Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Phonology

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Like the Formosan languages which had fanned out from Taiwan ca. 3000 years ago, an intense flattening of the phonemic landscape slowly decimated the Semitic language in Oceania. By the time of the writings we have from Mindoro, many simplifications had taken place. Almost all the changes parallel the development of Proto-Austronesian (PAn) > Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) and subsequent developments.

History

Attempts to reconstruct the origin and development of PAH are made difficult, 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 and iː u/uː/o/oː/ʊ
Mid
Low a and 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 consonantal phonology, with as many as 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. Two letters were homographs.[1]. It is highly unlikely that the begadkefat letters had two sounds until well after 800 B.C., so please the table "Best-Guess PH Consonants" for a more accurate reconstruction.[2] Also, šin and sin should be counted among the begadkefat letters, with /ʃ/ a mere allophone of /ɬ/ or visa versa.

Contrastingly, the vowels of Paleo-Hebrew seem relatively close to Proto-Semitic (which had only /a i u/ and did not contrast length). PAH seems to have evolved along similar lines to it's siblings back in the ANE and to Chamorro and Palauan. The PAn schwa probably had a PAH reflex of /ε/. A system of five vowels had emerged, with all possibilities contrastive for length except /o/.

Sound changes

The amalgamated Semitic people who found themselves sold into 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 either had not yet arise or were 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 /a/ also seems to have started before the exodus.

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

Onset consonant changes

  • PH *k',χ > PAH *q[6]
  • PH *ʁ > PAH *r
  • PH *t’ > PAH *t
  • PH *ɬ > PAH *ŋ
  • PH *ħ > PAH *h
  • PH *ʕ > PAH *a, word initial *ʔa
  • 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 qorh t y k l m n s rora 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

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 and serving in the Balangays round about them, the Hebrew language had grown to sound like it neighbors in almost every respect. Still like the ANE, n assimilated causing gemination before everything except ʔ , h, r and (innovatively) q.


Vowels

PAH Vowels
Front Near-front Central Back
High i vs. iː u vs. uː
High-mid e vs. εː o or oː
Near-low a vs. aː

Semitic phonotactics required every syllable to begin with a consonant, but the disappearance of certain consonants medially and finally allowed vowel hiatus for the first time<footnote>That's not entirely true, since /u/ aka šureq had always existed</footnote>. The seeming anti-diphthong bias of the Levant was slowly being replaced by the pro-diphthong attitude of Polynesia.

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

Like the general Semitic tendency

  • ay > ê

but unlike it ancestors, aw > ô did not happened

Phonotactics

PAH syllables were CV, CVV, or CVC: syllable began with a consonant and could have ended with a short vowel, a long vowel, a diphthong, or certain consonants. A syllable cannot consist of more than two characters of katakana, unless a long vowel is written out and not simply an overline. However, I-'ayin roots with prefixes and numerous other cases permit vowel hiatus, that is, medial and final syllables consisting of nothing but V. Generally, this can be avoided by counting semi-vowels as consonants, but not always.

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 became gemination), and the begadkepat letters lost 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 *ŋ, 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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