Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/272

 Very frequently such interdependent words are also united by ; this, however, is not necessary, but depends on the accentuation in the particular case. On the wider uses of the ''constr. st''. see the Syntax, § 130.

2. The vowel changes which are occasioned in many nouns by the are more fully described in §§ 92–5. But besides these, the terminations of the noun in the construct state sometimes assume a special form. Thus:

(a) In the, plural and dual, the termination is , e.g. , ; ,.

Rem. The of the dual has evidently arisen from  (cf. ), but the origin of the termination  in the ''constr. st''. plur. is disputed. The Syriac ''constr. st''. in ay and the form of the plural noun before suffixes (,, &c., ) would point to a contraction of an original , as in the dual. But whether this ay was only transferred from the dual to the plural (so Olshausen, and Nöldeke, Beitr. zur sem. Sprachwiss., Strassb. 1904, p. 48 ff.), or is to be regarded as the abstract, collective termination, as in (see f) and  (so Philippi,  1890, col. 419; Barth,  1904, p. 431 ff.), must be left undecided.

(b) The original is regularly retained as the feminine termination in the  sing. of those nouns which in the absolute state end in, e.g. ,. But the feminine endings, , and also the plural , remain unchanged in the.

(c) Nouns in (cf. ) from verbs  (§ 93, Paradigm III c) form their ''constr. st''. in, e.g. , constr. . If this is due to contraction of the original, with  added as a vowel letter, we may compare , constr. ;, constr. ;, constr. .

On the terminations and  in the ''constr. st''. see § 90.

K. U. Nylander, Om Kasusändelserna i Hebräiskan, Upsala, 1882; J. Barth, ‘Die Casusreste im Hebr.,’ liii. 593 ff.

1. As the Assyrian and old Arabic distinguish three cases by special endings, so also in the Hebrew noun there are three endings which, in the main, correspond to those of the Arabic. It is, however, a question whether they are all to be regarded as real remnants of former case-endings, or are in some instances to be explained