Nifʕal—A verbal class which is two

Abstract

Several peculiarities of Modern Hebrew verbs of the nifʕal type are surveyed, showing that the past/present and future paradigms of this type are more independent of each other than those of other verbal types. It is proposed that different formatives are used in constructing the different paradigms; in this sense, these verbs in fact appear in two defective verbal types: one for the past/present and one for the future. The peculiarities surveyed are shown to follow from this proposal.