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Re: The Grammar of Hebrew

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Saturday, September 11, 2004, 17:54
On Sep 10, 2004, at 4:10 PM, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:14:04 +0930, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating > Dragon) <dragon@...> wrote: >> I'm assuming that "shel" (of) is closely related to "sheli" (of me).
> Looks like Arabic, where you can also add possessive suffixes to > prepositions to create a compound word, e.g. "li" = to me, from l- > "to" + -i "my", or "fi" = in me, from fi "in" + -i "my". > Cheers, > -- > Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> > Watch the Reply-To!
Okay, for some reason i haven't gotten Adrian's message, but i've gotten Philip's response to it. Weird. Anyway, _shel_ in Hebrew is the alien love child of two prepositions: _she-_ = 'that'/'which'/'who' (i always forget the term for this.. relative clause introducer?) _le-_ = 'to'/'of' So literally, the phrase _hakisei' sheli_ 'my chair' is actually "the chair which (is) mine". Similarly, _keli shel hheres_ 'ceramic tool' is literally "a tool which (is) of ceramic". I've heard that _shel_ was invented by bad printers/scribes who 'accidentally' detached the double preposition _shele-_ from the beginning of the noun it used to be attached to, but i don't know how true that is. Ooops, forgot... _sheli_ "my/mine" is technically _she+le+i_. -Stephen (Steg) "seabáth seálóm" *("seabath"???!)