References

[Zev bar-Lev]

To members of the KLANG-LIST, with apologies:


I had intended to Š what's the word?  "lurk", "loiter", "lounge"
(something else in initial /l/, maybe)? silently a while, with good
netiquette, before jumping  in.  But since I was careless enough to
send a personal note to the list membership, I might as well (with my
apologies) at least distribute a note on the work I referred to
there.


I have been working on initial consonants as "phonesthemes" or
(better) submorphemes.  This research began in Hebrew, where it has
gone far enough to prove itself pedagogically:  My textbook for
high-elementary students teaches students how they can guess the
meaning of unknown roots (i.e. triconsonantal roots) on the basis of
the initial consonant, e.g. roots beginning with /p/ have something
to do with "opening up", including "open (mouth, face), disperse,
explode, surprise, Š"

This would be an expectable equivalent of "assonance" submorphemes
(using Bolinger's division) like English gl-, spr-, etc, since
initial clusters arise by morphophonology.  (The first two consonants
of the root corm a cluster only under "accidental" conditions, e.g.
the plural but not the singular because of accent shift.)

But I found the same situation (far less regularly than in Hebrew,
but convincing to me nevertheless) not only in Arabic and Mandarin
(also no clusters), but also in Russian and -- with the help of
Margaret Magnus' work -- English.  I find Magnus' attempts to build
up composite meanings for clusters less convincing:  Cluster
submorphemes seem to me to be far less regular subphenomena of
initial consonants as submorphemes, as I argue in my articles.  For
example, gl- meaning "bright light" (revised from Bolinger) but also
gloom and other counter-examples, all fit under /#g-/ = "overwhelm";
/#gl-/ accounts for subsets of various submeanings on various sides
of the "overwhelm" meaning-spectrum, although partly gravitating
towards "light".

One more note:  I use the term "letters" in Hebrew because the
phenomenon is a bit more regular in the written language, because of
some intricate changes in the morphophonemics of the modern language.



articles:
ßHebrew Key-Letters', SHOFAR, Summer 2003.
ßotiyot mafteahh be'ivrit' ['Key-Letters in Hebrew'], HADOAR VOL. 82, #4, 2003.
ßKabbalah & Hebrew Key-Letters', forthcoming in BULLET. HEBR. HIGHER ED.
ßArabic Key-Consonants' forthcoming in JOURNAL OF ARABIC & ISLAMIC STUDIES.

textbook:
The Alef-Bet Puzzle, Montezuma Publ. (San Diego State University) 2004.

conference papers:
ßKabbalah/Sufism and Hebrew/Arabic Key-Letters'. Western Jewish
Studies Conf., San Francisco, March 2002.
ßotiyot mafteahh behoraat ivrit' ['key-letters in teaching Hebrew'].
NAPH Conference, July 2002, Beer-Sheva Israel.
ßSingle-Segment Submorphemes', Humanities Conference, Hawaii, January 2004.
ßKey-Consonants in Semitic', NACAL, San Diego, June 2004.
ßHebrew Key-Letters', NAPH, Austin TX, June 2004.



see also my web-site (below) on Hebrew key-letters.

‚‚Ý
prof. Zev bar-Lev
Dept. of Linguistics & Oriental Languages
San Diego State University
San Diego CA 92182
e-mail: zev.bar-Lev at sdsu.edu
web-site: languagebazaar.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/klang-list/attachments/20040813/78cb3fd8/attachment.htm>