Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>Different stems of a verbal root do not constitute a "different verb."  If 
>you claim they do, I
hope you have some solid, tenable evidence. >

I would claim that there are five basic vocabulary-building stems that
Hebrew uses
for building verbs out of a root.

Qal (pa`al/ pa`el/ pa`ol)   -    [[Nif`al]]

     Nif`al   (itself-- i.e., not as auto-generated passive of pa`al)

PIel     -     [[Pual]]

       Hitpa`el

Hif`al     -     Hof`al


In that sense, Hebrew has five binyanim,
though these five are based
on three basic skeletons:
'zero' [p`l],
doubled middle root letter, and
h-prefix.
The n+root binyan took over the qal passive, so it now does
'double duty',
and the hitpa`el is a 't' sub-binyan of the 'doubled middle'.

(Yes, there are many other sub-binyanim for phonetic and historical
reasons like polel [a pi`el type], hishtaf`al, etc.) we are talking here
about the generic system of the Hebrew language.
Pu`al and Hof`al are not called 'binyanim' in this sense because
they do not build independent vocabulary iterms.

These vocabulary items constitute useable, communicable verbs.

If someone creates/created a new verb by building in a new stem of a
root, then that is a neologism.
When accepted and used by a language community, it becomes a
normal 'verb'.

The above consistutes a standard, linguistic, cross-Semitic derevational
morphology.
It is not usually taught in beginning Hebrew pedagogy but it is the
principle underlying the verb systems of the different Semitic languages
and is regularly learned by beginning students as part of Arabic
derivational morphology. It is typically addressed in
advanced Hebrew classes. Or you could look at
Living Biblical Hebrew, Part Two, in the back chapter on the binyanim
for an example with beginning students.

Because of typical Hebrew pedagogy, roots are often learned as 'verbs'
by beginning students, and then in the fine print somewhere the
students are warned that they cannot just 'conjugate these roots into
binyanim'. To do so would be to propose neologisms in many cases
or to propose new meanings for old verbs.

In order to help students avoid the 'etymological fallacy' that is often
endemic to traditional Hebrew pedagogy, I carefully refer to a root
as a root.
When I talk about a verb, I am talking about verbs (not abstract roots)
like sippar and minna, and would distinguish these from other verbs
like safar and mana, even though sippar and safar share the same
root s-p-r and minna and mana share the same root m-n-y. And
although mana and safar have a highly congruent semantic meaning,
(counting/numbering)
the verbs sippar and minna do not share a highly congruent
semantic meaning with each other.

Thus yashlix (yashlik) 'he would throw' is a verb, while *yishlox is not a
biblical verb. higgid 'he reported/told' is a biblical verb, *nagad is not
a biblical verb.

In simple words-- the meanings of roots in various binyanim are not
predictable in the way that suffixtense--prefix tense are predictible or
that pi`el--pu``al are predictable.
To what may this be compared?
To the unpredictability of derivational morphology in any language,
like English *duce (a great verb for teaching students, right?)
and re-duce and pro-duce, or do and re-do. Etc.

In the rare event that the above does not already make sense,
try to conjugate n.g.sh. 'to come over nearby'
in good biblical/massoretic Hebrew. Check your production out
with a concordance/software, carefully.
n.g.sh is a 'suppletive' accross binyanim, something more common
in Greek, like perdesthai 'to be farting' middle imperfective,
versus pardein 'to fart' active perfective.
Suppletion is not as uncommon as people may assume in Hebrew :
e.g.,   h-l-k suffixtense joins with y-l-x in the prefix tense qal,
though both suffixtense and prefix tense of holix are from y-l-k. (or
w-l-k, if you will).

braxot

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life