Lesson 32– الدَّرْسُ الثَّانِي وَالثَّلاثُونَ

Sound Verb and Defective Verb – الفِعْلُ الصَّحِيحُ والمُعْتَلُّ

Making Defective Verbs Negative

• We are still in lesson thirty two of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
• In Lesson 17 (Making the Arabic Verb Negative) we learnt some Arabic negative particles that precede verbs, such as (لا، لَنْ، لَمْ، ما) and knew that some of these particles change the short vowel-ending of the verb from a đammah to fatћah such as لن. For example:

• Some of these negative articles change the ending short vowel of the present verb from a đammah to sukūn, such as لمْ. For example:

• Some of them do not change the ending short vowel of the present verb, such as /laa/ and /maa/. For example:

• Now we will study the effect of these articles on the defective verbs, especially the first three types: modal (mithāl), hollow (aĵwaf) and nāqiŝ (deficient) verbs. Consider the following examples:

1-  modal verb / mithāl - الْفِعْلُ الْمِثَالُ

• We notice here that the negative form of the modal verb (mithāl), which begins with a defective letter, is like the negation of the sound verb.

2-  hollow verb / aĵwaf - الفعل الأَجْوَف

• We notice here that the hollow verb (aĵwaf) does not change with the articles لا and ما. With the negative article لن its ending short vowel changes into fatћa. But after article لم the verb form changes from أزُورُ to أزُرْ – what occurred here is that we omitted the defective letter و because it is sākin (quiescent / without vowel) and followed by another sākin (quiescent) letter رْ because it is preceded by the negative article لمْ. The original Arabic language rule says: if two sākin (quiescent / without vowel) letters follow each other, the defective letter of which is omitted. This occurs with all modal (nāqiŝ) verbs. For example:

3-  deficient verb / nāqiŝ - الفعل الناقص

• We notice the changes that occur to the deficient (nāqiŝ) verb (which ends with a defective letter), as follows:

a.    Negative articles لا and ما do not affect it, but the đammah never appear on the deficient (nāqiŝ) verb. For example:

b.    When using the negative article لن, we notice a fatћa appears on the defective letter if it is a و or ي, but not ا / ى because this is not possible. For example:

c.    In case the verb is negated with the negative article /lam/, the defective letter at the end of the verb is always omitted and a short vowel sign appears on the letter before it to indicate that a defective letter is omitted. We put fatћa if the omitted defective letter is alif or alif maqsura; Kasrah if the omitted defective letter is yaa’; and đammah if the omitted defective letter is waaw. For example: