Talk:Modern Hebrew grammar/Archive 1

Hope nobody minds, I moved the content of the grammar section here from Hebrew language. Tomer ^TALK 07:27, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Clean-up and editing

As anyone can see, I've been doing a lot of editing on this article recently. My main goals are:

• Fully wikify the article (use tables, divide the article into appropriate sections)
• Add Hebrew characters (with nikudot — vowels)
• General copyediting and rewording.
  • Rewording phrases that are addressed to the reader (such as you will see and we can see)
  • Fixing paste-os (several paragraphs refer to the wrong parts of speech in the wrong sections).

I am apt to make mistakes here and there, so even if it appears that I am still in the middle of editing, please feel free to continue make any minor corrections to errors you see. — Ke6jjj 09:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Good job, Ke6jjj! I just want to discuss about something before I edit the article.

I think it's wrong to write מגדלים like 'mgadlim' in Latin letters, simply because it's not said, or supposed to be said that way. "shva na" should basically be, according to my grammar teacher, "half a vowel".. not a full consonant. Usually said like an 'eh'. Especially in words such as 'megadlim' when it's hard to say the 'mg' combination.

Also... the fact that the conjugation of you plural feminine and they feminine are out of the table kind of bothers me. I'm aware that it's not normally used and yet I feel it's the more correct way to conjugate the verb. RadagastGal 18:50, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is a tough point in transliteration. I don't think "megadlim" would be right, however, because you could interpret that as the longer 'eh'. How about "m'gadlim" or "mihgadlim"? (The addition of the 'h' being the key factor).

On the second point (you pl. fem. and they pl. fem. conjugations being removed from the atid table) I agree without reservation. I didn't remove them; someone else did. I was thinking of moving them back in, and will do so when I put the Hebrew lettering into the atid table. — Ke6jjj 04:40, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I really don't think you need to add nikud to everything. It's not particularly helpful IMHO, and I think it adds quite a barrier to editing; even if you know the right nikud for a word, it's a lot more effort to type out the word with nikud than without. (It might be good for the conjugations, though.) BTW, I think m'gadlim is the best transliteration by far. Ruakh 19:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

other parts of speech

anyone feel up to taking on the task of writing sections on adverbs, adjectives, etc.? Tomer ^TALK 07:27, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I took up the challenge. Adjectives and adverbs have been added, and I went through nouns and tried to make it cleaner and more readable. I looked at verbs and cringed in fear--maybe next week! Anyhow, have a look and please correct my mistakes--I'm not much of a grammarian and I don't know Wikipedia markup well. And I haven't added links or anything. Mlevie 18:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Took a shot at reorganizing the "verbs" section too. Left the background discussion as is. Somebody please run through and clean up the numerous mistakes I'm sure I've made!Mlevie 17:45, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmmmm... since you want to be corrected a bit, I'm here to try and help, though I'm not fully sure myself.

About Gerunds... there are gerunds in Hebrew, and you mentioned them as 'action nouns'.. my dictionary says at least that it's the same and it looks right. Like you said, 'ktiva'='writing', etc.

Regarding 'Word Formation' in 'Noun', you do not say' 'Pa'alan' but 'Catlan', and not 'Pa'elet' but 'Cattelet'. And so on with all nouns. In addition, just as a note, 'Cattelet' is not only for diseases. For example, 'rakevet'- Train, 'kasefet'- a safe. :)

And last, becuase it was really good and without mistakes as far as I know, I have a problem with the 'Adverbs'. I mean, some may say 'hu tafas oti chazak' (why with a 'q'?), but I think it's better to say 'hu tafas oti be-chozka'.. and I think so about 'barur' and 'yafe' too. Unless you have examples? When I have time I may add things... I think it would be rather confusing though. Gal 21:16, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Go ahead and make any changes you feel are justified--that's how Wikipedia works. I do have one quibble: I'm pretty sure it's perfectly grammatical to use certain common adjectives as adverbs: tov, ra, qashe, qal, chazaq, yafe, etc. On the news when there's a car accident, don't they say 'ha-nehag nifga qashe' (the driver was severely wounded)? You can't say 'be-koshi nifga,' because that means 'barely wounded.' Similarly if the driver is lightly wounded they'll say 'nifga qal,' not 'be-qalut'--although you can say 'ani lo lokeach et ze be-kalut' to mean 'I don't take this lightly.' So I guess it depends.Mlevie 04:20, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I've always thought it's the condition of the wounded, and didn't really see it as an adverb. I suppose you can use it this way I'm not really sure myself... so I'm not going to change it. Tell me what do you think of my changes.. Gal 22:01, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me!Mlevie 03:21, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that, in classical Hebrew at least, one would just have to find some work-around. In the example given, the severity really refers to the nature of the wound (even though in English we use an adverb), so to be technically right, you would have to say something like "kibel maka/pigua/whatever kasha". If I'm correct in saying that historically, this form would have been wrong, than I'd like to add some sort of qualification to this like 'frequently used' or something.--Judah

Error?

Shouldn't yitkhatev be yitkatev? AnonMoos 14:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks like this has been fixed. — Ke6jjj 09:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

In the verb classification section, shata and ala are examples of third-hey verbs, but do yarad and nafal belong there too? I'm only a beginning student, but it strikes me they're in the wrong place. 140.247.201.110 07:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

They are all weak roots. Ghostal 18:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Archaic endings

I was under the impression that future tense they (fem) and you (fem, pl) no longer had the "nah" at the ending, thus explaining why I removed them. I am sorry if I am mistaken. If you are sure that the older way is still used then by all means change it back, but i feel that a note should be put on the article telling the reader that it is rather archaic.

--AndreRD 14:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

They do exist, just not used usually... you would hear them in the news for instance.. I think they should be mentioned the table, but I agree a note should be added. Radagastgal 01:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I changed the note from "archaic" to "commonly ignored"--archaic sounds like the versions commonly used are grammatically correct, but as far as I know, they are not officially endorsed. Probably someone should add something about what people use instead of the "na" ending--I wasn't sure what it was for third-person. ---Judah

By the way, the same endings exist for imperative, and, I think past tense, as well. These were certainly part of historical Hebrew, and at least some of them are used in more 'precise' modern Hebrew as well, as Radagast said. I'm no expert on modern Hebrew, but anyone who wants to imply an official change of the grammar (to allow the male versions to be used for female) needs to supply a source at least. There's an Academy--the grammar is not defined by the average man in the street.

The Academy is not necessarily the final arbiter of grammar; if, for example, the Academy proclaimed as a rule that ish ("man") was to be a feminine noun, it would simply be mistaken. I think it's overkill to say that the historic feminine forms are "very archaic" (and thus on par with, say, vav ha-ipukh), but I also think it's stretching it to say that feminine use of the historic masculine forms is "colloquial" — in my experience, this use common even in very polite speech. Can't the article acknowledge the feminine forms' continued existence while clarifying their extreme rarity? (BTW, if you care, these endings do exist for the imperative mood, but not for the past tense.) Ruakh 21:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well then maybe another word instead of "colloquial" would be better, but the main point I'm arguing is that the admittedly rare feminine forms are still the only correct ones. You give an example of the academy proclaiming a rule against both history and the way the language is spoken, but if the original language and the academy agree, and it is still used, even if rarely, I think that it must be acknowledged as the "correct" form. It's maybe analogous to the word "whom" in English--the word "who" is often used for both subjects and objects, but you would agree that "whom" is still the correct form for an object, wouldn't you?--Judah

Um, no, I wouldn't agree to that. I'd agree that whom is still a correct objective-case (dative/accusative) form of who, but any English-speaker can tell you that who itself is the ordinary objective-case form of who. Really, the only time people use whom is when they're de-stranding an ordinarily-stranded preposition: hence, "Who are you talking to?" → "To whom are you speaking?" (Notice the huge register change; the latter form is simply incorrect for most everyday purposes.) Similarly, the historic feminine future-tense and imperative-mood forms are still among the correct forms, but they're reserved for a very particular form of speech. Ruakh 00:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh. Well some people might tell you that there's not one but two problems with the sentence "Who are you talking to", since it ends in a preposition. I know that that last rule is dismissed by some, but it makes you wonder if that's the connection--the people who spoke with precise grammar said "To whom are you talking", while the same people who ignored one rule ignored the other.

But not to get too far off the subject, I suppose we have a disagreement here about the word "correct"--you maintain that however the language is commonly spoken is a correct way (descriptivist, right?) and I am saying that the historical form is the correct way until it is completely superseded either by nobody ever using it, or by a national agreement (as represented by the Academy) to change it. (Hebrew in particular, with its strong historical roots, I feel should be much less mutable than other languages, but that's just an opinion, of course.)

Probably neither of us will convince the other of his point of view, so can we agree on a wording which simply states the facts? Something like: "Historically, the plural feminine future tense third-person, future tense second-person, and imperative mood, had their own suffix of na, but nowadays many/most people commonly use the male forms for both genders, in all cases." Would that suit you?

Also, I think that they should be added back to the charts as well (perhaps with parentheses, if you want).--Judah

For the record, the rules about whom and preposition-stranding are not rejected by some linguists, but by essentially all linguists … but moving on …

I'd be okay with something like that. How about this: "Historically, the feminine second- and third-person plurals had distinct future-tense forms (shown in parentheses in the table), and these distinct forms are still advocated by the Hebrew Academy [if that's actually true]; however, in everyday modern practice, the corresponding historic masculine forms are used regardless of their subjects' genders." This gives all the relevant facts — historical existence, Academic support, current moribundity — and the reader can decide for himself what to use.

Ruakh 15:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I stick to 'whom', and consider myself more correct for it, but anyway...

I can't give any personal evidence about what the Academy advocates, so that would have to be confirmed. I also don't like the term "advocated", because it seems to take the POV that the Academy's advocation is not binding on the language, which I think some people (beside me) would disagree with. And I'd like some sort of qualifier on the word "used", like "more commonly used" or "usually used".

The truth is, I'm not so comfortable with "everyday modern practice", because that seems to endorse it as a correct practice. I know you consider it that, of course, but what's wrong with "most people commonly use"? That gives the facts, and readers can make their own judgements about whether popular usage defines the language or not. Or even without the word "commonly", if you think that most people never use the original form at all.

"Historically, the feminine second- and third-person plurals had distinct future-tense forms (shown in parentheses in the table) which are still occasionally heard; however, nowadays many people use the historic masculine forms to refer to both genders."?--Judah

Well, what the Academy advocates isn't binding on the way the language is spoken. People who take the Academy's word as gospel will, of course, follow its recommendations no matter how they're phrased. I think "advocated" is the NPOV term; what would you prefer?

The word "used" is being qualified, with the phrase "in everyday modern practice." And TBH, "in everyday modern practice" only implies "correct" if you think that everyday modern practice is necessarily correct. You're free to think that everyday modern practice is wrong in this regard, but that doesn't change what it is.

I'm not actually bothered by your phrasing, except that "many people" should be "most people" (though "the great majority of people" would really be the most accurate), "historic masculine" should be "historically masculine" (it's not the forms that are historic, but their masculinity), and "to refer to" should simply be "with" (since "reference" traditionally denotes the relationship between a term and the thing it's a term for, such that a verb theoretically refers to an action, not to the gender of an actor). Also, I'd have thought that you'd like the Academy's position included, since it supports your stance. (In the interest of telling The Whole Story, I'd also like it in there, though I don't feel too strongly about it.)

Ruakh 00:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course the Academy's statements aren't binding on how the language is spoken--how could they be? But as a prescriptivist, at least when it comes to Hebrew, I feel that the language is not determined solely by how people speak it. If the Academy considers its version of the language the definitive one, then I'd write something like "According to the Academy, x is still the correct way to say it." I mean if the Academy isn't prescriptivist, what's the point of advocating anything at all? You, for instance, if you would advocate anything, you would advocate the more common usage, right? More likely you would say that whatever is understood is correct.

The reason I took out the Academy is only because I have no personal knowledge to back up that statement--I presume that it is correct, but to actually write it, I would want to check it out somehow (I don't know how).

Historic vs. historically--I agree with you there, although in my defense, the word historic came from your original formulation somewhere above. I don't agree about "refer to", since the Hebrew words in question are not just verbs, but verbs+pronouns, which do refer to the people taking the action. Or, even if you want to maintain that there is not always a pronoun implied, at the least they contain specific parts which refer to gender. But if you still like "with" better, use it--it's not worth fighting about.

What about this version (with 'some prescriptivists' my weak substitute for the academy, and the word practice put back in)?

Historically, the feminine second- and third-person plurals had distinct future-tense forms (shown in parentheses in the table) which are still occasionally heard, and some prescriptivists would call those the correct forms; however, in practice, most people use the historically masculine forms to refer to both genders.

--Judah

Sounds good to me. Of course, this means we need to add those forms to the table. ;-) Ruakh 22:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Fixed the tables. Also changed the summary sentence; have a look at it now.--Judah

Thanks. :-) Ruakh 21:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The section divisions make no sense to me.

The way the article is currently divided into sections makes no sense to me; can anyone explain it?

Examples of things I don't get:

• Why the lead text of the "Word order" section is a paragraph about the definite article. (Indeed, the entire "Word order" section has exactly one sentence about word order: the first sentence in its last paragraph.)
• Why direct objects and adjectives are grouped together into one section (though adjectives also get a section to themselves, later on).
• Why the section titled "Indirect objects" has one paragraph about indirect objects (with no grammatical information, by the way; instead, it names a bunch of semantic categories that don't actually bear on grammar), one sentence about sentences without subjects, and the bulk of two paragraphs about connecting clauses and such.

Does anyone object to a complete restructuring of most of this information?

Ruakh 06:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, Ruakh. I agree, the section ordering is strange. Indeed, reworking it was second on my list of things to do (after adding all the Hebrew lettering, which of course, I have not yet completed). I'd love to see the ordering be fixed. You're welcome to just go ahead and do it, but could you propose some new possible orderings here first? — Ke6jjj 18:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Periodbot output

I wonder if someone would be kind enough to take a look at the entry for this article in [[1]]. The criteria used by periodbot may be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Punctuation. I don't feel qualified to review the punctuation in the article, but one of the editors here may want to judge whether any of the flags have merit. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 22:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That page is far out of date; the article has changed so much that little of what Periodbot flagged is still in the article. Ruakh 04:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for checking. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Something important that is missing

WHERE ARE THE GZEROT?! PEOPLE WHO READ THIS WON'T BE ABLE TO CONJUGATE VERBS PROBABLY! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.128.42.30 (talk • contribs) .

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. -Tomer^talk 22:20, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Word Order

Although strictly speaking it may be correct, as a fluent speaker I think that the notion that the word order is somewhat arbitrary and may be SVO or VSO is only somewhat correct. It is true that both orders naturally work in the language, VSO is mainly used in Biblical Hebrew (even the example that is given, by the way, is from the Bible, although the beginning of the article clearly states that the article is about the grammar of Modern Hebrew). In Modern Hebrew, under normal circumstances, SVO is used almost exclusively (although, of course, the "et" particle is still required for direct objects). The article is not incorrect, of course, but at the same time, I think it is misleading to say that Modern Hebrew uses both orders equally and has no preference of one over the other - that is simply not the case. --EngineeringCat 04:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. VSO is allowed in Hebrew (at least, much more so than in English), but it's not used arbitrarily. Really, I think the article would benefit from an explanation of when VSO is used. I'll have to think more about it, but my initial instinct is that it's one way to emphasize the subject:

Person A: [to person B] Ma asita hayom?

Person B: Shum davar.

Person A: [to person C] V'ma asita ata?

Person A: Tikkhi et-ha-zevel, b'vakasha.

Person B: Kakh et-ze ata, im ze mafria l'kha.

Actually, the latter example is VOS (though I think VSO — kakh ata et-ze — would work, too). I think VOS depends on the object being very short. And I think both VSO and VOS are more common with some subjects (such as ata) than others (such as ani, anakhnu). That's just my initial thought, though.

Ruakh 01:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and point taken. I think this is somewhat similar to Russian - because of the case system in Russian, virtually any word order can be used and the meaning remains the same. However, Russian is also, generally, an SVO language, and the other orders are used to emphasize something or in certain other situations, but not commonly. Technically, by keeping the "et" in the right place, any word order can be achieved in Hebrew, as it essentially marks the accusative case. --EngineeringCat 01:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that the reversed subject/verb came only when an adverb or adverbial phrase where present. For instance:

Ahar-kakh ra'ah Ze'ev et hamechonit. (אחר–כך ראה זאב את המכונית)

Is that not correct? J21 06:19, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. That might be the case in the third person — I'll have to think about it — but it's definitely not in the first and second persons. (The first and second persons allow a good deal of flexibility, for the simple reason that as soon as you encounter the subject, it's obvious it's the subject, because its person and number matches the verb's. Though to be honest, I'm not sure if something like "na'ase et-ze, ata v'ani," which on the surface is VOS, might in some sense really be SVO with right-dislocation and pronoun-dropping.) Ruakh 13:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I would think the "at ve'ani" addition isn't a rearrangement of the sentence so much as 'repetition' of the subject which was implicit (through the use of "na'ase") for emphasis. Kind of like throwing in the object at the start of the sentence in English: "Me, I like chocolate ice cream more." All it really is is a stylistic device for clarification (who is the 'we' you're talking about?) -- the "at ve'ani" isn't a grammatically necessary part of that sentence, after all. J21 14:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

יתכתב

In the table which lists different binyanim and tenses for the root כתב, the final one -- יתכתב (yitkatev) -- should have a dagesh in the second ת, should it not? (i.e. יתכּתּב). I don't want to make the edit because editing Hebrew on an English computer is always worrisome. I'd rather leave it to someone with a little more expertise. ;) J21 04:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)