Arabic verbs (فِعْل fiʻl; pl. أَفْعَال afʻāl), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of two, three, four and also five (but mainly three) consonants called a root (triliteral or quadriliteral according to the number of consonants). The root communicates the basic meaning of the verb, e.g. k-t-b 'write', q-r-ʼ 'read', ʼ-k-l 'eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as person, gender, number, tense, mood, and voice.
Contents
- Inflectional categories
- Tense
- Mood
- Voice
- Participle
- Verbal noun madar
- Derivational categories conjugations
- Regular verb conjugation for person number tense aspect mood and participles
- Weak roots
- Assimilated first weak roots
- Hollow second weak roots
- Defective third weak roots
- Doubled roots
- Formation of derived stems forms
- Sound verbs
- Form VIII assimilations
- Defective third weak verbs
- Hollow second weak verbs
- Assimilated first weak verbs
- Hamzated verbs
- Doubly weak verbs
- Summary of vowels
- Verbs in colloquial Arabic
- References
Various categories are marked on verbs:
Weakness is an inherent property of a given verb determined by the particular consonants of the verb root (corresponding to a verb conjugation in Classical Latin and other European languages), with five main types of weakness and two or three subtypes of each type.
Arabic grammarians typically use the root f-ʻ-l to indicate the particular shape of any given element of a verbal paradigm. As an example, the form yutakātabu 'he is corresponded (with)' would be listed generically as yutafāʻalu, specifying the generic shape of a strong Form VI passive verb, third-person masculine singular present indicative.
The maximum possible total number of verb forms derivable from a root — not counting participles and verbal nouns — is approximately 13 person/number/gender forms; times 7.385 tense/mood combinations, counting the sa- future (since the moods are active only in the present tense, and the imperative has only 5 of the 13 paradigmatic forms); times 17 form/voice combinations (since forms IX, XI-XV exist only for a small number of stative roots, and form VII cannot normally form a passive), for a total of 1,632. Each of these has its own stem form, and each of these stem forms itself comes in numerous varieties, according to the weakness (or lack thereof) of the underlying root.
Inflectional categories
Each particular lexical verb is specified by four stems, two each for the active and passive voices. In a particular voice, one stem (the past stem) is used for the past tense, and the other (the non-past stem) is used for the present and future tenses, along with non-indicative moods, e.g. subjunctive and imperative. The past and non-past stems are sometimes also called the perfective stem and imperfective stem, respectively, based on a traditional misinterpretation of Arabic stems as representing grammatical aspect rather than grammatical tense. (Although there is still some disagreement about the interpretation of the stems as tense or aspect, the dominant current view is that the stems simply represent tense, sometimes of a relative rather than absolute nature. There are some unusual usages of the stems in certain contexts that were once interpreted as indicating aspectual distinctions, but are now thought to simply be idiosyncratic constructions that do not neatly fit into any aspectual paradigm.)
To the past stem, suffixes are added to mark the verb for person, number and gender, while to the non-past stem, a combination of prefixes and suffixes are added. (Very approximately, the prefixes specify the person and the suffixes indicate number and gender.) A total of 13 forms exist for each of the two stems, specifying person (first, second or third); number (singular, dual or plural); and gender (masculine or feminine).
There are six separate moods in the non-past: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive, short energetic and long energetic. The moods are generally marked by suffixes. When no number suffix is present, the endings are -u for indicative, -a for subjunctive, no ending for imperative and jussive, -an for shorter energetic, -anna for longer energetic. When number suffixes are present, the moods are either distinguished by different forms of the suffixes (e.g. -ūna for masculine plural indicative vs. -ū for masculine plural subjunctive/imperative/jussive), or not distinguished at all. The imperative exists only in the second person and is distinguished from the jussive by the lack of the normal second-person prefix ta-/tu-.
The third person masculine singular past tense form serves as the "dictionary form" used to identify a verb, similar to the infinitive in English. (Arabic has no infinitive.) For example, the verb meaning 'write' is often specified as kataba, which actually means 'he wrote'. This indicates that the past-tense stem is katab-; the corresponding non-past stem is -ktub-, as in yaktubu 'he writes'.
Tense
There are three tenses in Arabic: the past tense (اَلْمَاضِي al-māḍī), the present tense (اَلْمُضَارِع al-muḍāriʻ) and the future tense. The future tense in Classical Arabic is formed by adding either the prefix سَـ sa- or the separate word سَوْفَ sawfa onto the beginning of the present tense verb, e.g. سَيَكْتُبُ sa-yaktubu or سَوْفَ يَكْتُبُ sawfa yaktubu 'he will write'.
In some contexts, the tenses represent aspectual distinctions rather than tense distinctions. The usage of Arabic tenses is as follows:
In all but Form I, there is only one possible shape for each of the past and non-past stems for a given root. In Form I, however, different verbs have different shapes. Examples:
Notice that the second vowel can be any of a i u in both past and non-past stems. The vowel a occurs in most past stems, while i occurs in some (especially intransitive) and u occurs only in a few stative verbs (i.e. whose meaning is 'be X' or 'become X' where X is an adjective). The most common patterns are:
Mood
There are three moods (حَالَات ḥālāt, a word that also means "cases"; sg. حَالَة ḥālah), whose forms are derived from the imperfective stem: the indicative mood (مَرْفُوع marfūʻ), usually ending in u; the subjunctive (مَنْصُوب manṣūb), usually ending in a; and the jussive (مَجْزُوم majzūm), with no ending. In less formal Arabic and in spoken dialects, the final vowels of the indicative and subjunctive are not pronounced, making them identical to jussive.
The imperative (صِيغَة اَلْأَمْر ṣīghat al-amr) (positive, only 2nd person) is formed by dropping the verbal prefix from the imperfective jussive stem, e.g. قَدِّم qaddim 'present!'. If the result starts with two consonants followed by a vowel (a or i), an elidible alif is added to the beginning of the word, usually pronounced as "i", e.g. اِغْسِلْ ighsil 'wash!' or اِفْعَل ifʻal 'do!' if the present form vowel is u, then the alif is also pronounced as u, e.g. أُكْتُب uktub 'write!'. Negative imperatives are formed from the jussive.
The exception to the above rule is the form (or stem) IV verbs. In these verbs a non-elidible alif pronounced as a- is always prefixed to the imperfect jussive form, e.g. أرسل arsil "send!", أضف aḍif 'add!'.
The subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses after certain conjunctions. The jussive is used in negation, in negative imperatives, and in the hortative li+jussive. For example: 2. sg. m.:
Voice
Arabic has two verbal voices (صِيغَات sīghāt "forms", sg. صِيغَة sīghah), active (صِيغَة اَلْمَعْلُوم ṣīghat al-maʻlūm), and passive (صِيغَة اَلْمَجْهُول ṣīghat al-majhūl). The passive voice is expressed by a change in vocalization. For example:
Thus, the active and passive forms are spelled identically in Arabic; only their vowel markings differ.
Participle
Every verb has a corresponding active participle, and most have passive participles. E.g. muʻallim 'teacher' is the active participle to stem II. of the root ʻ-l-m ('know').
Verbal noun (maṣdar)
In addition to a participle, there is a verbal noun (in Arabic, مَصْدَر maṣdar, pl. مَصَادِر maṣādir, literally meaning 'source'), sometimes called a gerund, which is similar to English gerunds and verb-derived nouns of various sorts (e.g. "running" and "a run" from "to run"; "objection" from "to object"). As shown by the English examples, its meaning refers both to the act of doing something and (by frequent semantic extension) to its result. One of its syntactic functions is as a verbal complement of another verb, and this usage it corresponds to the English gerund or infinitive (He prevented me from running or He began to run).
Some well-known examples of verbal nouns are fatḥ (see Fatah) (Form I), tanẓīm (Form II), jihād (Form III), islām (Form IV), intifāḍah (feminine of Form VIII verbal noun), and istiqlāl (Form X).
Derivational categories, conjugations
The system of verb conjugations in Arabic is quite complicated, and is formed along two axes. One axis, known as the form (described as "Form I", "Form II", etc.), is used to specify grammatical concepts such as causative, intensive, reciprocal, passive or reflexive, and involves varying the stem form. The other axis, known as the weakness, is determined by the particular consonants making up the root. For example, defective (or third-weak) verbs have a w or y as the last root consonant (e.g. r-m-y 'throw', d-ʻ-w 'call'), and doubled verbs have the second and third consonants the same (e.g. m-d-d 'extend'). These "weaknesses" have the effect of inducing various irregularities in the stems and endings of the associated verbs.
Examples of the different forms of a sound verb (i.e. with no root weaknesses), from the root k-t-b 'write' (using ḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):
The main types of weakness are as follows:
Regular verb conjugation for person-number, tense-aspect-mood, and participles
In Arabic the grammatical person and number as well as the mood are designated by a variety of prefixes and suffixes. The following table shows the paradigm of a regular sound Form I verb, kataba (كتب) 'to write'. Most of the final short vowels are often omitted in speech, except the vowel of the feminine plural ending -na, and normally the vowel of the past tense second person feminine singular ending -ti.
The initial vowel in the imperative (which is elidable) varies from verb to verb, as follows:
In unvocalised Arabic, katabtu, katabta, katabti and katabat are all written the same: كتبت. Forms katabtu and katabta (and sometimes even katabti) can be abbreviated to katabt in spoken Arabic and in pausa, making them also sound the same.
ا (alif) in final ـُوا (-ū) is silent.
Weak roots
Roots containing one or two of the radicals w (wāw), y (yāʼ ) or ʼ (hamzah) often lead to verbs with special phonological rules because these radicals can be influenced by their surroundings. Such verbs are called "weak" (verba infirma, 'weak verbs') and their paradigms must be given special attention. In the case of hamzah, these peculiarities are mainly orthographical, since hamzah is not subject to elision (the orthography of hamzah and alif is unsystematic due to confusion in early Islamic times). According to the position of the weak radical in the root, the root can be classified into four classes: first weak, second weak, third weak and doubled, where both the second and third radicals are identical. Some roots fall into more than one category at once.
Assimilated (first-weak) roots
Most first-weak verbs have a w as their first root. These verbs are entirely regular in the past tense. In the non-past, the w drops out, leading to a shorter stem (e.g. wajada (yajidu) 'to find'), where the stem is -jid- in place of a longer stem like -jlid- from the verb jalada (yajlidu) 'to whip, flog'. This same stem is used throughout, and there are no other irregularities except for the imperative, which has no initial vowel, consistent with the fact that the stem for the imperative begins with only one consonant.
The are various types of assimilated (first-weak) Form I verbs:
Hollow (second-weak) roots
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I hollow (second-weak) verb qāla (qultu, yaqūlu) 'to say', parallel to verbs of the faʻala (yafʻulu) type. See notes following the table for explanation.
All hollow (second-weak) verbs are conjugated in a parallel fashion. The endings are identical to strong verbs, but there are two stems (a longer and a shorter) in each of the past and non-past. The longer stem is consistently used whenever the ending begins with a vowel, and the shorter stem is used in all other circumstances. The longer stems end in a long vowel plus consonant, while the shorter stems end in a short vowel plus consonant. The shorter stem is formed simply by shortening the vowel of the long stem in all paradigms other than the active past of Form I verbs. In the active past paradigms of Form I, however, the longer stem always has an ā vowel, while the shorter stem has a vowel u or i corresponding to the actual second root consonant of the verb.
No initial vowel is needed in the imperative forms because the non-past stem does not begin with two consonants.
There are various types of Form I hollow verbs:
The passive paradigm of all Form I hollow verbs is as follows:
Defective (third-weak) roots
faʻā (yafʻī)
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb ramā (yarmī) 'to throw', parallel to verbs of the faʻala (yafʻilu) type. See notes following the table for explanation.
Each of the two main stems (past and non-past) comes in two variants, a full and a shortened. For the past stem, the full is ramay-, shortened to ram- in much of the third person (i.e. before vowels, in most cases). For the non-past stem, the full is rmiy-, shortened to rm- before -ū -ī. The full non-past stem rmiy- appears as rmī- when not before a vowel; this is an automatic alternation in Classical Arabic. The places where the shortened stems occur are indicated by silver (past), gold (non-past).
The endings are actually mostly regular. But some endings are irregular, in boldface:
faʻā (yafʻū)
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb daʻā (yadʻū) 'to call', parallel to verbs of the faʻala (yafʻulu) type. Verbs of this sort are entirely parallel to verbs of the faʻā (yafʻī) type, although the exact forms can still be tricky. See notes following the table for explanation.
Verbs of this sort are work nearly identically to verbs of the faʻā (yafʻī) type. There are the same irregular endings in the same places, and again two stems in each of the past and non-past tenses, with the same stems used in the same places:
The Arabic spelling has the following rules:
faʻiya (yafʻā)
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb nasiya (yansā) 'to forget', parallel to verbs of the faʻila (yafʻalu) type. These verbs differ in a number of significant respects from either of the above types.
This variant is somewhat different from the variants with -ī or -ū in the non-past. As with other third-weak verbs, there are multiple stems in each of the past and non-past, a full stem composed following the normal rules and one or more shortened stems.
- The full stem -nsay- occurs before -a/ā- or -n-, that is before dual endings, feminine plural endings and energetic endings corresponding to forms that are endingless in the jussive.
- The modified stem -nsā occurs in "endingless" forms (i.e. masculine or common-gender singular, plus 1st plural). As usual with third-weak verbs, it is shortened to -nsa in the jussive. These forms are marked with red.
- Before endings normally beginning with -i/ī- or -u/ū-, the stem and endings combine together into a shortened form: e.g. expected *ta-nsay-īna 'you (fem. sg.) forget', *ta-nsay-ūna 'you (masc. pl.) forget' instead become ta-nsayna, ta-nsawna respectively. The table above chooses to segment them as ta-nsa-yna, ta-nsa-wna, suggesting that a shortened stem -nsa- combines with irregular (compressed) endings -yna < *-īna, -wna < *-ūna. Similarly subjunctive/jussive ta-nsaw < *ta-nsay-ū; but note energetic ta-nsawunna < *ta-nsay-unna, where the original *-yu- has assimilated to -wu-. Consistent with the above analysis, we analyze this form as ta-nsa-wunna, with an irregular energetic ending -wunna where a glide consonant has developed after the previous vowel. However, since all moods in this case have a form containing -nsaw-, an alternative analysis would consider -nsaw and -nsay as stems. These forms are marked with gold.
The endings are actually mostly regular. But some endings are irregular in the non-past, in boldface:
Doubled roots
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I doubled verb madda (yamuddu) 'to extend', parallel to verbs of the faʻala (yafʻulu) type. See notes following the table for explanation.
All doubled verbs are conjugated in a parallel fashion. The endings are for the most part identical to those of strong verbs, but there are two stems (a regular and a modified) in each of the past and non-past. The regular stems are identical to the stem forms of sound verbs, while the modified stems have the two identical consonants pulled together into a geminate consonant and the vowel between moved before the geminate. In the above verb madda (yamuddu) 'to extend' (s.th.), the past stems are madad- (regular), madd- (modified), and the non-past stems are mdud- (regular), mudd- (modified). In the table, places where the regular past stem occurs are in silver, and places where the regular non-past stem occurs are in gold; everywhere else, the modified stem occurs.
No initial vowel is needed in most of the imperative forms because the modified non-past stem does not begin with two consonants.
The concept of having two stems for each tense, one for endings beginning with vowels and one for other endings, occurs throughout the different kinds of weaknesses.
Following the above rules, endingless jussives would have a form like tamdud, while the corresponding indicatives and subjunctives would have forms like tamuddu, tamudda. As a result, for the doubled verbs in particular, there is a tendency to harmonize these forms by adding a vowel to the jussives, usually a, sometimes i. These are the only irregular endings in these paradigms, and have been indicated in boldface. The masculine singular imperative likewise has multiple forms, based on the multiple forms of the jussive.
The are various types of doubled Form I verbs:
Formation of derived stems ("forms")
Arabic verb morphology includes augmentations of the root, also known as forms, an example of the derived stems found among the Semitic languages. For a typical verb based on a triliteral root (i.e. a root formed using three root consonants), the basic form is termed Form I, while the augmented forms are known as Form II, Form III, etc. The forms in normal use are Form I through Form X; Forms XI through XV exist but are rare and obsolescent. Forms IX and XI are used only with adjectival roots referring to colors and physical defects (e.g. "red", "blue", "blind", "deaf", etc.), and are stative verbs having the meaning of "be X" or "become X" (e.g. Form IX iḥmarra 'be red, become red, blush', Form XI iḥmārra with the same meaning). Although the structure that a given root assumes in a particular augmentation is predictable, its meaning is not (although many augmentations have one or more "usual" or prototypical meanings associated with them), and not all augmentations exist for any given root. As a result, these augmentations are part of the system of derivational morphology, not part of the inflectional system.
The construction of a given augmentation is normally indicated using the dummy root f–ʻ–l (ف–ع–ل), based on the verb faʻala 'to do'. Because Arabic has no direct equivalent to the infinitive form of Western languages, the third-person masculine singular past tense is normally used as the dictionary form of a given verb, i.e. the form by which a verb is identified in a dictionary or grammatical discussion. Hence, the word faʻala above actually has the meaning of 'he did', but is translated as 'to do' when used as a dictionary form.
Verbs based on quadriliteral roots (roots with four consonants) also exist. There are four augmentations for such verbs, known as Forms Iq, IIq, IIIq and IVq. These have forms similar to Forms II, V, VII and IX respectively of triliteral verbs. Forms IIIq and IVq are fairly rare. The construction of such verbs is typically given using the dummy verb faʻlala. However, the choice of this particular verb is somewhat non-ideal in that the third and fourth consonants of an actual verb are typically not the same, despite the same consonant used for both; this is a particular problem e.g. for Form IVq. The verb tables below use the dummy verb faʻlaqa instead.
Some grammars, especially of colloquial spoken varieties rather than of Classical Arabic, use other dummy roots. For example, A Short Reference Grammar of Iraqi Arabic (Wallace M. Erwin) uses FaMaLa and FaSTaLa for three and four-character roots, respectively (standing for "First Middle Last" and "First Second Third Last"). Commonly the dummy consonants are given in capital letters.
The system of identifying verb augmentations by Roman numerals is an invention by Western scholars. Traditionally, Arabic grammarians did not number the augmentations at all, instead identifying them by the corresponding dictionary form. For example, Form V would be called "the tafaʻʻala form".
Each form can have either active or passive forms in the past and non-past tenses, so reflexives are different from passives.
Note that the present passive of forms I and IV are the same. Otherwise there is no confusion.
Sound verbs
Sound verbs are those verbs with no associated irregularities in their constructions. Verbs with irregularities are known as weak verbs; generally, this occurs either with (1) verbs based on roots where one or more of the consonants (or radicals) is w (و), y (ي) or the glottal stop ʼ (ﺀ) (also known by the Arabic names of the corresponding letters, which are wāw, yāʼ and hamzah, respectively); or (2) verbs where the second and third root consonants are the same.
Some verbs that would be classified as "weak" according to the consonants of the verb root are nevertheless conjugated as a strong verb. This happens, for example:
Form VIII assimilations
Form VIII has a -t- that is infixed into the root, directly after the first root consonant. This -t- assimilates to certain coronal consonants occurring as the first root consonant. In particular, with roots whose first consonant is d z th dh ṣ ṭ ḍ ẓ, the combination of root and infix t appears as dd zd thth dhdh ṣṭ ṭṭ ḍṭ ẓẓ. That is, the t assimilates the emphasis of the emphatic consonants ṣ ṭ ḍ ẓ and the voicing of d z, and assimilates entirely to the interdental consonants th dh ẓ. The consonant cluster ḍṭ, as in iḍṭarra 'compel, force', is unexpected given modern pronunciation, having a voiced stop next to a voiceless one; this reflects the fact that ṭ was formerly pronounced voiced, and ḍ was pronounced as the emphatic equivalent not of d but of an unusual lateral sound. (ḍ was possibly an emphatic voiced alveolar lateral fricative /ɮˤ/ or a similar affricated sound /dɮˤ/ or /dˡˤ/; see the article on the letter ḍād.)
Defective (third-weak) verbs
Other than for Form I active, there is only one possible form for each verb, regardless of whether the third root consonant is w or y. All of the derived third-weak verbs have the same active-voice endings as faʻā (yafʻī) verbs except for Forms V and VI, which have past-tense endings like faʻā (yafʻī) verbs but non-past endings like faʻiya (yafʻā) verbs. The passive-voice endings of all third-weak verbs (whether Form I or derived) are the same as for the faʻiya (yafʻā) verbs. The verbal nouns have various irregularities: feminine in Form II, -in declension in Form V and VI, glottal stop in place of root w/y in Forms VII–X.
The active and passive participles of derived defective verbs consistently are of the -in and -an declensions, respectively.
Defective Form IX verbs are extremely rare. Heywood and Nahmad list one such verb, iʻmāya 'be/become blind', which does not follow the expected form *iʻmayya. They also list a similarly rare Form XI verb iʻmāyya 'be/become blind' — this time with the expected form.
Hollow (second-weak) verbs
Only the forms with irregularities are shown. The missing forms are entirely regular, with w or y appearing as the second radical, depending on the root. There are unexpected feminine forms of the verbal nouns of Form IV, X.
Assimilated (first-weak) verbs
When the first radical is w, it drops out in the Form I non-past. Most of the derived forms are regular, except that the sequences uw iw are assimilated to ū ī, and the sequence wt in Form VIII is assimilated to tt throughout the paradigm. The following table only shows forms with irregularities in them.
The initial w also drops out in the common Form I verbal noun ʻilah (e.g. ṣilah 'arrival, link' from waṣalah 'arrive').
When the first radical is y, the forms are largely regular. The following table only shows forms that have some irregularities in them, indicated in boldface.
Hamzated verbs
The largest problem with so-called "hamzated" verbs (those with a glottal stop ʼ or "hamzah" as any of the root consonants) is the complicated way of writing such verbs in the Arabic script (see the article on hamzah for the rules regarding this). In pronunciation, these verbs are in fact almost entirely regular.
The only irregularity occurs in verbs with a hamzah as the first radical. A phonological rule in Classical Arabic disallows the occurrence of two hamzahs in a row separated by a short vowel, assimilating the second to the preceding vowel (hence ʼaʼ ʼiʼ ʼuʼ become ʼā ʼī ʼū). This affects the following forms:
In addition, any place where a hamzat al-waṣl (elidable hamzah) occurs will optionally undergo this transformation. This affects the following forms:
There are the following irregularities:
Doubly weak verbs
Doubly weak verbs have two "weak" radicals; a few verbs are also triply weak. Generally, the above rules for weak verbs apply in combination, as long as they do not conflict. The following are cases where two types of weaknesses apply in combination:
The following are examples where weaknesses would conflict, and hence one of the "weak" radicals is treated as strong:
The following are cases with special irregularities:
Summary of vowels
The vowels for the various forms are summarized in this table:
See also Wiktionary's appendix on Arabic verb forms.
Verbs in colloquial Arabic
The Classical Arabic system of verbs is largely unchanged in the colloquial spoken varieties of Arabic. The same derivational system of augmentations exists, including triliteral Forms I through X and quadriliteral Forms I and II, constructed largely in the same fashion (the rare triliteral Forms XI through XV and quadriliteral Forms III and IV have vanished). The same system of weaknesses (strong, defective/third-weak, hollow/second-weak, assimilated/first-weak, doubled) also exists, again constructed largely in the same fashion. Within a given verb, two stems (past and non-past) still exist along with the same two systems of affixes (suffixing past-tense forms and prefixing/suffixing non-past forms).
The largest changes are within a given paradigm, with a significant reduction in the number of forms. The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.
This paradigm shows clearly the reduction in the number of forms:
In addition, Form IV is lost entirely in most varieties, except for a few "classicizing" verbs (i.e. verbs borrowed from Modern Standard Arabic).
See varieties of Arabic for more information on grammar differences in the spoken varieties.