Looking ahead: Each Stem and Conjugation will have a diagnostic \(Pre =\) Formula

HGQ SHORTHAND: \(Pre\) = Strong Form Diagnostic Word-initial Sequence

Each of the stems/conjugations has a distinctive combination of consonants, vowels, and occasionally Dagesh Forte marks the first one or two syllables of a given verb
This serves to make the strong form of the verb easy to differentiate from the other stems
We will call this diagnostic sequence “\(Pre\)”
- Saying “diagnostic word-initial sequence of consonants and vowels” would get tiresome!

ק represents any strong letter as \(R_1\) in a strong verb
This means the distinctive word-initial sequence of a Qal Perfect verb is no prefix/preformative and a Qamets in \(V_1\)
In other words, when a strong verb has no prefix/preformative, \(R_1\) is any strong letter and \(V_1 = \bar A\) (Qamets) it is nearly always a Qal Perfect conjugation
- Thanks to propretonic reduction, the Qamets reduces to Vocal Sheva in 2MP/3MP
- We will discuss weak letter deviations and how to work our way back to the strong verb paradigm in the next lesson