The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

COOK The Language of Onqelos and Jonathan 153
the final-weak? One reason might be that the loss of final vowels in the
final-weak verbs would entail a greater communicative loss than with
other classes of verbs. The loss of final long vowels in strong verbs
would still leave contrasting forms: qatalta~qatalt(u/i) > qatalt~qatalit.
But in final-weak verbs the contrast could be lost: hazeta~hazet(u/i) >
hazet-hazet. Therefore one might think that the final -ti was borrowed
from Hebrew to distinguish 1st c. sing, from 2nd masc./fem. sing,
forms.
I still think this is a mistake. I have a hard time imagining speakers
of an Aramaic dialect all deciding to borrow a Hebrew morpheme to
avoid communication loss caused by sound change. In the case of
Onqelos and Jonathan, the contrast was not even lost, because the final
long vowels did not fall away in the 2nd person forms. The only solution
I can come up with is phonological. The contracted diphthong -e
in the second syllable (for active forms) or the long -f vowel there (in
stative forms of the Peal and all derived-stem forms) may have generated
both an assimilation and a lengthening of the final vowel:
hazetu > hazeti, sawwitu > sawwiti. There might indeed have been
some kind of reinforcing of this process from a Hebrew substratum or
adstratum. In any case, this phenomenon is peculiar to the dialect of
Onqelos and Jonathan. Tal does not discuss either of the two features
just mentioned.
I will conclude this brief survey with three features, two morphological
and one phonological. The two morphological features are the
most famous Easternisms in the text of Onqelos and Jonathan: the
occasional masc. pi. emphatic ending in -e, and the occasional derivedstem
infinitive with o-e vocalism. Obviously both these features are an
acute embarrassment to the view of the Western provenance of
Onqelos and Jonathan. However, they are not so predominant in the
text of the Targums as to preclude an explanation of them along the
lines of copyist error or redactional change. Tal and Dalman both
argued for the originality of at least some of the plural emphatic
forms. I still think an explanation in terms of copyist error is defensible,
but not necessary. For heuristic reasons, I want to explore the
possibility that these Easternisms are native to the Onqelos and
Jonathan dialect.
As far as the masc. pi. emphatic form is concerned, it can be noted
that Palmyrene is like the Targums in having occasional plurals in -e