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Another Look at the Biblical Hebrew Focus Particle 
University of Stellenbosch
Despite the attention devoted to from various angles in recent years, there has been no exhaustive treatment in terms of all its occurrences in the Hebrew Bible. In this revision of the author's own detailed description of the focus particle in Genesis to 2 Kings, many of his earlier views are confirmed. However, it was also found that his earlier model needs some refinement. For example, although the most typical semantic function of is to signal that an entity x must be added to an entity y as far as a predication or argument z is concerned, in a few instances (in mainly poetic texts) does have an affirmative connotation. Although even more rare, in a few instances also appears to be a near-synonym of 
. As far as a profile of its uses in terms of frequency is concerned, the most prototypical use (about 50%) is + constituent.