Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/82

 text. The complete transformation and amplification of the system (in three different forms, see, note), which soon caused the Jews to forget its real origin, is clearly connected with the gradual change from the speaking voice in public reading to chanting or singing. The accents then served as a kind of musical notes. Their value as such has, however, with the exception of a few traces, become lost in transmission. On the other hand, according to their original design they have also a twofold use which is still of the greatest importance for grammar (and syntax), viz. their value (a) as marking the tone, (b) as marks of punctuation to indicate the logical (syntactical) relation of single words to their immediate surroundings, and thus to the whole sentence.

2. As a mark of the tone the accent stands almost invariably (but see below, ) with the syllable which has the principal tone in the word. This is usually the ultima, less frequently the penultima. Amongst the Jewish grammarians a word which has the tone on the ultima is called (Aram.  i.e. accented below ), e.g. ; a word which has the tone on the penultima is  (Aram., accented above), e.g. . Besides this, in many cases a secondary tone is indicated in the word by  (cf. ). Examples such as   (cf. 40:18, , , ) are regarded by the Jewish grammarians as even proparoxytone.

3. As marks of interpunctuation the accents are subdivided into those which separate (Distinctivi or Domini) and those which connect (Conjunctivi or Servi). Further a twofold system of accentuation is to be noted: (a) the common system found in twenty-one of the Books (the i.e. twenty-one), and (b) that used in the first three Books of the Hagiographa, viz. Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, for which the vox memor, is, from the initial consonants of the names, Psalms,  Proverbs,  Job, or more correctly, according to their original sequence,  , so that  means the accents (sing. ) of these three Books. The latter system is not only richer and more complicated in itself, but also musically more significant than the ordinary accentuation.