Home The interaction of vowel quality and pharyngeals in Sephardic Modern Hebrew
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The interaction of vowel quality and pharyngeals in Sephardic Modern Hebrew

  • Itsik Pariente EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 10, 2015
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This paper examines the complex interactions between pharyngeals and vowel quality in Sephardic Modern Hebrew. Phonetically similar to low vowels, gutturals in general and pharyngeals in particular tend to trigger vowel lowering and epenthesis of low vowels. Sephardic Modern Hebrew exhibits multiple strategies in order to avoid the proximity of non-low vowels to pharyngeals. The language processes take into account several factors, including the syllabic position of the pharyngeal (onset or coda), prosody (stress) and lexical category (nouns vs. verbs).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. All remaining errors are my own.

Abbreviations

1

=first person

ind

=indicative

pret

=preterite

prs

=present

sg

=singular

References

Al-Ani, Salman. H. 1970. Arabic phonology: An acoustical and physiological investigation. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110878769Search in Google Scholar

Anttila, Arto. 2002. Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20. 1–42.10.1023/A:1014245408622Search in Google Scholar

Bat-El, Outi. 1989. Phonology and word structure in Modern Hebrew. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Bat-El, Outi. 1994. Stem modification and cluster transfer in Modern Hebrew. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12. 571–593.10.1007/BF00992928Search in Google Scholar

Bat-El, Outi. 2003. Semitic verb structure within a universal perspective. In Joseph Shimron (ed.), Language, processing, and language acquisition in a Root-based Morphology, 29–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/lald.28.02batSearch in Google Scholar

Bat-El, Outi. 2005. The emergence of the binary trochaic foot in Hebrew hypocoristics. Phonology 22. 1–2910.1017/S0952675705000515Search in Google Scholar

Becker, Michael. 2002. Hebrew stress: Can’t you hear those trochees? Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Beckman, Jill. 1998. Positional faithfulness. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2008. Paradigms (Optimal and otherwise): A case for skepticism. In Asaf Bachrach & Andrew Nevins (eds.), Inflectional identity, 29–54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Bolozky, Shmuel. 1982. Remarks on rhythmic stress in Modern Hebrew. Journal of Linguistics 18. 275–289.10.1017/S002222670001361XSearch in Google Scholar

Butcher, Andrew & Ahmad, Kusay. 1987. Some acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of pharyngeal consonants in Iraqi Arabic. Phonetica 44. 156–172.10.1159/000261792Search in Google Scholar

Cohn, Abigail & McCarthy, John. 1998. Alignment and parallelism in Indonesian phonology Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 12. 53–137.Search in Google Scholar

Delattre, Pierre. 1971. Pharyngeal features in the consonants of Arabic, German, Spanish, French, and American English. Phonetica 23. 129–155.10.1159/000259336Search in Google Scholar

Farris-Trimble, Ashley. 2008. Cumulative faithfulness effects in phonology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Ghazeli, Salem. 1977. Back consonants and backing coarticulation in Arabic. Austin, TX: University of Texas dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Graf, Dafna & Adam Ussishkin. 2003. Emergent iambs: Stress assignment in Modern Hebrew. Lingua 113. 237–270.10.1016/S0024-3841(02)00087-6Search in Google Scholar

Hall, Nancy. 2006. Cross-linguistic patterns of vowel intrusion. Phonology 23. 387–429.10.1017/S0952675706000996Search in Google Scholar

Inkelas, Sharon & Cheryl Zoll. 2007. Is grammar dependence real? A comparison between cophonological and indexed constraint approaches to morphologically conditioned phonology. Linguistics 45. 133–172.10.1515/LING.2007.004Search in Google Scholar

Keller, Frank. 2006. Linear Optimality Theory as a model of gradience in grammar. In Gisbert Fanselow, Caroline Fery, Ralph Vogel & Matthias Schlesewsky (eds.), Gradience in grammar: Generative perspectives, 270–287. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199274796.003.0014Search in Google Scholar

Klatt, Dennis H. & Kenneth N. Stevens. 1969. Pharyngeal consonants. Quarterly Progress Report 93. 207–216.Search in Google Scholar

Laufer, Asher & Thomas Baer. 1988. The emphatic and pharyngeal sounds in Hebrew and in Arabic. Language and Speech 31. 181–205.10.1177/002383098803100205Search in Google Scholar

Legendre, Géraldine, Yoshiro Miyata & Paul Smolensky. 1990. Can connectionism contribute to syntax? Harmonic Grammar, with an application. In Karen Deaton, Manuela Noske & Michael Ziolkowski (eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 237–252. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, John J. 1981. A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology. Linguistic Inquiry 12. 373–418.Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, John J. 1994. The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals. In Patricia A. Keating (ed.), Phonological structure and phonetic form: Papers in laboratory phonology III, 191–233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511659461.012Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, John J. & Alan Prince. 1993. Generalized alignment. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marie (eds.), Yearbook of morphology, 79–153. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-017-3712-8_4Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, John J & Alan Prince. 1995. Faithfulness & reduplicative identity. In Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey & Suzanne Urbanczyk (eds.), Papers in Optimality Theory (University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18), 249–384. Amherst, MA: Graduate Linguistic Student Association.Search in Google Scholar

Myers, Scott. 2000. Boundary disputes: The distinction between phonetic and phonological sound patterns:. In Noel Burton-Roberts, Philip Carr & Gerard Docherty (eds.), Phonological knowledge: Conceptual and empirical issues, 245–272. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Orgun, Cemil Orhan. 1996. Sign-based morphology and phonology: With special attention to Optimality Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Pariente, Itsik. 2010. Pharyngeal related non-lexical vowels in Sephardic Modern Hebrew. Linguistics in Amsterdam 3.1–19.Search in Google Scholar

Pariente, Itsik. 2012. Grammatical paradigm uniformity. Morphology 22. 485–514.10.1007/s11525-012-9207-zSearch in Google Scholar

Pariente, Itsik & Shmuel Bolozky. 2014. Stress shift and trochaic structures in the nominal system of Modern Hebrew. Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 6. 1–26.Search in Google Scholar

Pater, Joe. 2000. Non-uniformity in English secondary stress: The role of ranked and lexically specific constraints. Phonology 1. 237–274.10.1017/S0952675700003900Search in Google Scholar

Pater, Joe. 2009. Weighted constraints in generative linguistics. Cognitive Science 33. 999–1035.10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01047.xSearch in Google Scholar

Perkell, Joseph. 1971. Physiology of speech production: A preliminary study of two suggested revisions of the features specifying vowels. MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics Quarterly Progress Report 102. 123–139.Search in Google Scholar

Prince, Alan. 1980. A metrical theory for Estonian quality. Linguistic Inquiry 11. 511–562.Search in Google Scholar

Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky. 1993/2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar (RuCCS Technical Report 2). Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University. Revised version published 2004, Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470759400Search in Google Scholar

Smith, Jennifer L. 2001. Lexical category and phonological contrast. In Robert Kirchner, Joe Pater & Wolf Wikely (eds.), Workshop on the lexicon in phonetics and phonology, 61–72. Edmonton: University of Alberta.Search in Google Scholar

Smith, Jennifer L. 2011. Category-specific effects. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin Ewen, Beth Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, 2439–2463. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781444335262.wbctp0102Search in Google Scholar

Smolensky, Paul. 1993. Harmony, markedness, and phonological activity. Handout of keynote address, Rutgers Optimality Workshop 1, October 23. ROA–87.Search in Google Scholar

Smolensky, Paul. 1995. On the structure of the constraint component Con of UG. Ms, University of California at Los Angeles.Search in Google Scholar

Urbanczyk, Suzanne. 1996. Patterns of reduplication in Lushootseed. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Ussishkin, Adam. 1999. The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output-output correspondence. Phonology 16. 401–442.10.1017/S0952675799003796Search in Google Scholar

Revised: 2013-9-17
Revised: 2015-3-20
Accepted: 2015-1-9
Accepted: 2015-6-2
Published Online: 2015-11-10
Published in Print: 2015-11-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

Downloaded on 17.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flin-2015-0015/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button