Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

33 Direct and indirect objectObjectmarkersIn English, some verbs take a direct object (‘Eat meat’) and some anindirect object, introduced by a preposition (‘Opt for octopus, look at theleopard’). Such prepositions are ‘empty’ and have no meaning of theirown (contrast ‘for’ or ‘at’ in ‘This is for you’, ‘I’m at the party’). The sameis true of Hebrew: some Hebrew verbs take a direct object, whereasothers take an indirect object introduced by a preposition.Which verbs take which type of object is somewhat arbitrary, in bothlanguages. Thus ‘look for’ (indirect object in English) takes a directobject in Hebrew, and conversely ‘use’ (direct object in English)requires an indirect object with : I’m looking for a baby-sitter Use a pencilFor more on indirect objects and their prepositions, see 34(b).34 Object markersa The direct object marker The Hebrew direct object is only strictly direct when it is indefinite, as in: Take meat Take a chairWhen definite (e.g. ‘the meat’), it is generally introduced by thespecial preposition . This is known as the direct object marker. By‘definite’, we mean (a) a noun with , or (b) a name, or (c) a definitepronoun.59