THE ARABIC MOOD SYSTEM:

SEMANTICO·SYNTACTIC OBSERVATIONS

Mohamed �id Haded

Univel'Sity of lhe.,. of April, Ubya

Introduction

Most of the linguistic works on the Arabic verb system have confined
attention to the morpho!ogy of verbs and their clausalsUucll1rt'. leaving
the semantics of verbal paradigms untouched or not sufficiently treated.
Ancient Arab grammarians, particularly those who belon� to the
BasraSchool of Grammar, were intrigued almost exclwively with Hlorm",
or rather as in the western tradition
fonns'" This school which was founded in what is now known as "Iraq"
is represented by several grammarian authorities. To cite a few, we find
Sibawaih, a Persian muslim whose book "al�kita:b" is still a valuable
source in modem linguisticsrudies;and AI-Khalil Ibn Ahmad AI·farahidi,
Sibawaih's teacher, whose lexicon "'al-ain" aUo«h pragmatic insights to
the study of Arabic syntax. As Bakalla (1983) in the intToduction observes,
"in terms of methodology, Sihawaih rep resents the Basran school of
grammar'" (30).
Traditional Arab grammarians paid little orno attention to Ihe scope
of meaning signified by the Arabic verbal moods, nor did they take into
account the speaker's attitude or his psychological behaviour toward the
content of the utterance: a'i to questions of 'certainty', 'uncertainty', 'possi­
bility', etc_
Works by Arabists. notably: Bateson (1967); Bishai (1971); Tritton
(1977);Wickens (1980) and Thatcher (1982), tend to establish their conclu­
sions about the Arabic vi!Jb and its moods on the dmo/a/a of individual
variants in isolation.. thus stopping short of determining with exactitude
the meanings pro;ected by verb forms, especially when such forms are
collocated with certain functlonalsor used in different situational contexts.
In a rather informative article, Omar (1994) writes: "It is the context of the
situation ... that will determine the meaning" (39-58). Omar is right In his
claim because word meaning can Rever be explored objectively inisolated
environments, but rather, relative to situational contexts.
..

Modem studies b y native speakers of Arabic {d. Swed (1982); AI­

aswad (1983); Khanna (1983» have not probed into the semantic ranges of
Arabic verb moods, though their works are devoted to the lreahnent of
tense and the historical evolution of the Arabic verb. They survey, in a few
pages, the vero..tense and verb moods with almust no syntactic detail or
semantic signification; in addition, they have not explored the intricate
nature of relahons that connect words together Wilkins (1980) attests that,
"these liN! the relato
i nship'
language" (124).
In his Ph.D dISSertation at lndiana University. Fradkin (1985) offers
a closer view of Arabic moods and writes:

No QIU' thlls/a,ronsfdtud l/Im, 5ysttnllllICPllyfor IlItQpp"rrnl synlagmillir

",son Ihllt Ihty Il� prrdldllblt and rtqUirtd by tllfnOU$ p"rtlcla (204).

In short, it is evident that Arab5 and non-Arabs have been fairly

cautious in the treatment of moods. They have not bridged the classical
approach of "verb" inAection to adequately examine the verb's semantic
invanants.Not only this, b ut some of them have even gone as far as to deny
the existence of a system of moods in Arabic. Cantarino in TI� SynttIX of
Modern limbic PrrN Vol I (1974) alleges that, "Arabic has never developed
.

a full system of moods" (77). Yet in another context, he recogniZeS the fact
thai, "the dllferent moods uf 1I,� lmperfect indicate the Iipeaker'S po;yrho­
logical approach to the description of the verbal action" (77).
The purpose of this paper IS to investigate the morphological struc­
ture of Arabic moods and the semantic fie1d"sdenoted by them, taking into
account what is often refemd. to as "verb status " or the "character of the
verb" We intend to find out how much of the overall meaning of an
utterance has to be a5Cnbed to the verbal mood. Thus, the present paper
intends to throw some light on the morphCHyntactic identity of moods and
e1ucidate the affinity between the lexical meaning oflhc verb form and the
general implication designated by the whole utterance, pamcu1arly with
respect 10 the speaker's attitude. In view of lhe significance of this topic, it
would be useful to begin by giving an explanation of" moods" before gOUlg
into the actual discussion.

Badcgmund

Mood as a governing element in the syntactic structure o f language

is 8 frequent topic in modem linguistic studies. Several questions have
been raised regarding 'concept', 'behaviour', 'resemblance with nolUl
case-makers', 'semantic shadings', etc.
 THll ARABIC MOOD SYlnnt .,

To begin with. we must acknowledge the concept that mood is the

verbal property which indicates whether a certain item in the sentence
structure is governed or otherwise.A verb form IS governed if its applica­
tion is generally dependent upon the use of particular lexical forms like
particles, prepositions, adnominal complemcntizers, verro.nominals and
soon.l n a language like Latin,for example, prepositions are said to govem
nouns, malting a certain case-ending obligatory.
Fradkin (1985) seems 10 be in accord with Lyons (1979) who attests
thai the verbal feature 'mood' islinked to the "speaker's commitment with
respect to the (actual states of what he is saying" (307). Lyons' statement
implicates that mood is associaled with the utterer's �ycholoSical ap­
proach to the perception of the verbal event. With this sense, mood differs
from both the deictic category 'tense' and the semantico-syntactic nolion
'aspect' Wlule 'tense' shows the various possible locations of a situation in
time, 'aspects' as seen byeomrie (1976) are, "differenl waysofconsldering
the internal temporal constituency of an action'" (6).
Re turrung to the mood's governing eUect, the verb in the Arabic
sentence is the governing component par excellence.II assigns the 'nomi­
native' to the doer of the action and the 'accusative' to tile receiver of it,
provided that the receiver is not governed by other elements already The
verb fonn iLcei! may be govemed by rertain particles (,Ia.,'n', 'halta', '7an'
'Ian', 'Cal-') in which case it assumes either the 'subjunctive' or 'jusslVe'
mood, accordingly, for instance:

(I) Iyaktubu (tpfv,) at-tilmi; du .t-jumlau.1

he-wnll' the pupiHhe-5CI'Ilence
"'The pupil wntC$lhe 5Cnlence'"

If we add the particles "Ian" and "lam", respective.ly, to the above

structure, we will obtillR accordingly these two sentences:

(2) Ilan yaktuba at-rilmi: du at-jumlatal

wllll10t h"-wlll,,, the-pupil
"The pupil will not write the sentence'"

(3) Itam yaktub at-tUm!; du al-jumllital

did not he-wrlte the pupit-thlHelltence
"The pupil did not write the sentence"

A closer look at sentence (2) reveals that the functional "Ian" with its
inherent future signification has affected the imperfective indicative [onn
'yaktubu' putting It in the 'subjunctlVe' In the meantime, the operating
particle �Iam'" in sentence (3) with its negative preterital reCerence has
86

converted the indicative fOnTI to the 'juuive' mood. Being the governing
catalyst in sentences (1·3) above, the verb form has put the substantive �al­
jumlata' in the "accusative.' case for it is the receiver of the action.
Referring to the Arabic: tenses of "'QI-tnQ:di" and , ,'"/Jf-M:di," , (respec­
tively Hperfectjve" and "'Imperfective"), modem Arabist authorities up­
hold the viewpoint that though the two tenses - Wright calls them: "states"
- share the same characteristic, (Le. both � indicative), the "perfective" is
defective in the sense that it has no other gramma tical fonns correspond­
ing to the diversity of the "imperfective".
One aspect which is believed to characterise the Arabic imperfective
is that it has, apart from the indicative form, other verbal forms termed
moods: (a) the subjunctive (b) the juss1ve (e) the imperative - energetic.
Wright in his encyclopedic work A GrammtJr oflhe Arabic Langtulge (19Bl),
speaks of five moods by saying:

TIltfirs' is ami"."'" 10 Iittpnftd and ,mpe:rfod 5lfJld,lht S«OrUi lind third

1m rrslridtd to ,Itt. Impnfoct; the fourth, or im�livr. is aprwtd /Iy /I

."mt.1Jornt;1,",lIh�fifth Otn � dtTioot not on/II/rftm the Impnfoct. but II/SO

from t� Im�l1ltfot (52J.

The fact that there are no good justifications, at least, from the
perspective of modem Arabic 10 reject the imperative and energetic from
the entire system of moods, yet several Arab and non-Arab authorities
advocate the idea of setting both moods apart from the whole system,
perhaps owing to diachronic reasons in the ancient variety
Indeed, the energetic mood has virtually no special particles to
govern it automatkally as is the case with the jussive and the subjWlCti.ve.
It i s never obligatory, yet it carries a future impUcation. The semantico­
syntactic ranges of this formintersect not only with the imperative, but also
with the subjunctive and the jussive. Nevertheless, the energetic opposes
the Jussive in that it appears without prefixes.
Apparently, the tripartite system of Arabic moods (indicative, sub­
junctive, jussive) te$e.mbles to a great extent the declension system of
Anbic nouns with its case markers: nominative, accusative, genitive. For
inc.'",nre, the Imperfective verb ')JQf/Dhu' literally "he opens- has the
ensuing modal variations:

Indicative 'yaftahu' -u

Subjunctive 'yaftaha' -.

jussive 'yaltah' -0
 THE AllABIC MOOD SY5TEN 81

UkeWlse in the nominal system. the noun 'mijtlJ:h' meaning key'" "

yields the following declension forms, with the prefixed definite article
"al-"

Nominative ' al-mifta:h u' -u

Accusative 'al milta:ha
· '
-a
Genitive 'al·mifta: hi ' -;

Oearly as the above paradigms show, the indicative corresponds to

the nominative and the subjunctive is congruous with the accusative in
nouns.
The similarity between mood markers and noun case-endings in
Arabic stems from the morphological fact thai very minor changes take
place in the vowel of the ultimate character of the verb form. In the
subjunctive, the vowel '·u' of the indicative form converts to '-a' while the
jussive replaces the '-u' by a zero vowel or "suku:n", to use the Arabic
notion, and hence, causing the final radical of the imperfective form to
become unvowelled. We would like to emphasize that the Arabic tTadiHon
employs the same phonological notions when referring to mood markers
and noun case-endings,alike. This grammatical operation is nea!SSaI)' (or
a proper understanding of the original meaning and other relaled mean­
ings. II is conventionally called "i?ra:b",literally "parsing" and is defined
by Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1990) as, "the variation of the final
vowel in words after their insertion in the utterance and determined by the
different governing operators" (54).

The Subjunctive Mood

The syntactic rules for the OCC\I.Trence of Arabic moods can be fairly
intricate. This is borne out by the fact that the clausal structUll! of each
utterance and the different ways of linking together the main and subor­
dinate clauses an!' complex.
The subjunctive is formed essentially from the indicative verbal
form. The personal pronouns which lack adjunct characters {allowing the
Last radical convert the nominative .<iUpprqcript H-u" (or d amma) into "-a"
(or fetha). Uthe indicative form has" _na" or"-ni" in final position preceded
by a long vowel ('alif' or 'waw' or 'ya'), the "-na" or "-nj" ailer the third
radical is omitted in the case of the subjunctive. For both second and third
person feminine forms immediately terminating in the pronominal"·na",
the plural formsan!' the same forall the moods. TIle morphological rule for
fOrming the subjunctive can be written as:
..

after CJ a1t�c,
Indicatl\'c -u: -na, -ru
Subjunctive -a: -0

With respect to meaning. thesubjunclive signifies an eventuality yet

to take place in the future. The overall �antics of this mood is to add
prenotional implication on the partoftheutterer-orin Fradkin's tenn, "to
insert conjecture" In fact, i t is the perception which the utterer intends to
attract a special attention to and with which the addressee may accord or
otherwise.
While the subjunctive almost always carries this conjectural mean­
ing, the Indicative is unconunitted or rather neutral in this respect. The
perceptual element denoted by the indicative form may or may not be
conjectural and the heiuer is likely or unlikely to concur In essence, the
mood under examination implies a kind of linguistic ""insistence" in
reference to the speaker's understanding of the verbal development. The
indicative by contrast refrains from showing such denotalum though it
may express it covertly.
AnolhH impnrt;mt racet of the semantic fields of the Arabic subjunc­
tiveis its use in situatIonal contexts with the negativi.zer"Ian" As faras we
can see, this is the single area, par excenence, in which the subjunctive
presents itseUas an independent clause. PorZiadahand Winder (1964), the
lexica1 word "Ian" ill a functional word, "wtuch negates the future abso­
lutely It ill fonowed by a verb in the subjunctive" (l22). The particle is a
"very strong negation of the future" (Wright, 1981. 300), though some
analysts, notably Cantarino, advocate the view that "Ian" translated as
"will/shall not'" s i
"sawfa" or the contracted form "sa·" In either case, the ultimate result is
that there is no process of apprehensionexcepl by the will and inlent of the
speaker
In reality, the subjunctive can be used with a sct of particles which U
employed can enEota', impliciUy or expllcitl y. some conjec tures, for exam·
pie:

'hatta' "until, to the extent that'"

'kay' "in order to"
'likay' "in order to, for the purpose of"
'Ian' "will not/shall nol"
'Ii-' "to, so as 10"
'?an' "that"
'?ana' "that nol" (contraction of "1an"
plus "1a:")
' fa-' "and then"
 THE ARABIC Mooo SYSTEM 89

Although these particles together with other paratactic prefIXes can

imply meaniJII9> UIo.e ncce55ity, obligution, prohibition. inclination. pE'r4
miMion, directive, etc., the most traditional particle, according to general
consensus, that frequentJy aa:ompanies the subjunctive is "?an", as in:

(4) /7aradtu (pfv ) 7an tadhaba (Ipfy.)/

wanted41 that you·go
"I wanted you to go"

Both Arab and non-Arab grammarians assert that an embedded

clause introduced by "?an" can circumstantially be replaced by a verbal
noun or "masdar", for example:

(5) /?aradtu daha:baka/

wanted-I gOing-your
"I wanted your goingN

The subordinate clause led by "?an" in example(4) refers t o a n event

yet to take place In posteriority The truth of U� semantic reading stems
from the functional role played by such a clause; ilservesas lhedoe.r of the
action, not the receiver of it,
To sum up, the verbal situation of the subjunctive is often associated
with the direct speculation about the situation. The subjunctive with this
conjecture consolidates the Idea that it can refer to any verbal process,
whether or not the process is concretely linked 10 the real world.
In particular situational contexts, the potential meaning of the sub­
junctive form may also be a consequence of the overall meaning induced
by the verb of the supero.rdinatedause of which the subjunctive with ..?anH
serves as object.

The Jussive Mood

The jussive. active and passive, is fonnulatcd from the indicative. It

has the same forms as the subjunctive with one single exception: the
pronominal persons that have no letters following the ultimate radical
deletion of their final vowels and assume a zero vowel or "suku:n" as a
result.
1111S apocopated modification - Fradkin tenns it "truncated modifi4
calion" -of the imperfective indicative has in fact two major areas of
operation: (a) the imperative and (b) the conditional. In Wright's words,
"The jussive is denoted by the absence of any vowel with the third radical,
as ·yaktub', whence it is sometimes called the apocopated imperfect" (60).
 Always used to express prohibitions, deny statements, and issue
directives, the jussiveis rarely applied alone. Inother words, it is generally
accompanied by particles and pronominal prefIXes such as: 'lam', '1in',
'Ia:', 'li-', as in:

(6) lli-taxruj (Ipfv ) fa wranl

let-me-go out at once
"Let her go out at once"

Clearly, the jussive in the above example is employed to indicate a

command, hence its reinJorcement with the pardtdctic prefix "Ii-" tr.ms­
tated as "let" U a prohibition isdesired, the negativizer "Ja:"lilerally " not'"
then precedes the jussive (se<:ond persons only), for instance:

(7) (i) Ila: taxruj (Ipfv )/ (masculine singular)

nol you'"80 oul
"00 not go out"

(ti) 11a: taxruja: (Ipfv.)1 (dual)

nol you-go out
"00 not go out"

In the typological linguistic picture, the jussive i ntersects with the

perfective 'al-ma:di' in two semantic areas: (a) The conditional with '1in'
trilIllIlitlcd as "if" and (b) the referential identity o f the negativizer "ma;"
foUowed by the pedective form and "lam" followed by the imperfective.
As for the particle "1in", grammarians are faithful in pointing out this
quadrilateral mix-and-match pattern of conditionals, rendered as: "U you
go, I ( will) go"

(8) 11in ta d hab d ahablul fjussive - perfective)

17in d ahabta d ahabtu/ (perfective perfective)
-

11ind ahabta 18 d hab/ (perfective - jussive)

/?in ta d hab 1a dhabI ijussive - jussive)

It seems to us that the semantic feature reflected by the foursynony­

mow utterances of the above pattern is that the verbal development
descn'bed is not necessarily conceivable. This is indeed the very nature of
Arabic condilionals and the Adft'lotatum of future temporality Fradkin
(1985) asserts that. "there is, in es sence, no control over the perception of
these processes" (237).
 THE AltARIC MOOD SVST£M 91

Let us now examin� the functional "lam". It has invariably a past time
..:onnotation in
of Arabic syntax which isdonunated endrelyby th�jus.sive.1n two inllucn
tial nineteenth-century work. Wright claims that the imperfective after
'lam' has exclusive1y the denotation of the perfective. BrocldemUUl (d. R.
Fradkin 1985) views this preterital meaning of the jussiv� after 'Iam' as a
reflection or effect of the old semitic variety. But he does not explain why
this meaning of the jussive should only appear in negation.
To dte an example:

(9) flam yaktub Opfv.) darsa-hu/

did not he-....nte lesson-his
"He did not write his lesson"

With respect to th� synonymous affinity and substitutability of 'lam'

plus imperfective and 'rna:' plus perfective, we must admit that several
non-native speakers have not acknowledged the semantic variation be­
tween them. Nonthele5S, the Arabist scholar, Rammuny (1978) suggests,
though with caution, that 'rna:' followed by the perfective is the negation
of the verb form together with the whole utterance, and 'lam' negates only
the verb form.
We wish to add that 'rna:' is not only followed by the perfective, but
also by the imperfective. In such cases, it resembles the particlfS '1in' and
'man' in having two sentence parts: apodosis and protasis. The verbs in the
prowis (U -clause) and the apodosis (main clause) are in the imperfective
jussive. The particle 'ma:' with this "impersonal" utilization signals a
future denotation, similar to that expressed by the conditionaJ particle
'lin'

Conclusion

What we are proposing here is that far more attention should be paid
to the semantic variations of the Arabic moods. A partial investigation of
the system will, unquestionably, yield partial and insignificant conclu­
sions. Language meaning is never stable or invariable if the situation
-

changes so does Ih� meaning.

The notion of 'mood' has to do with the perception of the verbal
deve10pmenl It detennines the semantico-synlactic relations that exist
between words on the grounds of contrast between factuality and non­
factuality (I.e, actual fact and hypotheticalness).
The mood system in Arabic comprises the indicative, the subjunc­
tive, and the jussive. Thesubjunctive represents a tenuous affini ty with the
92 JURNAL BAHASA MODEN

situation named. The jussive, meanwhile, expresses a denial of that situa­

tion; this is in Fradkin's expression, "the mood of arbitrariness, a sort of
appeal to the perception of a verbal process" (236). The imperfective
indicative being the unmarked member concurs with the verbal situation,
it distinctly involves factuality if it is used in default of any precedent
functionals. The major difference between the jussive and imperative lies
in the grammatical prefixes accompanying them. On a semantic basis, the
imperative cannot co-occur with a negation; nor can it be formed from
morphological passives.
As for the energetic form, we believe that it harmonizes more with the
'Subjunctive + n' than with the 'jussive + an' as in "taktuban na" rendered
as "you write" !tis a morphologically hybridized entity This has given the
form its semantic hybridity, hence designating the determination of the
subjunctive as well as the appeal of the jussive.
We must admit objectively that Arabic has developed a system of
moods. As Fradkin (1985) who affords pragmatic insights into the phe­
nomenon observes, "there is a system and it is complete" (168), although
it is merely confined to the imperfective.

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