Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> Subject: RE: b-hebrew digest: July 14, 1999
> From: "Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 08:26:53 -0700

>>>> In my dissertation, 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 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.

> This is what I was trying to ascertain from the beginning, that the
> use of pause was a phenomenon of spoken Hebrew at some stage, not
> just a phenomenon of written Hebrew.  The BIG question then which I
> am slowly working towards, is: if a native BH NLU in speaking gave
> "greater prosodic prominence to words in certain positions within
> phrases, and such prosodic prominence could have effects on the
> other phonology of such words," then what is the relationship
> between these pauses and the other linguistic features of BH? You
> have mentioned the relationship between phonology and the
> orthographic accentual system, but what other possible relationships
> exist of which we could have some confidence in ascertaining given
> the MT?

Well, pausal alternations are conditioned by phrasal phonology, so
pausal alternations are one of our strongest indicators of phrasal
phonology in Hebrew, and the only really direct and immediate one.
(The accentual nested constituency parse is not 100% phonological in
nature, and does not always strictly agree with the pausal phonology.)
We don't have a lot of independent information about phrasal phonology
in Hebrew aside from pausal forms (and more indirectly, orthographic
accentual consitituency), and we're lucky to have that much -- for
most ancient languages, there is much less information available.

That's why in my dissertation I examine the problem of the correlation
between pausal phonology and the hierarchical immediate-constituent
hierarchy of the masoretic orthographic accentual system -- those are
the main sources of information about phrasal phonology that can be
compared.

>> 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

> Are you saying that your dissertation demonstrates that the
> distribution of the pausal forms (and accents perhaps?) is orderly
> enough to be able to help us understand the behaviour of the phrasal
> prosodic constituents which in turn could shed light on the
> syntactic factors co-determining this?  That is, what are the
> implications for your findings for the understanding of the syntax
> of a NLU?

There are actually several studies of correlations between the
Masoretic orthographic accentual sytem and syntactic consitituency
(Aronoff, Dresher, etc.); I haven't really discussed that in any depth
(just briefly allude to it in section 3.1.2 starting on p.240).

If you're interested in syntax (rather than in phrasal/prosodic
phonology), then it's easier just to examine the accentual system
(though of course the masoretic orthographic accentual system is not
necessarily a pure transcription of any one single aspect of
linguistic structure).  I could send you my multi-meg working e-text
of a ca. 1993 version of the CCAT/CLaremont/Michigan/Westminster BHS
(more recent corrections would not be included) parsed according to
the algorithms of Wickes (basically).


>> 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...  ;-)

> I've heard of this before, and I'm wondering what would a FG
> analysis make of this?

Sorry, what's "FG"?

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