21st Century Bible Hebrew -- verb root classes

Now the verb root classes.

A strong verb root has letters that are not guttural, vav, yod, or initial nun. If two of the letters are the same, it is the first and last, not the second and third (the latter is a separate root class). The vowels are considered as the standard and the vowels of other root classes are adjustments to the presence of gutturals, or to the disappearance of a root letter. Mashal is an example of a strong verb.

Polel verbs are like strong verbs, except that the second and third root letters are the same. Most polel verbs have only piel, pual, and hitpael but there are a few that have qal, nifal, or hifil. In nifal and hifil, the last root letter sometimes drops off. In other binyanim, the two root letters can contract to one and take dagesh.  Bishesh is an example.

Guttural letters in any position in a verb root change the vowels because gutturals cannot take dagesh and, at the start of a syllable, cannot take shva. The chataf vowels often appear instead of shva.  These include akhal, shaal (“ask”), qara, chayah, hayah, asah, and so on.

Vav and yod in any position have a habit of dropping out of at least part of the conjugation. Yod at the start of the root may be replaced by vav for historical reasons (it has a cognate peh vav verb in Akkadian).  There is only one peh vav verb left in Hebrew, viter.

Medial vav verbs often conjugate in the piel, pual, or hitpael by doubling the final root letter, making them look like polel verbs.  These verbs are called “hollow” in Arabic; a “hollow” class exists in all Semitic languages.  Qum and sim are classic examples of the hollow class. 

There are no lamed vav or lamed yod verbs in Hebrew; these classes exist in all the other Semitic languages (they are called  “defective verbs” in Arabic) but they have merged into lamed heh in Hebrew.

Peh nun verbs sometimes assimilate the nun to the second root letter, which then takes dagesh.  There doesn’t seem to be an historical connection for this like there is for the yod, although Akkadian and Assyrian had n-initial verbs that assimilated and duplicated like this.  (In Arabic, the “assimilated” verb root class assimilates waw.)

Lamed heh verbs are high-frequency and are the only verbs that appear in the certainty epistemic.  They are unique to Hebrew.

Four-letter roots are of two types. Some have XYxy with a shvah under the Y. These used to be considered a trace of the proto-Semitic verb root system which had only two letters per root, but this concept is losing support. Four-letter roots adopted from other languages, like tirgem or tilpen, do not repeat letters.

There are only 2 posts left for this part of my blog. I will then start with another form of insanity on Tuesdays.