Hebrew words generally contain two components, root and a grammatical portion. The root, typically three consonants (X-X-X), establishes the semantic field: l-m-d “studying,” g-z-l “stealing,” d-r-sû “searching.” The grammatical portion is a pattern of vowels and certain consonants that fits into the root; for example, XaXXan “one who does,” XaXaX “third-person- masculine, simple past tense.”
Other patterns give melamed “teacher,” talmid “student,” derasûah “exegesis,” midrasû “commentary.” Analyzing words in an advertisement, Geoffrey Sampson (Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1985], pp. 89–92) finds that only 30 percent have more than one possible reading in isolation; in context none is ambiguous.
