May 18 2006
Dagesh, What’s the Point?
Dagesh
The diacritical point, dagesh, serves to distinguish a letter in two ways:
1. Dagesh lene
The “hardening” of a consonant, or pronunciation without aspiration, is marked by a dagesh lene. Because it distinguishes between plosive and fricative consonants, it is sometimes called dagesh plosive.
Dagesh lene is associated with the six begadkephath letters (בְּגַדְכְּפַת) and occurs at the beginning of words (cf. בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א Genesis 1:1) and after closed syllables (cf. וְיִרְדּוּ֩ Genesis 1:26).[1]
2. Dagesh forte
Dagesh forte is used to “strengthen” a letter. This strengthening typically marks doubling in which the consonant closes the previous syllable as well as begins the following one (צַדִּיק < צַדדִיק*).
This doubling dagesh occurs with assimilation (English: in + measurable > immeasurable; Hebrew: יִתֵּן < יִנְתֵן*). Also, some grammatical forms (i.e. Piel, Pual) necessitate the doubling of the second root radical (R2).
Dagesh may be used for euphonic reasons:
- Dagesh conjunctive, or forte conjunctivum
In a situation in which two words are joined, or closely linked, in pronunciation and an open, unaccented final syllable (usually qames, qames he or seghol he) is followed by an accented first syllable, a dagesh conjunctive is commonly used.
Examples:
לְכָה־נָּא Numbers 22:6; יְצַוֶּה־לָּךְ Psalm 91:11; and וּמִֽשְׁנֶה־כֶּ֫סֶף Genesis 43:15 (GKC, 20c)
- Dagesh disjunctive
In syllables with the vowel shewa, dagesh distinguishes a vocal instead of silent shewa (called also dagesh dirimens).[2]
Example:
בְּחַלְּקֵי Isaiah 57:6 is be-ha-le-ke and not be-hal-ke
[1]Dagesh with waw can be a dagesh forte or the historically long vowel, sureq. The difference is distinguished in printed texts by whether or not a vowel is associated with the letter (with a vowel the dagesh is forte and without it is sureq).
[2]See Ari’s comment below.
Chip,
With the resh the proceeding vowel is usually lengthened where one might expect a dagesh forte with some letters. But there are several places where the MT uses the dagesh in the resh (for example Pr 14:10 and Ez 16:4 among others). Check out Gesenius 22s for a complete list of examples. Years ago (c. 1950), I think, William Brownlee published an article or two on this. I don’t have the articles and can’t remember where I he published them. Normal search methods have failed me. I’d be interested if you know why these exceptions occur. Or do you know where I can find Brownlee’s articles? It may be relevant to something I’ve been working on.
1)Dagesh lene does not occur at the beginning of a word following a word that ends in a "vowel marker" (a, h, w, y) unless the two words are separated by a disjunctive accent. This rule does not apply if h (with a mapiq) or w is used as a letter, and not as a vowel.
2) re. dagesh disjunctive: Are you saying that the dagesh here is only an indicator of the vocal sheva? I thought that generally a dagesh actually causes a sheva to be vocal (i.e., it is not just an indicator, but it has a force of its own).
3) Regarding your post of Apr. 23, 2006, accents can also change the tense of a verb (e.g., from perfect to imperfect). Also an accent can shift from ultima to penultima if the accent is conjunctive and the following word is stressed on the initial syllable.
4) I’ve been trying to get the text to show up better on my screen. But I still get the accents appearing between letters, rather than above or below them. Is this normal?
It’s probably worth mentioning the dagesh forte that gets introduced with the definite article prefix.
Ari:
The accents should appear as in a printed text (above and below). What browser/OS are you using?
Duane:
Thanks for pointing out the resh examples. That’s new to me, and am interested as to why they are there.
Chip:
Why can’t I do paragraphs or line breaks in my comments?
Ari:
Thanks for the corrections/emendations; I appreciate your thoroughness. Yevin (403) states concerning dagesh conjunctivum: "In the Masorah this phenomenon is called dehiq or ate merahiq. In some sources these names are used for two different categories of this phenomenon, but it has recently been suggested by Dotan that the phenomenon itself was called ate merahiq, while the dagesh used to mark it was called dehiq. Rules governing this phenomenon were formulated by Baer, but the practice of the best Biblical MSS has not yet been studies in detail."
Concerning the general usage (not with begadkephath), dagesh is used to designate a full pronunciation of the marked consonant. See Yevin (394-396, 399, 413-414) for an argument for dagesh as a separator.
He states: "The value of conjunctive dagesh is uncertain. Is it simply a diacritic, or does it indicate some particular pronunciation? Dagesh generally has the latter function, indicating that the begad-kefat letters represent stops, or that a consonant should be doubled, so it would seem likely that dagesh would have some phonetic value in the other cases of its use as well. Consequently, since conjunctive dagesh is not used only in bedag-kefat letters, it can be argued that it represents "strong" dagesh, indicating the doubling of the consonant. This is easy to see in cases where the dagesh is used after a short vowel, patah or segol, as will ??? and ???, with conjunctive dagesh after segol as Ps 91:11 ??????????????? or even Ex 21:31 ??????? ????. There is no problem in understanding dagesh here as indicating doubling: maz-zeh, yesawwel-lek. In some other cases, however, this view seems less acceptable. In ????????? ???? (Jos 5:14, where bN uses dagesh) the dagesh in the lamed cannot mark the preceding syllable as closed, since that syllable ends with resh, and the word has a disjunctive accent (legarme, see #278)…Thus if it is assumed that the dagesh indicates the doubling of the consonant in these cases also, it seems necessary to suggest that it was not such that the doubling consonant closed one syllable and opened the next, as in ?????? qit-tel, but that the doubled consonant stood at the beginning of the syllable, as wayyomer llo, yelde-llo, qumu ssu’u, etc. In this situation, presumably, the long vowel of the preceding syllable need not be shortened" (416).
Duane:
I am still working on the Brownlee article; do you remember any more about it? One other article you may want to consult is E.J. Revell, "The Nature of Resh in Tiberian Hebrew" in AJS Review (1981) pp. 125-236.
Tim:
I will see about fixing that problem.