Lesson 33– الدَّرْسُ الثَّالِثُ وَالثَّلاثُونَ
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs – الفِعْلُ المُتَعَدِّي والْفِعْلُ اللازِمُ
Nominal and verbal sentences
- We are still in lesson thirty three of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
- The Arabic verbal sentence has two main components that must be there for it to be verbal. These components are:
- The verb
- The doer
- The order is vital in this regard. This means that a verbal sentence must start –originally- with a verb.
- Study the following verbal sentences:
| Images | Translation | Sentence |
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| Ahmad met his lecturer at the university | |
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| Sa’id slept early | |
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| The car hit Tariq’s leg | |
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| Khalid learnt Arabic quickly |
- On the other hand, if a sentence begins with a noun, then it becomes a nominal sentence. The examples above of verbal sentences can be transformed into nominal ones if we placed the doer at the beginning of the sentence as follows:
| Verbal Sentence | Nominal Sentence |
- Consequently, the verbal sentence is the one that starts –originally- with a verb; and the nominal sentences is the one that starts –originally- with a noun.
Transitive and intransitive verbs
- Arabic verbs are divided into two types:
- The first type is the transitive verb “الفِعْلُ الْمُتَعَدِّي”. This kind of verbs require a direct object to complement the meaning of the sentence as the meaning of the sentence cannot be complete without this object. Consider the verbs in the following passage:
| English | Arabic |
| The teacher read many English books. He translated some of them into English. He taught us one of them. And we understood this book well |
It is noteworthy that the verbs (قَرَأ، تَرْجَمَ، دَرَّسَ، فَهِمَ) require a direct object. This type of Arabic verbs is called transitive verbs; that is the verb that needs a direct object for the meaning of the sentence to be complete. Without this direct object, the meaning will remain uncompleted.
- On the other hand, some verbs do not need a direct object, and the meaning can be complete without this object. This type of verbs is called intransitive verbs “الْفِعْلُ اللازِمُ”. Consider the verbs in the following passage:
| English | Arabic |
| Tamir sat on the bed. Then he slept for half an hour. Later he woke up at 6 o’clock. Then he went to the university |
From the examples above, we note that there is no direct object, and that the meaning of the sentence is complete without the object. These verbs [جَلَسَ، نَامَ، اِسْتَيْقَظَ، ذَهَبَ] are called intransitive verbs أَفْعَالٌ لازِمَةٌ.