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1. Definition: Morphology and tense Fiʿl (etymologically ‘fact, operation’) is generally translated by ‘verb’. It is not, as one might have assumed, the noun depicting the process ( maṣdar) of the verb faʿala ‘to do’, since the verbs constructed in the form CaCaCa derive their maṣdar in the form CaCC (al-Xalīl, al-ʿAyn, s.v. f-ʿ-l), apparently with the exception of three verbs whose maṣdar takes the form CiCC (Ibn Mana̱ūr, Lisān, root f-ʿ-l). Sībawayhi's Kitāb, dating from the 8th century, was the first book in the Arabic grammatical tradition. It begins by dividing …

1. Definition The fāʿil (lit. ‘he who does’) corresponds, in the analysis of the Arab grammarians, to the protagonist of the verb. It is the primary element to which the verb relates (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I, 33–34), meaning that the verb “does not go without it” (Sīrāfī, Šarḥ II, 267). In fact, the verb ( fiʿl) and its fāʿil constitute a pair “each of whose two elements cannot go without the other, and which the speaker cannot do without” ( lā yaġnā wāḥidun min-humā ʿan al-ʾāxar wa-lā yajidu l-mutakallim min-hu buddan; Sībawayhi, Kitāb I, 23). For the Arab grammarians, the fāʿil is a syntactic fu…