Re: Old Hebrew Emphatics Question

From: "Dan Sulani" <dnsulani@...>
>     First, let me say that I'm not certain of exactly what you mean
>  by the term "emphatic". If you mean a co-articulation that is
> reputed to have existed in proto-Semitic  ( I recall a book
> on the development of Hebrew that set up certain
> proto-Semitic consonants in triads: voiced, voiceless, and "emphatic"
> [IIRC,  "emphatic" involved the raising of a closed glottis;
> but I don't claim to be a scholar of Semitic linguistics, so if I'm
> wrong on the terminology, please correct me.]  ),
> then, IME, modern Israeli Hebrew has no such thing.
I think "emphatic" is just meant to be an overarching label for the different
ways that the cognate "emphatic" consonants were realized (this may be
misinformation).

My book on Proto-Afroasiatic reconstructs them as ejectives originally and
probably still so in Proto-Semitic.

>     Finally, as I understand it, proto-Semitic also had "emphatic"
> interdentals and "emphatic" dentals/alveolars, none of which exist
> in moden spoken Hebrew. In fact, interdentals of any sort do not show
> up in modern speech. |tav|, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, once
> stood for, AFAIK, an interdental. Today it is pronounced exactly the same
> as |tet| ( = [t] ).
FWIW, this is the PS consonant inventory my book lists:

    b  D  d     z  g  G  ?\ ?
          d.
    p  T  t  ts s  k  x       h
       T. t.    s. k.         h.

      l  K  m  n  r  w  j

There's also notes that (at least for this author) *d. is [K\], the dotted
consonants are ejectives, and the interdentals (T, T., D) are possibly
palatalized dentals originally (their sources are PAA affricates such as [tS ts
dz dZ] etc.)

    *Muke!
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