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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Simple Pronunciation Question...

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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Simple Pronunciation Question...
  • Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:46:22 +0100


From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>


The discovery that at least one modern South Arabian language still has a lateralised sound as an allophone of sin might be taken as evidence for the usefulness of the comparative method. If you start with one sound rather than two, you do have to explain why not only Hebrew and Aramaic developed sin for mostly the same words, but why both ancient and modern South Arabian languages show a sin in over 80% of those same words. It is rather odd that 3 languages who develop 3 's' sounds distribute them in almost identical ways.

Even if we accept Karl's hypothesis that Hebrew borrowed sin from Aramaic, you still have to explain why there is such a high degree of agreement between Aramaic and South Arabian. Unless there is some strong connection between Aramaic and Southern Arabia which we don't know about, borrowing would seem unlikely.

Kevin Riley
***

After you explained this "chance coincidence",

you'll have to work on:

Hebrew Sapah "lip"
Proto-Semitic SLap

Latin lab-ia
English lip
Hausa leBe

How come these languages have -l- where Proto-Semitic has a lateralized consonant?

Arnaud Fournet




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