My earlier readings indicated that the diacritic marks, or “nikkudim,” were added much later in the history of the evolution of the Hebrew language. Can you tell me approximately what century this occurred? Can you please provide me good English-language texts that address the history of the evolution of Hebrew and the adding of such things as the question mark, exclamation mark, quotation marks, nikkudim, etc.?To the best of my knowledge the Nikkudim (vowel markings) were developed by the Masoretes in Tiberias around the 8th century. There were competing Nikkud systems developed by Palestinian and Babylonian Jewish scholars but the Palestinian school prevailed, thus we have Nikkudim on the bottom of letters instead of the top where the Babylonians had them.
As far as punctuation goes, the application of question marks etc. to Hebrew syntax is of extremely recent origin and cannot have originated much earlier than the late 19th century.
I am not familiar with any English language histories of Hebrew.
Sincerely,
Rabbi A.Y. Rabenstein