From: "Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT crossmyt.com>
Subject: Matres Lectionis
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:34:09 -0500 (CDT)
The difference between he-pathah.-taw-dagesh-sh AT wa-shin-h.ireq-`ayin-
h.ireq-yod in Jeremiah 36:9 and he-pathah.-taw-dagesh-sh AT wa-shin-h.ireq-
yod-`ayin-h.ireq-yod in Jeremiah 36:22 is a general difference in use
of supplemental "matres lectiones" letters in spellings, and does not
show any phenomenon that is specific to or exclusive to ordinals or
numerals (so that your subject line is rather infelicitous). Matres
lectionis are extremely simple on one level (their presence is merely
optional), but to try to really explain their detailed patterns of
occurrence and omission demands a large-scale study using high-powered
statistics; you could look at the Andersen and Forbes books, etc.
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