Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

once you hear it, you can't stop hearing it: there is music inherent
in spoken language. it is that music that is behind the rabbi's
chanting every shabbos.

consider "a cup of coffee", which prosodically is organized as

(a)                        (b)                     (c)
        .                       0                          H
      /   \             =     /   \             =       L       
    w       s               1       0                       
    |       |
a--cup of--coffee 

in (a) w/s stand for weak/strong. such binary organization is the
heart of intonation. musically, (a) has a pitch contour of high/low or
H/L as in (c). the same organization can be plotted by a graded
top-down notation in (b) where branching induces a lower grade on a
weak branch.

similarly "five francs for a cup of coffee"

               .                                    0
         /          \                           /       \
    w                    s                  1               0
   / \                 /   \              /   \           /   \
 w     s             w       s          2       1       1       0
 |     |             |       |
five francs for--a--cup of--coffee

here's how the hebrew accents work: they are equivalent to the binary,
graded structures. their pitch contours generate precisely the right
kind of tonal declinations that are derived by deductive and inductive
reconstruction of the rabbinical chanting.

in other words, a prosodic representation as above has the following
properties: in binary fashion it groups words, and then groups groups,
into structures isomorphic with pitch contours. such structures
pattern with the syntax most of the time, but systematically deviate
from the syntax in satisfying prosodic rules/constraints. these
contours are precisely what is behind the various chanting traditions.
(notice that "prominence" has nothing to do with it). various
substitutions of accents are motivated by musical requirements. end of
story.

really, really, neat. I'll be giving a paper on this business February
1999 and hopefully trying to get the research out in a number of forms.

is there theological significance to a god that sings instead of
speaks? ;-)
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Vincent DeCaen, Ph.D.  <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/intro.html
c/o Deparment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, M5S 1A1
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