Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<pporta AT oham.net>]

Thank you, Yitzhak.
I'll take in account your last words:

"In any case, for your
purposes I suggest
just listing the qamats form as a rare variant form of the tsere form"

Thank you again!

Pere Porta
(Barcelona (Spain)



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Question on vowel


> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 6:02 AM,  Pere Porta wrote:
> > I'm seeking the reason for the different vowel in two words that are
> >  structurally equal.
> >
> >  I'm telling on the cluster consisting of Qal Participle singular of 
> > verbs
> >  lamed"heh + suffix of first person singular, -ny
> >
> >  Look at www.oham.net/out/S-d/S-d1496.html and then at
> >  www.oham.net/out/S-d/S-d1497.html
> >  In the first, the second root consonant takes tsere. While in the latter 
> > the
> >  second root consonant takes qamats.
> >  Does anyone of you which is the reason for this?
> >
> >  Maybe the reason is that the first case is in pause while the second is 
> > not?
> >  Or maybe the reason is that aleph does not take tsere but qamats
> >  (disregarding of pause or non-pause position of the word)? Is there 
> > another
> >  reason for these different vowels?
>
> The fact is that both of these occur in pause.  The second is at a 
> generally
> minor pausal marker, but it is also a frequent pausal forms.  For a 
> discussion
> of pausal forms see the following:
>
> http://www.etana.org/abzu/abzu-displayentry.pl?RC=19526
>
> According to the Hebrew University Bible, the Kennicott 93 manuscript 
> contains
> for the second the following spelling - rw)yny.  Evidently, the
> vocalization here
> was with tsere, and in fact, one sees that often r?h has tsere in
> similar forms such
> as "sees him."  The use of qamats is the odd one out.  It might be
> tempting to claim
> that the Masoretic reading is incorrect here and to suggest a
> correction, but this
> would go against the principle of lectio difficilior.  If one looks at
> the above
> description of pausal forms, one does not find this as a pausal form.
> But type 12
> has a very similar alternation between tsere in contextual and qamats in 
> major
> pause.  Furthermore, he notes that the participle forms do not show the 
> pausal
> alternation of tsere and qamats and normally have tsere even in pause.
> Now, here
> we see a form that normally does not have a pausal form.  However, perhaps 
> some
> similar process was at work in this particular word.  In this word, a
> suffixed participle
> perhaps conditions were appropriate for pausal alternation.  In most 
> cases, like
> type 12 participles, the participle form had a tsere.  But in this
> word the general
> pausal alternation from tsere to qamats took place.  If it is right to
> compare it to type
> 12, then the use of qamats is more ancient than the tsere (see discussion 
> in the
> book).  To me, this is interesting because my initial feeling was that
> the tsere
> represented a reflex of an original -i-, in this location (which in
> turn developed from
> the following original root consonant -y- that became an -h in
> non-suffixed forms).
> Furthermore, the qamats form goes against the consonantal form "rw)yny" in
> Kennicott 93, and yet it seems (if all the above follows) to be more
> "original" than
> that alternate consonantal representation.  In any case, for your
> purposes I suggest
> just listing the qamats form as a rare variant form of the tsere form.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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