Skip to content

Option for Modern Hebrew Syllabification #4

@charlesLoder

Description

@charlesLoder

Currently, havarot syllabifies words according to Traditional (i.e. Sephardic) or Tiberian rules.
The ability to syllabify word according to general Modern Hebrew pronunciation would be beneficial, especially for augmenting with transliteration schemas that follow Modern Hebrew

Differences

Syllable Properties

Syllable.medial

In issue #2, it is proposed to introduce more linguistic properties to syllables.
Modern Hebrew differs in it's syllable properties

A medial property would need to be included:

Syllable.medial: string | null

Modern Hebrew allows for syllable types of CCV and CCVC.

E.g. גְּדֹולִים is realized as [gdo. 'lim]

Syllable.onset

For syllables beginning with א, ע, or ה, the onset can be realized as null.
Though, orthographically, they do function like an onset.

Realization of Shewa

In Biblical Hebrew reading traditions, the shewa is often vocalic, but in Modern Hebrew it is often realized as a zero-vowel [Ø] (Coffin and Bolozky, A Reference Grammar of Modern Hebrew, 22), creating syllables of CCV or CCVC types (see above)

The most common times that a word-initial (maybe syllable-initial) shewa is realized as vocalic is when (1) it's onset is a י, ל, מ, נ, or ר, or (2) when the second letter is א, ה, or ע.

Example of (1):

  • גְּדֹולִים is [gdo. 'lim]
  • לְבָנִים is [lǝ. va. 'nim]

Example of (2):

  • תְּשׁוּקָה is [tʃu. ˈka], but
  • תְּאוּנָה is [tǝ. u. ˈna]

A shewa preceded by a shewa is typically vocal as well, just like TIberian, but not necessarily so

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

enhancementNew feature or request

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions