Simon Montagu wrote:
John Cowan wrote:
Dean Snyder scripsit:
3) adoption of the various supra-consonantal vowel and accent systems
4) The abandonment of most of the apparatus introduced in step 3, as far as productive use of the script is concerned, reverting to the 22CWSA.
I don't think that it can be described as "abandonment". The vowel system was only ever used for a limited range of texts, and continues to be used for a limited range of texts to this day, in parallel to use of the 22CWSA for most other texts written in the script.
Definitely not abandoned. Vowel-points are still very much used in Hebrew today. Apart from children's books, poetry is also regularly pointed (my translations of Tolkien are mostly unpointed, except the poems which are all *fully* pointed--including such things as dagesh, etc. These concerns are important for Hebrew scansion). They are also regularly used in things like newspapers, just not on every word. Something like two or three words a page (I'd guess) has a point or two written in it, in order to forbid a mistaken reading that might otherwise be made. And foreign proper names also gets points now and then.
Even more so the accent system which, except possibly as a conceit, is only ever applied to the Biblical text.
I used to think so, but I've since seen books with accents on an Aramaic translation of the Bible, and also a few accents (not completely accented) on the text of the Mishna(!) And once or twice I've seen blessings accented. And prayer books that at least *discuss* the prosody of non-Biblical prayers in terms of accents. But yes, that system (those systems, really) is essentially limited to Biblical text in general.
~mark
