Palestinian-Jordanian Levantine Arabic 5.3. Active Participles

Participles are descriptive terms that are derived from verbs and indicate a relationship with them. Participles can function as nouns or adjectives. There are two types of participles in Palestinian-Jordanian Levantine Arabic: active participles and passive participles.

Table of Contents

• Active Participle Base Form
• Active Participle Derived Forms
• Active Participle As a Verb
• Level V – Advanced I (C1)

Active Participle Base Form

An active participle describes the doer of an action. The active participle is derived from the corresponding verb. The most common form of an active participle is فَــاعِــل (fā‘il).

For instance, from the verb كَــتَــب (katab) ‘he wrote,’ we can derive the active participle كَــاتِــب (kātib) ‘writer.’

Note that the active participle can vary by gender and number. Feminine, dual, and plural markers can be added to the base active participle form as follows:

Think of the English suffix ‘-er’ in ‘writer,’ ‘-or’ in ‘inspector,’ ‘-ist’ in ‘novelist,’ ‘-ian’ in ‘historian,’ or ‘-ent’ in ‘correspondent.’ Similarly, Arabic uses a variety of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to form the active participle.

Active Participle Derived Forms

The ten most common patterns of the active participle are:

† مْــفَــعِّــل (mfa‘‘il) is also used with some verbs.

Here are some examples of the different active participle patterns in Palestinian-Jordanian Arabic:

Note that in the above list, many active participles are used as: nouns, e.g., مُـــدَرِّس (mudarris) ‘teacher,’ or adjectives, e.g., مِــتْـــوَاصِـــل (mitwāṣil) ‘continuous.’

Some common words have active participle forms but have historically acquired their own specific meanings. For example, the word طَـــالِــب (ṭālib) is the active participle form of the past verb طَـــلَــب (ṭalab) ‘he sought.’ Thus, the word طَـــالِــب (ṭālib) literally means ‘seeker,’ e.g., طَـــالِــب مُــسَــاعَــدِة (ṭālib musā‘adeh) ‘seeker of help.’ However, the word طَـــالِــب (ṭālib) has historically acquired the meaning of ‘student,’ i.e., ‘seeker of knowledge.’

This applies to many other words in Arabic following active participle forms, such as شَــــارِع (shāri‘) ‘street,’ مُـــسْـــلِـــم (muslim) ‘Muslim,’ رَاهِــــب (rāhib) ‘monk,’ قَـــاضِــيْ (qāḍi) ‘judge,’ مُــحَــامِــيْ (muḥāmi) ‘lawyer,’ and سَـــايِــح (sāyiḥ) ‘tourist.’

Active Participle As a Verb

In addition to functioning as a noun or adjective, the active participle in Arabic is frequently used as a flexible verbal form capable of expressing past, present continuous, and future actions. This versatile usage highlights the flexibility of Arabic, demonstrating its rich morphological adaptability.

Consider the verbs رِجِــــع (riji‘) ‘he returned’ and بَـــلَّــش (ballash) ‘he started.’ The corresponding active participle forms are:

The same active participle form can be used to express actions in the past, present continuous, and future, depending on the context, as demonstrated in the following examples:

Here are some more examples of active participles used as verbs to express actions in Palestinian-Jordanian Arabic:

Next: Passive Participle

Back to: Verbal Nouns

Other lessons in Level V: