Basic of Arabic morphology

The formation
of Arabic word

consonantal vowel
affixes
root pattern
 ‫ْ‬ ‫َ‬
‫كٌرٌم‬ ‫ك ِريمٌ‬

‫ﹶ ﹺﹲ‬
 ‫َ‬ ‫َْ‬
‫كٌتٌب‬ ‫مكت ٌ‬
‫ب‬ ‫ﻣ‪-‬‬

‫ﹶﹾﹶﹲ‬
 The root is a consonantal
morpheme which is usually
discontinuous or non-sequential

A root consisting typically of

three consonants
Root

The root carries the core lexical

meaning
‫س_ك_ن‬ ‫ك_ت_ب‬ ‫م_س_ك‬

‫ف_ت_ح‬ ‫ض_ر_ب‬
 The vowel pattern also called vocalism or
vocalic melody

The vocalism is a vocalic morpheme

which may consist of one or more
vowels.
Vowel
pattern a pattern of vowels fitting around
the consonants of the root

the vowel pattern usually has the

function of determining the syntactic
role of the stem, perfect or imperfect
aspect of verb, singular or plural
number of noun, etc.
 a-a-a ‫ﹶﹶﹶ‬

na-ṣa-ra َ ‫َن‬
َ‫ص ٌر‬
 a-i-u ‫ﹶ ﹺﹸ‬

ʕa-mi-lu َ
‫ع ِام ٌل‬
 The vowel pattern functions

‫ﹶﹺﹸ‬ Nominatif

‫ﹶﹺﹶ‬
determining the
syntactic role of Akusatif
the stem

‫ﹶﹺﹺ‬ Genitif
The vowel pattern functions
determining perfect
or imperfect aspect
of verb

‫ﹶﹶﹶ‬ ‫ﹶﹾﹸﹸ‬

َ ‫َن‬
َ‫ص ٌر‬ ْ
ٌ‫ينصر‬َ
The vowel pattern functions
Determining
singular or plural
number of noun

‫ﹺﹶﹲ‬ ‫ﹺﹶﹶﹺ‬ ‫ﹸﹸﹲ‬

ٌ َ ‫ِكت‬
‫اب‬ ِ َ‫ِكتَب‬
ٌ‫ان‬ ٌ ُ ‫ُكت‬
‫ب‬
Singular Dual Plural
 The affixes used in Arabic word Some of these affixes are
formation may be prefixes, derivational and some are
suffixes, or infixes inflectional.

Affixes

inflectional affixes are those that

Derivational affixes are generally
signal the grammatical
those that change the
relationship of a word in a
grammatical class of a word
sentence
Positional Classification of Affixes In Arabic

Prefixes
• ‫ لعب‬- ‫ﻣ‬
(al-sawaabiq)

Suffixes
• ‫ ون‬- ‫ﻣﺴﻟﻣ‬
(al-lawaaHiq)

Infixes
• ‫ لس‬-‫ا‬- ‫ﺠ‬
(al-dawaaxil)
Functional Classification of Affixes

Derivational Affixes Inflectional Affixes

‫شخص‬ ‫قلم‬
Nomina Nomina

‫ ﻲ‬- ‫ﺷﺨﺻ‬ ‫ ان‬- ‫ﻗﻟﻣ‬

Ajektiva Nomina