Marhaba! Right now, we're going to talk about two more derived Arabic verb patterns,
Form III, or Pattern III, and Form VI, what we would call in Arabic
وزن فاعَلَ
or وزن تفاعل
after their past tense conjugations.
The mechanics, first of all, you'll notice that they both have the extra addition of an
'alif'
after the first letter of our جذر, remember, that three letter root that we have represented in the template by 'faa-'ayn-laam.'
In the past tense for Form III,
the 'alif' would be the major indicator. I would have the first letter of my جذر
followed by the 'alif and then 'ayn-laam,' voweled فاعَلَ.
In the present tense I retain that 'alif,' but the vowels are a little bit different.
On the prefix whatever it's going to be, I'm going to have a 'Dhamma,' I'm going to keep that 'alif,' and then on
the second letter of the جذر I
add a 'kasra' instead, for يُفاعِل.
Notice, too, that the مصدر of Form III
is the only derived مصدر form that has a 'taa marbuuTa' on the end, and it also has a 'miim' at the beginning.
المفاعَلة
So if you're looking at a new verb, and you're wondering what form it might be and you see it in its مصدر form,
that's an excellent clue that it's a Form III verb.
Form VI also has an 'alif' after the first letter of our root,
and it also has a 'taa' at the beginning before the first letter of our root, our جذر.
So, we wind up with in the past,
تفاعل
And in the present tense unlike Form III--oops!
Form VI, not Form V--my classical education is limited. In the present tense
we're going to retain that 'taa' and that 'alif,' so I've got my conjugation suffix here,
'taa' as part of the form,
and I keep that 'alif,'
So, conjugated for هو,
يتفاعل
We're talking about these forms together in this video because
they are in some cases kind of interrelated, and we have parallel forms.
We're going to see that in just a minute. In terms of the basic meanings, how the وزن
affects the core meaning of the جذر, the root,
Form III has a couple of meanings. One meaning that's pretty common is 'trying to do something.'
So we have the verb,
or I should say, the جذر
'siin-baa-qaaf,' which at its most basic means 'coming before,'
'being first,' and if we put that into Form III we wind up with a verb
'يسابق,' that means 'to race,' to try to come before someone else.
A slightly more gruesome example would be
the جذر 'qaaf, taa, laam,'
Which in Form I makes a verb that means 'to kill,' يقتل,
and in Form III it gains a slightly more abstract meaning.
'يقاتل' means 'to battle,' like on a battlefield to try to kill someone.
Another meaning of Form III can just mean 'doing something with someone else.'
So we have the جذر 'qaaf-baa-laam,'
which in Form I might mean 'to receive someone,' like receiving someone in your house, and we can turn that into a Form III verb, يقابل,
which means more specifically 'to meet someone,'
'to meet up,'
someone in a public place.
One little fact that might come in handy if we're trying to remember the 'trying' sense, is that the verb for 'try,'
the very basic verb for 'trying' in Arabic is also a Form III verb:
يحاول.
So that might be a useful reminder.
Form VI, means, often,
'to do something together.'
Doing something with other people, so we get a lot of parallel
constructions between Form III and Form VI. If we said هو يسابق صديقه (مثلاً)
'he races his friend,'
In a case like that, يسابق is the verb
and then صديقه is the object. Who is he racing? His friend. But in Form VI,
I could say,
specifically, Form VI enables me to say, in one word,
'they race each other.' If I were talking about a group of people, all of whom were racing together, I could say
'هم,' we could take or leave the pronoun,
'يتسابقون'and I know from the fact that it's Form VI
that they are racing each other. If I wanted to refer specifically on a battlefield
to a group of people 'battling each other' I could say
'هم يتقاتلون' You'll notice that in
writing and in speaking, you often encounter form six in plural conjugations for this reason.
'Me and my friend meet up together,'
نتقابل.
We do it together.
Another meaning of Form VI which is kind of fun is
it sometimes gives the flavor of
'pretending to do Form I.'
For example we have a verb in Arabic
يجهل
which means kind of 'to be ignorant' of
something. The root has to do with
'not knowing things, 'being ignorant.' If we take that جذر and we put it into Form VI
we get
'يتجاهل' conjugated for هو in the present tense
which specifically means
'to ignore.' And when we ignore something, we're 'pretending not to know it,' right? We're pretending to not know of it,
we're pretending it doesn't exist, even though we know it is. That's what it means, 'to ignore.'
My favorite example might be a
verb in Form VI from the جذر of the Adjective مريض which you probably know, مريض means sick, ill.
Once, I was feeling under the weather, and I couldn't make my Arabic class and
the next day I came, and I talked to my أستاذ, and I said I'm sorry يا أستاذ.
I wasn't able to be in class today, أنا كنت مريضاً.
I was sick, and he looked at me not unkindly, but with a skeptical eye, and he said hmm, John,
'كنت مريضاً, you were sick? or
'هل كنت تتمارض؟' were you just pretending to be sick? In Form VI,
this verb specifically means 'to malinger, to feign an illness,' perhaps to get out of taking an Arabic test.
So we get a lot of delicious verbs from Form VI in that 'pretending'
paradigm, as well.
So those are the basic meanings of Form III and Form VI. Again, very important to remember that we see kind of
parallel forms between them. We can meet up with someone, or we can get together in Form VI.
We can 'race against someone else' in Form III or we can 'race each other,' all of us, in Form VI.
And that's kind of the link that binds those two forms together a lot of the time.