Biblical Hebrew Forum

["biblical hebrew" <jcr.bhebrew AT gmail.com>]

IF:To convince myself that something indeed hides between the 's' and
the 'l' of pensəl I would have to record the word, pass it through an
oscilloscope, observe the Fourier wave decomposition of each of its
components and analyze its frequency and amplitude content.

JCR: Or you could just explain to me what difference you hear between the
's' and the 'l' of 'slate' with those of 'pencil'. I suspect that you can
hear this difference but that you just believe it to be a 'tiny gap'.

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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       Thesis 1 - Aleppo codex machine translation
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  Thesis 2 - language acquisition simulation

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On 9/19/07, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:
>
> Jason,
>
> First, it is XAG GAH, '[she] celebrated', not XAGIGAH, 'feast'.
> The question, of course, it what constitutes a "vowel". A consonant
> has breadth and may include some faint, involuntary, miniscule vocal
> aftershocks, depending on its situation in a word. Articulating 'B'
> by itself I do hear the sound of air resonating in my mouth even as
> it is being ejected between my spread lips. But in the combination BG
> the sound of this trailing puff of air is absorbed in the G and it
> becomes BGADIM to my ear. It is possible that some people hear
> "something", to wit: "the shortest and quickest to pronounce vowel
> available to the human vocal system", between the 's' and the 'l' of
> pensəl because this is how they articulate it. As said, I cannot hear
> this whisper of the grass, this, audible to some, $IRAT HA(ASABIM. We
> need to keep also in mind that the distance between hearing something
> and dreaming of hearing it is very short [I am ignorant of the
> essentials of the science of psychophonetics, but am occasionally
> reproached that I hear only what I want to hear].
> To convince myself that something indeed hides between the 's' and
> the 'l' of pensəl I would have to record the word, pass it through an
> oscilloscope, observe the Fourier wave decomposition of each of its
> components and analyze its frequency and amplitude content. But I
> will not do it since I am not interested in this esoteric science of
> phonetics, which, I admit, should be nevertheless of great interest
> to scientists working on computer speech recognition.
> In any event, this discussion of the microscopic nature of this
> metaphysical ə is irrelevant to Hebrew. As you know, a Hebrew speaker
> overriding a schwa does it now by a premeditated, full-fledged vowel
> and not by an incidental squeak. Thus, the question is if it should
> be ,BGADIM, 'clothes', or B[E]GADIM, the same as M[E]GADIM, 'sweets,
> gifts of the earth', is now commonly articulated.
> I think that the pause in MacCoots is long and deliberate.
>
> On Sep 19, 2007, at 5:54 PM, Jason Hare wrote:
>
> > Isaac,
> >
> > A very clear difference between XfG|GfH and MacCoots is that /g/ is
> > vocal while /k/ is not. In order to pronounce two /k/ sounds
> > distinctly side-by-side, you have to completely stop the first
> > (which ends in silence) before beginning the second. The same is
> > not the case with vocal consonants. The vibration of the vocal
> > cords in the /g/ sound creates a small /ə/ vowel before the next
> > consonant. I can hear it; James can hear it; Michael can hear it. I
> > think it's a natural sound. I think you hear it, but you have not
> > identified it in the same way that we have. This is why James says
> > that it's impossible to pronounce /b/ without a vowel. /b/ is a
> > voiced phoneme, so it cannot be pronounced without moving the vocal
> > chords and pushing out air (which is the very thing that creates a
> > vowel). With unvoiced consonants (e.g., /p/ /k/ /f/), I can agree
> > with you that there is no /ə/ sound at all. The same may be true of
> > combinations of liquids or combinations of voiced and unvoiced
> > consonants. I haven't thought about it sufficiently to put forward
> > an opinion in this way. However, it is clear that there is a vowel
> > sound that *must* exist between the cluster בג in בגדים, and
> > this sound is *represented* as /ə/. It is simply the push of air
> > required to sound the vocal cords and transition between the /b/
> > and the /d/.
> >
> > The same vibration is not necessary for the word כביסה, so the
> > consonant cluster is intact: /kvi.'sa/. Do you not feel this at all?
> >
> > Jason Hare
> > Rishon Lezion, Israel
> >
> > Isaac Fried wrote:
> >> James and Michael,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the advice. But the question is not articulating the /
> >> ə/  but just hearing it. Even listening on a good talking
> >> dictionary I  hear nothing in 'pencil' but pensl. Possibly 's'
> >> leaves a faint,  barely audible, trail, and 'l' a similar initial
> >> faint burst.  Possibly it is indeed "the shortest and quickest to
> >> pronounce vowel  available to the human vocal system", I just do
> >> not hear it, and  certainly am not going to deliberately attempt
> >> it. In any event, I am  not interested in the nano-phonetics of
> >> micro-second gaps and milli- decibel sighs. The sound-laboratory
> >> science of the ephemerally  sonant /ə/ looks to me esoteric and
> >> irrelevant to the issue at hand.  As I said, when a present-day
> >> Hebrew speaker "moves" a schwa he does  it forcefully and to the
> >> fullest extent of the vowel. The bottom line  is that there is in
> >> my opinion no such thing as a vocal schwa in  Hebrew. I think
> >> Hebrew sounds crisper and more esthetic without the  extra schwa
> >> "NA" E's. I have never encountered an instance where a  word is
> >> unpronounceable without resorting to a schwa mobile.
> >> I think it is so:
> >> 1. The nakdanim placed the schwas to avoid vacancies and block
> >> thereby latter unauthorized additions.
> >> 2. The meaning of the word schwa appears to me to refer to the
> >> fact  that the sign is vertical, NICAB, in contrast with the tsere
> >> that is  SARU(A, 'spread out'. I can hardly believe the often
> >> heard claim that  the name schwa refers to 'nothing'.
> >> 3. The schwa is to be pronounced as the word $WA itself is
> >> pronounced, with $ abutting W.
> >> 4. Occasionally a thin cleavage is helpful, but never an E. Thus,
> >> it  should be XAG[ ]GAH, '[she] celebrated', not XAG[E]GAH. If I
> >> am not  mistaken the English pronounce MacCoots as Mac[ ]Coots,
> >> not Mac[E]Coots.
> >>
> >> Isaac Fried, Boston University
> >
>
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