Introduction
The morphological ontology of the early Arab grammarians shows the metamorphosis of its tenses. The Arabic syntax in terms of tense and linguistics is divided into two primary forms: faal and yafal. The faal describes the past tense, while yafal describes the present and future tense. Faal and yafal can be used with other verbs to instill meaning and vector framework in their linguistic orientation (Fauzi et al., 2019). It is fundamental to know the verbal and non-verbal linguistics of the Arabic dialect to categorize the aspect categories. Therefore, the starting point is the meta-grammar used as a noetic principle. The Gemeinte is important in making the utterances made by a speaker when speaking Arabic. Equally, the intentum and signum categorized the functionality of conjunctions in the Arabic contexts.
Colloquial Arabic needs progressive reading, listening, writing, and speaking to communicate confidently. According to Levantine Arabic, the natives have useful vocabularies that can help non-natives grasp the linguistic orientation of the language proficiency (Fauzi et al., 2019). Therefore, Arabic emanates from a Semitic language with three living languages: Amharic, Maltese, and Hebrew. The language has 28 letters representing short vowels, consonants, and other pronunciations markers. Levantine Arabic (LA) is spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
Arabic Pronunciation and Consonants
The phoneme is used as a distinctive sound in various semantics of the Arab linguistic. For instance, some words are used to describe consonants, while others describe vowels. The alterations at times make the word useful or render it passive in a statement. When the parameters are changed, the meanings are also rendered meaningless (Nazir et al., 2019). Consonants are described based on voicing, area of articulation, and manner used in articulation. For example, /s/ and /z/ are pronounced differently based on the voicing: /s/ is pronounced with noiselessness and /z/ is voiced. The articulations of Arabic linguistics need variations in tongue, lips, and teeth. In the Arabic language, the consonants are pronounced through oral or nasal. The nasal consonants are /m, n/, and the lateral sound is /l/. The parameter of Arabic is a mode of laying emphasis based on the consonant emphatic simulation (Nazir et al., 2019). For instance, Arabic /s/ is similar to /s/ in English, but the emphatic /S/ requires lowering the posterior vocal tract. The articulation is similar to its counterparts, such as /s, S/, /dh, DH/, and /t, T/.
The Arabic /t/ is not the same as the English /t/ due to systemic sociolinguistic. LA has variated grasps in transliteration keys that come as two or four shaped positions. According to Arabic alphabets, the descriptions are free from their articulations (Nazir et al., 2019). The following are simulations that are fundamental in getting the Arabic matrix.
- أ/ ʔ/ – this is similar to the glottal plosive sound because, during the pronunciation, the air is blocked below the glottis and then released simultaneously (Nazir et al., 2019). For example, during the performance exercise, repeating the vowel found in “egg” severally makes the pronouncer realize that there are a series of glottal plosives of the repetitive vowel.
- ث/ th/ – the sound varies amongst Arabic speakers based on gender, social class, and area of residence such as rural or urban (Gusdian & Lestiono, 2020). Many men and people emanating from rural pronounce this consonant as (/th/: /thalaathih/= tree). Women and people from urban areas convert the same word to (/t/: /talaatih/ = three).
- ح/ H/ – the sound has no English counterpart, categorized under the voiceless pharyngeal fricative.
- ج/ j/ – this sound is similar to English “jealous, but some social groupings in the Arabic language mention it differently. Many women or people from Arabic urban contexts pronounce it like the French word “rouge.”
- خ/ x/ is pronounced with a similar sound to that of the “ch” in Germany “lock.”
- ر/ r/ is not pronounced like the /r/ in English because the dialect is closer to trill. When pronouncing it, the tongue is pulled forward, and then the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge once.
- ص/ S/ – the sound is pronounced as an English /s/ because it is an emphatic articulation. The sound is pronounced using the alveolar ridge when the /s/ is pronounced. Equally, the Arabic /S/ is pronounced with the lower jaw a little bit back (Gusdian & Lestiono, 2020). The primary constriction is the alveolar ridge, and the simulation is the fundamental formulation of the Arabic consonant.
- ض/ D/ – is similar to English /d/, and the pronunciation simulation is similar to the English orientation.
- ط/ T/ and ظ/ DH/ are similar to the emphatic counterpart /t/ and “the” consecutively.
- ع/ 3/ – the sound has no English constant, but the Arabic /H/is the closest. The vocal fold vibration accompanies the sound. It is a sound produced as if someone is being strangled.
- غ/ gh/ – this is voiced as velar fricative, pronounced as the English /g/. The main difference is that the /g/ can be pronounced as a fricative because /gh/ is pronounced when air is constricted. The /gh/ is similar to the /r/ in French “rouge.”
Arabic Tense
It is ideal to know the verb root system to understand the Arabic tense. The Semitic language has a complex logarithm in building words affiliated to the primary root. Many Arabic words emanate from a trilateral root, and the pattern serves as the foundation of all other words (Zhao & Shirai, 2018). For example, k-t-b forms the trilateral root for words affiliated with “writing.” Katib كاتِب refers to a writer, Kitab كِتَاب refers to a book, Maktab مَكتَب refers to an office or desk, and Maktabah مَكتَبة is the bookshop or library.
When it comes to the verb roots, the essential aspect is to know that the trilateral root can absorb up to fifteen verb forms. However, the most common type of trilateral absorption takes ten forms. Individuals can create different verbs by adding prefixes, changing root consonants and suffixes (Zhao & Shirai, 2018). For example, the verb فعل (to do) takes different forms, and the most basic one is the root verb faʿala (فَعَلَ). The second form of faʿala is done by doubling the sound of the letter ع to form faʿʿala (فَعَّلَ). By doubling the letter, it becomes a transitive verb, meaning the action posed was done to someone or something. The third form is fāʿala (فاعَلَ) that means the transitive verb was done with something or someone (Zhao & Shirai, 2018). The same word takes the causative and transitive orientation, and it requires an object to complete when it becomes afʿala (أفْعَلَ). The other conformity of the verb includes tafaʿala as reflexive, tafāʿala as passive, infaʿala when used as passive version, iftaʿala as reflexive version with different nuances, and istafʿala when used as a considerate verb.
Present Tense
The Arabic language uses tense to express ongoing and habitual actions. The emphasis can be shown through adverbs such as “now” and “every day.” The adverb “now in Arabic is “al-ʾān” and “every day” in Arabic is “kulla yawm.” The sentences below show the differential use of tenses in “al-ʾān” and “kulla yawm.”
- ʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-ǧāmiʿah kulla yawm’ = ‘I go to the university every day.’
- ʾataḥaddaṯu maʿ ʾumī al-ʾān’ = ‘I am talking to my mom now ‘
The table on the next page shows an example of conjugation for the verb “to do” (فَعَلَ) (Obiedat, 2019). It is possible to form a negative tense by adding لا prefix before the verb. When the prefix is added to the present tense, it changes its verb into future tense.
Past Tense
The past tense in Arabic is the same as in English tense because the third person form is the verb. The past tense is made using the prefix لم placed before the present tense verb in Arabic (Obiedat, 2019). The table below shows the past tense framework using the verb “to do.”
Arabic Phonetics
The phonetics of the Arabic language is analyzed based on quality or quantity. The vowel quality refers to the tongue height being high or low. The vowel quantity is the duration it takes to produce the vowel while maintaining the quality. For instance, the vowels in bat and beat have different qualities. Each word entails opening the mouth with a different logarithmic degree to be mentioned correctly to maintain quality; in terms of quantity, the tongue position spatializes between high and low parameters (Alrumhi, 2021). The general outlook of beat and bat have differences in /i/ and /æ/. Arabic phonetics has four short and long vowels, and each pair have two vowels that vary in terms of quantity. For example, /nam/ is the imperative verb of sleep, while /naam/ is the past form of the verb. Phonetically, the verb changed in quantity because the second verb doubled the vowel “a,” making it longer than its counterpart.
Arabic Duration
The time taken to pronounce the vowels and consonants in Arabic is very significant in bringing the difference of the meanings. The allophonic and phonemic variation can differentiate between the tense and the meaning of any word. A phonemic logarithm changes the phoneme while the allophonic variation does not distort the word. A phonemic variation results in a change in the new word or rendering the word meaningless (Alrumhi, 2021). In the allophonic variation, the word introduces a dialectal variation, but it does not change the meaning of the word or make it meaningless. The examples below show the phonemic and allophonic variations and how the distortions bring effects.
- Example 1: ham versus hat
- Example 2: BrE. Basil versus AmE. Basil
In example 1, the phonetic variation changes the phoneme /m/ and makes it /t/. The change in example 1 makes the two words have a different meaning. In example 2, the phonemic variation occurs when the first vowel is changed from /eı/ to /æ/. The durational differences in the Arabic language are made by making identical vowels in terms of quality to become variated phonemes (Furqon & Fauzi, 2019). When the difference manifests as vowels, it becomes long or short vowels. The durational difference is utilized through consonants referred to as single or germinate. The examples below show the differences utilized in consonants in the Arabic context.
- Example 1A: katab – to write
- Example 1B: kaatab – the exchange of letters
- Example 2A: daras – to study
- Example 2B: darras – to teach someone
The words in examples 1A and 1B show a difference in vocalic durational difference, while those in 3A and 3B show the consonantal durational difference (Furqon & Fauzi, 2019). Both examples have changed their word difference according to the Arabic logarithm.
Arabic Stress
Stress forms a relative prominence on various syllables within a given context. In Arabic, stress is allophonic, but in English, it is phonemic. This means that stress does not change the meaning of a word in Arabic, but it changes the word’s meaning in English. For example, present is a gift while pre’sent is giving a talk or giving something to an individual. Stress in Arabic enables the listener to distinguish between long and short vowels within a sentence (Al Suwaiyan, 2018). It is also weight-sensitive because the syllable that receives the stress becomes heavier than other syllables within a given sentence. In a sentence, syllable weight is measured by the type and number of segments it contains. Longer vowels become heavier than short vowels, and most of the tie the geminates are segmented across syllable framework. When two or more syllables are distributed across syllables, the syllable is left aligned to receive the commendable stress that it needs to stress a point (Al Suwaiyan, 2018). For example, the last consonant in a word has weight when the last syllable that contains the consonant is unstressed. Any form of stress is done in a manner that it brings the difference in the contextual meaning.
Consonant Clusters and Socio-phonetics
Consonantal adjacency is an important aspect of the Arabic language. Some consonants are permissible in some languages, but it is revoked in others. For instance, the Japanese language accepts /ts/ as an initial, but English accepts the sequence as a word-final position. Arabic has different word initials that cluster its word matrix (Nodari et al., 2019). However, Standard Arabic orientation does not allow the usage of the consonant cluster as a word-initial position. For example, /kitaab/ refers to a book in Modern Standard Arabic but /ktaab/ refers to a book in Levantine Arabic. Equally, Arabic is leveled based on several factors such as gender, economic class, ethnic group, social class, and social relations (Nodari et al., 2019). Gender controls most of the speech varieties, and it categorizes all logarithms into male or female. The socio-phonetic point interdentals /th/, //dh/ and /DH/ are affiliated to the male speech. Females use plain and non-emphatic counterparts whenever they are required to pronounce words with emphatic consonants.
Root Morphology
The Arabic language has a systematic word structure that conforms to mathematical concepts. All Arabic words with independent meanings have their roots made up of three consonants. The three consonants are called radicals linguistically, and their roots may contain more consonants (Haddad et al., 2018). According to the Arabic spectrum, the radicals maintain their order regardless of the segments added in differential derivations. The derivations follow specific template structures that make the root meaning understood. Subsequently, the root concepts are utilized when the new verbs are presented. For example, consider k, t, and b the root meaning of “write.” Below is a list of root morphologies that the consonants can make.
- Example 1: katab to mean, “He wrote”
- Example 2: katbat to mean, “She wrote”
- Example 3: katabu to mean, “They wrote” (masculine)
- Example 4: kaatib to mean “writer” (masculine)
- Example 5: maktuub to mean “Written”
- Example 6: maktabih, which means “library”
- Example 7: ktaab to mean “book”
- Example 8: kutub to mean “books”
From the examples posed above, each word retains its root and maintains the consonants’ radical order. The meaning of the retained root consonants has something related to the consonance meaning (Haddad et al., 2018). Arabic orientation expresses various ideas with different utterances, and when uttered, it might bring different meanings. Therefore, when an individual changes the grammar, word order, cultural setting, word choices, or history, the translation might change the usage of a word or its meaning. It is fundamental to know the language’s pronunciation to bring the difference in masculine sentences and feminine sentiments (Haddad et al., 2018). Any confusion can misguide the listener and bring a different meaning to the conversation or the passage.
Syntactic Aspect in Arabic
The aspect and tense in Arabic show that the verbs interact with the internal arguments such as the modifiers, object, and particles to show aspectual interpretations. Equally, the verb becomes the tense phrase to synchronize with the tense features. Therefore, the tense and aspect features are developed due to syntactic relations and functional projections. The elements in Arabic refer to the definite end of the event or the continuous spectrum of the sentence being posed. Aspect is different from tense because it refers to the timeline that the speaker or writer uttered the words.
Arabic does replace “it” with either “he” or “she” to signify the gender orientation of the object being referred to. Compared to European languages, the Arabic language is substantially different because pronouns can either be independent or part of the word. When the pronoun is part of the given the word, it is a possessive pronoun (Haddad et al., 2018). These pronouns have suffixes at the end of the nouns, prepositions, and verbs. The table below shows the possessive pronouns in a word such as “ktaab” (book). The possessive pronouns are underlined to provide clarity to understand the differentiation.
Number and Gender Agreement
The Arabic language is ambiguous since many words have more sense dependent on the gender addressing it or being addressed. The predefined stop words do not affect the meaning of ambiguous words in the original sentence. The language has a subject-verb order to obtain fluency in active sentences. Whenever individuals use gainful passives, they lack case endings in the Arabic morphology. Equally, the language borrows some foreign semantics equivalent to modern standard Arabic (Kramer & Winchester, 2018). At times, the language is mixed with Jordanian Arabic and modern Arabic due to a lack of competence and clarification on the words posed. Equally, some words have more than one sense depending on the context being used. The word sense disambiguation (WSD) helps people to find the ambiguous word and the aim of its framework (Kramer & Winchester, 2018). The algorithm segmentation eliminates the stop words and ensures that the sentence matches the augmentation context. Gender agreement depends on the algorithm segmentation and the tonal variations based on gender being addressed.
Conclusion
Learning modes of using the verbs and verb tenses in Arabic should be done with care because any mismatch means the whole sentence is formless. It is essential to learn the tense usage, gender matrix, ideological tenses, and prefix usages in various nouns to clarify the Arabic context’s differentiated meanings. The root system in Arabic verbs forms the base of every semantic, and developing the primary verb tense is fundamental in passing the intended ideology. The language has circumstantial and conditional clauses that set the situation of the occurrences. In circumstantial clauses, the subject of discussion is usually the pronoun that is identical to the superordinate clause. The conditional clauses must have the present, future, or past time reference to enable the language to have differentiated degrees of hypothetic. The syntax of the verbs is arranged in the primary and subordinate clauses. In Arabic, every form of passage or speech conforms to its verb formulations to indicate the aspectual and non-habitual anteriority. This shows the temporal verbs’ aspectual character with clear categories of categories between the Levantine Arabic and Modern Arabic.
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