15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Metathesis in Modern Hebrew: An Analysis in Articulatory Phonology

Mariko Yanagawa

Yale University, USA

This study proposes an account for metathesis in Modern Hebrew (henceforth Hebrew) in the framework of Articulatory Phonology. First, it is proposed that metathesis is restricted to binyan hitpa'el, because word-medial, hetero-morphemic clusters, which allow metathesis because of their weak gestural cohesion, occur only in this context. This was supported by the present experiment. Second, it is proposed that metathesis occurs in stop+sibilant sequences, because there is a gestural instability between the sibilant and the following vowel due to the sibilant gesture's resistance to overlap with the following vowel. Based on these proposals, a gesture-based Optimality Theoretic analysis of hitpa'el metathesis is proposed.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Yanagawa, Mariko (2003): "Metathesis in modern hebrew: an analysis in articulatory phonology", In ICPhS-15, 1671-1674.