Classical Arabic

Notes:

• [ɑ(ː)] is the allophone of /a/ and /aː/ after uvular and emphatic consonants
• [eː] arose from two separate sources, often conflated:
  • The contraction of the triphthong *ayV. Some Arabs said banē (< *banaya) for banā ("he built") and zēda (< *zayida) for zāda ("it increased"). This /eː/ merged with /aː/ in later Classical Arabic and most modern Arabic dialects.[14]
  • A completely different phenomenon called imāla led to the raising of /a/ and /aː/ adjacent to a sequence i(ː)C or Ci(ː), where C was a non-emphatic, non-uvular consonant, e.g. al-kēfirīna < al-kāfirīna ("the infidels"). Imala could also occur in the absence of an i-vowel in an adjacent syllable. It was considered acceptable Classical Arabic by Sibawayh, and still occurs in numerous modern Arabic dialects, particularly the urban dialects of the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean.
• [eː] may have been the original pronunciation of a final ی which is otherwise pronounced as [aː]. In the Kisā'i and Hamzah recitations of the Qur'an, this pronunciation is used, whereas in the Hafs pronunciation aː is used instead. An example of this can be seen in the names Mūsā (Moses), 'īsā (Jesus), and Yahyā (John), which would be pronounced as Musē, 'īsē and Yahyē in the former two manners of recitation.

Grammar

Nouns

Case

The A1 inscription dated to the 3rd or 4th century AD in the Greek alphabet in a dialect showing affinities to that of the Safaitic inscriptions shows that short final high vowels had been lost in at least some dialects of Old Arabic at that time, obliterating the distinction between nominative and genitive case in the singular, leaving the accusative the only marked case:^[15]

Classical Arabic however, shows a far more archaic system, essentially identical with that of

State

The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness. Besides dialects with no definite article, the Safaitic inscriptions exhibit about four different article forms, ordered by frequency: h-, ʾ-, ʾl-, and hn-. The Old Arabic of the Nabataean inscriptions exhibits almost exclusively the form ʾl-. Unlike the Classical Arabic article, the Old Arabic ʾl almost never exhibits the assimilation of the coda to the coronals; the same situation is attested in the Graeco-Arabica, but in A1 the coda assimilates to the following d, αδαυρα *ʾad-dawra الدورة 'the region'.

In Classical Arabic, the definite article takes the form al-, with the coda of the article exhibiting assimilation to the following dental and denti-alveolar consonants. Note the inclusion of palatal /ɕ/, which alone among the palatal consonants exhibits assimilation, indicating that assimilation ceased to be productive before that consonant shifted from Old Arabic /ɬ/:

Verbs

Barth-Ginsberg alternation

Proto-Central Semitic, Proto-Arabic, various forms of Old Arabic, and some modern Najdi dialects to this day have alternation in the performative vowel of the prefix conjugation, depending on the stem vowel of the verb. Early forms of Classical Arabic allowed this alternation, but later forms of Classical Arabic levelled the /a/ allomorph:

See also

• Arabic
• Modern Standard Arabic
• Varieties of Arabic
• Ancient North Arabian
• Quranic Arabic Corpus
• Arabic–English Lexicon

Notes

1. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2011-05-30). "Polygenesis in the Arabic Dialects". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics.
2. ^ Bin-Muqbil 2006, p. 14.
3. ^ Bin-Muqbil 2006, p. 15.
4. ISBN 978-90-47-40649-5
   . Retrieved 7 April 2021.
5. ^
   ISBN 978-0-231-11152-2
   .
6. ^ Blau, Joshua (1970). On Pseudo-corrections in Some Semitic Languages. Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
7. ^ Putten, Marijn van; Stokes, Phillip (January 2018). "Case in the Qurˀānic Consonantal Text. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 108 (2018), pp. 143–179". Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes.
8. ISBN 978-1-118-44869-4
   .
9. ^ Watson 2002, p. 13.
10. ^ Danecki, Janusz (2008). "Majhūra/Mahmūsa". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Vol. III. Brill. p. 124.
11. ^ Heinrichs, Wolfhart. "Ibn Khaldūn as a Historical Linguist with an Excursus on the Question of Ancient gāf". Harvard University.
12. ISBN 9004117652
    .
13. ^ Watson 2002, p. 16.
14. ^ ^{a b} Studies, Sibawayhi. "solomon i.sara_sibawayh on imalah-text translation". Academia.edu.
15. ^ Al-Manaser, Ali; Al-Jallad, Ahmad (19 May 2015). "Al-Jallad. 2015. New Epigraphica from Jordan I: a pre-Islamic Arabic inscription in Greek letters and a Greek inscription from north-eastern Jordan, w. A. al-Manaser". Arabian Epigraphic Notes 1. Retrieved 2015-12-09.

References

• Bin-Muqbil, Musaed (2006). "Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Arabic Emphatics and Gutturals". University of Wisconsin–Madison. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Holes, Clive (2004) Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties Georgetown University Press.
  ISBN 1-58901-022-1
• ISBN 0-7486-1436-2
  (Ch.5 available in link below)
• Watson, Janet (2002). "The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic". New York: Oxford University Press. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Bin Radhan, Neil. "Die Wissenschaft des Tadschwīd". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

External links

Look up Classical Arabic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up Modern Standard Arabic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up Fus-ha in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Classical Arabic Grammar Documentation – Visualization of Classical Quranic Grammar (
  iʻrāb
  )
• [1] – Lectures on Quranic Arabic by Dr. Khalid Zaheer (CA)
• Institute of the Language of the Quran – Free Video lectures on basic and advanced Classical Arabic grammar
• [2] – A hub for learners of Classical Arabic.