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Nouns

Gender of Nouns

Feminine Markers (continued)

3. Shortened ʔalif

The last feminine marker is the least specific to feminine nouns. It is the “shortened ʔalif“ الأَلِفُ المَقْصُوْرَةُ (see §II.12.). Nouns that end with a shortened ʔalif are called “shortened nouns.”

The final hamza·t of the extended ʔalif ـاء is dropped in the modern spoken dialects, and in those dialects the extended ʔalif is not distinguished from the shortened ʔalif ـا .

Just like the ـاء , the ـا / ـى can be a feminine marker only when the ـا / ـى  is fourth letter or beyond in a word (i.e. the word has four letters or more). If the ـا / ـى is third letter, then it is an original letter of the word and cannot be a marker.

Terminal ـا  can be altered from a terminal root-letter w, and terminal ـى  can be altered from a terminal root-letter  y. A terminal weak letter is turned to ـا / ـى only if it is preceded by a short A vowel:

‑aW→ ‑aa

‑aY→ ‑a·y

Thus, a terminal shortened ʔalif will be found in words that have the following ending:

Where l is a variable final root-letter, and a is fixed and additional (an a is always additional because it is not a letter to begin with).

This ending is common in verbal nouns, passive participles, time and place nouns, tool nouns, and irregular plurals; and in none of these it is a suffix.

1) Shortened Nouns with Less than Four Letters

Mostly verbal nouns, nouns structured as verbal nouns, or irregular plural nouns. The ending ‑ȃ/‑a·y is part of the stem.

Verbal nouns are masculine unless a tied tȃʔ is attached to them, which is uncommon in this case. Irregular plurals are feminine unless referring to male humans.

Thus, unless irregular plurals, shortened nouns with less than four letters are masculine with rare exceptions (I found two exceptions.)

Examples, click on the Arabic word to hear it:

As usual, verbal nouns are commonly used as female personal names although they are masculine grammatically.

Examples:

2) Shortened Nouns with Four Letters or More

In nouns with four letters or more, there are two possibilities:

I. Derived nouns & irregular plurals

Derived Nouns with four letters or more, like those with less than four letters, are masculine. Derived nouns that can end with a non-suffix ‑ȃ/‑a·y are verbal noun structures that begin with an additional m‑ (“mīmic” verbal nouns), passive participles, time and place nouns, tool nouns, and the ʔafʕal agent noun stem.

Examples, click on the Arabic word to hear it:

Passive participles are commonly used as male personal names.

Adjectives of the structure ʔafʕal have two situations:

ʔAfʕal adjectives can end with ‑ȃ/‑a·y That is original and not a feminine marker when the final root-letter is w or y.

Examples, click on the Arabic word to hear it:

The last word is an exception.

Irregular plurals are always feminine unless they refer to male humans where they can be masculine as well. It is possible for the ‑ȃ/‑a·y suffix to appear attached in irregular plural structures (faʕla·y & faʕȃla·y), but in this case it will NOT be a feminine marker.

Irregular plurals that end with ‑ȃ/‑a·y usually refer to humans.

Examples:

II. Faʕla·y, fuʕla·y, verbal nouns, and loanwords

Nouns and adjectives of the following structures are feminine:

These are standard agent noun structures; the ‑ȃ/‑a·y ending in these structures is a feminine marker.

The masculine form of faʕla·y is faʕlȃn. They are both nomina diptota. They usually denote qualities that are related to “emptiness” or “fullness,” and they are common in female and male names, respectively.

Examples, click on the Arabic word to hear it:

The structure fuʕla·y differs from faʕla·y in only one vowel. However, this structure has a distinguished and an important function: it functions as a feminine superlative adjective.

Examples:

The masculine form of fuʕla·y is ʔafʕal which is a “bisexual” comparative structure. When the definite article is added to ʔafʕal, it becomes the masculine superlative form.

Both fuʕla·y and ʔafʕal are nomina diptota (any noun ending with an additional ‑ȃʔ or ‑ȃ/‑a·y is a nomen diptotum).

The ‑ȃ/‑a·y ending of a verbal noun will be a feminine marker if the verbal noun achieves the following:

Such verbal nouns with a suffixed feminine ‑ȃ/‑a·y are infrequent—verbal nouns more commonly take the tied tȃʔ as a feminine marker. They are usually of the forms fiʕla·y and fuʕla·y and are commonly used as female personal names.

Examples:

These are also diptota because they end with a feminine ‑a·y.

The diminutive forms of structures carrying a feminine ‑ȃ/‑a·y also carry one. All the structures carrying a feminine ‑ȃ/‑a·y that have been mentioned so far share one diminutive form which is fuʕayla·y.

Finally, foreign nouns ending with an A sound (which are common) often end with a feminine ‑ȃ/‑a·y in Modern Standard Arabic (in Classical Arabic a terminal tied tȃʔ was also commonly used).

Examples, in modern Arabic:

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