Lesson 50– الدَّرْسُ الْخَمْسُونَ

Verbal Nouns  - أَسْمَاءُ الأَفْعَال

Some rules of sentences comprising verbal nouns - بَعْض أحكام جملة اسم الفعل

  • We are still in lesson fifty of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • We learnt in the previous parts of this lesson everything about the verbal nouns in Arabic. We learnt that it does the function of the verb in terms of meaning and tense, but the rules of the verb do not apply to it, as in the case of attaching pronouns to it.
  • We also learnt that the verbal noun and the verb that has equivalent meaning express the same thing, but the usage of the verbal noun indicates some sort of intensiveness and gives more strength to the feeling of the verb itself.
  • We also learnt the three types of the verbal noun: past, present and imperative, with examples for each type.
  • Now we will explain some of the rules of the verbal noun and its sentence:
    • As we notice in the term “verbal noun”, it is neither a verb nor a noun. Consequently neither the rules of the verb nor those of the noun apply to it. However, some rules of those of the noun and some of those of the verb apply to the verbal noun.
    • The verbal noun is not attached to any pronoun as is the case with the verb. We say: صَهْ يا وَلَدُ، صَهْ يا وَلَدانِ، صَهْ يا أَوْلادُ, but in the case of the verb, we say:اُسْكُتْ يا وَلَدُ، اُسْكُتَا يا وَلَدَانِ، اُسْكُتُوا يا أَوْلادُ.
    • There is an important difference between the verbal noun and the noun. As we leant, the indefinite noun can be definite by means of tanwīn (nunation), prefix al- and annexation (iđâfah). On the other hand, there are two cases regarding the verbal noun. The first case: If there is no tanwīn, then it is definite. The second case: if there is tanwīn, then it is indefinite.
    • For example: if we say to someone talking: صَهْ  /sah/ this means to “hush” and do not talk about this topic only but not anything else, but if you say to him: صَهٍ /sah-in/ this means that you ask him not to talk at all and not to speak about anything (shut up).