In הַ֥לְלוּ (Psalms 150:1 et alia) does the first lamed with the schwa end the first syllable or begin a second open syllable? Tradition has this word as three syllables ha le lu. Should it be just two hal lu? I note that other consonants with a schwa close a syllable, e.g. in the same verse בְּקָדְשׁ֑וֹ be qad sho.
top of page
bottom of page
@Bob MacDonald as you point out there seem to be (at least) two roles to the vertical mark known in Unicode as METEG, other than the role of silluq. We might call these two roles the musical and the phonetic. I believe that is what Yeivin calls them. The musical is "merely" about marking a secondary stress whereas the phonetic changes something about the pronunciation other than stress (for example, modulating sheva quality, the topic here). I would caution against distinguishing these roles using the words meteg vs. gaʿya, as you seem to be suggesting.
As tempting as that may be (pointless to have two words for the same thing, so why not assign one word to each of the two roles), this is, as far as I am aware, unprecedented and will confuse many readers. I think following Yeivin's lead and using the adjectives "musical" and "phonetic" is a better idea, applying those adjectives to either meteg or gaʿya (but not to both, i.e. always use meteg or always use gaʿya).