The Qameṣ Shift in Palestinian and Tiberian Hebrew

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The qameṣ shift is a major question in the historical phonology of Hebrew and in the reconstruction of the Tiberian reading tradition. Jonathan Howard's published research has examined the development conventionally represented as */aː/ > [ɔː] and the problem of determining when this sound change entered Palestinian and Tiberian Hebrew.

In a 2026 peer-reviewed study, Howard examined possible evidence in the Greek transcriptions preserved in Origen's Hexapla, dating from the first half of the third century CE in Palestine. He has proposed that lexical diffusion may help explain how the shift spread gradually through the language and why different stages of the change may be visible in the textual transmission of Hebrew.

Jonathan Laufer Howard is a researcher in Hebrew language and historical linguistics associated with the Department of Hebrew Language and Sociolinguistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Ben-Gurion University records list him in Hebrew Language M.A. and Ph.D. studies, and the department's researcher directory identifies him as a doctoral student.

His research deals with the history and phonology of Hebrew, the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, medieval Hebrew grammatical thought, vocalization, manuscript traditions, and Hebrew in Late Antiquity. His work combines close philological reading with the historical study of pronunciation, writing systems, linguistic theory, and textual transmission.

His ORCID is 0000-0001-8630-8468.