Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

thought some of you might get a smile from my studies.

"The Eight-fold Vowel System of Tiberian Hebrew: Evidence from
Segholate Nouns" Vincent DeCaen (U of Toronto), William Idsardi (U of
Delaware) ms draft 1999

from intro
in this article we consider one aspect of how speakers of Tiberian
hebrew mentally stored the words of their language. That is, we
consider what the underlying representation of the Tiberian hebrew
vowel system was. We will address this question with a particular
methodology, namely that two words will have different underlying
vowels when (1) the vowels of two words differ in their realizations,
and (2) the divergences in realizations cannot be explained by nearby
sounds. In brief, different behaviours indicate different sounds. We
will eventually discover eight patterns, indicating that each of the
eight surface vowel qualities indicated by the Massoretes was also an
underlying vowel quality.

;-)

cheers
V  
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Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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De omnibus dubitandum.  --ironically, Karl Marx's favourite motto