Editing Arabic (section)

====Verbs====
{{further|Arabic verbs}}
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are [[Grammatical conjugation|conjugated]] in two major paradigms ([[past]] and [[non-past]]); two [[grammatical voice|voices]] (active and passive); and six [[grammatical mood|moods]] ([[indicative]], [[imperative mood|imperative]], [[subjunctive]], [[Irrealis mood#Jussive|jussive]], shorter [[energetic mood|energetic]] and longer energetic); the fifth and sixth moods, the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.<ref>Rydin, Karin C. (2005). A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. New York: Cambridge University Press.</ref> There are two [[participle]]s, active and passive, and a [[verbal noun]], but no [[infinitive]].

The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed [[perfective]] and [[imperfective]], indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of [[Grammatical tense|tense]] and [[Grammatical aspect|aspect]]. The moods other than the [[indicative]] occur only in the non-past, and the [[future tense]] is signaled by prefixing {{Script/Arabic|سَـ}} ''{{transliteration|ar|sa-}}'' or {{Script/Arabic|سَوْفَ}} ''{{transliteration|ar|sawfa}}'' onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past {{Script/Arabic|كَتَبـ}} ''{{transliteration|ar|katab-}}'' vs. non-past {{Script/Arabic|ـكْتُبـ}} ''{{transliteration|ar|-ktub-}}''), and use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single [[suffix]]al morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of [[prefix]]es (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.

The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, {{Script/Arabic|كَتَبَ}} ''{{transliteration|ar|kataba}}'' 'to write'. In Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which has the same meaning, is almost never used.