Biblical Hebrew Forum

["uri hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

   Any intorduction to Semitics should be useful.
    What you call the "10 forms" in Arabic, are the the very same verbal
structures known as Binyanim in  Hebrew ; more of them in Arabic. In BH 
too are traces of Binyanim that never made it to common usage; e.g. 
"hishtah(.)vah" is precisely in the Arabic Istaf'ala form or in Hebrew
Hishtaf'el Binyan ( from the root h(.)wh ),which one would not find in
most grammar introductions.                         Uri