[b-hebrew] hatuf patah under the lamed (LHBDYL) in Gen 1, 18 and Lev 10, 10

Yitzhak Sapir yitzhaksapir at gmail.com
Mon Mar 2 06:49:17 EST 2009


On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Laurent Pinchard wrote:
> dear Isaac,
>
> would you know why in Gen 1,18 we have a hatuf patah under the lamed (LHBDYL), which I don't understand:
> this semi vowel never appears under lamed as a preposition. Note that I have this from the BHS edition.
> Interestingly Leviticus 10,10 also mentions the same lamed with hatuf patah on the same word. Elsewhere
> any word starting with W(shuruk)LH-- would have as anticipated a patah or a shewa. Is this hatuf patah
> under the lamed a mistake? if not what is the rationale ?

The rationale is that you won't mistake it for a silent schewa.

Without the hataf patah, the word would be pronounced: [uul-hav-'diil].
With the hataf patah, the word is pronounced: [uu-lahav-'diil]

Note that u: (the shuruq at the beginning of the word) is normally
short.  In this case, however, it takes
secondary stress so it is long (and probably divided in reading as [uu]).

This probably has to do not only with the "wlh" but with the stress of
the word.

Yitzhak Sapir


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