al-Af'al al-Nasikha
- Author died
- -
- Editions
- Printed in 1998 AD at the author's expense
al-Af'al al-Nasikha (The Abrogating Verbs) is a specialized treatise on Arabic grammar authored by the Egyptian scholar and teacher Hamdi Kokab (Hamdi Farraj Muhammad Farraj) . The book focuses exclusively on the grammatical category of verbs that govern the nominal sentence by entering upon the subject (mubtada') and predicate (khabar), altering their grammatical cases .
Scope and Contents
The work examines the theoretical framework and operational rules governing abrogating and deficient verbs (al-af'al al-nasikha al-naqisa) . It opens with a terminological introduction outlining the linguistic and technical definitions of the verb (al-fi'l), the concept of abrogation (al-nawasikh), and the designation of deficiency (al-naqis) in Arabic syntactic theory .
The body of the book is arranged into three principal chapters:
- Chapter One: Kana and Its Sisters (Kana wa-Akhwatuha): Covers the primary group of deficient verbs, addressing grammatical debates regarding whether they are genuine verbs, particles, or non-literal verbs (af'al al-'ibara), alongside their inflectional morphology, semantic designations of time, and the conditions governing their syntactic operations .
- Chapter Two: Verbs of Appropinquation (Af'al al-Muqaraba): Analyzes the eleven verbs of appropinquation, hope, and inception—termed collectively as Kada wa-akhwatuha—and examines their specific syntactic constraints, particularly the structural requirement that their predicates generally take the form of an imperfect verb, as well as the rules governing their conjunction with the particle an .
- Chapter Three: Zanna and Its Sisters (Zanna wa-Akhwatuha): Explores the category of doubly transitive verbs that take a subject and predicate as two direct objects, dividing them into verbs of the heart (af'al al-qulub, encompassing verbs of certainty and preponderance) and verbs of transformation (af'al al-tahwil), along with their syntactic states of full governance (i'mal), neutralisation (ilgha'), and suspension (ta'liq) .
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