Then why does the masculine ending on verbs, -ta have a dagesh?
The real reason is that the fricativization of these letters occurred
very early. We
have evidence it occurred already in the 5th century BCE. By the time of the
Massoretes, the rule that a bgdkpt letter is fricative after a vowel no longer
applied, but in various words where this fricative rule applied and
the vowel before
the bgdkpt letter dropped later, the fricative sound remained. Take the word
*malk- "king". Originally, the plural had a long a: in the second
syllable. Thus,
the plural of "melekh" is "melakhim". This used to be the case in the
construct
form: "mala:khe". However, when the second a: dropped, the word remained
"malkhe". The verbal suffixes had no vowel before them ever. Thus, the word
"I heard" is attested in Amarna as $a-mi-ti "$ami(ti", without a vowel
between the
(ayin and "ti" suffix. This goes for the rest of the verbal suffixes.
However,
the noun suffixes had a vowel before them. This was the case ending. While
the case ending was eventually lost, the "-ka" suffix remained fricative.
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