The semantics of word division in northwest semitic writing systems : Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and Greek / Robert S.D. Crellin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crellin, Robert Samuel David, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Series:

Contexts of and relations between early writing systems (Series) ; v. 4.

Contexts of and relations between early writing systems ; Vol. 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semitic languages, West--Syllabication.

Semitic languages, West.

Semitic languages, West--Semantics.

Physical Description:

vi, 311 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxbow Books, 2022.

Summary:

Much focus in writing systems research has been on the correspondences on the level of the grapheme/phoneme. Seeking to complement these, this monograph considers the targets of graphic word-level units in natural language, focusing on ancient North West Semitic (NWS) writing systems, principally Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician and Ugaritic. While in Modern European languages word division tends to mark-up morphosyntactic elements, in most NWS writing systems word division is argued to target prosodic units, whereby written 'words' consist of units which must be pronounced together with a single primary accent or stress. This is opposed to other possibilities including Semantic word division, as seen in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic.0The monograph starts by considering word division in a source where, unlike the rest of the material considered, the phonology is well represented, the medieval tradition of Tiberian Hebrew and Aramaic. There word division is found to mark-up 'minimal prosodic words', i.e. units that must under any circumstances be pronounced together as a single phonological unit. After considering the Sitz im Leben of such a word division strategy, the monograph moves on to compare Tiberian word division with that in early epigraphic NWS, where it is shown that orthographic wordhood has an almost identical distribution. The most economical explanation for this is argued to be that word division has the same underlying basis in NWS writing since the earliest times. Thereafter word division in Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform is considered, where two word division strategies are identified, corresponding broadly to two genres of text, poetry and prose. 'Poetic' word division is taken as an instance of mainstream 'prosodic word division', while the other is morphosyntactic in scope anticipating later word division strategies in Europe by several centuries.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction

1.1. What is a word?

1.2. Why Northwest Semitic and Greek?

1.3. Wordhood in writing systems research

1.4. Linguistic levels of wordhood

1.5. Word division at the syntax-phonology interface

1.6. Previous scholarship

1.7. Method

1.8. Outline

pt. I Phoenician

2. Introduction

2.1. Overview

2.2. Literature review

2.3. Corpus

2.4. Linguistic and sociocultural identity of the inscriptions

2.5. Proto-alphabetic

2.6. Shared characteristics of word division

2.7. Divergence in word division practice

3. Prosodic words

3.1. Introduction

3.2. Distribution of word division

3.3. Graphematic weight of function words

3.4. Morphosyntax of univerbated syntagms

3.5. Sandhi assimilation

3.6. Comparison of composition and distribution with prosodic words in Tiberian Hebrew

3.7. Conclusion

4. Prosodic phrase division

4.1. Introduction

4.2. Syntax of univerbated syntagms

4.3. Comparison with prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew

4.4. Syntactic vs. prosodic phrase level analysis

4.5. Verse form

4.6. Conclusion

pt. II Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform

5. Introduction

5.1. Overview

5.2. Literature review

5.3. Basic patterns of word division and univerbation

5.4. Exceptions to the basic patterns of word division

5.5. Line division

5.6. Contexts of use

5.7. Textual issues

5.8. Inconsistent nature of univerbation

5.9. Hypothesis: Graphematic words represent actual prosodic words

6. The Ugaritic `Majority' orthography

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Syntagms particularly associated with univerbation

6.3. Univerbation with nouns

6.4. Univerbation with verbs

6.5. Univerbation with suffix pronouns

6.6. Univerbation at clause and phrase boundaries

6.7. Summary

7. Quantitative comparison of Ugaritic and Tiberian Hebrew

7.1. Introduction

7.2. Corpus

7.3. Frequency of occurrence

7.4. Length of phrase

7.5. Quantifying the morphosyntactic collocation of linking features

7.6. Measuring Association Score B for Ugaritic and Tiberian Hebrew

7.7. Visualising morphosyntactic collocation of linking features with MDS

7.8. Conclusion

8. Semantics of word division in the Ugaritic `Majority' orthography: prosodic word or prosodic phrase

8.1. Introduction

8.2. Graphematic wordhood in the Ugaritic `Majority' orthography

8.3. Consistency of the representation of ACTUAL PROSODIC WORDHOOD in Ugaritic

8.4. Univerbation at clause boundaries

8.5. Adoption of the `Majority' orthography outside of literary contexts

9. Separation of prefix clitics

9.1. Introduction

9.2. Literary texts

9.3. Non-literary texts adopting the `Majority' orthography

9.4. Non-literary texts adopting the `Minority' orthography

9.5. Conclusion

pt. III Hebrew and Moabite

10. Word division in the consontantal text of the Hebrew Bible

10.1. Introduction

10.2. Morphosyntactic status of graphematic affixes in Tiberian Hebrew

10.3. Morphosyntactic status of graphematic affixes

10.4. Graphematic status of graphematic affixes

10.5. Conclusion

11. Word division in the consonantal Masoretic Text: Minimal prosodic words

11.1. Introduction

11.2. Combining prosody and morphosyntax (Dresher 1994; Dresher 2009)

11.3. Accounting for graphematic wordhood prosodically

11.4. Mah `What?'

11.5. Lo'

11.6. Minimal domains for stress assignment and sandhi

11.7. Conclusion

12. Minimal prosodic words in epigraphic Hebrew and Moabite

12.1. Introduction

12.2. Siloam Tunnel inscription

12.3. Meshac stelae (KAI 181 and KAI 30)

12.4. Accounting for word division in the Meshac and Siloam inscriptions

12.5. Conclusion

12.6. Conclusion to Part III

pt. IV Epigraphic Greek

13. Introduction

13.1. Overview

13.2. Corpus

13.3. Prosodic wordhood in Ancient Greek

13.4. Metre and natural language

13.5. Problems with identifying graphematic words with prosodic words

13.6. Conclusion

14. The pitch accent and prosodic words

14.1. Introduction

14.2. Prosody of postpositives and enclitics

14.3. Prosody of prepositives and `proclitics'

14.4. Conclusion

15. Domains of pitch accent and rhythm

15.1. Introduction

15.2. Challenging the inherited tradition of accentuation

15.3. Pitch accentuation and rhythmic prominence have different domains

15.4. Rhythmic words are canonically trimoraic or greater

15.5. Graphematic words correspond to rhythmic words

15.6. Conclusion

16. Graphematic words with multiple lexicals

16.1. Introduction

16.2. Inconsistency of levels of graphematic representation

16.3. Prosodic subordination of one lexical to another

16.4. Punctuating canonical rhythmic words

16.5. Conclusion

17. Epilogue: The context of word division

17.1. Overview

17.2. Orality and literacy

17.3. Prosodic word level punctuation is a function of the oral performance of texts.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-311).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

1789256771

9781789256772

OCLC:

1240414692