Keeping in mind the whole above discussion...

Keeping in mind the whole above discussion, now look at the four small gardaans of the نهي verb which is the negative command: نهي حاضر معروف (second person active prohibition) e.g. لا تَضرِب , Don’t hit! نهي حاضر مجهول (second person passive prohibition) e.g. لا تُضرَب , You must not get hit. نهي غاﺋﺐ و متكلّم ** ** (third & first person active prohibition) e.g. لا يَضرِب , He must not hit. نهي غاﺋﺐ و متكلّم مجهول (third & first person passive prohibition) e.g. لا يُضرَب , He must not get hit.

📌Note the structure of the eight examples: إضرِب was the first, then we had three that began with ‘ لِ ’, followed by four that began with ‘ لا ’. Significant? From a pure صرف perspective, not really, because verb conjugation, more than anything else, has to do with the designated letters at the end of the verbs which make the conjugations slightly different in how they look and sound, and that’s why we memorize them, with particular attention given to those slight differences.

However, from a نحو point of view, the difference between إضرِب and the rest is very profound. (If you understand this, you’ve understood a lot, insha Allah.) What the scholars of نحو did, is they looked at the above 8 examples, noting that all end with a ْ ‘ سكون ’. Then they saw, seven of them have particles i.e. governing agents in front of them, either ‘ لِ ’or ‘ لا ’. From this, they deduced that the sukoon at the end of all except إضرِب is a reflection of grammatical state.

Therefore, these gardaans are not separate verbs, but rather THE SAME مضارع (present-tense verb) in the state of ‘ جزم ’. In other words لِتُضرَب , لِيَضرِب , لِيُضرَب and the four نهي tables are nothing more than يَضرِبُ , يُضرَبُ , تَضرِبُ and تُضرَبُ with either ‘ لِ ’or ‘ لا ’ in front of them, both of which are ‘ جزم ’ giving particles. As for ‘ إضرِب ’ i.e.

the second person, active command, they said this is different for two reasons: It does not begin with a recognized prefix of the present-tense verb, ي , ت , ء , or ن . Therefore, it cannot be incorporated into the مضارع category, as we did to the others. Furthermore, it does not have a governing agent before it which could explain away the sukoon at the end of it, meaning no grammatical reflection can be attributed to this last letter sukoon.

For these two reasons, the scholars of نحو have classified the فعل somewhat different than the scholars of صرف .

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