Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/83

 I. The Common Accents.

Preliminary remark. The accents which are marked as stand to the right over or under the initial consonant of the word; those marked as, to the left over or under the last consonant. Consequently in both cases the tone-syllable must be ascertained independently of the accent (but cf. below, ).

A. Disjunctive Accents (Distinctivi or Domini).

1.  Sillûq (end) always with the tone-syllable of the last word before Sôph pāsûq, the verse-divider, e.g..

2.  ʾAthnâḥ or  ʾAthnaḥtā (rest), the principal divider within the verse.

3 a. Segôltā, postpositive, marks the fourth or fifth subordinate division, counting backwards from ʾAthnâḥ (e.g. ).

3 b. Šalšèleth (i.e. chain), as disjunctive, or Great Šalšèleth, distinguished by the following stroke This stroke is commonly confused with Paseq, which has the same form. But Pâsēq (= restraining, dividing, also incorrectly called Pesîq) is neither an independent accent, nor a constituent part of other accents, but is used as a mark for various purposes; see the Masoretic lists at the end of Baer’s editions, and Wickes,, p. 120 ff., where Pâsēq is divided into , , , and. The conjecture of Olshausen (Lehrb., p. 86 f.), that Pâsēq served also to point out marginal glosses subsequently interpolated into the text, has been further developed by E. von Ortenberg, ‘Die Bedeutung des Paseq für Quellenscheidung in den BB. d. A.T.,’ in, 1887, and in the article, ‘Paseq u. Legarmeh,’ in 1887, p. 301 ff. (but see Wickes, ibid. 1888, p. 149 ff.; also E. König, in the, 1889, parts 5 and 6; Maas, in , v. 121 ff., viii. 89 ff.). Prätorius, 1899, p 683 ff., pointed out that Paseq (which is pre-masoretic and quite distinct from Legarmēh) besides being a divider (used especially for the sake of greater clearness) also served as a sign of abbreviation. For further treatment of see H. Grimme, ‘Pasekstudien,’ in the, i. 337 ff., ii. 28 ff., and, &c., Freiburg (Switzerland), 1902, p. 173, where it is argued that indicates variants in a difficult sentence; J. Kennedy, , Edinb. 1903, with an index of all the occurrences of, p. 117 ff. According to Kennedy the ‘note-line’, of which he distinguishes sixteen different kinds, is intended to draw attention to some peculiarity in the text; it existed long before the Masoretes, and was no longer understood by them. See, however, the reviews of E. König,, 1904, p. 448 ff., G. Beer,. 1905, no. 3, and esp. A. Klostermann,, 1904, no. 13, with whom Ginsburg agrees (, Leiden, 1904, p. 210 ff.) in showing that the tradition with regard to the 479 or 480 uses of is by no means uniform. The purpose of is clearly recognizable in the five old rules: But the assumption of a far-reaching critical importance in is at least doubtful.—Cf. also the important article by H. Fuchs, ‘Pesiq ein Glossenzeichen,’ in the, Aug. 1908, p. 1 ff. and p. 97 ff. from the conjunctive in the poetic accentuation, is used for
 * 1) as a divider between identical letters at the end and beginning of two words;
 * 2) between identical or very similar words;
 * 3) between words which are absolutely contradictory (as God and evil-doer);
 * 4) between words which are liable to be wrongly connected;
 * 5) and lastly, between heterogeneous terms, as ‘Eleazar the High Priest, and Joshua’.