The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents

I argue that the Tiberian system of accents which annotate the text of the Hebrew Bible has a prosodic basis. Accentual representations are constructed in terms of units somewhat similar to the modern prosodic hierarchy, and they deviate from syntactic constituency in ways that are characteristic of prosodic representations. They are constrained by the effects of syntactic edges, geometric properties of prosodic phrases, principles for organizing phrases into higher-level constituents, and position in the phrase, associated with variations in tempo. It is shown that the Tiberian representation can best be understood by integrating results of phonological, phonetic, and psycholinguistic research on prosodic structure.