# Is the verb the most important form in Arabic?



## C. E. Whitehead

Hi! I have gotten this idea (mainly from the fact that the 3-consonant form I verb seems so primary in Arabic) that the verb is the most important part of speech, the part on which other parts are built.

This seems to be in contrast to Persian/Farsi, where the noun seems important; thus to say: "I want to play football" you say something like, "futbol bazi-koni miham" (except of course that Persian/Farsi is not normally written using the Roman alphabet; this means roughly that 'I do football playing' or something); to say, "I speak Persian, you say something like, "sop-e-farsi mikonam" (meaning roughly, 'I do the Persian tongue"); thus the verb, 'koni,' meaning 'to do' is used with nouns to create a ton of sentences!

Correct me if I'm wrong about either Arabic or Persian/Farsi. (And no, I hardly do the Persian tongue at all, so I welcome the corrections.)

Best, 

cew


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## المعتصم

in fact, verb isn't always the part that all other parts are built on. you know that in Arabic we have three parts of speech, ism (noun), fi3l (verb) and 7arf (preposition).
most nouns are built on verbs but not all, i.e. words that are not originally Arabic, indeclinable nouns (شجرة، قلم، عشب،...), al-Dama2er (pronouns), al-asma2-al-mawsuula (relatives),... etc
some verbs are built on nouns(these verbs are not on فعل form "I") (شجّر، قلّم، اعشوشب)
all 7uruuf (prepositions) are not originally verbs(من، الى، عن، حتى، أو، و،لا،...etc)


best to all..


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## C. E. Whitehead

Thanks for the great info. on Arabic!

It is really helpful!  It makes the system clearer to me.  I know that 3 consonants are used to form most words and was taught that the perfective form of the form I verbs was primary!

(In Persian the verb 'koni,' 'to do' is important; it's used with nouns; there are also 'verb-like' endings that can be put on adjectives, thus to say I'm fine you add the first person singular ending 'am' to the adjective 'hob' to form 'hobam'--that's my understanding; there are also verbs in Persian)

Best,

--cew


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## Mahaodeh

I don't know what you mean exactly by "the part on which other parts are built" but I do know this, in the vast majority of cases, the noun is derived from the verb and not otherwise. I have read somewhere a long time ago that "Arabic is a verbal language" where the verb is the basic part of the vocabulary - specifically, the simple past, singular, masculine third person tense.

Having said that, this does not mean that a verb is essential in the sentence, you can compose entire paragraphs without using a single verb.



المعتصم said:


> indeclinable nouns (شجرة، قلم، عشب،...)


 
While I agree that some nouns that are originally Arabic are not based on verbs, I'm not sure you used such examples, as an example: شَجَرَ يَشْجُرُ شَجْرًا تشابك واختلف ومنها قوله تعالى: "لا يؤمنون حتى يحكموك فيما شَجَرَ بينهم"، لست متأكدة من عشب وحسب علمي هناك من يقول أن قلم كلمة مستعارة من اليونانية

I would have used: أرض، شمس، إمرأة


As for Persian, I don't speak any but in any case comparing Arabic to Persian is comparing Apples to Oranges since they belong to different language families.


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## clevermizo

Mahaodeh said:


> I don't know what you mean exactly by "the part on which other parts are built" but I do know this, in the vast majority of cases, the noun is derived from the verb and not otherwise. I have read somewhere a long time ago that "Arabic is a verbal language" where the verb is the basic part of the vocabulary - specifically, the simple past, singular, masculine third person tense.



I think that's what he meant: in other words, in a large number of cases if you simplify an Arabic word down to its root, you have a verb.

Interestingly, this even works for some حروف. If you think about it, a root for على could be the same as the verb علا which makes sense because of what the word على means (to be over or on top of something).




> As for Persian, I don't speak any but in any case comparing Arabic to Persian is comparing Apples to Oranges since they belong to different language families.


I think he was mostly contrasting them. In other words, he was saying they are in fact fundamentally different in this respect. Whereas most Persian words may at their root level be "nouns", perhaps most Arabic words at their root level are "verbs." 

(Also, there's really no problem comparing/contrasting apples and oranges. Suppose I come across a person that knows what neither is, so I explain well "apples are like this; oranges are like this." They are both fruits, and Persian and Arabic are both languages. So at a fundamental level it's ok to compare them linguistically. No one's trying to say they're genetically related.)

Note, I don't know how true this contrast is. My own skepticism about it stems from the fact that this dependency in modern Persian on a helping verb like "do" ("do the playing" rather than "play", etc.) is a modern phenomenon. The same is true in Hindi/Urdu with helping verbs. Indo-european languages definitely rely heavily on verbs and full verbal conjugation/inflection and this tendency in the Indo-Iranian group of languages may not reflect the underlying "noun" or "verb" nature of the language.

On the other hand, Hebrew and Aramaic, like Arabic, if you simplify a word to its root, you very often get a "verb." So it may be that Semitic languages in general rely on a "verbal" meaning to build words.

My only hesitance about this particular claim is that there are many words (like names of plants and animals) for which I don't see obvious verb roots. Also, I don't know how you could get a verb out of بـ or في.


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## Faylasoof

clevermizo said:


> I think that's what he meant: in other words, in a large number of cases if you simplify an Arabic word down to its root, you have a verb.


 


> …On the other hand, Hebrew and Aramaic, like Arabic, if you simplify a word to its root, you very often get a "verb." So it may be that Semitic languages in general rely on a "verbal" meaning to build words.


This is what I feel. As someone coming from an Indo-Iranian linguistic background  (Urdu-Hindi and Persian) the thing that struck me most when I started with Arabic was precisely this presence of the tri-literal consonantal root system that formed the basis of the majority of verbs. 
 This apparent verbal _bias_ in Arabic in contrast to the other languages (all Indo-European, including English) that I speak always struck me and while Iagree that in modern Persian the use of auxiliary verbs to make compounds is the preferred way, one can look at Pahlavi (Middle Persian). There too one doesn’t see a such a “verbal bias” as in Semitic languages.  At least that is how I feel. Same appears true of Urdu-Hindi.


> Indo-european languages definitely rely heavily on verbs and full verbal conjugation/inflection and this tendency in the Indo-Iranian group of languages may not reflect the underlying "noun" or "verb" nature of the language.


.  Isn’t this true for most languages? I mean a (heavy) reliance on the use of verbs to express action.  





> My only hesitance about this particular claim is that there are many words (like names of plants and animals) for which I don't see obvious verb roots.


Even with this caveat of names of many plants and animals etc. not being obviously derived from verbs, I’ve still used the verbal root system in Arabic to guess the meanings of nouns, adjectives from the verb wherever I can. Works very well. 


> ...Also, I don't know how you could get a verb out of  بـ or في but على I suppose could be related to علا.


  



> ...Interestingly, this even works for some حروف . If you think about it, a root for على could be the same as the verb علا which makes sense because of what the word على means (to be over or on top of something).


 Perhaps the negative examples of prepositions are extreme, but even here as you indicate على seems related to the verb علا (=علو and على).


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## clevermizo

I agree - the comment I made about prepositions was mostly tongue in cheek. It's definitely extreme.

It is interesting however that names of foods, plants and animals are difficult to reduce to the "verbal" base system. But most other nouns are not.


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## dkarjala

These are all very interesting thoughts. I would like to add the following:

1. Let's not forget that the verb in the past tense is NOT necessarily the basic root. The verb has to have specific vowels, which can change the meaning, therefore it is the consonants that make the root, not the verb form.

2. In addition, the most basic words (and often those that have an influence on the theme vowel of a particular verb) consist of the three-consonant root plus one or two short vowels (fu'l, fi'l, fa'l, etc.). These, to me, are far more basic in sound, and do not change, and are thus more primitive in the barest sense of the term. It is strange to imagine the verb 'to rain' developing before the noun 'rain' for example - simply imagine the language developing from scratch.

3. Thirdly, and most importantly, Arabic is a West Semitic language and as such has participated in the INNOVATION of the suffix-conjugation perfect 'tense'. The original past tense, as evidenced by more conservative languages and Arabic grammar itself, was _yaf'al_, or the jussive/_muDaari' majzuum_. (Which is why it appears with this meaning after _lam_ and in conditional sentences). The form you are referring to (the perfect) was originally a stative/adjectival/passive form. Compare some remaning statives like _kabura _'he IS big'. 

I know this is a lot but this issue is often overlooked by Arabists who aren't yet trained in general Semitics and it's a fascinating topic.


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## Faylasoof

What you say is also very interesting but I’m not sure if we / I gave you the wrong impression. 

 Yes, the tri-literal root strictly speaking is not equivalent to the verb. However, the way we think about the most verbs in Arabic is in a tri-literal root form. Moreover, the listing of words in most, though not all, Arabic dictionaries is by this route system where the verb is the one first listed. All else follows. 

 I think this is what some of us were trying to say. Of course the root needs the short vowels to make sense as either a verb or noun etc. but it is the verb that we see first (and for many of us think of first) when we are searching for a word. Very different from the non-Semitic languages I started off with. 

 The _evolution and development_ of the Arabic (or other Semitic) language(s) was _not_ what I had in mind.


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## C. E. Whitehead

Thanks for the historical information!

I am a little familiar with a dissertation by someone studying in linguistics who insisted that the 'perfective' 3-consonant root verb was sort of basic; but what you say about other forms having influence on the theme vowel (whether for example you have FaMaLa -- where F stands for "first," "M" for "middle," and "L" for last; and then I've inserted the vowels -- or FaMiLa ) might make some sense! I still tend to think that today the perfective 3-consonant root is to some degree basic in Arabic (although historically some other verb form may have been more basic). 

On another topic, for me it's very possible to imagine the verb, 'rain,' evolving concurrently with the noun or even before it. Rain puddles are what's standing, not rain; rain is always in flux. So the first word for 'rain' might be a verb talking about the action--especially if the language has a preference for verbs!

(Languages do seem to have their preferences; there are for example those where the verb seems to focus on the 'doer' of the action; that is the verb agrees with the subject who is usually active; and others where the verb seems to focus on the person or thing acted upon; that is the verb generally agrees with the 'direct object' of the action when there is one--for example the Algonquian languages. Back to verbs and nouns; water flows; rivers run; the sun shines; and you can focus on either the water or the flowing, the river or the running, the sun or the shining. Indeed, in many languages there are 'impersonal verbs,' verbs where there is really no subject, so 'it' is inserted as a 'dummy subject:' an example from the European languages is, "It's raining;" the French, "Il pleut." )

--cew



dkarjala said:


> These are all very interesting thoughts. I would like to add the following:
> 
> 1. Let's not forget that the verb in the past tense is NOT necessarily the basic root. The verb has to have specific vowels, which can change the meaning, therefore it is the consonants that make the root, not the verb form.
> 
> 2. In addition, the most basic words (and often those that have an influence on the theme vowel of a particular verb) consist of the three-consonant root plus one or two short vowels (fu'l, fi'l, fa'l, etc.). These, to me, are far more basic in sound, and do not change, and are thus more primitive in the barest sense of the term. It is strange to imagine the verb 'to rain' developing before the noun 'rain' for example - simply imagine the language developing from scratch.
> 
> 3. Thirdly, and most importantly, Arabic is a West Semitic language and as such has participated in the INNOVATION of the suffix-conjugation perfect 'tense'. The original past tense, as evidenced by more conservative languages and Arabic grammar itself, was _yaf'al_, or the jussive/_muDaari' majzuum_. (Which is why it appears with this meaning after _lam_ and in conditional sentences). The form you are referring to (the perfect) was originally a stative/adjectival/passive form. Compare some remaning statives like _kabura _'he IS big'.
> 
> I know this is a lot but this issue is often overlooked by Arabists who aren't yet trained in general Semitics and it's a fascinating topic.


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## Mahaodeh

I don't think I agree with you:
 



dkarjala said:


> 1. Let's not forget that the verb in the past tense is NOT necessarily the basic root. The verb has to have specific vowels, which can change the meaning, therefore it is the consonants that make the root, not the verb form.


 
In Arabic, the past tense IS the basic form of the verb in all verbs. While it does have short vowels (otherwise it would be hard, if not impossible to pronounce) it has the least additions, be those additions short vowels, long vowels, additional letters or prefixes and suffixes, it also has no omissions of the root long vowels like tenses do.
 



dkarjala said:


> 2. In addition, the most basic words (and often those that have an influence on the theme vowel of a particular verb) consist of the three-consonant root plus one or two short vowels (fu'l, fi'l, fa'l, etc.). These, to me, are far more basic in sound, and do not change, and are thus more primitive in the barest sense of the term. It is strange to imagine the verb 'to rain' developing before the noun 'rain' for example - simply imagine the language developing from scratch.


 
I'm not a specialist in the development of languages, I don't remember even reading much about it, so bare with me a little: it seems to me that the other way round makes more sense. Imagine a group of people that have no way of communicating in words with each other and they start to develop language; they would most probably need verbs first, not nouns. On one hand, they don't have conversations with each other at all, so exclaiming something like "woow, what green grass this is" seems like a luxury that would not even cross their mind. On the other, if they want to point out something or someone to another person it would be much easier and more convenient to simply point to it. Moreover, it seems to me that the first attempts to communicate would be to get someone to do what you want: words like "come, go, give, take, hide, hit, run...etc." are the urgent things.
 
I'm just thinking out loud here, but looking at my sister's children growing up, they seem to start with verbs not nouns even if they do in fact use nouns. When my 18 month old niece would say to me "hum" she is not saying "food", rather she is saying "_feed_ me" even if we use hum to mean food; she is not aware that it's a noun not a verb but she is using it as a verb anyway.
 
So te me, it makes more sense to have the verb be the basic form, not the noun. As the language develops, obviously you would need both in addition to adverbs and articles and all the other parts of language.
 



dkarjala said:


> 3. Thirdly, and most importantly, Arabic is a West Semitic language and as such has participated in the INNOVATION of the suffix-conjugation perfect 'tense'. The original past tense, as evidenced by more conservative languages and Arabic grammar itself, was _yaf'al_, or the jussive/_muDaari' majzuum_. (Which is why it appears with this meaning after _lam_ and in conditional sentences). The form you are referring to (the perfect) was originally a stative/adjectival/passive form. Compare some remaning statives like _kabura _'he IS big'.


 
Again, I'm no specialist so bare with me a little. The switching does not really seem to make sense to me. I don't know how other Western Semitic languages developed, I don't even speak any of them; but I know this about Arabic, the earliest inscriptions in Arabic dates back to the second century and the bulk is in the fourth or fifth, documented in the fifth or sixth centuries. All of which is what is known in the west as Classical Arabic which uses the current verb forms. While the language itself may have been spoken a thousand years earlier, we have nothing to prove that so I think it's safe to assume that this is based on other Western Semitic languages.
 
I don't know how this happened, but why assume it happened in Arabic too; could it not have been possible that this didn't happen in Arabic?
 
The example of Kabura may be an exception if what you say is true, but I doubt it is. Verbs from baab THarufa are used commonly as adjectives not verbs although they act grammatically as verbs. An example is from the Quran: يا أيها الذي آمنوا لما تقولون ما لا تفعلون كَبُرَ مقتا عند الله أن تقولوا ما لا تفعلون; in English it says: .... why do you say what you do not do _it is a great abhorrence_ to God that.....
 
Please don't quote my translation of the quran, I'm just making a point.
 
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with such transformation, I'm just trying to understand why you are considering it a given fact. Even if it were a theory, I believe we are all learned enough to know that a theory is not a fact.


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## clevermizo

Mahaodeh said:


> In Arabic, the past tense IS the basic form of the verb in all verbs. While it does have short vowels (otherwise it would be hard, if not impossible to pronounce) it has the least additions, be those additions short vowels, long vowels, additional letters or prefixes and suffixes, it also has no omissions of the root long vowels like tenses do.




I think what they meant is the 3rd person singular past tense is not necessarily the most basic form of a "root" which contains meaning. I don't think they were talking about "verbs" so much anymore. It just so happens that in writing if you boil most words down to the root, it appears in form the same as some past tense verb. I think that you will agree of course that the past tense and the root are not the same (خوف and خاف for example). 
 



> Imagine a group of people that have no way of communicating in words with each other and they start to develop language; they would most probably need verbs first, not nouns.




Well personally I think they would need both, and start off with words that could be used as either verbs or nouns. This also is a way to understand your sister's example.
 


> I'm just thinking out loud here, but looking at my sister's children growing up, they seem to start with verbs not nouns even if they do in fact use nouns. When my 18 month old niece would say to me "hum" she is not saying "food", rather she is saying "_feed_ me" even if we use hum to mean food; she is not aware that it's a noun not a verb but she is using it as a verb anyway.


Again, she might be using it to mean both a noun and a verb simultaneously.

There are by the way languages that have words that can change semantic categories without modification. Most words in Chinese pass from one semantic category to another, and Chinese does not have any inflection (no prefixes, no suffixes, no vowel changes, no templates, etc). A word like [gei] 给 means both a verb "to give" and a particle "to... someone" (for the indirect object, like لــ or إلى in Arabic). 工作 [gong zuo] means both "to work" and "a job/employment."





> Again, I'm no specialist so bare with me a little. The switching does not really seem to make sense to me. I don't know how other Western Semitic languages developed, I don't even speak any of them; but I know this about Arabic, the earliest inscriptions in Arabic dates back to the second century and the bulk is in the fourth or fifth, documented in the fifth or sixth centuries....


Well Hebrew and Aramaic also have the suffix conjugation for the regular past tense. I too don't know that much about a lot of older Semitic linguistics, but I think they were saying that this "innovation" was something that occurred before Arabic was in existence. Again I don't know much about this theory. The remnant of the majzuum being the old "past" tense in Arabic would then be its use as the negative: لم يفعل. I assume there are other languages that just use the analogue to this form as the past tense itself.


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## C. E. Whitehead

We are getting quite speculative here--when we talk abotu how languages first evolved--but I tend to agree that both nouns and verbs can be basic; I think that some languages tended to build on one and some on the other; it may have something to do with the psychology of the people, their experiences, or just random choosing:


clevermizo said:


> Well personally I think they would need both, and start off with words that could be used as either verbs or nouns. This also is a way to understand your sister's example.
> 
> Again, she might be using it to mean both a noun and a verb simultaneously.
> 
> There are by the way languages that have words that can change semantic categories without modification. Most words in Chinese pass from one semantic category to another, and Chinese does not have any inflection (no prefixes, no suffixes, no vowel changes, no templates, etc). A word like [gei] 给 means both a verb "to give" and a particle "to... someone" (for the indirect object, like لــ or إلى in Arabic). 工作 [gong zuo] means both "to work" and "a job/employment."


 
--Best,
cew


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## clevermizo

C. E. Whitehead said:


> We are getting quite speculative here



The entire notion that Arabic is somehow "verb-based" is speculative; nothing wrong with getting more speculative.


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## dkarjala

Mahaodeh said:


> Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with such transformation, I'm just trying to understand why you are considering it a given fact. Even if it were a theory, I believe we are all learned enough to know that a theory is not a fact.



I understand what you're saying here. I think I threw people off when drawing in Semitic and not Arabic grammar _per se_. As for this particular issue, it _is_ an accepted fact in the scholarly community. What makes a "West Semitic" language "West Semitic" is the very fact that it uses _fa'ala_ forms as perfective verbs, therefore Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic etc. all share a common mother language in which _fa'ala_ was a stative-adjectival form, as in East Semitic. To suggest otherwise in light of the evidence is akin to deriving Latin from Italian. This is not the time nor place, but I could give you enough evidence to convince you off the top of my head if needs be; that is, if you don't accept the current consensus in the field - which I wouldn't blame you for one bit.

That being said, I should apologize for going off on a tangent when the question was about Arabic _synchronically
_and not about historical justifications. My point was that I think words like _dars_, _Huzn, _etc. are no less primitive than the 3ms perfective form of the verb in form - in fact, they are much less complex. The fact that the first thing under a root in a dictionary is the verb and not the primitive nominal is a choice of dictionary makers, not the language.



			
				clevermizo said:
			
		

> The remnant of the majzuum being the old "past" tense in Arabic would then be its use as the negative: لم يفعل. I assume there are other languages that just use the analogue to this form as the past tense itself.



Exactly. Don't forget in Classical Arabic يفعلْ can also be used in the protasis and apodosis of a condition instead of the perfect. ان يعفلْ ينجحْ = ان فعل نجح In Akkadian, the suffix conjugation is only a passive or stative form. This is exactly what happened in Romance languages, Germanic languages, Greek, etc. with the passive. It is common for it to become used as a perfective. 



			
				mahoadeh said:
			
		

> Imagine a group of people that have no way of communicating in words with each other and they start to develop language; they would most probably need verbs first, not nouns.




Definitely opinion. In fact the commands or interjections that were mentioned above are often retained as particles and not verbs at all, c.f. أيا، هيا, هلمّ، وي، إيا، بخ، etc. To talk about things not present (things one needs to get!) one has to have nouns.

Also, I think the Arabic basic nouns are more 'basic' because:

1. They could be seen as influencing the theme vowel.
2. They can't change their form or vowel (the perfect can be stative or active, active or passive, and is meaningless in classical language without something after the third radical)
3. They are 'different' than other nouns. The masculine singular is often a collective/plural, a _taa marbuuTa _makes it singular. Usually something irregular is a retention of an older system. Well...always, in fact.

There are more reasons, of course, but again, I'm only saying what I really believe, and giving my best educated reasons...not trying to impose it. I really enjoy this and respect all of you for your responses.




			
				mahaodeh said:
			
		

> The example of Kabura may be an exception if what you say is true, but I doubt it is. Verbs from baab THarufa are used commonly as adjectives not verbs although they act grammatically as verbs




Consider first verbs of the _wazn fa'ula/fa'ila_. They all have a present tense stative translation (nearly) in English. Secondly, consider the optative بارك الله فيك، رحمه الله، etc. These are old, common and have a non-past meaning. Thirdly, there is no good explanation for the مضارع مجزوم unless it was an older, more conservative form that was in the process of being replaced by the old stative/passive (again, as happens in multiple language families) when the language was codified.




			
				faylasoof said:
			
		

> but it is the verb that we see first (and for many of us think of first) when we are searching for a word. Very different from the non-Semitic languages I started off with.




Semitic languages have a root system, and so it is natural and beautiful and easy to organize dictionaries by the root system. I reiterate, however, that the choice to list the verb first is not dictated by form. Why the longer, mutable form _daras-a_ before the shorter, frozen _dars-u-n_, where the minimum vowels necessary to make it pronounceable are used? 

Also, with other languages, you don't look up nouns, adverbs or some other 'favorite' form - you just look up a spelling. The _mawrid _dictionaries of Arabic are like this. 

Sorry I really like this topic. Feel free to ban me.


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hi!



dkarjala said:


> I. My point was that I think words like _dars_, _Huzn, _etc. are no less primitive than the 3ms perfective form of the verb in form - in fact, they are much less complex. The fact that the first thing under a root in a dictionary is the verb and not the primitive nominal is a choice of dictionary makers, not the language.


 
Actually it's the choice made by the traditional grammarians, whose views affect how speakers of Arabic view their grammar and language. 



dkarjala said:


> Don't forget in Classical Arabic يفعلْ can also be used in the protasis and apodosis of a condition instead of the perfect. ان يعفلْ ينجحْ = ان فعل نجح In Akkadian, the suffix conjugation is only a passive or stative form. This is exactly what happened in Romance languages, Germanic languages, Greek, etc. with the passive. It is common for it to become used as a perfective.


Sometimes the past participle--used in the passive--is conjugated with an auxiliary verb meaning 'be' and sometimes with one meaning 'have,' yes, in the Romance languages and in English. 'Have' is used with transitive verbs in French; it is used with both transitive and intransitive verbs in English; 'have' indicates that an action has been completed in both French and English. 'Be' is used with the same participle to form the passive in both Romance and English. In French of course, the perfective form is also used in speech as the simple past tense; the French have a different literary past tense.

--cew


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## dkarjala

C. E. Whitehead said:


> Sometimes the past participle--used in the passive--is conjugated with an auxiliary verb .... In French of course, the perfective form is also used in speech as the simple past tense; the French have a different literary past tense.
> 
> --cew



Right on. The past participle is not just used in the passive in these Indo-European languages; it was, at one point, ONLY a passive adjective, like the suffix conjugation in east semitic. The use of the auxiliary verb with it probably starts as a compound tense in 'vulgar' speech (I have a dropped pen > I have, dropped, a pen > 'I have dropped a pen' as a new tense). This is why French and German et. al. use 'to be' for certain verbs...because they are intransitive and you couldn't say 'I have an arrived X' so instead they opted for what amounts to an ergative construction (i.e. 'arrived' is not passive...you can't 'arrive' someone or something).

You mention French has a literary past tense; I would say it was once the only past and has been replaced and overlapped by the construction I just described. It isn't used to the extent it once was, and just like in Semitic languages, it will probably be replaced by the form created with the passive adjective. The French _passe simple _is probably in the same situation as the Semitic _yaf'al _past once was untold amounts of time ago.


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hi!



clevermizo said:


> The entire notion that Arabic is somehow "verb-based" is speculative; nothing wrong with getting more speculative.


 

Hmm, I don't think it's entirely speculative to talk about whether or not Arabic is verb-based; I think it might be verb-based compared to Farsi, which forms a number of verbs from nouns and an auxiliary verb like 'koni'  (though Farsi also has verbs of course).  I think we can compare two languages to see which has a richer verb system and which has to use nouns in conjunct with verbs (the French similarly form a number of verb-like constructions with the verb 'faire,' 'to do;' although there is a verb "rain," the French often say "it's raining" with "faire" plus the noun, "pluie," 'rain:' "Il fait de pluie;" I don't know if I would say that French is constructed around nouns because in fact there is also a verb, "pleuvoir," 'to rain,' but we can make some comparisons).

In English, phrases about dancing are often constructed with "do" plus a noun ("do the twist," "do the jitterbug;" but of course you can also use "jitterbug" as a verb!).

In Arabic, I don't know of too many of what we in English would consider verbal expressions that are constructed using nouns plus auxiliaries, but my Arabic is quite limited (and I don't speak Farsi/Persian at all as I noted previously), so that's why I asked here in the forum; what I'm hoping to do is to get more data to compare the two languages maybe . . . (for fun of course).

Best,

cew


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## ayoubb

The past tense is actually the heart of the Arabic language. Suppose one day, the Arabs wanted to change their past tense verbs for some reason. Well all the other tenses will have to be changed because all Arabic tenses rely on the past tense. Most of the nouns will be have to be reinvented because 90% of the nouns are derived from the past tense verbs. That's why the past tense is the heart and not other tenses.


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## nn.om

All speech units are important in languages, even particles (the meaningful units) are important.


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## dkarjala

nn.om said:


> All speech units are important in languages, even particles (the meaningful units) are important.



Right on. And no one has really defined 'verb-based' yet OR explained why _fa'al- _is more basic than _fi'l_-.

That being said, it could be said synchronically that Arabic bases its nouns on nominal forms of roots which are mental images of actions rather than objects...but this _is_, of course, speculative in the extreme.


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## C. E. Whitehead

dkarjala said:


> That being said, it could be said synchronically that Arabic bases its nouns on nominal forms of roots which are mental images of actions rather than objects...but this _is_, of course, speculative in the extreme.


 

Sorry I took so long to get back to this; this I agree with -- I understand that, whatever the origin of Arabic's three-consonant root system, the simple past tense verb (3rd person) is now used as the basis for creating other forms?

Best,

C. E. Whitehead


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## clevermizo

C. E. Whitehead said:


> Sorry I took so long to get back to this; this I agree with -- I understand that, whatever the origin of Arabic's three-consonant root system, the simple past tense verb (3rd person) is now used as the basis for creating other forms?
> 
> Best,
> 
> C. E. Whitehead



Not necessarily. Sometimes words are spawned from nouns instead. For example, in this thread, the colloquial verb قَوَّص　meaning "to shoot" is mentioned, which is formed from the noun قَوْس　meaning a bow. It doesn't come from the verb of the same root because that means "to be bent/crooked" (ق و س) and and that doesn't lend itself to "to shoot" as easily as the noun referring to, well, an instrument of shooting.

I concede it does seem as though most words can be boiled down to verbs. However in colloquial Arabic verbs are very often created from nouns directly, usually going into the Form II فعّل　or the augmented form فعلل. Since this is where most of the "new word generation" is going on, rather than standard Arabic, I'd say the noun very much holds its own as a progenitor of new words.


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