Hebrew Parts of Speech

Adjective

An adjective is a word used to modify a noun. In Hebrew, an adjective must agree with the word it modifies in gender and number. Adjectives can also appear in different states. The class tag identifies ordinal or cardinal numbers.

Noun

A noun is a word which designates a person, thing, or quality. Hebrew nouns are distinguished by class, gender, number, and state.

Class: In grammatically tagged Hebrew texts, nouns fall into three distinct classes:

Common: Nouns with no special characteristics.
Proper Names: Nouns used to identify unique individuals, things, events, or places.
Gentilic: Nouns which are names with a yod added to them to identify a person from a specific tribe or group. In English, it is similar to the "ian" added to identify nationality, for example "Egyptian" a person from Egypt.

Related Topics

Paragraph

In grammatically tagged Hebrew texts, the Paragraph tag indicates the letters nun, peh, or samech which appear as paragraph markers at the end of many verses.

Particle

Particles are words which serve a variety of functions and which do not belong to any of the other parts of speech. In Hebrew, the article is used to make definite or draw attention to nouns and other substantives. The article is either prefixed or suffixed to the word it modifies.

Particles can fall into any of the following classes:

Particle Class	Function
Conjunction	Connects words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. A Hebrew conjunction may be free standing or prefixed to the word which follows it.
Adverb	A word used to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
Interrogative	Introduces a question such as "who?", "what?", or "where?".
Interjection	Expresses strong feeling, emotion, or surprise. They are often capable of standing on their own.
Negative	Negates some element within a sentence, such as "not."
Direct Object	In Hebrew, the direct object is often preceded by the direct object marker, 'et. This word is generally left untranslated, since it serves merely to signify which word is acting as the direct object.
Preposition	Indicates the relationship of a substantive (known as the object of the preposition) to a verb, an adjective, or another substantive. Prepositions can be free-standing or prefixed to other words. When prefixed to a word with a definite article, it forms a compound preposition article.
Relative	Introduces a relative clause. A relative clause serves as an adjective modifying the antecedent of the relative particle. In the sentence "Moses was the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt," the relative particle "who" introduces the relative clause "who led the Israelites out of Egypt," which acts as an adjective modifying the noun "man."
Compound Preposition Article	Formed when a preposition is prefixed to a word with a definite article. In such cases, the article drops out and the preposition assumes the vowel pointing of the article.

Pronoun

Pronouns are words that stand in the place of nouns in order to avoid unnecessary repetition.

Hebrew pronouns fall into two classes:

Independent Pronoun: One that stands by itself and which represents a specific person or object. As such, independent pronouns possess person, gender, and number.
Interrogative Pronoun: One that introduces a question, such as "who," "what," or "where."

The person a Hebrew pronoun takes indicates whether it represents the person or persons speaking (first person), the person or persons spoken to (second person), or the person, persons, or things being spoken about (third person).

Suffix

For the most part, Hebrew suffixes are pronominal—that is, they function as pronouns. When attached to nouns or adjectives, pronominal suffixes generally indicate possession or stand at the end of a construct chain (a series of one or more nouns or adjectives which are in the construct state). When attached to verbs or prepositions, they usually function as the object of the verb or preposition. Because they act as pronouns, pronominal suffixes possess person, gender, and number. The class tag offers the rare energic Nun tag.

In addition, there are three suffixes which do not act as pronouns: the directional Heh, the paragogic Heh, and the paragogic Nun. Although not technically persons, they are listed at the bottom of the Person pop-up menu in the Set Tag Details dialog box.

Paragogic Heh: Comprises a long form of the imperative.
Directional Heh: Indicates motion toward the word to which it is attached. For example, when the directional Heh is suffixed to the word mitzrayim (Egypt), it forms mitzrayma, which means "toward Egypt."
Paragogic Nun: Comprises a long form of the imperfect which may indicate contrast or duration.

Verb

A verb is a word that expresses action or a state of being. In Hebrew, verbs can be distinguished according to their stem and aspect. Depending on its aspect, a Hebrew verb can also possess person, gender, number, and state, as well as being jussive (or apocopated) or cohortative.

For more details, see Hebrew and Aramaic Verbs.