Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/151

 ending  of nouns, and of the 3rd fem. sing. perfect. For the afformatives  and, see.

3. The characteristic vowel of the second syllable becomes before tone-bearing afformatives which begin with a vowel, but is retained (as being in the tone-syllable) before the toneless afformative. Thus:, , (but in   &c.),.

Rem. 1. The ō of the second syllable (as in the inf. constr. and imperat.), being lengthened from an original ŭ in the tone-syllable, is only tone-long. Hence it follows that: (a) it is incorrectly, although somewhat frequently, written ; (b) before the short vowel appears as, e.g. ,  (but cf. also , ); (c) it becomes  before the tone-bearing afformatives  and  (see above, e; but Jerome still heard e.g. iezbuleni for ; cf.  iv. 83).

Quite anomalous are the three examples which, instead of a shortening to, exhibit a long û: , immediately before the principal pause, but according to Qimḥi (ed. Rittenb. p.18b), ed. Mant., Ginsb., Kittel against the other editions, with the tone on the ultima; likewise ;  (in principal pause). In the first two cases perhaps and  (for, &c.) are intended, in virtue of a retrogressive effect of the pause; in   is to be read, with August Müller.

2. The ō of the second syllable is to be found almost exclusively with transitive verbs middle a, like. Intransitives middle a and ē almost always take ă in the impf., e.g., , ,  (,  is also originally intransitive = to accustom oneself); ,  (but cf.  and  imperf.  and to inhabit,  imperf. ); also from verbs middle ō, as , the imperf. has the form.

Sometimes both forms occur together; those with ō having a transitive, and those with ă an intransitive meaning, e.g., , i.e. is short; impf. ō, to overcome, ; impf. ă, to be overcome,. More rarely both forms are used without any distinction, e.g. and,  and  (but only the latter with a transitive meaning=he bends, in ). On the a of the impf. of verbs middle and third guttural, cf. ; . In some verbs first guttural, ,  , and  , and in  for yintēn from , instead of ă or ō a movable  (originally ĭ) is found in the second syllable. A trace of these i-imperfects in the ordinary strong verb is probably to be found in, since  otherwise only occurs in Qal. We call these three forms of the imperfect after their characteristic vowel impf. o, impf. a, impf. e.

3. For the ''3rd sing. fem. (=tiq-ṭōl), Baer requires in   (but read with ed. Mant., &c. ). For the 2nd sing. fem.'' the form