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# Prepositions and the Grammaticalization of Ancient Hebrew Bipartite Reciprocal Markers

**Authors:** [Camil Staps](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/camil-staps/) · **Year:** 2019 (print 2020) · **Venue:** Journal of Semitic Studies 65(1), 61–84 **Link:** [doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050](https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050) · **Licence:** CC BY-NC (per OpenAlex/publisher) — summary only

[**2** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3006837905) openalex · 2026-10-18[Journal of Semitic Studies](https://openalex.org/S1709330)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050)
- [PDF](https://academic.oup.com/jss/article-pdf/65/1/61/41640756/fgz050.pdf)
- [DOI 10.1093/jss/fgz050](https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3006837905)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Camil Staps](https://openalex.org/A5031376425) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1164-6838) · h 2 · 13 citations · 20 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The full text is not in the library; this card rests on the publisher's abstract, so the ideas are provisional. The paper studies the Hebrew way of saying "each other": a two-part phrase in which a word for "a person" (אִישׁ, אִשָּׁה) is paired with a kinship or fellowship noun (אָחִיו "his brother", רֵעֵהוּ "his fellow", אֲחֹתָהּ "her sister"), the two joined by a preposition ("a man to his brother"). Unlike English "each other", these phrases never fused into one word. Looking at Biblical and Qumran Hebrew, the author finds no sign that the preposition lost its meaning; it kept real semantic weight, and its near-obligatory presence is offered as the reason the construction did not grammaticalise further.

## Ideas

- I1. Detect the reciprocal pattern in the trees: אִישׁ/אִשָּׁה as subject + a later prepositional phrase whose noun is אָח/רֵעַ/אָחוֹת with a 3rd-person suffix agreeing with it → mark the clause as reciprocal (e.g. MISC `Reciprocal=Yes`) and gloss "one another"; count the Torah's cases and the prepositions used.
- I2. Annotate the two parts with their own relations (subject; oblique with the preposition kept) rather than a fixed multiword expression, since the paper argues the preposition keeps its meaning; write this as the UD convention for hbo reciprocals.
- I3. In the Torah dictionary, give אִישׁ and אָח/רֵעַ a sense "(in pairs) each … the other" with the reciprocal examples.

## For Mova

I1 and I2 go into [Pronouns, particles and prepositions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/05-pronouns-particles/) (reciprocals) and `08-syntax.md`, and as a head/MISC rule in `tools/macula`; I1 also gives the world/coreference step a cue that both participants act on each other. I3 is for `macula dict` (`10-lexicon.md`).

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.1093/jss/fgz050](https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050)

```
@article{staps2019prepositions,
  title = {{Prepositions and the Grammaticalization of Ancient Hebrew Bipartite Reciprocal Markers}},
  author = {Staps, Camil},
  journal = {Journal of Semitic Studies},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1093/jss/fgz050},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgz050}
}
```

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