Arabic-L:LING:Adjectives and Nouns

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 04 Apr 2001
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Adjectives and Nouns

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1)
Date: 04 Apr 2001
From: sameh-al-ansary at usa.net
Subject: Adjectives and Nouns

Dear Mike,

  In principle the Arabic language does not have on the morphological level a
word class called adjective, we have in Arabic "Sifa mushabbaha" instead. On
the other hand your example "Al-Arabeyya" is a relational noun (Nesba)that is
used mostly as an Adjective, not originally an adjective. So "Al-Arabeyya" in
the sentence is an Adjective but out of the context it is a Mansub Noun.
Sometime, this kind of Nouns is a common noun (according to my opinion in
building my tagset for Arabic POS taggeing). For example the word
"Al-?irhaabeyy" 'terrorist' in a sentence like "Al3amalu Al?irhaabeyyu" is an
adjective while in a sentence like "Al?irhaabeyyu qama bi 3amaliyatin
xaTiratin" is a common noun.

Sameh Alansary,
Nijmegen University

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End of Arabic-L: 04 Apr 2001