The Verb Form Numbers

The Verb Form Numbers system is quite old, going back to the earliest European Arabic grammars such as that of Guillaume Postal, Paris, ca. 1538 and Pedro de Alcala' ca. 1613. Their order of numbering is the same as that which we are familiar with today. Another grammar was published in Rome ca. 1622 which uses the numbering system but has forms II and IV switched. Erpenius' grammar was only superseded in 1810 by the grammar of De Sacy, who used the same system which has been in vogue ever since. Incidentally, the numbering system was also used in older grammars of Hebrew, but seems to have fallen out of usage.

      The system, an extremely useful mnemonic device is not entirely unrelated to the traditional work of صَرف, for it follows the order of  المجرَّد and المزيد   .The use of numbering, however, is the Latin, European innovation which might have been a claque on some aspect of the study of Latin grammar. At the very least, it is well known that Latin grammar traditionally numbers the different classes of conjugation. De Sacy is careful to make clear in his presentation the verb forms that they fall into groups of

 المزيد بحرف ، المزيد بحرفين، المزيد بثبلثةِ حُروف

      Most verbs in Arabic can be classified into ten forms. These forms are:

1. فَعَلَ     دَرَسَ                     6. تَفاعَلَ      تَراسَلَ

2. فَعَّلَ    دَرَّسَ                      7. إنفَعَلَ       إنقَلـَبَ

3. فاعَلَ   شاهَدَ                      8. إفتَعَلَ       إرتَفَعَ

4. أفعَلَ    أقبَلَ                       9. إفعَلَّ        إحمَرَّ

5. تَفَعَّلَ    تَحَدَّثَ                    10. إستَفعَلَ  إستَخدَمَ

Furthermore, each transitive pattern has an automatic passive counterpart where the stem short vowel Fatha and Kasra are replaced by Dhamma and Kasra.