Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Phonology

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Like all the 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 on Palau, 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 u
High-mid ə o
Near-low a
All Possible PH Levantine Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Post-A. Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop unvoiced p t k ?
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 Canaan 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 very 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/.


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 /k/ 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 Helenization of ‘ayin into /a/ also seems to have started before the exodus.

Best-Guess PH Levantine Consonants
Labial Alveolar Post-A. Palatal Velar Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop unvoiced p t k ?
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 *a
  • PH *z > PAH *s
  • PH *s’ > PAH *ts[7]

Coda consonant changes (the same but also)

  • PH *? > PAH *Ø
  • PH *ts > PAH *s

Consonants

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

After untold hundreds of year surrounded by the Lapitan empire, the Hebrew language had grown to sound like it neighbors in almost every respect.

Vowels

PAH Vowels
Front Near-front Central Back
High i u
High-mid ə o
Near-low a

The major change from PH to PAH in regard to vowels came not in what vowels were you, but how they were used. 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.

PAH Diphthongs
Front Central Back
High iw uy
Mid ey oy
Low ay aw

Phonotactics

PAH syllables are CV(V or C): 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 somes times sonorants, sometimes begadkepat, with s more often sonorant and c more often begadkepat). Gutturals reject gemination, sonorants accept every process, 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'.

  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/ always 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.