Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

> Subject: RE: pausal forms
> From: "Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>
> Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 17:47:16 -0700

>> As for the linguistic basis of pausal/non-pausal alternations, the
>> basic factor is that pausal forms (at the end of major prosodic/
>> syntactic constituents) had a greater degree of stress.  Most pausal
>> phonological changes fall under two phenomena, vowel-lengthing and
>> blocking of stress-movement.  Here vowel-lengthing is a very natural
>> consequence of greater stress, and in my dissertation I discuss how
>> stress-shift blocking is also a natural result of a greater degree of
>> stress being placed on a word.

> Henry, assuming you're right, what motivates the user/writer/massorete
> to add the stress.

That's the wrong question -- the Masoretes were only writing down the
pronunciation they heard in formal cantillation/recitation of the text,
and didn't consciously think about where to add in pausal forms; in
fact, the whole development of the analysis of Hebrew grammar is mainly
post-masoretic.


>> In my dissertation ( http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~churchyh/hc599dis.zip
>> ), I explore how the accentual system correlates with "minor pausal
>> phonology" (stress-shift blocking) in detail, and it can be seen how
>> such stress alternations arose from prosodic patterns which could
>> naturally occur in speech, though they're a little fossilized in
>> Masoretic.

> So a natural language user would produce these stress alterations?
> Is that what you mean?

Yes.


> So if I understand you correctly, at some stage when BH was still
> spoken, users would naturally stress certain words?

Would give greater prosodic prominence to words in certain positions
within phrases, and such prosodic prominence could have effects on the
other phonology of such words.


> If this is what you are saying, then can you inform me of how accurate
> are the correlations between "prosodic patterns which could naturally
> occur in speech" and the MT?  Thanks.

That's kind of the wrong question again, but I discuss a related
question (correlation between pausal phonology and the hierarchical
immediate-constituent hierarchy of the masoretic orthographic accentual
system) in my dissertation.


> Vince:

> what do you think are the syntactic and/or semantic and/or pragmatic
> reasons that produce the "natural prosodic phenomena"?

Syntactic etc. factors influence the hierarchy of phrasal prosodic
constituents, and the phrasal phonology influences the distribution of
pausal forms.  There's a whole extensive literature on the relationship
between syntactic and prosodic constituency (Elisabeth Selkirk, etc.).


>> in my derivations, pausal forms are basic and full; contextual forms
>> are derived and reduced (that is, the opposite of received wisdom).

> In a GB-grammar framework do you then see the 'deep' forms all in
> pause with the 'surface' forms mostly phonologically transformed?

It's actually not as boldly innovative as he thinks -- the idea that
pausal stress represents the stress position which is initially-assigned
during the course of the synchronic phonological derivation has been
pretty much the standard assumption in all generative phonological
analyses beginning with Prince (1975) -- just turn to p. 194 of your
copy of "The Phonology and Morphology of Tiberian Hebrew" (MIT PhD,
1975), and it's right there...   ;-)

Anyway, forms in early derivational stages of a synchronic phonological
derivation are not "in pause" in the sense of having received phrasal
prosodic prominence.


> When you say "right-edges" I assume you mean in spoken sounds, not in
> orthographic marks? (Sorry if I have the lingo all messed up!).

That's actually a confusing terminology -- the standard linguistic
meaning of "right edge" is "end of constituent", but the metaphor
doesn't really work for Arabic and Hebrew !  ;-)


--
Henry Churchyard   churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/