Arabic: An Essential Grammar

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Chapter 14

Perfect tense verbs, root and

radicals, triliteral verbs and

word order

14.1 There are two main verb tenses in Arabic:

(a) Perfect tense: corresponds usually to the English past or perfect

tense.

(b) Imperfect tense: corresponds usually to the English present or

future tense (see chapter 17).

Note: The tenses in Arabic do not express the time of an event in the same

precise way as the primary tenses in Indo-European languages. The Arabic

tenses can be better understood as different aspects of viewing the action in

terms of an opposition between a stated or proposed fact and an action or state

in progress or preparation. That is why the terms perfect and imperfect tense do

not correspond to the meaning of these terms in, for example, English (in fact,

the literal Latin meanings of the terms perfect and imperfect are more helpful in

this regard). In spite of this, we will keep to the traditional terms, since they are

widely employed in Western Arabic textbooks.

14.2 Perfect tense

The perfect tense, َأْل ِف ْع ُل ْلـ َما ِضي, indicates mostly a past state, com-

pleted action or established fact. In the third and second persons

the perfect may also express a wish or benediction. In conditional

sentences the perfect expresses a hypothesis (to be explained in

chapter 39).

Note: Because there is no infinitive in Arabic in the same sense as in English, the

third person masculine singular of the perfect tense is given as the corresponding

basic or reference form of the verb. Thus, for example, the basic verb form

َكـ َتـ َب kataba means ‘he wrote’ or ‘he has written’. But when used as a general