section_path: Grammar/Literary Arabic/Derivation
section_name: Derivation
paragraph_text: Derivation
  
  Like other Semitic languages, and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of nonconcatenative morphology, applying many templates applied to roots, to derive words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.
  
  For verbs, a given root can occur in many different derived verb stems, of which there are about fifteen, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV", although Forms XI to XV are rare.
  
  These stems encode grammatical functions such as the causative, intensive and reflexive. Stems sharing the same root consonants represent separate verbs, albeit often semantically related, and each is the basis for its own conjugational paradigm. As a result, these derived stems are part of the system of derivational morphology, not part of the inflectional system.
  
  Examples of the different verbs formed from the root كتب k-t-b 'write' (using حمر ḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):
  
  Form II is sometimes used to create transitive denominative verbs (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.
  
  The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" (similar to a verbal noun) has turned into a noun referring to a particular type of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied directly to roots, such as the "nouns of location" in ma- (e.g. maktab 'desk, office' < k-t-b 'write', maṭbakh 'kitchen' < ṭ-b-kh 'cook').
  
  The only three genuine suffixes are as follows: