verb complications

[cellio]

The book I'm using for biblical Hebrew started with perfect (past) verbs, drilling in patterns of usage that seem to be pretty consistent most of the time. (Yes, of course there are irregular verbs; every language has 'em, I assume.) And so far we've only covered one of the seven binyanim. (I don't have the vocabulary to translate that directly; examples are reflexive versus causitive versus "just plain did it". It's the difference between "write", "dictate", "correspond", "be written", and others.)

Now in this one binyan (pa'al) that we've been using so far, there are two things that tell you how to read the verb: suffixes and vowels. Both of these are very consistent; for example, "malachti", "shalachti", and "zacharti" are all first-person singular verbs. (I ruled; I sent; I remembered.)

So I was feeling like I got this, so far. Then we hit imperfect verbs. It looked straightforward at first; there are prefixes and sometimes suffixes, and the text introduced a vowel pattern. I dutifully memorized the chart -- and then got to the part where it said there are three different common vowel patterns in this binyan. I don't yet know if there's a pattern to it, but they haven't stated one yet.

Now I had thought that the vowel pattern is how you tell which binyan the word is in -- if one of those vowels in, say, "shalachti" changes, then it means I'm not in pa'al any more and the meaning has changed somehow. But if the imperfect tense includes three different variations within a single binyan, how many variations are there going to be by the time we get all seven binyanim?

Recognition is easier than generation; in time I assume that I'll learn to recognize any of the three variations as imperfect pa'al. Generation is a completely different problem, though; at this point I have to assume that I'm probably not going to spell correctly much of the time.

I eventually internalized perfect; I'll internalize imperfect too. I was just surprised at how much more complex it appears to be right at the beginning (when, I presume, they would simplify if they could).

Comments

[cellio]

Sure. I'll use third-person singular (M).

Yishmor (cholam chaseir)
Yishlach (patach)
Yikra (kametz)

Prefix is always yud + chiriq; first vowel is always shva; second vowel can be one of three possibilities (commonly, the book says).

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

From what I recall of consciously learning* (mostly modern) Hebrew, the way to tell which binyan you're dealing with is to look for the patterns that stay constant (e.g. the yud + chiriq) which only occur in one binyan (e.g. modern Hebrew X-vav-XX should be present tense singular masculine no matter what the second vowel is).

In practice, the way I usually tell which binyan I'm dealing with (or which part of speech/gender/number/etc) is to replace the root consonants of the mystery word with ones I know to form a word I know, being careful not to mess with the non-root parts. So, if the mystery word were "m'sader", I'd match that to "m'daber" and say it's a pi'el verb, present tense, masculine, singular, and having something to do with "order" based on the root (a quick peek at Ben-Yehuda says "arrange" which I'd accept as a synonym for "cause order").

*as opposed to picking up subconsciously during reading/listening.

[cellio]

Thanks. If other markers change (and it's not just the vowels), then this seems less intimidating.

(a quick peek at Ben-Yehuda says "arrange" which I'd accept as a synonym for "cause order")

As in "u'm'sader et ha-kochavim" in ma'ariv aravim.

*as opposed to picking up subconsciously during reading/listening.

Yup. There's a fair bit of stuff that I'm recognizing but hadn't fully understood, so the mix of osmosis and formal structure is helpful. I suspect this would have been harder without the osmosis. Besides, it's neat when you get one of those "oh so that's how that works!" moments.

[sethg]

My standing-on-one-foot answer, since I don't have Alkalay with me, is that aleph is a weak letters and chet is a gutteral, and the vowel patterns change when there are such letters in the root.

This happens in other tenses, too. For example, resh-aleph-hey is ro'eh in the pa`al masculine singular predicate tense (segol under the second root letter, instead of the tzere for shomer) and ra'iti for first-person imperfect.

[cellio]

Thanks! I'll see if that pattern emerges as we work through more verbs.