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Case marking of the imperfect in Arabic Posted by on Oct 6, 2009 in Grammar

In previous posts, I explained the case marking system (الإعراب) of nouns and adjectives. I also explained adverbs in other posts. In this post; I start to discuss the case marking of present tense/imperfect. Just like nouns and adjectives, verbs take special vowels and suffixes to mark their case. The choice of the appropriate case depends on what comes before the verb. Present tense/imperfect verbs by default take short /o/ (الضمة), and this case is called (المضارع المرفوع). Present tense verbs are in this case if there is nothing special comes before them, i.e. if they are not preceded by particles that necessitate that they take another case, or if they are preceded by (لا) for negation.

أدرسُ اللغة العربية ولا أدرسُ اللغة الصينية.

“I study Arabic; I do not study Chinese.”

هل تدرسين في الجامعة؟

“Do you study at university?”

In the case of (المضارع المرفوع), verbs that do not end in one of the suffixes (ون، ان، ين), take a short /o/ (الضمة), and verbs that end in the suffixes remain the same. So, this case is marked either by the short /o/ or the final suffix (ن).

أدرُسُ

أَنَا

تدرُسُ

أَنْتَ

تدرُسين

أَنْتِ

يدرُسُ

هُوَ

تدرُسُ

هِيَ

تدرُسان

أَنْتُمَا

يدرُسان

هُمَا(m.)

تدرُسان

هُمَا(f.)

ندرُسُ

نَحْنُ

تدرُسون

أَنْتُمْ

تدرُسن

أَنْتُنَّ

يدرُسون

هُمْ

يدرُسن

هُنَّ

In the following post, I will explain the second case of the imperfect; keep reading!

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