Now, depending on the particular pattern, the base-letter...

Now, depending on the particular pattern, the base-letter meaning of writing will be expressed in a unique way. For instance, كَتَبَ (he wrote), كُتِبَ (it was written), يَكتُبُ (he writes, is writing or will write), كاتِب (writer), مَكتَب (desk i.e. place of writing), أُكتُب (write!) and many, many others. Also recall that we said the subjects of all of these verbs i.e. the pronouns are not separate words but letters.

The recognition of these patterns and designated letters which come at the end of the verbs to reflect the pronouns is the subject matter of صرف (Arabic Morphology). As for the third and final meaning, which is also a ‘non-word’ meaning, we refer back to the first section of this discussion i.e. introducing grammatical states. Recall that grammatical structure in Arabic is reflected by change in the last letter.

It is from the ending of a given word that we determine whether that word is being used in the sentence as a subject of the verb, an object, or whether the word is in the possessive case. It is نحو which deals with all the technicalities of grammatical meaning. In summary, we may say the most basic meaning originates from the given three base letters of a word. These three letters then need to be arranged with vowels in order to be pronounced.

In most languages this vowelling carries little if any meaning. In Arabic whole distinct meanings such as tenses and the gender, plurality and person of pronouns is conveyed via these vowels and letters. When the individual words are constructed, they need to be used in sentences, because people do not speak in words. They speak in sentences. Sentence structure is reflected again, not by separate words (like in other languages), but by vowels or letters! This is our third meaning.

[^1] See Appendix A for a discussion of how meanings are conveyed in the Arabic language, with reference to Ibn Khaldun and the Prophet (pbuh).…