Alright, now I'll try to briefly explain the Hebrew
binyanim system. It's sort of complicated, but I'll try my best.
Hebrew has seven
binyanim (singular
binyan, literally "building"). Each one of them carries a certain meaning, and when a certain root is placed within that binyan (which has its own conjugations/derivational morphology), the binyan's meaning sort of becomes an overtone to the root...
I'll try to make that a bit clearer through examples further below.
These seven binyanim are commonly called pa'al, nif'al, pi'el, pu'al, hitpa'el, hif'il, and huf'al. The names come from the masculine singular 3rd person past form of the root *P-?-L "act, do" within each binyan.
Binyan Pa'al is the base binyan, a sort of catch-all with a wide array of semantic meanings. Binyan Nif'al represents verbs that are active (think active~stative distinction), inchoative, passive, reciprocal, and it also contains about 5 reflexive verbs. Hitpa'el consists of the same basic categories as Nif'al, except that the passive is extremely rare, and the active and reflexives are extremely common. Pi'el contains mostly agentives (and a few causatives, mostly along the lines of "cause to become") Hif'il consists mostly of causatives. Pu'al is the passive counterpart of pi'el, and huf'al of hif'il.
These categories are much stronger for more commonly-used verbs (or recent creations), while older verbs have a greater tendency toward drifting meaning-wise, especially when a binyan may completely collapse and disappear.
Now, let's give a few examples of roots across multiple binyanim (the form given is the citation form, the masculine singular 3rd person past, within the specified binyan).
K-T-V "write"
katav "write" (Binyan pa'al, as it is the root meaning)
nichtav "be written (Binyan nif'al, as it is passive)
hitkatev "correspond" (Binyan hitpa'el, more of a reciprocal)
hichtiv "dictate" (Binyan hif'il, "cause to write")
huchtav "be dictated" (Binyan huf'al, the passive form of hif'il)
H-L-CH "go, walk"
halach "go" (Pa'al, root meaning)
holich "lead, transport, conduct" (Hif'il, "cause to go"; the form is irregular because one aitch dropped through haplology)
CH-SH-V "think, consider"
chashav "think" (Pa'al, root meaning)
nechshav "be considered" (Nif'al, passive; /X/ has a tendency to screw up preceding vowels)
chishev "calculate, esteem" (Pi'el, agentive)
chushav "be calculated, esteemed" (Pu'al, passive pi'el)
hitchashev "consider, take into consideration" (Hitpa'el, active verb)
hechshiv "esteem, ascribe importance" (Hif'il, causative)
?-L-H "go up, rise, grow, excel, immigrate to Israel" (ever heard of
making aliyah? Aliyah is the Pa'al Gerund of ?-L-H)
'alah "rise, go up, immigrate to Israel" (Pa'al, root meaning)
he'alah "raise, lift, promote, cause to immigrate to Israel" (Hif'il)
hu'alah "be raised, be promoted" (Huf'al, passive hif'il)
hit'alah "rise, be raised, exalt oneself, boast" (Hitpa'el, active)
?-L-M "vanish" (no pa'al form)
ne'elam "vanish, disappear" (Nif'al, active)
hit'alam "ignore, overlook" (Hitpa'el, active "making itself vanish")
he'elim "hide, conceal" (Hif'al, causative "cause to vanish")
Get it? You can also see how the meaning also drifts as different binyanim are applied to each root.
The one interesting thing about the binyanim, though, is that there are no (well, very, very few) irregular verbs. But, within each binyan, there exists many different patterns (eg, within pa'al, the pattern for the masculine singular present tense verb varies from CoCeC to CaCeC to CoCeh to CaC to CoCeCa to CoCeach). Yet all of these are perfectly regular. This is called the
gizrah, and I will get to it next time.
(As well as more of what the binyanim do to other parts of speech, other than verbs).
Trebor wrote:btw, i put in a request for derivational morphology examples.
Erm, I don't understand what exactly it is you want to see. Just, more examples of related words? The more interesting connections? What?