This is a collaborative page put together by students on CompLit 252A (Poetry) in Fall 2015. It notes some of the things they learned (anew) when working through the chapters of the Thackston grammar each week. The notes reflect each student's different terminologies for talking about grammar, and their diverse starting points.

Lesson One

- Diptote nouns have identical indefinite accusative and genitive cases but all nouns are inflected as triptotes when definite. [Tori]

- I thought the third case is 'dative' but it is in fact genitive! [ella]

- Clusters of more than two consonants do not occur in classical Arabic [Katherine]

Lesson Two

-The small initial ص is a sign of elision. [Tori]

- All adjectives can be used as nouns! [ella]

- Nouns that have different endings for each of the three cases are called triptotes [Katherine]

Lesson 3

-It is not possible to have a construct with the first word indefinite and the second word definite. Ex: كتاب الرسل would be كتاب لرسل or كتاب من كتب لرسل. [Tori]

- [Katherine] had same

- Didn't know idaafa was unique to Semitic languages [ella]

-الأسبوع الثالث: التمييز يجيب على سؤال (في ماذا؟) ،أي في ماذا محمود أفضل مني؟ محمود أفضل منك خطاً ،أي محمود له خط كتابة أفضل ،فتكون كلمة (خطاً) تمييز منصوب [Ali]

-الأسبوع الرابع: المفعول لأجله يجيب على سؤال (لماذا؟) ،أي لماذا أعتذر محمود لمريم؟ أعتذر محمود لمريم أسفاً ،أي محمود أعتذر لأنه يشعر بالأسف، فتكون كلمة (أسفاً) مفعول لأجله منصوب [Ali]

Lesson 5

-Non-human plurals in Koranic Arabic use plural feminine adjectives rather than singular. [Tori]

- same as Tori! [ella]

- in Koranic Arabic all sound feminine plurals take strict adjectival agreement, but in MSA/Post-koranic Arabic, they take deflected agreement [Katherine]

-الأسبوع الخامس: الإختلاف الأكبر بين المدرستين البصرية والكوفية النحويتين هو أن الأولى (والتي هي شكل النحو المستعمل في يومنا هذا) اعتبرت النحو منهج مغلق لا يقبل التأثيرات والتغييرات الخارجية وبأن اللغة العربية التي تحدثها البدو هو الصحيح. فيما اعتبرت المدرسة الكوفية النحو منهج مفتوح يقبل إضافات ألسنة وثقافات غير عربية

Lesson 6

-قد or لقد is added to the beginning of sentences for emphasis and indicates the past perfect.[Tori]

- [Katherine] had same/similar

- I didn't know that if the feminine noun does not come right after the verb, the verb can conjugated as masculine, nor that human plural can be considered as feminine in certain cases [ella]

-الأسبوع السادس: لا يجوز حذف الألف في الأسماء المقصورة المحتوية على حروف كثيرة عند التثنية حتى وإن بدت ثقيلة عند نطقها. على سبيل المثال: مثنى خوزلى ومستشفى خوزليان ومستشفيان وليس خوزلان ومستشفان [Ali]

Lesson 7

- Why ل receives fatha when joined with enclitic pronoun [ella]

- Preposition endings in alif maqsura take the y before adding enclitics [Katherine]

-الأسبوع السابع: عند الإشارة لمكان بعيد يمكن استعمال (ثَمَّ) و(هَنَّا) و(هِنَّا) و(هنالك) بدلاً من هناك [Ali]

Lesson 8

-Demonstratives can only precede the noun they modify if it has a definite article. Ex:

.في مدينة النبي هذه --> in this city of the prophet. [Tori]

- The difference between هذا and ذلك is a matter of distance [ella]

- demonstratives agree in gender and number with the words to which they refer [Katherine]

-الأسبوع الثامن: (حتى) لها ثلاثة أشكال. للتعليل: تمرن حتى تضعف. و للإشارة للانتهاء:سوف أدرس حتى الأسبوع القادم. و للتعظيم أو التحقير: العديد من الناس يحجون كل عام حتى المسنون [Ali]

Lesson 9

-Relative pronouns can be nominalized, ie stand in for the subject. Ex: .سجد الذي سمع الامر

يعني, "He who heard the command bowed down."[Tori]

- I was not familiar with the structure ان الذين - those who... [ella]

- I wasn't familiar with the structural way Thackston categorizes verbs so I spent time that week looking into that [Katherine]

-الأسبوع التاسع: (حتى) يمكن أن تكون حرف ابتداء فيكون ما بعدها مبتدأ وخبر: وحتى محمد حزين

Lesson 10

-The active participle can also be translated in the future tense. [Tori]

- I didn't know كل + اسم فاعل yields past progressive [ella]

-الأسبوع العاشر: (الذي) تستعمل كوصلة إلى وصف المعارف بالجمل، مثل: أحببت محمد الذي لطالما ساندني

Lesson 11

-Verbal noun as a verbal complement: maSdar used mean a verb in the most general, gerund-esque sense w/the verb's matching pronoun, y3ani: هو منعك من الذهب الى الدكان (he prevented you from going to the store) [Madeleine]

- I didn't know the ل of the verb is omitted in اسم فاعل when it is ى [ella]

- p. 67 the subject is genitive and objective is accusative for دخول الرجال البيت [Katherine]

Lesson 12

-The imperfect tense can denote past or future action w/ context alone rather than with كان/سوف [Tori]

-Perfect indicative as a complement to the object, y3ani: شوفتهم يمشيون الى المدرسة (I saw them walking to school) [Madeleine]

- Use و and a pronoun to mean while p. 73 [Katherine]

Lesson 13

-The particle الا does not affect the case of the following noun. [Tori]

- I didn't know about the 5 names and how they change according to case. [ella]

- لا followed by an indefinite noun in the mansoub indicates total negation of the category [Alex]

- the word ذو is a definite word giving possession [Katherine]

Lesson 14

-Alif Maqsura cannot follow a ي. For feminine singular elatives ending with alif maqsura, the ي is followed by a long alif. Ex: دنيّ-->دنيا [Tori]

-Didn't know the uses of خير and شر as better and worse. [ella]

-"As an adjective in the comparative degree, the masculine singular elative form is used regardless of the gender and number of the referent" [Alex]

-ManSoob (accusative) nekira (indef) can be used to mean "in terms of" or "with respect to" y3ni: انا اكبر منك عمرًٍِِِِِِِ. [Madeleine]

- a definite elative is explicitly superlative i.e. I am your highest lord: أنا ربكم الأعلى [Katherine]

Lesson 15

- For numbers 3 through 10: if the singular of the noun being counted is masculine the number appears in feminine form and vice versa [Alex]

-Chiastic concord (see Alex's post) is used even when the counted noun is plural, ie the nonhuman plural is not treated as feminine singular as it would be with a regular adjective. [Tori]

-Male noun takes female number, female noun takes male number [Madeleine]

- same as previous, also no. one (wahid) functions as a regular adjective [Katherine]

Lesson 16

- Nouns in the fa'in pattern (قاض) use the fu'at (قضاة) plural pattern [Alex]

-I didn't realize there are different ways to pluralize a fa'il depending on if it is a noun pattern or adjectival pattern. [Tori]

-Some broken plurals have a secondary plural, like: كاتب --> كتاب --> كتبة [Madeleine]

- for imperfect, often the alif maqsura becomes a standard y (ya) in the dual and feminine plurals [Katherine]

Lesson 17

- Verbs starting with radical W but with a doubled letter (such as ودد) do not drop the W (ex. يودّ) [Alex]

-doubly weak verbs do not lose their second radical in the imperfect indicative (ex: روي becomes يروي in 3rd masculine singular) [Tori]

- تود لو ان -- the construct used translates to 'she wishes there were' - I forgot how لو can function in this way p.103 [Katherine]

-The لو works kind of like ان after ود (to wish) [Madeleine]

Lesson 18

-The subjunctive is used after future negation (لن) [Tori]

-The subjunctive is used after the hypothetical fa- (ف) [Alex]

- ما كان لئ- ان is understood to mean 'it was not possible' (I also didn't remember most of the subjunctive) [Katherine]

-The subjunctive (manSoob-ization?) for verbs whose last root-letter are alif maksooras, there is no change from indicative, except for dropping the noons in enti, muthanna, hum [Madeleine]

Lesson 19

- الم is the question form of لم like: "الم تذهب؟" means: "did NOT go?" [Madeleine]

- For the imperative, if the stem vowel is u then the jussive begins with a prosthetic u (i.e. اكتب uktub). If the stem vowel is a or i a prosthetic i is added. [Alex]

-When wa- or fa- comes before li-, li- loses its vowel and becomes wa-l- or fa-l- [Tori]

- - for jussive, la, lm, l- are all signifiers [Katherine]

Lesson 20

-In hollow verb jussives, the hollow letter gets chopped out in the ana, naHnu, enta, hua, heya like لم تكن [Madeleine]

-The imperative of a hollow verb does not use a prosthetic vowel (i.e. قم qum) [Alex]

-A long vowel can't be followed by a consonant so C2w/y verbs lose their long vowels in the jussive to allow for the sukuun. [Tori]

- same as Alex! [Katherine]