Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

>> Subject: tiberian phonology & vulgar latin
>> From: decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)
>> Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 21:31:26 -0400 (EDT)

>> has the parallel between canaanite > tiberian hebrew vowel system
>> and the developments in latin > romance been picked up explicitly
>> somewhere? if not, be interesting model and parallel to pursue to
>> help understand tiberian system.

[Sorry for late reply, have been way behind on B-HEBREW reading...]

Yes, this is discussed in some detail in section 1.4 of my
dissertation which can be downloaded from
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/ (that site may be under
construction in the next few days, if so you can't access that page,
the actual compressed PDF file of the dissertation excerpt is at
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/bigpersonal/c1-4xcpt.zip ).


> Subject: Re: tiberian phonology & vulgar latin
> From: Michael Hildenbrand <hildenbr AT Haas.Berkeley.EDU>
> Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 13:27:54 -0700 (PDT)

> I don't know that that parallel has been drawn.  My question back to
> you is what Canaanite vowel system would you use?  Most of the
> Canaanite we have preserved contains very little indication of vowel
> pronunciation.

Well, if you try to reconstruct the Canaanite vowel system based on
unsystematic guessing from imprecise cuneiform transcriptions etc.,
then you'd probably go nuts; but if you apply the systematic
principles of phonological reconstruction, then the history of the
overall structure of the Canaanite vowel system becomes very clear in
broad outlines:

Starting from the proto-Semitic situation, in which there were only
three distinctive vowel qualities (call them "i", "u", and "a"), which
occurred both in long and short vowel phonemes, Canaanite underwent a
shift in which long "a" become a long mid "o" vowel in most cases,
while the original diphthongs "ay" and "aw" become long "e" and long
"o" respectively, in most cases.  The vowel system which resulted from
these changes has long and short "i" and "u" vowel phonemes, "e" and
"o" vowels which are long only, and a short "a" vowel phoneme (and
possibly also some surviving remnant long "a" vowels which escaped
raising to long "o").  This vowel system is the Canaanite vowel system
of the late 2nd. millennium B.C. and the beginning of the 1st.
millennium B.C. which is reconstructed and used as a baseline in
Zellig S. Harris's book _Development of the Canaanite Dialects: An
Investigation in Linguistic History (American Oriental Series, Volume
16)_.

Of course, there is no way to reconstruct the exact vowel qualities in
every local Canaanite dialect at each different sub-period, but they
were mostly probably minor variations and developments of the above
basic common early "Canaanite" vowel system.

However, you can't actually go directly from this early Canaanite
vowel system to an "Ashkenazi" type pronunciation tradition with seven
basic vowel qualities and no vowel length distinctions, as is
discussed in my dissertation.  (For one thing, the early Canaanite
vowel system has nothing corresponding to seghol.)

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/