--- title: "Some Special Functions of the Adnominal — Kapeliuk 2026" description: "Kapeliuk argues that the pronouns usually called \"possessive\" in Semitic grammars do much more than mark possession." authors: ["Olga Kapeliuk"] year: 2026 venue: "Folia Orientalia 40" source: "https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/3449" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Folia Orientalia)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kapeliuk-2026-some-special-functions-adnominal-pronouns/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kapeliuk-2026-some-special-functions-adnominal-pronouns/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/) / Some Special Functions of the Adnominal Pronouns in Neo-Semitic # Some Special Functions of the Adnominal Pronouns in Neo-Semitic **Authors:** Olga Kapeliuk · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** Folia Orientalia 40 · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Folia Orientalia)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/3449) · [PDF](https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/download/3449/2617) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7204618813) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary Kapeliuk argues that the pronouns usually called "possessive" in Semitic grammars do much more than mark possession. She calls them by the neutral formal label "adnominal" so the name does not presuppose a meaning. The study looks at the peripheral Semitic branches: two Eastern Neo-Aramaic varieties (Urmi Christian, UCNA, and Jewish Zaxo, ZJNA) and two Ethio-Semitic languages (Amharic and Tigrinya). It also draws comparisons with Ge'ez, Old Syriac and Israeli Hebrew. The evidence comes mainly from modern literary works and from texts that linguists have recorded and published. The paper first sets out the pronoun paradigms. It then covers several newer functions: - an exclusive "our" in Neo-Aramaic; - obligatory possessor marking on body parts and kin, which in Ethio-Semitic can add an object to the verb; - the use of frozen pronoun forms to build adverbs. Kapeliuk concludes that the north-eastern and south-western edges of the Semitic area developed similar features in parallel, setting them apart from mainstream Semitic. The work matters because it shows one small morphological class carrying subject, object, genitive, definiteness and adverbial roles. ## Key points - **Paradigms.** A table compares the suffixed (and, for Neo-Aramaic, independent) adnominal pronouns of UCNA, ZJNA, Amharic and Tigrinya. Only Tigrinya still distinguishes gender in the 2nd and 3rd person plural. - **Pronouns after prepositions.** - Amharic now uses independent nominative pronouns after prepositions. - Neo-Aramaic often uses the independent adnominal form instead of a suffix. - **Definite article.** In Amharic, the 3rd singular possessive has turned into a definite article. - **Exclusive "our".** Following Polotsky (1961), the UCNA form -enij means "our" excluding the hearer, such as the speaker's family or village. Marogulov's grammars list only the other form, yet he uses -enij himself. Similar examples appear in Zaxo texts. - **Body parts in Hebrew and Ethio-Semitic.** - Colloquial Israeli Hebrew mostly drops the possessor pronoun with body parts and prefers a dative pronoun. In Netzer's (2003) sample, only 12 of 90 expressions kept the pronoun. - In Ge'ez and modern Ethio-Semitic, a possessed body part can trigger an extra object suffix on the verb. ## Interesting ideas - Name a grammatical category by its form rather than its assumed meaning, so the analysis does not prejudge function; this keeps several roles visible. — For Mova (frames): treat English possessive determiners (nmod:poss) as plain attachments and let frame building decide the role. For example, "his" is the agent in "his arrival" but the patient in "his arrest". - Some languages require a possessor marker on body parts and kin even when the possessor is named elsewhere; English instead uses a bare article ("took her by the hand"), which hides the link. — For Mova (world): when a definite body-part noun has no possessor, use part-whole knowledge to attach it to the nearby object or experiencer instead of creating a new entity. - Interpret "our" by which group it refers to and whether the hearer is included, not just by who owns the thing. — For Mova (frames): coreference could tag each "we/our" as inclusive or exclusive of the addressee. This would make dialogue answers about who is meant explainable. - Measure language drift by counting how often an expected marker actually appears in a sample of expressions, as Netzer's 12-of-90 figure does. — For Mova (learn): compare the rate of a construction in silver data against a gold treebank. A sharp gap can flag dialect drift or parser bias. - Pronouns can freeze into semantically empty parts of fixed adverbs, so a pronoun form need not point to any referent. — For Mova (world): flag empty pronouns in fixed phrases (expletive "it", "of its own accord") so that no phantom entity enters the text's world. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{kapeliuk2026some, title = {{Some Special Functions of the Adnominal Pronouns in Neo-Semitic}}, author = {Kapeliuk, Olga}, booktitle = {Folia Orientalia 40}, year = {2026}, url = {https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/3449} } ``` - [← previous Some Dialects Are More Equal Than Others: Non-Prestigious Arabic Dialectal Bias in LLMs](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/eida-2026-some-dialects-more-equal-than/) - [next → SOMVOICE: A First Dataset to Study the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Voice Characteristics of Healthy French Speakers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/martin-2026-somvoice-first-dataset-study-effects/) - [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/) ## References 14 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Avineri, Iddo, 1988. 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