Abstract
This thesis discusses different strategies for interpreting the placement of the ṭəʿåmim in Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. After introducing the signs and their distribution in the text, the thesis looks at different levels of linguistic analysis where the ṭəʿåmim provide interesting information. At the word level, word stress and vowel length are discussed. At the phrase level, the different types of phrases are analyzed in light of a closest constituent analysis. At the verse level, the distribution of the ṭəʿåmim is shown to depend on simple rules which maximize the most common structures of Tiberian Hebrew. Prosodic structure is also evaluated to show what bearing that it has on the placement of the ṭəʿå̄mīm. Finally, the ṭəʿåmim are discussed in relation to discourse features.
The goal of the thesis is to show that the ṭəʿå̄mīm are not simply musical notation, but have a linguistic basis, and provide insight into linguistic features of Tiberian Hebrew.