Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Ryan Clan wrote:
> Your opinions please.
>
> My grammars are divided into two schools of thought concerning the way
> an inseparable preposition attaches itself to a word that begins with a
> vocal shewa.
>
> The first school of thought says that under these conditions, an
> inseparable preposition creates a closed syllable at the beginning of a
> word, usually invoking the "rule of shewa." However, this approach
> ignores the absence of a dagesh lene in any following begadkephat letter.

Can you give an example where the dagesh is absent in this situation?
In any case, this is the correct view.  There is no rule that a short vowel
likes to be closed.  An open short (and unstressed) vowel is simply denoted
by a schewa or hataf.

Yitzhak Sapir