Arabic: An Essential Grammar

151

Chapter 22

Triptotes and diptotes

22.1 Nouns, adjectives and proper names are classified according to

their inflection into two major inflectional types: triptotes and diptotes.

(a) Triptotes

All definite as well as most other nouns and adjectives and some

proper names are triptotes. This means that they take all three

different vocalic case endings (-u, -a, -i) and nunation (-un, -an,

-in) in the indefinite form (see chapters 5 and 8). In Arabic a

triptotic noun or adjective is called َأْلـ ُم ْن َص ِر ُف, i.e. fully declined.

(b) Diptotes

Certain indefinite nouns and adjectives as well as many proper

nouns are called diptotes. They have only two vocalic case

endings: -u for the nominative, and -a for the accusative and

genitive jointly. Another important feature is that they do not

take nunation (-un, -an, -in). Diptotes are therefore called in

Arabic َغـ ْي ُر ْلـ ُم ْن َص ِر ِف or ص ْر ِفَّ َأْلـ َم ْم ُنو ُع ِم َن ل, i.e. not fully

declined.

22.2 When a diptote is made definite by the definite article َأْ لـ.., a

suffix possessive pronoun, or by being the first noun (َأْلـ ُم َضا ُف

al-

mud
̇

a ̄fu) of an

id

̇

a ̄fah construction, it takes the usual three case

endings, i.e. it becomes a triptote, e.g.

Diptote indefinite

Nominative: one d

̇

ammah ـُـــ/-u/

Accusative and genitive: one fath

̇

ah ـَـــ/-a/