# The meaning of suffix conjugation verbs



## sad cat

What can suffix conjugation verbs mean besides simple past, like "I wrote", and present perfect, like "I have written"?

Someone said that גדלתי can mean all of the following

I have become big.
I have grown big.
I am big.

The last meaning is not a simple past or present perfect. Does this happen with other verbs too?


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## Drink

In the case of stative verbs (גדל is a stative verb), it can indicate a present state.

I don't have my grammar with me, but if you look at Joüon and Muraoka's _Grammar of Biblical Hebrew_, it lists basically all the possible meanings of all the verb forms. I suggest you check it out.


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## JAN SHAR

How do you define a stative verb? And what makes גדל one?


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## Drink

There is a morphological aspect to stative verbs, that they tend to have "a" as the thematic vowel of the prefix conjugation, and that they tend to have have "e" or "o" as the thematic vowel the past tense, and that their participles tend not to be of the form qotel, but rather qatel, qatol, or other. 

But there are active verbs with stative morphology (e.g. למד) and there perhaps are stative verbs with active morphology, though I cannot think of any in binyan qal at the moment.

Then there's the semantic element.

Firstly, stative verbs indicate a state, rather than an action or transition (though they may often have a secondary meaning that indicates a transition to that state).

But another important morpho-semantic feature is that the suffix conjugation often has a present tense meaning (e.g. זקנתי באתי בימים).

Worth noting that there is a common misconception that stative verbs must be intransitive. This is not the case. Two examples of transitive stative verbs are ידע and אהב.


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## Ali Smith

Thanks, Drink. I might add that a stative verb describes a state, and a state is a situation that does not require any effort to stay in. By contrast, when you have a dynamic situation, such as walking or eating, effort is required to stay in it. If one ceases to put any effort into walking or eating, one ceases to walk or eat, respectively. However, once someone or something becomes big or tall or old, it will remain in that situation without any effort on its or anyone else's part. Thus, גדל in the qal binyan is a stative verb.


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## Drink

I believe that that is a sort of "teaching" explanation useful to learners trying to understand stative verbs for the first time, and not a rigorous definition to be used in an academic discussion.


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## JAN SHAR

Are there any other meanings a suffix conjugation verb can have?


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## Drink

You can take a look at a grammar such as that of Joüon and Muraoka. It lists all possible meanings of each form of the verb (at least in the authors' opinions).


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## JAN SHAR

Thanks. You or someone else mentioned in another thread that the verbal system of Rabbinic Hebrew is different from that of Biblical Hebrew. Is there any place one can find a description of the suffix conjugation in RH?


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## Drink

I have not read any systematic scholarly descriptions of Mishnaic Hebrew, but I have spent a lot of time studying Mishnaic Hebrew texts.

You've inspired me to order M. H. Segal's grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew. I'll let you know what I think once it arrives.

From my personal experience I can say that the suffix conjugation does have some interesting uses. My favorite phenomenon is its use as a perfective hypothetical conditional (without any "if" or other marking of the conditional; the participle is used as the imperfective equivalent, I think, though I'm not 100% certain about this aspectual distinction; but be cautious as this is merely my own ad-hoc nomenclature without systematic analysis):

האישה שהלכה היא ובעלה למדינת הים *באת ואמרה* מת בעלי תינשא ותיטול כתובה וצרתה אסורה *הייתה* בת ישראל לכוהן תאכל בתרומה

[Regarding the case of] a woman who went overseas with her husband: *If she returned and said*, "My husband has died," she may marry and she may claim [the money promised to her in] her _ketubah_. *If she was* a _bat Yisrael_ (i.e. not the daughter of a Kohen or a Levi) [married to] a Kohen, she may eat _terumah_ (the tithe that is given to the Kohanim, which may only be eaten by a Kohen, a wife of a Kohen, or an unmarried daughter of a Kohen).


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