התהלך and Its Congeners

Abstract

In 1955, E. A. Speiser argued that nonreflexive, nonmiddle, and nonreciprocal verbs such as התהלך “walk about” are not derived from the hithpael stem but originate in a durative stem comparable to the Akkadian Gtn. This article challenges Speiser’s argument and intends to show that these “atypical” hithpael verbs indeed reflect semantic features of a reflexive stem.