Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

{bryan wrote:}
>if the question is "what do you do?"
>'elmad `ivrit    {end quote}

somehow this doesn't feel quite right.

i find it very interesting that you are drawn back to prefix verbs as
though to a magnet. i wonder what it is in training material that does
this? [=i don't think it is the biblical text itself doing this.]

even in the above example i would not expect habitual/future prefix verbs
to be most frequent. 

do you have some "plain vanilla" prefix examples that refer to the a real
present? 
we might look at them together to see what is happening, just where and
when are they permissible. 

(e.g. they are very frequent in questions about actual goings-on! but in
the answers?) [also, e.g., uxal "i can" lo uxal "I can't" is one such
idiomatic prefix present, but its modality is lexicalized. yaxol "able
(part/adj)" doesn't even exist in BH.]

notice some potential counter examples to your first question:

ha-anashim ro`e- tson
and not *ha-anahsim yihyu ro`e-tson
        nor *ha-anashim yir`u tson

ki BOQER anoxi
                                    
though the above are probably because your first question implies a
profession and participles can easily be nominalized.

still, your second question, "what are you doing?" seems to imply that you
would AGREE that the participle is the default form for an actual present
situation. students could use that information.

{bryan wrote:}
>"what are you doing?"
>'ani lomed `ivrit  [end quote]

at least now students may be able to think and talk in Biblical Hebrew. :-)
  If their only choices had been prefix verbs and suffix verbs they might
never really get started thinking or doing something in the language in the
hear and now.    ma na`ase?

braxot veHag sameaH. mi yitten ve-hirbeta le'exol sufganiyot!
randall