Hi,

Today we’re going to briefly look at a phenomenon that often causes problems for learners: the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs. A transitive verb is one that takes a direct object, while an intransitive verb does not. In English, many verbs can have both transitive and intransitive meaning. These ‘ergative verbs‘ have an odd property. When they are used intransitively, the subject is the ‘experiencer’ of the action, but when they are used transitively, it is the object that expresses the ‘experiencer’ and the subject the ’causer’. This is most easily understood from some examples:

Intransitive

 Transitive

The water will boil.

She’ll boil the water.

The house burned down.

Sami burned the house down.
The sugar melted.

You melted the sugar.

Now, this isn’t a blog about English grammar. So what’s the relevance of this to an Arabic learner? The relevance is that this phenomenon is far less common in Arabic. In pairs of sentences like these, you usually need two different verbs. Consider the following examples:

بتغلى المي
btighla lmayy
The water will boil.

 بغلي المي
bighli lmayy
I’ll boil the water.

احترق البيت
7tara2 ilbeet
The house burned down.

سامي حرق البيت
saami 7ara2 ilbeet
Sami burned the house down.
داب السكر
daab issikkaar
The sugar melted.

دوبتي السكر
dawwabti ssikkaar
You melted the sugar.

As you can see, there are three separate correspondences here, in (increasing) order of frequency:

  1. Some pairs of verbs are both Form I and differ only in their ‘vowelling’ (i.e. the vowels they take in the past and the present). Examples of this include غلي ghili/yighla and غلى ghala/yighli (‘boil’), طفي Tifi/yiTfa and طفى Tafa/yiTfi ‘turn off’. This is fairly uncommon.
  2. Some pairs of verbs have an intransitive form that looks very much like a passive of the transitive form (Form VIII or VII for a Form I transitive, Form V for a Form II). Other examples of this include تغير tghayyar and غير ghayyar ‘change’.
  3. Some pairs of verbs have an intransitive verb on Form I and a transitive verb on Form II, which looks very much like a causative. Other examples of this include دفي difi/yidfa and دفى daffa/ydaffi ‘warm up, heat up’; برد barad/yibrod and برّد barrad/ybarred ‘cool down’.

Although the first two are considerably less common than the last one, there is no way to be absolutely certain of which correspondence applies to a particular word. These pairs, like passive/active pairs, have to be learnt. (Sorry).

But there are a few counterexamples! The following words can be used both transitively and intransitively, just like their English counterparts:

  • سكر sakkar ‘close’ and فتح fata7 ‘open’: فتح الباب fata7 ilbaab ‘the door opened’, فتحت الباب fata7t ilbaab ‘I opened the door’.
  • وقف wa22af ‘stop’ and بلش ballash ‘start’: وقف wa22ef ‘stop’, but وقفتو wa22afto ‘I stopped him’.