Introducing Arabic Morphology (Úáã ÇáÕÑÝ)

[Instructor]

1 Introducing Arabic Morphology (Úáã ÇáÕÑÝ)

1.1 Definition and benefit

The Science of Morphology (Úáã ÇáÕÑÝ) is that science of Classical Arabic which deals with how to construct individual words, and specifically verbs, into the various tenses of past, present and future. Primarily, Sarf is concerned with identifying the patterns of vowellization associated with tenses etc. as well as the designated suffixes which come at the end of verbs and reflect the gender, plurality, etc. of the pronouns which are the subjects of the verbs.

Upon gaining a mastery of the science of Sarf, one will be empowered with the skill of determining base letters from non-base letters and thus recognizing even the most complex of conjugations which may number in the hundreds.

1.2 The Arabic Alphabet

In the Arabic language we have 28 letters and they are all consonants.
Ç È Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù Ú Û Ý Þ ß á ã ä å æ í Á
The short vowels are not considered separate letters and therefore are not part of the alphabet. Short vowels are three and they, together with the long vowels correspond to a, e, i, o, and u. In grammar terminology a short vowel is called a ‘ ÍóÑóßóÉñ ’. In order to indicate that a consonant is followed by a short vowel in pronunciation, the matching symbol from those given below is placed upon or underneath the letter. Any letter with a ‘ÍóÑóßóÉñ ’ on or underneath it is called ‘ãÊÍóÑøö ß’.

The three ÍÑßÇÊ are:
ÖóãøóÉ : õ - corresponds to a short ‘o’ or ‘u’ in English. The letter with this is said to be ãóÖãæã
ÝóÊÍóÉ : ó - corresponds to a short ‘a’ in English. The adjective is ãóÝÊæÍ
ßóÓÑóÉ : ö - corresponds to a short ‘e’ or ‘i’ in English. The adjective is ãóßÓæÑ

Absence of vowel is called Óõßæä ( ú ). If a letter is ÓÇßä (i.e. has a Óõßæä) on it, this would mean it is the final consonant in a syllable. By definition, a syllable is the sound produced by coupling at least one consonant and one vowel. Consonants alone can not be pronounced. For instance, try pronouncing the letter ‘b’ without adding a vowel to it! The moment a sound comes out, one realizes it’s either ‘ba’, ‘be’ or the like, which has been pronounced, not just the letter ‘b’ by itself. The reality is that all consonants need to be coupled with vowels in order to become syllables and thus pronounceable. This is the nature of human utterance. So this is the bare minimum requirement: you have at least one consonant and a vowel. Often however, syllables may be comprised of two consonants with a vowel between them, such as in ‘fun’. In terms of Arabic grammatical terminology, the second consonant (i.e. the one upon which the sound of the syllable stops) is said to have a Óõßæä on it. For instance, in the word ‘fun’, we would say the ‘n’ there is ÓÇßä.

In English, when a consonant is doubled in the same word, meaning the first syllable ends in the same letter that the second syllable starts with (e.g. funny ‘fun-ny’), both consonants are written separately. When this happens in Arabic, the letter is only written once, and the symbol (ø ) is placed upon it to indicate duplication in pronunciation. This pronouncing of the letter twice, first with a ‘sukoon’, and then with a ÍÑßå, is called ÊóÔÏööíÏ or ÔóÏøå , and the letter is said to be ãõÔóÏøÏ (e.g. the È in ÊóÈøóÊ is ãõÔóÏøóÏ). Unlike the short vowels of the language, long vowels are actually considered letters. They are referred to as weak letters or ÍõÑæÝ ÇáÚöáøÉ. They are also three in number:í æ Ç , and are essentially stretches in the ó , õ , and ö respectively.

[Instructor]

1.3 Patterns and Suffixes
In the Arabic language, meanings are established by placing base letters side by side in designated patterns. Mostly all combinations of three consonants have been assigned distinct meanings and whenever those consonants appear in a given word, depending on the pattern of vowellization, the base letter meaning will be conveyed in a unique way. For instance, the base letters ß, Ê, andÈ , express the meaning of ‘to write’. In Arabic there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of ways to vowel those three letters, some of which include the addition of ‘non-base’ letters. All of these patterns carry distinct meanings, such as the various simple, continuous, and perfect tenses of past, present and future. Depending on the particular pattern, the base-letter meaning of “writing”, will be expressed in a unique way. For instance, ßóÊóÈó (he wrote), ßõÊöÈó (it was written), íóßúÊõÈõ (he writes, is writing or will write), ßÇÊöÈñ (writer), ãóßúÊóÈñ (desk i.e. place of writing), ÃõßúÊõÈú (write!) and many, many others.

1.3.1 Conjugation Tables (Gardaans)
In all languages, verbs are conjugated to reflect three aspects of their subjects:
Gender — Masculine or Feminine
Plurality — Singular, Dual (unlike English, Arabic also has separate forms to indicate on two of something) and Plural (3 or more), and
Person — Third person, Second person and First person.

This process in English is fairly simple due to the reflection occurring via a separate pronoun. Table 1-A shows what this would look like.
Person Conjugation Gender Plurality
3rd He slept Masculine Singular
She slept Feminine
They slept Masculine or Feminine Plural
2nd You slept Masculine or Feminine Singular or Plural
1st I slept Masculine or Feminine Singular
We Slept Plural
Table 1?A : Conjugation of English Verbs
As you can see from Table 1-A, the “slept” stays the same through-out, and only the pronoun which is a separate word altogether changes (to reflect those three aspects). In Arabic the three aspects are indicated not by separate words, but by designated letters which are added to the end of the verb as suffixes. These suffixes or designated letters ARE the pronouns and because they are not separate words, verb conjugation is more complex than in English. A great portion of Arabic Morphology is devoted to memorizing the tables that result from MULTIPLYING those three aspects mentioned above (i.e. gender, plurality, and person). In Arabic there are only two genders, meaning Arabic has no ‘it’. All non-human things are categorized as either masculine or feminine. As mentioned above, plurality includes singular, dual and plural. Multiplying the gender (2) with plurality (3), will give us 6. Then taking this 6 and multiplying it with third person, second person, and first person (3), gives us 18. The complete breakdown is shown in Table 1-B.

Person Gender Plurality English Equivalent #
3rd Masculine Singular He 1
Dual (2) They (M2) 2
Plural (>2) They (M>2) 3
Feminine Singular She 4
Dual (2) They (F2) 5
Plural (>2) They (F>2) 6
2nd Masculine Singular You (M) 7
Dual (2) You (M2) 8
Plural (>2) You (M>2) 9
Feminine Singular You (F) 10
Dual (2) You (F2) 11
Plural (>2) You (F>2) 12
1st Masculine Singular I (M/F) 13
Dual (2) We (M/F≥2) 14
Plural (>2) We 15
Feminine Singular I 16
Dual (2) We 17
Plural (>2) We 18
Table 1?B : Conjugation of Arabic Verbs – All Possibilities
Due to the fact that EVERY subject will need a gender, plurality AND a person, we look at the total combinations that result from multiplying the above. It comes to 18, six for each of the third, second and first persons. For most conjugations there are separate suffixes. However, occasionally, like in almost all languages, two or more conjugations are condensed into one. In Arabic this condensing happens in the first person i.e. ‘I’ and ‘We’, thus reducing the number from 18 to 14. This is because there are no separate dual forms (just singular and plural). Also, gender becomes irrelevant. Therefore, number 13 will be singular first person: ‘I’ and number 14 will be plural first person: ‘We’ (see Table 1-B on the previous page). The conjugation of a single verb into these 18 (14 after condensing) gender-person-plurality combinations is called a “Gardaan”, and each line of the Gardaan Table, is called a ÕöíÛå (“seegha”).

1.3.2 Active vs. Passive Voice

Having understood the basic reasoning from which conjugation tables (Gardaans) are born, the next thing which is of importance would be what they call active and passive voice. For all actions that require objects (transitive verbs), the verb can either be active or passive. Active is when the verb is directed at the subject which is also mentioned e.g. he helped; whereas in the passive voice the verb is directed towards the object and the subject is missing e.g. he was helped. In Sarf, there are separate gardaans for each of the active and passive voices, 14 conjugations per gardaan. In the active gardaan, those designated letters we talked about earlier reflect the three aspects, gender etc. of the subject, while in the passive gardaan it’s the object whose three aspects are being reflected.

Essential Note

We mentioned in the previous section how base letters (usually three) are put onto patterns to create compound meaning. For simplification purposes, in order to isolate the pattern meanings (subject matter of Sarf) from the meaning coming from the base letters (which are found in dictionaries; not directly a concern of Sarf), the scholars of Sarf have used the most basic base letters in terms of meaning as models for all of the patterns to be discussed through out the science. The three ‘model’ letters are Ý , Ú , and á . The meaning associated with these letters is the very simple meaning of ‘to do’. When the Scholars of Sarf use these letters (excluding all other combinations), there purpose is not so you translate the pattern e.g. he did, they did, she did, you did, I did etc. Rather it will be just to show you what pattern of vowellization is associated with what tense etc. So when you have your three letters ready for constructing (they can be any three letters taken from a dictionary), you may now vowel them accordingly and produce the intended compound meaning. This is similar to how a tailor will have many different paper cut-outs of shirts and pants in order to facilitate and simplify his work. Nobody ever attempts to wear the cut-out. Rather they wait until some garment etc. is produced. Likewise, for example, when we say the model pattern for the active past tense verb for tri-literal verbs is ÝóÚóáó, and for the passive voice it is ÝõÚöáó, literal translation of each conjugation is never the purpose. Therefore, throughout these discussions we will be only giving the patterns and conjugation tables. We will not make any attempt at translating the tables. Where this is needed, for instance in the very first tables, ÝÚá will be replaced with other base letters so as to produce clear translations for all conjugations. We will, however, clearly explain the tenses and other distinct meanings associated with the patterns.