Arabic-L:LING:Al-imra'a responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 12 Feb  2004
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:Al-imra'a response
2) Subject:Al-imra'a response
3) Subject:Al-imra'a response
4) Subject:Al-imra'a response
5) Subject:Al-imra'a response
6) Subject:Al-imra'a response

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1)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:rberjak at shaw.ca
Subject:Al-imra'a response

Hi,
According to Lisan Al-alarab the alif in imraa is alif alwasul and the
ancient Arabs used to say mra'a as the feminine form for mra ( man).  
They
used the alif in both they said imra and imra'a when they defined they  
said
almra (the man) and almara'a (the woman) they never said alimra. Now  
we, the
contemporary Arabs do not use the word imra for man and we wrongly  
define
imra'a as al imra'a. So in the dictionary the proper way is almra'a and
alimra'a is a common mistake but it is too popular to be seen so. Hoping
this helps and good luck.
Rafik Berjak

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2)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:timbuckwalter at verizon.net
Subject:Al-imra'a response

I just asked 7 native speakers (who all happen to be women) in our
annotation area here at the LDC (where they do POS tagging, speech
transcription, etc.) and they all saw nothing wrong with the form
al-imra'a (and they tend to have very strong opinions about right and
wrong MSA!). In fact, they were surprised with the low corpus statistics
for al-imra'a.

-- Tim

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3)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:wasamy at umich.edu
Subject:Al-imra'a response

In general, what you say you were taught is the customary view.
However, there might be a distinction between al-mar'a and al-imra'a.

As you know al-mar'a is often used as a generic reference to "woman".
Al-mar'a can also refer to the singular definite: the woman.

As is the case with this and several other nouns, the fact that the  
same form can be used to refer to a definite woman, or to woman/women  
in general can sometimes lead to ambiguity.
This is why sometimes the form al-imra'a is used, as in the following  
case:

  قصة النبي داود مع ...  الامرأة من العبر ما يكفي .. قصة فيها  ...

The choice of al-imra'a in the above instance, where there is no other  
context, informs the reader that this is the story of al-naby Dawood  
with a specific woman, not with women.

Waheed

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4)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:mmughazy at unix.cc.wmich.edu
Subject:Al-imra'a response

I have no intuitions about Standard Arabic, but here is my take on
this issue.

I had four words in mind: mar' (man) and its feminine counterpart
mar'a (woman), and 'imro' (man) and its feminine counterpart 'imra'a
(woman). Then, I looked up quite a few examples from the Quran, Al-
Bukhaary and other classical texts. My observation is that mar' (man)
and mar'a (woman) are used only as generic NPs denoting types.
Therefore they are usually used as subject NPs and they require the
definite article.

examples:
(a) al-mar'u `alaa diini khaliilih
(b) al-mar'a al-`arabiyya

The other two: 'imro' and 'imra'a are used only as referential NPs
that require existential quantification and refer to individuals.
Therefore, they can be used after demonstratives or as predicates.

I hope that helps
walaahu 'a`lam

Mustafa Mughazy
Western Michigan University

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5)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:Ola.Moshref at zu.ac.ae
Subject:Al-imra'a response

As a native speaker, my reation was that I re-read the first line of  
your message several times, and I didn't get the transliteration. I  
thought it was mistyped. It didn't sound normal when I understood that  
what is meant is "the woman". I can't say if they are definite errors,  
but I think it is very likely that newspapers and the internet are  
inaccurate linguistically.
 
Ola

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6)
Date: 12 Feb 2004
From:kaix04holmanski77 at hotmail.com
Subject:Al-imra'a response

Dil,

I actually ran into an interesting scenario with this as well.

I know that Mar' is the masculine form and that Mar'a is the feminine.   
With Imra'a, I was originally taught (or this is how I remember it  
anyway) that Imra'a was also woman (singular) and that you could  
pluralize it with Imra'a-at (like any regular feminine plural).  I was  
called on this by a Kuwaiti I knew, but even she couldn't tell me why I  
was wrong.

I'm still not sure but I thought I'd pass what little I have to  
contribute along.  I'm interested in seeing what we get back.

Chris Holman

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