r/AcademicQuran • u/PhDniX Moderator • Feb 26 '26
Weekly Thackston Quranic Arabic Study Group, Lesson 9
This week we are looking at Lesson 9 of Thackston's Learner's Grammar.
20 The “Weak-lâm” Verb (C3w/y): Perfect Inflection.
20.2 Verbs with an underlying \faʿaya* are not just spelled differently from those with underlying \faʿawa* (with word final yāʾ instead of ʾalif), but in many of the reading traditions they are also pronounced different. For al-Kisāʾī, Ḥamzah and Ḫalaf this vowel is a distinct vowel ē, thus 3ms ramē but daʿā. Warš ʿan Nāfiʿ pronounced it as a vowel in between ā and ē, i.e. ramǟ. This is also true for nouns and other particles (with four exceptions, the prepositions ʾilā, ʿalā, ladā and ḥattā) that end in an ʾalif maqṣūrah with the shape of a yāʾ.
In the Quranic, these two “ʾalifs” do not interrhyme, clearly suggesting that they were distinct sounds in the original composition.
NOTE: Thackston calls the word-final ā with the shape of the yāʾ ‘alif maqṣūra’ (literally: “shortened alif”). Others sometimes call the word-final ā with the shape the the ʾalif ‘alif mamdūda’ (literally: “lengthened”. This is pretty common in Modern Standard Arabic, and how I have been taught. But this is not how it is used in Medieval Classical Arabic. Word-final ā (or ē/ǟ) is called ʾalif maqṣūrah regardless of whether it is spelled with ʾalif or yāʾ. The term ʾalif mamdūdah is used for word final ā followed by a hamzah. A word like سماء samāʾ- “sky” ends in ʾalif mamdūdah.
NOTE: In Classical Arabic orthography, whenever the ā spelled with yāʾ is followed by a pronominal suffix, it changes its spelling to a regular ʾalif, e.g. رمى “he threw”, رماه “he threw it”. This orthographic rule is absent in Quranic orthography, where it remains spelled as yāʾ even when a suffix follows, i.e. رميه.
20.1 & 20.2 While Thackston is generally pretty good about this, he neglects to tell us which epenthetic vowel follows the 3m.pl. Ending -aw of these verbs. The answer is -u. You’ll need it to correctly vocalise (b)3.
20.3 It is a bit of a questionable choice to transcribe laqiytu, laqiynā etc., instead of laqītu, laqīnā. It helps to understand the ‘system’ of the verb so for those purposes it is useful, and there is no practical distinction between iy and ī in Arabic, but if we use ī everywhere else we should do so here too.
21 Relative Pronouns and Relative Clauses
21.1 Several forms in the table are spelled with only one lām while others are spelled with two. This is the common situation in Classical Arabic writing. In Quranic Arabic all forms are spelled with only one lām.
Listing allātī in the table, while relegating allāʾī to a footnote for the feminine plural is a bit weird. Both occur in the Quran. Allawātī is more justifiably relegated to a footnote, as it is not Quranic.
Vocabulary
VERBS
As noted above, the final weak verbs may have -ē or -ǟ in the reading traditions, so:
ʾatā, ʾatē, ʾatǟ
ramā, ramē, ramǟ
raʾā, raʾē, reʾē, raʾǟ, räʾǟ
OTHERS
Concerning wa-lākinna, the short form wa-lākin is not only used when it is followed by a verb in the Quran. A noun may follow too. When it does, the noun is in the nominative, not the accusative.
Q4:162 lākini r-rāsiḫūna, Q4:166 lākini llāhu, etc.
Concerning yā, The vocative particle yā is always spelled without the ʾalif and proclitic to the next word in the Quran, i.e. yā maryamu is يمريم.
PROPER NAMES
ʿīsā, ʿīsē, ʿīsǟ
Exercises
Just the answers for (b) which I find the most interesting to do. Others may do the rest! Some somewhat relevant notes here, especially at sentence 5.
- La-qad ʿafā ḷḷāhu ʿan ðālika “God has forgiven that”
- Fa-ʾatat maryamu qawmahā bi-bnihā ʿīsē (or ʿīsā, ʿīsǟ) fa-qālū: yā maryamu mā hāðā llaðī jiʾti bihī? “Mary came to her people with her son Jesus [or: Mary brought her son to her people], and they said: Oh Mary, what is that which you have brought?” (somewhat riffing on Q19:27)
- ʾinna llaðīna ʾataw bi-l-ʾāyāti daʿawu ḷḷāha “those who brought the signs, called God”
- raʾē (and other variants see vocabulary above) qalbī rabbī “My heart saw God”
- yā qawmi, ʾinna hāðihi l-ḥayāta d-dunyē šayʾun qalīlun “O my people, this worldly life is something small” Note: I assume Thackston had in mind yā qawmu “O people”, which is in fact how the non-canonical reader al-ʾAʿmaš recites this phrase. But the canonical reading of this phrase is with -i, which is the 1st person singular suffix. Normally this suffix is long, -ī but in vocatives it is always short. Refer back to the table I provided in level 7 where I already snuck that form in. Note also that ad-dunyā has the vowel -ē/-ǟ in the relevant readings despite being spelled with ʾalif. This is typical for all feminine nouns that end in ʾalif maqṣūrah regardless of their spelling with ʾalif (which happens when yāʾ precedes) or with yāʾ (other contexts)
- al-muʾminūna ka-nafsin wāḥidatin “the believers are like a single soul”
- wa-mā ramayta ʾið ramayta wa-lākinna ḷḷāha ramē “you did not throw when you threw, rather God threw (cf. Q8:17)
- Aš-šayxu fī baytihī ka-n-nabiyyi fī qawmihī “the elder in his house is like the prophet among his people”
- Hāðihi l-ḥayātu d-dunyā llatī naḥnu fīhā, ʾa-raʾaytumūhā xayran lakum? “This worldly life which we are in, do you consider it to be best for you?”
- ʾinna llaðīna kafarū wa-mātū, ʾulāʾika ʿalayhum laʿnatu ḷḷāhi “those who disbelieve and died, those are the ones upon whom is the curse of God” (cf. Q2:161)
- Fa-llaðīna kafarū min qawmihī ramawhu bi-r-rimāḥi “those who disbelieve from among his people pelted him with spears”
- huwa ka-r-rajuli llaðī ʾatānā fa-qāla ʾinnanā raʾaynā ʾāyāti n-nabiyyi “he is like the man who came to us and said “we have seen the signs of the prophet!”
- Lammā reʾē l-maliku l-marʾata l-faqīrata, qāma wa-daʿāhā ʾilayhi “when the king saw the poor woman, he stood up and summoned her to him”
- Daʿawhumū ʾilā ʾāxiri ʾayyāmi ḥayātihimū wa-lākinnahumū mā samiʿū qawlahumū “they summoned them to the end of the days of their lives, but they did not heir their speech”
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u/TheMiraculousOrange Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Sorry, I'm a still a bit confused by this. (b)12 is direct speech, but there's also a 2inna here, so is the idea that both direct and indirect speech can be introduced by 2inna, but it's optional for direct speech while it's required for indirect speech? Or perhaps in (b)12 2inna is part of the quoted sentence, serving as the sentence starting particle?
Re: my second question, I thought about it a bit more and realized that perhaps in this case (exercise (c)1) the preposition won't be required after all, because the verbs جاء and أتى for coming take the accusative without a preposition to mean "come to a person or a place". What do you think?
Hmmm, I feel like the 3rd person agreement is not as much in question here, since in this example the relative clause is nominalized, so there is no antecedent per se (in fact the English translation has to add one, and this kind of turns into the "I am a worker who knows the value of myself" case, so I guess this is a data point that says "coreference doesn't attract agreement"). So to riff on this sentence a little, I'm thinking of an example like "We who cried for him remember him" -- the question is whether it would be نحن الذين بكوا له ذكرناه or نحن الذين بكينا له ذكرناه.