Re: questions about Arabic

En réponse à Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>:

> >
> > That's not alif, that's hamza with a kesra.  Don't let the
> orthographic form
> > fool you.
>
> I think you're confusing alif and hamza. IIRC, alif is simply the
> vertical-stroke glyph (considered a consonant), which doesn't really
> stand
> for anything in itself except for a place marker, and hamza is the
> diacritic
> written with alif when you wish to indicate a glottal stop.  So /ibn/
> (son)
> is written with alif (+ /i/ sign) baa nun, beause it doesn't have a
> glottal
> stop, whereas /?ab/ (father) is writter alif + hamza (+ /a/ sign) baa,
> with
> the hamza representing the glottal stop. Both of these cases use alif,
> but
> only /?ab/ uses hamza.
>
Thank you Eric for answering before me. I don't think I would have been quite
polite if I had answered directly to David (I hate when my own arguments are
thrown back at me without a good reason). My point with my example was just a
joke to show that David was confused with the orthography when he said "when
alif stands for a vowel". If he could say that, then I could as well say that
alif in the word <ibn> stood for the /i/ sound, since in both cases it was
stupid to say so. Alif is a place-holder, an orthographic mark which never has
any phonological value. It is not even considered really a consonnant since
Arabic dictionaries don't use it in their entries (the hamza is used instead,
since the hamza is a real consonnant, namely a glottal stop, but you already
know that). The alif has quite a few uses, as carrier of the hamza for instance
(but waw can also carry the hamza, and in some words the hamza can even be
written alone), as carrier of the tanwîn <an> to mark nouns in the indefinite
direct case (in this case it is absolutely not necessary, but still written), as
mark of the presence of an unstable hamza in front of some words (like /ibn/,
pronounced ['ibn] after a pause, but only [bn] after a vowel. Of course in this
case the alif is NOT the hamza, it just shows the possible presence of it, as
the hamza is written only when it's stable), or as mark of lengthening of a
previous fatha (even then you have some words with a long /a:/ which are written
without alif, like the demonstrative /ha:Da:/ written haa-dhaal-alif, not
*haa-alif-dhaal-alif. In this case when words are fully vocalized the alif has
to be put above the previous consonnant in a form called "subscripted alif"). In
all those cases, you can never say that alif stands for anything actually
spoken. It is only a graphical mark which carries another mark or warns of the
presence of something (length of a fatha or unstable hamza). In absolutely no
case you can say that it stands for a vowel or anything else.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr