Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:46:22 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca&gt
> Subject: distribution of pause by accents

> i did some serious number crunching based on our work here on pausal
> phonology. of some interest, distribution of pausal environments
> (not necessarily pausal form there!) by accent level:

> d0 (athnah, silluq):    61.0%
> d1                      31.4%
> d2                       6.4%
> d3                       0.9%
> conjunctive              0.4%
> (based on a sample of 2846)

> what still surprises me is pause on less than d1, and conjunctives
> too: wow.  at any rate, this should give average pausal phrases per
> verse.  henry, how do those %s square with your statistical study?
> (i don't have accent to it right now: moving office again)

I'm not entirely certain what you mean by "distribution of pausal
environments (not necessarily pausal form there!)", but here are the
most basic statistics from section 3.3.2.2.1 of my dissertation (page
373 et seq.).  The numeric accentual codes of the dissertation are
used, where the numbers 1-5 represent words with disjunctive accents
in the following way: "1" is silluq, "2" is 'athnah., "3In" is the
initial accents of Cohen's d1 class (s@gholta and shalsheleth), "3" is
other accents of Cohen's d1 class (zaqeph, etc.), "4" is the accents
of Cohen's d2 class (r@bhia`, etc.), "5" is the accents of Cohen's d3
class (pazer, etc.).  Also, "6" is the transcription for conjunctive
accents.


Census of all Hebrew words in the `twenty-one' books according to accents:

            1       2    3In     3      4      5   | Tot.Disj. |    6
           ---     ---   ---    ---    ---    ---  |   -----   |   ---
Number:   18433   17047  928   61980  38659   8843 |  145890   | (82439)
Percent:  12.6%   11.7%  0.6%  42.5%  26.5%   6.1% |    100%   |
                                                           
Stress-shift-blocked pausal forms in the `twenty-one' books:
                                                              
            1       2    3In     3      4      5   | Tot.Disj. |    6
           ---     ---   ---    ---    ---    ---  |   -----   |   ---
Number:    617     603    24    624    130     17  |   2015    |   (19)
Percent:  30.6%   29.9%  1.2%  31.0%   6.5%   0.8% |   100%    |
Ratio:     2.42    2.56  1.87   0.73   0.24   0.14 |           |
                                                           
                                                           
Stress-shifted non-pausal forms with disjunctive accents in the 21 books:
                                                              
            1       2    3In     3      4      5   | Tot.Disj. |    6
           ---     ---   ---    ---    ---    ---  |   -----   |   ---
Number:     1       5     1     3335   3145   807  |   7294    |   (?)
Percent:  0.01%   0.07%  0.01% 45.7%  43.1%  11.1% |   100%    |
Ratio:    0.001   0.006  0.02   1.08   1.63   1.83 |           |


Here the numbers in the "ratio" rows of the last two tables are
derived from dividing the percent number in the same column by the
percent number in the same column in the first (census) table.  So the
number "1.83" in the last row of the last table was calculated as
11.1%/6.1%, i.e. as (807/7294)/(8843/145890).  It's these ratios which
may give the truest picture of the affinity of pausal and non-pausal
forms for accentual categories.  There was no attempt to collect and
tabulate stress-shifted non-pausal forms with conjunctive accents.

If we collapse some of the categories in the second (pausal) of the
three charts above, then I guess we can make the following comparison:


 d0 (athnah, silluq):    61.0%  |  1,2     60.0%  = 1220/2034
 d1                      31.4%  | 3In,3    31.9%  = 648/2034
 d2                       6.4%  |   4       6.4%  = 130/2034
 d3                       0.9%  |   5       0.8%  = 17/2034
 conjunctive              0.4%  |   6       0.9%  = 19/2034

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