In הַ֥לְלוּ (Psalms 150:1 et alia) does the first lamed with the schwa end the first syllable or begin a second open syllable? Tradition has this word as three syllables ha le lu. Should it be just two hal lu? I note that other consonants with a schwa close a syllable, e.g. in the same verse בְּקָדְשׁ֑וֹ be qad sho.
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That is a good question. If we were to rephrase it in the way that the medieval grammarians tended to discuss these sorts of issues, they might say:
In the case of the Tiberian tradition, it all depends on whether or not a gaʕya is present under the ה: i.e,. הֽ.
If a gaʕya is present, then shewa is pronounced mobile. As such, the preceding pataḥ is lengthened being in an open syllable:
Ps. 150.6: הַֽלְלוּ־ [haːlaluː]
Theoretically, if a gaʕya is not present, then the shewa would be pronounced silent. As a result, there would be a geminated lamed and the preceding pataḥ would also remain a short vowel, since it would be in a closed syllable:
eg: הַלְלוּ [halˈluː]
It seems to be the case, however, that gaʕya was not always marked in such situations and yet readers of the Tiberian tradition still tended to pronounce it as [haːlaluː] as if it had gaʕya, even when it did not.
You can read more about this in Geoffrey Khan's book in section §I.2.5.8.3.
Thank you. You have outlined a critical distinction that results in a problem for the interpretation of the silluq as compared to the gaʕya or a metheg.
All these three signs are identical and have the same Unicode sign, alt-1468. gaʕya has this distant function on the next syllable by your interpretation. It is odd coding but not impossible to interpret by a reader since it is in advance of the schwa it governs. Metheg, on the other hand, is not related to the music but to pronunciation (as far as I know). My grammar book (Lambdin) complains that the metheg is inconsistently used. And silluq is a musical accent and governs aspects of cantillation, particularly being the last accent in 99.9% of the verses in the Tanach. I.e. it returns to a rest point similar to a tonic in modern music. This failure in Unicode creates an uncertainty in the programmed reading of the text in order to produce a musical score. (I have transcribed the entire Tanach into Music XML as can be seen from my blog posts over the last 10 years. I wrote the program in 2015.)
And as to consistency in the Tanach itself, a quick scan of the 27 uses of this word הללו with יָֽהּ following shows 8 uses without the short vertical stroke (whatever it is to be called). These are all on the first word of a verse, but not all first words in the whole set of verses. E.g. Psalms 111:1 הַ֥לְלוּ יָ֨הּ also 112, 113, 135, and 147-150, but compare 146:1 הַֽלְלוּ־יָ֡הּ.
correction to my original comment: “shewa on the second letter (first lamed)”
Bob
Further to our discussion of this elsewhere, bear in mind that halleyu is the plural of hallel—hence the shva is נע (mobile), rather than naḥ (quiescent).
Thanks, Jonathan. It is possible that in the context of reading one word without knowing where it came from, which is what a computer program must do to determine syllable formation, that the presence of the sign following the patah could signal the end of the syllable. The question still remains, is the sign just for pronunciation (metheg) or for syllable definition (gaya) or music (silluq) or perhaps even both or all three? The fact that three meanings can be coded into one Unicode font element is a coding problem.