Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tomas Frydrych <tomas AT frydrych.freeserve.co.uk>]

I think that the examples of the ending that Henry Churchyard gave do
not all fit into the same category, strictly speaking. Namely, in the
second occurrence in Ps 116:7, the y belongs to the original root and
occurs regularly with all suffixes on  III-y prepositions, albeit the
appearance is that of a pl. suffix.

In Ps 103:3MT, 4, 5 and 116:7A the y is due to the suffixed noun being
in pl. (masculine form), i.e., the y is the construct marker of the
noun. The fact that the ay diphthong is not reduced is not surprising,
since it marks the plural and the reduction of ay to e would result in
the identical form in both sg. and pl. (cf. the case of the _regular_
2fs nominal suffixes). The qamets used here instead of the patah of the
standard suffixes is due to the fact the the syllable division is
different since the y forms here a closed syllable with the preceding
consonant, while in the case of the standard suffix it goes together
with the suffix itself, and so the syllable vocalized with the patah is
open. Once the final y (off the suffix) is removed , the hireq reduces
to shewa, the silent shewa has to lengthen to hireq and the qamets to
reduce to patah, resulting in the regular MT form.

Tomas Frydrych