Fientivity, Transitivity, and Stem Vowel Variation in Byzantine Piyyuṭ

In the following article, an attempt is made to trace the expansion of the fientive ablaut class a ~ o throughout the history of the Hebrew language, beginning with Biblical Hebrew, through Qumran Hebrew, into Mishnaic Hebrew, and finally into the language of Byzantine piyyuṭ. Once it has been established that in piyyuṭ, this ablaut class is expanding at the expense of its competitors (e.g., the Stative class e ~ a), I make the claim that due to this spread, as well as the pressures of rhyme and a rigid view of the relationship between the qal stem and the causative hifʿil on the part of the liturgical poets, piyyuṭ shows a number of completely unprecedented, transitive/causative uses of qal verbs which are otherwise stative in the Hebrew language—e.g., [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /] 'he will cause to approach'. Finally, a publication of two Qillirian shivʿatot is appended at the end of the article, together with commentary.