Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Note that all inanimate objects take feminine singular or feminine plural agreement in the plural, regardless of their "inherent" gender and regardless of the form of the plural. Some nouns have two or more plural forms, usually to distinguish between different meanings. There are over 70 broken plural patterns of which only 31 are common.
Various forms of the demonstrative pronouns occur, usually shorter than the Classical forms. For example, Moroccan Arabic uses ha l-"this", dak l-/dik l-/duk l-"that" (masculine/feminine/plural). Egyptian Arabic is unusual in that the demonstrative follows the noun, e.g. il-kitāb da "this book", il-bint i di "this girl".
In Persian this kind of plural is known by its Arabic term jam'-e mokassar (جَمِع مُکَسَّر, literally "broken plural"). However the Persian Academy of Literature (Farhangestan) does not recommend the usage of such Arabic plural forms, but instead the native Persian plural suffix -hā. [citation needed]
Dual forms that exist in Modern Standard Arabic do not exist in Levantine, the plural is used instead. Because conjugated verbs indicate the subject with a prefix and/or a suffix, independent subject pronouns are usually not necessary and are mainly used for emphasis.
Nonconcatenative morphology is extremely well developed in the Semitic languages in which it forms the basis of virtually all higher-level word formation (as with the example given in the diagram). That is especially pronounced in Arabic, which also uses it to form approximately 41% [5] of plurals in what is often called the broken plural.
These feminine and plural forms had much more extensive use in ancient poetry. [4] E.g. The adjective كبير kabīr 'big' changes to أكبر ’akbar in the default elative, and then كبرى kubrā in the feminine singular, أكابر ’akābir in the masculine plural and كبريات kubrayāt in the feminine plural.
The regular feminine plural is formed by adding ـَاتِ-āt(i) in the definite and -āt(in) in the indefinite (spelled identically). Some forms of indefinite accusative are mandatory even for spoken and pausal forms of Arabic, sometimes -an is changed to a simple -a in pausa or spoken Arabic.
Arabic verb morphology includes augmentations of the root, also known as forms, an example of the derived stems found among the Semitic languages. For a typical verb based on a triliteral root (i.e. a root formed using three root consonants), the basic form is termed Form I, while the augmented forms are known as Form II, Form III, etc. The ...