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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Cantillation Mark Database
  • Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:52:40 +1100

Hi Gabriel,

Here's some references pertaining to the issue of the linguistic nature of the accents:

Churchyard, Henry. 1999. “Topics in Tiberian Biblical Hebrew Metrical Phonology and Prosodics.” PhD diss., University of Texas.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. 1981. “Accentuation and Metrical Structure in Tiberian Hebrew.” Pages 180-208 in Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of Semitic Linguistics. Edited by Hagit Borer and Youssef Aoun. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 3. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. 1994. “The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents.” Language 70: 1-52.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. In press. “The Word in Tiberian Hebrew.” In The Nature of the Word: Essays in Honor of Paul Kiparsky. Edited by Kristin Hanson and Sharob Inkelas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dresher/tibhebword.pdf]

Hope something's useful.

Regards,
David Kummerow.




Yitzhak,

Thank you for the, um, encouragement.

I am a linguist and technical writer, not a
mathematician and programmer, which is why I have
approached this project ass-backwards, if I may use
that phrase on this list. I imagined the program I
wanted, then wrote the documentation as if it already
existed, including mock screen shots and all. I
understand that this may not be the most efficient way
of doing things, but I had little choice.

Cantillation marks may indeed be linguistic data, or
not. Literary texts often contain other kinds of
semiotic data, images, musical notes, etc., generally
referred to as metatext. I have retained the only two
comprehensive theories of cantillation marks that I
could find, rabbinical semantic and syntactic
analysis, and an alternative theory that considers
cantillation marks to be a system of musical notation.

Cantillizer will allow users to do traditional parsing
as well as set the whole Bible to music. It will
provide statistical and distributional analysis of all
cantillation marks, independent of the text, to find
out what patterns may exist and, if possible, the
meaning of the signs, as if they were an unknown code,
which in fact they are. The data can then be
reinterpreted in conjunction with the text.

I have been thinking about cantillation marks for
three years, so I am in this for the long haul. I have
already found one musician/programmer, so I am sure I
will find a CTO for the project.

Best Regards.

Gabriel






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