Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 8/31/07, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> -y in ky: I do not want to discuss this at length.  According to HALOT, this
> spelling is found even in Ugaritic, where mater lectionis are extremely 
> rare to
> nonexistent.  I think this is reason in itself to suggest that this
> spelling does
> not have to signify a mater lectionis.

Locating now Daniel Sivan's comments on this in his Ugaritic grammar, he
writes "The use of -y as a mater lectionis is found seldom in poetry and is
more frequent in prose.  The word ky (for emphasis and causation) is
written in prose always plene and it is possible that its reading is ki:  In
poetry it is written always defective, that is k.  So too the conjunction b
written plene [by] in prose, and defective in poetry, that is b."  (p.
11, Hebrew)
One, therefore, cannot learn from the Siloam inscription's spelling of the
word ky that the -y was a mater lectionis any more than one can learn the
same from Ugarit.  That this was the exception in the word ky is clear from
the construct of the masculine plural in the oblique state which has a final
long -i: but no -y.  One may even suggest that this is the case for the word
r)$ in the final line of the inscription (that is, the reading should be 
"heads
of", not "head of").

Yitzhak Sapir