Lesson Three
1.The لا of categorical denial/ لا النافية للجنس (“لا for the negating of the category”)
The phrase لا فضلَ in line 8 up in the Text means “there is no preference/superiority”; the negative particle لا followed by an indefinite noun in the accusative case without nunation means “there is no…” We saw another instance of this usage in Lesson 1: لا بدَ لي من الزواج بهده المرأة ‘I must marry this woman!’ which literally means “There is no escape for me from marrying this woman.” Some common expressions are
لا مفرَّ ‘it is inevitable’ (“there is no escape”)
لا شكَّ ‘no doubt’ ; لا بأسَ (بِهِ) ‘OK’ (“there is no harm/injury in it”)
لا شكرَ على الواجب ‘No thanks [are to be given] for [what is] a duty.’ (polite response to شكراً)
2. The Active Participle/اسم الفاعِل
The active participle/اسم الفاعِل, also called “verbal adjective”, is an adjective derived from a verb by regular rule; if derived from a transitive verb it may have verbal force—that is, take an object, as in مقدِّمٌ هَدايا ‘presenting gifts’—and if derived from an intransitive verb it denotes the quality or characteristic carried by the verb, like جميلٌ ‘(having become) handsome’. Some participles can also be made into nouns, with specialized meanings and plural forms different from those of the corresponding verbal adjectives: compare زائِر – زائرون ‘visiting’ and زائر – زُوّارٌ ‘visitor)s(’.
You should know how to derive participles by now, but what do participles mean? The active participle may have any of the following meanings: an activity in progress, or progressive action, like داهِبٌ ‘going’; prediction of coming action or state, or future action, like مُسافِرٌ ‘departing, going to depart’; or a condition or state resulting from a completed action, or perfective state, like فاهِمٌ ‘having come to understand, understand(s)’ and ناشِفٌ ‘(having become) dry’.
It is possible to correlate the meaning of the active participle with the semantic class of its verb as presented in Lesson 1, “Verbs, Type of action”, as follows:
1. Stative Verbs. All statives have participles with perfective meaning: that is, “having entered the state of…”, “having become”…; statives can be sub-classified as follows:
qualitative: those statives that denote a quality or characteristic and so are intransitive, like وَسِعَ ‘to be wide, spacious’ have active participles that correspond to ordinary adjectives, like واسِعٌ ‘wide, spacious’. Qualitative participles may also take “non-canonical” forms (forms other than فاعِلٌ), like فَعْلٌ، فَعَلٌ، فَعِلٌ، فَعيلٌ, such as صَعْب ‘difficult’, حَسَن ‘good’, كَريم‘noble’.
impersonal: qualitative verbs that take a clause or verbal noun as subject, like يجب – واجب ‘is necessary, must’ – ‘necessary’.
Note: qualitative and impersonal verbs do not occur in the imperative mood.
statives: all other statives take the “canonical” form of the active participle, فاعِلٌ , and may be transitive or intransitive, like اعرف أساميهم = انا عارفٌ أساميهم ‘I know their names’, مُحْتَوٍ على = يحتوي على‘contains, containing’, مجيدةٌ العربيةَ ‘good at Arabic’.
As statives are devoid of action, the imperfect indicative verb, like the active participle, does not have progressive meaning: صَعْبً على ‘difficult for’ and يَصْعُب على ‘it is difficult for’.
2. Activities are verbs whose action stays the same throughout the period of its activity: they do not produce a result or conclusion or lead to a terminus, like استعمل ‘to use’ and انتظر ‘to wait’; they can occur with expressions denoting extent of time, like “he waited for an hour”. Their participles and the imperfect indicative both may have progressive meaning: مستعمل ‘using’ – يستعمل ‘he uses, is using’ and منتظر ‘waiting’ -ينتظر ‘he waits, is waiting’.
A good test to see whether a given verb is an action or a stative verb is to see whether it can be used in a response to “What are you )doing(?” For example, to test the following verbs, “to have (to own, possess), to want, to wait, to think, to know” we can ask the following questions; the asterisk * denotes an incorrect usage of the verb:
*What are you having in you handbag? “to have” is stative.
*What are you wanting with that book? “to want” is stative.
What are you waiting for? “to wait” is an action.
What are you thinking about? “to think” is an action.
*What are you knowing about the Comoros Islands? “to know” is stative.
3. Acts are actions that produce a result from or conclusion to the activity; they occur with time expressions denoting the end of the time period of the action, like “He read the book in an hour.” The imperfect of act verbs may have progressive meaning. There are two subclasses of acts, developmental and accomplishment verbs.
Developmentals are change-of-state verbs, denoting “becoming (quality or characteristic)”; the participle has perfective meaning and, as qualitative verbs, Form I developmental verbs may have non-canonical forms of the active participle (i.e., forms other than فاعل): احْمَرَّ ‘to turn red, redden’ مُحْمَرٌّ ‘reddened, reddish’; يَكبُرُ ‘becomes/is becoming big, large’ – كبيرٌ ‘big, large’. The changes denoted in these verbs are non-volitional—they come about not by desire but as a result of the natural course of events.
Notice the contrast between stative qualitatives and act developmentals: the imperfects of acts may have progressive meaning– يكبُرُ ‘is becoming large’ – كبير ‘big, large’–whereas stative qualitatives never have progressive meaning– يكرُمُ ‘is noble, generous’ — كريم’noble, generous’.
Accomplishments are acts that produce a desired result–that is, the subject is an agent with a goal in mind. The imperfect may have progressive meaning, while the active participle denotes a strong desire to do something, “fully intends to…” يدرس ‘he studies, is studying’ – دارِسٌ = ‘will (definitely) study, is going to study’.
4. Inchoatives, the last semantic class, include three sub-classes: commencing, inceptive and movement verbs. They all have in common the beginning (“inchoation”) of an action or state as well as an imperfect tense verb that does not have progressive meaning; they are distinguished from each other by the meanings of their participles.
Commencing inchoatives denote the assuming of a temporary state or condition, unlike stative and act qualitative verbs, which are mostly permanent qualities. Their participles have perfective meaning, and may take non-canonical participial forms, like the فَعِل and فعلان patterns below.
يَنسى’he forgets’ – هو ناسٍ ‘he has forgotten; he forgets’
يتعَبُ ‘he gets tired, tires’ – تعِبٌ, تَعْبانٌ ‘tired’
Inceptive inchoatives are verbs that combine Activities and Acts: they may denote an activity or the inception of that activity; to illustrate, riding (a train) is an activity but one must first mount the train before it starts. English uses two sets of verbs for such pairs of actions–“to wear” and “to put on”, “to sleep” and “to fall asleep”, “to ride” and “mount, get on”, etc., whereas Arabic uses an inceptive verb for both phases of the action, the inceptive act (perfective participle) and the continuing activity (progressive participle):
يركب ‘he mounts, gets on; he rides’ – راكِبٌ ‘having gotten on, mounted; riding’
ينام ‘he falls asleep; he sleeps’ – نائِمٌ ‘(having fallen) asleep; sleeping’
يلبَس‘he puts on, dons; he wears, has on’ – لابِسٌ ‘having donned; wearing’
Movement inchoative verbs include the features of inceptives but add the third feature of change of location–to go, move, travel, etc. Thus, while the imperfect does not have progressive meaning, the participle may have perfective, progressive, or future (i.e., predictive) meaning. To illustrate with سافَرَ ‘to travel, go on a trip; to leave, depart’:
يُسافِرُ ‘he travels (activity); he sets out, leaves, departs (inceptive act)’
مُسافِرٌ ‘having departed (perfective); traveling, on a trip (progressive); leaving, going to leave (future)’
TABLE 1. VERB AND PARTICPLE CLASSES
| Verb Class and Features | Imperfect Tense | Active Participle |
| 1. STATIVES [-action] a. states b. qualitatives [permanent quality or condition] [non-standard participle] [intransitive] [-imperative] c. impersonals [clause or verbal noun subject] | -progressive a. يعرف ‘he knows’ b. يحسن ‘it is good’ c. يجبُ ‘it is necessary’ | perfective هو عارف ‘he knows (“is having learned”) حسن ‘good’ واجب ‘necessary’ |
| 2. ACTIVITIES [-conclusion] + extent pf time: لِمدّةِ “for” | +progressive يستعمِلُ ‘he is using’ | progressive مُستعمِلٌ ‘using’ |
| 3. ACTS [+conclusion, result] at a point in time: “in” في a. developmentals [change of state or condition] [non-standard participle] [-volition] b. accomplishments | +progressive a. يكبُرُ ‘it is growing large’ b. يدرس ‘he is studying’ | a. perfective كبير ‘(having become) large’ b. strong intent دارسٌ ‘will study, will be studying’ |
| 4. INCHOATIVES [beginning an action, entering a state] a. commencing [temporary quality or state] b. inceptives: activity; inception of activity c. movement: change of location | -progressive a. ينسى’forgets’ يتعبُ ‘gets tired’ b. ينامُ ‘sleeps’; ‘falls asleep, goes to bed’ c. يسافِرُ ‘travels; departs, leaves’ | a. perfective: ناسٍ ‘has forgotten; forgets’ non-canonical patterns: تعبان، تَعِبٌ ‘tired’ b. نائِم’sleeping’ ‘falling asleep,going to bed’ Perfective: ‘asleep’ c. مسافرٌ : perfective: ‘has set out, left’ progressive: ‘traveling’ future: ‘will depart, going to leave’ |
If we tell you that the verb ذهب ‘to go’ is a movement verb, then you automatically know that the imperfect, يذهب, means only “he goes” and does not mean “he is going”. To say “he is going” you use the participle, هو ذاهب.
Surprisingly, perhaps, اجتمع ‘to assemble, meet’ is a verb of movement; this is logical, however, when you consider that it involves people’s movement from various locations to wherever the meeting place is.
As a rule, when you have a semantic class of some sort there is usually a zero member as well. Movement verbs include the verb بَقِيَ ‘to remain’, which is negative movement–not to go away. Thus the imperfect يبقى is ‘he remains’ and the participle باقٍ is ‘staying, remaining; having stayed; will stay, will be staying’.
The question arises, Is it possible to predict what class a given verb will belong to? In the final analysis you will have to ask a native speaker whether a given verb and its participle have progressive meaning or not, and then you can fit it into the scheme given above. But make sure that your native speaker is giving you Standard rather than colloquial usage! Here are some useful clues:
Given a qualitative verb–one denoting a permanent quality or characteristic–it will be either a stative or an act. If the Hans Wehr dictionary translates it with “to be” plus a quality (“to be good”), then it is a stative; if the translation includes “be or become” (“be or become small”) then it is an act and most likely always with the meaning “to become small”.
A last tip: If you learn a participle with a progressive translation then you can guess that it is either an activity verb or an inchoative and perhaps guess as to whether it is a pure Activity or might require an inceptive act to begin the activity; if it is an activity verb, then its imperfect verb may have progressive meaning, but if it is inchoative then its imperfect does not have a progressive reading.
Ernie, It is important to distinguish between structure one the one hand (i.e. the phrase or clause in which the participle is found and the role of the participle in that structure) and the function of the structure in the sentence where it occurs. Do we have terms to distinguish between them?
As the illustrations above show, the active participles of all qualitative, impersonal and developmental verbs function like all ordinary adjectives, without any verbal force, as in
منظرٌ رائعٌ‘a splendid view’; أُممُ العالمِ المختلِفةُ ‘the various nations of the worldخَشَبٌ متحجـّرٌ ‘petrified wood’, هذا الموقعُ الهامُّ ‘this important location’
The transitive verbs of all other subclasses have active participles that have verbal force–that is, they may take a direct object an indirect object, a predicate, a prepositional phrase (if the verb takes a preposition before its object), and other complements, depending on the nature of the source verb. It may also be a مضاف in an إضافة. .
جلس منتظراً زوجته جلس منتظِراً He sat waiting for his wife.’
السبب المؤدّي الى تقدّم العرب the reason leading to the advancement of the Arabs.
The meanings of the participles given above are of indefinite participles; when the participle is definite the meaning becomes “one who…”, as in the phrase دارسو اللغة العربية ‘those who study/are studying the Arabic language’.
Active participles with object and predicate complements and participial clauses are further discussed in Chapter 12.
The functions of phrases with participles in the sentence
Participles and their complements, like adjectives, may function as predicates, noun modifiers, and حال .
هذه البلاد واقعة تحت حكم اجنبي This country has fallen under foreign rule.
ما هي الامور الدالّة على التقدّم الاقتصادي What are the things that indicate economic progress.
بعث فيهم شعوراً جديداً قائماً على مبادئَ عالية It induced in them new feelings based on high principles.
ألّفوا كتبهم مستخدمين اللغة العربية They wrote their books using the Arabic language.
As will be seen later participial constructions, including those with verbal force, again like adjectives, can be used as nominals and hence can take on the functions of nouns.
(Ernie, what are the terms that will help us distinguish these from the participial nouns (those that are participles in forms but not in meaning as you indicate below?)
3. Participial Nouns. Participles are adjectives but some participles acquire fixed specific meanings and then function as nouns. In English, for example, “building” is an active participle derived from the verb “to build”; it may occur in a phrase like “the group building the new dormitory”. “Building”as a noun can refer to a concrete structure, “the tallest building in town”. As nouns these words can be made plural, unlike participles: “tall buildings”. In Arabic you will see the participle طالِبٌ in phrases like هو طالبٌ يدَها ‘He is asking for her hand.’ and the same word-shape used as a noun in الطالب الاجنبي ‘the foreign student’. Arabic participles and nouns are distinctive in inflection as well, as participles take sound plurals– طالبون – طالبات ‘seeking, ones who seek’–while Form I participial nouns regularly take broken plurals–طلاّب, طلبة ‘students (masc.)’ and زائر- زوّار ‘visitor-s’ fromزائر ‘visiting’. Derived Form participles and nouns as a rule take sound plurals: مدرّس-ون ‘instructor-s’, مُغترِب-ون‘émigré-s’, مستهلِك-ون ‘consumer-s’.
1. Verbs meaning “about to”/افعال المقاربة
In Lesson 1 we took up auxiliary verbs and verbs of beginning/فعال الشروع; in this lesson we meet another subclass of auxiliaries, the verbs of “about to” (to do s.th.)/افعال المقاربة (also called “verbs of appropinquation”), for example, كاد يكاد (ان) ‘to be on the point of, be about to….’:
الفصحى تكاد تكون واحدة ‘Modern Standard Arabic has almost become (“is almost”) uniform.’
Unlike other auxiliaries (but like ) this subclass of verbs meaning “about to” can appear in either tense, and may be followed by an imperfect indicative verb or by ان and a verb in the subjunctive:
كِدت اموتُ ‘I almost died.’
تكادُ انْ تقعَ ‘She almost falls.’
Another such verb is اوشك يوشك (انْ) ‘to be on the point of, be about to, all but’ which uses the Form I verbal noun وَشْك:
اوشك الليلُ ان ينتهيَِ ‘the night was almost over’
اوشك ان ينتهيَ الليلُ ‘the night was almost over’
الليل يوشكُ ان ينتهيَ ‘the night is almost over’
The Form I verbal noun وَشْك is often used in the phrase على وشْكِ followed by a verbal noun/مصدر or أنْ–clause to mean “on the point of, on the verge of”:
كان الفلك على وشك الرحيل ‘The boat was on the verge of departing.’
Auxiliary verbs of beginning/افعال الشروع. The verb بدأ ‘to begin’ exemplifies a group of verbs called the verbs of beginning/افعال الشُروع that are followed by a main verb in the imperfect indicative: بدأ يأكل, أخد يأكل, صار يأكل, all meaning “he began to eat.” Of these verbs only بدأ, may also be used in this sense in the imperfect. بدأ بِ can take a verbal noun as an object with the same meaning: بدأوا بالأكل ‘they began to eat, they began eating.’
Lesson 4
Lexical Note 1
غير ‘other, unlike, non-’
This is a high frequency word in Arabic and has a variety of uses, functions, and meanings. It occurs mostly as the head of an اضافة followed by an adjective, a noun or pronoun, or a clause, but can occur alone.
1. As a مضاف
(1) Followed by an adjective or participle, it may mean ‘un-, non-, or not’ and has the meaning of ليس .The adjective or participle as a مضاف اليه ‘second term of an idafa’ is in the genitive and agrees in gender, number and definiteness with the noun it modifies; غير itself takes the appropriate case for its role in the sentence. The اضافة , being adjectival, may function as predicate, an attributive, or حال modifier.
هذه الاقتراحاتُ غيرُ مقبولةٍ. These suggestions are unacceptable.
في حادثتين غيرِ سعيدتين in two unhappy incidents
لا تفيد التصريحاتُ غيرُ الواضحةِ. Unclear statements are of no use.
حضرواغيرَ مستعدّين للنقاش. They attended not ready for a debate.
In the first example, غير مقبولة is خبر ‘predicate’, putting غيرُ in the nominative, مقبولة is feminine singular in agreement with the non-human plural noun الاقتراحات. In the second example, غير سعيدتين is صفة ‘attributive adjective’ and so غيرِ agrees with حادثتين in case while سعيدتين agrees with it in number (dual), case (genitive) , and definiteness; the same rules apply in the third example to غيرُ الواضحةِ and here الواضحة is definite like التصريحاتُ. In the fourth example, غيرَ مستعدّين is حال , غيرَ is in the accusative, and مستعدّين is m.p. like its صاحب , the subject marker in حضروا .
It is worth pointing out that in the third illustration it is becoming common in Standard Arabic today to read and hear the definite article attached to غير rather than to the adjective. Thus,
لا تفيد التصريحاتُ الغيرُ واضحةٍ. Unclear statements are of no use.
(2) Followed by a noun, noun phrase or أنْ/أنّ-noun clause, it generally means “other than, different from” . Several cases arise:
(a) the اضافة with غير is an independent phrase. غير here together with a preceding negative has the meaning of إلاّ ‘no…but, none…except. only’ (see Lesson 1 Grammae Note 3) and as pointed out in that note is مرفوع
‘in the nominative’.
لم ينجح في الامتحان غيرُ صديقِك هنري No one passed the test except your friend Henry.
(b) The اضافة is in apposition with a preceding noun. As an appositive غير here has the meaning of سِوى ‘other than’ :
لن يتزوّج امرأةً غيرَ سوزي He will not marry a woman other than Suzie
لم يعد يعرف شيئاً يفعله غيرَ أنْ يبكي He no longer knew what to do other than weep.
لم يحضر احدٌ غيرك الحفلة . No one other than you attended the party (“some one other than you did not attend…”)
In these sentences غير assumes the case of the noun it is in apposition with.
(c) The referent (preceding) noun is obviated by the context and omitted, in which case the اضافةitself serves as an independent noun phrase and assumes its appropriate functions and cases in its sentence:
لن يتزوّج امرأة غيرَ سوزي He will not marry (anyone) other than Suzie.
لم يعد يعرف شيئاً يفعله غيرَ أنْ يبكي He no longer knew (anything) but to cry.
لم يحضر الحفلة أحد غيرك No one other than you attended the party (“ one other than you did not attend …)
Here again غير has the meaning of and can be replaced by سِوى.
(d) غير is sometimes followed by a noun identical to its referent and means ‘different, dissimilar to’ and is thus the opposite of مثل
هذه مدينة غيرُ المدينة التي كنت تعرفها. This is a town which is a different town from the one you knew.
هذه المدينة غيرُ المدينة التي كنت تعرفها. This town is not the same town you you used to know.
(e) as an independent unit, غير followed by a noun translates ‘non-‘ as in:
تعليم العربية لغيرِ العرب the teaching of Arabic to non-Arabs
Such as unit, in an enumeration of items, takes a suffixed pronoun referring to these items and means ‘and others, et alia’:
الفرس والروم وغيرهم the Persians and Byzantines and others/etc.
This اضافة (غير + ضمير) is frequently followed by البيانية او من لتحديد المقصود من (see Lesson 3 Grammar Note 5)
الخمر والسرقة والربا وغيرها من العادات السيئة. حرّم
It proscribed liquor, theft, and usury and other such bad habits.
غير occurs in fixed expressions like وغيره ، وغير ذلك following an enumeration of items to mean ‘and so forth’, ‘et cetera’, also followed by من البيانية as in the previous example:
وغير ذلك من الأمور/الأشياء and so forth
Widely used equivalents to these expressions are: وما اليه (من)، وما الى ذلك (من)
(f) It is followed by مصدر مؤوّل بانّ ‘a clause with أنّ’.
غير انّ ‘except that’, ‘though’, ‘but’ introduces a sentence that is in contrast to a previous sentence or paragraph:
قضى الاسلام على …. غير أنّه شجّع … على إكرام الضيف ومساعدة الغريب والأقرباء
Islam put an end to …; however, it promoted honoring guests and supporting the stranger and relatives.
In such cases, غير can be replaced by إلاّ .
and finally (g) It forms a prepositional phrase with من ، بِ ، على ، في , which can be followed by a noun, a verbal noun or a clause, meaning “without” as in:
حضر من غير زوجته. He arrived without his wife.
غادر من غير ان يقول كلمة. He left without saying a word.
تحدّث ب/من غير توقـّف. He talked without stopping.
على غير معرفة منّي به without (my) knowledge of him
أجابت في غير خوف She answered without fear.
In all these instances the prepositional phrase may be replaced by
دونَ، بدونِ، من دونِ:
من غيرِ شَكٍّ=من دون شكّ=بدون شكّ= دونَ شكّ
2. As an independent expression or item:
(1) الغير ‘the other(s)’, ‘fellow men’ is synonymous with الآخرون:
احترام الغير من ضروريّات الحياة Respect of others is one of the necessities of life.
(2) لا غيرُ/غيرَ/ليس غير (in the nominative or accusative) ‘nothing but’, ‘only’, ‘no more’:
مبلغ هذا الشيك عشرون دولاراً لا غير The amount of this check is 20 dollars only.
مُخْتلِفٌ ‘different’, مُجَرَّدٌ ‘bare’ and كثيرٌ من ‘many’
In the last paragraph of this Text مختلف appears in two different syntactic constructions:
امم العالم المختلفة ‘the various nations of the world’
في مختلف القارات ‘in the various continents’
The adjective مختلف follows the noun it modifies in the first example but precedes it as the first term of an idafa in the second. As an attributive adjective it agrees with the modified noun in gender, number, case and definiteness, as usual, but as the first term of the idafa it always remains masculine singular. The meaning is the same in both cases but the adjective is highlighted as an idafa first term.
Another common adjective that behaves like this is مُجَرَّدٌ ‘mere, pure, nothing more than’ followed by a genitive noun, as in
ليست مجردَ عواطف. ‘They are not mere emotions.’
مجرد often occurs in the combination بِمجردِ ما ‘as soon as, at the moment when’
The adjective كثيرٌ ‘much; many’ likewise is invariably masculine singular when it is followed by a prepositional phrase with من meaning ‘many of, a lot of’:
كثير من النساء ‘many of the women’
GRAMMAR
1. Verbs meaning “about to”/افعال المقاربة
In Lesson 1 we took up auxiliary verbs and verbs of beginning/افعال الشروع; in this lesson we meet another subclass of auxiliaries, the verbs of “about to” (to do s.th.)/افعال المقاربة (also called “verbs of appropinquation”), for example, كاد يكاد (ان) ‘to be on the point of, be about to….’:
الفصحى تكاد تكون واحدة ‘Modern Standard Arabic has almost become (“is almost”) uniform.’
Unlike other auxiliaries (but like كان) this subclass of verbs meaning “about to” can appear in either tense, and may be followed by an imperfect indicative verb or by ان and a verb in the subjunctive:
كِدت اموتُ ‘I almost died.’
تكادُ انْ تقعَ ‘She almost falls.’
Another such verb is اوشك يوشك (انْ) ‘to be on the point of, be about to, all but’ which uses the Form I verbal noun وَشْك:
اوشك الليلُ ان ينتهِيَ ‘the night was almost over’
اوشك ان ينتهيَ الليلُ ‘the night was almost over’
الليل يوشكُ ان ينتهيَ ‘the night is almost over’
The Form I verbal noun وَشْك is often used in the phrase على وشْكِ followed by a verbal noun/مصدر or أنْ–clause to mean “on the point of, on the verge of”:
كان الفُلْكُ على وشكِ الرَحيل ‘The boat was on the verge of departing.’
2. The Passive Participle/الاسم المفعول. In the previous lesson we discussed active participles; it would be well now to have a glance at passive participles, first the forms and then their usages.
Form I verbs are the most basic forms of verbs in Arabic, and the derived verb conjugations are built on them. For example, Form I verb وضُحَ ‘to be clear’ can be put into the causative Form II verb وضّح to mean “to cause to be clear, make clear, clarify, explain’. Form I active participles have their own private shapes different from those of the derived Forms. The Form I active participle pattern is فاعِلٌ and its variants, as you know, and the passive pattern is مَفْعولً, as in فاعل ‘making’ and مفعول ‘made’ from فعل – يفعل ‘to do, make’.
The rule for forming all the derived verb participles goes like this, illustrated by Form II قدّم ‘to present; to offer’, Form VI تناوَل ‘to reach for and take’ and VIII انتخب ‘to elect’:
0: Imperfect indicative: يقدِّم يتناوَل ينتخِب 1. Select the imperfect stem: -قدِّم -تناوَل نتخِب –
2. Prefix مُ-: مُقدِّم متناوَل منتخِب
3. Change the stem vowel where necessary
for the active to i: مُقدِمٌ’presenting’ متناوِل ‘taking up’ منتخِب ‘electing’
for the passive to a: مُقدَم ‘presented’ متناوَل ‘taken up’ منتخَب ‘elected’
The meaning of the passive participle is “having undergone )the action of the verb(” or “having been put into or assumed (the state or quality denoted by the verb)”; the technical term for this meaning is patient, one who has suffered or undergone the action of the verb. Thus the underlying meaning of مقدَّم is ‘having been presented’, of متناوَل is ‘having been taken’, and of منتخَب is ‘having been elected’.
The passive participles of verb-preposition idioms retain the preposition to specify the meaning of the phrase; the structure is illustrated by the following phrase based on وَثِقَ – يَثِقُ بِ ‘to trust, have confidence in’:
دراسةٌ موثوقٌ بها ‘a trustworthy/reliable study’
Here the past participle itself is invariable–it is always masculine singular, while the pronoun object of the preposition is what agrees with the modified noun. Here are two more examples:
القوانين المعمول بها ‘the laws on the basis of which (governments) have been operating’
علمه وجهده غير مرغوبٍ فيهما في وطنه الام’his education and efforts are not favored in his mother country’
A secondary meaning of the passive is potentiality of action; for example, مأكول can mean either ‘(having been) eaten’ or ‘edible’ and مقبول can mean ‘accepted’ or ‘acceptable’. This feature is found in the verb as well, where the passive can have potential meaning, as in شيء لا يُصَدَّقُ ‘something unbelievable (“not to be believed”)’ and لم يحدثْ شيءٌ يُذْكَرُ ‘Nothing remarkable happened.’
Finally, some passive participles develop fixed meanings and become nouns, taking the plural patterns that nouns rather than adjectives take, like مكتوب ‘message, note’ (“that which has been written”) with its plural مكاتيبُ and مفهومٌ – مفاهيمُ ‘notion-s, concept-s’. The word معلوم is interesting: as a passive participle it means “known”; as a noun it means “fee; duty, tax” (Tunisia), and with the feminine suffix, معلومة, it means ‘a known or given fact, a piece of information’ with the regular plural معلومات meaning ‘knowledge, information; data’.
Derived passive participles may also mean noun of place, like مخيَّم ‘camping ground, camp’ from خيَّم ‘to pitch tent, encamp’ and مُستشفىً ‘hospital’ from استشفى ‘to seek a cure’. In this usage the derived passive participles differ from basic Form I verbs, which have the special pattern مفعلة/مَفعَل (or مفغِل with most verbs whose imperfect stem vowel in ـِ i). The plural of all of these patterns is مَفاعِلُ.
مكتبٌ – مكاتِبُ ‘office-s’ from كتب – يكتُب ‘to write’
مدرسةٌ – مدارسُ ‘school-s’ from درس – يدرُس ‘to study’
مجلِسٌ – مجالسُ ‘seat; session; council’ from جَلَسَ – يجلِس ‘to sit down’
مقهىً – مقاهٍ from the root of the noun قهْوة ‘coffee’
3. Human collectives
Nouns like الحَضَرُ ‘the town dwellers’ are human collective nouns. As human collectives, they refer to groups or classes of humans, they take masculine plural agreement, and they form unit nouns by means of the nisba suffix يٌّ-. (The nisba suffix regularly forms a feminine singular in يّةٌ- , and takes masculine and feminine sound plurals.) Illustrations:
Collective : الحضر ‘the town dwellers’
Unit noun : حضري، حضرية ‘a town dweller’
Plural of unit noun: ضريون، حضريات ‘town dwellers’
Agreement: الحضرُ يعملون بالتجارة والصناعة الخفيفة ‘The town-dwellers engage in trade and light industries.
The unit noun is a nisba derivative: it accordingly my serve as either a noun, e.g., ‘a town-dweller’, or as a relative adjective, e.g., ‘settled, sedentary, non-Bedouin’. The masculine plural of the relative adjective is equal in meaning to the collective noun itself: الحضريون equals الحضر. Thus there are three ways to say “the sedentary poets” in Arabic:الشعراء الحضريون، الشعراء الحضر and شعراء الحضر. Technically speaking, the last one means “the poets of the town dwellers” and the first two mean “the sedentary poets”; for all practical purposes, however, such differences in nuance are slight and can be ignored.
Other human collectives in this lesson are العرب ‘the Arabs’ البدو and ‘the Bedouins’; these two are exactly like الحضر except that they cannot form masculine sound plural forms of the nisba, the collective itself serving for plural adjective or noun: الشعراء العرب or شعراء العرب ‘the Arab poets’, الشعراء البدو ‘the Bedouin poets’. Additional human collectives like الحضر are اليونان ‘the Greeks’; الانكليز ‘the English’; الامريكان ‘the Americans (the unit noun is امبيكي); الفُرْس ‘the Persians (the unit noun is فارِسيّ); اليهود‘the Jews’; البَربَر ‘the Berbers’.
Some human collectives also have broken plurals, e.g., اعْراب ‘(Bedouin) Arabs’, plural of عرب; التُرك\الاتراك ‘the Turks’; الكُرد\الاكراد ‘the Kurds’; الارمن\الارامِنة ‘the Armenians’. This latter broken plural is of the pattern افاعِلةُ, which you have seen in words like استاذ\اساتذة ‘professor/s’.
مثل – أمثال
مثل always occurs as مضاف in an اضافة whose اليه مضاف is a s., d., or p. noun or pronoun. It serves as a noun, as a noun modifier , in which case it may appear as singular or plural, and as a prepositional.
1. مثل as an independent noun phrase
Here it can fill the functions of a noun and is declined accordingly:
يجب ان تكون مكانة المرأة مثل مكانة الرجل.
لم ارَ في حياتي مثلَ هذا الانسان. “the likes of”
إنّ امثالَ هؤلاء الناس لا يظهرون في مثلِ هذه المناسبات. “the likes of”/ “such…as”
لم يحدّثنا احد بمثل هذا الكلام. “such a…as”, “a…like this”
هل هذه اللغات مثل اليابانية؟. “like”, “the same as”
2. مثل as noun modifier
Here it agrees with the noun it modifies:
لها علاقة بالفنون مثل الرسم والتصوير. gen “like, such as”: prep?
أبرز علماء كثيرون امثال دارون و… و… nom “such as”?
هناك علماء مثل اينشتاين هربوا من بلادهم. nom “like, such as”?
ما زالوا يستخدمون اللغات القديمة مثل اليونانيّة. acc
لها مساوئ عديدة متل ازدحام السكّان. nom.
As can be noticed from the examples above, the modification may be restrictive or non-restrictive.
3. مثلَ as a prepositional
Here the phrase with مثل , always in the accusative, modifies the sentence that precede like an adverbial, signifying ‘in a way similar to/like’. Compare:
دخل الاسلام لكنّه احتفظ بلغته الاصلية مثلِ الكردية
Here are other examples:
في كلّ دين مذاهب مثلُ السنّة والشيعة .
يتصرّف الكبار الآن مثلَ الأطفال.
لم نعد نفكّر مثلَك.
دخل الاسلام لكنّه احتفظ بلغته الاصلية مثلَ البربر.
توسُّع في معاني بعض الكلمات ‘Expansion in the meaning and uses of some words’
Several words occur in the Basic Text, whose meanings are expansions of words that we know:
1. احاط به . We have seen this word to mean ‘surround a place or s.o.’. However, one can surround, encompass other things. For example, we can say
أحاط بالموضوع او أحاط بالأمر علماً He knew it thoroughly (from all sides).
أحاطني علما بالموضوع He informed me about the matter (lit. he surrounded me with knowledge about it from all sides)
أحاط الموضوع بالكِتْمان He concealed it (surrounded it with secrecy)
يحيط الموضوع بالغُموض He obscures it (surrounds it with obscurity).
2. سَريع . We know أسرع ‘be quick, fast, hasten, hurry’ as inبه أسرعوا الى الترحيب ‘they rushed to welcome him’ . The word سَريع indicates having the quality or feature of promptness, quickness, expeditiousness’
3. نافع . We know نفع ‘be of use, benefit’. Well guess what نافع means.
4. حِفاظ . This word occurs in this lesson and is المصدر from the verb حافظ . You will remember that المصدر of Form III verb is most often مُفاعلة and we do have the word مُحافظة. But we also know that for some Form III verbs, فِعال is an alternative; of the verbs we have encountered the following have this alternative: دِفاع ‘defense’ from دافع , كِفاح ‘struggle, fight’ from كافح . This is not the case with other verbs of this Form, e.g.
شاهد ، سافر، قابل ، شارك ، ساعد ، حاضر، طالب ، قاوم ، صادق ، راسل ، عاصر،
We have the verb تابع , but تِباع is only used as an adverbial تِباعاً ‘one after the other, in succession’. Wherever applicable, from hereon in that second form of المصدر will be provided with new words.
5. حوالَيْ . This word occurs in this lesson with the meaning of approximately, and has this meaning whenever followed by numbers or measures of any kind. However, it also has the other meaning of ‘around’, او من حَوْلِ حَوْل , that we find in إحاطة ‘surrounding’ as in:
جلس واولاده حوالـَيـْه/حَوْلَه I sat with his children around him.
This has the same meaning as:
جلس واولاده محيطون به
The form أجمع , ‘entire, all, whole’, which occurs as m. and f., s. or p.: m.s. أجْمَعُ , f.s. جَمْعاءُ , m.p. أجْمَعون , f.p. جُمَعُ ; the m.p. is declined أجمعون – أجمعين but the others are diptotes. It normally occurs in all its forms, after كلّ followed by a pronoun, the مضاف اليه being a pronoun referring to the head noun. In this case, it agrees in gender , number and case with the head noun.
جاء ا لفريق كلُّه أجمعُ The whole team arrived (lit. all of them, the whole of them.
جاءت الجماعة كلُّها جمعاءُ The whole group arrived.
تحدّثت مع المراسلين كلّهم أجمعين I talked to all the
It can occur independently as a noun in apposition:
اجتمعنا بأعضاء المنظّمة أجمعين We got together with all the members of the organization.
عند إقامته في الصحراء سمع القبيلةَ َ جمعاءَ تغنّي During his stay in the desert he heard the whole tribe sing.
It may occur in an إضافة followed by a pronoun and preceded by the prep. بِ :
قرأت مؤلّفاتِه بأجمعِها I read his writings in their entirety.
f. Synonyms for items in (c.) and (e.) above are: بأ سْرِه and بأكمله