Division
For classical Arabic grammarians, the grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:
- al-luġah اللغة (language/lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
- at-taṣrīf التصريف (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
- an-naḥw النحو (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection (ʾiʿrāb) which had already been lost in dialects.
- al-ištiqāq الاشتقاق (derivation) examining the origin of the words
- al-balāġah البلاغة (rhetoric) which elucidates construct quality
The grammar or grammars of contemporary varieties of Arabic are a different question. Said M. Badawi, an expert on Arabic grammar, divided Arabic grammar into five different types based on the speaker's level of literacy and the degree to which the speaker deviated from Classical Arabic. Badawi's five types of grammar from the most colloquial to the most formal are Illiterate Spoken Arabic (عامية الأميين ʿāmmiyyat al-ʾummiyyīn), Semi-literate Spoken Arabic (عامية المتنورين ʿāmmiyat al-mutanawwirīn), Educated Spoken Arabic (عامية المثقفين ʿāmmiyyat al-muṯaqqafīn), Modern Standard Arabic (فصحى العصر fuṣḥā l-ʿaṣr), and Classical Arabic (فصحى التراث fuṣḥā t-turāṯ). This article is concerned with the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic exclusively.
Read more about this topic: Arabic Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word division:
“Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple.... Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“For in the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord’s portion: whom, being his firstborn, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him. Therefore all their works are as the sun before him, and his eyes are continually upon their ways.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 17:17-9.
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)