Intro to Compound Verbs

Compound verbs are verbs made up from a helper verb and some other word. These are extremely common in Pashto. In fact, 70% of the verbs in the LingDocs Pashto Dictionary are compound verbs. Here are some examples:

• کار کول - kaar kawul (to work)

• کار - kaar (work) +

  کول - kawul (to do)
• منډې وهل - munDe wahul (to run)

• منډې - munDe (runs) +

  وهل - wahul (to hit)
• بندول - bandawul (to close)

• بند - band (closed) +

  کول - kawul (to make)
• ستړی کېدل - stuRay kedúl (to get tired)

• ستړی - stúRay (tired) +

  کېدل - kedúl (to become)

In order to understand how compound verbs work it's important to know that they fall into two different categories:

• stative compound verbs
  • involve something being changed
• dynamic compound verbs
  • involve an action being done

These two types of compounds look very similary but they behave completely differently. Unfortunately this is an area of Pashto grammar that is not very well known or explained, and so, learners often get quite confused about compound verbs and why they behave the way they do.

Before we understand how these compounds are made and how they work, it might be helpful to quickly picture them as little machines.

With stative compounds, we are taking some object and changing it by "making" it something else. We have something that is changing "state," hence the name "stative." For example - if we melt ice, we are changing the state of the water from frozen to liquid. We are making the ice into liquid.

If we cook potatoes, we are changing the state of the potatoes from raw to cooked.

With dynamic compounds, we are simply doing some action. The action is the object and the subject "does" it. So these compounds look like much simpler machines.

For example, with the compound verb کار کول - kaar kawul (to work) we have کار - kaar (work) as the object/action that gets done.

Don't worry if this doesn't fully make sense yet. We will explain how these compounds work in the chapters ahead. For now, the important thing to know is that there are these two kinds of compounds, and they are very different.

• stative compounds are used to make something different
• dynamic compounds are used to do an action

For each type of compound we have a completely different structure and set of rules. If a student is just told that there are "compound verbs" in Pashto and then try to understand what's going on with them, they are in for a world of pain. 😫 But if we know that there are both stative and dynamic compounds, everything will make sense. 🙂