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b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Re: What is a syllable?

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  • From: Ratson Naharadama <yahoo-arch AT heplist.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: What is a syllable?
  • Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:05:07 -0700

James Christian:
> In reality the segmentation is
> 'woul' and 'dyou' to produce
> two CV syllables.

Actually, this would not be accurate. You are correct if you would say that the way that your sentence is pronounced would not produce the syllable division as "would" followed by "you" (which is what you did imply, so you are correct on that). However, the way that the sentence would be parsed for syllables would not produce "woul" and "dyou", neither. What it would produce (with most average English speakers, we will ignore those persons who have been trained to enunciate a sentence like this to produce "would" and "you" as clearly separate syllables) would be the syllables "would" and "dyou". What happens in English speech in this particular situation is the gemination of the final consonant of "would" (the consonant becomes "long"). Spanish speakers can frequently point out foreigners speaking spanish not only because of vowel accent, vowel lengths, vowel colouring, and consonant colouring, but also in that many Spanish consonants are pronounced geminate, even though they are written with one letter (and the fact that most English speakers aren't even aware of gemination). For example, "shovel" written in Spanish is "pala" but it is pronounced with a geminate-L producing "pal-la" (if you said "pa-la" to a Spanish speaker, their first response will likely be to ask What? even if you are already holding a shovel in your hand). While this doesn't really change the meaning of the word in many cases (it does in some cases, and more often it does in, the related, Italian language), in the Semitic languages, gemination is an essential meaning changer in the language. For example, geminating the second consonant of a verb frequently strengthens the meaning of the verb (to break something becomes to utterly destroy or to shatter something). If you geminate the firs consonant of a noun, you make that noun definite (indefinite yôm (a day) becomes ayyôm (the day)). In Arabic and Hebrew, the real use of the alif or heh in making something definite is not the value of the consonant (in Arabic, this use of alif does not carry its own sound, it is silent, the same is true for ancient Hebrew, but it is frequently pronounced in modern Hebrew), but to carry a vowel in front of the consonant that is to become geminate.

If a consonant can be geminate in Semitic languages, then why in all of the consonantal scripts of these languages do they write them with only one letter? Because , just like in Spanish, they saw it as one letter, only its length was different (not the number of letters). However, when you look at a semitic syllabic text and compare it to its equivalent consonantal text, you will see not only long and short vowels, but also long and short consonants spelled out.
--
Ratson Naharädama
Denver, Colorado




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