Arabic Present Tense الْفِعْلُ الْمُضَارِعُ

The Present Tense – الْفِعْلُ الْمُضَارِعُ

• • فِعْلٌ (A verb – the action being performed),
  • فَاعِلٌ (A subject – the person or thing doing the action) and
  • مَفْعُولٌ (An object – the thing upon which the action is done).
• We have learnt that the verb refers to three tenses (periods):
  • Past الْفِعْلُ الْمَاضِي
  • Present الْفِعْلُ الْمُضَارِعُ
  • Future الْفِعْلُ الْمُسْتَقْبَلُ
• In this section we will learn about the present form of the verb يُحِبُّ meaning “Likes or Loves”. The present form of the verb takes – originally – the nominative case, but with a single đammah. It never takes two đammas.  We have also learnt in the previous lesson that the object of a verbal sentence takes the accusative case i.e., it takes single fatħah when definite and double fatħah (Fatħatain) when indefinite. When we say:

يُحِبُّ أَكْبَرُ الْكِتَابَة َ  (Akbar loves writing)

• In this sentence يُحِبُّ means “likes” which is a verb, أَكْبَرُ is the subject therefore it takes the nominative case, الْكِتَابَةَ is the object which takes the accusative case. But when we say:

نُحِبُّ دِينَنَا    (We love our religion)

• The word نُحِبُّ means “we love”, so “love” is the verb and “we” is the subject whereas our religion is the object and therefore it must take the accusative case. Now if we look at this example carefully we see that the word دِينَنَا  is basically (دِينَ + نَا), so the word دِينَ take the accusative case, and since it is annexed with a pronoun so it is Muđâf and cannot take tanwīn.
• However, when a pronoun is the object of some verb, it does not take accusative case because the pronouns are generally indeclinable therefore they do not change their cases. Let’s take some examples to better understand the rule: