Morphology Summary

What is the Purpose and Goal of Arabic Morphology?

As mentioned in the introduction to Arabic Morphology article, the Arabic language sub-science known as صرف – referring roughly to what we know as Morphology as well as Etymology – is a subject through which we become aware of the meanings associated to patterns of vowelization, that is tense, voice and added connotations. This is different than the base letter meanings of hitting and helping, sitting and standing, etc. that are the subject matter of Lexicology.

In practice, the following topics are discussed in this science. Their purpose is to aid students of the language, with the help of Lexicology, in forming and correctly vowelling words.

1.       conjugating basic conjugable words, or basic verb conjugation in Arabic

2.       conjugating enhanced conjugable words, or verbs that belong to enhanced verbal paradigms

3.       conjugating irregular conjugable words such as hollow verbs and deficient verbs

4.       understanding the added meanings achieved by enhancing basic conjugable words or paradigm connotations

Simple Conjugation

Below are conjugation tables for a particular verb in the perfect and imperfect tenses. Alongside the tables are methods of varying the meaning of a verb in each of the two tenses. Notice that the tables also note the idiosyncrasies of certain conjugations.

Perfect Tense

Imperfect Tense

·         the particle لن is one of 4 reasons an imperfect verb is rendered subjunctive; لن emphatically negates the verb in the future (“will never”)

Building the Jussive

1.       the 5 conjugations without a نون suffix will have their ضمة change to a سكون

2.       the rest of the conjugations will lose their نون

3.       but conjugations 6 and 12 will retain their نون (they do not change at all)

·         the particle لم is one of 5 reasons an imperfect verb is rendered jussive; لم emphatically negates the verb in the past (“has never”)

Distance (forming the past continuous “used to” or “would”)

·         conjugate the verb كان in tandem with the main verb (somewhere before it)

·         this applies to both active and passive and can be negated using the particle ما

·         the verb كان will be conjugated in the active despite the voice of the main verb

Emphasizing the Verb

1.       render the imperfect verb subjunctive (this is just a shortcut and, grammatically speaking, the verb will not actually be in the subjunctive case); if the verb now ends in واو or ياء, drop that letter

2.       prefix every conjugation with the particle لَـ

3.       for every conjugation that ends in an Aleph, add the suffix ـنِّ

4.       for conjugations 6 and 12, add the suffix ـانِّ

5.       for all other conjugations, add the suffix ـنَّ

·         the emphasized verb has its tense limited to the future (“will certainly”)

·         this applies to affirmative active and affirmative passive only

·         note that in every conjugation with an Aleph before the particle of emphasis (the نون), the نون is مكسور, and that it is مفتوح in all other conjugations

·         it is possible, for prosodic reasons, to use a lighter particle of emphasis – the particle ـنْ with a سكون – but this can only be done with those conjugations where the other نون is مفتوح

Command and Prohibition

Forming the Imperative

1.       for the second-person active conjugations

a.       start with the imperfect and remove the prefix

b.      Add an eliding Hamza if necessary. The vowel on this Hamza will be determined as follows

§  if the second base letter has a ضمة, the Hamza will be given a ضمة

§  if the second base letter has either of the other two vowels, the Hamza will be given a كسرة

2.       for all other conjugations

a.       Prefix the imperfect conjugations with لِـ. This لام will have a سكون when preceded by a conjunction

3.       all imperative conjugations will receive the same ending as the imperfect jussives

·         all imperative conjugations can be emphasized using either of the two methods of emphasis mentioned above

Forming the Prohibitive

1.       using the imperfect conjugations, the particle لا will precede the verb as a separate word

2.       the conjugations will receive the same ending as the imperfect jussives

·         all prohibitive conjugations can be emphasized using either of the two methods of emphasis mentioned above

Derived Nouns

Verb Paradigms and Paradigm Connotations

Verbal paradigms are variations that come about in the stem of basic verbs, and they result from one of two things. The first is a result of the combination of middle letter vowel in the perfect conjugations and the middle letter vowel in the imperfect conjugations. For a given verb, the middle letter vowel for both tenses is basically random and is determined by looking in a dictionary. There is basically no meaning significance to these vowels and this is just a phenomenon of the language. The combination of what vowel a verb’s middle radical is given in the two tenses gives the following paradigms.

The other reason why verbal paradigms exist is because of extra letters that are added to the stem in order to enhance the meaning of the verb. The following are by far the most popular methods of enhancement.

Forming the imperfect conjugations

1.       append the imperfect prefix

2.       if the first conjugation of the perfect tense has exactly 4 letters (including eliding Hamzas), the prefix will be مضموم, and it will be مفتوح otherwise

3.       if the perfect conjugations have an extra تاء prefixed to them, the second last letter will be مفتوح, otherwise it will be مكسور

·         all variations of the perfect verb, all variations of the imperfect verb, and forming the imperative and prohibitive all use the same formulas as the simple verb

·         derived nouns, however, are treated differently

Forming the active and passive participles

1.       starting with the first conjugation from the imperfect table, replace the imperfect prefix with a ميم مضمومة

2.       for the active participle, ensure the second last letter is مكسور, and for the passive, ensure it is مفتوح

·         enhanced paradigms do not have other derived nouns; although they may use the two participles as a substitute if necessary

Irregularity Rules

Hamza Verbs

Duplicated Verbs

Glide Irregularities

Rule 5

The chart above is divided into two vertical halves. The left half describes the sequence we’re looking for in the original form of an irregular word. And the right half describes an algorithm to turn that sequence into the desired result. Each slot (or column) represents a consonant, a short vowel, a long vowel, or a non-vowel in the original and resulting words.

Each cell holds whether the position is a consonant, a vowel, and so forth. The following is a legend for the symbols.

C – consonant    {w – واو, y – ياء, G – glide (either w or y)}

V – vowel            {u – ضمة, a – فتحة, i – كسرة}

S – ساكن

L – long vowel   {uw – ـُو, aa – ـا, iy – ـِيْ }

X / Y – either X or Y

The objective is to start at the first row and try to match sequences in a given word with what the first row stipulates. If the first row fails to match our sequence, we move to the second row, and then the third. If the third row fails to match any sequence in our word (or the algorithm becomes idempotent), then the given word will not experience change.

Take, for example, قَوَلَ. The first two letters and vowels can symbolically be represented as C a w a. This is more generally written as C V G V and matches row 3 of the chart. The algorithm requires that the initial consonant be copied for slot 1 of the result, so we get C. It then requires that, since the first vowel was (a), the second slot of the result should contain (aa), so we have C aa. For the final slot, the algorithm recognizes that the second vowel in the original was (a), so this slot must also be (a). We now have C aa a. This is the representation for قَاَ. Now, since Alephs do not have vowels, the (a) on it is dropped and we’re left with قا. Circumscribing the part of the word the algorithm did not match, the final result is قالَ.

Notes on the above algorithm

·         The algorithm does not consider gerunds, plurals, frozen nouns, and derived nouns. Although the algorithm will be accurate for most of these, it may break down in certain cases.

·         The algorithm should not be applied where the rules of تعليل are not meant to be applied; if it is, it may return false positives.

·         The algorithm works only with mandatory rules.

·         The rules of cluster reduction may need to be applied once the algorithm outputs its answer.

·         The algorithm does not handle drop of letters to reflect the jussive case; that is a grammar topic.