Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

The et indicates the accusative only when the accusative
is also marked by the definite "the" "he".
When the accusative is not definite, the et is not used.
It is a really strange particle tho, does anyone know
how or where it originated?
I took a linguistics course (from a CHomsky clone)
who had us diagraming sentences in our chosen language.
Mine was BH. I learned a lot, but I could never figure out
where to put the )et.
I thought finally that it might act like a preposition,
and put the DO further down on the tree. Lowering the
DO makes the S and DO equal.
What do you linguistic mavens think?
Liz


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Washburn [mailto:dwashbur AT nyx.net]
> Sent: Wed, May 22, 2002 10:20 AM
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: Et (Genesis 1:1)
>
>
> > Although I have been endeavoring to learn Biblical Hebrew
> in my spare
> > time, I have as yet had no formal instruction beyond
> interacting with my
> > computer program (this will hopefully change when I leave
> for college) and
> > so this question may be simplistic.  Forgive me, the
> program I am using
> > seems to be good for vocabulary but not so great on
> teaching me grammar.
> >
> > I recently purchased a Hebrew Bible and began to peruse it,
> starting at
> > the beginning.  I recognized most of the words in Genesis
> 1:1 and I now
> > understand each except for the word "et" that appears to be
> used twice,
> > once by itself and the second time with a vav prefix, I
> assume indicating
> > the "and."  My question is this:  what is the function of
> this word?  It
> > doesn't seem to me to have any word-for-word correspondence with the
> > English translations, so what is the idea behind it?
> >
> It's a grammatical marker indicating that the next word is the direct
> object of the verb.
>
> Dave Washburn
> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
> You know you're a lousy artist when you can't
> draw a straight line on an Etch-a-Sketch.
>
>
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