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org/english

Author (s): Yusuf Mullan

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Table of Contents
The Science of ........................................................................................ 4
Definition, Purpose and Subject Matter ..................................................... 4
Mapping the Arabic Language................................................................... 4

: ........................................................................................................... 4
The Sentence (

/ ).................................................................... 5

: ................................................................................................ 5
/
The Two Parts of the Sentence: ...................................................... 7
The Two Parts of the Sentence: ...................................................... 7

Grammatical States ..................................................................................... 8

Introduction ................................................................................................ 8
Reflection of Grammatical States - .................................................. 9
Statelessness -

vs. ....................................................................... 9

Process of Reflection -

............................................... 12

The 20% of Verbs that are .............................................................. 12

Types of ................................................................................................ 14
Essential Note on ................................................................................ 15
The 20% of that are .................................................................... 16
Personal Pronouns - ................................................................... 17
Relative Pronouns -
Demonstrative Pronouns -

........................................................ 21
............................................. 23

Verbal Nouns -

................................................................... 24
Adverbs of Time or Place - .............................................. 24
Words Denoting Sounds or Noises - ............................... 24
Numbers 11-19 -

................................................................... 24
Words denoting vagueness - ..................................................... 24

Appendix A - Expressiveness of the Arabic Language ........................... 25

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The Science of
Definition, Purpose and Subject Matter

is the science of classical Arabic which deals with how to identify the grammatical

positioning of the three parts of speech;

, and by recognizing the changes which

occur at their end. In addition to this, it discusses how to connect the parts of speech with one
another and make meaningful sentences.
The purpose of

is to guard one from making errors when articulating and understanding

the language of the Arabs. From the various sciences associated with the Arabic language,

is by far the most important.

All discussions in are centered upon words, phrases, and sentences.

Mapping the Arabic Language

The most basic utterance which comes out of the human beings mouth is termed . If it
has no established meaning, it is known as
( meaningless), whereas if it does convey
established meaning, it is called ( meaningful).

could be either one word, termed

( single) also known as ( word) or a group of words; ( compound). The group of

words can be linked together so as to result in a complete sentence; //

( non-beneficial
(beneficial combination/sentence), or it may constitute a phrase;
combination).

The Arabic word ( )is divided into three types;

, and .

Stated otherwise,

every word in the Arabic dictionary falls into one of these three categories. Unlike English
which has eight parts of speech, in Arabic there are only three. This inconsistency will become
clear only after precise definitions are given to the three types:
1.
e.g.

: is the that gives a full independent meaning in itself and is not linked to time,

( man), ( house).

The category is broader than noun in that it also includes three

others from the eight English parts of speech, namely pronouns, adjectives and adverbs.
2.

: is the that gives a full independent meaning in itself and is also linked to time,

e.g.
( helps). This is exactly the same as the verb in English.
( wrote),

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3.

is the which has no independent meaning of its own i.e. can only be

understood after coupling either a noun or a verb to it, e.g.

(in),

( on), ( and).

This

category includes prepositions, conjunctions, and articles.

The Sentence ( /)
A sentence is a group of words that conveys to the point of satisfaction either information or

( My lord!

( Take the book),

( The man is tall),

Give

1.
: is the wherein the possibility of truth and falsehood exists: e.g.

desire e.g.

me sustenance). It is primarily of two types:

(The girl is intelligent),

(The teacher is present).
2.
: is the whose meaning does not support the possibility

falsehood e.g.
( Do you have a pen?),
(Drink the water!).

of truth and

A sentence, essentially, is the conveyance in words of a specific linkage made between two
ideas; one primary, the other descriptive within the mind of the speaker. Now if the two ideas
also exist in the outside world and what the speaker is saying corresponds to the outer reality, it
is termed true. If it does not correspond it is called false. For instance the sentence

( is

can be verified by
the world, if we see is

sleeping) in which the idea of sleeping has been linked affirmatively to

judging it with the reality. When looking towards what exists in

actually sleeping, it would mean the affirmation is correct, and hence the statement is true.

Otherwise, it would be false. In a

no such external reality exists. It is the words of
the speaker which for the first time are bringing the two ideas together.

literally means to

originate. Now we see clearly why sentences such as questions and commands do not support
truth and falsehood; confirmation and non-confirmation to external reality can not occur due to
there being no such reality.
Keeping in mind the above explanation, EVERY possible sentence can be easily classified
into either
or , including sentences about which we know with absolute certitude that

they are true, such as Allah created the heavens, or likewise with certitude we know their
falsehood, such as The sky is below us. Both these and similar statements are without doubt

sentences, for they have external realities to which they either confirm or not confirm.

It is

the existence of this reality (or non-existence) which determines whether the sentence will be
classified
or .

:
/

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We said every sentence is essentially made up of two parts; a primary one and a descriptive
one. First they link together in the mind of the speaker. Then they are conveyed through the
medium of words. This linkage which results in a sentence is termed . The primary part
or subject of the sentence is called

and the descriptive part or predicate is known as

. To illustrate, consider a boy ( ) and the idea of laziness (
) . There are several
ways these two ideas can be linked together. Some will result in sentences while others will
form only phrases:
1.

, the lazy boy: a descriptive phrase
2.

, the boys laziness: a possessive phrase
3.

, The boy is lazy: a full sentence ( -).
, The boy became lazy: also a full sentence ( -).
4.

In the third example

the

primary part of the sentence. The

appears second.
In the fourth example

so it is the

which appears first is the i.e. the

(in this case adjective)

again its the :

is the predicate and it

which is being talked about,

Only here it does not appear first, but second. The

appearing first, is the descriptive part and therefore the .

,
( verb)

We see there is no consistent order in which they must appear. Subject and predicate do not
mean first and second. They mean primary and descriptive. When the sentence comprises of
just two words, as in both the above examples, identifying the two is still relatively easy.
However, like in all languages, sentences in Arabic are not restricted to just two words. They
can be very long. Having sentences which are between ten and say twenty words long is quite
normal in Arabic. It is in such complex sentences that the process of identifying the subject,
(made up of multiple phrases) from the predicate (also compound) becomes somewhat difficult.
A great portion of

is devoted to parsing and analyzing sentences in order to determine the

subject from the predicate, for even the basic translation of a sentence depends entirely on it. It

.
language is , for without

is for this reason great scholars like Ibn Khaldun say

(The

most important of the sciences associated with the Arabic

it no

communication can exist).

important aspect of Arabic.

which is knowledge of vocabulary, according to him is the least

To make recognition of the

and somewhat easier the scholars of further

classify the sentence into two categories based on the first word in the sentence:

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1.

: the sentence which begins with an e.g.

(The boy is standing).

The

two parts are known as and

(subject and predicate).

( Hamid went).
: the sentence which begins with a e.g.

parts are known as and ( verb and subject).
2.

The two

The Two Parts of the Sentence:

The

, when it appears in an structure, is called . With rare exception, it will

be first in the sentence. The in this type of sentence is called
.
The Two Parts of the Sentence:

The

, when it appears in the sentence, it is called or subject of the verb

preceding it. Unlike in English, the verb ALWAYS precedes the subject in Arabic. Therefore,
in this type of sentence the

i.e. the will always come after the descriptive part or

predicate. The predicate ( ) is known simply as

Table 1-A.

Table

Error!

No

text

of

These ideas are summarized below in

specified

style

in

document.-A

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Grammatical States
Introduction
Human beings experience emotional states based on interaction with one
another. People make us happy, angry, and sad etc. These states are then
reflected on our faces by our facial expressions i.e. smiles, frowns etc.
Arabic words behave in a similar fashion. They enter grammatical states
because of interaction with surrounding words. These grammatical states
are then reflected on the last letter of the word. Unlike human emotions,
grammatical states in Arabic are just four:

- the nominative case.

- the accusative case.
- the genitive case.
- the jussive case.
We see this in the English language to a very restricted degree in
pronouns. Take for example the three variations of the third person
masculine pronoun; he, him and his or for the feminine; she, her and her, for
the second person masculine; you, you and your and for the first person; I,
me and my.
The reason why the same meaning is being conveyed using three
different words is to reflect grammatical state. When the pronoun is
intended to be subject of the verb, he or she is used. Likewise for object,
one must use him or her. In the English language this discussion is
restricted to pronouns. For nouns, regardless of how the noun is used, there
will be no difference in the way the noun is pronounced. In Arabic this
process is extended to ALL nouns.

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Reflection of Grammatical States -

The name given to this process is . Therefore, is the process
by which grammatical states are reflected on the last letter of words by
change in vowelling or lettering, either explicitly or assumed.
The need for this occurs because in Arabic, we have no other way of
determining whether a given noun is being made the subject of the verb or
the object, or whether it is in the possessive case. There is no rule in Arabic
which states the subject HAS to come before the object. A verb followed by
two nouns can have any of the following three possibilities:
The first is subject and second is object.
Vice versa.
The two nouns together form a possessive phrase
For instance, if the verb
(boy) and

(hit) is followed by the two nouns

(a persons name), the sentence can have three possible

meanings:
A boy hit Zaid.
Zaid hit a boy.
Zaids boy hit (Someone else)!
It is apparent from the above that some sort of system of reflection is
needed to determine the intended structure while excluding the other two.
In Arabic this is done by giving the last letter a distinct vowelling or
lettering.1
Before moving further it is important to know which of the three parts of
speech experience these states and reflection process, and which do not.
This is important because every word will have some sort of ending
including state-less words. There is a sub-set of words that do not enter
grammatical states and hence there endings have no grammatical
significance. One may liken them to a stoic person who remains
emotionless. When confronted with this state-less type of word, one should
be fully aware of its state-less nature and not assume grammatical meaning
from the ending.

Statelessness - vs.
Now, returning back to our discussion, we said it is important to
understand from the outset which of the parts of speech experience
(i.e. are

and which dont (i.e. are

),

so that false grammatical

assumptions may be effectively avoided. (Refer to the previous section.)

Recall that the purpose of

was to determine between various

grammatical usages, such as subject, object, and possessive case, by way of

last letter reflection. A simple pondering on the three definitions given
1

See Appendix A for a discussion of how meanings are conveyed in the Arabic
language, with reference to Ibn Khaldun and the Prophet (pbuh).

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above will reveal that only s have the capacity of ever becoming subject,
object, or being used in the possessive case. To illustrate further, lets try
making a

( i.e. verb) the subject of another verb and see how it sounds,

while contrasting it to when a noun is made subject. Went was quick!

Going was quick; meaning the act of going was quick. Primarily, the reason
why went did not make sense and going did is because went has a tense
in it, preventing it from becoming subject, whereas going is an act with no
tense. In any case, from the above explanation and example it becomes
clear that verbs can not be made subject, object etc., and the same goes for
particles. So when these two categories will never become subjects, objects
etc., they have no need for reflection. They should be state-less ( )in their
entirety. Therefore, the logical division should have been as follows:

: all .
: all .

: all .
Had the division been like this, things would have been easy and the
discussion would have ended. Unfortunately, the existing reality is a bit
different from this. The reality is as follows:

: All .

(the way theyre supposed to be)

: 80% ( the way theyre supposed to be), 20% .

This 20%

needs to be accounted for.

: 80% ( the way theyre supposed to be), 20% .

This 20%

also needs to be explained.

It is this very explanation which will be the focus of the rest of this
discussion,

The scholars of ( Arabic Morphology) have classified the into 4

types, namely:

, the past tense verb e.g.

( wrote).

This category is

in its

entirety i.e. No governing agent will ever enter upon a past-tense

conjugation and alter its ending.

the present and future tense verb e.g.

(helps, or will

help)or one may refer to the first as perfect i.e. occurred and the second
as imperfect, meaning ongoing, either presently in the process of occurring
or will begin at a future time.

, imperative or command verb e.g.

( Drink!)
, negative command or prohibition e.g.
( Dont drink)

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To more easily explain the 20% of verbs that do enter grammatical states
and therefore are , we need to modify this classification slightly. This
will be done by examining the last two verbs in a somewhat detailed manner
in the next chapter.

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Process of Reflection -
Recall from the discussion of the 4 types of
that the

in the previous section,

( the past tense verb) is in its entirety i.e. no governing

agent will ever enter upon it and alter its ending. Skipping

and

leaving it for last, lets take a look at the remaining two verbs: and .

The 20% of Verbs that are

Recall that

, which is the command verb, like all verbs, will have an

active as well as a passive. Each table will have 14 conjugations. (Refer to

the

book)

However, when contemplating the reality of Amr, we see

something unique not found in the other types of verbs, namely, the fact that
literally speaking commands have to be directed to someone being
addressed. By literal definition, must be second person and in the active
voice, such as Sit! Drink! Read! Etc... Does that mean you cant use an

verb in the passive voice or in other than the second person?

can, but it wont be a literal

Well you

, it would be a figurative way of speaking.

Take for instance second person passive with the verb to help i.e. You
must get helped, or third person active, He must help, or third person
passive, He must get helped. Now contrast these three with just Help! You
will see a sharp difference in literal and figurative application of the term
command upon the various conjugations of the tables. For this reason,
the scholars of Sarf tend to break down the table of 14 into two smaller
tables, the first being just the middle six conjugations of the second person,
and the other being the remaining 8, a combination of the third person 6 plus
numbers 13 and 14. When they did this, to keep things level, they also
broke down the passive table into two similar tables, although the above
reasoning does not apply to the passive table. Now, instead of two big
tables of 14 and 14, we have four small tables:

(second person active command) e.g. , Hit!

(second person passive command) e.g.

must get hit.

You

( third & first person active command) e.g. , He

must hit

, He must get hit.

(third & first person passive command) e.g.

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Keeping in mind the whole above discussion, now look at the four small
gardaans of the verb which is the negative command:

( second person active prohibition) e.g. , Dont

hit!

( second person passive prohibition) e.g. , You

must not get hit.

( third & first person active prohibition) e.g. ,

He must not hit.

( third & first person passive prohibition) e.g.

, He must not get hit.

Note the structure of the eight examples:

was the first, then we had three that began with , followed by
four that began with .
Significant? From a pure

perspective, not really, because verb

conjugation, more than anything else, has to do with the designated letters at
the end of the verbs which make the conjugations slightly different in how
they look and sound, and thats why we memorize them, with particular
attention given to those slight differences.
However, from a point of view, the difference between and the

rest is very profound. (If you understand this, youve understood a lot,
insha Allah.)
What the scholars of

did, is they looked at the above 8 examples,

noting that all end with a

Then they saw, seven of them have

particles i.e. governing agents in front of them, either or . From this,

they deduced that the sukoon at the end of all except is a reflection of

grammatical state. Therefore, these gardaans are not separate verbs, but
rather THE SAME ( present-tense verb) in the state of . In other
words , , and the four

tables are nothing more than

,
,
and
with either or in front of them, both

of which are giving particles.

As for i.e. the second person, active command, they said this is

different for two reasons:

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It does not begin with a recognized prefix of the present-tense verb,

, , or .

Therefore, it cannot be incorporated into the category, as

we did to the others.

Furthermore, it does not have a governing agent before it which could
explain away the sukoon at the end of it, meaning no grammatical reflection
can be attributed to this last letter sukoon.

For these two reasons, the scholars of

somewhat different than the scholars of

have classified the

This happens by taking

seven of the above eight tables and incorporating them into

keeping

as the third distinct type of .

and

The breakdown is

as follows:

, the past-tense verb. in its entirety, as mentioned previously.

, the present and future-tense verb.

Predominantly , as will be

seen shortly.

, the second person, active-command verb, also in its

entirety.
The present-tense verb (), like all verbs, also has 14 conjugations.
From the 14, two conjugations, namely the two feminine plurals (number 6
and 12) are

i.e. will never change despite the governing agent entering

upon them. The final at the end of these two conjugations is actually the
pronoun, and from it we get the plural feminine meaning.
As for the other 12 conjugations of the present-tense verb, they are all

PROVIDED THAT THEY ARE FREE OF THE OF EMPHASIS.

These 12 conjugations can be split into two groups:
Those that end in a

in the state of

This would include 5

conjugations; numbers 1, 4, 7 and the last two, 13 and 14.

Those that end with a

in the state of

the remaining seven

conjugations i.e. the four duals, plus numbers 3, 9 and 10.

Types of
Before we proceed, it is important to note that in total there are three
different types of !

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The first is the of feminine plurality. This is actually a pronoun (and

not a reflection of

).

It comes at the end of conjugation numbers 6 and

12 and will never drop.

The second is what they call, the . The function of this is to
reflect that the verb is in its default state of . The presence of this
at the end of the seven conjugations mentioned above will indicate

The pronoun is the letter before the i.e. an for the four duals, a for
the two masculine plurals, and for number ten, the second person
singular feminine. In and , this will drop.
The third and final is what we referred to as the of emphasis.
This is a special which is a particle and is attached to the end of the

It comes in both a form as well as a form. Its meaning

function is twofold. Firstly it eliminates the present tense and makes the
verb specific to the future. Secondly it adds emphasis to the future tense
meaning (verily or surely). All conjugations of the present-tense verb
become as a result of it.
Now we can clearly see the 20% of verbs which are and distinguish

them from the 80% that are :

- in its entirety.
- also.
with the of feminine plurality (6 and 12)-

with the of emphasis (all 14 conjugations)-

empty of

the above mentioned both -

Note that from a total five only one is and four are . Four from
five is 80% and one from five is 20%.

Essential Note on

Thus far we have covered five types of words.

All .

.
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.
with the nun of feminine plurality.
with the nun of emphasis.
Depending on the reason of ( statelessness),

words are of two

types:

- words that are truly

i.e. They never enter grammatical

states and therefore have no need for the process of reflection called
The first three from the above five are

- words that are

due to a secondary reason such as

resemblance to the first category, meaning they do enter grammatical states

and hence need the reflection that provides. However, owing to some
external reason, their last letters remain constant despite the many governing
agents that enter upon them.

with the of feminine plurality is

because the final at the end of these two conjugations RESEMBLES the
of

i.e. conjugation number 6 of the past-tense table, whereas the

emphatic tables are in their entirety due to the of emphasis being a
particle and particles do not give way to last letter change.

The 20% of that are

From the perspective of

and , the is classified into two

categories:

: that do not resemble and are therefore .

This category comprises of the vast majority of

( about 80%), divided

into 16 types to be discussed at a later time. Grammatical state in them will

be reflected on the last letter as mentioned previously. This reflection can
be via i.e. short vowels;
, and , and also by means of

letters such as long vowels (, and ). It may be explicit or assumed. For

the most part, there will be a full separate reflection for each grammatical
state. Occasionally, there will be just two reflections for all three of the
states enter. From this we see that does not necessarily mean
,
nor does or mean and .

, and are the states

and
, and are just one method of their reflection. There may

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be others. In human beings happiness is usually reflected by smiles, but it

doesnt have to be like that. Sometimes its through tears. In animals
happiness is reflected by tail-wagging for instance . In total for

(the 16 types of

) ,

there are nine methods of reflection.

These will be covered in detail once we are done explaining the nouns,
insha Allah.

: that do resemble and are therefore .

nouns are 8 types.

Under each are just a few

Together they

account for less then 20% of .

The eight categories are listed below.

or

: Personal Pronouns.

: Relative Pronouns.

: Demonstrative Pronouns.

: Nouns in the meaning of verbs!

which indicate on time or place (type of

Adverb).

: A

: Words which are used to refer to sounds or noises.

small group of words which were originally phrases,

namely the numbers from eleven to nineteen.

: Words that refer to vagueness in speech or number etc.

(Like so many in English.)

Personal Pronouns -
Pronouns in Arabic are much more than what we have in English. To
fully understand all the groupings of Arabic Pronouns, contrasting them
with their English counter-parts will be helpful. In English, primarily we
have three groups of pronouns: nominative, accusative and genitive. They
are listed below:
Nominative: he, she, they, you, I and we
Accusative: him, her, them, you, me and us
Genitive: his, her, their, your, my and our
Note that in the plural third person (they), gender is irrelevant, meaning
the same pronoun is used for feminine and masculine, while in the second
person both gender AND plurality are not considered. Likewise, the
singular feminine third person (her) is used twice in accusative as well as
genitive. So basically the total number of pronouns in English is only 18
and after dropping the ones which are used twice 16.

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In Arabic, the total number is very high at 84: six groupings, each of
which has a full 14 pronouns. To understand the significance of the number
14 here, recall what we mentioned when explaining the conjugation tables.
Six groupings is because in addition to the three groupings mentioned above
Arabic also has governing agents. If a pronoun is said to be in

due to

being subject for instance, there must be something to cause the

preceding the pronoun, which in this case would be the verb. Thus the verb
in

is called the ( governing agent).

of the states

This will happen in all three

enter into; , and .

Now the pronoun may be

attached ( ) to the agent and both written as ONE WORD, or the agent
could be a separate word and the pronoun written by itself () . In each

case the pronoun will look different. For there is no , because the
agents of

are just two, namely prepositions and , which puts the

in the state of .

Both agents REQUIRE that the pronoun after

them be attached. This leaves us with a total of five groups. Then because
the one can have only two agents, it is mentioned twice, thus making
the number of groupings six (with 14 under each):

(I hit).

Nominative pronoun attached to its agent e.g. the

: Nominative pronoun separate from its agent.

which means he.

( I saw him)

in

: Accusative pronoun attached to its agent e.g. the in

: Accusative pronoun separate from its agent e.g.

(you alone).

with : Genitive pronoun attached to preposition e.g.

the in ( for him).
with
in
(his house).

: Genitive pronoun attached to

e.g. the

All of these 84 pronouns are due to their dependency upon nouns. In

order to be used in speech, third person pronouns need to be preceded by

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nouns and so forth. Dependency is a characteristic of particles: one of the

three

The following is a full table of all the

discussed in this section:

)(

)(

)(

)(

)(

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)(

)(

Table Error! No text of specified style in document.-B - Personal

Pronouns

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Relative Pronouns -

In order to fully understand what relative pronouns are, one needs to be

informed about the

- phrase which in Arabic grammar is the

noun-adjective phrase, an expression of usually two

in which the

second describes the first.

( a noble man), or

( the noble man)

e.g.

From the aspects in which the

being

and have to correspond, is

or ( definite or indefinite).

and correspondence is fairly simple.

In most cases both words are

Adding to both words will

make it the noble man whereas keeping both words empty will leave it a
noble man. However, occasionally the need arises to describe a noun using
a whole sentence. Take for instance the phrase a man who I met
yesterday. I met yesterday is a full sentence. It was used in the above
example to describe the indefinite noun a man.
The scholars of
(

have attached a value to the informative sentence

)and have told us its .

Therefore, if the above example

were to be rendered into Arabic it would read as follows:
extra word is needed between the noun being described i.e.

. No
the

, for they are both and correspondence

and the sentence

is complete. On the other hand, were the to be , we would have

had a problem of matching the two. To convey the meaning the man who I
met yesterday, merely adding an to the would not suffice. We
would be left with a (
) and a

( the ) .

The only way this meaning could be validly conveyed is if somehow that
value attached to the

could be transformed into a

This is where the comes into play.

value.

or Relative Pronouns are like which, what, that, or who

in English, not the question which, what etc. but the pronouns which come
between nouns and the sentences that describe them. Read that again!
pronouns which come between nouns and the sentences that describe
them. In English these pronouns MUST be brought in every such

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structure. In Arabic they are brought ONLY when the is . If it

is

, there will be no need for a , in which case the grammatical

structure itself will join the sentence to the noun being described.
This is the primary purpose why we have these words in the language. If
the noun being described is of a very general meaning such as man, woman,
thing etc, often the noun is not mentioned. The itself will convey the
entire meaning, such as in the following sentence:

(The person who taught you in the masjid

came).

In this sentence the not only means who but actually the

person who.

The sentence which follows the

called

Together with the

i.e. the describing is

both parts become

for the

preceding noun, or if the noun is of a general nature and implicit as

together will directly become part of

and
there MUST be a third person pronoun
Within the

mentioned above, the

the greater sentence.
referring back to the

This pronoun will always correspond to the

in gender and plurality. In the above example the implicit pronoun

hidden in the verb is referring to the .
Besides

and its dual, plural, and feminine variations, the following

relative pronouns are in use:

- the person who

- the thing that. Both and have no duals our plurals.

The same

word is essentially used for all gender and plurality.

is for human

beings while is for non-humans.

, -which.

Both

will always be to the after

them. The second word of the possessive phrase may be singular or plural
e.g.

( which book) and,

( which of the books).

Both

meanings are almost identical. Just two ways of saying the same thing.
and

are both

and there grammatical state will be subject to the

governing agent before them similar to normal s.

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The which is attached to the active and passive participles (

and

)is also considered to be and in the meaning of .

Hence,

would mean

is akin to

( one who hits).

Likewise,

(one who is hit). In other words the at the

beginning of both literally means one who.

in the dialect of the clan of

- also in the meaning of

according to this particular tribe of Arabs e.g.

( the man who

hit you came to me).

Except for
, , and the duals of and , all are due
to there dependency upon the
except with its

You will never encounter a

As mentioned repeatedly, dependency is a

characteristic of : one from the

Demonstrative Pronouns -

Descriptive Pronouns (this/that) are devices used to refer or point

towards nouns. While the pronoun in Arabic is called

, the noun is
( that book),
known as
is the

. In the phrase

and
is the
. The pronoun coupled with the noun will

always be a phrase. However, there are instances when the noun being
referred to is of a very general nature such as thing, man, or woman, in
which case the pronoun itself will convey both meanings i.e.

can mean

this thing or this person as apposed to just this. When this happens the
following word will be the remaining part of the sentence (the predicate). In
order to determine whether the following word is connected to
forming the second part of the descriptive phrase or whether
independent of a separate

and

is

and conveying the entire meaning itself

as mentioned above, one will need to look at the next word. If it begins

with an , the two words will become a descriptive phrase (this book),
otherwise a full sentence. When the

and

can not take do to being

a descriptive phrase is intended, such as this book of his, in

order to avoid confusion with the

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brought after the possessive phrase. Consider the following three ways of
using this device:

1.

: this book

: This is a book.
3. : this book of his
2.

Verbal Nouns -

These are a group of words in the language which are very few in
number. They have the meanings of verbs, meaning that their meanings are
linked to time. They have tenses. However, besides the tense, they have no
other characteristic of verbs such as conjugation tables and suffixes. They
do not fall under any recognized pattern of verb. They come in two types; a
group that has a past tense meaning e.g.

(became distant), and a

group consisting of words that have command-verb meanings e.g. ( give

respite), the first being identical to ( a past-tense verb), and the second to

( a second person active command verb).

Although these words do have the meanings of

due to the absence

of all other characteristics of recognized verbs, they were not categorized as

such. The other two parts of speech also do not apply, but because there
number is so less in the Arabic language, the scholars of grammar did not
see it appropriate to give them a separate category and call them the fourth
part of speech. Instead they said these are

which contain the

meaning of verbs, treating this tense as a resemblance to verb, hence their

nature.

Recall both and

are .

Adverbs of Time or Place -

Words Denoting Sounds or Noises -

These are essentially sounds rendered into words e.g.
sound.

They are all

, a coughing

due to sounds not having true grammatical

positioning, in terms of being subject, object etc.

Numbers 11-19 -

Words denoting vagueness -

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Appendix A - Expressiveness of the Arabic Language

Ibn Khalidun, may Allah elevate his rank, wrote in his magnificent

regarding the Arabic language and its superiority over all other languages.
He said,

it is because in Arabic even non-words i.e. vowel

sounds and patterns carry meaning. In other languages, to convey these

non-word meanings whole words need to be used. He said that is why we
see massive difference in length when some Arabic passage is translated
into a non-Arabic language. The Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him, said,
Speech has been made comprehensive for me.
Basically we have three distinct sources for meanings, only one of which
is because of the words themselves:
A meaning originating from the base letters of a word i.e. wherever and
in whichever pattern those letters are found, the base letter meaning will be
present e.g. the base letters kaf, taa, and baa express the meaning of
writing. Wherever these letters are found, the base letter meaning of
writing will be there. In Arabic almost all combinations of three consonants
have meaning. It is the job of the dictionary to give us this base letter
meaning.
A meaning coming from the pattern. The letters themselves are all
consonants. 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 its either ba, be or the like which has been
pronounced, not just the letter b by itself. The reality is all consonants
need to be coupled with vowels in order to become syllables and thus
pronounceable. This is the nature of human utterance. By definition, a
syllable is the sound produced by coupling a consonant with a vowel. This
is nothing more than a manifestation of human limitations. In other
languages, this vowelling which arose out of pure necessity is mostly
random and carries little significance. However, in Arabic it is this very
vowelling which Ibn Khaldun is calling our second meaning, namely the
pattern meaning. , , and we said expresses 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 meaning. Now, depending on the
particular pattern, the base-letter meaning of writing will be expressed in a

( it was written),
( he
( writer), ( desk i.e. place of

unique way. For instance,

( he wrote),
writes, is writing or will write),

writing), ( write!) and many, many others. Also recall that we said the

subjects of all of these verbs i.e. the pronouns are not separate words but
letters. The recognition of these patterns and designated letters which come

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at the end of the verbs to reflect the pronouns is the subject matter of
(Arabic Morphology).
As for the third and final meaning, which is also a non-word meaning,
we refer back to the first section of this discussion i.e. introducing
grammatical states. Recall that grammatical structure in Arabic is reflected
by change in the last letter. It is from the ending of a given word that we
determine whether that word is being used in the sentence as a subject of the
verb, an object, or whether the word is in the possessive case. It is

which deals with all the technicalities of grammatical meaning.

In summary, we may say the most basic meaning originates from the
given three base letters of a word. These three letters then need to be
arranged with vowels in order to be pronounced. In most languages this
vowelling carries little if any meaning. In Arabic whole distinct meanings
such as tenses and the gender, plurality and person of pronouns is conveyed
via these vowels and letters. When the individual words are constructed,
they need to be used in sentences, because people do not speak in words.
They speak in sentences. Sentence structure is reflected again, not by
separate words (like in other languages), but by vowels or letters! This is
our third meaning.

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