Arabic is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic.

History

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Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers. The earliest grammarian who is known to us is (died 735 (117 H)). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian scholar (ca. 760–793).

Traditionally, the grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:

• (lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
• (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
• ' (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection (') which had already been lost in dialects.
• (derivation) examining the origin of the words
• (rhetoric) which elucidates construct quality

Phonology

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Classical Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semi-vowels), originally corresponding to the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet. (By Qur'anic times, however, the letter alif no longer represented a glottal stop, but a long . As a result, a diacritic symbol, hamza, was introduced to represent this sound. In addition, some of these phonemes have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or phonemic splits.) Arabic has six vowel phonemes (three short vowels and three long vowels); they appear as various allophones, depending on the preceding consonant. Short vowels are not usually represented in written language, although they may be indicated with diacritics. (See: Arabic alphabet.)

List of phonemes as transliterated in this article (in DIN 31635, see also Arabic transliteration):

• 26 consonants:
• 2 semi-vowels:
• 6 vowels:

Note that Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic sounds are generally considered to be , , , and . (Sometimes is wrongly included — wrongly, because only the four emphatics, and not , cause assimilation of emphasis to an adjacent non-emphatic consonant.)

It is generally believed that Classical Arabic phonology is extremely conservative, and is close to that of Proto-Semitic; only the South Arabian languages are more conservative in their phonology. The six vowels are inherited without change from Proto-Semitic, and of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost (, with merged with ). In addition, various sounds have been changed. An original lateral fricative became , restoring a previously lost sound. Another complex lateral sound, (voiced pharyngealized lateral affricate), became with loss of the lateral sound, although the original sound appears to have still existed at the time of the Qur'an. (Hence the Classical appellation or "language of the " for Arabic, where is the letter corresponding to this sound, which was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic.) An original became , and became palatalized at the time of the Qur'an, and in the standard modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. (The dialects variously have (Arabian Peninsula), (Cairo), (North Africa), (Persian Gulf area), and original (a few isolated pockets here and there).) Other changes may have occurred as well, especially in the emphatic consonants, depending on how Proto-Semitic is reconstructed.

The syllable structure of Arabic is such that there may be clusters of two, but not of three consecutive consonants. A cluster of two consonants at the beginning of an utterance will be preceded by an auxiliary vowel ().

Noun

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State

Nouns (and their modifying adjectives) are either definite or indefinite (there is an article for the definite state only). A noun is definite if it has the definite article prefix (al-), if it has a suffixed pronoun (kalbu-ha l-kabīr "her big dog"), if it is inherently definite by being a proper noun (Miṣru l-qadīmah, "old Cairo"), or if it is in a genitive construction (Iḍāfa) with a definite noun or nouns (bintu l-maliki, "the daughter of the king").

Article

The article (') ' is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. It is also prefixed to each of that noun's modifying adjectives. The initial vowel ('), is volatile in the sense that it disappears in sandhi, the article becoming mere ' (although the is retained in orthography in any case for clarity).

Also, the ' is assimilated to a number of consonants (dentals and sibilants), so that in these cases, the article in pronunciation is expressed only by geminating the initial consonant of the noun (while in orthography, the writing ' is retained, and the gemination may be expressed by putting on the following letter).

The consonants causing assimilation (trivially including ') are: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . These 14 letters are called 'solar letters' ('), while the remaining 14 are called 'lunar letters' ('). The solar letters all have in common that they are dental, alveolar and postalveolar consonants in the classical language, and the lunar consonants are not. (ج ' is pronounced postalveolar in most varieties of Arabic today, but was actually a palatalized voiced velar plosive in the classical language, and is thus considered a lunar letter.)

Inflection

Arabic has three grammatical cases roughly corresponding to: nominative, genitive and accusative, and three numbers: singular, dual and plural. Normally, nouns take the ending ' in the nominative, ' in the genitive and in the accusative. However, with important exceptions, case is not shown in standard orthography, and it is optional whether or not to articulate a case ending when speaking or reading aloud. Technically, every noun has such an ending, although at the end of a sentence, no inflection is pronounced, even in formal speech, because of the rules of 'pause'.

The plural of a noun is formed by a suffix in some cases (sound plurals), but frequently, the vowel structure of a word is changed to form the plural (broken plurals). There are a number of patterns of how this is done. Some singular nouns take several plurals. There could be traces of broken plurals in other Semitic languages, but nowhere are they as widespread as in Arabic. The plurals of nouns representing humans usually use sound plurals. Masculine sound plurals take the forms "" in the nominative and "" in the genitive and accusative. In the feminine, the ending is "" and is limited in its declension to two forms; one for the nominative and another for both other cases. For example, "" and "" are possible, but not "". This pattern can also be used with for plurals of non-human nouns.

Gender

Arabic has two genders, expressed by pronominal, verbal and adjectival agreement. Agreement with numerals shows a peculiar 'polarity', c.f. the section on numerals.

The genders are usually referred to as masculine and feminine, but the situation is more complicated than that. The 'feminine' singular forms are also used to express 'singulatives', which are singulars of collective nouns meaning irrationals of both grammatical genders.

The marker for the feminine gender is a ' suffix, but some nouns without this marker also take feminine agreement (e.g. ' 'mother', ' 'earth'). Already in Classical Arabic, the ' marker was not pronounced in pausa. It is written with a special letter (') indicating that a ' sound is to be pronounced in sandhi, but not in pausa.

Genitive construction (Iḍāfa)

A noun may be defined more closely by a subsequent noun in the genitive. The relation is hierarchical; the first term (') governs the second term ('). E. g. 'the house of a man', 'a man's house'. The construction as a whole represents a nominal phrase, the state of which is inherited from the state of the second term. The first term must "be in construct state", namely, it cannot carry the definite article nor the tanween. Genitive constructions of multiple terms are possible. In this case, all but the final term take construct state, and all but the first member take genitive case.

This construction is typical for a Semitic language. In many cases the two members become a fixed coined phrase, the being used as the equivalent of nominal composition in Indo-European languages (which does not exist in Semitic). thus may mean either 'house of the (certain, known) students' or 'the student hostel'.

Nisba

The Nisba (') is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is ' for masculine and ' for feminine gender (in other words, it is ' and is inserted before the gender marker). E. g. ' 'Lebanon', ' 'Lebanese'.

A construction noun + nisba-adjective is often equivalent to nominal composition in Indo-European languages (solar cell is equivalent to sun cell).

Pronoun

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A pronominal paradigm consists of 12 forms: In singular and plural, the 2nd and 3rd persons differentiate gender, while the 1st person does not. In the dual, there is no 1st person, and only a single form for each 2nd and 3rd person. Traditionally, the pronouns are listed in order 3rd, 2nd, 1st.

Personal pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual
3rd (m)
3rd (f)
2nd (m)
2nd (f)
1st			(n/a)

Enclitic pronouns

Enclitic forms of the pronoun (') may be affixed to nouns (representing genitive case, i. e. possession) and to verbs (representing accusative, i. e. a direct object). Most of them are clearly related to the full personal pronouns. They are identical in form in both cases, except for the 1st person singular, which is ' after nouns (genitive) and after verbs (accusative).

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual
3rd (m)
3rd (f)
2nd (m)
2nd (f)
1st			(n/a)

Demonstratives

There are two demonstratives (), near-deictic ('this') and far-deictic ('that'):

• ', f. ', pl. 'this, these'
• ', f. ', pl. 'that, those'

Numerals

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Cardinal numerals

Cardinal numerals (') from 1-10 (zero is ', from which the English words "cipher" and "zero" are ultimately derived)

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10

The numerals 1 and 2 are adjectives; 3-10 are diptotes (the ending is dropped in oral usage).

Numerals 3-10 have a peculiar rule of agreement known as polarity: A feminine referrer agrees with a numeral in masculine gender and vice versa, e.g. 'three girls'.

Numerals 11-19 are indeclinable, and they show gender agreement (not polarity). The noun counted takes accusative singular.

• 11
• 12
• 13

The numerals 20-99 are followed by a noun in the accusative singular as well. There is agreement in gender with the numerals 1 and 2, and polarity for numerals 3-9.

• 20 (dual of '10')
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 30
• 40

Whole hundreds, thousands etc. appear as first terms of genitive constructions, e.g. '1001 nights'.

• 100
• 1000

Fractions of a whole smaller than "half" are expressed by the structure sg. ', pl. '.

• "half"
• "one third"
• "two thirds"
• "one quarter"
• "three quarters"

etc.

Ordinal numerals

Ordinal numerals (') higher than "first" are formed using the structure ', :

• m. ', f. ' "first"
• m. ', f. ' "second"
• m. ', f. ' "third"
• m. ', f. ' "fourth"

etc.

They are adjectives, hence, there is agreement in gender with the noun, not polarity as with the cardinal numbers.

Verb

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As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate 'write', indicate 'read', indicate 'eat' etc.; Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root 'do' as a template to discuss word formation. The personal forms a verb can take correspond to the forms of the pronouns, except that in the 3rd person dual, gender is differentiated, yielding paradigms of 13 forms.

Prefixes and suffixes

In Arabic, the grammatical person and number as well as the mood is designated by a variety of prefixes and suffixes. Most Arabic verbs are regular and follow the pattern detailed below.

NOTE:The Arabic example below is the Arabic verb kataba (كتب), "to write". Only the prefixes and suffixes of the verb have been vocalised, the vocalisation of the stems (كَتَب for the past and كْتُب for the present) has been omitted for reasons of legibility.

Prefixes and suffixes of the Arabic verb
	Past	Present	Subjunctive and Jussive
Singular
3rd (m.)	STEM-a	ya-STEM	no written change
	كتبَ	يَكتب
3rd (f.)	STEM-at	ta-STEM	no written change
	كتبَتْ	تَكتب
2nd (m.)	STEM-ta	ta-STEM	no written change
	كتبْتَ	تَكتب
2nd (f.)	STEM-ti	ta-STEM-īna	ta-STEM-ī
	كتبْتِ	تَكتبِينَ	تَكتبِي
1st	STEM-tu	a-STEM	no written change
	كتبْتُ	َأكتب
Dual
3rd (m.)	STEM-ā	ya-STEM-āni	ya-STEM-ā
	كتبَا	يَكتبَانِ	يَكتبَا
3rd (f.)	STEM-atā	ta-STEM-āni	ta-STEM-ā
	كتبَتَا	تَكتبَانِ	تَكتبَا
2nd (m. & f.)	STEM-tumā	ta-STEM-āni	ta-STEM-ā
	كتبْتُمَا	تَكتبَانِ	تَكتبَا
Plural
3rd (m.)	STEM-ū	ya-STEM-ūna	ya-STEM-ū
	كتبُوا	يَكتبُونَ	يَكتبُوا
3rd (f.)	STEM-na	ya-STEM-na	no written change
	كتبْنَ	يَكتبْنَ
2nd (m.)	STEM-tum	ta-STEM-ūna	ta-STEM-ū
	كتبْتُم	تَكتبُونَ	تَكتبُوا
2nd (f.)	STEM-tunna	ya-STEM-na	no written change
	كتبْتُنَّ	يَكتبْنَ
1st	STEM-nā	na-STEM	no written change
	كتبْنَا	نَكتب

Perfect

In the perfect conjugation, the perfect stem ' is affixed with a personal ending, e. g. ' 'he wrote', 'he read'. The perfect expresses a completed action, i.e. mostly past tense.

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual
3rd (m)
3rd (f)
2nd (m)
2nd (f)			--
1st			(n/a)

Imperfect

The imperfect expresses an action in progress, i.e. mostly present tense. There are several vowel patterns (', ',') the root can take. The root takes a prefix as well as a suffix to build the verb form. E. g. ' 'he is writing'. Note the co-incidence of 3rd f. sg. and 2nd m. sg.

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual
3rd (m)
3rd (f)
2nd (m)
2nd (f)			--
1st			(n/a)

Mood

From the imperfect stem, modal forms can be derived: the subjunctive by (roughly speaking) replacing the final vowel by ', the jussive by dropping this ' of the subjunctive, and the imperative (only 2nd person) also by dropping the verbal prefix.

The subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses after certain conjunctions. The jussive is used in negation, in negative imperatives, and in the hortative +jussive. For example: 2. sg. m.:

• imperfect indicative 'you are doing'
• subjunctive 'that you do'
• jussive 'do not!'
• imperative 'do!'.

Voice

Arabic has two verbal voices, active and passive. The passive voice is expressed by a change in vocalization and is normally not expressed in unvocalized writing. For example:

• active ' 'he did', ' 'he is doing' فَعَلَ
• passive ' 'it was done', ' 'it is being done' فُعِلَ

Weak verbs

Roots containing one or two of the radicals ' ('), ' (') or ' (') are subject to special phonological rules because these radicals can be influenced by their surroundings. Such verbs are called 'weak' (verba infirmae, 'verbs of weak ^*) and their paradigms must be given special attention. In the case of ', these peculiarities are mainly orthographical, since ' is not subject to elision (the orthography of ' and ' is unsystematic due to confusion in early Islamic times). According to the position of the weak radical in the root, these verbs are called primae infirmae, mediae infirmae or tertiae infirmae. Another special class of roots are such that their second and third radicals are identical. These roots are called mediae geminatae.

Stem formation

"Derived" verbs are those who do not have just three consonants in the perfect tense, namely, all verbs unless the primary verbs (those like ).As for instance, verbs such as , , , are called "derived" verbs. Semantically, we would like to be able to say that the meaning of the "derived" verbs somehow "derives" from the meaning of the primary, by operations like the intensive, reflexive, and causative, but in fact the actual meaning of all verbs is impredictable and needs to be recorded in the lexicon. Classical Arabic has a great number of derived stems, not all of which are still in use. For the modern language, it is mostly sufficient to consider stems I-VIII and X, plus IX for verbs meaning "whiten", "blacken", "yellowen" and so on.

Sound verbs
	Active voice		Passive voice
	Past stem	Present stem	Past stem	Present stem
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII			n/a
VIII
X

The exact vocalisation will be dependent on the word form.

Common uses of those stems include:

• is often used to make an intransitive verb transitive. Eg: ' is "be noble" but ' is "make (someone) to be noble", or, more idiomatically, to "honor".
• ' to give a passive meaning. Eg: ' "break" and "be broken".

Participle

The Arabic participle is a verbal noun formed from one of the derived verbal stems. E.g. ' 'teacher' is the active participle to stem II. of the root ' ('know').

• The passive participle to Stem I is
• Stems II-X take prefix ' and nominal endings (e.g. II. '.)

Infinitive

There is a second type of verbal noun besides the participle that is referred to as 'infinitive' because it often translates to infinitive constructions in Indo-European languages. It is strictly speaking not an infinitive, it would be more correct to speak of "verbal noun I" and "verbal noun II", but the name infinitive is too widespread to abandon it. It is popularly referred to as "masdar".

• infinitive formation to stem I is irregular.
• the infinitive to stem II is .
• stems III-X simply take nominal endings (for stem III, the passive participle is often substituted). As for instance, the stem ista`mal, by simply taking nominal endings, becomes isti`maal.

For example: ' 'date, history' is the infinitive to stem II. of ''' ('date').

Syntax

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In Arabic, word order is less important than in English, and more stylistic than semantic. Verbs often start sentences and sometimes come after the subject.