So simple: Dagesh is a stop. Dagesh hazak caused posttonic gemination common in many languages. That would include post-secondary stress after ha-, wa-. The Masoretes applied similar logic to create dagesh kal in order to break consonantal clusters. Clusters tend to blur, which is unacceptable in liturgical speech.
Vadim Cherny http://vadimcherny.org/hebrew/dagesh_stop.htm _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
