Lesson 33– الدَّرْسُ الثَّالِثُ وَالثَّلاثُونَ

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs – الفِعْلُ المُتَعَدِّي والْفِعْلُ اللازِمُ

Introduction - مُقَدِّمَةٌ

  • This is lesson thirty three of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • We studied the types of sentences in Arabic, namely the Arabic nominal sentence that begins (originally) with a noun and the Arabic verbal sentence that starts (originally) with a verb.
  • The verbal sentence is made up of two main components: the verb + the doer. We will study this in detail later in this lesson, but now let’s see the following two examples.
  • In case the sentence includes only these main components and does not need a direct object, as is the case in the two examples below, then the verb is called an intransitive verb "فِعْلٌ لازِمٌ".

Doer

Verb

Translation

Sentence

مُحَمَّدٌ

ظَهَرَ

Muhammad showed up

ظَهَرَ مُحَمَّدٌ

شَاكِرٌ

تَغَيَّبَ

Shakir failed to show up

تَغَيَّبَ شَاكِرٌ

  • The sentence may contain a verb, a doer and a noun which suffers the action of the verb. In this case, the verb is called a transitive verb "فِعلٌ مُتَعَدٍّ", as in the following two examples:

Direct object

Doer

Verb

Translation

Sentence

الدَّرْسَ

الطَّالِبُ

كَتَبَ

The student wrote the lesson

كَتَبَ الطَّالِبُ الدَّرْسَ

اللَّبَنَ

الْوَلَدُ

شَرِبَ

The boy drank the milk

شَرِبَ الوَلَدُ اللَّبَنَ

  • In Arabic, there are three cases of transitive verbs as follows:
    1. Transitive verbs with one direct object.
    2. Transitive verbs with two direct objects.
    3. Transitive verbs with three direct objects.

Object 3

Object 2

Object 1

Doer

Verb

Translation

Sentence

Case

 

 

العَرَبِيَّةَ

إبْرَاهِيمُ

دَرَسَ

Ibrahim studied Arabic

دَرَسَ إبْرَاهِيمُ العَرَبِيَّةَ

1

 

لَذِيذًا

الطَّعامَ

خَالِدٌ

حَسِبَ

Khalid deemed the food delicious

حَسِبَ خَالِدٌ الطَّعامَ لَذِيذًا

2

مُرًّا

الحَقَّ

خَالِدًا

مُحَمَّدٌ

أَعْلَمَ

Muhammad told Khalid [that] the truth [is] painful

أَعْلَمَ مُحَمَّدٌ خَالِدًا الحَقَّ مُرًّا

3