The Phono-Morpho-Orthographic AHWY אהוי Juncture

Abstract

AHWY אהוי matres lectiones ‘mothers of reading’ are the most complex and inconsistent spelling category in Hebrew. They designate vowels and consonants which are often interchangeable, they mutate towards each other, they have non-equal distributions in various spelling sites, and all of this complexity is conditioned by morpho-phonological considerations. Many factors work together to generate an inconsistent, quasi-optional representation of this class. Thus, the expectation regarding AHWY אהוי (which are all homophonous consonants) is that they should not only be subject to regular substitution errors, but they should also be prone to omission and reduplication. Moreover, since AHWY appear all over the word as root, function or internal elements, they might be harder to classify morphologically than the strictly consonantal letters. The only way to appreciate the richness and complexity of the AHWY אהוי system is to examine them through the triple-dimensioned prism of the phono-morpho-orthographic juncture; that is, through the orthographic restrictions on AHWY אהוי occurrence in the written word as designators of different phonological entities with various morphological roles.