Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> The Masoretes, sorry, did not write anything on grammar. Saaida wrote
> centuries after them.
> Michtav has dagesh while $imchem doesn't - would you suggest any
> conceivable difference between them which have led to different use of
> dagesh kal?

The Masoretes did write works on grammar.  Saadia was contemporaneous
with Ben Asher (vocalizer of the Aleppo codex).  Ben Asher himself wrote
the Diqduqe Teamim.  Even later works, such as the Hidayat al Qari are
valuable and provide a consistent understanding of the Masorah.  These
were written by people who were still trained in the authentic Tiberian
tradition.

The reason mikht@v does have a dagesh is because historically there
was no vowel between the kaph and the taw while in the case of the
work $imkhem there was a vowel.  Furthermore, a pronoun like -khem
is very prone to linguistic leveling.

Yitzhak Sapir