The Semantics of Word Division in Northwest Semitic Writing Systems: Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and Greek (Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS))

Description

Much focus in research on alphabetic writing systems has been on correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. The present study sets out to complement these by examining the linguistic denotation of markers of word division in several ancient Northwest Semitic (NWS) writing systems, namely, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, as well as alphabetic Greek. While in Modern European languages words on the page are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, I argue that in most NWS writing systems words are divided on the basis of prosody: ‘words’ are units which must be pronounced together with a single primary accent or stress, or as a single phrase. After an introduction providing the necessary theoretical groundwork, Part I considers word division in Phoenician inscriptions. I show that word division at the levels of both the prosodic word and of the prosodic phrase may be found in Phoenician, and that the distributions match those of prosodic words and prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew. The latter is a source where, unlike the rest of the material considered, the prosody is well represented. In Part II, word division in Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform is analyzed. Here two-word division strategies are identified, corresponding broadly to two genres of text: viz, literary, and administrative documents. Word division in the orthography of literary and of some other texts separates prosodic words. By contrast, in many administrative (and some other) documents, words are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, anticipating later word division strategies in Europe by several centuries. Part III considers word division in the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Here word division is found to mark out ‘minimal prosodic words’. I show that this word division orthography is also found in early Moabite and Hebrew inscriptions. Word division in alphabetic Greek inscriptions is the topic of Part IV. Whilst it is agreed that word division marks out prosodic words, the precise relationship of these units to the pitch accent and the rhythm of the language is not so clear, and consequently this issue is addressed in detail. Finally, the Epilogue considers the societal context of word division in each of the writing systems examined, to attempt to discern the rationales for the prosodic word division strategies adopted. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations 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 Part 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 Part 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 Part III Hebrew and Moabite 10. Introduction 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. מַה‎ mah “What?” 11.5. לֹא‎ lōʾ 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. Meshaʿ stelae (KAI 181 and KAI 30) 12.4. Accounting for word division in the Meshaʿ and Siloam inscriptions 12.5. Conclusion 12.6. Conclusion to Part III Part 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. Conclusion: 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 Bibliography Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Chapter 1 Introduction PART I Phoenician inscriptions Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 Prosodic words Chapter 4 Prosodic phrases PART II Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform Chapter 5 Introduction Chapter 6 The Ugaritic ‘Majority’ orthography Chapter 7 Quantitative comparison of Ugaritic and Tiberian Hebrew Chapter 8 Semantics of word division and univerbation in the ‘Majority’ orthography: prosodic word or prosodic phrase? Chapter 9 Separation of prefix clitics PART III Hebrew and Moabite Chapter 10 Word division in the consontantal text of the Hebrew Bible Chapter 11 Word division in the consonantal Masoretic Text: Minimal prosodic words Chapter 12 Minimal prosodic words in epigraphic Hebrew and Moabite PART IV Epigraphic Greek Chapter 13 Introduction Chapter 14 The pitch accent and prosodic words Chapter 15 Domains of pitch accent and rhythm Chapter 16 Graphematic words with multiple lexicals Chapter 17 Epilogue: The context of word division Bibliography