Tag Archives: Arabic grammar
Arabic Diptotes: Adjectives Posted by aziza on Feb 19, 2011
In this post, I explain diptotes (الممنوع من الصرف) in relation to adjectives. There are some adjectives that are diptotes, i.e. they do not take nunation (تنوين) when indefinite, and that are marked by (ـُ) for the nominative case and with (ـَ) for both accusative and genitive cases. All adjectives that have the pattern (أفعل)…
Arabic Diptotes: Names Posted by aziza on Feb 17, 2011
In this post, I explain more about diptotes (الممنوع من الصرف), i.e. words that do not take nunation (التنوين) when indefinite, and that are marked by (ـُ) for the nominative case and with (ـَ) for both accusative and genitive cases. There are lots of names that are diptotes. All feminine names are diptotes, i.e. – …
Arabic Grammar: Diptotes Posted by aziza on Feb 15, 2011
In this post, I explain the case marking system with special reference to diptotes or (الممنوع من الصرف). Diptotes refers to a category of nouns and adjectives that do not take tanween when they are indefinite and have special markings for cases. It should be remembered that when these words are definite, they take regular…
Identifying fronted predicates1 Posted by aziza on Jan 20, 2011
In this posting, the answer of the question presented yesterday about fronted predicates. Please find the fronted predicates underlined and the subjects marked in bold. كان للصالونات الأدبية دور هام فى الحياة الأدبية في مصر .. كان لها دور كبير ومؤثر .. فصالون مي مثلا، كان ينبض بالحرارة، لأن صاحبة الصالون كانت جميلة، وكان كل…
Identifying fronted predicates Posted by aziza on Jan 19, 2011
I got a request from one of the dear blog readers asking for examples on identifying fronted predicates and their subjects. First, allow me to remind of the cases in which we have fronted predicates and what conditions need to exist in a sentence so that it has a fronted predicate. We have a fronted…
Expressing frequency in Arabic: Adverbials of Time Posted by aziza on Dec 27, 2010
In this post, I give examples on the use of some adverbials of time that express frequency. These are adverbs that describe how often an action is done, e.g. always, sometimes, often, etc. Never = أبداً لا أدخن أبداً. “I never smoke.” الأستاذ لا يتأخر عن الدرس أبداً “The teacher is never late for his…
Arabic Negation Using ‘laa’ Posted by aziza on Dec 6, 2010
In my previous post, I explained how (لا) can be used to indicate categorical negation. In this post, I explain the difference between its use for negation (النفي) and prohibition (النهي). (لا) is used for negation (النفي) with present tense verbs, e.g. لا أشرب القهوة كثيراً. “I do not drink a lot of coffee.” لا…