Structural focus
Deploy past conjugation in Pa'al, Pi'el, Hif'il with suffix subject encoding.
Objective
Convert conversational material to past tense using person-marking suffixes.
Deconstruction
Extract -נו suffix behavior and map directly to modern past-tense production.
Key points · 7
- The past tense is built by adding person-marking SUFFIXES to the verb stem — one suffix set across all binyanim. (Harrison calls it the 'perfect'; OHT calls it עָבָר, 'past'.)
- Pa'al past of סָגַר ('close'): סָגַרְתִּי (I), סָגַרְתָּ (you m.), סָגַרְתְּ (you f.), סָגַר (he), סָגְרָה (she), סָגַרְנוּ (we), סְגַרְתֶּם (you m.pl), סָגְרוּ (they).
- Unlike the present, the past encodes the PERSON in the ending — so the pronoun is optional: (אֲנִי) סָגַרְתִּי.
- Harrison's model is קָטַל → קָטַלְתִּי, קָטַלְתָּ, קָטַל, קָטְלָה, קָטַלְנוּ … (the 'perfect').
- Essential irregular: הָיָה ('was') → הָיִיתִי, הָיִיתָ, הָיָה, הָיְתָה, הָיוּ — Hebrew's past 'to be', which has no present form.
- Biblical narrative often uses the vav-consecutive (OHT L15): וַ + a 'future'-looking form reads as PAST — וַיִּסְגֹּר ('and he closed'). Modern Hebrew drops this and uses the plain past.
- The 1st-plural ending ־נוּ (סָגַרְנוּ 'we closed') is also the Biblical object suffix 'us' (גְּאַלְתָּנוּ 'You redeemed us') — one ending, two jobs.