The Arabic Language

zaydūna
‘Zayds’, genitive/
accusative 
zaydīna
: in the morph-by-morph segmentation of the Arabic grammar-
ians, this becomes |zayd-u-w-n-a|, |zayd-i-y-n-a|. The /n/ is analysed as a compen-
sation for the fact that plural nouns do not have nunation, which is why they 
receive an /n/ that disappears as soon as the word is followed by a genitive (
zaydū 
l-madīnati
‘the Zayds of the city’). The vowel /a/ at the end is necessitated by 
the consonant cluster that arises with /-w-n/ at the end of the word. The real 
problem are the vowels /u/, /i/ and the glides /w/, /y/: they share between them 
the double function of indicating plurality and nominative case, but it is impos
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The Arabic Linguistic Tradition 
117
sible to assign either function to any of them alone. The linguistic model followed 
by the grammarians did not allow them to posit combined morphs |-uw-|, |-iy-| 
with a double function. They resorted, therefore, to other solutions, for instance, 
by assigning the function of plural morph to the glides /w/, /y/ and positing an 
underlying, virtual case ending that was deleted in the surface form (e.g., /zayd-
uw-u-na/ realised as [zajduːna]).
The second type of plural is that of the broken or internal plural (
jamʿ mukassar
), 
referring to the breaking-up of the consonant pattern by different vowels. Of all 
Semitic languages, Arabic exhibits the largest expansion of the system of broken 
plurals (cf. above, Chapter 2, pp. 18f.; Chapter 6, p. 93). There are more than 
thirty-six patterns for plurals. In this domain, grammarians analysed the various 
morphological patterns, but they did not formulate rules for the plural formation 
of semantic classes of singular nouns.
7.3.2 The verb
The second part of speech is the verb (
fiʿl
). The verbal system of Arabic has a 
two-way distinction of a prefix and a suffix conjugation, traditionally called in 
Western grammars the imperfect and the perfect. For Arabic grammarians, the 
verb’s main feature was the indication of time: already in Sībawayhi’s defini-
tion (see above, p. 110) three tenses are distinguished, namely, past, present 
and future, which are expressed by only two verbal forms, called by him 
māḍī
‘past’ and 
muḍāriʿ
‘resembling’. The latter term refers to the resemblance of the 
imperfect verb to the noun, which is the cause of its declension. Later grammar
-
ians called the prefix conjugation 
mustaqbal
‘future’ and denied the existence 
of a special form for the physical present. It remains surprising that with only 
two verbal forms grammarians thought in terms of a temporal tripartition; and 
foreign influence, for instance from Greek philosophy, is not to be excluded in 
this case. Arabic grammarians regarded conjugated verbs as combinations of a 
verb and a pronoun. A form such as 
ḍarabtu
‘I have hit’ is analysed by them as the 
verb 
ḍaraba
with the bound pronoun of the first-person singular 
-tu
; 
ḍarabū
is the 
same verb 
ḍaraba
with the pronoun of the third-person masculine plural 
-w
. The 
form 
ḍaraba
itself is ambiguous: in a verbal sentence it is the verbal form, but in a 
nominal sentence it is the verbal form with the zero pronoun for the third-person 
masculine singular (cf. above, pp. 112–14); likewise, the form 
ḍarabat
is either the 
verb with a feminine marker 
-t
, or the verb with the feminine marker and a zero 
pronoun.
There are three morphological types of the perfect: