Derived verbs: Forms II, III, V and VI

Hi everyone!

In the last couple of posts, we looked at how to conjugate so-called ‘Form I’ verbs of various kinds. In this post we will look at how to conjugate derived verbs on Forms II (fa33al), III (faa3al), V (tfa33al) and VI (tfaa3al).

Stem shapes

All four of the forms we’re looking at here are fairly straightforward. They don’t have distinct doubled or hollow shapes – as in fuS7a, these take exactly the same form as their sound equivalents (for example Form II نوم nawwam ‘put to sleep’ and دقق da22a2 ‘be precise’, which have exactly the same shape as شرب sharrab ‘give to drink’). Their only significant variants are sound and defective. Moreover, their internal vowelling is more or less what you would expect it to be from fuS7a.

The sound stem shapes are as follows:

II	شرب sharrab caused to drink	يشرب y-sharreb causes to drink
III	قاتل 2aatal fight	يقاتل y-2aatel he fights
V	تعلم t3allam learn	يتعلم yi-t3allam he learns
VI	تقاوم t2aawam be resisted	يتقاوم yi-t2aawam he’s resisted

Their defective counterparts are as follows:

II	خلى khalla made (s.o.) do	يخلي y-khalli makes (s.o.) do
III	ساوى saawa did	يساوي y-saawi he does
V	تخلى tkhalla abandon	يتخلى yi-tkhalla he abandons
VI	تقاوى t2aawa overpower	يتقاوى yi-t2aawa he overpowers

Conjugation

You might be surprised that I’m not giving over more space to address conjugation. A traditional approach would be to give you full conjugation tables for all eight possible shapes, in the imperfective and the perfective. But in fact, all we need to do is apply the rules that we learnt for Form I verbs in the last post to these stem shapes and we can easily produce whatever form we need.

The sound forms are the most straightforward. As you can see with the verb 3allam below, the prefixes and suffixes simply attach to the relevant stem straightforwardly. The only (very small) change, in red, is the deletion of final i predicted by the normal deletion rule:

علمت 3allam-^et I taught	علم 3allem I teach
علمت 3allam-^et you (m.) taught	تعلم t-3allem you (m.) teach
علمتي 3allam-ti you (f.) taught	تعلمي t-3allm-i you (f.) teach
علم 3allam he taught	يعلم y-3allem he teaches
علمت 3allam-et she taught	تعلم t-3allem she teaches
علمنا 3allam-na we taught	نعلم n-3allem we teach
علمتو 3allam-tu you (p.) taught	تعلمو t-3allm-u you (p.) teach
علمو 3allam-u they taught	يعلمو y-3allm-u they teach

With Form V and Form VI forms, of course, this deletion doesn’t take place (short a can’t be deleted). Note as well that these stems now begin with a consonant cluster, so they use the other set of imperfective prefixes:

تعلمتي t3allam-ti you (f.) learned	تتعلمي ti-t3allam-i you (f.) learn
تعلمو t3allam-u they learned	يتعلمو yi-t3allam-u they learn

The stem of the defective forms changes more. But it changes in exactly the same ways that Form I verbs do. Suffixes beginning with vowels (either in the perfective or the imperfective) cause the final vowel of the stem to drop (in green), and suffixes beginning with consonants (in the perfective only) cause the final vowel to become -ee (in red):

ساويت saawee-t I did	ساوي saawi I do
ساويت saawee-t you (m.) did	تساوي t-saawi you do
ساويت saawee-ti you (f.) did	تساوي t-saaw-i you (f.) do
ساوى saawa he did	يساوي y-saawi he does
ساوت saaw-et she did	تساوي t-saawi she does
ساوينا saawee-na we did	نساوي n-saawi we do
ساويتو saawee-tu you (p.) did	تساوو t-saaw-u you (p.) do
ساوو saaw-u they did	يساوو y-saaw-u they do

Again, the only difference with Forms V and VI is that their final imperfective vowel is -a and that the stem begins with a consonant cluster:

تقاوى t2aawa he overpowered	يتقاوى yi-t2aawa he overpowers
تقاويتي t2aawee-ti you (f.) overpowered	تتقاوي ti-t2aaw-i you (f.) overpower
تقاوو t2aaw-u they overpowered	يتقاوو yi-t2aaw-u they overpower

That’s all for today! Next time we’ll be looking at Forms VII, VIII and X.