3.2 NUMBER – العدد

 

The third property of the اسم is number. All words in Arabic have a singular version (مُفْرَدٌ), a pair version (مُثَنَّى) and a plural version (جَمْعٌ).The singular and pair are standard and easy to recognize. They are the first and second columns of the مسلم chart. When it comes to plurals, however, there are four types. They are:

1)      The sound masculine plural – الجَمْعُ المُذَكَّرُ السَالِمُ

2)      The sound feminine plural – الجَمْعُ المُؤَنَّثُ السَالِمُ

3)      The broken plural – جَمْعُ تَكْسِيْرٍ

4)      The plural by meaning – اسْمُ جَمْعٍ

 

THE SOUND MASCULINE PLURAL

The sound masculine plural refers to the third column in the masculine version of the مسلم chart (مُسْلِمُوْنَ، مُسْلِمِيْنَ، مُسْلِمِيْنَ). This type of plural is used only for beings of intellect. This includes humans, angels (الملائكة), and jinn. Even though this type of plural is known as the sound masculine plural, it is also used for mixed groups that include both men and women.

This type of plural is known as a sound plural because the original make-up of the word remains sound. That is to say the original form of the word does not change. The ون/ين endings are simply added onto the singular version without affecting its form.

THE SOUND FEMININE PLURAL

The sound feminine plural refers to the third column in the feminine version of the مسلم chart (مُسْلِمَاتٌ، مُسْلِمَاتٍ، مُسْلِمَاتٍ). This type of plural is used for both beings of intellect and inanimate objects. It cannot be used to refer to mixed groups (a group made up of both men and women).

This type of plural is known as a sound plural because the original make-up of the word remains sound. The اتٌ/اتٍ endings are simply added onto the singular version without affecting its form.

BROKEN PLURALS

Broken plurals are plurals in which the original make-up of the word is broken. In English, generally, to create a plural, an “s” is added to the end of the word and the original word remains unchanged. For example, “book” becomes “books” and “house” becomes “houses”. There are some words, however, that do not follow this pattern. The plural of “goose”, for instance is “geese”. The plural of “tooth” is “teeth”, and the plural of “mouse” is “mice”.

In a similar way, in many cases in Arabic, an ending combination (ون/ين/اتٌ/اتٍ) can be added to the singular version of a word to make it plural. There are some cases, however, where the original form of the اسم is broken. The plural of مَسْجِد for example, is مَساجِد. The ا appears in the middle of the word in the plural version and breaks the original form of the word. Likewise, the plural of the word كِتابٌ isكُتُبٌ . In this case, the ا is eliminated and the حركات on the word change. The original form of the word does not remain intact.

Because broken plurals do not have an ending combination that indicates that they are plural, they tend to look like singular words. The only way to tell the difference between a singular word and a broken plural is to know the definition or memorize the broken plural patterns. Below are some common broken plural patterns that appear in the Quran.

 

Notice that some broken plural patterns are partly-flexible and some are fully-flexible.

PLURAL BY MEANING

There are words that appear to be singular but are considered plural because they have a plural meaning in that they refer to a group comprised of many members.

 

THE GRAMMATICAL TREATMENT OF PLURALS

What is meant by “grammatical treatment” will become clearer when we study pronouns, pointing words, fragments, and sentences. For now, MEMORIZE the rules below. There are two rules pertaining to the grammatical treatment of plurals.

1)      All non-human plurals are treated as SINGULAR FEMININE

E.g. سَيَّارَاتٌ

2)      Everything else is treated “as is”:

a.      The sound masculine human plural is treated as PLURAL MASCULINE

E.g. مُسْلِمُوْنَ

b.      The sound feminine human plural is treated PLURAL FEMININE

E.g. مُسْلِمَاتٌ

c.       Words that are plural by meaning are treated as PLURAL MASCULINE

E.g. قَوْمٌ

d.      Human broken plurals are treated as PLURAL MASCULINE

E.g. رُسُلٌ

➢ DRILL 2 How are these words treated grammatically?