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This gesture (reconstructed by me) corresponds to the sign merkha ("extension, prolonging"). The name certainly fits the natural relationship of the
second degree to the first or tonic degree: an extension
of the scale upward. In Letteris and Ginsburg, it appears as a curved line; in manuscripts and most printed editions,
as a straight line.
Merkha is one ta`am that is not given multiple forms or interpretations or both by early sources. Even so, in
early manuscripts it may be confused with silluq
(becaus silluq is made to bend to the
left, in order to distinguish it from "ga`ya").
One passage where such confusion apparently happened is Isaiah 34:11-12, where "her nobles" became detached from the end of verse 11 and attached to the
head of verse 12. Merkha (on vohu, "confusion", verse 11) seems to have been
confused with silluq, and silluq (on horeha, "her nobles") with merkha (cf. the KJV and the RSV renderings). |
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The sublinear sign merkha
also appears in prosody in a rare "doubled" form, merkha kefulah (see above,
left to right). Haïk-Vantoura, believing that no sublinear sign could have a strictly doubled form, inferred
that this sign is a combination of a sublinear and a superlinear sign: merkha and pashta (op. cit., pp. 277-278). In effect, the melodic interpretation
would be F followed by G on the same syllable (in the basic prosodic mode). The typographical error found in the
Letteris Edition at Nehemiah 3:38 (4:6, English versification) may have influenced her reasoning
here. (The error is a matter of substituting merkha
for tifha, which normally follows merkha
kefulah.)
According to Hebrew grammarians such as Professor James D. Price, and as may be verified upon examination of the
various musical-verbal contexts, merkha kefulah
is in fact a combination of two sublinear signs normally found on different syllables: tevir and merkha, in that
order (see above). So corrected, the melodic interpretation is all the more expressive (first D, then F on one
syllable, assuming the basic prosodic mode).
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Updated July 23, 2010 |
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