Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vadim Cherny <vadimcherny AT gmail.com>]

In my hypothesis, except for several narrow situations, dagesh occurs  
in either of the two environments:

post-tonic dagesh hazak (gemination helps avoid post-tonic reduction),  
and
in accented syllables after consonantal clusters (to prevent  
consonantal jamming of nizchAr - ni'char type)

birchatay is neither, thus no dagesh.

Vadim Cherny



Charles Grebe wrote:

In Genesis 33:11, the word "my blessing" (birchatay) does not have a
dagesh lene in the caph.