# Syriac: omission of dot on bgdkpt letter



## flockhat

Hi guys,

Is there a rule that whenever you have one of the six bgdkpt letters at the beginning of a word you should omit both ܩܘܫܝܐ and ܪܘܟܟܐ? You never see ܟ݁ܬ݂ܰܒ݂ but rather ܟܬ݂ܰܒ݂.

Thanks again


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## radagasty

There is no such rule. Be that as it may, the _quššaya_ and _rukkaka_ dots are not used at the beginning of words, since the bgdkpt letters are plosive in that position.


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## Ali Smith

If they are plosives (stops) at the beginning of a word, shouldn’t they have _quššaya_?


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## radagasty

Why put a dot, if one already knows that it is plosive? The diacritical dots in Syriac generally served a practical purpose—either disambiguation or preservation of the correct reading—and they usually weren't written unless needed, which is in part why their use was so sporadic and inconsistent. That's also why the _syame_ is the most consistently used of all the diacritical dots, because, in unvocalised texts, plural forms are often otherwise identical to the singular.


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## Ali Smith

Because sometimes a begadkefat letter will be fricative despite being at the beginning of the word that contains it. Observe:

ܕܲ݁ܒ݂ܒ݂ܲܝܬܵ݁ܐ 'which is in a/the house'

In this word both b's are spirantized. Similarly, look at this:

ܒ݁ܢܵܐ ܒ݂ܲܝܬ݁ܵܐ 'he built a house.'

Here the second b (but not the first) is spirantized despite occurring at the beginning of the word.


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## radagasty

Textbooks present an idealised picture of the language that is, almost by necessity, divorced from reality, since what may be legitimately described as _Classical Syriac_ varied significantly over time and space. In particular, spirantisation was probably a later phenomenon—we don't know when exactly it arose in Syriac, but certainly before the 7th century A.D.—and there were moreover significant differences in its realisation between Eastern and Western Syriac. It is therefore almost impossible to present a rule for the whole of the corpus, and Thackston's idealisation may never have been the case at any point in time, let alone across the entire span his textbook purports to cover.

Turning to your specific examples, neither of the ܒ's in ܕܒܒܝܬܐ are in word-initial position, as proclitic particles, from a phonological point of view, form part of the word to which they are attached. As for ܒܢܐ ܒܝܬܐ, spirantisation across word boundaries did take place in WS, but not in ES, so Thackston's rule (c) needs to be qualified.

Spirantisation was only weakly phonemic in Syriac, and therefore not consistently marked, especially word-initially. And yes, there is one important class for which spirantisation was phonemic at the beginning of a word, _viz._ borrowings from Greek, but, by and large, the _quššaya_ and _rukkaka_ dots, if used at all, were generally omitted at the beginning of words. This was not a rule, but common practice.


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