Re: Lateralization

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 23:18:24 +0000 Keith Alasdair Mylchreest
<kam@...> writes:

> according
> to whether they were originally voiced, voiceless or voiceless and
> ejective
> (with simultanious glottal stop). I'm not sure I entirely believe
> this, [t']
> I can manage, a stop with double articulation, alveolar and glottal,
> but
> [(t)s'] ? and [T'] ?? let alone [hl'], I can't see how you can be
> making a
> stop in one part of the vocal tract and a sibilant/fricative in
> another
> (unless of course the original semites were aliens with two vocal
> tracts).
-

I have never found out whether i can pronounce any ejective properly, but
i don't have much of a problem doing what feels like the same thing in
the back of my throat when saying [t] to get [t'], as [s] to get [s'].
[hl] is a whole nother problem altogether!

> Proto  /    d  dz   D   l       t  ts  s~S? T  hl       t' ts'  T'
> hl'    /
> Arab.  /    d   z   D   l       t   s   s   T   S       t'  s'  D'
> d'    /
> Ethiop./    d   z   z   l       t   s   s   s  hl       t'  s'  s'
> hl'(?) /
> Heb.   /   d~D  z   z   l      t~T  s   S   S  hl       t'  s'  s'
> s'    /
> Akk.   /    d   z   z   l       t   s   S   S   S       t'  s'  s'
> s'    /
> Aram.  /   d~D  z  d~D  l      t~T  s   S  t~T  s       t'  s'  t'
> "     /
-

The chart seems good to me, at least from what i know of Hebrew and
Aramaic.

> Hebrew /hl/ is 'sin' that is a 'shin' /S/ with a dot top left rather
> than
> top right. Since the points are a rather late addition to Hebrew
> writing
> can we be sure that this distinction really exited, and if it did
> that 'sin'
> actually stood for a lateral fricative? (Could be serious if you're
> called
> Sarah, sorry Hlarah!).
-

That's how we *know* that the distinction survived into Masoretic times.
No use designing arbitrary distinctions into an orthographic system.
Other distinctions, such as <hhet> /H/ /x/, and <`ayin> /3/ /G/, weren't
marked (although they probably would have used a similar rightdot/leftdot
system) because they had already disappeared, the velar phonemes merging
with the pharyngeal phonemes, probably under influence from the
developing beged-kefet system of /bgdkpt/ [vGDxfT] fricativization.  The
pronounciation of <ssin> as /hl/ might have survived until that time, or
it might have already merged with /s/.  Either way, there was still a
distinction in pronounciation between different occurances of The
Grapheme Which Looks Somewhat Like <W>, thereby necessitating a diacritic
distinction to inform the uninitiated.


-Stephen (Steg)

> Keith