Appendix:South Levantine Arabic verbs

Root
South Levantine Arabic verbs are usually derived from a three letter root (trilateral), however some verbs have a root of four letters (quadrilateral).

The root can either be regular or have a type of “weakness”.

Defective root
Defective verbs end in one of the letters Alif, Yā' or Alif Maqṣura  in the past tense.

A final in the past tense usually becomes  in the non-past and vice versa.

A final is derived from Hamza  in MSA. It remains unchanged.

Hollow root
Hollow verbs have Alif, Wāw or Yā'  as their middle letter.

The past tense always has the middle letter, usually becoming or or  and sometimes remain  in the non-past.

Hollow verbs become regular in the forms II, III, V and VI, as the middle letter is pronounced as consonant (e.g. &rarr; ).

Doubled root
If verbs have the same middle and final root letter, these are merged into one geminate consonant.

The past tense always has the middle vowel “a”, usually becoming “e/i” or “o/u” and sometimes remain “a” in the non-past.

These verbs become regular in the forms II, III, V and VI (e.g. &rarr; ).

Assimilated root
Some verbs with the first root letter Hamza or Wāw  are assimilated, others completely regular.

This means that the first letter becomes a long vowel in the non-past.

Forms
There are 10 verb forms in Levantine Arabic. The basic form is form I. Other forms are derived from form I by adding prefixes and/or geminating consonants.

Verbs derived from the same root usually have related meanings in the different forms.

Quadrilateral verbs can only have two forms (Iq and IIq) corresponding to form II and V but with two middle consonants instead a geminate one.

Past tense

 * The 3rd person masculine form is the given form of verbs, i.e. the plain stem without any affixes.
 * The stress shifts to the last vowel of the stem in the 2nd and 1st person forms.
 * The 2nd person masculine and 1st person singular forms are identical.

Subjunctive

 * The prefix is stressed in regular and defective verbs in form I and IV, otherwise always unstressed.
 * The vowel i in stressed prefixes assimilates to u, if the stem also has the vowel u.
 * The forms of 3rd person feminine and 2nd person masculine are identical.

Present tense

 * The present tense is formed by adding the prefix b- to the subjunctive
 * The b-prefix tends to be assimilated to m before n by many speakers.
 * The consonants ʔ and y of the subjunctive prefixes are elided.
 * An epenthetic vowel i is inserted to prevent clusters of three consonants.