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Arabic grammar
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Arabic is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic - the Arabic grammar (??? ???? na?w ?arabi).
identity of the oldest Arabic grammarian is disputed with some sources saying Ibn Abi Ishaq and medieval sources saying Abu-Aswad al-Du'ali, the oldest known Arabic grammarian, established diacritical marks and vowels for Arabic in the mid-600s.
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Encyclopedia
Arabic is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic - the Arabic grammar (??? ???? na?w ?arabi).
History
The identity of the oldest Arabic grammarian is disputed with some sources saying Ibn Abi Ishaq and medieval sources saying Abu-Aswad al-Du'ali, the oldest known Arabic grammarian, established diacritical marks and vowels for Arabic in the mid-600s. The schools of Basra, Kufa, Sibawaih further developed grammatical rules in the late 700s.
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 is (died AD 735/6, AH 117).
The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian scholar (ca. 760–793).
Division
Traditionally, the grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:
- (lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
- (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
- (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection () which had already been lost in dialects.
- (derivation) examining the origin of the words
- (rhetoric) which elucidates construct quality
The grammar or grammars of contemporary varieties of Arabic are a different question. Said M. Badawi, an expert on Arabic grammar, divided Arabic grammar into five different types based on the speaker's level of literacy and the degree to which the speaker deviated from Classical Arabic. Badawi's five types of grammar from the most colloquial to the most formal are Illiterate Spoken Arabic (????? ??????? ?ammiyat al-'ummiyyin), Semi-literate Spoken Arabic (????? ????????? ?ammiyat al-mutanawwirin), Educated Spoken Arabic (????? ???????? ?ammiyat al-'muthaqqafin), Modern Standard Arabic (???? ????? fu??a al-?a?r), and Classical Arabic (???? ?????? fu??a at-turath). This article is concerned with the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic exclusively.
Phonology
Classical Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes, including two semi-vowels, which comprise the arabic alphabet. It also has six vowel phonemes (three short vowels and three long vowels). These 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.
Hamzatu 'l-wa?l (???? ?????), elidable hamza, is a phonetic object prefixed to the beginning of a word for ease of pronunciation, since literary Arabic doesn't allow consonant clusters at the beginning of a word. Elidable hamza drops out as a vocal, if a word is preceding it. This word will then produce an ending vocal, "helping vocal" to facilitate pronunciation. This short vocal may be , depending on the preceding vowel, ?? a fat?a /a/ , ?? a kasra /i/ or ?? a ?amma /u/. If the preceding word ends in a sukun (i.e. not followed by a short vowel), the Hamzatu 'l-wa?l assumes a kasrah /i/. Symbol ?? shadda indicates a gemination or consonant doubling. See more in Tashkil.
Noun
??? ism
State
Nouns (and their modifying adjectives) are either definite or indefinite (there is an article for the definite state only). A noun is definite if it has the definite article prefix (??? al-), if it has a suffixed pronoun (????? ?????? kalbu-ha l-kabir "her big dog"), if it is inherently definite by being a proper noun (??? ??????? , "old Cairo"), or if it is in a genitive construction with a definite noun or nouns (??? ????? bintu l-malik(i), "the daughter of the king").
Article
The article (???? ??????? ) ??? is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. It is also prefixed to each of that noun's modifying adjectives. The initial vowel (), is volatile in the sense that it disappears in sandhi, the article becoming mere (although the is retained in orthography in any case as it is based on pausal pronunciation).
Also, the 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 ??? is retained, and the gemination may be expressed by putting on the following letter).
The consonants causing assimilation (trivially including ? ) are: ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? , ? . These 14 letters are called 'solar letters' (???? ??????? ), while the remaining 14 are called 'lunar letters' or 'moon letters' (???? ??????? ). The solar letters all have in common that they are dental, alveolar and postalveolar consonants in the classical language, and the lunar consonants are not. (? is pronounced postalveolar in most varieties of Arabic today, but was actually a palatalized voiced velar plosive in the classical language, and is thus considered a lunar letter; nevertheless, in colloquial Arabic, the ? is often spoken as if solar.)
Inflection (case)
????? i?rab
Arabic has three grammatical cases roughly corresponding to: nominative, genitive and accusative. Normally, singular nouns take the ending in the nominative, in the genitive and in the accusative. Some exceptional nouns, known as diptotes (??????? ?? ????? ), never take the final n, and have the suffix in the genitive except when the diptotic noun is in the definite state (preceded by al- or is in the construct state). However, case is not shown in standard orthography, with the exception of indefinite accusative nouns ending in any letter but ? or ? , where the "sits" upon an added to the end of the word (the still shows up in unvowelled texts). When speaking or reading aloud, articulating the case ending is optional, but rarely used except in religious situations. Technically, every noun has such an ending, although at the end of a sentence, no inflection is pronounced, even in formal speech, because of the rules of 'pause' (????? al-waqf).
Case is not shown in standard orthography, with the exception of indefinite accusative nouns ending in any letter but ta marbuta or hamza, where the -a(n) "sits" upon an alif added to the end of the word (the alif still shows up in unvowelled texts). Cases, however, are marked in the Koran, children's books, primers and to remove ambigous situations. If marked, it is shown at the end of the noun.
Nominative case
??????? al-marfu?
- Subjects of a verbal sentence.
- Subjects and predicates of an equational (non-verbal) sentence, with some notable exceptions.
- Certain adverbs retain the nominative marker.
- The citation form of words is (if noted at all) in the nominative case.
For singular nouns and broken plurals, it is marked as a ?ammah (-u) for the definite or ?ammah + nunation (-un) for the indefinite. The dual and regular masculine plural are formed by adding -ani and -una respectively (-a and -u in the construct state). The regular feminine plural is formed by adding -atu in the definite and -atun in the indefinite.
Accusative case
??????? al-man?ub
- The subject of an equational (non-verbal) sentence, if it is initiated with inna, or one of her sisters.
- The predicate of kana/yakunu "be" and its sisters. Hence, ????? ????? al-bintu jamilatun "the girl is beautiful" but ????? ???? ????? al-bintu kanat jamila(tan) "the girl was beautiful" (spelling ????? is not affected here (letter ?) in the unvocalised Arabic). The ending in brackets may not be pronounced in pausa or in informal Arabic.
- Both the subject and the predicate of ?anna and its sisters in an equational clause.
- The object of a transitive verb
- Most adverbs.
- Internal object/cognate accusative structure
- The accusative of specification/purpose/circumstantial.
For singular nouns and broken plurals, it is marked as a fat?ah (-a) for the definite or fat?ah + nunation (-an) for the indefinite. For the indefinite accusative, the fat?ah + nunation is added to an alif e.g. ???, which is added to the ending of all nouns (e.g. ??? ??????? kana ta?banan "he was tired") not ending with a hamza or ta marbuta. The dual and regular masculine plural are formed by adding -ayn(i) and -in(a) (both spelled ??? in Arabic) respectively (-ay and -i in the construct state, both spelled ?? in Arabic). The regular feminine plural is formed by adding -at(i) in the definite and -at(in) in the indefinite, both spelled ??? in Arabic.
Genitive case
??????? al-majrur
- Objects of prepositions.
- All, but not necessarily the first member (the first nomen regens), of an
i?afa (genitive construction) . The object of a locative adverb. Semi-prepositions if preceded by another (true or semi) preposition Objects of ?? kam "how much/many" and ?? ayy "any". Elative (comparative/superlative) adjectives behave similarly: ???? ??? "'a?walu waladin" "the tallest boy".
For singular nouns and broken plurals, it is marked as a kasrah (-i) for the definite or kasrah + nunation (-in) for the indefinite. The dual and regular masculine plural are formed by adding -ayn(i) and -in(a) respectively (both spelled ??? in Arabic) (-ay and -i in the construct state, both spelled ?? in Arabic). The regular feminine plural is formed by adding -at(i) in the definite and -at(in) in the indefinite, both spelled ??? in Arabic.
- Note: diptotic nouns receive a fat?ah (-a) in the genitive, indefinite and are never nunated.
- Note: there is no dative case; instead, the preposition ?? "li-" is used.
Number
??? ?adad
Arabic distinguishes between nouns based on quantity. All nouns are either singular when there is one, dual (??? ?anna) when there are two, and plural if there are three or more.
The dual is formed by adding ??? -an(i) to the noun stem in the nominative and ??? -ayn(i) in the accusative and genitive. The final vowel "-i" is not pronounced in pausa and more colloquial forms of Arabic (not affecting the Arabic unvocalised spelling). The final ending ?? "-ni" is dropped in the i?afa construct form (Status constructus), resulting in ?? -a and in the nominative and ?? -ay in the accusative and genitive (affects the spelling as well).
The plurals are formed in two ways. The "sound plurals" are formed by the addition of a suffix. Masculine sound plurals take the forms ??? "" in the nominative and ??? "" in the genitive and accusative. These do not change whether the noun is definite or indefinite. Note that in written Arabic (without vocalisation) dual and sound plural forms are spelled identically but pronounced differently. The final "-a" is not pronounced in pausa and in less formal Arabic.
Feminine indefinite sound plurals take ??? "" in the nominative and ??? "" in the accusative and genitive. Feminine definite sound plurals take ??? "" in the nominative and ??? "" in the accusative and genitive. The broken plurals are formed by altering the vowel structure according to one of about five established patterns. Some nouns have two or more plural forms, usually to distinguish between different meanings. All these feminine forms are spelled identically in Arabic, the endings in brackets are not pronounced in pausa and in less formal Arabic.
Gender
??? jins
Arabic has two genders, expressed by pronominal, verbal and adjectival 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' singular forms are also used to express 'singulatives', which are singulars of collective nouns meaning irrationals of both grammatical genders.
The marker for the feminine gender is a ?? (always follows a fat'?a, hence the short vowel /a/) suffix, e.g. ????? jami?a(t)- "University" but some nouns without this marker also take feminine agreement (e.g. ?? 'mother', ??? 'earth'). Already in Classical Arabic, the marker was not pronounced in pausa. It is written with a special letter ? (Arabic: ??? ?????? ) indicating that a sound is to be pronounced in sandhi, but not in pausa. Strictly speaking, Classical Arabic requires this letter to be pronounced as [h] in pausa (hence its form, a with the two dots of a ), but even in Modern Standard Arabic the letter is most often ignored altogether, so ????? "city", "town" is simply pronounced as madina in less formal Arabic (all cases).
Ending ?? never takes an alif marker in the accusative indefinite but the ending "-tan" may be still pronounced in non-pausal, formal Arabic.
Adjective and apposition
In Arabic, adjectives and appositions follow the noun and agree with the preceding noun in state, gender and case. For example:
- Adjective (??? na?t):
- al-baytu 'l-kabir(u) (????? ??????) "the big house"
- ra'aytu ?ura(tan) jamila(tan) (???? ???? ?????) "I saw a nice picture"
- Apposition:
- ar-rasulu Mu?ammad(un) (?????? ????) "the prophet Muhammad"
Nisba
The Nisba (?????? ) is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is ?? for masculine and ??? for feminine gender (in other words, it is and is inserted before the gender marker). E. g. ????? "Lebanon", ?????? "Lebanese (singular masculine)", ??????? "Lebanese (singular feminine)", ???????? "Lebanese (plural masculine)" ???????? "Lebanese (plural feminine)".
A construct noun and nisba-adjective is often equivalent to nominal composition in English and other languages (solar cell is equivalent to sun cell).
The Arabic nisba has affected some English adjective of Arabic or related origin: Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Pakistani, etc.
Adverb
??? ?arf
Adverbials are expressed using adjectives in the indefinite accusative, often written with the ending ??? (e.g. ????? ay?an "also") but pronounced "-an" even if it's not written (see accusative), e.g.: ??? ?????? ????? ????? , literally: "he read the book a slow reading", i.e., "He read the book slowly". This type of construction is known as the "absolute accusative" (cf. absolute ablative in Latin grammar).
Adverbs can be formed from adjectives, ordinal numerals: ?????? kathiran frequently, a lot, often, ?????? nadiran rarely, ????? awwalan firstly or from nouns: ????? ?aadatan usually, ???? jiddan very.
The second method to form adverbs is to use a preposition and a noun, e. g. ?? bi-, e.g. ????? bi-sur?a(ti) fast, "with speed", ?????? bi-?-?ab?(i) exactly
Pronoun
???? ?amir
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 | Dual | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | | | |
|---|
| 2nd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
| 3rd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
|
Note: "anta" can be shortened to "ant" in pausa.
Dual forms: ????? and ???, plural feminine ????? and ??? are only used in very formal Arabic.
Enclitic pronouns
Enclitic forms of the pronoun (??????? ??????? ) 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 after nouns (genitive) and after verbs (accusative).
| Person | Singular | Dual | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | | | |
|---|
| 2nd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
| 3rd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
In a less formal Arabic, like in many spoken dialects, -ka and -ki are pronounced as -ak, and -ik in all case endings, thus, the case endings (-u, -i and -a) are often ignored.
Demonstratives
There are two demonstratives (????? ??????? ), near-deictic ('this') and far-deictic ('that'):
- , f. , pl. 'this, these'
- , f. , pl. 'that, those'
Plural forms of non-human nouns are treated as feminine singular.
Some of the demonstratives (hadha, hadhihi, ha'ula'i, 'ula'ika and dhalika) should be pronounced with a long "a", although the unvocalised script doesn't contain an alif. They have letter ?? "dagger alif" (??? ???????? alif khanjariyya), which doesn't exist on Arabic keyboards and is seldom written, even in the vocalised Arabic.
Numerals
Cardinal numerals
Cardinal numerals (??????? ???????? ) from 1-10 (0 zero is ??? , from which the English words "cipher" and "zero" are ultimately derived)
The Arabic numerals are written as follows: ? - zero, ? - one, ? - two, ? - three, ? - four, ? - five, ? - six, ? - seven, ? - eight, ? - nine.
The endings in brackets are dropped in less formal Arabic and in pausa. Note that ? (ta? marbu?a) is pronounced as simple /a/ in this cases. There are cases when -t in ? must be pronounced but not the rest of the ending.
????? (i?nan(i)) is changed to ????? (i?nayn(i)) in oblique cases. This form is also commonly used in a less formal Arabic in the nominative case.
The numerals 1 and 2 are adjectives. Thus they follow the noun and agree with gender.
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. 'three girls'. The noun counted takes indefinite genitive plural (as the attribute in a genitive construct.)
Numerals 11-19 are indeclinable, perpetually in the indefinite accusative. Numbers 11 and 12 show gender agreement in the ones, and 13-19 show polarity in the ones. The gender of ??? in numbers 11-19 agrees with the counted noun (unlike the standalone numeral 10 which shows polarity). The counted noun takes indefinite accusative singular.
12 13
The numerals 20-99 are followed by a noun in the indefinite accusative singular as well. There is agreement in gender with the numerals 1 and 2, and polarity for numerals 3-9.
(dual of '10')21 22 23 30 40
Whole hundreds, thousands etc. appear as first terms of genitive constructions, e.g. alf(u) layla(ti) wa-layla(tu) (1001 nights)??? ???? ?????
, can also be spelled ???? (same pronunciation) 1000
Fractions of a whole smaller than "half" are expressed by the structure sg. , pl. .
"half" "one third" "two thirds" "one quarter" "three quarters"
etc.
Ordinal numerals
Ordinal numerals (??????? ????????? ) higher than "second" are formed using the structure , :
, f. ???? "first"m. ???? (definite form: ?????? ), f. ????? "second"m. ???? , f. ????? "third"m. ???? , f. ????? "fourth"m. ???? , f. ????? "fifth"m. ???? , f. ????? "sixth"m. ???? , f. ????? "seventh"m. ???? , f. ????? "eighth"m. ???? , f. ????? "ninth"m. ???? , f. ????? "tenth"
etc.
They are adjectives, hence, there is agreement in gender with the noun, not polarity as with the cardinal numbers.
Verb
??? fi?l
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root (??? ?????, ), which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants ????? , for example, indicate 'write', ????? (e.g. ???) indicate 'read', ????? (e.g. ???) indicate 'eat' etc.; Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root ????? '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.
Prefixes and suffixes
In Arabic the grammatical person and number as well as the mood is designated by a variety of prefixes and suffixes. Most Arabic verbs are regular and follow the pattern detailed below.
NOTE:The Arabic example below is the Arabic verb kataba, "to write". Only the prefixes and suffixes of the verb have been vocalised, the vocalisation of the stems (????? for the past and ????? for the present) has been omitted for reasons of legibility.
Prefixes and suffixes of the Arabic verb | Perfective | Imperfective | Subjunctive and Jussive |
|---|
| Singular |
|---|
| 1st | STEM-t(u) | a-STEM | no written change |
|---|
| ?????? | ???? | | 2nd | masculine | STEM-t(a) | ta-STEM | no written change |
|---|
| ?????? | ????? | | feminine | STEM-ti | ta-STEM-in(a) | ta-STEM-i |
|---|
| ?????? | ????????? | ??????? | | 3rd | masculine | STEM(-a) | ya-STEM | no written change |
|---|
| ???? | ????? | | feminine | STEM-at | ta-STEM | no written change |
|---|
| ?????? | ????? | | Dual |
|---|
| 2nd | masculine
& feminine | STEM-tuma | ta-STEM-an(i) | ta-STEM-a |
|---|
| ????????? | ????????? | ??????? | | 3rd | masculine | STEM-a | ya-STEM-an(i) | ya-STEM-a |
|---|
| ????? | ????????? | ??????? | | feminine | STEM-ata | ta-STEM-an(i) | ta-STEM-a |
|---|
| ??????? | ????????? | ??????? | | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | STEM-na | na-STEM | no written change |
|---|
| ??????? | ????? | | 2nd | masculine | STEM-tum | ta-STEM-un(a) | ta-STEM-u |
|---|
| ??????? | ????????? | ???????? | | feminine | STEM-tunna | ta-STEM-na | no written change |
|---|
| ????????? | ???????? | | 3rd | masculine | STEM-u | ya-STEM-un(a) | ya-STEM-u |
|---|
| ?????? | ????????? | ???????? | | feminine | STEM-na | ya-STEM-na | no written change |
|---|
| ?????? | ???????? |
In unvocalised Arabic, ????? - katabtu, katabta, katabti and katabat are all written the same. Forms katabtu and katabta and even katabti can be abbreviated to "katabt" in spoken Arabic and in pausa, making them also sound the same.
"kataba" can be abbreviated to "katab" in spoken Arabic and in pausa.
Dual verb and feminine plural forms are only used in very formal Arabic.
? (alif) in final ??? (-u) is silent.
Perfective/perfect
?????? al-ma?i
In the perfective (occasionally called 'perfect') form, the perfective stem is affixed with a personal ending, e. g. 'he wrote', 'he read'. The perfective expresses a completed action, i.e. mostly past tense. The second vowel is /a/ in most verbs, but /i/ in some verbs (especially intransitive) and /u/ in a few (especially verbs whose meaning is "be X" or "become X" where X is an adjective, usually naming a permanent or semi-permanent quality, e.g. 'he became big, he grew up').
| Person | Singular | Plural | Dual |
|---|
| 1st | | | |
|---|
| 2nd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
| 3rd
!masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | | |
|---|
|
Imperfective
??????? al-mu?ari?
The imperfective expresses an action in progress, or incompleted, i.e. mostly present tense. There are several vowel patterns (, , ) the root can take. The root takes a prefix as well as a suffix to build the verb form. E. g. ???? 'he is writing'. Note the co-incidence of 3rd f. sg. and 2nd m. sg. To explain the future tense, it is possible to use the prefix ?? sa- in front of the imperfective forms (or fully written ??? sawfa), e.g. ????? sayaktubu or ??? ???? sawfa yaktubu "he will write".
| Person | Singular | Plural | Dual |
|---|
| 1st | | | |
|---|
| 2nd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | |
|---|
| 3rd | masculine | | | |
|---|
| feminine | | | |
|---|
Mood
Modal forms can be derived from the imperfective stem: the subjunctive (????? man?ub) by (roughly speaking) replacing the final vowel by , the jussive (????? majzum) by dropping this of the subjunctive.
The imperative (???? ????? ?igatu 'l-'amr(i)) (only 2nd person masculine) is formed by dropping the verbal prefix from the imperfective stem, e.g. ??? qaddim "present!". If the result starts with two consonants followed by a vowel ("a" or "i"), a non-elided alif added the beginning, usually pronounced as "i", e.g. ???? igsil "wash!" or ???? if?al "do!" if the present form vowel is "u", then the alif is also pronounced as "u", e.g. ???? uktub "write!".
Note: the exception to the above rule is the form (or stem) IV verbs. In these verbs an alif pronounced as "a" is always prefixed to the shortened form, e.g. ???? arsil "send!", ???? a?if "add!".
The subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses after certain conjunctions. The jussive is used in negation, in negative imperatives, and in the hortative +jussive. For example: 2. sg. m.:
'you are doing'subjunctive 'that you do'jussive 'do not!'energic imperative 'do!'.
Voice
Arabic has two verbal voices, active and passive. The passive voice (???? ??????? ?igatu 'l-majhul) is expressed by a change in vocalization and is normally not expressed in unvocalized writing. For example:
'he did', ???? 'he is doing' ??????passive ??? 'it was done', ???? 'it is being done' ??????
Note that active and passive forms are spelled identically in Arabic!
Weak roots
Roots containing one or two of the radicals (), () or () often lead to verbs with special phonological rules because these radicals can be influenced by their surroundings. Such verbs are called 'weak' (verba infirma, 'weak verbs') and their paradigms must be given special attention. In the case of , these peculiarities are mainly orthographical, since is not subject to elision (the orthography of and is unsystematic due to confusion in early Islamic times). According to the position of the weak radical in the root, the root can be classified into four classes: first weak, second weak, third weak and doubled, where both the second and third radicals are identical. Some roots fall into more than one category at once.
Stem formation
"Derived" verbs are those which do not have just three consonants in the perfect tense, namely, all verbs except the primary verbs (those like ). For instance, verbs such as , , , are called "derived" verbs. Semantically, we would like to be able to say that the meaning of the "derived" verbs somehow "derives" from the meaning of their primary verbs, by operations like the intensive, reflexive, and causative, but in fact the actual meaning of all verbs is unpredictable 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-VIII and X, plus IX for verbs meaning "whiten", "blacken", "yellowen" and so on.
In the following chart, a boldfaced transliteration indicates a word that would actually exist in an Arabic lexicon for this particular root (? - ? - ?) (f - ? - l - right-to-left).
| Sound verbs | Derived nouns |
|---|
| Active voice | Passive voice | Active participle | Passive participle | |
|---|
| Past (3rd sg. masc.) | Present (3rd sg. masc.) | Past (3rd sg. masc.) | Present (3rd sg. masc.) | Sg. masc. nom. |
|---|
| I | | | | | | | Many |
|---|
| II | | | | | | | |
|---|
| III | | | | | | | |
|---|
| IV | | | | | | | |
|---|
| V | | | | | | | |
|---|
| VI | | | | | | | |
|---|
| VII | | | n/a | | | |
|---|
| VIII | | | | | | | |
|---|
| IX | | | n/a | | n/a | |
|---|
| X | | | | | | | |
|---|
| XII | | | | | | |
|
|---|
The middle vocal in form I active voice can be a, i or u, depending on the root applied in form I. The exact vocalization depends on the word form. Forms XI (), XIII (), XIV (), and XV () are very rare.
Common uses of those stems include:
- is often used to make an intransitive verb transitive. Eg:
is "be noble" but is "make (someone) to be noble", or, more idiomatically, to "honor". gives a passive meaning. Eg: "break" and "be broken". is used only to render stative verbs meaning "to be or become X" where X is a color or physical defect, eg: "turn red, blush" or "go deaf".
A more complete list of meanings is found at Wiktionary's appendix on Arabic verb forms.
Participle
Every verb has a corresponding active participle, and most have passive participles. E.g. 'teacher' is the active participle to stem II. of the root ('know').
- The active participle to Stem I is
, and the passive participle is .Stems II-X take prefix and nominal endings for both the participles, active and passive. The difference between the two participles is only in the vowel between the last two root letters, which is for active and for passive (e.g. II. active , and passive ').
Verbal noun (masdar)
In addition to a participle, there is a verbal noun (in Arabic, ???? , literally meaning "source") sometimes called a gerund, which is similar to English gerunds and verb-derived nouns of various sorts (e.g. 'running' and 'a run' from 'to run'; 'objection' from 'to object'). As shown by the English examples, its meaning refers both to the act of doing something and (by frequent semantic extension) to its result. One of its syntactic functions is as a verbal complement of another verb, and this usage it corresponds to the English gerund or infinitive (He prevented me from running or He began to run).
- verbal noun formation to stem I is irregular.
- the verbal noun to stem II is . For example: 'date, history' is the verbal noun to stem II. of ('date').
- stem III often forms its verbal noun with the feminine form of the passive participle, so for , "he helped", produces the verbal noun . There are also some verbal noun of the form : , "he strove", yields (a struggle for a cause or purpose).
Syntax
Genitive construction
A noun may be defined more closely by a subsequent noun in the genitive (????? i?afa, literally "an addition"). The relation is hierarchical; the first term () governs the second term (). E. g. ??? ??? 'the house of a man', 'a man's house'. 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", namely, it cannot carry the definite article nor the tanween. 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 the genitive case.
This construction is typical for a Semitic language. In many cases the two members become a fixed coined phrase, the being used as the equivalent of nominal composition in some Indo-European languages (which does not exist in Semitic). ??? ?????? thus may mean either 'house of the (certain, known) students' or 'the student hostel'.
Note: ? (ta? marbu?a) of the first term must always have a pronounced -t (after /a/). This applies to spoken Arabic as well.
Word order
Classical Arabic tends to prefer the word order VSO (verb before subject) rather than SVO (subject before verb). However, the word order is fairly flexible, since words are tagged by case endings. Subject pronouns are normally omitted except for emphasis or when using a participle as a verb (participles are not marked for person). Auxiliary verbs precede main verbs, and prepositions precede their objects.
Adjectives follow the noun they are modifying, and agree with the noun in case, gender, number, and state: For example, ??? ????? "bint(un) jamila(tun)" "a beautiful girl" but ????? ??????? "al-bintu l-jamila(tu)" "the beautiful girl". (Compare ????? ????? "al-bint(u) jamila(tun)" "the girl is beautiful".) Elative adjectives, however, precede their modifying noun, do not agree with it, and require that the noun be in the genitive case (see below).
Note that case endings are dropped in pausal forms, in colloquial Arabic and in less formal MSA ("Formal Spoken Arabic"), hence SVO is more common in spoken Arabic.
inna
The subject of a sentence can be topicalized and emphasized by moving it to the beginning of the sentence and preceding it with the word ?? inna ~"indeed". Examples are ??? ??? ???? "innaka anta jamilun" "YOU are beautiful" or ?? ?????? ????? "inna s-sama’a zarqa’u" "THE SKY is blue". (In older texts, "inna" was translated "verily".)
"inna", along with its "sister" terms ?? "anna" ("that", as in "I think that ..."), "inna" ("that" after ???/???? qala/yaqulu "say"), ???? "(wa-)lakin(na)" "but" and ??? "ka’anna" "as if" require that they be immediately followed by a noun in the accusative case, or an attached pronominal suffix.
Numbers
Numbers behave in a quite complicated fashion. "wa?id-" "one" and "'i?nan-" "two" are adjectives, following the noun and agreeing with it. "?ala?at-" "three" through "?ašarat-" "ten" require a following noun in the genitive plural, but agree with the noun in gender, while taking the case required by the surrounding syntax. "'a?ada ?ašara" "eleven" through "tis?ata ?ašara" "nineteen" require a following noun in the accusative singular, agree with the noun in gender, and are invariable for case, except for "'i?na ?ašara/'i?nay ?ašara" "twelve". Numbers above this behave entirely as nouns, showing case agreement as required by the surrounding syntax, no gender agreement, and a following noun in a fixed case. "?išruna" "twenty" through "tis?una" "ninety" require the accusative singular; "mi'at-" "hundred" and up require the genitive singular. The numbers themselves decline in various fashions; for example, "?išruna" "twenty" through "tis?una" "ninety" decline as masculine plural nouns, while "mi'at-" "hundred" declines as a feminine singular noun and "'alf-" "thousand" as a masculine singular noun. "mi'at-" "hundred" and "'alf-" "thousand" can themselves be modified by numbers (to form numbers such as 200 or 5,000) and will be declined appropriately. ("mi'atani" and "200" "'alfani" "2,000" with dual endings; "?ala?atu 'alafin" "3,000" with "'alf" in the plural genitive, but "?ala?u mi'atin" "300" since "mi'at-" appears to have no plural.) In compound numbers, the last number dictates the declension of the associated noun. Large compound numbers can be extremely complicated, e.g.:
- "'alfun wa-tis`u mi'atin wa-tis`u sineen(a)" "1,909 years"
- "ba`da 'alfin wa-tis`i mi'atin wa-tis`i sineen(a)" "after 1,909 years"
- "'arba`atun wa-tis`una 'alfan wa-?amanu-mi'atin wa-?ala?atun wa-sittuna sanat(an)" "94,863 years"
- "ba`da 'arba`atin wa-tis`ina 'alfan wa-?amani-mi'atin wa-?ala?atin wa-sittina sanat(an)" "after 94,863 years"
- "'i?na `ašara 'alfan wa-mi'atani wa-?nani wa-`išruna sanat(an)" "12,222 years"
- "ba`da 'i?nay `ašara 'alfan wa-mi'atayni wa-?nayni wa-`išrina sanat(an)" "after 12,222 years"
- "'i?na `ašara 'alfan wa-mi'atani wa-sanatan(i)" "12,202 years"
- "ba`da 'i?nay `ašara 'alfan wa-mi'atayni wa-sanatayn(i)" "after 12,202 years"
Other
Object pronouns are clitics and are attached to the verb, e.g. ara-ha "I see her". Possessive pronouns are likewise attached to the noun they modify, e.g. "kitabu-hu" "his book". The definite article "al-" is a clitic, as are the prepositions "li-" "to" and "bi-" "in/with" and the conjunctions "ka-" "as" and "fa-" "thus, so".
See also
External links
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