Re: Arabic 'sura' (?)-- a question

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

>
>     It's not really an [h], is it?  It has the same form, but it's
> always
> been called "taa marbuta" when I've seen it, and it always carries the
> two
> dots.  Is this related to all those words in Hebrew that have a silent
> /h/ at
> the end of them?  Wow!
>
AFAIK, it's not related to the /h/, but to the /t/. It's indeed a "taa" which
has been closed on top (maybe because it appears so often at the end of many
feminine words, and thus was abbreviated compared to the final form of a
normal "taa"), making it look a little like a "haa", but with still the two
dots. It's not pronounced only at the pause and in dialects. It's the real mark
of the feminine in many words (the /a/ preceeding it is only a consequence of
its presence. In Old Arabic, the feminine ending was definitely -atu)and it
carries the case vowels of feminine nouns with it. So as soon as the case vowel
is pronounced, the /t/ is pronounced too. Also, it's never part of a root
(since it's a suffix). I guess the root for suura should be something like s-w-
r (a concave root, i.e. with a semi-vowel in the middle, making it irregular -
Arabian grammars call those roots "sick" :)) ). Of course, it's just a guess,
so I could be wrong.

Christophe.

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