Arabic grammar: Encyclopedia II - Arabic grammar - Noun

Arabic grammar - Noun

Arabic grammar - 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.

Arabic grammar - Article

The article (adātu-t-taʻrīf) 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). 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. (ج ǧīm 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.)

Arabic grammar - 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.

Arabic grammar - 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. ʼumm 'mother', ʼarḍ '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.

Arabic grammar - 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). baytu-ṭ-ṭalabati thus may mean either 'house of the (certain, known) students' or 'the student hostel'.

Arabic grammar - 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Noun", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki