Prepositions and the Grammaticalization of Ancient Hebrew Bipartite Reciprocal Markers

Besides using the verbal niphal and hitpael stems, ancient Hebrew can indicate semantic reciprocity with bipartite reciprocal markers such as îsh et-aḥîṿ⁠, literally ‘someone with his brother’. In contrast to the Western European counter-parts of these constructions (e.g. English each other), the an...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Staps, Camil (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Oxford University Press [2020]
In: Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 65, Issue: 1, Pages: 61-84
Further subjects:B Articles
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Besides using the verbal niphal and hitpael stems, ancient Hebrew can indicate semantic reciprocity with bipartite reciprocal markers such as îsh et-aḥîṿ⁠, literally ‘someone with his brother’. In contrast to the Western European counter-parts of these constructions (e.g. English each other), the ancient Hebrew variants are not fully grammaticalized into a single morphological unit like îsh-aḥiṿ⁠. This article considers one type of bipartite reciprocal marker (the one using îsh ‘someone’ and a term denoting kinship or fellowship) in detail, to see whether the preposition in the construction (e.g., et ‘with’) may have prevented further grammaticalization. Since no bleaching of the preposition can be observed in the corpus of Biblical and Qumran Hebrew, we conclude that prepositions continued to have a significant semantic value, which indeed suggests that their near-obligatory presence has prevented further grammaticalization.
ISSN:1477-8556
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgz050