Talk:Nota accusativi

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I am not competent to judge the factual content re: Hebrew grammar, but it seems unsatisfactory to explain "nota accusativi" with an example in a language that uses n.a. to indicate definite articles. Rob Burbidge 10:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How is this not just a preposition?

We need more examples of these. The usage in Hebrew makes it seem to me like this is basically a preposition used to show the same thing as an accusative case would in a more synthetic language, which while interesting (I'm not aware of such things in any Indo-European languages I'm familiar with), doesn't show why this matters. A quick search through Google yields no new info for me, so I hope someone has an idea. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 01:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine to analyse "'et" in the Hebrew examples as a preposition. But "preposition" is a part of speech, whereas "nota accusativi" refers to its function (in more modern terms this translates as "accusative marker"). So "'et" is a preposition marking accusative. The example given is Hebrew probably because "nota accusativi" is a term often used in (Western) Hebrew linguistics. Btw there are also Indo-European languages like Spanish with accusative (or direct object)-marking prepositions. And Spanish "a" marks only definite/human direct objects, so its semantics is pretty similar to Hebrew "'et". So unlike the two other contributors on this talk page, I'd say this article is ok like this. Promb (talk) 19:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We need more clarity

My knowledge of Hebrew is less than minimal, but here goes. I needed 3 or 4 rereadings to understand the second sentence,

It generally is applied to linguistic indicators of the accusative case, such as the use of the prefix "et" in Hebrew, for nouns in the accusative, which are indicated by use of the definite article (i.e. "the").

The relative clause at the end of the sentence is sloppy English; it gives the impression that Hebrew accusative nouns are indicated by the definite article, which is false (and would be weird if true). Also, all the textbooks I have seen state quite clearly that Hebrew has no case structure. Therefore it is wrong to speak of Hebrew “nouns in the accusative”. May I suggest the following revision:

It generally is applied to linguistic indicators of the direct object in languages which do not have a case system for nouns. An example is Hebrew, where the particle “et” marks the direct object, but “et” is used only with nouns which have the definite article (for other nouns the direct object is determined by word order).

This seems a bit long and clumsy. Will an expert please weigh in?

— Solo Owl (talk) 02:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other languages

A list of languages that have nota accusativi would be interesting.

Are there languages that usually mark direct objects with a case inflection, but still use nota accusativi, at least sometimes?

— Solo Owl (talk) 02:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]