1. Introduction

The Arabic word for verb is fiʿl. This term has undergone a double metalinguistic reinterpretation and generalization: ‘action’ > ‘expression designating an action’ > ‘(action or nonaction) verb’. In the Arabic grammatical tradition, while syntactically (naḥw) representing merely the second element of the tripartite division of the parts of speech (after the noun and before the particle), the verb occupies a central place in the morphology (ṣarf or taṣrīf)…