Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 05/10/2005 17:38, Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:

> > When sheva under a guttural consonant becomes vocalised, the 
> > vocalisation is always a composite sheva
> >    
>
> Though this doesn't affect your original argument, it's worth pointing
> out for the sake of accuracy that when a shva under a gutteral
> consonant becomes vocalized, sometimes it will NOT be composite.  If
> the would-be composite ("chataf") shva falls before another shva, it
> then turns into a full vowel.  For example, YA'AV'RU (they will pass)
> gets a full vowel under the AYIN.
>
> -Joel Hoffman
> http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman
>
>  
Thank you, Joel. I was not aware of this grammatical rule. In fact it 
seems to be not quite consistent, for I found just 25 cases of composite 
sheva followed by sheva (for interest, the references are EXO 8:3; 9:11; 
30:8; LEV 25:46; NUM 9:3; JDG 16:2,23; 1SA 18:7; 2SA 10:11; 1CH 
11:13,28,44; 12:3; 29:18; 2CH 9:29; 10:11,14; 26:22; EZR 10:14; EST 
2:14; JOB 7:21; PSA 119:175; JER 29:27; 50:11; ZEC 11:5 - but some of 
these are textual oddities), and in at least some of these cases (e.g. 
JDG 16:23; 2SA 10:11; 1CH 11:13; EZR 10:14; PSA 119:175) the composite 
sheva is in a place where there would be a simple sheva according to the 
regular non-guttural paradigm.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/