Arabic: Perfective Verbs
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Introduction
Arabic has quite a complex verb system, which is considerably different from indo-european languages.
Arabic makes the distinction between present tense and past tense in a very different way: there are no actual tenses, but arabic makes use of verbal aspect. A verb has a perfective form, which represebts a completed action (often in the past), and an imperfective form, which represents an unfinished, on-going or habitual action.
As is common in arabic courses, we will focus on the perfective aspect first, for it is easier to construct.
Arabic does not know an infinitive verb like many other languages do, in a dictionary you will therefore not find the infinitive verb form, but always the 3rd person masculine form in the perfective aspect. So you will find "he wrote" to reference the verb "to write".
Each verb is build with three (in rare cases four) root letters. And suffixes are appended to conjugate the verb for different persons, in imperfective aspect, there are also prefixes.
Word Order
Arabic is an VSO language (Verb - Subject - Object), this means that the verb is usually placed at the start of the sentence, before the subject even, unlike in english.
- كتب الولد رسالة
- kataba al-waladu risālatan
- literal: [writes the-boy a-letter]
- The boy writes a letter
Perfective Aspect
We will use the verb "to write" (kataba كتب) to illustrate how the perfective aspect is formed. This verb is formed around the root letters KTB. We will highlight the suffix in bold, the remaining part of the verb remains unchanged and is the perfective stem.
- First person singular - I wrote - katabtu - كتبت
- Second person singular masc. - You (m) wrote - katabta - كتبت
- Second person singular fem. - You (f) wrote - katabti - كتبت
- Third person singular masc. - He wrote - kataba - كتب
- Third person singular fem. - She wrote - katabat - كتبت
- Second person dual masc/fem. - You (2) wrote - katabtumā - كتبتما
- Third person dual masc. - You (m2) wrote - katabā - كتبا
- Third person dual fem. - You (f2) wrote - katabtā - كتبتا
- First person plural - We wrote - katabnā - كتبنا
- Second person plural masc. - You (mp) wrote - katabtum - كتبتم
- Second person plural fem. - You (fp) wrote - katabtunna - كتبتن
- Third person plural masc. - They (mp) wrote - katabū - كتبوا
- Third person plural fem. - They (fp) wrote - katabna - كتبن
Note: In third person plural masculine (كتبوا) an extra 'alif is written after the waw. This alif is not pronounced but serves merely to mark the end of the verb since a waw is never attached to the next letter. Which might give rise to some confusion if the alif wasn't there to mark the end.
Stem I
Arabic verbs can be put into several groups. At the basis of all these groups lies the Stem I group. The verb you saw above (كتب) is a Stem I verb. All Stem I verbs have a stem like R1 - a - R2 - vowel - R3, R1 stands for the first radical, the first of the three root consonants. R2 stands for the second, and R3 for the last.
In arabic grammars, you will always see the consonants fā (ف)، `ayn (ع) and lām (ل) used in place of R1, R2 and R3. Together they form the stem I verb: fa`ala (فعل) (to do).
Another Stem I verb, formed with the root consonants sin, mim and `ayn, is sami`a (سمع) (to hear). And one with DRS is darasa (درس - to learn).
The vowel in Stem I is not determined so it can vary per verb:
- Stem I (a): R1aR2aR3 - fa`ala - فعل
- Stem I (i): R1aR2iR3 - fa`ila - فعل
- Stem I (u): R1aR2uR3 - fa`ula - فعل
Derived Stems
There are are 9 more verb stems a verb can be a member of, these verbs are constructed using the same three radicals. And whereas there is an undetermined vowel in Stem I, they are all determined for the other stems:
- Stem II: R1aR2R2aR3 - fa``ala - فعّل
- Stem III: R1āR2aR3 - fā`ala - فَاعل
- Stem IV: 'aR1R2aR3 - 'af`ala - أفْعل
- Stem V: taR1aR2R2aR3 - tafa``ala - تفعّل
- Stem VI: taR1āR2aR3 - tafā`ala - تفاعل
- Stem VII: inR1aR2aR3a - infa`ala - انفعل
- Stem VIII: iR1taR2aR3 - ifta`ala - افتعل
- Stem IX: iR1R2aR3R3a - if`alla - افعلّ
- Stem X: istaR1R2aR3 - istaf`ala - استفعل
When conjugating verbs belonging to one of the stems above, you mostly use the same suffixes you already learned. For example, let's take a look at some perfective conjugations of the Stem III verb for the root N Q SH, which means "to discuss".
- nāqasha ناقش - He discussed
- nāqashtu ناقشت - I discussed
- nāqashnā ناقشنا - We discussed
- nāqashū ناقشوا - They discussed
And the same examples for the stem V verb with root KLM, meaning "to speak":
- takallama تكلّم - He spoke
- takallamtu تكلّمت - I spoke
- takallamnā تكلّمنا - We spoke
- takallamū تكلّموا - They spoke
