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  • From: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Yemenite Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:05:36 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 08:23:39 +0100, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Will Parsons" <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
> >
> > Quite true, but there are differences in the way natively spoken languages
> > are influenced by the surrounding languages and purely learned languages.
> > If Yemeni Hebrew were the mother tongue to a community, I wouldn't be the
> > least surprised to see it incorporate Arabic phonemes that had not
> > previously
> > existed in their Hebrew speech (an emphatic interdental, for example). I
> > think this kind of borrowing is a good deal less likely when the language
> > community is not actively using the language for everyday communication.
> > Here the influence is mainly negative - not too negative in the case of
> > Yemeni consonants, because of the richness of the Arabic consonantal
> > inventory, but more noticeably in the other traditional pronunciations,
> > where the distinctions between daghesh and non-daghesh pronunciation of
> > letters has been eliminated where the host languages do not support such a
> > distinction.
> ***
>
> The elimination can also just be an internal "spontaneous" change.
> A.
> ***

Sure it's possible. Let's see. Non-daghes daleth is pronounced [d] in
Ashkenazic. German, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian &c. have no phoneme [ð].
Yememite Hebrew has [ð] for non-daghesh daleth. Arabic had/has a phoneme
[ð]. It *could* be coincidence...

> > I imagine it would hard to find instances of minimal pairs where a daghesh
> > (lene) and non-daghesh daleth or gimel would produce a difference in
> > meaning. I don't think this precludes them from considered separate
> > phonemes, however. The Massoretes certainly heard a difference, or they
> > wouldn't have bothered with distinguishing them in the first place.
> > Compare
> > the distinction in English between the voiced and voiceless interdental
> > fricatives. To my mind, there is no doubt that they are separate
> > phonemes -
> > they are not conditional variants of each other and they are clearly
> > indicated by separate pronunciation symbols in dictionaries. But finding
> > a minimal pair is quite difficult - the only one I've been able to come up
> > with is "thy" vs "thigh", and I've had to use an archaism to do it!
> ***
>
> The opposition voiced / voiceless is widespread in the sytem of English,
> so it's "costless" to keep it here.

I'm not saying it isn't.

> In addition dh is mainly attested in grammatical morphemes.

And your point is?

--
William Parsons




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