Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> 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.
>
What difference does that make for the argument? Elongated sound with short
stop might be call aspirated plosive, or hoarse fricative (hoarseness
consists is mini-stops). Beta is commonly described as a sound between
plosive and fricative.

> >... 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.
>
Hair-splitting. Say, word-initial pei in Masoretic phonology is more of a
plosive than some other pei's. This was not the case for LXX translators.
Would you agree with this statement?

> >... 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.

The begedkefet second radical in hitpael is plosified, not geminated. Not
hitcabbed, but rather, hitca.bed. Plosification is an alternative to
gemination. Plosification of dageshed consonants started in
second-consonant-in-a-row when vocalization of schwa was lost.
Compare hitcavEd (stress on the last) with hitcAvved-hitcAbed. Gemination is
only needed for post-tonic sound. Gemination/ plosification is likely caused
by specific environment (stress, in this case), rather than present
originally; the original sound was more of a fricative or aspirated.

> >... some
> >non-inter-vocal begedkefet's are fricatives--or, at any rate, aspirated
> >(third radical in smihit plural).

Your explanation that inter-vocal begedkefet's were fricativised does not
work.

> >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). ...
>
> Gemination of the second radical is a marker of
> certain verb forms in all Semitic languages.

Let's talk about it. In which Semitic languages are we certain of ancient
gemination or plosification of second-in-a-row consonant after "vocal" schwa
(third radical in segholate, second in nifal, first in hitpael)?
Which Semitic language in antiquity consistently geminated or plosified the
word-initital?

> >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?
>
It happens in Russian, French and Italian. I wasn't able to test singing in
other languages.

> >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.

Not ultra-short a, I presume?

Vadim Cherny