Before we can describe the grammatical
order of words in this comparative concordance we will first introduce some grammatical distinctions that will be used consistently on this site.
We start with the distinction between morphological and syntactical analysis. In English the morphological analysis of a word deals with the grammatical structure of that word in and by itself while its
syntactical analysis
is occupied with the the relationship of that same word to other words in a sentence. This helpful distinction in English does not apply with equal simplicity to Arabic. For in this Semitic language you encounter words whose English translation constitutes a phrase and sometimes even a complete sentence (e.g. the single Arabic word
fa'allamahu means so he taught him, making up a complete sentence in English)! This complexity is achieved with the help of one or more prefixes and/or, at most, one suffix, which are affixed to the core
word in Arabic. In addition, the syntactical position of an Arabic word in a sentence very often determines certain aspects of its form, especially its ending (e.g. the Arabic bilbayti means in the house
and the Arabic walbaytu means and the house; the same word house appearing first in the genitive as bayti and then in the nominative as baytu). For these reasons the grammatical
analysis of an Arabic word in and by itself already necessitates both a morphological and
a syntactical analysis - and remember, the latter without recourse to other words appearing in the complete sentence to which the word under consideration belongs. We therefore introduce here the distinction between (simple) morphological forms and (complex) syntactical forms for Arabic words. A
syntactical form is an Arabic word exactly as it appears in a given text, including possible prefixes, a suffix and special endings reflecting its syntactical state in a sentence. A morphological form
is taken to be a syntactical form stripped of all its prefixes and suffixes and in abstraction of those aspects of its morphology that are determined by its syntactical position.
Each morphological form can be associated with one stem form. For verbs and nouns the stem form is taken to be the associated verb in its active perfect, third person, masculine singular form. For particles the
stem form is identical with the morphological form. For proper names the stem form is the respective morphological form in the singular and, where possible, masculine form.
A root
is associated with any specific form of an Arabic word. This root is composed of the basic consonants that characterise the respective form. For most verbs and nouns the root contains only three consonants (so-called radicals). For particles and proper names the root is taken to be the set of consonants out of which their respective stem forms are constituted.
We illustrate these distinctions using the following examples:
1) Verb
a) complex syntactical form wasayushajji'uhum = and he will encourage them
b) morphological form yushajji'u
= he encourages
c) stem form shajja'a = he encouraged
d) root shin+jim+'ain (three radicals)
2) Noun
a) complex syntactical form wabishajaa'atihaa
= and with her courage
b) morphological form shajaa'a = courage
c) stem form shaja'a = (no meaning in Arabic)
d) root shin+jim+'ain (three radicals)
3) Particle
a) complex syntactical form wa'ilayhi = and to him
b) morphological form 'ilaa = to
c) stem form 'ilaa = to
d) rootalif+lam+
ya (three radicals)
The Arabic texts of the Bible and the Qur'an used to compile this comparative concordance contain 514,307 syntactical forms. A large number of these words appear more than once in this corpus
of texts. If you count such words only once, then we arrive at a word list of 85,690 different syntactical forms out of which the texts of the Bible and the Qur'an are composed. The syntactical forms in this word list contain 30,009 different morphological forms. And these Biblical and Qur'anic forms are based on only 5,611 different roots! (This statistical information is tentative, as the grammatical analysis of the words involved is not yet complete and mistakes in typing and analysis cannot be excluded.)
