NON-PROTOTYPICAL USES OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

Definiteness is a complicated category that has attracted the attention of philosophers and logicians in addition to linguists. While a core set of prototypical functions of the definite article are common cross-linguistically, the standard Biblical Hebrew grammars have identified a late group of exceptional cases that they have difficulty explaining. Part of this difficulty is based on a misunderstanding of the associative use of the definite article, which should be counted among the prototypical functions rather than the exceptions. Many of the remaining exceptional cases can be explained as non-specifics, however, which have developed secondarily from the use of the definite article with generic noun phrases.