Dictionary of Plurals in Arabic Morphology: A Study in Structure and Meaning

About this book

A journey into the word's memory.. when "plurals" become mirrors of meaning. Between this book's covers we find no mere chronicle of dry morphological rules, but stand before a linguistic "symphony" restoring credit to the Arabic mind that never knew "coincidence" in building its words. Have you ever wondered why one language's plurals grow narrow while Arabic expands to grant a single word eleven plurals? In the "Dictionary of Plurals," researcher Ismail Bab Hussein takes us on a demanding and enjoyable exploratory journey across the terrain of dictionaries and the Holy Quran, to lift the veil off the secrets lurking behind "sound transformations" and "semantic shifts." This work is no mere dictionary, but a human attempt to understand the philosophy of multiplicity; how simple movements turn into deep significations, and how the "plural system" accommodates what rigid morphological laws sometimes fail to. The book progresses from the stillness of the "singular" to the dynamism of the "dual" and on to the clamor of "plurals" of all types, tracking the early Arabs' footsteps in taming language to suit discourse's occasion and meaning's context. It is an invitation to everyone passionate about Arabic, from the academic seeking statistical precision, to the reader held back by wonder before his language's richness, to realize that the "plural" in Arabic is no mere quantity, but an art, a diversity, and an eloquence that never runs dry. This book is the bridge linking our solid linguistic heritage and our contemporary questions about "the philosophy of structure."