Re: Semitic rhotic questions

On Friday, November 7, 2003, at 04:33  PM, Paul Bennett wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 18:36:10 +0200, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>
> wrote:
>>> 1. Does anyone know with any acceptable degree of
>>> certainty what the actual value of the Biblical Hebrew
>>> rhotic was?
>>
>> It is rather possible that Old Hebrew /r/ was [G] or [R] because it is
>> classified as guttural, and its presence in the stem provokes the same
>> kind of
>> phonetic changes, as, e.g. /X\/ or /?\/.
>
> Well, damn. That flies in the face of my research, although I trust you
> more than I trust myself on this matter. I might have some quite
> severe re-
> borrowing to do. Blast. Still, it's only a small handfull of roots at
> this
> time, so that's not too bad.
>
> Anyone else got any information to back up either /4/ or /G/~/R/ for
> ancient Hebrew? Steg? Dan? Anyone?
>
I generally support the /4/~/r/ (flap/trill) theory, although /R/ could
also be a possibility.  A trill could fit the other 'gutturals' in some
cases, like not being able to be geminated, while not fitting them in
other cases, like being able to carry a 'shva na`' (schewa mobile?) [@]
and not turning surrounding vowels into /a/ (something the pharyngeals
do all the time).


-Stephen (Steg)
  "desert power"