Lesson 90 – الدَّرْسُ التِّسْعُونَ

Introduction to Morphology - مُقَدِّمةٌ لِعِلْمِ الصَّرْفِ

Introduction - مُقَدِّمَةٌ

  • This is lesson ninty of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • From this lesson up to lesson 109 (20 lessons) we will study the Arabic Morphology عِلْمُ الصَّرفِ الْعَرَبِي.
  • The Arabic grammar القَوَاعِد العَرَبِيَّة consists of two main branches; the Arabic syntax النَّحْو and the Arabic morphology الصَّرْف.
  • The syntax studies the formation of the sentences and the structures, i.e. it teaches us the changes which happen to the words because of its position in the structure, while the morphology studies the pattern of the word and how to form a word from another word regardless its position in the sentence, i.e. morphology teaches us how to make the different patterns of derivatives.
  • Here below, we will discuss what does/doesn’t morphology study in detail?

Root: ك ت ب

Derivative

كاتِبٌ

مَكْتُوبٌ

مَكْتَبٌ

مَكْتَبَةٌ

كُتِبَ

Meaning

Writer

Written

Desk - office

Library - stationary

Was wrote

Type of derivative

اسم فاعل

اسم مفعول

اسم مكان

اسم مكان مؤنث

فعل مبني للمجهول

Meaning

Active participle

Passive participle

Noun of place

Feminine noun of place

Passive voice

Morphologic pattern

فاعلٌ

مَفْعُولٌ

مَفْعَلٌ

مَفْعَلَةٌ

فُعِلَ

    1. All verbs are studied in morphology, except the inert verbs, i.e. the verbs that do not accept changes in their basic forms, i.e. they are not conjugated in all tenses, as (لَيْسَ، عَسَى، بِئْسَ، نِعْمَ).
    2. In the study of verbs we will learn how to derive various stem verbs of the same root verb by using the augmented letters. Consider the following different stems and their patterns:

Root: ق ت ل

Example

Meaning

Morphologic pattern

Stem

Arabic

English

قَتَلَ طارِقٌ الثُّعْبانَ

Tariq killed the snake

To kill

فَعَلَ

قَتَلَ

قَتَّلَ الْجَيْشُ أَعْدَاءَهُ

The army killed his enemies thoroughly

To kill thoroughly

فَعَّلَ

قَتَّلَ

قاتَلَ الْجُنُودُ قِتالاً شَدِيدًا

The soldiers fought powerfully

To fight

فاعَلَ

قاتَلَ

تَقاتَلَ الْجَيْشانِ حَتَّى غُروب الشَّمْسِ.

The two armies fought each other till the sunset

To fight each other

تَفاعَلَ

تَقاتَلَ

    1. In the morphology we will also learn the conjugation of nouns and verbs, because the conjugation is a morphologic change related to the formation of the word when conjugated in different gender and number. Consider the nominal conjugation of the following example:

Root ط ل ب

Number

Singular

Dual

 

Gender

Masculine

Feminine

Masculine

Feminine

Masculine

Feminine

 

example

Arabic

طَالِبٌ

طَالِبَةٌ

طَالِبانِ

طَالِبتان

طالِبُونَ/ طُلابٌ

طالِباتٌ

English

Student

Female student

Two students

Two female students

Students

Female students

  • Finally we will end the lesson with a part about the difference between syntax and morphology, In-Shā’-Allâh (God willing).