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Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

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22 The imperativeTheimperativea Form of the imperativeThe imperative has just three forms. These involve suffixes, in fact thesame suffixes as the 2nd person future tense, but without its prefixes:Example:masc. sing.fem. sing.no suffix get up! (to a male) get up! (to a female)masc. and fem. pl. get up! (to many)Note: The special fem. pl. form is so rare that we have omitted it.Suffixes aside, what the imperative looks like depends on the binyaninvolved (see under the individual binyanim in 26–32 and 50–9). As a ruleof thumb, the imperative resembles either the future or the infinitive.b Use of the imperativeThe imperative (<strong>Hebrew</strong> term: ) is found only in positive requests. Innegative requests, it is replaced by the future tense (see 40(c)). For themost part, it is formal in tone, inhabiting fiction, documents, instructionmanuals, cookbooks, speeches and the like.At the same time, a handful of verbs have an imperative in all-roundeveryday use. These are usually of one syllable. Notable examples: come! move! wait! go! go! leave! leave off! get up!39

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