Re: replies to padraic brown and danny wier

wajjix"t_ho:v dA:"wi:D ben  k_he:j"P\A: B@"P\i: "DA:n "wajir  :

>
>
>
>                       I read that the Arabic fricatives _khaa_  and
> _ghayn_  were uvulars, but
>                       others
>
>                       say velar.  The symbols used are the Greek
> letters chi and gamma, which
>                       probably
>
>                       doesn't intend to reflect actual IPA values.
> There is a noticeable difference
>
>                       if you have a well-trained ear, even though
> languages that distinguish /x/
>                       from
>
>                       /X/ and /G/ from /R/ are rare.  Probably found
> only in North Caucasian,
>                       Salishan
>
>                       and *maybe* an older stage of Hebrew and Syriac
> (where intervocalic stops
>                       become
>
>                       fricatives, but before Hebrew lenis kaph and
> cheth merged into a single
>                       phoneme
>
>                       /x/).>>
Not quite. H.eth (and `ayin) were almost surely still being pronounced
as pharyngeals when the non-emphatic stops underwent their
spirantizations, not as uvulars. However there is pretty good evidence
that the Hebrew alphabet notwithstanding the proto-semitic velar
fricatives (*x and *G... or were they uvulars? ;) ) had not yet merged
with the pharyngials (*X\ and *?\) at this point, although they were
both written by the same pair of graphemes.
    Since this means that in certain words h.eth and `ayin were being
pronounced very similar to the lenis gimmel and kaph one would expect
some degree of orthographic confusion, but there doesn't seem to be any.
One possible explanation is that there was a velar vs. uvular
distinction going on there.


>
>
>                           Well, gamma is, of course, the velar, but
> chi (if I'm thinking of the
>                       right one) is a voiceless, uvular fricative
> which I'm sure Arabic doesn't
>                       have (meaning, I've never heard a native speaker
> use it, and I was never
>                       taught by any teacher to use anything other than
> a voiceless, velar
>                       fricative).
>
>
>
> <<I'm leaning towards uvular since every time I've heard Arabic spoken, I
>                       want to
>
>                       interpret the ghayn sound as an R (of course the type used in French and
>
>                       German).
>
I have to agree with you on this. Ghayn definitely sounds uvular to
me... I'm unsure about khaa' though.
    Once when I was studying Hebrew with a native speaker the subject
came up of how to transliterate Arabic words, and she was insisting on
using an <r> with a diacritic for ghayn, although I don't believe this
is right; books in Hebrew on semitic philology use `ayin with a
diacritic, and I can't imagine Israeli newspapers using reysh!


JDM


>  The velar fricative, i.e. Irish Dh/Gh, doesn't have that "faux
>                       rhotic"
>
>                       quality and is a good bit softer.
>
>
>                       The Dutch G apparently went through a shift of /g/ > /G/ > /x/, that is,
>
>                       spirantization then devocalization.  Like what happened with Spanish where J
>                       is
>
>                       pronounced /x/.
>
>                        >>
>
>                           I haven't taken a straight phonology class yet (that's next semester),
>                       but in all the data I've seen in other Linguistics classes for Arabic (this
>                       being aside from the Arabic classes I've taken), khaa and ghayn are both
>                       velar.  Anyone else heard anything?
>
>                       -David
>
>