Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi John,

You've got it the wrong way around: it is not the presence of a pathah 
vis-a-vis hatef-pathah which signals interrogative heh vs definite 
article, but the presence or absence of the dagesh. The definite article 
is not simply /ha/ but /haC/, ie with gemination. It is the gemination 
which is determinative, not solely the orthographic vowel realisation as 
phonetically the vowel sound is exactly the same, as Yitzhak has already 
told you. It is not that "the dagesh mark isn't providing any additional 
information". As I've told you, the presence of the dagesh controls the 
orthographic realisation of the vowel -- so if you're going to remove 
the dagesh, you logically need to remove the preceding vowel also 
because they come together in the orthographic representation of the 
language.

The example I gave was the one already discussed: /hashshomer/.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> The vowel mark under the HE tells you if its interrogative vs definite 
> article. The hatah patah tells you its interrogative, the patah tells 
> you its definite article. So in this example the dagesh mark isn't 
> providing any additional information. Even if the vowel mark is 
> controlled by the dagesh - the point is that the vowel mark can provide 
> the data on its own.
>
> The example that you gave I wasn't able to find in the text. Could you 
> provide the book/chap/verse for the two words, or can you spell them 
> using the CCAT format?
>
>
> B"H
> John Steven
>
>
>
> David Kummerow wrote:
> > Well, in your example, if you were to remove the dagesh from /ha??omer/, 
> > then how do you determine interrogative heh vis-a-vis definite article, 
> > since the definite article vis-a-vis interrogative heh is determined by 
> > the presence/absence of dagesh? Sure, you can resort to semantic 
> > grounds, but what is the formal indicator? It is not simply the vowel 
> > marking, but the presence or absence of the dagesh. If you're going to 
> > remove the dagesh, then you might as well remove the preceding vowel, 
> > because it's orthographic realisation is determined by the presence of 
> > the dagesh, which is in turn realised by the semantics of the phrase. 
> > Same issue with /wayyiqqtol/ vis-a-vis /weyiqtol/ etc.
> >
> > Regards,
> > David Kummerow.