Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Dear John,

You can't go putting forth examples such as the ones below as disproving 
the fact that the definite article in BH is /haC-/ before firstly 
understanding the phonetic conditioning surrounding the realisation of 
the /haC-/ morpheme. Please either accept that the morpheme /haC-/ has 
several phonologically conditioned allomorphs [haC-], [ha-], and [he-] 
or set forth a more convincing arguement as to why you assert that the 
definite article in BH is not /haC-/ but rather /ha-/.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> You said that the mark indicating the article HE is the dagesh.
> This isn't so - as the following examples show (Note that I didn't even
> have to go beyond Genesis to find a bunch of them):
>
> Inter. HE and dagesh in second syllable.
> gn17:17,8 <HA/L.:/BEN>
> gn18:21,4 <HA/K.:/CA(:AQFT/FH.>
> gn37:32,13 < HA/K.:TONET>
>
> Article HE and no dagesh in second syllable.
> gn2:12,3 <HA/HIW)>
> gn7:4,16 <HA/Y:QW.M>
> gn14:10,2 <HA/&ID.IYM>
> gn15:10,15 <HA/CIP.OR>
> gn30:41,5 <HA/M:QU$.FROWT>
>
>
> So again, if you remove the dagesh mark from the word in the <H:A/$OM"R>
> vs <HA/$.OM"R> no translational data would be lost.
>
> Are there any examples where it would - especially on the word part that
> the dagesh appears?
>
> B"H
> John Steven