Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Phonology

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Like the Formosan languages fanning out from Taiwan approximately 3000 years ago, an intense flattening of the phonemic landscape slowly decimated the Semitic language in Oceania. By the time of they were living Mindoro, many simplifications had taken place. Almost all the changes parallel the development of Proto-Austronesian (PAn) > Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP).

History

Attempts to reconstruct the origin and development of PAH are clouded, both by uncertainty of the phonetic environment they left and the one to which they went.

Paleo-Hebrew

PH Levantine Vowels
Front Near-front Central Back
High i iː u uː
High-mid eː ə o oː
Near-low a aː
All Possible PH Levantine Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Post-A. Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop unvoiced p t k ʔ
voiced b d g
ejective t' k'
Fricative unvoiced *f *θ s *ʃ *x χ ħ h
voiced *v *ð z *ɣ ʁ ʕ
ejective s'
lateral ɬ
Approximants w l j
Trill r

Before being carried off, the Ancient Hebrews of the Middle East had a robust and diverse phonology, with nine places and ten manners of articulation. Tiberian Hebrew orthography utilizes 22 consonants with three diacritical marks (the dageš, sin-dot, and šin-dot) to notate 31 sounds, though it is a recent rediscovery that two letters were homographs.[1]. It is highly unlikely that the begadkefat letters had two sounds until well after 800 B.C.[2] Also, šin and sin should be counted among the begadkefat letters, with /ʃ/ a mere allophone of /ɬ/ or visa versa.


Sounds changes

The amalgamated Semitic people who found themselves slaves in Southeast Asia had a phonology that largely overlapped with the surrounding PAn language(s). The sounds which were uniquely Afro-Asiatic seemed to have dropped off very quickly. The fricative “versions” of the stops (which had always been allophone) fell away almost immediately, [3], as did the “emphatic” versions (i.e. /k’/ became /q/ and /t’/ became /t/). PH *ɬ > PAH *ŋ[4]. The addition of the velar nasal may seem strange, especially in the syllable onset, but is entirely predictable given the new surroundings in Southeast Asia and Oceania[5]. The alveolar fricative ejective (Tiberian צ/ṣaḏé) may well have become the alveolar affricative before leaving the Levant. The Phoenician Vowel Shift of ‘ayin into /e/ also seems to have started before the exodus.

Best-Guess PH Consonants
Labial Alveolar Post-A. Palatal Velar Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop unvoiced p t k ʔ
voiced b d g
ejective t' k'
Fricative unvoiced s ħ h
voiced z ʕ
lateral ɬ
Affricate ts
Approximants w l j
Trill r

Onset consonant changes

  • PH *k',χ > PAH *q[6]
  • PH *ʁ > PAH *g
  • PH *t’ > PAH *t
  • PH *ɬ > PAH *ŋ
  • PH *ħ > PAH *Ø
  • PH *ʕ > PAH *e, word initial *'e
  • PH *z > PAH *s
  • PH *s’ > PAH *ts[7]

Coda consonant changes (the same as above but also)

  • PH *ʔ > PAH *Ø with compensatory lengthening
  • PH *ts > PAH *s or *t under gemination


Grand Master Plan

Consonants
א ב ג ד ה  ו  ז  ח  ט  י כ/ך  ל  מ/ם  נ/ן  ס  ע  פ/ף  צ/ץ  ק  ר  ש  ת
ʔ b g d h w s qorØ t y k l m n s gore p c q r ŋ t
Vowels
בַּ בָּ בָּה בֶּ בֶּי בֶּה בֵּ בֵּי בֵּה בִּ בִּי בָּ בֻּ בֹּ בֹּה בּוֹ בּוּ בְּ בֲּ בֱּ בֳּ
a ā ā e e ē ē ē ē i/ī ī o u/ū ō ō ō ū ə ᵅ ᵉ ᵒ
ey ī ay ay aw ow ??? a e o

Segolates are CvCCu

Consonants

PAH Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Stop unvoiced p t k q
voiced b d g ʔ
Affricate ts
Fricative s h
Approximant w ɹ j
Lateral l

After untold hundreds of year surrounded by the Lapitan empire, the Hebrew language had grown to sound like it neighbors in almost every respect. Still like the ANE, n assimilated (caused gemination) before everything except ʔ and h.


Vowels

PAH Vowels
Front Near-front Central Back
High i iː u uː
High-mid eː ə o oː
Near-low a aː

The major change from PH to PAH in regard to vowels came not in what vowels were used, but how they were used. Semitic phonotactic still required every syllable to begin with a consonant, but the assimilation of diphthongs and triphthongs stopped. With uvular and pharyngeal fricatives changing into vowels, the tri-consonantal roots began to unravel, or just metamorphose into something different. A vast array of diphthong opened up, an array which would only expand. However, vowel hiatus was still ruled out.

Short vowels in an open, unstressed, pretonic syllables reduced (i.e. elided) when possible, just as in Amorite and Ugaritic. Short, stressed vowels typically lengthened, as in Phoenician:

  • a > ō
  • i > ē
  • u > ō
PAH Diphthongs
Front Central Back
High ow
Mid ey oy
Low ay aw

Entirely opposite of the general Semitic tendency, diphthongs and triphthongs stopped contracting:

  • ô > aw
  • ê > ay

Phonotactics

PAH syllables were CV, CVV, or CVC: every syllable begins with a consonant and may end with a short vowel, a long vowel, a diphthong, or certain consonants. A syllable cannot consist of more than two characters of katakana (unless the long vowel is written out and not simply an overline).

w.u.v. = with under-specified voicing
"Gutterals" "Sonorants" ← or → "Begadkap̅at"
able to be... h ' q r w y l m n ŋ s c b g d k p t
geminated No No No No as uw as iy Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes as t Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
in coda Yes No No Yes as u as i Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes as s w.u.v. w.u.v. w.u.v. w.u.v. w.u.v. w.u.v.

The consonants can be broken down into three easy categories: gutturals, sonorants, and the "begakepat" letters (s and c are some times sonorants, sometimes begadkepat, with s more often sonorant and c more often begadkepat). Gutturals reject gemination, sonorants accept every process (except syllable-coda, word-medial n usually becomes gemination), and the begadkepat letters lose control of their voicing in the coda.

When c is geminated, only the t is in the coda of the previous syllable. Hence カッ̣ス゚ is pronounced /kat.tsu/. In the coda, it is an 's'.

Quiescing

The gutturals plus w and y typically quiesce, that is, go silent. This is universally the case with short 'e' vowels. For example, for to God one would expect ビエロ̅゜ハィミ /bi.ʔe.lō.'hay.mi/, but the glottal stop quiesces to make ビロ̅゜ハィミ /bi.lō.'hay.mi/.

The other uniform rule is that when two vowels are the same with a guttural, w, or y in between, then that consonant will quiesce and the vowel with lengthen. For example, the direct case of "land" should be ha + ʔarcu = ha'arcu (ハアㇽス゚）, but the two A's "squeeze out" the glottal stop and it becomes hārstu (ハ̅ㇽス゚).


References

  1. ↑ JBL 124, No. 2, Richard C. Steiner, p.229-267
  2. ↑ For those unfamiliar with Biblical Hebrew, this means that /f ɣ ð x f θ/ either did not exist at all in 1000 B.C., or they were allophone of /b g d k p t/
  3. ↑ that is /f v θ ð x ɤ/ remained /p b t d k g/
  4. ↑ likely akin to PAn *ɬ > PMP *ñ, l, n.
  5. ↑ See geographic distribution, The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Chapter 9: The Velar Nasal
  6. ↑ The emphatic consonants are hotly debated, so /k'/ may well have been /q/ in the ANE.
  7. ↑ Again, may have been such originally.
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