Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 10/02/2005 21:02, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> > It is worth noting that almost all languages have the basic p, t and k
> > sounds, but their fricative equivalents are relatively rare and absent
> > in many languages.
> >
> >    
> I don't see any significant divergence of our views. I don't mean that Greek
> phi was 100% fricative; likely, it was a hoarse sound. Similarly for
> begedkefet.
>  

An aspirated plosive is not a fricative at all. It is not a hoarse 
sound. It is a plosive, a stop, in which the air stream is completely 
blocked, which never happens with a fricative. A sound has to be one or 
the other.

> My point is that word-initial pei sounded for LXX folks more like phi than
> like pi. I assume you agree about this. ...
>  

Yes.

> ... Neither the word-initial pei, nor phi were pure fricatives. But pi was
> strong plosive. The Masoretic word-initial pei is a strict plosive,
> contrasted to (non-dageshed) hoarse fricative pei elsewhere. Or, let pei be
> aspirated plosive, I have no problem with that. ...

At some point intervocalic pe (without dagesh) changed from being a 
plosive to a fricative, a process well attested in many languages.

> ... Then the word-initial pei in
> Masoretic phonology  is specifically less aspirated than certain other
> pei's. ...
>  

No. There is not a scale of aspiration. In some sense there is a 
progression unaspirated plosive -> aspirated plosive -> fricative, but 
actually the change to fricative does not increase the aspiration but 
removes it.

> ... I don't argue about the exact sound, rather about the relative aspiration 
> of
> begedkefet with and without dagesh kal. Clearly, with dagesh kal the sound
> is less aspirated. ...
>  

Vadim, here you don't know what you are talking about.

> ... The difference in aspiration is unrelated to inter-vocal position. Some
> inter-vocal begedkefet's are plosives (second radical in hitpael); ...

Yes, because they are geminated, as indicated by dagesh hazaq, and 
geminated plosives never become fricatives, at least in Hebrew.

> ... some
> non-inter-vocal begedkefet's are fricatives--or, at any rate, aspirated
> (third radical in smihit plural).
> No language, as far as I know, consistently and significantly reduces
> aspiration of the second-in-a-row consonant (that is, the one after closed
> syllable or word-initial). ...

The difference is not in which radical the consonant is but in whether 
or not it is geminated. Gemination of the second radical is a marker of 
certain verb forms in all Semitic languages, so this is not special 
pleading for Hebrew. And no one has mentioned reduction of aspiration in 
any environment.

> ... Yet, we assume Masoretes heard what they wrote
> down.
> There is one environment, in which second-in-a-row consonant loses
> aspiration: opera singing with lower part of larynx. This happens because of
> the inter-consonantal stop (intermission), introduced to avoid jamming the
> second-in-a-row consonant.
>
>  
Is this observation cross-linguistic?


> > > > Vadim, I was trained in phonetics to hear small sound differences
> > > >        
> > > But try asking peas traders at your local market to do likewise.
> > >
> > >      
> > The Masoretes were not market traders, they were expert linguists who
> > trained themselves to hear fine phonetic distinctions.
> > ...
> >    
> This seems kind of unprecendented, isn't it? Besides, they indeed were
> traders.
> But they could clearly hear the subtle differences--in singing, where accent
> and elongation reveal the subtleties.
>
>  
They could hear the differences whatever their occupation. Even if they 
were market traders they needed to hear these differences as they could 
be semantically significant in their market trading.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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