# nifa'al, "pa'ul", active passives and defeated linguists



## theunderachiever

I'm....I'm pulling my hair out over this.

I'm almost there. I almost understand this, albeit all 14 of my brain cells are working at 200% capacity to get it. But then out of nowhere:

נכנס

How on earth is this a passive verb? It is certainly active. Is there a XaXuX (Is there a name for this? I thought it would be "pa'ul", but I think I just switched the vowels around in "pu'al") counterpart to verbs like this, such as /katuv/ to /nikhtav/?

I'm beginning to feel like I understand the difference between words like נכתב and כתוב, but I still feel rather lost. I took them to have the same meaning for the longest time, but upon engaging in a more formal study of Hebrew grammar, I'm beginning to suspect כתוב pertains more to a state of being while נכתב is more reflective of something *doing* the writing. I know how vague that sounds, but I think what's happening to cause this confusion is due to a deficiency in English, because I think something similar might exist in Russian and German. I would probably translate both as "is written", but I think these two words are indicating two aspects of the same concept. My guess is /katuv/ simply "is written" while /nikhtav/ emphasizes the fact that it is written _by_ someone. If I'm anywhere close to right, I may have a bit of trouble determining which word to use in some cases. How is /katuv/ conjugated in the past or future? (On second thought, if it's a participle acting the way I think it's acting, I don't think it can actually take a past or future form, but could only take an auxiliary verb to indicate a past or future aspect, i.e., haya/yihyeh katuv, but I'm wrong a lot.) Or the present, for that matter? I've only ever heard this as /katuv/. Is it a participle that doesn't have a past or future for some strange reason? WHY DOES HEBREW HATE ME?

This "understanding" is tenuous at best and is contradicted by verbs like נכנס, but נכנס contradicts my understanding of how nifa'al verbs function anyway. Is there some passive aspect of /nikhnas/ that I'm simply not getting? Is something acting on me which leads me to enter? What about surviving? Meeting?  I've always wondered this about verbs like this but could never figure it out.

Am I _close_ to being close to right?

Oy...


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## Albert Schlef

(I'm just a layman; others may chime in hopefully.)



> נכנס
> 
> How on earth is this a passive verb?



Binyamin don't have a clear-cut meaning, because of the way the language evolved.

The original meaning of binyan nif'al was reflexive action: an action that one carries out on oneself. For example, נכנס means "to insert/enter oneself". For example, נשמר means "to guard oneself". נסמך means "to lean oneself on ...". Later nif'al evolved to also serve as passive for (mainly) binyan pa'al.




> I'm beginning to suspect כתוב pertains more to a state of being while נכתב is more reflective of something doing the writing.



Exactly.

Binyamin have past and future tenses. They also have a present "tense" (this tense can also be thought of as a noun/adjective --describing the function/state of an object-- and not necessarily as a verb). Binyan pa'al happens to have two such present forms: one for active, one for passive. /kotev/ (the active form) means "writer" (or "[he is] writing"). /katuv/ (the passive form) means "[is] written".

(You'll notice that the present "tense", in all binyanim, have only four conjugations (male/female singular + male/female plurals), exactly as in the noun/adjective system.)

So, if you want to say "written" you can use either כתוב or נכתב, but, as you yourself felt, נכתב is a full blown verb (passive, in this case; and in past tense), which stresses the action of somebody's writing it.


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## hadronic

Hello,​
Here is what I wrote in another forum on that topic. It's a little broader since it also encompasses passive for other active binyanim. I thought it was worth mentioning._
Babelfish wrote:מתקדם is used for both meanings: "advancing" / "progressing" and "advanced". There's no other word in common use, you'd need a perfect passive participle  and we only have this for the 1st conjugation... (apologies for the assault of grammar terms   ) 
I thought of מְקֻדָּם as a literal translation of "promoted", but even in this narrow meaning I don't think I've ever encountered it._​
Perfect passive participle is actually available for all 3 active binyanim:
- Qal: katav - katuv
- Pi'el: sider - mesudar
- Hif'il: hastir - mustar

Qal's specificity is that only Qal distinguishes between stative passive (perfect) and agentive passive (imperfect) : katuv - written, nikhtav - being written. German also observes this distinction:
Ha delet sgura - die Tür ist geschlossen.
Ha delet nisgeret - die Tür wird geschlossen.

In the two other binyanim, the passive is ambiguous : "ha kheder mesudar" could be both "the room is cleaned / tidy" or "the room is being cleaned" (mostly the former though). In the past on the other hand, the distinction is possible : "ha kheder haya mesudar" (adjectivale, stative) vs. "ha kheder sudar" (verbal, agentive). In Qal, this becomes a three way distinction in the past : katuv - nikhtav (with patach) - haya nikhtav (with qamats) / feminine: ktuva - nikhteva - hayta nikhtevet. That "haya nikhtav" doesn't bring much on the table, except that it's sometimes a handy way to distinguish between present and past which are homophonous in Nif'al.

Finally, to answer the question, what Hebrew lacks here is precisely not the perfect passive participle, the plain perfect (or past) participle.
In languages like French or English, past participle behaves two ways :
- as passive past participle for transitive verbs: eaten (=having been eaten), mangé (=ayant été mangé)
- as (plain) past participle for intransitive verbs: disapperead (=having disappeared), disparu (=ayant disparu).
So in the word "advanced", we mean people that did advance, did progress, it's a past participle of the intransitive verb. Hebrew has the present participle "mitkadem", but misses the past one "she-hitkadem).
The same can be seen in "ha shana haba'a" with present participle vs. "ha shana she-avra" with a substitute of past participle (cf. French "l'année passée", with past participle of intransitive verb "passer", vs. "l'annonce passée" with past passive participle of transitive verb "passer").


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## hadronic

I also want to add that Arabic sheds a lot of light on what's happening in Hebrew.
Arabic has 10 binyanim, each of them with active and passive forms : present (imperfective), past (perfective) and participle.

Hebrew, for a reason that I ignore, decided to consider passive forms as a binyan of its own, but I think this blurs the picture:

Qal Active:  katav   yikhtov   kotev, Passive:  --  --  katuv
Nif'al Active: nikhtav yikkatev nikhtav, Passive: -- -- --
Pi'el Active: kittev  yekhattev  mekhattev, Passive: kuttav  yekhuttav  mekhutav
Hif'il Active: hikhtiv yakhiv makhtiv, Passive: hukhtav yukhtav mukhtav
Hitpa'el Active: hitkattev yitkattev mitkattev, Passive: -- -- --

There are only 5 binyanim in Hebrew according to the Arabic nomenclature (maybe 6 if you count the marginal Po'el).
Passive Qal stopped being used before Biblical times, probably of its homophony with Passive Hif'il (Gesenius cites some places that are suspected to be remnants of Passive Qal, but that the Massoretes revocalized as Huf'al). Active Nif'al progressively took the empty slots.
Passive Nif'al and Hitpa'el maybe never have existed given their intransitive nature, but their Arabic counterpart definitely do (mutakallim vs. mutakallam).

All in all, the system went through many refactorings, hence the blurry pic nowadays.


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> There are only 5 binyanim in Hebrew according to the Arabic nomenclature (maybe 6 if you count the marginal Po'el).



Then you'd have to count hitpo'el as well, making 7. If you count השתחוה, then 8. And if you count הלתחם as Arabic's form VIII, then 9. All that's missing then is Arabic's form IX (if'alla). But Hebrew has innovated some new ones as well, such as nitpa'el and hitpu'al.


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## hadronic

Sure .

Some also posit binyan _shif'el_  (shikhzer, shidreg, shikhtev, shi'atek,...) as another "new" binyan  (which is not denominal, like misper [from mispar] or tifked [from tafkid]).


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> but their Arabic counterpart definitely do (mutakallim vs. mutakallam).



But that's probably a relative recent thing comparable to hitpu'al.


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## hadronic

Not at all. In Arabic, _tafa``ala _can be active: _ta`allama _"to learn", _takallama_ "to speak".
So the mutakallim is the speaker, the sayer,  and the mutakallam is the spoken, the said.


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> Not at all. In Arabic, _tafa``ala _can be active: _ta`allama _"to learn", _takallama_ "to speak".
> So the mutakallim is the speaker, the sayer,  and the mutakallam is the spoken, the said.



So when is the first attestation of _mutakall*a*m_, _t*u*kallama_ _t*u*k*u*ll*i*ma_, or _y*u*takallamu_?


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## hadronic

I would guess it has always existed. Coran and pre-islamic literature.


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> I would guess it has always existed. Coran and pre-islamic literature.



You can guess anything you want. But the Koran has no such forms for the root k-l-m, nor for `-l-m.


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## hadronic

Fair enough, I'll try to back up my claim when I'm back home.



If anything, it's not new as hitpu'al is. Given the fact that form 5 and 6 can be transitive, there's no such semantic hurdle to derive a passive out of it.


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> If anything, it's not new as hitpu'al is. Given the fact that form 5 and 6 can be transitive, there's no such semantic hurdle to derive a passive out of it.



I meant that it is the same sort of semantic innovation as hitpu'al.


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## hadronic

Root K-B-L does have :


(5:27:10) *fatuqubbila*and it was accepted فَتُقُبِّلَ مِنْ أَحَدِهِمَا وَلَمْ يُتَقَبَّلْ مِنَ الْآخَرِ(5:27:14) *yutaqabbal*was accepted إِذْ قَرَّبَا قُرْبَانًا فَتُقُبِّلَ مِنْ أَحَدِهِمَا وَلَمْ يُتَقَبَّلْ مِنَ الْآخَرِ(5:27:21) _yataqabbalu_accepts قَالَ لَأَقْتُلَنَّكَ قَالَ إِنَّمَا يَتَقَبَّلُ اللَّهُ مِنَ الْمُتَّقِينَ(5:36:20) *tuqubbila*will be accepted وَمِثْلَهُ مَعَهُ لِيَفْتَدُوا بِهِ مِنْ عَذَابِ يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ مَا تُقُبِّلَ مِنْهُمْ


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> Root K-B-L does have :
> 
> 
> (5:27:10) *fatuqubbila*and it was accepted فَتُقُبِّلَ مِنْ أَحَدِهِمَا وَلَمْ يُتَقَبَّلْ مِنَ الْآخَرِ(5:27:14) *yutaqabbal*was accepted إِذْ قَرَّبَا قُرْبَانًا فَتُقُبِّلَ مِنْ أَحَدِهِمَا وَلَمْ يُتَقَبَّلْ مِنَ الْآخَرِ(5:27:21) _yataqabbalu_accepts قَالَ لَأَقْتُلَنَّكَ قَالَ إِنَّمَا يَتَقَبَّلُ اللَّهُ مِنَ الْمُتَّقِينَ(5:36:20) *tuqubbila*will be accepted وَمِثْلَهُ مَعَهُ لِيَفْتَدُوا بِهِ مِنْ عَذَابِ يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ مَا تُقُبِّلَ مِنْهُمْ



Fair enough. By the way, your links were broken, I fixed them above.


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## origumi

This thread is confusing. There are 7 binyanim in Hebrew, 3 of them are passive: nif'al, pu'al, huf'al. The passiveness is not guaranteed in the case of nif'al. In addition there's a passive form pa'ul which describes, generally speaking, a state and has no past or future tense, and regarded as part of banyan pa'al (qal).

If you read Western biblical Hebrew grammar books, remember they prefer the terms perfect, participle, imperfect rather than past, present, future, for deep grammatical reasons.

I don't see how Arabic helps for this Hebrew 101 question. I also don't think that unconventional counting of binyanim, unlike grammar books, would help.


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## hadronic

Passive binyanim pu'al and huf'al are only fragmental : they miss an infinitive, and imperative. They do have a participle, but then you leave the fragmental Qal passive participle pa'ul. Then also, you do not explain why nif'al, in its Qal passive meaning, does have an infinitive and an imperative. 

It makes a lot more sense if, following the traditional Arabic nomenclature, you include the passive binyanim pu'al and huf'al in their respective active binyanim, as I did above. They all supplete each other nicely, and weirdness varnishes. 

On multiple other counts, pu'al and huf'al are nothing close to the complex semantic relationships between other binyanim : they only mean one thing, passive of pi'el and hif'il resp. They are single leaves in the entire diagram. Relationships between Qal and Nif'al, Qal and Hitpa'el, Hif'il and Nif'al... are a lot more tortuous. Moreover, roots existing only in the Pu'al or Huf'al are non existant, or extremely rare (I think of  קורץ),  unlike other binyanim. 
All this shows their derived nature. They are not primary pillars of the "building". 

Finally, I used the terms : past (perfective), present (imperfective) and participle, for Arabic.


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## theunderachiever

origumi said:


> This thread is confusing. There are 7 binyanim in Hebrew, 3 of them are passive: nif'al, pu'al, huf'al. The passiveness is not guaranteed in the case of nif'al. In addition there's a passive form pa'ul which describes, generally speaking, a state and has no past or future tense, and regarded as part of banyan pa'al (qal).
> 
> If you read Western biblical Hebrew grammar books, remember they prefer the terms perfect, participle, imperfect rather than past, present, future, for deep grammatical reasons.
> 
> I don't see how Arabic helps for this Hebrew 101 question. I also don't think that unconventional counting of binyanim, unlike grammar books, would help.



hardonic learned through pm and a recording in my first post that I have some familiarity with Arabic, which is why I suspect he (or she?) alluded to it.

By the way, hardonic, 
"German also observes this distinction:
Ha delet sgura - die Tür ist geschlossen.
Ha delet nisgeret - die Tür wird geschlossen."
summed things up perfectly for me.  This is exactly what I meant when I said I thought something similar existed in German.  

Danke schön


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## hadronic

I find it also very irritating when dictionaries insist on listing all the pu'al, huf'al and passive nif'al forms of verbs, as if they were words on their own right. They are not. They are derived conjugations, just like English do / be done. It takes up real estate for no added value, and deceitfully raises the number of words such or such dictionary contains.


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## Albert Schlef

BTW, I read on Wikipedia that:

 "בעברית מתאפיינים הסבילים הפנימיים בתנועת u: בניין הֻפְעַל (להִפְעִיל) ובניין פֻּעַל (לפִּעֵל)."

 ("pasive binyanim are characterized by a 'u' vowel.")

Which reminds me that in Arabic too the passive forms have a noticeable "u" vowel. I haven't noticed this similarity before.


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## Drink

Albert Schlef said:


> BTW, I read on Wikipedia that:
> 
> "בעברית מתאפיינים הסבילים הפנימיים בתנועת u: בניין הֻפְעַל (להִפְעִיל) ובניין פֻּעַל (לפִּעֵל)."
> 
> ("pasive binyanim are characterized by a 'u' vowel.")
> 
> Which reminds me that in Arabic too the passive forms have a noticeable "u" vowel. I haven't noticed this similarity before.



Well this is one of the distinguishing features. The other being the "a" vowel (e.g. "mudarr*i*s" vs. "mudarr*a*s"), which is a distinguishing feature only when the active already has an "u" vowel. In Hebrew, this is manifested by "po'*e*l" vs. "po'*a*l".


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