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Mr DENDANE Zoubir
Universit de Tlemcen
Abstract:
The present paper intends to point up that the
Arabic broken plural noun, as labelled by traditional
Arabic grammarians, is undeniably considered, both in
morphological and phonological circles, as the most
sophisticated system of nominal plurality. Its complex
structure consists of a great number of rules due to the
overall morphological patterning of the language and, in
particular, its non-concatenative nature. As a matter of
fact, the Arabic broken plural, sometimes wrongly
referred to as irregular, is regarded as representing a
significant challenge to Natural Language Processing
applications and translation theory. Thus, questions arise
as to a) how to devise approaches to identify the various
plural types; b) how to develop algorithms to deal with
nouns subjected to internal modification of the singular
form. In addition, it is not easy to consider the numerous
patterns of pluralisation in relation to meaning,
particularly in cases where the input is the same singular
stem.
1. Introduction
The present paper is intended to examine one of
the most complex morphological structures that pervade
the Arabic language system: pluralisation a system that
excludes the dual noun, referred to as almuannaa in
Arabic and classified as a separate category.
The Arabic plural system, which consists of a
two-mode formation, sound plural and broken plural
as labelled by traditional Arab grammarians, represents,
with its structural configuration, an immense challenge to
both structural and generative morphologists. While the
morphological patterns of the sound plural observe a
straightforward
regularity,
the
broken
plural
is
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Weak verbs in Arabic have a long vowel or two as part of the triconsonantal root and are subject to changes in different paradigms,
e.g. ql / jaql / qawl, said, says, a saying.
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Paucity
Multiplicity
Ultimate pl.
Types
()
()
()
Number
3 to 10
11 and more
Patterns
4
aful, afl,
afila(tun),
fila(tun)
17
fawil, fail,
fual, fial,
falil, fal,
fal, ful,
fal, etc.
fiala, etc.
in
dictionaries
as
heard
plurals,
i.e.,
68
{ } 13
70
72
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Rfrences
- Kiraz, G. A. (1996). Analysis of the Arabic Broken
Plural and Diminutive (1996). In Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference and Exhibition on MultiLingual Computing
- McCarthy, J. (1981). "A Prosodic Theory of
Nonconcatenative Morphology." Linguistic Inquiry 12:
373418.
- McCarthy, 1983 "A Prosodic Account of Arabic
Broken Plurals," Current Trends in African Linguistics I
(ed) By L. Dihoff, (Dordrecht: Foris, 1983) pp. 263-289.
- McCarthy, J. and Prince, A. 1990a. Foot and word in
Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic broken plural. Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory 8:209282
- McCarthy, J. J. and Prince, A. (1993, 2001) Prosodic
Morphology Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst Rutgers University
10115, USA.
- Soudi, A, Cavalli-Sforza, V. Jamari, A. (2002): Arabic
Noun System Generation. In: Proceedings of the Arabic
Processing Conference, University of Manouba, Tunisia.
- Troyer, M. (2006). Broken plural formation in
Moroccan Arabic
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