Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 21.58 16/09/99 -0500, Henry Churchyard wrote:
>This spacing hypothesis is a new one by me (though similar to the Central
>European typographic practice of emphasizing words by  s p a c i n g
>t h e m  o u t  internally).  

I n    t h i s    c a s e    i t ' s    t h e    opposite    t h a t ' s
b e i n g    claimed !

Concentration is claimed to indicate stress.

>You might get more helpful comments by
>summarizing the gist of the article, and/or providing a bibliographic
>reference, rather than just throwing your raw plusses and asterisks at us.

The writer who has a book pending doesn't really want this stuff spread
around, because the editor was worried.

I thought one should be able to comment, working from one's knowledge of
the language and comparing the expected stressings with what was provided
with the raw plusses and asterisks.

There are about four basic types of stress patterns in languages: clause
initial, clause final, natural fall in words, sentence focus stress and if
you can think of others.... The first two cases can be eliminated without
any further thought. What is shown with the claimed stress patterns here
argues against a simple fall of stress where they occur in words and leaves
us with sentence stress which is to my knowledge based on the theme or
focus of a sentence. What do the provided stresses in context show?

If one can't decide what the likely range of possibilities of stressings
would be by looking at the Hebrew text, then there is no hope of verifying
the stressings provided in the article (I attempt to cite below).


Cheers,


Ian

--------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Ex 4:28-31 [..], primary (+) and secondary (*) [stress]

1 'hr]n 't kl dbry yhwh '[$r
           *

2 $lxw w't kl h'tt '$r cwhw wylx m$h[
        *   *                *

3 w'hrn wy's pw 't kl zkny bny y$r'l    wydbr
         +    * *        *   +    *      +

4 'hrn 't kl hdbrym '$r dbr yhwh 'l m[
       +          +              *

5 wy`]$ h'tt l`yny h`m     wym`n
               + *  +       *

6 ] yhwh 't bny y[$r'l
              *