Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Hayyim wrote:

> Does the shewa under the second letter (which had been the 
> first before the 
> conjunction was added) always remain vocal?  I.e. is it true 
> to say that a shewa 
> under the second letter after waw conjunctive is always vocal?

I would think not. For one thing, the rule of shva normally creates a
closed syllable. Granted, this would be an unusual case for a closed
syllable not to start with a consonant, but in that respect, this is an
unusual case regardless. Ordinarily, we should think that no syllable in
Hebrew starts with a vowel (which, regardless of how we take the shva,
makes the initial u- exceptional). For another thing, the identity of an
initial shva as necessarily vocal rests on its position at the beginning
of a word. Once it is no longer at the beginning of the word, it would
make sense for this distinction to disappear. Finally, I just checked
the Artscroll siddur, which marks vocal shva, and on the first couple of
occasions I saw, the shva following the conjunction was not marked as
such. Of course, this all assumes that there is a real distinction
between vocal and silent shva, but that assumption was already in your
question.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics