The Medieval Prosodic Orthography of the Tiberian Masoretic Reading Tradition

Abstract

The medieval accentual notations of the Tiberian Masoretic Reading Tradition (TMRT), known as the ṭaʿămē hammiqrå̄, guide the reader in the proper intonement of the Hebrew Bible. Since Dresher’s groundbreaking 1994 article, scholars of the ṭaʿămē hammiqrå̄ have increasingly understood the system to exhibit features corresponding to the prosodic phrase structure of speech. However, the lack of a suitable theoretical framework for analysing and interpreting the ṭaʿămē hammiqrå̄ has greatly hindered research on the system, leaving it largely opaque. This article presents conclusions from Pitcher (2020), a study undertaken to investigate the possibility that the correspondences identified by Dresher may point to a more significant correlation between the ṭaʿămē hammiqrå̄ and modern prosodic descriptions than has been previously considered. In this article the ṭaʿămē hammiqrå̄ are introduced as a prosodic orthography of liturgical Tiberian Hebrew and a wholly linguistic model grounded in the discipline of prosodic phonology is proposed.