The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: hannīqqūḏ haṭṭəḇeryānī) is a system of diacritics (niqqud) devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to produce the Masoretic Text.[1] The system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts as well.
The Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, makes fine distinctions of consonant quality and length, and serves as punctuation. While the Tiberian system was devised for Tiberian Hebrew, it has become the dominant system for vocalizing all forms of Hebrew and has long since eclipsed the Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems.
The sin dot distinguishes between the two values of . A dagesh indicates a consonant is geminate or unspirantized, and a raphe indicates spirantization. The mappiq indicates that is consonantal, not silent, in syllable-coda position.
The seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew are indicated straightforwardly by distinct diacritics:
| niqqud with א | Hebrew: אַ | Hebrew: אֶ | Hebrew: אֵ | Hebrew: אִ | Hebrew: אָ אׇ | Hebrew: אֹ | Hebrew: אֻ | Hebrew: אוּ | |
| name | patah | segol | tzere | hiriq | qamatz | holam | qubutz | shuruq | |
| value | pronounced as //a// | pronounced as //ɛ// | pronounced as //e// | pronounced as //i// | pronounced as //ɔ// | pronounced as //o// | pronounced as //u// | ||
The ultrashort vowels are slightly more complicated. There were two graphemes corresponding to the vowel pronounced as //ă//, attested by alternations in manuscripts like .. In addition, one of the graphemes could also be silent:
| niqqud with א | Hebrew: אְ< | -- how does one put a [2] on the actual alef with svah in the first row, instead of on the word shva in the second row of the table like I did?If you know how to do it, it would be better I think --> | Hebrew: אֲ | Hebrew: אֱ | Hebrew: אֳ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| name | hataf patah | hataf segol | hataf qamatz | ||
| value | pronounced as //ă/, ⌀/ | pronounced as //ă// | pronounced as //ɛ̆// | pronounced as //ɔ̆// |
Shva was used both to indicate lack of a vowel (quiescent šwa, shva nah) and as another symbol to represent the phoneme pronounced as //ă// (mobile šwa, shva na), the latter also represented by hataf patah. The phoneme pronounced as //ă// had a number of allophones; pronounced as //ă// had to be written with shva rather than hataf patah when it was not pronounced as pronounced as /[ă]/. Before a laryngeal-pharyngeal, mobile šwa was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel (pronounced as /[uvɔqɔ̆ʕɔ]/) and as pronounced as /[ĭ]/ preceding pronounced as //j//, (pronounced as //θăðammĭjuni//). Using ḥataf vowels was mandatory under gutturals but optional under other letters, and there was considerable variation among manuscripts.
That is referenced specifically by medieval grammarians:
The names of the vowel diacritics are iconic and show some variation:
Cantillation signs mark stress and punctuation. Metheg may mark secondary stress, and maqqaf conjoins words into one stress unit, which normally takes only one cantillation mark on the final word in the unit.