Mid-word געיה with Shewa

(This document is a sort of appendix to a parent document, “Review of Chabad’s CTR.”)

The combination of געיה with shewa rarely appears in the middle of a word. It is briefly mentioned in section 335 of Yeivin’s Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah. I find eight cases in Tanakh. They are shown below. They are shown as they appear in MAM. They are shown with MAM’s special maqaf shown in gray.

The eight cases have a lot in common:

• Their first syllable has merkha on a short vowel ( pataḥ, ḥiriq qatan, or segol ).
• Their second syllable:
  • Starts with געיה with shewa (simple shewa or ḥataf segol ).
  • Ends with a long vowel (tsere or shuruq).
• Their third syllable is unstressed. (In one case, it starts with shewa: לפני־יהוה.)
• Their fourth syllable has the primary stress. In one case, the primary accent is a conjunctive: munaḥ. In all the other cases, it is a disjunctive (tsinnor or revia).
• In one case, there is a fifth syllable: אשרי־הגבר.

(Above, we use the Masoretic notion of a syllable where vocal shewa is not considered to be an independent syllable. Rather, it is considered to be attached forward, i.e. attached to the syllable right after it.)

Above, the Ps 64:7 case, יחפשו־עולת, is marked “guttural-closed syllable” because the merkha is on a guttural-closed syllable, i.e. the געיה with shewa comes right after a guttural-closed syllable. So, it is a little different than all the other cases, since all the other cases have merkha on an open syllable.

Above, the last two cases are marked “ḥataf ” because the געיה with shewa is a געיה with a ḥataf shewa, i.e. a געיה with a (vocal) shewa notated as a ḥataf vowel (in this case, notated as a ḥataf segol ). So, they are a little different than all the other cases, since all the other cases are notated with a simple shewa. But this difference is mostly cosmetic, i.e. they are still quite analogous. Those last two cases are also a little different because they involve a simple rather than compound word. Again, this difference is mostly cosmetic, i.e. they are still quite analogous.

Speaking of the compound word cases, in all six of them, the maqaf in MAM is one of MAM’s special maqaf marks. This kind of maqaf is special because it (like many features of MAM) is an aid to reading that is not supplied by the authoritative manuscripts. (Other such features include qamats qatan and most non-pashta stress helpers.) For more information, see the section “תיבה הראויה להיות מוקפת (מקף אפור)” in Chapter 2 of the MAM documentation.

Here is KCT (shown with MAM for comparison):

Here is CTR (shown with MAM for comparison):

(Above I have “normalized” CTR’s accent on Ps 98:3 ואמונתו to be Unicode ZINOR. The rather strange uses and abuses of Unicode in CTR are covered in the parent document, “Review of Chabad’s CTR.”