Language:
English
Year of publication:
2018
Titel der Quelle:
Hebrew Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
59 (2018) 193-207
Keywords:
Khan, Geoffrey
;
Kimhi, David,
;
Kimḥi, Joseph,
;
Masorah
;
Hebrew language, Biblical Vowels
;
Hebrew language, Biblical Phonology
;
Hebrew language, Biblical Phonemics
Abstract:
Much has been written on the synchronic phonological analysis of Tiberian Hebrew. Most of the literature dealing with this problem, however, is based on outdated ideas about Tiberian Hebrew phonetics. This paper provides a new phonological analysis of the Tiberian Hebrew vowels based on the pronunciation of Tiberian Hebrew as reconstructed by Geoffrey Khan. This results in the identification of three phonemically short vowels, /ɛ̆ ă ɔ̆/; five vowels that are underspecified for length, /i ɛ a ɔ u/; and five that are phonemically long, /ī ē ɔ̄ ō ū/. I conclude that the Tiberian vocalization is largely phonemic, since every vocalic phoneme is always spelled with one and the same vowel sign. Moreover, the occurrence of five underspecified and five phonemically long vowels matches the description of the Hebrew vowels given by Joseph and David Qimhi, suggesting that they, too, aimed to capture the phonemic level of Hebrew phonology.
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