Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/248

 survivals from a period when even final vowels were not supported by a vowel-letter. Cf. also  ;,  (before ; but in  );  (for ) ; and (unless the  is radical) in prose  (which reading is also preferable, in , to the form ), also , but in  always. —  is no doubt intended to indicate the reading, parallel to ; cf. above, on, &c.

(c), the Aramaic orthography for , chiefly in the later writers; , ; , ; , ; , (unless  is intended); , ; cf. also ( from ) ;,. On the other hand, according to the western Masora, is to be read in ; see Baer on the passage.

(d), an obtuse form of , only in  for   (unless it is again a  combining the   and the  ); cf. for ;   (, and ).

(e) without the tone, e.g.   [ ];, ; cf. ,, . In all those examples the usual tone-bearing is perhaps intended, but the Punctuators, who considered the feminine ending inappropriate, produced a kind of  form (see ) by the retraction of the tone. [In, , (note in each case the following ), and in , , the text is probably in error.]

(f), as an old feminine termination, preserved also in Syriac (see examples in Nöldeke’s , § 83), in Arabic and (contracted to ê) in Ethiopic, very probably occurs in the proper name , cf. Nöldeke, xl. 183, and xlii. 484; also  undoubtedly arises from an original ; so Wright,, p. 138; König, , ii. 427.

3. It is wholly incorrect to regard the -ending as the original termination of the feminine, and the  ending  as derived from it. The Ethiopic still has the throughout, so too the Assyrian ; in Phoenician also the feminines end for the most part in, which is pronounced  in the words found in Greek and Latin authors; less frequently in  (see Gesenius, , pp. 439, 440; Schröder, , p. 169 ff.). The ancient Arabic has the obtuse ending almost exclusively in ; in modern Arabic the relation between the two endings is very much as in Hebrew.