Arabic Grammar
Structure of the Arabic alphabet
Arabic Grammar
(Adapted from http://www.arthistoryclub.com/art_history/Arabic_language)
Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely known throughout the Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century, and is the liturgical language of Islam.
The expression "Arabic" may refer either to literary Arabic or to the many spoken varieties of Arabic; Arabs consider literary Arabic as the standard language and tend to view everything else as mere dialects. Literary Arabic, al-luġatu ‘l-carabīyatu ‘l-fuṣḥā (Literally: the pure Arabic language—اللغة العربية الفصحى) is both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur’an. (The expression media here includes most television and radio, and all written matter, including all books, newspapers, magazines, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.) "Colloquial" or "dialectal" Arabic refers to the many national or regional dialects/languages derived from Classical Arabic, spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not frequently written, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them, notably Egypt and Lebanon. They are often used to varying degrees in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and chat shows.
The term Modern Standard Arabic is sometimes used in the West to refer to the language of the media as opposed to the language of "Classical" Arabic literature; Arabs make no such distinction, and regard the two as identical.
It is sometimes difficult to translate Islamic concepts, and concepts specific to Arab culture, without using the original Arabic terminology. The Qur’an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Oriental Jews, and indeed Iraqi Mandaeans; and, of course, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims do not actually speak it; they only know some fixed phrases of Arabic, as used in Islamic prayer.
Quite a few English words are ultimately derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, among them every-day vocabulary like sugar, cotton or magazine. More recognizable are words like algorithm, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, and zenith (See List of English words of Arabic origin). The Maltese language is the only surviving European language to derive primarily from Arabic, though it contains a large number of Italian and English borrowings.
Contents
1 Dialects
2 Grammar
2.1 Phonology
3 Alphabet
3.1 Caligraphy
Dialects
"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the Maghreb dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered a separate language. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding Maghrebis (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa’in respectively), but now sound very different.
The major groups are:
Egyptian Arabic (Egypt) Considered the most widely understood and used "second dialect"
Maghreb Arabic (Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, and western Libyan)
Hassaniiya (in Mauritania)
Andalusi Arabic (extinct, but important role in literary history)
Maltese
Sudanese Arabic (with a dialect continuum into Chad)
Levantine Arabic (Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and western Jordanian)
Iraqi Arabic
Gulf Arabic (Gulf coast from Kuwait to Oman, and minorities on the other side)
Hijazi Arabic
Najdi Arabic
Yemeni Arabic
A fuller list can be found at the main article (Varieties of Arabic.)
Grammar
Phonology
Standard Arabic has only three vowels, in long and short variants, namely /i, a, u/. Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.
See Arabic alphabet for the IPA phonetic symbols that belong in this chart.
[dʒ] is [g] for some speakers, i.e. a plosive. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian dialect. In many parts of North Africa and in Lebanon, it is [ʒ] (ie not affricated).
[l] becomes [l̴] only in /ʔallaːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah.
[ ̴] is used to indicate velarization and pharyngalization (=emphatic consonants).
In the dialects there are more phonemes, one occurs in the Maghreb as well in the written language mostly for names: [v].
See Arabic alphabet for the IPA phonetic symbols that belong in this chart.
[dʒ] is [g] for some speakers, i.e. a plosive. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian dialect. In many parts of North Africa and in Lebanon, it is [ʒ] (ie not affricated).
[l] becomes [l̴] only in /ʔallaːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah.
[ ̴] is used to indicate velarization and pharyngalization (=emphatic consonants).
In the dialects there are more phonemes, one occurs in the Maghreb as well in the written language mostly for names: [v].
Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long.
Alphabet
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety – Nabataean or Syriac – is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (Maghrebi) and Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.
Calligraphy
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi , many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur’an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur’an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition that is often indecipherable. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. Two of the current masters of the genre are Hassan Massoudy and Khaled Al Saa’i.
Last updated: 07-30-2005 05:03:28
The content of this article is licensed from Wikipedia.org under the
GNU Free Documentation License.
Arabic grammar
(Adapted from http://www.arthistoryclub.com/art_history/Arabic_language)
Arabic is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic.
Contents
1 History
2 Phonology
3 Noun
3.1 State
3.2 Article
3.3 Inflection
3.4 Gender
3.5 Genitive construction (iDáfa)
3.6 Nisba
4. Pronoun
4.1 Personal pronouns
4.2 Enclitic pronouns
5 Numerals
5.1 Cardinal numerals
5.2 Ordinal numerals
6 Verb
6.1 Perfect
6.2 Imperfect
6.3 Mood
6.4 Voice
6.5 Weak verbs
6.6 Stem formation
6.7 Participle
6.8 Infinitive
7 Sintax
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 117 H). 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:
al-luġah (lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
at-taṣrīf (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
an-naḥw (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection (icrab) which had already been lost in dialects.
al-ištiqāq (derivation) examining the origin of the words
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:
26 consonants: ’ b t ṯ ǧ ḥ ẖ d ḏ r z s š ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ c ġ f q k l m n h
2 semi-vowels: w y
6 vowels: a ā i ī u ū
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-tacrīf) al- is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. The initial vowel (hamzatu-l-waṣl), is volatile in the sense that it disappears in sandhi, 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 case endings are only present in formal or literary language. 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’.
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 singular nouns take several plurals. There could be traces of broken plurals in other Semitic languages, but nowhere are they as widespread as in Arabic. The plurals of nouns representing humans usually use sound plurals. Masculine sound plurals take the forms "-ūn" in the nominative and "-īn" in the genitive and accusative. In the feminine, the ending is "-āt" and is limited in its declension to the nominative and genitive endings. For example, "-ātun" and "-ātin" are possible, but not "-ātan". This pattern can also be used with for plurals of non-human nouns.
Gender
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 plurals of inanimate objects of both grammatical genders.
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
Enclitic pronouns
Enclitic forms of the pronoun (aḍ-ḍamā’iru 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).
Demonstratives
There are two demonstratives (asmā’u al-’išāratu), near-deictic (‘this’) and far-deictic (‘that’):
hāda, f. hādihi, pl. hā’ulā’i ‘this, these’
dālika, f. tilka, pl.’ulā’ika ‘that, those’
Numerals
Cardinal numerals
Cardinal numerals (al-acdād al-aṣliyyat) from 1-10 (zero is ṣifr, from which the English word "cipher" comes)
1 waḥidun
2 iṯnānu
3 ṯalāṯatu
4 arbacatu
5 ḫamsatu
6 sittatu
7 sabcatu
8 ṯamāniyatu
9 tiscatu
10 cašaratu
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.
11 aḥada cašara
12 iṯnā cašara
13 ṯalāṯata cašara
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.
20 cišrūna (dual of ’10′)
21 aḥadun wa cišrūna
22 iṯnāni wa cišrūna
23 ṯalāṯatu wa cišrūna
30 ṯalāṯūna
40 arbacūna
Whole hundreds, thousands etc. appear as first terms of genitive constructions, e.g. alfu laylati wa laylatu ’1001 nights’.
100 mi’atu
1000 alfu
Fractions of a whole smaller than "half" are expressed by the structure sg. Fucl, pl. afcāl.
niṣfun "half"
ṯulṯun "one third"
ṯulṯāni "two thirds"
rubcun "one quarter"
ṯalaṯatu arbācin "three quarters"
etc.
Ordinal numerals
Ordinal numerals (al-acdād at-tartiyabiyyat) higher than "first" are formed using the structure fācilun, fācilatun:
m. awwalu, f. ūlā "first"
m. ṯānin, f. ṯāniyat "second"
m. ṯāliṯun, f. ṯāliṯatun "third"
m. rābicun, f. rābicatun "fourth"
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-’ indicate ‘read’,’-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-c-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 facal is affixed with a personal ending, e. g. kataba ‘he wrote’, qara’a ‘he read’. The perfect expresses a completed action, i.e. mostly past tense.
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.
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.:
imperfect indicative tafcalu ‘you are doing’
subjunctive an tafcala ‘that you do’
jussive la tafcal ‘do not!’
imperative ifcal ‘do!’.
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:
active facala ‘he did’, yafcalu ‘he is doing’ فَعَلَ
passive fucila ‘it was done’, yufcalu ‘it is being done’ فُعِلَ
Weak verbs
Roots containing one or two of the radicals w (wāw), y (yā) or ’ (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.
I. facal- (the basic stem)
II. faccil- (gemination of the middle radical)
III.fācil- (lenghtening of the vowel following the first radical)
IV. afcil- (clustering of first and second radical)
V. tafaccal- (prefix ta- and gemination of middle radical)
VI. tafācal- (prefix ta- and lenghtening of the vowel following the first radical)
VIII. iftacal- (infix -ta- after first radical)
X. istafcal- (prefix (i)st-)
The exact vocalisation will be dependent on the word form.
Common uses of those stems include:
faccala is often used to make an intransitive verb transitive. Eg: karuma is "be noble" but karrama is "make (someone) to be noble", or, more idiomatically, to "honor".
infacala to give a passive meaning. Eg: kasara "break" and inkasara "be broken".
Participle
The Arabic participle is a verbal noun formed from one of the derived verbal stems. E.g. mucallimun ‘teacher’ is the active participle to stem II. of the root c-l-m (‘know’).
The passive participle to Stem I is mafcūlun
Stems II-X take prefix mu- and nominal endings (e.g. II. mu-faccil-un.)
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.
infinitive formation to stem I is irregular.
the infinitive to stem II is tafcīlun.
stems III-X simply take nominal endings (for stem III, the passive participle is often substituted).
For example: ta’rīḫun ‘date, history’ is the infinitive to stem II. of ’-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, especially with derived forms of the same verb. Such as the root "’alm" which in Form I is "to know" but in form II "’allm" with the middle radical(letter) doubled, changing the meaning to "to teach". Also considered good form is constucting a long sentence joined together with connectors (Adawat al Rabt) which are like conjunctions which allow for many clauses to run on and run in the same sentance.
For example: qara’a al-kitāba qirā’atan baṭī’atan, 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."
The Masdar, verbal nouns which are irregular for Form I and regular for all derived forms, functions sometimes like an infinitive and sometimes like the noun which encompasses the concept of the verb.
Active and Passive partiples, called Ism Fa’l or Ism Mafa’ul after the pattern into which the roots are put, function sometimes like adjectives, sometimes present partiples, and sometimes like nouns such as "Doer" and "Doneto". So: KAtib is "reader" and maKtub is "written".
There are many types of sentences:
the nominal sentence, consisting of a subject and a predicate (al-bayt kabir – "the house big" viz., "the house is big")
the verbal sentence, which usually follows the VSO pattern (yafham ayman al-muhadarat => Ayman understands the lecture);
the amma… fa-sentence
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Last updated: 06-02-2005 00:30:20
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