Palestinian system

While the Babylonian system, as described above, is primarily concerned with showing breaks in the verse. Early Palestinian manuscripts, by comparison, are mainly concerned with exhibiting phrases: for example the tifcha-etnachta, zarqa-segolta and pashta-zaqef sequences, together with or without intervening unaccented words. These sequences are generally linked by a sequence of dots, beginning or closing using a dash or a dot in a different place to show which sequence is actually meant. Unaccented words (which in the Tiberian system bring conjunctives) are usually normally demonstrated by a dot following the word, as if in order to link it to the following word. There are separate symbols for much more sophisticated tropes such as pazer and telisha gedolah. The manuscripts tend to be very fragmentary, no two of them following quite the same conventions, and these marks may symbolize the specific reader's aide-memoire instead than a official system of punctuation (for example, vowel signs are often used just where the word might normally become unclear). In one manuscript, most probably of somewhat later date compared to the others, there are distinct marks with regard to different conjunctives, actually outnumbering those in the Tiberian method (for example, munach prior to etnachta has a distinct sign from munach before zaqef), and the overall system approaches the Tiberian in comprehensiveness. In some additional manuscripts, in particular those that contains Targumim rather of original text, the Tiberian emblems have already been added by a later hand. In general, it may be noticed that the Palestinian as well as Tiberian systems tend to be much more strongly related to each other than both is to the Babylonian.

This method of phrasing is shown in the Sephardic cantillation modes, in which the conjunctives (and to some degree the ``near companions'' such as tifcha, pashta and zarqa) are rendered as flourishes leading into the motif associated with the following disjunctive rather than as motifs in their own right. The somewhat sporadic employ of dots above and below the words as disjunctives is closely similar to that identified in Syriac texts. Kahle also notes a few similarity with the punctuation of Samaritan Hebrew.