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From: rhendel@mcs.drexel.edu (Russell Hendel)
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 13:13:56 -0500
Subject: MALACH: Trup on Tehillim

A quick but simplified answer to some of Itzhak Fingers questions on
trup in tehillim and Hefsek words [V25 n 65] are as follows:

1) Baer wrote an excellent book on Tehillim trup in 1860 (the library of
Congress is the only place I know where you can get it).  Much of the
material in this book was incorporated into Mordechai Breuers 2nd
edition of his book on Teamim.

2) WithOUT getting very technical we can safely say the following: Trup
come in two kinds: connectors (mshareth) and pauses(mafsikim). The major
PAUSE trup in Chumash are ethnachta, sof posok, katan, tipchah,
revii. The major PAUSE trup in Tehillim are ethnachta and sof posok
reviia, tipchah and revia mugrah.  NOTE: The reviia in Tehillim
FUNCTIONS the same way the KOTON does in Chumash This tends to cause
some confusion since Revii in chumash has a weaker pause capacity.  As
Itzchak correctly notes the Tipchah in tehillim is printed at the
beginning of the word (and is in fact called a tchi..."pushed" because
it was pushed to the beginning of the word).

3) PAUSE FORM: Again, as Itzchak notes certain words (like Malach) have
an ordinary form (patach kamath) and a PAUSE FORM (kamatz kamatz).  The
question then becomes when is the PAUSE FORM used. Here is the answer

4) The PAUSE FORM is almost "always" used on strong PAUSE accents(like
ethnachta and sof posook). It is "sometimes" used on weaker pause
accents (like tipcha and koton). Some good examples to understand this
principle are words like KTN (katan vs Katon) VYMR( vayomer vs VAYOMAR)
IMC (imcha vs imach). Use of a konkordance will show how this "always vs
sometimes" principle explains alot.

Now we can answer Itzchaks questions. The PAUSE FORM of mlc was used on
the PAUSE accents.  As a further comment this should not surprise us
since Reviiah in tehillim is like a ktn in chumash. For more details on
the "degree of pause" in the various pause forms one should read the
above cited books.

Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.d.,ASA
rhendel @ mcs drexel edu