Tiberian vocalization

The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: הַנִּקּוּד הַטְבֶרְיָנִי‎, romanized: hanniqquḏ haṭṭəḇeryāni) 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. The system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts as well.

Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, distinguishes 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. It has long since eclipsed the comparatively rudimentary Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems for writing Biblical Hebrew.

The sin dot distinguishes between the two values ofש‎. A dagesh indicates a consonant is geminate or unspirantized, and a raphe indicates spirantization. The mappiq indicates thatה‎ is consonantal, not silent, in syllable-coda position.

The seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew are indicated straightforwardly by distinct diacritics:

The diacritics qubutz and shuruq both represent /u/, but shuruq is used when the text uses full spelling (with waw as a mater lectionis). Each of the vowel phonemes could be allophonically lengthened; occasionally, the length is marked with metheg. Metheg also indirectly indicates when a following shva is vocal.

The ultrashort vowels are slightly more complicated. There were two graphemes corresponding to the vowel /ă/, attested by alternations in manuscripts likeארֲריך~ארְריך, ואשמֳעָה~ואשמְעָה‎.‎. In addition, one of the graphemes could also be silent:

Shva was used both to indicate lack of a vowel (quiescent šwa, shva naḥ) and as another symbol to represent the phoneme /ă/ (mobile šwa, shva naʻ), the latter also represented by hataf patah. The phoneme /ă/ had a number of allophones; /ă/ had to be written with shva rather than hataf patah when it was not pronounced as [ă]. Before a laryngeal-pharyngeal, mobile šwa was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel (וּבָקְעָה‎ [uvɔqɔ̆ʕɔ]) and as [ĭ] preceding /j/, (תְדַמְּיוּ֫נִי‎ /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 (hyphen) conjoins words into one stress unit, which normally takes only one cantillation mark on the final word in the unit.

• Babylonian vocalization
• Hebrew cantillation
• Cardinal vowels
• Niqqud
• Palestinian vocalization
• Tiberian Hebrew

• Blau, Joshua (2010). Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-129-0.
• Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993). A History of the Hebrew Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55634-1.
• Yeivin, Israel (1980). Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah. Scholars Press. ISBN 0-89130-373-1.