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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Initial Consonant Clusters in Biblical Hebrew

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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: pporta7 AT gmail.com, kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Initial Consonant Clusters in Biblical Hebrew
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:49:29 -0400






Pere Porta:

1. Biblical Hebrew records primarily consonants. At Genesis 18: 2 we see
$L$H, but I don’t think anyone views that as an initial consonant cluster.
It’s thought to be $ + implied vowel + L +implied vowel + $ + H.

However, a lamed/L is [like a resh/R] a so-called “sonorant”, and according
to some linguists, a Hebrew could pronounce $ + sonorant + vowel as a single
syllable. “The words for ‘2’ are the only words in the language that commence
with an initial consonant cluster, permissible because of the sibilant +
sonorant combination in snayim and the sibilant + stop in stayim (see
Hoberman 1989).” “Ancient Hebrew Morphology”, by Gary A. Rendsburg.

http://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/component/docman/doc_view/121-ancient-hebrew-morphology

>From Wikipedia:
“Examples of sonorants
A typical sonorant inventory found in many languages comprises the following:
two nasals /m/, /n/, two semivowels /w/, /j/, and two liquids /l/, /r/.”

All of N and L and R are sonorants. Since $N is possible [and attested once
in Biblical Hebrew] as an initial consonant cluster, $L + vowel and $R +
vowel are theoretically possible as well, though not attested in Biblical
Hebrew.

2. Here’s a more dramatic way of posing the same question.

Do people think that a Hebrew living in Biblical times could have pronounced,
as a strange foreign name, “Shrek” as a single syllable?

I am afraid that the answer may be: Unattested, and somewhat unlikely, but
by no means impossible.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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