[Mesorah] Kosht

[Benjamin M. Kandel]

I don't think there's any rule that a dagesh kal can't appear at the end
of a word.

Also, to respond to a previous post:
>"Vayishb" is indeed a strange word, the only one I can think of that ends
>in a beit (rather than a veit); one would expect it to have been
>"vayishbeh".   Similarly, one would have expected "veyeird" and "vayeird"
>to have been "veyirdeh" and "vayirdeh"; they're strange exceptions to the
>norm."

One of the forms of Hebrew verbs is called the "jussive" form (also called
the "shortened" form of future, or third-person imperative).  The form
appears in two major contexts - when you want someone that you're talking
about in third person to do something (as in "May rain not fall down on
our succah"), and as the form that appears after vav hamehapeich.  It
looks like the future, but in some cases, it's slightly different:  The
final heh drops (as in "yehi ratzon", "vayishb", "veyird", "yitzef",
etc.); and in hifil of ayin-vav verbs, the final vowel changes to a tzere
from a chirik (yakeim (Shmuel Aleph 1:23), not yakim).

Kol tuv

Ben

P.S. An interesting "exception" to the "no dagesh chazak at the end of the
word" rule is "vayichad Yitro", which looks like a dagesh chazak. 
However, ibn Ezra there points out that the word is really "vayichd
Yitro", and the chet just got a patach because it's so hard to pronounce a
guttural with a shva like that, but it is really a dagesh kal.


> kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
>
>> New (but related) question: I noticed that in the great majority of
>> these two-final-shva words (including kosht nayrd and achalt) the last
>> consonant has a dagesh. Is there some sort of rule that a dagesh on a
>> shva shows that the shva is a shva na? Or maybe I'm confusing this with
>> something about two consecutive shvas.
>
> Yes, there is such a rule, but there's also a rule that a dagesh can't
> appear at the very end of a word.  These words break that rule.  There's
> another rule that a sheva na is always the beginning of a syllable, and
> therefore can't possibly exist at the end of a word; that rule, as far as
> I know, has no exceptions, because it's part of the very definition of
> sheva na.  Therefore the sheva at the end of these words is nach, even
> though there's a dagesh.  (I wonder whether these dots aren't really
> degeshim at all, but mappikim, such as one gets in a final heh, and their
> function is to indicate that the letter is pronounced.)
>
> --
> Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
> zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
>                        	                          - Clarence Thomas
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