Peter Constable wrote:
Insofar as any of these cases makes sense (and that's not very far), I'd *barely* hazard that it's better at 18, since I can *almost* see a qamats qatan combined with a munah, but not with a qamats.It would seem to me that it would be appropriate that this new
character's canonical combining class should either be the same as
that of QAMATS which is 18
That is correct. We overlooked the properties line in the proposal, the template for which was the earlier ATNAH HAFUKH document. Sorry about that. It should read:
05BA;HEBREW POINT QAMATS QATAN;Mn;18;NSM;;;;;N;;*;;;
Well, of course, the effect of this is that a sequence of < qamats,
qamats qatan > is not canonically equivalent to < qamats qatan, qamats
. No harm in that, but also not especially useful, I suspect.
A value of 18 also means that sequences like < qamats qatan, munah > vs.
< munah, qamats qatan > are canonically equivalent. Leaving it at 220
would mean that these are *not* equivalent (while < qamats, qamats qatan
vs. < qamats qatan > are). This is probably more useful.
I would probably leave the value at 220. That is what all of the Hebrew vowel points should have been, IMO. Though getting one right doesn't make a huge difference -- people are still going to be using CGJ to preserve particular sequences in the cases this will most likely be needed.
However, since qamats-qatans only occur in unstressed syllables, such a thing would be rare.
Actually, no: some accents go on unstressed syllables. For example, a dehi could coexist with a qamats-qatan. Psalms 4:2 has a qamats-qatan on the same letter as GERESH MUQDAM, as do others. Psalms 9:14 has one with a DEHI. Exodus 34:11 has one with a QADMA.
But a *pair* of qamatses, one of each sort? That wouldn't happen.
~mark
