Arabic grammar


'''Arabic''' is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic.

History

Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers. The earliest grammarian who is known to us is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq (died 535/6). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian scholar Sibāwayhi (ca. 760–793). Traditionally, the grammatical sciences are divided into four branches:

Phonology

Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semi-vowels), expressed by the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet. In dialects, usually not all 28 phonemes are realized, so that for these speakers, some homophones are disambiguated only orthographically. Arabic has six vowel phonemes (three short vowels and three long vowels); they appear as various allophones, depending on the preceding consonant. Short vowels are not usually represented in written language, although they may be indicated with diacritics. (''See:'' Arabic alphabet.) List of phonemes as transliterated in this article: The consonants include a so-called "emphatic" series ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, q peculiar to Semitic. The voiceless sounds ṣ, ṭ, q have clear equivalents in other Semitic languages, while it is not clear whether the voiced emphatic consonants are an Arabic innovation. Arabic has a tendency towards affrication. The fricatives ǧ, f clearly go back to occlusives g, p, while the fricatives ṯ, ḏ (corresponding to English thorn, eth) may be either old fricatives or an Arabic innovation. The syllable structure of Arabic is such that there may be clusters of two, but not of three consecutive consonants. A cluster of two consonants at the beginning of an utterance will be preceded by an auxiliary vowel (''alif al-waṣl'').

Noun

State

The Arabic noun can take one of three states of definiteness: definite, indefinite or construct state. The definite state is marked by the article al-. The indefinite state is marked by an ending -n (nunation). The construct state is unmarked and occurs in the first member of a genitive construction.

Article

The article (''adātu-t-taʿrīf'') al- is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. The initial vowel is volatile in the sense that it disappears in sandhi (''hamzatu-l-waṣl''), the article becoming mere -l- (although the alif is retained in orthography in any case for clarity). Also, the l is assimilated to a number of consonants (dentals and sibilants), so that in these cases, the article in pronunciation is expressed only by geminating the initial consonant of the noun (while in orthography, the writing alif lam is retained, and the gemination may be expressed by putting šadda on the following letter). The consonants causing assimilation (trivially including l) are: t, ṯ, d, ḏ, r, z, s, š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, l, n. These 14 letters are called solar letters (''ḥuruf šamsiyyat''), while the remaining 14 are called lunar letters (''ḥuruf qamariyyat'').

Inflection

An Arabic noun can take three cases: nominative, genitive and accusative, and three numbers: singular, dual and plural. Normally, nouns take the ending -u(n) in the nominative, -i(n) in the genitive and -a(n) in the accusative. The plural of a noun is formed by a suffix in some cases (sound plurals), but frequently, the vowel structure of a word is changed to form the plural (broken plurals). There are a number of patterns of how this is done. Some words take several plurals. There could be traces of broken plurals in other Semitic languages, but nowhere are they as widespread as in Arabic.

Gender

Arabic has two genders, expressed by pronominal as well as by verbal agreement. Agreement with numerals shows a peculiar polarity, c.f. the section on numerals. The genders are usually referred to as masculine and feminine, but the situation is more complicated than that. The feminine gender is also used to express singulatives. The marker for the feminine gender is a -t- suffix, but some nouns without this marker also take feminine agreement (e. g. umm mother, ard earth). Already in Classical Arabic, the -t marker was not pronounced in pausa. It is written with a special letter (''ta marbuta'') indicating that a t sound is to be pronounced in sandhi, but not in pausa.

Genitive construction (Iḍāfa)

A noun may be defined more closely by a subsequent noun in the genitive. The relation is hierarchical; the first term (''al-muḍāf'') governs the second term (''al-muḍāf ilayhi''). E. g. baytu raǧulin house of a man. The construction as a whole represents a nominal phrase, the state of which is inherited from the state of the second term. The first term must be in construct state, and thus cannot be marked definite or indefinite. Genitive constructions of multiple terms are possible. In this case, all but the final term take construct state, and all but the first member take genitive case. This construction is typical for a Semitic language. In many cases the two members become a fixed coined phrase, the iḍāfa being used as the equivalent of nominal composition in Indo-European languages (which does not exist in Semitic). baitu-ṭ-ṭalabati thus may mean either house of the (certain, known) students or the student hostel.

Nisba

The Nisba (''an-nisbatu'') is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is -iyy- for masculine and -iyyat- for feminine gender (in other words, it is -iyy- and is inserted before the gender marker). E. g. lubnānu Lebanon, lubnāniyyun Lebanese. A construction noun + nisba-adjective is often equivalent to nominal composition in Indo-European languages.

Pronoun

A pronominal paradigm consists of 12 forms: In singular and plural, the 2nd and 3rd persons differentiate gender, while the 1st person does not. In the dual, there is no 1st person, and only a single form for each 2nd and 3rd person. Traditionally, the pronouns are listed in order 3rd, 2nd, 1st.

Personal pronouns

Person Singular Plural Dual
3rd (m) huwa hum humā
3rd (f) hiya hunna
2nd (m) anta antum antumā
2nd (f) anti antunna
1st ana naḥnu (n/a)

Enclitic pronouns

Enclitic forms of the pronoun (''aḍ-ḍamāʾiru al-muttaṣilatu'') may be affixed to nouns (representing genitive case, i. e. possession) and to verbs (representing accusative, i. e. a direct object). Most of them are clearly related to the full personal pronouns. They are identical in form in both cases, except for the 1st person singular, which is -ī after nouns (genitive) and -nī after verbs (accusative).
Person Singular Plural Dual
3rd (m) -hu -hum -humā
3rd (f) -hā -hunna
2nd (m) -ka -kum -kumā
2nd (f) -ki -kunna
1st -(n)ī -nā (n/a)

Demonstratives

There are two demonstratives (''asmāʾu al-ʾišāratu''), near-deictic ('this') and far-deictic ('that'):

Numerals

Cardinal numerals

Cardinal numerals (''al-aʿdād al-aṣliyyat'') from 1-10 (zero is ṣifr, from which the English word "cipher" comes) The numerals 1 and 2 are adjectives; 3-10 are diptotes (the ending -(t)u is dropped in oral usage). Numerals 3-10 have a peculiar rule of agreement known as polarity: A feminine referrer agrees with a numeral in masculine gender and vice versa, e.g. ṯalāṯu fatayātin three girls. Numerals 11-19 are indeclinable, and they show gender agreement (not polarity). The noun counted takes accusative singular. The numerals 20-99 are followed by a noun in the accusative singular as well. There is agreement in gender with the numerals 1 and 2, and polarity for numerals 3-9. Whole hundreds, thousands etc. appear as first terms of genitive constructions, e.g. alfu laylati wa laylatu 1001 nights. Fractions of a whole smaller than "half" are expressed by the structure sg. fuʿl, pl. afʿāl. etc.

Ordinal numerals

Ordinal numerals (''al-aʿdād at-tartiyabiyyat'') higher than "first" are formed using the structure fāʿilun, fāʿilatun: etc. They are adjectives, hence, there is agreement in gender with the noun, not polarity as with the cardinal numbers

Verb

Like in many Semitic languages, the Arabic word formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants k-t-b, for example, indicate write, q-r-ʾ indicate read, ʾ-k-l indicate eat etc.; Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root f-ʿ-l do as a template to discuss word formation. The personal forms a verb can take correspond to the forms of the pronouns, except that in the 3rd person dual, gender is differentiated, yielding paradigms of 13 forms.

Perfect

In the perfect conjugation, the perfect stem faʿal is affixed with a personal ending, e. g. kataba he wrote, qaraʾa he read. The perfect expresses a completed action, i.e. mostly past tense.
Person Singular Plural Dual
3rd (m) faʿal-a faʿal-ū faʿal-ā
3rd (f) faʿal-at faʿal-na faʿal-tā
2nd (m) faʿal-ta faʿal-tum faʿal-tumā
2nd (f) faʿal-ti faʿal-tunna --
1st faʿal-tu faʿal-nā (n/a)

Imperfect

The imperfect expresses an action in progress, i.e. mostly present tense. There are several vowel patterns (''a-a'', a-u,''a-i'') the root can take. The root takes a prefix as well as a suffix to build the verb form. E. g. yaktubu he is writing. Note the co-incidence of 3rd f. sg. and 2nd m. sg.
Person Singular Plural Dual
3rd (m) ya-fʿal-u ya-fʿal-ūna ya-fʿal-āni
3rd (f) ta-fʿal-u ya-fʿal-na ta-fʿal-āni
2nd (m) ta-fʿal-u ta-fʿal-ūna ta-fʿal-āni
2nd (f) ta-fʿal-īna ta-fʿal-na --
1st a-fʿal-u na-fʿal-u (n/a)

Mood

From the imperfect stem, modal forms can be derived: the subjunctive by (roughly speaking) replacing the final vowel by a, the jussive by dropping this a of the subjunctive, the imperative (only 2nd persons) by also dropping the verbal prefix. The subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses after certain cunjunctions. the jussive is used in negation, in negative imperatives and in the hortative li+jussive. For example: 2. sg. m.:

Voice

Arabic has two verbal voices, active and passive. The passive voice is expressed by a change in vocalization and is normally not expressed in unvocalized writing. For example:

Weak verbs

Roots containing one or two of the radicals w (''wāw''), y (''yā'') or ʾ (''hamza'') are subject to special phonological rules because these radicals can be influenced by their surroundings. Such verbs are called weak (''verba infirmae'', 'verbs of weak [radical]) and their paradigms must be given special attention. In the case of hamza, these peculiarities are mainly orthographical, since hamza is not subject to elision (the orthography of hamza and alif is unsystematic due to confusion in early Islamic times). According to the position of the weak radical in the root, these verbs are called primae infirmae, mediae infirmae or tertiae infirmae. Another special class of roots are such that their second and third radicals are identical. These roots are called mediae geminatae.

Stem formation

Derived verbs are variations on the shape of the primary kataba stem, such as kattaba, kātaba, inkataba, takattaba. Semantically, these formations correspond to changes in meaning such as intensive, reflexive, and causative, though the exact meaning varies from verb to verb and needs to be recorded in the lexicon. Classical Arabic has a great number of derived stems, not all of which are still in use. For the modern language, it is mostly sufficient to consider stems I-VI, VIII and X. The exact vocalisation will be dependent on the word form. Common uses of those stems include:

Participle

The Arabic participle is a verbal noun formed from one of the derived verbal stems. E.g. muʿallimun teacher is the active participle to stem II. of the root ʿ-l-m ('know').

Infinitive

There is a second type of verbal noun besides the participle that is referred to as infinitive because it often translates to infinitive constructions in Indo-European languages. It is strictly speaking not an infinitive, it would be more correct to speak of "verbal noun I" and "verbal noun II", but the name infinitive is too widespread to abandon it. For example: taʾrīḫun date, history is the infinitive to stem II. of ʾ-r-ḫ ('date').

Syntax

In Arabic, a word is classified as either a noun (''ism''), a verb (''fiʿl''), a pronoun or a preposition (''ḥarf''). Adverbials are expressed with nominal forms.Repetitive use of the same root in verb and noun in a sentence is considered good style. There are three types of sentences Category:Arabic language

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