Re: SPAM: Re: Hebrew hataf vowels (was: About CGJ)

From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 15:06:16 EDT

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    On 25/07/2003 11:01, Jony Rosenne wrote:

    >>But consider the seventh word in Jeremiah 52:19, which, as you would
    >>encode it, ends qof hiriq yod zaqef-qatan vav holam tav.
    >>(This hiriq yod
    >>vav holam sequence is in fact unique in the WTS Bible text.) In this
    >>case, is the yod a consonant followed by a holam-vav vowel, or is the
    >>hiriq-yod a vowel followed by a consonantal vav and a simple holam
    >>vowel? (How would this actually be pronounced in modern
    >>Hebrew, with a V
    >>sound of not?) BHS prints holam above the right side of vav, implying
    >>that the holam-vav is understood as a vowel, and has a footnote that
    >>many manuscripts and editions have a dagesh in the yod, which
    >>makes this
    >>understanding unambiguous.
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >
    >It is a Holam, rather than Vav Haluma, i.e. a vowel. The Dagesh doesn't make
    >a difference.
    >
    >The pronunciation raises no difficulty, even when presented without points,
    >as it is a feminine plural.
    >
    Thank you. I wonder if it is safe to assume that any yod or vav with
    "dagesh" immediately preceding a vav-holam is consonantal, i.e. neither
    a hiriq-yod full form vowel nor a shuruq, and so the holam-vav is a
    vowel. This rule seems to apply to the Bible text, but I don't know if
    it does to all Hebrew texts. There is a more general algorithm to
    distinguish the two vav-holams, but it is messy and potentially
    recursive to the start of the word - consider the pronunciation of a
    word consisting of a long string of vav-dageshes and a final vav-holam!

    >
    >In my bible it is the 14th word. The Maqaf only affects the pronunciation,
    >not the word count. Otherwise the word count would change when the text is
    >marked up with the Maqaf.
    >
    Good point. But the WTS text which I was basing this on does not count
    maqaf as a word break. Perhaps it should.

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com
    http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
    


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