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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Why assume the Masoretes recorded spoken Hebrew?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why assume the Masoretes recorded spoken Hebrew?
  • Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:22:10 +0000

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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