The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar PDF
Preview The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar
The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar provides a comprehensive guide to the grammar of the spoken language of Lebanon. I t presents the fundamentals and complexities of the Lebanese variety of Arabic in a practical and organized way. This guide also utilizes side-by-side transliterations in both the Arabic script and the Latin alphabet in the way that they are used by native speakers. The explanations of the grammar concepts are presented in English and are made to be easily understandable for everyone, regardless of prior linguistic knowledge. Special features of this text include endnotes on culture, expressions, and an entire chapter dedicated to regional varieties of Lebanese. T his book is an essential tool for all learners of the Lebanese variety of Arabic, and it is a useful resource for every stage of the language learning process, from beginner to advanced. R ichard A. Kline was born and raised in California. Growing up, he was fascinated by language and spent much of his time learning different languages while attending the University of California, Berkeley, and the American University of Beirut. The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar Richard A. Kline D esigned cover image: stock_colors via Getty Images F irst published 2023 b y Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN a nd by Routledge 6 05 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 R outledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Richard A. Kline The right of Richard A. Kline to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-27370-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-27369-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29241-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003292418 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgments vii Foreword viii 1 Introduction 1 2 The writing system 3 3 Adjectives 10 4 Nouns 16 5 Sentence structure 25 6 Adverbs 28 7 Pronouns 39 8 Prepositions 48 9 The genitive construct 55 10 Ken and its sisters 60 11 The verb system 74 12 Simple past tense 95 13 Present indicative tense 100 14 Future tense 105 vi Contents 15 Auxiliary and modal verbs 107 16 Continuous tense 120 17 Active participles 122 18 Perfect tenses 133 19 Passive participles and passive voice 139 20 Gerunds 146 21 Conditionals 153 22 Imperfect tense and the subjunctive voice 157 23 Imperative voice 161 24 Quantifiers 167 25 Numbers 171 26 Accusative of circumstance 177 27 Exclusion and exception 179 28 Exclamation 183 29 Conjunctions 186 30 Vocatives and discourse markers 188 31 Diminutive 191 32 Regional variation 193 Index 200 Acknowledgments The process of bringing this project to life would not have been successful had it not been for the friendships and professional connections that came into my life over the past ten years. I owe a great deal of thanks to those who actively helped me in my language learning journey, and special gratitude to those who simply communicated with me in Lebanese, acting as teachers without realizing it. I would like to thank Jihad Loutfi, Maya Bader, Simon Hall, Sara Zein, Ziad Othman, and many others too numerous to name for actively supporting and assist- ing in the process of giving life to this project. In addition, I would like to thank my spiritual teacher, Jana Sharaf Khalifa, for providing me with tools to help me realize my soul’s mission. I would also like to thank Ali Hajj Diab for countless hours of assistance in peer- editing this text. Ali is a natural-born teacher with an eye for detail, and the final product of this text is in large part thanks to his skills. In addition, I would like to thank Patricia Masri for generously providing her graphic design skills in creating the diagrams on page 7, as well as Bassel Bou Karroum and Mohammed Kassem Ayoub, for informational support on regional variation. Finally, I owe a special thanks to Marie-Thérèse Labaki, who was my first formal instructor of the Lebanese variety of Arabic and the greatest inspiration for me in terms of making an academic contribution to the pool of language resources for Lebanese. Foreword I am humbled and honored to present this text as the culmination of a ten-year passion project. The process of seeing this from start to finish included learning a language with very limited resources, documenting learning experiences, and cataloguing structural language patterns along the way. It was a combination of personal and academic motivations that led me to embark upon this journey. A s a descendant of the Lebanese diaspora who did not grow up with the lan- guage, I experienced a sense of urgency to learn about this particular part of my heritage when I began my university studies as a young adult. I pressed on to learn the Lebanese variety of Arabic for two main reasons. The first reason is a general love of language and linguistics. There are few experiences as exciting and enrich- ing as learning and using a new language to communicate and connect with others. The second reason is that I believed it could help me connect more to myself and to a part of my heritage that I felt had gone dormant long before I was born due to the assimilative practices that were commonplace for Lebanese and Syrian immi- grants in the early half of the twentieth century in the United States. Nevertheless, I have been fortunate to have the privilege to study and attend university and find an opportunity to move to Lebanon to fulfill a dream. For this I am deeply grateful. G iven the limited resources available to those who wish to learn the Lebanese variety of Arabic, my hope is that this humble contribution will help fill a gap in the field of Semitic and Arabic linguistics that I believe is well overdue for atten- tion. In addition, I hope that this work inspires others, as I have been inspired, to improve and build upon what is available. L ast, and as a disclaimer, I do not assume that this work is necessarily complete, as all academic works in language studies are liable to be improved and revised as interest grows and more scholarship in the field is produced. However, it is a starting point and an encouragement for all to share what they have received to those who seek. Furthermore, I see my work on this project as watering an acorn seed that I’ve planted. Its growth depends on many factors, and even if it dies at any point, at least it can provide some nutrients for the ground so that other life can emerge. Much of what happens next is out of my hands. But to be certain, the only seed that is sure never to offer anything at all is the seed that is never planted. 1 Introduction The corpus of literature available on Arabic linguistics is vast. The academic field, like any other, continues to develop as new thought informs linguistic theory and terminology. There are, of course, ongoing debates within various facets of the discipline. One of the categorical challenges that pose an ongoing debate among linguists in the field of Arabic linguistics is how to think about and where to place Arabic language varieties within the domain. R egister, d ialect , a ccent , slang, and p atois are some of the terms that one can find used to describe vernacular varieties of Arabic. In addition to those, fewer sources may refer to vernacular varieties of Arabic as languages in their own right. This text refers to Lebanese as a language variety. U ntil now, there is no substantiated evidence that spoken Lebanese is absent of its own grammar. If this were the case, it would not be possible to write a book on it. With that said, this text is not written with the intention of engaging in a politi- cal debate over whether or not Lebanese is a language variety; rather, it is written as documentation of what is observable and documentable. The primary goal is to present Lebanese grammar in an organized and practical way to serve as a refer- ence guide for language learners. T here are two liberties that have been taken in regard to this text. The first is invented terminology, which is intended to aid the learner in understanding observable phonological, morphological, and philological phenomena. The two invented terms that are used in this text stem from the verb forms lebanize and sukunify . In essence, to l ebanize something means to make it Lebanese. Regarding language, lebanization occurs when a foreign word is used following the Leba- nese phonological inventory and/or morphed in any way that adheres to Lebanese morphological rules. An example of this would be pluralizing b ank ﻚﻨﺑ as bnouk كﻮﻨﺑ , or turning the English verb save into the Lebanese verb sayyev ﭫّﯿﺳ so that it accords with Lebanese verb declination. The other invented term, sukunify , stems from the Arabic noun s ukun ( نﻮﻜﺳ ), which is the term for the diacritic mark that is used to indicate that there is no short vowel between two consonants. Therefore, sukunification is the process of deleting or near deleting a short vowel between two consonants where it might remain fully in tact in other varieties. An example of this would be the deletion of sound between the S ad and the ghayn in the Standard Arabic word Sa8ir ﺮﯿﻐﺻَ , lending to the l ebanized renditionS8ir (z8ir) ﺮﯿﻐﺻْ , as DOI: 10.4324/9781003292418-1
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