An Introduction to Hollow Verbs
What are hollow verbs in Arabic, how are they used, and why do they matter?
The Arabic language, as a member of the Semitic group of languages, is characterized by having the triliteral (three-lettered) root. In linguistics, the root is a base morpheme, or meaningful unit, to which prefixes, suffixes and infixes may be added. In other words, the root is the essential part of any word. And these root letters are necessarily from among the letters of the all-consonant alphabet. [Vowels (referred to as diacritical marks) are added above or below any given consonant, and do not have the same linguistic status as consonants do.]
Any given root of nouns, adjectives and verbs -- the 3 basic kinds of words that form the vast majority of Arabic words -- generally and most commonly consists of 3 consonants.
Interestingly in Arabic, as in English, the consonants ‘w’ and ‘y’ are considered to be semi-vowels, and in Arabic are deemed to be weak because they can function as both a consonant and as a vowel. And of course there are certain rules that govern their use and whether they show up as a consonant or a vowel in any given word.
The Hollow Verb in Arabic is any verb that happens to have either a ‘w’ or a ‘y’ in the middle of its triliteral root, such that this middle letter now displays certain peculiarities because of its being ‘weak’. The weakness of the ‘w’ and the ‘y’ is evidenced by the fact that the ‘w’, in addition to representing the consonant ‘w’ as in ‘world’, also represents the long vowel u, as in the English word, ‘pure’; and the ‘y’ representing the consonant y as in ‘yellow’, also represents the long i vowel as in the sound of the English word, ‘feel’.
Below is a short list of common hollow verbs in Arabic which illustrate their weakness due to their having either a ‘w’ or a ‘y’ in the middle position of their roots.
NOTE: The upper case S and upper case T in transliteration represent ‘emphatic letters’ in Arabic which influences the sound of the nearby vowels; the double a letters indicate the long a sound, as in ‘bad’. And as far as the ‘q’ in transliteration, this consonant is pronounced far back in the throat and has no English equivalent, while the ع is another guttural letter produced far back in the throat, and having no English equivalent, the c is used to represent it here (superscript c).