Markedness Relations in the Pronunciation of the Prefixed Particles in Modern Hebrew; Analogy and Regularization in Morphophonemic Changes; The Case of Weak Verbs in Post-Biblical and Colloquial Modern Hebrew

Analysis of the pronunciation of the prefixed particles in Hebrew formal and semi-formal speech shows that deviations from the norms are of significance only in the minority of the forms, espe cially in the rare environments. The findings are explained by a markedness theory which incorporates frequency and naturalness of rules and conditions from phonetic, morphophonemic, and morpho syntactic points of view. The pronunciation of the prefixed particles may serve as a parameter for linguistic registers.