Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/80

 Ginsburg,, p. 114 ff.: Dagesh and Raphe.

1., the sign of , is in ordinary printed texts placed only within the letters  as a sign that they should be pronounced with their original hard sound (without aspiration), e.g. , but ; , but ; , but.

2. The cases in which a is to be inserted are stated in. It occurs almost exclusively at the beginning of words and syllables. In the middle of the word it can easily be distinguished from, since the latter always has a vowel before it, whereas never has; accordingly the  in ,  must be , but in  it is.

A variety of the is used in many manuscripts, as well as in Baer’s editions, though others (including Ginsburg in the first two cases,, pp. 121, 130, 603, 662) reject it together with the Ḥaṭefs discussed in. It is inserted in consonants other than the to call attention expressly to the beginning of a new syllable: when the same consonant precedes in close connexion, e.g., where, owing to the , the coalescing of the two  is avoided; in cases like  = maḥ-sî (not măḥa-sî); according to some (including Baer; not in ed. Mant.) in in the combination , or  ,  &c. (so always also in Ginsburg’s text, except in ); see also and.  —Delitzsch appropriately gives the name of to this variety of  (, 1874, on ); cf. moreover Delitzsch,, 1863, p. 413; also his , Lpz. 1878, p. 12.

3. When is placed in a, the strengthening necessarily excludes its aspiration, e.g. , from.

1., llke , also a point within the consonant, serves in the letters as a sign that they are to be regarded as full consonants and not as vowel letters. In most editions of the text it is only used in the consonantal at the end of words (since  can never be a vowel letter in the middle of a word), e.g.  (to be high),  (her land) which has a consonantal ending (shortened from -hā), different from  (to the earth) which has a vowel ending.

Rem. 1. Without doubt such a Hē was distinctly aspirated like the Arabic Hā at the end of a syllable. There are, however, cases in which this has lost its consonantal character (the Mappîq of course disappearing too), so that it remains only as a vowel letter; cf. on the 3rd fem. sing.

The name means proferens, i.e. a sign which brings out the sound of the letter distinctly, as a consonant. The same sign was selected for this