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?

1. The morphology studies only the variable words, i.e. the words that can be transformed from a pattern to another of the same root to express different meanings related to its root. Therefore the morphology will not study the invariable nouns such as pronouns الضَّمَائِر, demonstrative nouns أَسْمَاءُ الإِشَارَة, relative nouns الأسْماءُ المَوْصُولَة, and questioning nouns أَسْمَاءُ الاِسْتِفْهَامِ.
2. The morphology does not study the particles (the letters) as (مِنْ، كَمْ، هَلْ، لَوْ), because all letters are not derived or related to certain roots.
3.  In the morphology we will learn the “derivation” which means the ramification of the words which are related to one root with certain rapprochement of the meanings. Consider the following derivatives, paying attention to the rapprochement of the meanings (please read from right to left):

Root: ك ت ب

4. 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).
5. 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

6. 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

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