Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 1/14/07, K Randolph wrote:

> It was when I digitized my notes from dictionary margins that I was
> struck by how seldom the sin and shin appeared in homonyms, as seldom
> as if they originally were one phoneme, not two as I had been taught. [...]
> This study backed up that observation.

How does the study back up your observation?

I point out, again, that I do not accept that phonemes must occur at a
similar percentage relative to other phonemes.  That is, that in order to
differentiate bat and hat as different words, /h/ and /b/ must be found in
the language at the same percentage as any other two phonems such
as /k/ and /p/.  However, I am still curious as to how Peter's "study"
backs up your observation.

Yitzhak Sapir