Arabic grammar
Arabic is a semitic language, classified as southern central Semitic together with Hebrew and Saramitan. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general.Traditionally, rules of word formation and syntax are known collectively as an-naḥū (النحو, literally 'the orientation').
= Phonology =
Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes, 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. Vowels are not usually represented in written language, although they may be indicated with diacritics. Arabic has three vowel phonemes; they appear as various allophones, depending on the preceding consonant. See Arabic alphabet.
= Noun =
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 occurrs in the first member of a genitive construction.
The article (adātu-t-taʿrīf) al- is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. The initial vowel is volatile in the sense that it dispappears in sandhi (hamzatu-l-waṣl), the article becoming mere -l- (although the alif is preserved 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 preserved, and the gemination may be expressed by putting ÃÂadda on the following letter).
The consonants causing assimilation (trivially including l) are: t, ṯ, d, ḏ, r, z, s, ÃÂ, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, l , n. These 14 letters are called 'solar letters' (ḥuruf ÃÂamsiyyat), while the remaining 14 are called 'lunar letters' (ḥuruf qamariyyat).
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 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 words take several plurals. The phenomenon of the broken plurals is particular to Arabic and is not known from other semitic languages.
Arabic has two genders, expressed pronominal as well as verbal 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' gender is also used to express 'singulatives'. 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, -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 none in pausa.
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 are 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'.
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 pronomial 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.
State
the Article
Inflection
Gender
Genitive Construction (Iḍāfa)
Nisba
Personal Pronouns
| Person | Singular | Plural | Dual |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3rd (m) | huwa | hum | humā |
| 3rd (f) | hiya | hunna | - |
| 2nd (m) | anta | antum | antumā |
| 2nd (f) | anti | antunna | - |
| 1st | ana | naḥnu | (n/a) |
Enclitic Pronouns
= Numerals =
Cardinal numerals from 1-10 (zero is ṣifr)
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.
= 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-ʾ indicate 'read', ʾ-k-l indicate 'eat' etc.; Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes.
Traditionally, arab grammarians have used the root f-ʿ-l 'do' as a template to discuss word formation.Demonstratives
Cardinal Numerals
The numerals 1 and 2 are adjectives; 3-10 are diptotes (the ending -(t)u is dropped in oral usage).
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.
Whole hundreds, thousands etc. appear as first terms of genitive constructions, e.g. alfu laylati wa laylatu '1001 nights'.Ordinal Numerals
| Person | Singular | Plural | Dual |
| 3rd (m) | faʿal-a | faʿal-u | faʿal-ā |
| 3rd (f) | faʿal-at | faʿal-na | faʿal-tā |
| 2nd (m) | faʿal-ta | faʿal-tum | faʿal-tumā |
| 2nd (f) | faʿal-ti | faʿal-tunna | -- |
| 1st | faʿal-tu | faʿal-nā | (n/a) |
The imperfect has a different shape and different affixes:
Derived verbs are variations on the shape of the primary kataba stem, such as kattaba, kātaba, inkataba, takattaba, etc., with senses such as intensive, reflexive, and causative, though the exact meaning varies from verb to verb and needs to be recorded in the lexicon.
Imperfect
Stem Formation
the Participle