Biblical Hebrew Forum

[decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)]

hi henry, 

glad you're still around: what exactly are you up to these days?
i'm working for an investment firm, but i hope to find time to keep up my
studies...

pause: a positional phenomenon, as you say: governed by syntax interfacing
with prosody. i can show the distribution using three-fold contrasts,
e.g., )F^T.FH, )A^T.FH, and )AT.F^H. the first two are pausal, and are
governed by phonosyntax. the nature of the vowel is a function of the
half-verse (silluq always; athnakh usually--but in poetry only if it marks
the half-verse). so that looks neat and clean, and consistent with what
you're saying, right?

let's define this as "pause", period. the precise trigger is something i'm
working intensively on....

what i'm finding is that for certain variants, under certain
configurations, if they are phrased together with a word "in pause", they
also show a pausal variation.

concretely, in tiberian aramaic, pausal variants [i] vs [e]:  [i] conforms
for the most part to a "pausal" distribution; there are interesting cases
where [i] appears regularly immediately before a word in "pause". the
covering law for [i] vs [e] appears to pick out a two-word "pausal
phrase". there is even one case where both words can and so do show [i],
which is cute.

but as you say, the idea is already kicking around; and i'm very grateful
for the tips... i'll have to look at goerwitz again.

V -- 
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Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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