Modern Standard Arabic case #

Modern Standard Arabic has three cases, the nominative (rafʿ), the genitive (jarr) and the accusative (naSb), marked by a suffix at the end of a noun or adjective: in the base declension -u, -i and -a, followed on an indefinite by nunation, a final -n ([Ryd05] ch. 7 §5, p. 166). The spoken varieties do not mark case (p. 166), so the case system is that of the written language.

A noun is in one of three states. It takes the definite article al-, or it is annexed, the first term of a construct (ʾiDaafa) or a noun with a possessive suffix, with "neither the definite article nor nunation" (ch. 8 §1.2.1, p. 211), or it takes nunation (ch. 7 §4, p. 156). The state is a form and not a meaning: an annexed noun is definite or indefinite with the noun it annexes, and so "looks definite because it does not have nunation, but it is not definite" when that noun is indefinite (p. 160, fn. 40), and masculine names such as muHammad-un are "semantically definite, but morphologically indefinite" (p. 164). The Universal Dependencies tag for definiteness, the value of a token's definiteness feature, keeps the three states apart, the annexed noun being UD's construct state ([dMMNZ21]).

A declension is "a class of substantives (nouns or adjectives) that exhibits similar inflectional markings for case and definiteness" (§5.4, p. 182), and Ryding sorts nouns and adjectives into eight of them (pp. 182–183), a classification she calls her own, "not standardized" (p. 167). A declension is therefore given here by its endings, and a noun by its stem and its declension, its form being the article, the stem and the ending. What a declension's endings do not distinguish no noun of the declension distinguishes (Noun.form_eq_form_iff). The triptote gives each case its own ending (§5.4.1, p. 183). The dual, the two sound plurals and the indefinite diptote have one ending for the genitive and the accusative, and "are considered to exhibit all three cases; it is just that the genitive and accusative have exactly the same form" (§5.4.2, p. 187). The defectives have one for the nominative and the genitive (§5.4.3, p. 197), and the indeclinables and the invariables one for all three cases (§§5.4.4–5.4.5, pp. 199–200).

Main declarations #

Arabic.ModernStandard.Case: the three cases, in the order of the grammars.
Arabic.ModernStandard.State, article, State.toUD: the three states, the article of each, and their Universal Dependencies tags.
Arabic.ModernStandard.Declension: a declension, by its endings, and the eight declensions.
Arabic.ModernStandard.Noun, Noun.form: a noun by its stem and declension, and its form in each state and case.
Noun.form_eq_form_iff, Noun.injective_form_iff: a noun distinguishes the cases its declension's endings distinguish.
Declension.triptote_injective, Declension.twoWay_eq_iff, Declension.diptote_eq_iff, Declension.defective_eq_iff, Declension.caseless_eq: the cases each declension merges.
Declension.nunation, Declension.definite_eq_indefinite, Declension.construct_eq_definite, Declension.nuun_deletion: how the endings mark the states.

Implementation notes #

The endings of the definite and the indefinite are read off the paradigm tables of §5.4 (pp. 184–201), one noun to a declension, and each noun's forms are checked against its table. The annexed endings are the definite ones less the final nuun of the dual and the sound masculine plural (pp. 189, 191, 211), checked against Ryding's examples of annexed nouns.

Ryding hyphenates morph boundaries, but not consistently (al-bayt-u and bayt-u-n beside al-muHaamii, mustashfan), so the forms are her transliterations without the hyphens inside the word, the boundary between stem and ending being given by the stem. The endings of the defectives and the indeclinables are the ones Ryding names, -in (p. 198, fn. 99), -ii, -an and -aa (p. 169, fn. 55); the ending of the invariables is their -aa (p. 169, fn. 55), and the sound feminine plural's ending includes its suffix -aat, on which it is marked for case (p. 191).

Ryding numbers the declensions but gives the two sound plurals different numbers on p. 183 and p. 187, so the declensions go by name here. Her defective declension also takes in diptote plurals such as maqaah-in 'cafés', whose indefinite accusative maqaah-iy-a has no nunation (p. 198); Declension.defective is the declension of the singular muHaam-in. The five nouns of the triptote, ʾab 'father' and the rest, which lengthen the case vowel when annexed (pp. 186–187), are not represented.

Modern Standard Arabic case #

Main declarations #

Implementation notes #

References #

The nouns of Ryding's tables #

Syncretism #

The states #