[Mesorah] ham'chadesh, ham'vorach, ...

[Michael Hamm]

R' Hayyim wrote, in part:
> Gesenius sees the mem after the article as having a "virtual dagesh", 
> and so it acts grammatically as if it had a dagesh (the shewa is na') 
> but is not pronounced as a doubled consonant. (He applies this to the 
> other exceptins as well and theorizes that in these cases the actual 
> pronunciation had lost the doubling and so the Masoretes did not record 
> dagesh.).

Is something like that true also when a letter (typically a lamed for some 
reason, in m ylimited experience) takes a dagesh at the start of a word? 
It's not pronounced doubled, but is (for purposes I cannot fathom) 
grammatically a dagesh?

Michael Hamm
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
msh210 at math.wustl.edu                Fine print:
http://www.math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html