Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Jason Hare wrote:
>> I was wondering, does the presence/absence of the dagesh alone change
>> the meaning of the word in any way?
>
> It's not the presence of a dagesh that can change a word. It is the
> form of a word that determines whether or not a dagesh is required for
> WRITING. This is an orthographical issue. The fact is, a short vowel
> cannot stand in an unaccented syllable in Biblical Hebrew (and this is
> the BH list, not the MH list -- we are here to discuss issues of
> Biblical Hebrew and not the ignoring of these classical rules by
> Israelis). If we have a short vowel in an unaccented syllable, there
> must be either a sheva under the following consonant or a dagesh.
> That's just how the accentuation/syllabification rules work in
> Biblical Hebrew!

I am not sure whether you intended it that way, but what you stated
does not accord with modern studies of the Masoretic vocalization.
All stressed vowels are long, including both primary and secondary
stress.  This means that the only short vowels are in unstressed
("unaccented") syllables.  (Compare now what you said).  Vowels in
open syllables are generally long.  Short open vowels are denoted
using schwa or hataf.  It essentially means that a short open syllable
cannot stand on its own but is "dependent" on the following syllable.

Yitzhak Sapir