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, '''' () 'to write'. Most of the final short vowels are often omitted in speech, except the vowel of the feminine plural ending '
, and normally the vowel of the past tense second person feminine singular ending '. The initial vowel in the imperative (which is elidable) varies from verb to verb, as follows: • The initial vowel is '
if the stem begins with two consonants and the next vowel is ' or ''''. • The initial vowel is '''' if the stem begins with two consonants and the next vowel is anything else. • There is no initial vowel if the stem begins with one consonant. In unvocalised Arabic, '
, ', '
and ' are all written the same: . Forms '
and ' (and sometimes even '
) can be abbreviated to ' in spoken Arabic and in pausa, making them also sound the same. () in final () is silent.
Weak roots Roots containing one or two of the radicals '
('), '
(' ) or '
(') often lead to verbs with special phonological rules because these radicals can be influenced by their surroundings. Such verbs are called "weak" (, 'weak verbs') and their paradigms must be given special attention. In the case of '
, these peculiarities are mainly orthographical, since ' is not subject to elision (the orthography of '
and ' is unsystematic because Classical Arabic is a hybrid of Old Hejazi, the dialect in which the consonantal text was written down by the Prophet, with other dialects which showed phonetic and morphological differences). 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 (or final 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 as their first radical. These verbs are entirely regular in the past tense. In the non-past, the drops out, leading to a shorter stem (e.g., 'to find'), where the stem is in place of a longer stem like from the verb '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. There 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 (root: ) 'to say', parallel to verbs of the type. See notes following the table for explanation. All hollow (second-weak) verbs are conjugated in a parallel fashion. The endings are identical to those of 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 vowel, while the shorter stem has a vowel or 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: • (root: ) 'to say', formed from verbs with as their second root consonant and parallel to verbs of the type • (root: ) 'to get going, to travel', formed from verbs with as their second root consonant and parallel to verbs of the type • (root: ) 'to fear', formed from verbs with as their second root consonant and parallel to verbs of the type • (root: ) 'to sleep', formed from verbs with as their second root consonant and parallel to verbs of the type The passive paradigm of all Form I hollow verbs is as follows: • 'to be said'
Defective (third-weak) roots The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb (root: ) 'to throw', parallel to verbs of the type. See notes following the table for explanation. ;Two stems each 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 , shortened to in much of the third person (i.e. before vowels, in most cases). For the non-past stem, the full is , shortened to before . The full non-past stem appears as 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). ;Irregular endings The endings are actually mostly regular. But some endings are irregular, in boldface: • Some of the third-person past endings are irregular, in particular those in 'he threw', 'they (.) threw'. These simply have to be memorized. • Two kinds of non-past endings are irregular, both in the "suffixless" parts of the paradigm (largely referring to singular masculine or singular combined-gender). In the indicative, the full stem actually appears normally; what is irregular is the lack of the normally marking the indicative. In the jussive, on the other hand, the stem actually assumes a unique shortened form , with a short vowel that is not represented by a letter in the Arabic.
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb (root: ) 'to call', parallel to verbs of the type. Verbs of this sort are entirely parallel to verbs of the 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 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: • In the past, the full stem is , shortened to . • In the non-past, the full stem is , rendered as when not before a vowel and shortened to before . The Arabic spelling has the following rules: • In the third person masculine singular past, regular appears instead of : hence , not *. • The otiose final appears only after the final of the plural, not elsewhere: hence 'you ( ) call ()' but 'you ( ) call ()', even though they are both pronounced .
The following shows a paradigm of a typical Form I defective (third-weak) verb (root: ) 'to forget', parallel to verbs of the type. These verbs differ in a number of significant respects from either of the above types. ;Multiple stems This variant is somewhat different from the variants with or 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. • In this case, only one form in the past uses a shortened stem: 'they () forgot'. All other forms are constructed regularly, using the full stem or its automatic pre-consonant variant . • In the non-past, however, there are at least three different stems: • The full stem occurs before or , that is before dual endings, feminine plural endings and energetic endings corresponding to forms that are endingless in the jussive. • The modified stem occurs in "endingless" forms (i.e. masculine or common-gender singular, plus 1st plural). As usual with third-weak verbs, it is shortened to in the jussive. These forms are marked with red. • Before endings normally beginning with or , the stem and endings combine into a shortened form: e.g. expected 'you ( ) forget', 'you ( ) forget' instead become , respectively. The table above chooses to segment them as , , suggesting that a shortened stem combines with irregular (compressed) endings 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 '''' 'be red, become red, blush', Form XI ''
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 (ف–ع–ل), based on the verb '''' '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 '''' 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 '
(root: ف-ع-ل-ل). 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 ' (root: ف-ع-ل-ق) 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 فمل '
(root: ف-م-ل) and فستل ' (root: ف-س-ت-ل) 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 '''' 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 '
(', و), '
(', ي) or the
glottal stop ''
(hamzah'', ﺀ); 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: • Largely, to all verbs whose only weakness is a hamzah radical; the irregularity is in the Arabic spelling but not the pronunciation, except in a few minor cases. • Largely, to all verbs whose only weakness is a '''' in the first radical (the "assimilated" type). • To all verbs conjugated in Forms II, III, V, VI whose only weakness is a و '
or ي ' in the first or second radicals (or both).
Form VIII assimilations Form VIII has a ـتـ -
t- that is
infixed into the root, directly after the first root consonant. This ـتـ -
t-
assimilates to certain
coronal consonants occurring as the first root consonant. In particular, with roots whose first consonant is د، ز، ث، ذ، ص، ط، ض، ظ
d z th dh ṣ ṭ ḍ ẓ, the combination of root and infix ت
t appears as دّ، زد، ثّ، ذّ، صط، طّ، ضط، ظّ
dd zd thth dhdh ṣṭ ṭṭ ḍṭ ẓẓ. That is, the
t assimilates the emphasis of the
emphatic consonants ص، ط، ض، ظ
ṣ ṭ ḍ ẓ and the
voicing of د، ز
d z, and assimilates entirely to the
interdental consonants ث، ذ، ظ
th dh ẓ. The consonant cluster ضط
ḍṭ, as in اضطرّ '''' 'compel, force', is unexpected given modern pronunciation, having a voiced stop next to a voiceless one; this reflects the fact that ط '
was formerly pronounced voiced, and ض ' was pronounced as the emphatic equivalent not of د '
but of an unusual lateral sound. (ض ' was possibly an emphatic
voiced alveolar lateral fricative or a similar
affricated sound or ; see the article on the letter ض
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 و '
or ي '. All of the derived third-weak verbs have the same active-voice endings as (فعى (يفعي '
verbs except for Forms V and VI, which have past-tense endings like (فعى (يفعي ' verbs but non-past endings like (فعي (يفعى '
verbs. The passive-voice endings of all third-weak verbs (whether Form I or derived) are the same as for the (فعي (يفعى ' 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, '''' 'be/become blind', which does not follow the expected form اعميّ '
. They also list a similarly rare Form XI verb اعمايّ ' '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 علة (e.g. صلة 'arrival, link' from وصلة 'arrive'). Root: و-ع-ل 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. Root: ي-ع-ل
Doubled verbs Root: ف-ل-ل
Hamzated verbs The largest problem with so-called "hamzated" verbs (those with a glottal stop
ʾ 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 ء 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
ʾaʾ ʾiʾ ʾuʾ become
ʾā ʾī ʾū). This affects the following forms: • The first-person singular of the non-past of Forms I, IV and VIII. • The entire past and imperative of Form IV. In addition, any place where a ''
(elidable hamzah) occurs will optionally'' undergo this transformation. This affects the following forms: • The entire imperative of Form I. • The entire past and imperative of Form VIII, as well as the verbal noun of Form VIII. There are the following irregularities: • The common verbs '''' (أكل; root: ء-ك-ل) 'eat', '''' (أخذ; root: ء-خ-ذ) 'take', '''' (أمر; root: ء-م-ر) 'command' have irregular, short imperatives ''''. • Form VIII of the common verb '''' 'take' is '''' 'take on, assume', with irregular assimilation of the hamzah. • The common verb '''' 'ask' has an alternative non-past '''' with missing hamzah.
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: • Verbs with a
w in the first radical and a
w or
y in the third radical. These decline as defective (third-weak) verbs, and
also undergo the loss of
w in the non-past of Form I, e.g. '''' 'guard', '''' 'complete, fulfill (a promise)', '''' 'be near, follow'. These verbs have extremely short imperatives '
(feminine ', masculine plural '
, feminine plural '), although these are not normally used in
Modern Standard Arabic. Similarly, verbs of this sort in Form IV and Form VIII are declined as defective but also have the normal assimilations of
w-initial verbs, e.g. Form IV '''' 'fulfill a vow', Form VIII '''' 'fear (God)', augmentations of '
and ', respectively (see above). • Verbs with a hamzah in the first radical and a
w or
y in the third radical. These decline as defective (third-weak) verbs, and
also undergo the assimilations associated with the initial hamzah, e.g. the common verb '''' 'come' (first singular non-past '''' 'I come') and the related Form IV verb '''' 'bring' (first singular non-past '''' 'I bring'). The following are examples where weaknesses would conflict, and hence one of the "weak" radicals is treated as strong: • Verbs with a
w or
y in both the second and third radicals. These are fairly common, e.g. '''' 'recount, transmit'. These decline as regular defective (third-weak) verbs; the second radical is treated as non-weak. • Verbs with a
w in the first radical and the second and third radicals the same. These verbs do
not undergo any assimilations associated with the first radical, e.g. '''' 'to love'. • Verbs with a hamza in the first radical and the second and third radicals the same. These verbs do
not undergo any assimilations associated with the first radical, e.g. '''' 'burn', first singular non-past '''' 'I burn', despite the two hamzahs in a row. The following are cases with special irregularities: • Verbs with a
w or
y in the second radical and a hamzah in the third radical. These are fairly common, e.g. the extremely common verb '''' 'come'. The only irregularity is the Form I active participle, e.g. '''' 'coming', which is irregularly declined as a defective (third-weak) participle (presumably to avoid a sequence of two hamzahs in a row, as the expected form would be
*). • The extremely common verb '''' 'see'. The hamzah drops out entirely in the non-past. Similarly in the passive, '''' 'be seen'. The active participle is regular '
and the passive participle is regular '. The related Form IV verb '''' 'show' is missing the hamzah throughout. Other augmentations are regular: Form III '''' 'dissemble', Form VI '''' 'look at one another', Form VIII '''' 'think'. • The common verb '''' 'live', with an alternative past tense '
. Form IV ' 'resuscitate, revive' is regular. Form X '''' 'spare alive, feel ashamed' also appears as '
and '.
Summary of vowels The vowels for the various forms are summarized in this table: ==Verbs in colloquial Arabic==