Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

> @ Herman
> You wrote:
> Herman:dear kelton, Steve, others interested,
> In Biblical Hebrew, there is no visible nominative, genitive, dative,
>  accusative, ablative or any other kind of case ending for which we 
> usLatin words, because they are Latin/Greek, i.e. Indo-European terms.
>  Let alone a "datival accusative". Imagine we would suppose there were
>  indeed case endings someday in Hebrew (which is likely), like in Arabic 
> there still are in poetry for example, then we could easily prove that 
> in the biblical phase of Hebrew they died out.
> Response: Well actually, the accusative is visible in Hebrew. )T is 
> definitely the sign for the direct object.  A dative accusative is just 
> a label for when we find a pronominal object where we would expect a 
> prepositional object.  

This is, to say the least, quite a contraversial subject; see, eg:

Garr, W. Randall. "Affectedness, Aspect, and Biblical 'et." Zeitschrift 
für Althebraistik 4 (1991): 119-134.

Khan, G. A. "Object Markers and Agreement Pronouns in Semitic 
Languages." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 47 
(1984): 468-500.

Kroeze, Jan H. "Alternatives for the Accusative in Biblical Hebrew." 
Pages 11-25 in Studien zur hebräischen Grammatik. Edited by Andreas 
Wagner. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 156. Freiburg/Göttingen: 
Universitätsverlag/Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1997.

Kroeze, Jan H. "Alternatives for the Nominative in Biblical Hebrew." 
Journal of Semitic Studies 46 (2001): 33-50.

Regards,
David Kummerow.