2255: Hebrew Contronyms Feb 17, 2021

Hebrew has a causative form for verbs which effectively reverses the meaning of the word, so הוא לומד means 'he learns' and הוא מלמד means 'he teaches', from the same root. It also has a number of contronyms that don't need to change form at all. For instance ללכת usually means 'to go' and לבוא usually means 'to come' but in certain cases that can effectively switch, such as in בא השמש (literally: the sun is coming) referring to a Sunset.

2216: Hebrew Causative Jan 8, 2020

In English, there are intensive adverbs or other adjuncts like 'very', 'well' and in the UK, 'bloody' all merely adding emphasis. In other languages, the intensive usually distinguishes the root meaning of a word, effectively the causative changes the intransitivity. For instance, the phrase הוא בא means "he comes" but in the causative form הוא מביא means "he brings" (i.e. he caused something else to 'come'). Hebrew uses many morphosyntactic systems in order to create meaning in verb stems and other prefixes are added for other tenses/aspects.