[Mesorah] Kimchi's rules

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 09:32:01PM +0300, Danny Levy via Mesorah wrote:
: One of the rules of trop (a masoretic rule by all counts) that is easily
: verified by looking anywhere in Tanach (except for Sifrei Eme"t) is that
: the mesharet of a tvir is a darga if the te'amim are separated by two or
: more syllables...

That's not a rule of the Baalei Mesorah, really. It's a pattern that
fits the data. You don't know if they had it in mind or not.

Exactly what RYQ set out to do -- find rules that fit the data.

He invented a new theoretical concept -- long and short vowels in Hebrew,
and split some vowels to make the theory work. But once he did, he had
a sevara for which shevas must be na because the syllable must be closed,
and which are nach because they were open.

We have no indication he set out to create a different set of open and
closed syllable. Just a different way of thinking about them, one with
a clearer theoretical consistency.

:                     In this rule a shva na is counted as a syllable,
: whether it is a shva na at the beginning of a word (e.g. Gen 15:7 and Num
: 17:11) or a shva na under a letter with a dagesh chazak (e.g. Num 34:5 and
: Deut 1:30).

: A shva after a Kimchi long vowel, however, is not counted as a syllable,
: e.g in Ex 9:15 and 12:22.  Evidently the Ba'alei Hamesorah considered such
: a shva to be nach.

Or, that your opening explanation, that it is about the number of
syllables that makes the meshareis of a tevir to be a darga is incorrect
according to RYQ. Or, as per
<https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/טעמי_המקרא#הרכבי_הטעמים>, that rule is
about distinguishing qadma-merkha-tevir from qadma-darga-tevir, and so
your examples aren't in scope.

As I have been saying since the start... how can we talk about anyone
contradicting "Mesoretic Rules" without having an identifiable list of
rules made by Mesoretes?

All we have is various sets of rules that do a better or worse job of
explaining how various texts are read. And the only question is whether
a set of rules overall tends to violate the readings the Mesoretes gave
those texts too often to be usable even in the "rule of grammar" sense
of violatable rule.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
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