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The Verbal Roots of Arabic and Hebrew and Their Autosegmental Representation

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The Verbal Roots of Arabic and Hebrew and Their Autosegmental Representation 8 chapter two CHAPTER TWO THE VERBAL ROOTS OF ARABIC AND HEBREW AND THEIR AUTOSEGMENTAL REPRESENTATION 2.1 Aspects of the phonology of Arabic and Hebrew1 There are 28 consonant phonemes in Arabic and 23 in Hebrew. These two inventories have much in common, but the number of voiceless and voiced fricatives in Arabic is larger than it is in He- brew (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2)2. Certain consonants occur as separate phonemes in Arabic, but they have merged in Hebrew (see § 2.1.2). A number of consonants are traditionally called ‘emphatic’. They are said to be velarized or pharyngealized: in Arabic TA" (T), @Ad (D), za" (Z) and $Ad (S) and in Hebrew TEt (T). In Ethiopic Semitic the corresponding consonants occur as ejectives. This has often been ascribed to the influence of the Cushitic languages in the region, but many investigators now hold the opinion that this ejective charac- ter may well represent an old heritage of the precursor languages of attested Semitic (see among others Joüon and Muraoka 1991, p.25). According to some investigators (see Versteegh 1997, p.21) the @Ad (D) perhaps originally had a lateral component, like the Hebrew SIn (see § 2.1.2). 1 See the explanatory list at the beginning of this book for the abbreviations used for some of the languages. 2 I have not tried to use IPA symbols for these consonants. This perhaps may have been feasible for AR, because of its rather standardized pronunciation, although it is affected by the influence of the dialect used in daily speech by a particular speaker (see § 2.1.1). Using the IPA symbols for the Hebrew consonants throughout this book would have been impossible, because the pronunciation of the consonants of He- brew has been subject to drastic changes throughout its history (see § 2.1.2). For this reason, only the major Manner and Place class nodes of the consonants can be specified with a sufficient degree of certainty. It would have been impractible to employ the IPA only for AR and not for Hebrew. The symbols used in my investi- gation for the consonants of Arabic and Hebrew deviate in part from those com- monly used in Semitic studies. The reason for this is that these symbols had to be compatible with PROLOG-2. They are rather similar to those used by McCarthy (1994). To facilitate reading this book, one should refer to Table 2.1 in which all consonants and the symbols which were used for them are listed (see also § 4.5). the verbal roots of arabic and hebrew 9 2.1.1 The consonant phonemes of Arabic In my study I investigated Modern Standard Arabic (AR). The pro- nunciation of its consonants follows rather closely the traditional pro- nunciation of Classical Arabic (the Quran and the pre-Islamic poetry), but there is some regional variation in the pronunciation of AR which is due to the influence of the local dialects (Al-Ani 1970). The bila- bial fA" (f) in Arabic is traditionally pronounced as a fricative, while a bilabial stop is absent. It corresponds to /p/ in Hebrew (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2). In many of the current forms of Arabic which are used in daily speech (usually called dialects) the pronunciation of the consonants may diverge considerably from that in Classical and Modern Standard Arabic (see for more details and for references Fischer and Jastrow 1980 and Versteegh 1997). In Classical Arabic the jim (G) is pronounced as a voiced laminoalveolar affricate (Al- Ani 1970), but in a number of current dialects it is a velar stop, as it is in Hebrew (gimel) and in other Semitic languages. The jim ap- pears to have been pronounced in Arabic as a stop, also in the early centuries of Islam (Moscati et al. 1969, § 8.4.2). According to many investigators this corresponds to its original pronunciation (Fischer and Jastrow 1980). It should be noted that Al-Ani (1970) ranges -hA" (x) among the velars, while McCarthy (1994) places it among the uvulars (see Table 2.2). 2.1.2 The consonant phonemes of Hebrew The phonetic realization of both the consonant and the vowel pho- nemes of BH is known only by approximation (see e.g. Joün and Muraoka 1991, p.23 and Kutscher 1971 and 1982, p.120). This is the case for the period during which its records were orally trans- mitted, as well as for the time when these texts were written down and edited during the first millennium B.C. The phonetic charac- teristics of these phonemes can be surmised to some extent, how- ever, from the lexical correspondences with other Semitic languag- es and from the transcription of Hebrew names into Greek and Latin. The following consonants are separate phonemes in Arabic but have merged in Hebrew:.
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