Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

18–23 THE INFLECTIONS OF THE VERB18 IntroductionTheinflectionsof the verbMost verbs have five major sets of inflections:Three tenses: past, present, futureImperative (i.e. request)Infinitive (i.e. ‘to . . .’)For example (referring to the verb by its simplest form, the ‘he’ form ofthe past tense):The three tenses:: will shorten shortens shortenedImperative:Infinitive:! shorten! to shortenMost verbs also have a related ‘action noun’, e.g. ‘abbreviation’. Wehave listed it together with the inflection tables, though in fact it is notquite as regular as the inflections proper (for example, the action noun for ‘dance’ is not as expected but ). For the use of the actionnoun, see 64.Note: Verbs also have a gerund, related to the infinitive (e.g.‘shortening’), but it is too uncommon to be listed here. See 97 for its use. In addition, any given verb belongs to a particular grammatical pattern(known as a binyan). There are seven binyanim (see 25). Every verb alsohas a root, with certain types of root being peculiar in some way, leadingto significant upsets in the verb’s inflections. But whichever binyan orroot-type they belong to, verbs form their tenses and other inflections in afairly uniform way; in the next five sections, we list these shared features.33