B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Hi Glenn,

The root שכב acts in the form of Yiqtal also in the imperative (and infinite).
So you will always see it in that sound of "qtal".

Basically, it would get the vowel Patah', like in 2Sam. 13:5.
But Here, it is in the pausal form, and so the Qamats comes instead of the Patah'.

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The sign on the left of the Qamats is not a Meteg, it is called Siluq.
They both look the same.
But the Siluq comes only one time in the verse - on the last word.
This is the mark that ends the verse.
The common mark ":", that is seen in the printed texts is not really a cantillation mark.

Notice that the Meteg comes as a secondary mark next to the main mark, while the Siluq comes as the main mark.

The imperfect of שכב is יִשְׁכַּב not יִשְׁכֹּב. The imperative is formed by removing the preformative from the imperfect, which means שְׁכַב. It has kamats because it's in pause and the vowel was lengthened.

Thanxs Ducky and Jason for the info!

Glenn

Would the verb שַׁכַב be considered a stative verb (in particular a pathach-stative verb)?

Glenn

The qametz in that case seems to be a a lengthened holem. The vowel in the last syllable of a sentence is naturally lengthened as it falls under the prosaic rules.

Hi Glenn and Jonathan,

Glenn, it is stative.
(What do you mean by "pathach-stative verb"?)

by the way, you wrote שכב with two Patah'. I guess you wanted to write the perfect form, and then, the first letter would be with Qamats.

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Jonathan,
The Qamats comes instead of a Patah'.
It is imperative, and it comes in this verb with Patah'.
Here, in the pausal form, the Qamats replaces it.

Hi Ducky:

My grammar textbook (by Pratico & Pelt) breaks down the stative verbs into 3 categories depending on what is the vowel on the middle root consonant (so they defined pathach-stative as verbs that have a pathach on the middle consonant, they also define tsere-stative and holem-stative)

Glenn

Hi Glenn,

I understand.

The stative forms are basically the "tsere" and the "holam".
My opinion is that the form of the "patah" when it comes as stative, derived by an analogy to the other more common forms of "patah-verbs" (action-form).

So a lot of times we see stative verbs that have two forms: one as stative form and one as "action-form" (and the action-form is by an analogy).
And sometimes, stative verbs took all of their forms as an "action-verb" by an analogy.

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So it is fine to count three stative forms, only that the last one is probably based on ananlogy and uses another non-stative form.

I'd just learn it as part of a short group of a-theme imperfects, such as:

יִלְמַד (instead of *יִלְמֹד), infinitive: לִלְמֹד
יִרְכַּב (instead of *יִרְכֹּב), infinitive: לִרְכֹּב (despite many Israelis saying לִרְכַּב)
יִשְׁכַּב (instead of *יִשְׁכֹּב), infinitive: לִשְׁכַּב (!)
יִשְׁכַּח (instead of *יִשְׁכֹּחַ), infintive: לִשְׁכֹּחַ

Others: יִדְבַּק יִצְחַק יִצְעַק יִגְדַּל יִקְטַן יִצְדַּק

There may be others, but these are the ones that come to mind for me. It's just a group of words with an a-theme vowel instead of an o-theme vowel in the imperfect. I don't see that they are necessarily "stative" in any sense, though I know that this is an elusive tag that's been attached to them.

Just learn it as one of these forms. I don't know that the label "stative" is very useful in this regard.

All of these are stative