The Imperfect Verb

The imperfect, expressing unfinished action, is formed from an abstract substantive preceded by the fragments of the personal pronouns (ן, א, תּ, י) which are called performatives, תּקְטֹל, יִקְטֹל, אֶקְטֹל.
The imperfect always used personal pronoun prefixes and in some cases suffixes, whereas the perfect never uses the personal pronoun prefixes.

Since the majority of the verbs in the Old Testament are in the past time, we translate these verb forms as past. These forms, however, could be past, present, or future. The imperfect shows either incipient incomplete actions (he began to look) or frequentative incomplete actions (he looked repeatedly). An imperfect may be in various times, in various modes, or in various persons, but one must be careful that his translation always will show incomplete action.

Personal Pronoun Prefixes

Singular Plural
3 m י He 3 m י וּ They (m)
3 f תּ She 3 f נָה תּ They (f)
2 m תּ You (m) 2 m תּ וּ You all (m)
2 f תּ ִי You (f) 2 f נָה תּ You all (f)
1 c א I 1 c נ We

Beginning with the root קטל and adding the suffixes and prefixes:

Singular
3 m יִקְטֹל He began to kill
3 f תִּקְטֹל She began to kill
2 m תִּקְטֹל You (m) began to kill
2 f תִּקְטְלִי You (f) began to kill
1 c אֶקְטֹל I began to kill
Plural
3 m יִקְטְלוּ They (m) began to kill
3 f תִּקְטֹ֣לְנָה They (f) began to kill
2 m תִּקְטְלוּ You all (m) began to kill
2 f תִּקְטֹ֣לְנָה You all (f) began to kill
1 c נִקְטֹל We began to kill
  1. Substituting the three radicals of most strong verbs for קטל will result in a paradigm of the simple imperfect for that verb.
  2. The ground form of most imperfects is יַקְטֻל. The vowel of the suffix is, attenuated from the original, except under the א, which prefers  ֶ   See the rules for gutturals for this preference of vowel.
  3. The second vowel in most strong verbs is ֹ  (ō). It is a tone long o heightened from an original ֻ  (ŭ). This stem vowel is volatilized before the vowel suffixes וּ and   ִי . Instead of יִקְטֹלוּ we find יִקְטְלוּ since טֹ is an unaccented open pre-tonic syllable before a vowel suffix.
  4. The performative יִקְ is a closed syllable. Thus, we know that shewa under the first radical ק is a syllable divider. Watch for daghesh lene following this closed syllable, יִקְדַּשׁ, יִשְׁכַּב, יִכְתֹּב.