Archive for 'Grammar'
The Gender of Arabic Nouns (2): Vocabulary and Examples Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jul 19, 2018
In series one of this post, it was pointed out that the gender الجِنْس of noun in Arabic is not as straightforward as often thought of. You learned about different types of masculine المُذَكَّر and feminine المُؤَنَّث nouns as well as the feminine markers عَلَامَات التَّأْنِيْث. Today, you will learn about some irregularities of masculine…
The Gender of Arabic Nouns (1) Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jul 17, 2018
The gender الجِنْس of noun الاِسْم in Arabic is either masculine مُذَكَّر or feminine مُؤَّنَّث. The masculine المُذَكَّر is the basic form; therefore, it does not require a marker عَلاَمَة. The feminine المُؤَنَّث is derived from the masculine; it requires a feminine marker عَلَامَة تَأنِيْث. There are two types of masculine: real masculine and unreal…
Assimilation in Arabic Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jul 12, 2018
In natural speech, it is always difficult to utter a sound twice in a row, as in عَلْلَم which becomes عَلَّم. It is also relatively difficult to produce two sounds from the same area of articulation consecutively, as in مِنْ رَأْسِكَ which is pronounced as مِرَّأْسِكَ. Therefore, we recourse to assimilation. In Arabic, assimilation الإِدْغَام…
Broken Plural in Arabic Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jul 5, 2018
In a previous post, you learned that Arabic plural nouns are three forms: sound masculine plural جَمْعُ المُذَكَّرِ السَّالِم, sound feminine plural جَمْعُ المُؤَنَّثِ السَّالِم, and broken plural جَمْعُ التَّكْسِيْر. The first two are regular because their formation entail adding a suffix (i.e. ون and ات, respectively) to the end of the singular without a…
Deriving Nouns from Verbs in Arabic (1) Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jul 3, 2018
A distinguishing feature of Arabic language is that it is a derivational language. Multiple words are derived from a single root word based specific morphological rules. Using the morphological measure, affixes (suffixes, prefixes, and infixes) are appended to the root word forming news words. For example, form the root كَتَبَ ‘write’, we derive كَاتِب ‘writer’…
Relative Clauses in Arabic Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jun 23, 2018
A relative clause is a clause (i.e. part of a sentence that does make a complete meaning) that begins with a relative pronoun. It is also called adjective clause. It functions as an adjective because it provides more information (i.e. describes) the noun or pronoun that come before it. In Arabic, it is called جُمْلَة…
The Arabic Morphological Measure Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Jun 14, 2018
The Arabic morphological measure المِيْزَان الصَّرْفِي is a measure that is proposed by Arabic grammarians to know and weigh the structure of words. It helps in understanding the internal structure of words, namely knowing whether the constituent letters of a word are essential or additional, and in deriving new words from the same root. The…