[Mesorah] Two (obvious) questions on parshas bereshis - double trop and double arum

[Mandel, Seth]

Absolutely true.

However, it is not the purpose of the cantillation marks to show these things.  The trop shows how the Ba'alei Masorah read/chanted the p'sukim down to the smallest detail, not what intonation one would use if one were doing a dramatic reading, as in a play or presentation.

I, curmudgeon that I am, even question the idea of "dramatic trop."  There are more variations between communities in the musical chants used for trop than most people imagine.  First, what might seem dramatic to you might not sound dramatic to me, and second, I can probably point you to a different community where it does not sound dramatic at all.

In all spoken languages, there are several things that indicate changed meaning, such things as stress, elongation of syllables, pauses.  Everyone uses them and most people are not conscious of them. In English, intonation distinguishes "you are going to the store" from "you are going to the store?" But a third option is "you are going to the store?!?!," distinguished by intonation including rhythm.  A sarcastic intonation is another option.

Every language uses these tools, so a linguist would say they are built into the mechanism of language that is innate to humans, and a rabbi might say that that is the way HQBH created language and implanted it into humans.  But in any case, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that even dead languages, such as Biblical Hebrew, used these techniques.

But even now punctuation cannot fully express all the options, and you have to hear it to get the fully meaning and connotations.  Back over 2,000-3,000 years ago when even representing vowels was a fairly new idea, you cannot really expect that ways to indicate things that even today are not fully represented would have been developed.

Trop does not represent intonation, although since it divides words it borders on the area of intonation.

So, although it is true that for many or most p'sukim one can predict the trop, that is only if the meaning of the posuk is clear.  The only proper way to try to tease out the meaning that the trop may indicate is to learn the basic rules, and then apply them to a given posuk to see what you come up with. If you come up with something different than the trop that was used, then it is a sign that something special is being signalled.  But is it sarcasm? irony? surprise?  All you can really determine is that something special is being signalled, beyond that is your guesses.


Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org


________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Micha Berger via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2018 3:54 PM
To: Danny Levy
Cc: mesorah at lists.aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] Two (obvious) questions on parshas bereshis - double trop and double arum

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 09:14:31PM +0300, Danny Levy via Mesorah wrote:
:                                                          Is it just a
: coincidence that a number of successive p'sukim require "dramatic" te'amim
: for their precise meaning?

Any more than the likelihood that a given English paragraph might require
more exclamation points than the norm?

Punctuation and tone are mixed notions in the punctuation system evolved
in Europe; why not in trop too?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
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