In Modern Hebrew, some, but not all, nominals exhibit obligatory /a/-syncope in open syllables if they are antepretonic in a simple (nominal) word. The same vowels optionally syncopate in any pretonic syllable in non-final members of compounds. Here we first show that syncope in compounds fills a gap in the typology of weak positions. We then propose a formal analysis in Gradient Harmonic Grammar (Smolensky and Goldrick 2016), which distinguishes between a weak /a/ and a strong /a/. Only the former undergoes syncope in both configurations; and only in non-compounds is it protected by a positional faithfulness constraint referencing the head foot of the prosodic word. Optionality in compounds is shown to follow from Base-Derivative faithfulness.

在现代希伯来语中，一些（但不是全部）名词性词如果在简单（名词性）词中是前声前的，则在开音节中表现出强制性的/a/-晕厥。相同的元音可选地在复合词的非最终成员的任何前声音节中切分音。在这里，我们首先证明复合词中的晕厥填补了弱势地位类型学的空白。然后，我们在梯度调和语法（Smolensky and Goldrick 2016）中提出了一种形式分析，它区分了弱 /a/ 和强 /a/。只有前者在两种配置中都会发生晕厥；并且只有在非复合词中，它才受到引用韵律词头脚的位置忠实性约束的保护。化合物的选择性显示出源自碱基导数的忠实性。