[Mesorah] another grammar question

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 10:46:22AM -0500, Michael Hamm wrote:
: Someone leining Ki Savo said (26:14) "v'lo nasati mimenu lames", with
: an Ashkenazi kamatz (not a patach) under the lamed of "lames" instead
: of the proper sh'va.  I corrected him without thinking about it
: (instinctively, you could say), and he went back, but after thinking
: about it I think I was wrong: there was no change in meaning.  Which
: is right: the correcting me or the new me?

I would ask slightly differently:
Does the halakhah apply to a change of the word's meaning that doesn't
change the meaning of the phrase as a whole?

"Lameis" means "to the deceased", as opposed to the pasuq really talking
about "to a deceased". No? But on the phrase level, the person is being
told to declare that he didn't give any of his crops as offerings to
dead people regardless of the article.

Perhaps one might argue that the erroneous version refers to a particular
dead person, perhaps Hevel, the first to die, Adam, the first to die in
the way the rest of us do (the effects of the eitz), perhaps limiting
to someone who was killed in beis din, etc... I don't find that compelling,
as you see from the rest of this email, just throwing it out there.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
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