4.12 Working back to the Lexical Form

* As we mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, to understand the Hebrew Bible, you WON’T need to know how to take a singular word and make it plural

You WILL need to know how to take a plural word and identify its singular counterpart

• Below is how to go from a plural noun to the singular, lexical form (assuming you didn’t already know the singular Lexical Form):
  1. Remove the plural or dual ending
  2. Perhaps add a Feminine Singular ending (usually ה ָ ), or less frequently, ה ֶ for Masculine Singular
  3. For Geminate nouns, drop the Dagesh Forte in the final letter when it lacks a vowel
  4. Often change vowels
     • Propretonic reduction - often without the plural ending, a reduced propretonic vowel in the plural will be a long vowel in the singular
     • Recognize the plural pattern of a Segholate noun
  5. Memorize the most common irregular pluralizations (Anki will have both singular and plural forms of these words)

Of course, the more vocabulary words you know, the less you will need to mechanically go through these steps!