Arabic Grammar - Division

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.