Margherita Farina collaborates with the University and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa on different projects concerning Syriac linguistics and philology. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and she has worked on different fields of Semitic linguistics. Her main contributions concern the Hebrew and Syriac Syntax-Semantics interface and the Hebrew and Syriac ancient grammatical traditions.
This study presents a modern linguistic approach to the function of the Syriac et-verbal prefix. Based on a detailed analysis of a number of early Syriac texts, it proposes a unified account of the different values traditionally attributed to the Syriac et- stems. Farina views the data within a typologically comparative framework derived from a cross-linguistic study of middle conjugations.