Source for above image : Madina Arabic – Text – Book 2 – Lesson 5

Verbal sentence cannot have two doers (Seq # 105)

Consider an English sentence ‘The men went’. Men is the plural of man. In Arabic it is رِجِــالٌ. It is not correct to say a verbal sentence ذَهَــبُــوا الرِّجَــالُ. This is because in the verb the first doer و is present and then noun الرِّجَــالُ is مَــرْفُــوْعٌ representing the second doer. In order to avoid such a confusing situation having two doers, singular form of the verb should be used in the above verbal statement. The correct verbal sentence will be ذَهَــبَ الرِّجَــالُ. Alternatively, we can also construct a nominal sentence as below.

الرِّجَــالُ ذَهَــبُوْا

In the above sentence الرِّجَــالُ is the subject (المُبْتَدَأُ) and ذَهَــبُوْا is the complete verbal sentence acting as a predicate to the subject الرِّجَــالُ. Just to understand more clearly, let us correct another verbal sentence as below.

Example

“Those who believe said”.

Incorrect verbal sentence is قَــالُوْا الَّذِيْــنَ آمَنُوا

Correct verbal sentence is قَــالَ الَّذِيْــنَ آمَنُوا

Alternative Nominal sentence is الَّذِيْــنَ آمَنُوا قَــالُوْا

Source: From the notes – Trying to understand the Arabic Language… By Mohammed Aijaz