Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Herman Meester <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>]

Thanks David for these titles;
Of course, I only object to the use of words like accusative etc.
because they are categories that designate usually case ending in
Greek, Latin and German, for example, and are independent of things
like object, subject, etc.
For example, in one semitic language I know of, the nominal predicate
in a verbal clause (for example "Xsubj was Ypred") has the accusative!
Which in Greek, Latin, etc. would be unthinkable.
So because of that reason I think descriptive grammars shouldn't
import stuff we don't need. For example, we could say that there's a
"dative" in a word like לכם lakhem, because it often functions in a
similar way as "you" in "we told you". But there is no dative at all,
there's just ל L and a suffix כם KM. In theory there would be a
genitive, because in some other Semitic languages all prepositions
have what is called a genitive.
Yours,
Herman

2005/11/23, 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.
>
>
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