It's a good idea but I think there should at least be a citation to a source, for the readers to be able to double-check what it means. Authoritative sources in Western languages are Wright's "A Grammar of the Arabic Language" and Fisher's "Grammatik des klassischen Arabisch". Or it should at least be double-checked before publication.
There are some finer points in grammar which specifically pertain to the Quran which for example sometimes makes a general rule not entirely true and one of such is actually the gender. This page states that non-human plurals always take feminine singual for adjectives, but this is not ALWAYS the case in the Quran. Example: Q24:24 وَلَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ آيَاتٍ مُّبَيِّنَاتٍ Here we see "verses", a non-human plural, taking "clear" in feminine plural. According to Classical Arabic grammar it should be: آيات مبينة I also have never heard of words that behave neither masculine nor feminine in Arabic. This page claims that they exist (the example given is 'chairs') but then contradicts itself in using 'chairs' as a masculine plural at the end. The distinction the page makes is between 'semantic gender' and 'grammatical gender' but I doubt if Arabic really has this distinction. For example, the word ملائكة is semantically masculine plural and is as such grammatically treated, while this page gives the false impression it is only 'semantically masculine'. I did not investigate this issue further (I will, but not now) so if anyone has something to say on it, please do. Kind regards, Eric M.A. student Islamic Studies McGill University, Montreal > Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:01:40 +0100 > Subject: Would you like to write a brief summary of a key topic in Quranic > Arabic grammar? > From: k...@kaisdukes.com > To: comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk > > Salamu Alaykum, > > Hello All. We are hoping to soon release a new version of the Quranic > Arabic Corpus (version 0.21). Major highlights in this release include > an extended treebank, improved linguistic annotation, and the first > version of pronoun resolution for key chapters of the Quran. An > informal list of new planned features here can be found here: > http://kaisdukes.wordpress.com/category/quranic-arabic-corpus. > > As part of this release, we would really like to see the grammar > documentation section extended. These online annotation guidelines are > useful not only to ensure consistency in the word-by-word grammar > pages, but also allow new visitors of the site to get an overview of > key topics. We would like to extend an open invitation for submissions > to the annotation guidelines. Would you be interested in putting > together a brief 1 or 2 page write-up on a particular topic in Quranic > grammar? For example, here is an interesting page on gender: > http://corpus.quran.com/documentation/gender.jsp > > Here is another example page, on the different semantic usages of the > prefix alif in the Quran: > http://corpus.quran.com/documentation/particlealif.jsp > > If you have a small amount of time, it would be great to get a write > up on an interesting topic! Some ideas for this (but not limited to): > > - An explanation of Arabic roots for beginners (trilateral and > quadrilateral radicals) > - Brief summary of Arabic verb patterns (wazn and masdar) > - A table explaining verb forms I to XII (we annotate these forms on > the corpus, but we don't have any documentation on them online) > - The difference between harf tafseer and harf madsadree > > It would be great for others with knowledge on these topics to > contribute even a little bit to this. Feel free to submit a write up > to me directly: k...@kaisdukes.com > > You don’t even have to write up something too long. Even a couple of > paragraphs on a key topic would be great, although a strong preference > is for submissions to include references to well-accepted literature. > Don’t feel limited to the above topics; anything is more than welcome. > We can also extend the existing documentation pages here: > http://corpus.quran.com/documentation/grammar.jsp, so feel free to > include new notes on an existing topic as well. If you feel like > writing something, please drop me an e-mail, and we can talk about it > further. Looking forward to hearing from you! > > Kind Regards, > > -- Kais Dukes > > Language Research Group > School of Computing > University of Leeds > > http://www.kaisdukes.com - Kais Dukes > http://corpus.quran.com - The Quranic Arabic Corpus > _________________________________________________________________ New Windows 7: Find the right PC for you. Learn more. http://windows.microsoft.com/shop
