Towards the development of an intonation-based prosodic model for the masoretic cantillation accents of Tiberian Hebrew
Loading...
Date
2017-11
Authors
Pitcher, Sophia Lynn
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The system of vocalisation encoded in the ṭaʿămê hammiqrāʾ represents one of the most
prominent expressions of the oral nature of the Hebrew Bible, yet the value of investigating
extant cantillation traditions has been largely dismissed in nonliturgical scholarship. Dresher
(1994) gives the first linguistic account of the ṭaʿămê hammiqrāʾ as a prosodic system within a
modern prosodic framework, but like Wickes (1887), Dotan (1978), Yeivin (1980), Aronoff
(1985), Janis (1987), and Price (2010), he treats pausal phenomena, rather than intonation, as
their central organising feature. In this dissertation I analyse an extant Ashkenazi cantillation
tradition of the ṭaʿămê hammiqrāʾ using modern prosodic theory and the musical concept of
conjunct and disjunct melodic motion to demonstrate that the ṭǝʿāmîm have a highly structured
intonational basis that organises the system and conforms substantially to cross-linguistic
prosodic norms. The intonation-based prosodic model for Tiberian Hebrew I propose in this
study offers a solution to the limitation Dresher (1994) encounters with the intonational phrase
domain of his prosodic model.
I investigate the prosodic nature of the ṭaʿămê hammiqrāʾ in the following steps: 1) describe,
classify, and catalogue the types of melodic patterns and intervals that conjunctive and
disjunctive ṭǝʿāmîm are able to form; 2) determine the organisational prosodic structure of the
ṭaʿămê hammiqrāʾ and compare it to the cross-linguistic prosodic model developed by Selkirk
(2009, 2011); 3) test how well this intonation-based model for Tiberian Hebrew identifies and
locates cross-linguistic prosodic structures for restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. The biblical corpus used to test this model is comprised of all the overtly headed ʾǎšer relative
clauses in the twenty-one books of the Hebrew Bible, of which representative examples are
presented and discussed in detail. My analysis indicates that Tiberian Hebrew distinguishes three
prosodic classes of relatives, a finding that accords with and refines cross-linguistic prosodic
norms for these syntactic constructions and largely corroborates Holmstedt’s (2016) analysis of
the restrictive semantics of relative clauses in the Hebrew Bible. A catalogue for this corpus of
relative clauses is compiled in Appendix B.
Description
Keywords
Ashkenazi, Accents, Cantillation, Law of continuous dichotomy, Masoretic text, Prosodic recursion, Prosody, Strict layer hypothesis, Syntax-phonology interface, Tiberian Hebrew, Dissertation (M.A. (Hebrew))--University of the Free State, 2017