148 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
from NOyGAwi, Sievers infers that regularly when,
owing to inflexion, the full vowel after a re-
duplicated consonant is lost, the reduplication
and also the vowel that followed it were entirely
lost also; and that, for example, Myklml was
always pronounced lamlachim in three syllables,
never lammelachim in four, and yhyv always waihi
in two syllables (cp. ydeymi not ydey;.mi), and never
wayehi in three syllables.
(2) Again, the consonantal text of the Old
Testament distinguishes two forms of the second
person perfect alike in the masculine and the
feminine. The second person masculine is gener-
ally of the form tlFq, more rarely of the form
htlFq, and again the feminine is generally tlFq,
and more rarely ytlFq. According to the received
vocalisation, the masculine, however spelt, was
pronounced katalta, and the feminine katalt.
Sievers, however, treats both the rarer forms
htlFq and ytlFq as trisyllabic, pronouncing them
katalta and katalti respectively; and he treats the
more frequent form tlFq, alike whether masculine
or feminine, as dissyllabic, pronouncing it katalt.
(3) Certain pronominal forms were originally
pronounced with a syllable less than in MT ; thus
MT 1.T7, pausal j~d,yA, has replaced j`dAyA; cp. such
forms in Origen's Hexapla as hxalax = j~l,kAyhe, bax=
j~b;, and in Jerome goolathach = j~t,lA.xuG. And it is
also argued that the endings hA-,, hA-u were once
monosyllabic.