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:
“That crazed girl improvising her music,
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship
Her knee-cap broken.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: and has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
“O, if you raise this house against this house
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)