Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

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