Abstract

The use of lamed to introduce the object of a transitive verb in Biblical Hebrew is commonly accounted for as an Aramaic influence. This article will compare how lamed is used in Aramaic and in Biblical Hebrew. According to Maksim Kalinin and Sergey Loesov, in Egyptian Aramaic the direct object marker lamed is prefixed almost exclusively to definite-animate singular noun phrases. This study shows that this is also true for Biblical Hebrew, taking into consideration the character of transitive verbs and excluding the cases in which lamed does not function as a true direct object marker.