This chapter provides an overview of case morphology in Arabic starting with a discussion of the place of case in Arabic linguistic analysis and its historical basis. Ryding then proceeds to discuss contemporary case theory, valence theory, the lexicalist hypothesis, and case hierarchy theory as they apply to Arabic. She provides an overview of Arabic case morphology and examples of Arabic declensions before describing and analysing each of the three Arabic cases: nominative, genitive, and accusative, including a discussion of accusative/genitive syncretism and peripheral case categories such as the vocative.

Arabic linguistics is a field that has both expanded and shifted over the last fifty years. The coming to the fore of Arabic sociolinguistics, variation theory, corpus linguistics, language acquisition, intercultural pragmatics, and Arabic media studies has enlarged the nature of research topics, strategies, and results so that both spoken and written forms of Arabic have come to be examined from multiple perspectives. Moreover, the development of social media and discussion platforms has had a profound effect on the interface of spoken and written language that has yielded new forms of Arabic discourse. This handbook brings together articles on a range of traditional and contemporary topics from a wide spectrum of research interests. We hope that the integration of new and traditional will represent both the broadened horizon for Arabic linguistic analysis and new congruence within this disciplinary area.

The Arabic lexicon

The Arabic lexicon, the word-stock of the language, consists primarily of words derived through the dominant paronymic root/pattern system of derivational morphology. However, a substantial segment of the lexicon consists of non-root/pattern-based lexemes. These items include solid stems that date back to the earliest forms of Arabic (such as laa ‘no,’ or hum ‘they m.’), borrowed foreign words and expressions, and the results of non-root/pattern processes such as suffixation and compounding for word-creation and lexical expansion. This chapter examines both solid stems and the processes for expansion of the lexicon which supplement the richness of root/pattern Arabic morphology.

Solid stems

Solid stems are words which cannot be reduced morphologically or analyzed in the typical root-and-pattern system. They consist of primarily four sets in Arabic: function words, pronouns, adverbs, and loanwords. Unlike words based on lexical roots, solid-stem words are normally listed according to their orthography in Arabic dictionaries.

Introduction

Derivational morphology creates word stems, or lexemes. It builds and enlarges the lexicon so that concepts may find expression within a language. Sometimes the process of derivation changes a word’s form class (e.g., creating an adjective from a noun, such as tuunis-iyy ‘Tunisian’ from tuunis ‘Tunisia’); sometimes it changes the subclass of a word (creating a transitive verb from an intransitive base, e.g., ʔadxala ‘to insert’ from daxala ‘to enter’). It affects almost all form classes or syntactic categories except those that are closed, such as function words (prepositions, conjunctions, particles). In Arabic, systematic derivation of words from lexical roots is at the heart of the word-creation system, and remains the distinctive feature of Arabic morphology. The fact that Arabic word stems consist primarily of discontinuous morphemes (interlocked roots and patterns) has been of substantial interest to morphological theory in general.

Derivational morphology can be expressed in terms of Word Formation Rules (WFRs). “A basic assumption … is that WFRs are rules of the lexicon, and as such operate totally within the lexicon. They are totally separate from the other rules of the grammar, though not from the other components of the grammar. A WFR may make reference to syntactic, semantic, and phonological properties of words, but not to syntactic, semantic, or phonological rules” (Aronoff 1976: 46). It is also the case that “derivational markers will be encompassed within inflectional markers” (Aronoff 1976: 2). That is, derivation applies to word-stem formation, creating a lexical unit. Inflectional markers are subsequently added to word stems when words are used in context. Derivation – in other words – is prior to inflection. Or, as Aronoff remarks, “Lexeme formation intrinsically feeds inflection” (1994: 127).