...
As to what today is called WAYYIQTOL, WEYIQTOL and WEQATAL, they carefully followed what they heard in the synagogue as well. Because shewa and patah could be pronounced in a similar, or almost similar way (as an "a" sound), the pronunciation of the first syllable of all three forms could have been the same, or almost the same. But the stress may have been different, because narrative accounts probably would be read in a different way than future and modal accounts. The Masoretes had at their disposition shewa and patah, which were pronounced similarly. ...
... But in time, grammarians read into the Masoretic pointing something that was not intended by the Masoretes themselves, ...
... and the four-component model was born. So these later grammarians are the real inventors of the new grammatical theories that Hebrew has four conjugations, ...
while the Masoretes were the ones who invented the graphical difference between verbs, ...
... which made it logical to distinguish between four, or rather five (WEYIQTOL as well) groups of verbs.
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