Arabic Plural Nouns – Arabic Number of Nouns

 

The emphatic active participles that refer to male humans are all standardly pluralized by the addition of the masculine plural ending to them regardless of whether they were participles or agent nouns, except for the structure fa“eel which is often pluralized irregularly.

Examples:

N.B. in perfect Classical Arabic, fa“eel, mif”aal, and mif”eel do not take the masculine plural ending. A general rule is that participles that can modify feminine nouns as adjectives without having feminine markers (q.v.) do not take the masculine plural ending.

Active participles and emphatic active participles referring to male humans can have an augmentative tied taa'< suffixed to them; in that case, they cannot take the masculine plural ending just as if the tied taa'< were feminine.

The standard passive participle structures are all meemic; they all begin with m- prefixes (ma- for form-I-derived and mu- for the rest). These words are all pluralized by the addition of the masculine plural suffix to them when they refer to male humans.

Examples:

 

The primary function of the active-participle-like structures in Standard Arabic is as agent nouns. This is why these structures are the least among the participles to take the masculine plural ending. Structures that can take the masculine plural ending include fa“il, fay“il, fa“ool, and ‘af”al when it is functioning as a comparative adjective.

Examples:

Fa“ool does not take the masculine plural ending in pure Classical Arabic. Comparative ‘af”al does take it in Classical Arabic but rarely does so in modern Arabic.

Active-participle-like structures that do not take the masculine plural ending are the rest of the structures, which include fa“l, fi“l, fu“l, fa“al, fu“ul, fa“aal, fu“aal, fa“eel, ‘af”al whose feminine form is fa“laa'<, and fa“laan whose feminine form is fa“laa.

 

۩Summary

The masculine plural ending used to be added to all masculine nouns, but in the current Arabic it is added only to participles referring to male humans provided that they function as participles not as nomina agentis.

The masculine plural ending cannot be added to the following:

• Feminine nouns

• Masculine nouns not referring to humans

• Masculine nouns referring to humans but not derived from verbs

• Masculine nouns derived from verbs and referring to humans but not participles

• Participles referring to humans but ending with a tied taa'<

• Non-meemic, non-emphatic participles referring to humans and functioning as non-adjective agent nouns

• Participles that can modify feminine nouns as adjectives without having feminine markers

 

Masculine nouns that do not take the masculine plural ending are pluralized irregularly or by means of the feminine plural suffix.

 

 

Extra Note: The Faa”il Participles

The non-meemic active participles (faa“il) that function as participles appear to be more resistant to change over time than other words.

 

An interesting example from modern spoken Arabic is found in the dialect of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo (Halab).

 

In standard North Syrian, the long A vowel (aa =ā) is changed to long E (ai = ē). However, as the dialect of urban Aleppo began to lose this feature, the long E in the faa“il participles (fai“el) was changed back to a long A (faa“el). Interestingly, this happened only in participles functioning as agent nouns but not ones functioning as participles.

 

Examples:

 

 

So participles in Aleppo have two pronunciations for each, an original pronunciation with an ē sound that indicates “doing,” and another one with an ā sound that indicates “doer” (there are exceptions though, like jaime“ (mosque), baired (cold), saikhen (hot), “ailiy (high) ‘aikher (last), etc.).

 

I see this similar to how the participles functioning as participles retained the regular pluralization in Arabic, whereas ones functioning as agent nouns became irregularly pluralized.

 

Irregular nouns

For description of irregular noun types, you may click here

 

I. Shortened Nouns

Shortened nouns are nouns that end with a long A vowel (-aa  ـا / ـى ).

Shortened nouns that can take the masculine plural are all masculine singulars, so the final weak A can never be a suffix in this case; it will always be part of the stem and turned from w or y.