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    6 views9 pages

    Concise Compedium

    Uploaded by

    Manar Machriki
    language

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 9
    ARABIC INTRODUCTION Axabic belongs to the South Central Semitic branch of the Semito-Hamitic family. Modern standard literary Arabic (al-fisha) is the official language of some 20 countries, ranging from Morocco on the Allantic seaboard of Africa to the Persian Gulf states. As such, it is used in the press and other media, and is the language of diplomacy and official communication between Arab states. Basi- cally, this literary standard is the language of the Qur'an and the Hadith, lexically enriched, of course, largely from Arabic’s own generative resources, Modernisms abound, but they are additions to a core structure which has hardly changed in a thousand years. Coltoquial Arabic is spoken as mother tongue, in various dialect forms, by an estimated 150 million people. And again, as the canonical language of Islam, Arabic is understood up toa point by many millions of people, wherever the Quran is taught—in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, East and West Africa, etc. Finally, one should mention the thousands of Arabic words that have been borrowed by Iranian, Turkic, Indian, and African languages, with little or no reciprocal borrowing by Arabic. Arabic literature, one of the world’s richest, dates from the sixth century AD, i.e. from the period immediately preceding the composition of the Qur'an and the birth of Islam. The following periods may be broadly distinguished: Pre-Islamic paganism (al-jahiliyya, ‘the period of ignorance’) The Quran and the Hadith (to mid-seventh century). The Umayyad period (to mid-eighth century) ‘The ‘Abbasid’ period the “golden age’ of Arabic literature (to mid- thirteenth century) 5. The age of decadence (thirteenth to nineteenth centuries) 6. The nineteenth-century revival (al-nahda). 7. The twentieth century. Confrontation with European modes of thought and expression, and vast proliferation of literature in all genres sep SCRIPT (See Appendix of Scripts.) There are two main forms: (a) Kufic, an angular script in general use up to the ninth century, and the ancestor of the present-day Moghrebi scripts of North-West Africa; (b) the flowing cursive character known as nasxi and its derivatives, ta'lig and ruq’a. The latter is much used in handwriting. The Arabic script is consonantal; vowels are not normally written 24 ARABIC except in pedagogic literature, and. of course, in the Qur'an, texts of which are always fully vocalized. PHONOLOGY Consonants labial: b, f, m, w dental: t,d,n, @,3,s, f,z.1.r velarized emphatic: . td, 5. @ uvular: g pharyngeal: h $(°) glottal: h, 2(*) Emphatic /¥/, etc. are notated here as f, ete ASSIMILATION ‘The so-called ‘sun letters’: the -lof the article is assimilated to.a following initial dental or an emphatic, e.g., al-Samsu — fef-famsu] ‘the sun’; al-naru — [en- nesru] ‘the fire’; al-tajiru— [et-tezjiru] ‘the merchant’ al-tabib — [ut-tobizb] ‘the doctor. Vowels I 1g. and short: i, a, u Long vowels are notated as 4, ete. Initial i, a, wf are supported by alif in the script, and pronounced with glottal onset (hamza). /a, az/ tend towards [e, e:]; after the emphatic consonants, a— [9]: e.g. daraba— [doraba]. *he struck’. In proximity to 1, /a/ — [e]: matik — [melik], kalb —» (kelb]. Stress Primary stress tends to fall on the penultimate if this is long. If the last two syllables are short; stress moves to the antepenultimate: e.g. falldhun ‘a peasant’; Sdriba ‘he dran MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX Noun The form of an Arabic word (wazn, pl. awzan) is related to its function. Thus, if we use Cy, Co, and C3 to denote the components of a triliteral root: C,aC,C,dC, denotes the practitioner of the verbal action: e.g. Na/Jar(un) ‘carpenter’; XuBBaZ(un) ‘baker. 25 ARABIC maCCoaC ‘kitchen’, CyaCiC(un) is often an adjective: may also be infinitive or broken plural (sce below): e.g. KaRiM ‘noble’; Jail, ‘beautiful is a noun of place: e.g. MaDRaS(un) ‘school’; maTBaX(un) For a general note on the triliteral root, see Semitic Languages. ‘There are two genders, masculine and feminine, and three numbers. ARTICLE Indefinite status is indi ted by nunation: e.g. malikun ‘a king’, The definite article for all genders and numbers is prefixed al-: e.g. al-maliku “the king’. As pointed out above, the -/ of the article assimilates with the ‘sun letters’. GENDER A common feminine marker is-at, written with t@ marbiita, i.e. -A-with two dots, in the singular, but reverting to ordinary in the plural: e.g. xddinuen ‘a servant’ xddimatun ‘a female servant”. Several common nouns are feminine, though not so marked, e.g. al-‘ardu ‘the earth’, al-naru “the fire’, al-Samsu “the sun’ NUMBE Singular, dual, and plural, The plural form may be sound or broken, The sound, plural is in -iana, oblique -ina: feminine, -dtun, oblique -dtin. Broken plural: the form of a broken plural is unpredictable, though there are certain recurrent patterns. Thus, with radicals C\C3Cy aC \CaiCy@’u is a plural of C\aCsiCyun: e.g. SaDiQun ‘friend’, pl “aSDIOW maCyiCiCsu is a plural of maCC,aCaun: e.g. maKTaBun ‘school’, pl. maKaTiBu Common broken plural forms are (omitting nunation): C\uCwiCy: e.g. OaLB, pl. OuLaB ‘heart’; CyiQ,aCy: e.g. Kal. B, pl. KiLaB ‘dog’: CyuCuCy: e.g. KiTAB, pl. KuTuB ‘book Dual: mase. -dni, ob. -aini. In the feminine -t- is inserted: -tani, obl. -taini Nunation dropsin construct: e.g. babani two doors’: babai,l-bait “the two doors of the house’. Formally, a broken plural is a feminine singular collective noun, and therefore takes a feminine singular adjective case Most nouns are triptotes with three cases, nominative, genitive, accusative, with characteristic vowels - (nom.), -i (gen.), -a (acc.). Diptotes have nominative in -wand general oblique in-a: e.g, triptote al-baitw ‘the house’; daxale baita. ka "he went into your (-ka) house’; fi.-baiti‘in the house’. In the colloquial, the endings -u,-a,

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