To Belabour The Points: Encoding Vowel Phonology in Syriac and Hebrew Vocalization

Abstract Medieval Hebrew and Syriac scribes both indicated vowels by placing dots above or below their consonantal writing. These vowel points were created in the Late Antique early Islamic periods to disam-biguate vocalization of important texts, especially Bible. The earliest step this process was implementation ‘diacritic dot’ system, which used a single dot distinguish pairs homographs: ‘above’ marked word with relatively-backed vowels, ‘below’ its homograph relatively-fronted vowels. This graphic depiction conveyed phonological association ‘height’ ‘backness’, that then entered Maso-retic tradition form mille'el (‘above’) millera' (‘below’) comparisons. In turn, principle backness as informed later placement Tiberian points.1