Lesson 64 – الدَّرْسُ الرَّابِعُ والسِّتُّونَ
The doer - الفاعِل
Rules of the doer – أَحْكَامُ الفَاعِلِ
- We are still in lesson sixty four of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
- The definition of the doer is that “which does the action of the verb, or the verb characterizes it”.
- This means that the doer is not only who does the action of the verb as (كَتَبَ الطَّالِبُ الدَّرْس); because there are many doers that the action is not done by them, but it characterizes them, as follows:
The doer | The verb | Example | |
English | Arabic | ||
Yasser died when he was young | /māta yāsirun ŝaghīran/ | ||
Omar lived a long life | /ξāsha ξumaru ŧawīlan/ |
- The verb (مَاتَ) and (عَاشَ) cannot be made by the doer, but these verbs characterize the doer as shown above. The doer in both sentences is in the nominative case, i.e. it is signed with /đammah/ on its last letter (ياسِرٌ – عُمرُ).
- Please note that the verb here is not in passive voice.
- In the light of this definition mentioned above, we will study in this part the rules of the doer.
- Firstly, consider attentively the following examples:
Picture | The doer | Example | No. | |
English | Arabic | |||
| The flight left the airport | غَادَرَتِ الطَّائِرَةُ المَطَارَ /ghâdarat aŧ ŧâ’ratu al maŧâra/ | 1 | |
| The flight landed at three | هَبَطَتِ الطَّائِرَةُ السَّاعَةَ الثَّالِثَةَ /habaŧat aŧ ŧâ’ratu as sāξata ath-thālithata/ | 2 | |
| The travelers get off from the flight | نَزَلَ المُسَافِرُونَ من الطَّائِرَةِ /nazala al musāfirūna min aŧ ŧâ’rati/ | 3 | |
| And they entered the arrival hall | /wa dakhalū ŝâlata al wuŝūli/ | 4 | |
| The two workers carried the luggage | حَمَلَ العَامِلانِ الحَقَائِبَ /ħamala al ξāmilāni al ħaqâ’iba/ | 5 | |
| The people received the travelers | 6 | ||
| Did Mohamed come? No, but Ali. | 7 |
- From the above mentioned table we notice the following rules of the doer:
1-The doer is always in the nominative case.
- In all the above mentioned examples you may notice that the doer is always in the nominative case.
- It is sometimes signed with the main sign of the nominative case, which is the /đammah/ as in examples no. 1, 2, 6, and 7, which are respectively (الطَّائِرَةُ - الطَّائِرَةُ – النَّاسُ – مُحَمَّدٌ – عَلِيٌّ )
- And sometimes it is signed with the letter /wāw/ which is the sign of the nominative case of the sound masculine plural as in example no. 3 (المُسَافِرُونَ).
- It can also be signed with /alif/ in its penultimate letter. The /alif/ is the sign of the nominative case of the dual noun, as in example no. 5 (العامِلانِ).
- If the doer is a pronoun as in example number 4, the nominative attached pronoun (ـوا) will be indeclinable nominative attached pronoun. We studied in the lessons from 44 to 48 the pronouns and we learnt that they are always indeclinable whatever the grammatical position they occupy is, and they can be in nominative, accusative, or genitive place.
- Here we have the pronoun in nominative place because it is in the position of a doer, and the doer is always in nominative case.
2-The second rule of the doer is that it must fall after the verb.
This is as shown in all the examples above, and here are some of them:
The doer | Example | No. | |
English | Arabic | ||
The flight left the airport | غَادَرَتِ الطَّائِرَةُ المَطَارَ /ghâdarat aŧ ŧâ’ratu al maŧâra/ | 1 | |
The flight landed at three | هَبَطَتِ الطَّائِرَةُ السَّاعَةَ الثَّالِثَةَ /habaŧat aŧ ŧâ’ratu as sāξata ath thālithata/ | 2 | |
The travelers get off from the flight | نَزَلَ المُسَافِرُونَ من الطَّائِرَةِ /nazala al musāfirūna min aŧ ŧâ’rati/ | 3 |
- We now clearly understand that the doer comes always after the verb.
- If you find a noun referring the doer and falling before the verb as in the sentence:
- Do not think that it is the doer. Rather, this noun in the beginning of the sentence is a subject (mubtada’), followed by a verbal sentence predicate.
- This kind of sentence we studied it in lesson 58 of the nominal sentence, and we can review it in the following tables:
The nominal sentence |
Breakdown of the nominal sentence | |
Verbal sentence (predicate) | Subject |
- As you may notice the verbal sentence has its own doer which is a latent pronoun, and the verbal sentence represents the predicate of the bigger sentence in which the subject is the noun which is in the beginning.
3-The verb is not changed according to the number of the doer, i.e. the verb is always singular. It is neither is dual nor plural.
In all the examples shown above we notice that the verb is always singular as follows:
The verb | ||||||
came | Received | Carried | Got off | Landed | Left | Meaning |
- The verb in all these examples is in singular form, even if the doer after it is a dual as:
Or plural noun as:
- There is an exception in which the verb can be in the plural form, when the doer is a plural noun and expressed by a subject preceding the verbal sentence as follows:
- This is the bigger nominal sentence which we studied above. The doer of the verbal sentence is the attached masculine plural pronoun (ـوا). This is the exceptional case in which the verb can be in the plural (masculine or feminine) or in the dual form.
- We remind you that this is under the condition that the attached pronoun (plural or dual) refers to an evident noun mentioned before the verb. Compare these wrong and correct sentences:
The attached pronoun refers to an evident noun that precedes the verb | Correct | |
The attached pronoun refers to an evident noun after the verb | Wrong | |
The verb is regularly in the singular form | Correct | |
The verb has to be exceptionally in the plural form | Wrong |
- NB.: For the specialists of Arabic grammar, it is important to mention that the second sentence mentioned above (دَخَلُوا المُسَافِرُونَ) which is wrong in Modern Standard Arabic, it was correct in the language of some ancient Arabic tribes, and it is allowed by some ancient grammarians, and they think that it is also used in the Holly Qur’an (Surah 21 Verse 3).
4-The fourth rule of the doer is that it falls originally after the verb and before the object or any other complement.
- As you notice in all the examples above, the original order of the words in the verbal sentence is as follows:
The verb + the doer + the object + the complement |
- This word order could be exceptionally changed, i.e. the object can precede the doer in some situations as in the following examples:
Picture | The object | The doer | Example | |
English | Arabic | |||
| Our teacher taught us to respect the people | عَلَّمَنَا الأُسْتَاذُ اِحْتِرامَ النَّاسِ /ξallamanā al ustādhu iħtirâma an nāsi/ | ||
| The teacher, his student thanked him | /shakara al ustādha ŧâlibuhu/ | ||
| The factory, its owner visited it | /zāra al maŝnaξa ŝaħibahu/ | ||
| The mother, her daughter helped her | Sāξadat al umma ibnatuha/ |
- In the above mentioned examples the object precedes the doer for exceptional reasons as follows:
-In the first sentence the object is an attached pronoun (عَلَّمَنَا) and the doer is an evident noun (الأُسْتَاذُ), so it is not possible to separate the pronoun and put it after the doer.
-In the rest of the examples the doer is respectively (طَاِلِبُهُ - صَاحِبُهُ - اِبْنَتُهَا). Each of these nouns contains an attached pronoun that refers to the preceding object of the verb (الأُسْتَاذَ - المَصْنَعَ - الأُمَّ). Therefore the doer is obligatorily postpositive, because the attached pronoun must refer to a preceding noun (not to a following noun).