9.3 Possessive Pronominal Suffix Meaning

Pronominal suffixes are always “object” or “possessive” pronouns (e.g., me, my, her, him, them, theirs)

Hebrew has another type of pronoun in addition to stand-alone words. In Lesson 6, we learned about one-letter preposition prefixes to words. Pronominal suffixes work similarly. The difference is these go on the back of words instead of the front.

  • On a noun, a pronominal suffix indicates the one who owns or is related to the noun: His books / her houses / their house / our father
    • As this indicates a specific noun (in other words, not just any books, but HIS books), a noun with a pronominal suffix is DEFINITE
    • This is our third of four factors that make a Hebrew noun definite80:
      1. Has the (definite) article
      2. Is a proper name
      3. Has a pronominal suffix
  • On a preposition, the suffix indicates the object: to her / with them / behind him / in front of it
  • Verbs also take pronominal suffixes, which will indicate the verb’s object. We will study these in Lesson 19.

Pronominal suffixes have gender, number, and person.

  1. We will meet #4 in Lesson 10↩︎