Degree of an action (كلّ / بعض)

Emphasizing Actions with (كلّ)

To emphasize that an action was done "completely," Arabic uses the Deputy Cognate Accusative (النائب عن المفعول المطلق).

Place the quantifier كلّ (all/every) directly in front of the verb's verbal noun. Grammatically, كلّ takes the accusative case, while the following verbal noun is in the genitive case. For example, pairing the verb ركز (to focus) with its verbal noun تركيز gives us ركز كل التركيز (focused completely). Notice how the root of the main verb and the verbal noun match perfectly.

Expressing Partial Degree with (بعض)

To express that an action was done "to some extent" or "somewhat," replace كلّ with بعض (some). As before, بعض takes the accusative case, and the following verbal noun remains genitive. Compare the total and partial investigations below:

Mastery and Perseverance

Verbs like أجاد (to master) and ثابر (to persevere) frequently use this structure to describe intense focus and effort.

Seeing the endings

This course writes Arabic the way books and newspapers print it, without the short-vowel marks, so the ending this lesson is about is usually something you hear in the audio but cannot see in the drills. Here are some of them with every vowel written out:

كل and بعض are accusative, كُلَّ, بَعْضَ, and the verbal noun after them is genitive: الِاسْتِقْصَاءِ, المُثَابَرَةِ. The verb's own object keeps its accusative too (الجَرِيمَةَ, الخَبَرَ), and كل is accusative even when the verb takes no object at all, as with ثابر على.