Talk:زالي

RFD discussion: March 2020–December 2021
This verb does not have an imperative form because it is always used in the negative. —213.166.157.178 12:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)


 * There are two distinct Arabic verbs . Does this apply to both? --Lambiam 18:28, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
 * No, only the second one; the first has instead the form owing to the different present vowel. Fay Freak (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Really always? In all times?
 * Fine in that case, but we cannot manually exclude forms from the conjugation tables, so bots recreate them (or if  runs his again, after all the additions in the last five years). Fay Freak (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I can add support to allow particular forms to be excluded. Benwing2 (talk) 19:06, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be great if you could. It makes perfect sense to suppress some forms on etymology 2. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:27, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I added 1 to suppress the imperative. (BTW this was probably the second inflection module I wrote, after Module:fro-verb. Nowadays I'd definitely structure it differently, more similarly to the Ukrainian and Belarusian modules, for example.) Benwing2 (talk) 07:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank you for improving the modules! Unrelated to this but The Korean inflection module (verb/adjective) would require suppression of honorifics and a total rewrite for the copula (a different paradigm unhandled). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I don't know anything about Korean conjugation, but I've added this to User:Benwing2/todo, where I've started to keep track of requests so they don't get lost. Benwing2 (talk) 01:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for adding this to the to-do list. I'll try to come around with the things to fix in the Korean conj module but I will also need some assitance from User:Tibidibi. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

What to do? Can it really only be used in the negative? Should we delete the positive forms? --Fytcha (talk) 23:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Apologies! That really sounds like very Classical Arabic that I almost forgot, however, the زالى word sounds a bit gibberish to me. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 23:59, 16 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Kudos for the OP for bringing that up. Yes, as derived from the 2nd etymology is exclusively used preceded by a negative article (i.e., , ). In fact, in the tradition of Arabic grammar, it is called nāqiṣ at-taṣarruf (نَاقِص التَصَرُّف, "conjugationally deficient"), along with ما برح، ما انفك، ما فتئ. They only have present and past morphological forms, but lack imperative ones. Lack of attestation also confirms this good old rule from primary school level Arabic grammar. Therefore, the deletion request should actually be extrapolated to ,  , ,  (only as imperatives, but kept as past forms for all but the first). Assem Khidhr (talk) 02:41, 17 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm suspecting here that the confusion arises from the meaning of the verb itself and from the many uses of . The "aspectual" negative phrase  or, which signifies continuity, is unlike other phrases with  that have like meanings. Take some other phrases with , for example, like  and . Both vaguely denote a sense of persistence, roughly matching the use of the English , yet the verb itself in the two means, on its own and without , persistence or perpetuity. In  or , however, the verb itself betokens roughly "going or dying away" or "perishing." An imperative with , moreover, is possible with  or , but not with  or , which, with  and subject, would instead be understood as a wish for annihilation (meaning approximately, "May this never go on").


 * I suggest that the conjugation table for be dropped since the information can be written in the usage notes (by pointing out that the verb may be made "aspectual" through negation and that the non-past aspectual form is يَزَالُ, whereas the non-past non-aspectual one is يَزُولُ. This way, the negative  may be separated from the non-negative occurrences of the particle. Roger.M.Williams (talk) 19:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)


 * So I searched the internet for attestations of non-past-form "imperatives" with . I found in Ibn Manzūr's lexicon this quotation of Qays Ibn al-Mulawwiḥ, where the imperative لا تَزَالي (translatable as "Do not change" or "Stay") occurs. I nonetheless found variations of this wording, with some being the future-tense لَنْ تَزَالي ("You shall [ever] remain"), but even these do not differ much in meaning from the imperative, and this is comparable to the use of the English, as it usually melds the declarative and the imperative. However, I cannot think of an imperative use of this phrase in any non-past form such as , however. Roger.M.Williams (talk) 20:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The conjugation on etymology 2 is currently incorrect, so an enhancement is required to suppress certain forms. As a temporary measure, the inlfection should probably be hidden and replaced with . -Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:27, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * RFD-deleted. Benwing2 (talk) 00:36, 19 December 2021 (UTC)