1 Participles in general: Unlike the perfect and the imperfect, the participle is a non-finite verb form, which means that it has no time reference of its own, hence the time reference is specified by the context. The 3ms functions as the base form of the participle.

-There are two types of participles, active and passive.

-The participle in Hebrew shares the qualities of both nouns and verbs:

Like the noun, the participle is inflected only in gender and number and it can take the definite article or a possessive pronoun (see Exercise 18.2).

Being a verb form, the participle can replace a finite verb denoting an ongoing action and/or take an object (see Exercises 18.3–4).

2 Participles of (unchangeable verbs) and verbs

-Only transitive perf-/a/ verbs (verbs that can take a direct object) of usually have both an active and a passive participle, e.g., ‘guarding’ and ‘guarded’. All other verbs have either an active participle, e.g., ‘standing up’, or a passive participle, e.g., ‘aged’.

-The base form (ms) of participles of the perf-/e/ verbs (e.g.,), the perf-/o/ verbs (e.g.,) and the verbs (e.g.,) is identical with the 3ms of the perfect.

-The passive participle of the perf-/a/ verbs, e.g., and many of the perf-/e/ and perf-/o/ verbs correspond to English adjectives, e.g., ‘old’.

3 Participles with deviant form: The presence of a changeable consonant and/or a guttural in a verb root normally results in regular sound changes.