> Subject: Re: cantillation makes a difference
> From: Jerry <jrs AT renome.rovno.ua>
> Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 17:36:30 +0300
> Monday, January 31, 2000, 5:46:31 PM, Vincent DeCaen wrote:
>> if i remember correctly, Isaiah 40:3, "a voice crying ...."
> You know, this verse was always interesting to me, but I'm not
> enough familiar with cantillation marks. Are the cantillations
> reliable for this verse? If yes what is the reading (along with
> meaning): "A voice crying, ..." or "A voice crying in the desert, "
> ?
Here's a representation of the constituency of the accentual parse of
Isaiah 40:3, according to transliteration conventions used in my
dissertation. Note that in strictly logical, terms, the major pause
break within the verse should be after _qore'_ or _bamidbar_
(depending on which reading was adopted), not after _yashru_. The
reason for the location of the major break after _yashru_ is due to
the frequent accentual constituency rearrangement of logical
(syntactic) structure [X [Y Z]] to accentual structure [[X Y] Z]
(especially when X is a brief introductory phrase, and the units [X Y]
and Z are approximately balanced in prosodic weight). The important
thing here is that _bamidbar_ is grouped most closely with what
immediately follows, not with what immediately precedes: