Pharyngeal related non-lexical vowels in Sephardic Modern Hebrew

Abstract

This paper examines non-lexical vowels in Sephardic Modern Hebrew. It is argued that two kinds of vowel, which are triggered by the pharyngeal consonants, should be identified: (a) true epenthetic vowels that emerge on the surface to repair illicit (marked) syllable structures. (b) \"Echo-vowels\" that are created by overlapping a vowel and a pharyngeal consonant. These vowels do not repair illicit syllable structures, but rather ease the perception of clusters containing a pharyngeal. These vowels are not syllabic and phonological processes ignore them.