Arabic-L:LING:Plurals

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 302 May 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Plurals

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1)
Date: 30 May 2007
From:"Schub, Michael B." <Michael.Schub at trincoll.edu>
Subject:Plurals

Dear Dr. Deeb,
       Thank you for your extremely pertinent observations.
       What does one do with Qur'an 7.160 ['twelve tribes']:  /12   
asbaaTan/.  The 'correct' form, in Classical and

MSA is  /sibTan/; yet a PLURAL of PAUCITY occurs in the text.

      /miraaran/  is used most ofter for 'many times.'  one meets,  
almost exclusively, expressions like

/thalaathu  marraatin/;  /thalaathu  aalaafin/  -- when /uluuf/  is  
found in contexts meaning 'thousands

upon thousands,' etc.
                                                                         
                Mike Schub

please add to my last note:  dialectal forms for 3 and 5 thousand  / 
tlaat-taalaaf/;  /khamsat-talaaf/,
may encourage this usage in MSA.                             Mike Schub

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2)
Date: 30 May 2007
From:"Dr. M Deeb" <muhammaddeeb at gmail.com>
Subject:Plurals
**
*On the "broken plurals," my colleague, Dr. Schub, raises a few probing
questions:*

* *
* *

*(1) He wonders why the plural / أسباط / is used instead of the  
singular /
سبط / in the qur'anic verse: / وقطّعناهم اثنتي  
عشرة أسباطا أمما /, VII: 160.
*

* *
*I'm afraid there is no violation of the grammatical code here.  We  
are to
be alerted that /أسباطا / is not a noun of distinction / 
تمييز /; rather, it
is a noun in apposition /بدل / to the number / اثنتي  
عشرة /.  As a relevant
detail, may I add that even the masculine singular / سبط / would  
not fit as
a noun of distinction after the feminine composite number /  
اثنتي عشرة
/.  Exegetes
and grammarians construe the verse as:*
**
*/                     اثنتي عشرة ، أسباطا أمما   
[فرقا] قطّعناهم /. *
**
*Incidentally, the word / سبط / has / سُبطان / as another,  
yet rarely used,
plural of abundance. *

* *
**
*(2) As I probably had pointed out in one of my earlier posts on the  
"broken
plurals," the sound feminine and masculine plurals are plurals of  
abundance,
yet they may be used to indicate paucity either (a) by default or (b) on
contextual and syntactic grounds.  The word / مرة / has several  
plurals, the
most common of which are /مرات / & / مِرار /, the latter  
being a broken
plural of abundance.  **Thus, the sentence / رأيته مرات /  
would mean "I've
seen him" anywhere from three times to infinity, whilst /رأيته  
مرارا /
emphasizes the more repeated action of seeing as counting starts from  
eleven
to infinity.  All that notwithstanding, practitioners of Arabic don't  
use
pocket calculators!*
**
* **  (In parenthesis, I'm often tempted to think of / مرار / as a  
verbal
noun, not a plural, which is lexically justified.)*
**
**
*(3) On /آلاف / (plural of paucity) & / ألوف / (plural of  
multiplicity or
abundance), Dr. Schub observes correctly that / ألوف / "is found  
in contexts
meaning 'thousands upon thousands,' etc."  Unfortunately, with the
disturbing Arabic illiteracy and growing use of local dialects, very  
few, if
at all, would tell the distinction between plural forms, let alone  
use them
properly.*
**
*With my 'abundant' and kin

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End of Arabic-L:  30 May 2007