Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

Level OneThere is a variety of such imposed patterns. For the verb there are seven,known as binyanim. For the adjective and noun, there are scores ofpatterns, some common and some quite infrequent, known as mishkalim.What makes verbs particularly different from nouns or adjectives is thatall verbs, without exception, must adhere to one of the seven verbpatterns (thus, all verbs consist of a root skeleton on which is mounted abinyan), whereas many nouns and adjectives have no particular root orpattern, and indeed are regularly imported direct from some foreignsource. Examples would be the nouns ‘idiot’ and ‘bank’ andthe adjectives ‘constructive’ and ‘topical’.b Functions of the verb patternsThere are seven binyanim:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 42These names are a graphic representation of the past tense form of eachbinyan. Thus ‘ate’, ‘took’, ‘kissed’ all belong to the firstbinyan, , while ‘hit’, ‘bothered’, ‘reminded’ allbelong to the third binyan, . (The choice of the letters --forthe names of verb patterns is because the verb means ‘to act’.)As the diagram suggests, the binyanim fall into three groups. These groupsare basically grammatical rather than semantic: that is, the group a verbbelongs to cannot tell us much about the meaning of that verb. Take, forexample, the verbs ‘complain’, ‘parallel’, ‘receive’, ‘be received’: the root --is being put through the variouspatterns with meanings that seem mostly arbitrary. Or take the verbs ‘trust’, ‘assure’, ‘insure’: that there is a connection isobvious, but there is no ‘magic formula’ to tell one what precisely theconnection will be.