[Mesorah] another dikduk question

[Yitzchak M. Gottlieb]

On Jul 20, 2011, at 0:09, Michael Hamm <msh210 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Most hif'il words in past tense have a chirik under the first letter (he), and a shoresh whose first letter is resh generally forms no exception: hirchik, hirtza, hir'im, hirkin.  Yet "showed" is her'a, not hir'a: why?

The Radak in ספר המכלול (Sefer HaMichlol) seems to indicate that verbs that end with a ה (he) sometimes have a סגול (segol) on the initial ה (he) giving הראה (her'a) and הגלה (hegla) as examples.  Admittedly this does not explain why, but it at least points to a pattern.

Zuki

-- 
Yitzchak M. Gottlieb
zuki at CS.Princeton.EDU