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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] T-SADE

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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "Will Parsons" <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] T-SADE
  • Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:30:43 +0200


----- Original Message ----- From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
To: "Will Parsons" <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 5:30 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] T-SADE



In addition, it's well known from Egyptian hieroglyphic that tsamekh was
nearly doubtless an affricate [ts] (S p r scribe => t_ p r and not **s p r
as is expected)

I would disagree about samekh being "nearly doubtless" [ts], certainly
not on the basis of Egyptian transcriptions, seeing that Egyptian
phonology is quite uncertain. (That Egyptian /t_/ indicated an affricate
seems quite unlikely considering its development in Coptic.)
***

I forgot to address that point in the previous mail.
That Egyptian /t_/ becomes /t/ in Coptic proves nothing.

At first sight, it would seem that the changes t > ts > s are a kind of one-way path. But there are plenty of examples showing that these changes can happen in the opposite direction.
1. For example Indian loanwords into Vietnamese now have t where Indo-Aryan had s < PIE *s.
2. In Uralic some dialects of Vogul-Mansi have -t- for Uralic *s.
3. And closer to us maybe, tea or the reflects the Min Chinese equivalent of BeiJing cha [t$ha]
4. Not to mention American English the > da

So Coptic t < /t_/ proves nothing. There are very good chances /t_/ was an affricate with an articulation very close if not identical to /ts/.

Best
Arnaud Fournet







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