Identifying a Verb's גזרה from Its Infinitive

The גזרות page names the classes. This one is the decision procedure: you have met לְהַגִּיעַ in a sentence, you need its root, its binyan and its class, and you need them in the next four seconds.

The infinitive is the right form to start from, because it is the form Israelis actually hand you when you ask how to say something, and because it preserves more of the binyan's signature than most finite forms. Run it in two steps: the front of the word narrows the binyan; what is left narrows the גזרה. This procedure assumes you know the pronunciation, from speech, niqqud or a dictionary entry. Unpointed spelling alone hides both the vowels and the dagesh, so it cannot always distinguish forms such as nif'al להיחשב from a hif'il beginning with the same letters.

Step 1 — the binyan, from the front

Strip the ל and listen to — or inspect the niqqud on — the first part of what remains. There are only five possible answers, not seven, because pu'al and huf'al have no infinitive at all.

Three footnotes make the table useful without pretending it is magic. hitpa'el hides when the first radical is a sibilant: the ת swaps places with it, so להשתמש, להסתדר, להצטלם and להזדקן all begin with something other than הת. That is metathesis, and the ת is still there, just one letter later. Second, for a sound-root full stem, pa'al's o is written with a vav — לכתוב, לסגור, לשמוע — while pi'el's pattern vowel is not. So a full stem with no vav is not pa'al; the converse is unsafe, because a pi'el can contain a root vav, as in לכוון. Short pa'al infinitives have no o to write either — לָרֶדֶת, לָצֵאת, לָתֵת, לָלֶכֶת — and step 2 catches them. Third, a ־ות ending swallows the stem vowel: לְהַרְאוֹת shows no long i and לְנַסּוֹת no a–e, so neither row fires on a ל״ה infinitive. Read it by elimination, then confirm from another principal part when the spelling is ambiguous.

Step 2 — the גזרה, from what is left

The rows that offer more than one answer are the ones to slow down on, because guessing there is how people end up hunting for roots that do not exist. A final ־וֹת may contain the ל״ה infinitive ending, as in לִקְנוֹת from ק־נ־ה, or a genuine final ת after cholam, as in לִשְׁבּוֹת from ש־ב־ת; the past קָנָה / שָׁבַת settles it. The ־ֶת row also has two lexical exceptions: לָקַחַת is ל־ק־ח, whose ל assimilates as though it were a נ, and לָלֶכֶת is ה־ל־ך, whose ה drops. That ending promises a missing or assimilated first radical, not that it was necessarily a י or a נ.

Eight infinitives, end to end

Five of those eight need a word of reasoning.

לָרֶדֶת. The ־ֶת ending and the two consonants ר and ד say a first radical is missing, and the class could be either. Check the past tense: יָרַד. There is the letter, and it is a י.

לְהַגִּיעַ. The dagesh in the ג has no source in the visible letters, so a first radical assimilated into it. Was it a נ or a י? The yod route, גזרת חפי״צ, is a closed set of eight roots whose second radical is צ or ז — and here the second radical is a ג. So the letter is a נ: נ־ג־ע. The same test tells you that הִצִּיג and הִצִּיעַ are not פ״נ.

לִקְנוֹת. The ־וֹת ending suggests ל״ה but cannot prove it, because a sound root ending in ת can look the same. The past קָנָה restores the ה and confirms ק־נ־ה; compare לִשְׁבּוֹת — שָׁבַת, where the ת stays in the past because it is radical.

לְהָבִין. After the hif'il's ה only ב and ן remain, and hif'il's own long i fills the gap. Two consonants plus a long vowel means a hollow root — and hollow roots hide either a ו or a י, with nothing in hif'il to say which. Here it is ב־י־ן, and no amount of staring will tell you; look it up.

לָצֵאת. Two signals at once — the ־ֵאת shape of a lost first radical, and an א sitting at the end of the stem. That is two classes on one root, פ״י and ל״א, which is exactly why the infinitive is shorter than its neighbours לָשֶׁבֶת and לָרֶדֶת.

Running it backwards

Given a sound root and a binyan, can you predict the infinitive? In four binyanim out of five, yes — their sound-root shapes are fixed. כ־ת־ב happens to fill all five, so it can show the whole answer at once. Weak roots apply the class-specific adjustments taught on their own pages.

pa'al is where prediction stops, and it stops completely. Look at what the same binyan produces: לִכְתּוֹב, לִשְׁמוֹעַ, לָשֶׁבֶת, לָקַחַת, לָתֵת, לִיפּוֹל, לָצֵאת, לָלֶכֶת. Within פ״נ alone the outcomes are לִיפּוֹל, לִנְסוֹעַ, לָגַעַת, לָתֵת and לָגֶשֶׁת — five different answers from one class, and no rule generates them. Learn every pa'al verb as a pair, citation form plus infinitive, and treat the infinitive as a fact about the verb rather than something you derive.

Common Mistakes

1. Looking the verb up as you met it. This is the single biggest obstacle English speakers hit with a Hebrew dictionary, and it makes the language look as though it is missing its commonest words.

2. Counting a prefix as a root letter. Stopping at the letters you can see gives you a real root that is the wrong root.

3. Assuming an assimilated first radical is a נ. Both פ״נ and פ״י assimilate, and the surface result is identical.

4. Filing a bare-ל infinitive as pa'al. pa'al and pi'el are the two binyanim with no ה, and only the vowels separate them — but ktiv male prints the difference for you.

5. Filing a hif'il as pi'el. Four letters and a מ in the present tense make הבין look exactly like דיבר.

Key Takeaways

• Work in two steps: the pronounced front of the infinitive narrows the binyan, and the stem narrows the גזרה or identifies what must be checked in another principal part.
• Only five binyanim have an infinitive — pu'al and huf'al do not — so step 1 has five answers: hitpa'el, nif'al, hif'il, pi'el or pa'al. Vowels and dagesh are part of the evidence; unpointed letters alone do not always decide.
• For a sound-root full stem, pa'al's o takes a vav while pi'el's pattern vowel does not. No vav therefore rules pa'al out, but a root vav can still occur in pi'el (לכוון), so the reverse inference is unsafe. Short pa'al infinitives need separate analysis.
• hitpa'el disguises itself before a sibilant — להשתמש, להסתדר, להצטלם — because the ת moves. And a ־ות infinitive shows no stem vowel at all, so step 1 reads it by elimination.
• Ambiguous shapes need a second check. For a ־ֶת infinitive, inspect the past tense: יָרַד restores י. For ־וֹת, compare קָנָה with שָׁבַת to learn whether ת is an ending or a radical. For an unexplained dagesh, ask whether the second radical is צ or ז before choosing assimilated י rather than נ.
• Backwards works in four binyanim for sound roots and fails in pa'al. לִכְתּוֹב, לָשֶׁבֶת, לָקַחַת, לָתֵת, לִיפּוֹל, לָגֶשֶׁת are not derivable — learn each pa'al verb as a citation-form-plus-infinitive pair.
• The habit to break: searching for a verb under an unanalyzed prefix. ל, מ, נ, ה and ת often belong to the pattern at the front of a verb; test their grammatical job before treating them as radicals.