Interdental consonants in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects

  • Geoffrey Khan University of Cambridge

Abstract

The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects exhibit a wide range of reflexes of the historical interdental consonants *θ and *ð. These were originally post-vocalic fricative allophones *[θ] and *[ð] of the stops */t/ and */d/ respectively in earlier Aramaic. In NENA these fricative allophones have become phonemicized. The interdental realization of the consonants has been preserved mainly in dialects in the western sector of NENA. In the eastern sector the interdentals have been replaced by various other consonants or debuccalized under the influences of contact languages.

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Author Biography

Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge

Geoffrey Khan (PhD, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1984) is Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge. His research publications focus on three main fields: Biblical Hebrew language (especially medieval traditions), Neo-Aramaic dialectology, and medieval Arabic documents. He is the general editor of The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics and is the senior editor of Journal of Semitic Studies. His most recent book is The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, 2 vols, Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures 1 (University of Cambridge and Open Book Publishers, 2020).

Geoffrey can be contacted at: gk101@cam.ac.uk

Published
2023-09-09