Arabic Grammar Quiz

Grammar of the Arabic Language

• Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Arabic language, which has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages.

• Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic have largely the same grammar, while colloquial spoken varieties of Arabic can vary in different ways.

• The largest differences between classical and colloquial Arabic are the loss of morphological markings of grammatical case, changes in word order, and an overall shift towards a more analytic morphosyntax.

• Early Arabic grammars were more or less lists of rules, without the detailed explanations which would be added in later centuries.

• For classical Arabic grammarians, the grammatical sciences are divided into five branches.

• Said M. Badawi divided Arabic grammar into five different types based on the speaker's level of literacy and the degree to which the speaker deviated from Classical Arabic.

• Classical Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes, including two semi-vowels, which constitute the Arabic alphabet.

• In Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, nouns and adjectives are declined, according to case (i‘rāb), state (definiteness), gender and number.

• In Arabic, personal pronouns have 12 forms. In singular and plural, the 2nd and 3rd persons have separate masculine and feminine forms, while the 1st person does not.

• Some very common prepositions have irregular or unpredictable combining forms when the enclitic pronouns are added to them.

• In a less formal Arabic, as in many spoken dialects, the endings of some words have their final short vowel dropped for ease of pronunciation.

• There are two demonstratives, near-deictic ('this') and far-deictic ('that'), and the dual forms are only used in very formal Arabic.

• Qur'anic Arabic has another demonstrative, normally followed by a noun in a genitive construct and meaning 'owner of'.Overview of Arabic Grammar

• Arabic verbs are based on a root made up of three or four consonants, which communicate the basic meaning of the verb.

• Verbs change vowels to specify grammatical functions such as tense, person, and number, in addition to changes in the meaning of the verb that embody grammatical concepts such as mood, voice, and functions such as causative, intensive, or reflexive.

• Arabic lacks an auxiliary verb "to have", constructions using li-, ‘inda, and ma‘a with the pronominal suffixes are used to describe possession.

• Arabic prepositions are divided into 'true prepositions' and derived triliteral prepositions.

• A noun may be defined more precisely by adding another noun immediately afterward, forming the genitive construct or annexation structure.

• The word order in Classical Arabic tends to prefer the verb before the subject before the object, but uses the particle ʼinna and SVO to emphasize the subject.

• There is evidence for a VP constituent in Arabic, that is, a closer relationship between verb and object than verb and subject.

• In the present tense, there is no overt copula in Arabic, and subject pronouns are normally omitted except for emphasis or when using.

• Arabic numerals behave in a very complicated fashion, with numbers 1 and 2 being adjectives, and numbers 3-10 showing agreement polarity with the noun.

• Fractions of a whole smaller than "half" are expressed by the structure fi‘l in the singular, af‘āl in the plural.

• The formal system of cardinal numerals, as used in Classical Arabic, is extremely complex, but large numbers are always written as numerals rather than spelled out, even in formal contexts.

• The relative pronoun agrees in gender, number, and case, with the noun it modifies.Overview of Arabic Grammar

• Arabic grammar has a complex system of declensions and conjugations.

• Arabic is a highly inflected language with three grammatical cases, two numbers, three genders, and a dual form.

• Arabic verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mood, and voice.

• The verb agrees with the subject in person, number, and gender.

• Adjectives follow the noun they are modifying and agree with the noun in case, gender, number, and state.

• Word order in colloquial spoken Arabic may employ different word order than Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic.

• The subject of a sentence can be topicalized and emphasized by moving it to the beginning of the sentence and preceding it with the word "inna."

• The definite article "al-" does not inflect for gender, number, person, or grammatical case.

• Object pronouns are clitics and are attached to the verb.

• Possessive pronouns are likewise attached to the noun they modify.

• An overhaul of the native systematic categorization of Arabic grammar was first suggested by the medieval philosopher al-Jāḥiẓ.

• In the modern era, Egyptian litterateur Shawqi Daif renewed the call for a reform of the commonly used description of Arabic grammar.