Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/275

 (b) In the termination often used in poetry with feminines, viz. (=), ; (=),, , ;  (=), , , ;  (=), , , ;    ;  ; , ;   is corrupt, see the LXX and Commentaries. These cases are not to be taken as double feminine endings, since the loss of the tone on the final syllable could then hardly be explained, but they are further instances of an old accusative of direction or intention. In examples like  this is still quite apparent, but elsewhere it has become meaningless and is used merely for the sake of poetical emphasis.

This termination usually has reference to place (hence called  ); sometimes, however, its use is extended to time, as in. Its use in properly ad profanum!=absit! is peculiar.

As the termination is almost always toneless (except in  ;  and  ) it generally, as the above examples show, exercises no influence whatever upon the vowels of the word; in the ''constr. st., , and in the proper names  ,   (so Baer; ed. Mant. and Ginsb. ),  ,  ,  , an ă is retained even in an open tone-syllable (cf., however,  ,   from , with modification of the a to è''; also   from ). In segholate forms, as a general rule, the is joined to the already developed form of the ''absol. st., except that the helping-vowel before naturally becomes, e.g. ,  , &c.;  ,  , &c., but also   (constr. st.; likewise to be read in the absolute in , ) and   (with Silluq''); cf. and (Baer, incorrectly, )  (both in ).—In the case of feminines ending in  the  is added to the original feminine ending , the ă of which (since it then stands in an open tone-syllable) is lengthened to ā, e.g. .—Moreover the termination  is even weakened to  in , , ; ,  and ,.

3. Of the three other terminations may still be regarded as a survival of the old nominative ending. It occurs only in the middle