Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

If English were spelled phonetically, "tu" would be used where we now
use "to", "too" and "two". Those are homonyms, words with the same
sound but different meanings.

The Hebrew consonantal text lists a higher percentage of words as
homonyms than does English, further I claim that the modern, western
style of lexicography gives a false high in the percentage of words
listed as homonyms (it lists far more words as homonyms than other
lexicographic methods), yet the percentage (to control for differences
of absolute frequencies) of words containing a sin/shin is less than
for words containing, for example, a resh or lamedh and is within the
standard deviation for words where there is no question that the
letter had but one root in the putative proto-Semitic.

I did a spot check on the spreadsheet that Peter made, and I noticed
that many of the homonyms he listed are not homonyms when using
different lexicographic methods. But that should not significantly
change the rankings, I don't think.

In closing, my observation was that sin and shin together were found
in homonyms no more frequently than other letters as a percentage of
total uses. The statistical study by Peter bears that out. But I agree
with Peter that that in itself does not prove that sin and shin were
one phoneme in Biblical Hebrew, neither does it disprove it.

Karl W. Randolph.

On 1/14/07, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> 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