Demonstrative Structure in Classical Arabic

This thread reminded me of a question I once had. Whether or not there is a connection between the demonstrative structure in some colloquial dialects and Hebrew.

As we see in the other thread the demonstrative structure in Egyptian Arabic is definite word followed by the demonstrative pronoun:

الكلب دا il-kalb da
Literally it would be "the dog this."

The structure is very similar in Hebrew -- definite word following by demonstrative pronoun. The only difference is that in Hebrew the demonstrative takes the definite article as well (ה ha):

הכלב הזה (ha-kelev ha-zeh)
Literally "the dog the this."

I opened up my Hebrew grammar looking for insight and found this statement:

"The use of the definite article with demonstrative pronouns (treating it as if it were an adjective*) is not limited to Hebrew. It is a feature shared with Phoenician, Aramaic, and Classical Arabic."

I thought this was an interesting statement and am wondering if it is true. Is there a demonstrative structure in Classical Arabic that would have the demonstrative pronoun defined and following the qualifying noun? Something like this:

الكلب الذا/الذاك al-kalb al-dha/al-dhaaka

I have a feeling that the statement is incorrect, but as there is a lot about Arabic I don't know I figured I'd ask. If it is wrong, as I suspect, then I have some thoughts on why the authors of the grammar arrived at this conclusion. Rather then get into all that right now, I will wait until I know for sure that the statement is not correct.

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* The authors of the book explain the demonstrative pronoun by saying that it functions as an adjective does -- that is, it occupies the same position as an adjective does (following the word), follows the rules of word order, gender and definiteness.

I'm not sure about Arabic - but I am confused about Aramaic. Aramaic, to my knowledge, doesn't have a definite article. It has an intensive suffix -a which under some contexts translates to "the" but not necessarily. This suffix eventually became permanently affixed to most nouns and I believe modern dialects function like Russian - i.e., they have no articles at all. Demonstratives (ha, han) don't agree in definiteness because there isn't a thing as such.

Maybe the definite agreement really is just a peculiarity of Hebrew? Again, I don't know if this structure exists or has existed in Arabic.

Ahh, yes, you are right. Aramaic has no articles. I forgot about that. Definiteness and indefiniteness is inferred from the context. So I do wonder where the authors got their information.

Edit: Thinking about it more I know next to nothing about Biblical Aramaic. More modern dialects (or of the last 2000 years anyway) do not have articles, but is it possible that Biblical Aramaic had a definite article?

Hi all

I've just had a thought. Could it be that the definite article in Hebrew is "ha" and in Arabic we say "hadha" in which case their "ha" corresponds to the Arabic "ha" of "hadha" except that in Arabic it does not mean "the" but is referred to as حرف التنبيه (particle for calling someone's attention) like the English "hey!"?

So it's my guess that the authors meant by definite article the sound "ha" which is a definite article in Hebrew. Arabs again would say that the "ha" of "hadha" is Harf tanbiih, and occurs also as Harf tanbiih in Hebrew, thus reversing the whole argument. I hope I've succeeded in getting my point across. It would be interesting to know what the equivalent of Harf tanbiih is in Hebrew.

Yes, Abu Bishr, that was the thought that I was alluding to.:) Great minds think alike, I guess.

I was actually in the process of writing the following when you posted, so rather than erasing I will post it anyway. So if it seems like there is some overlap that is the reason.

Again, I must stress that I know very little about Biblical Hebrew, so all the following is just conjecture.

The Hebrew demonstrative pronoun זה (zeh) is the cognate of the Arabic demonstrative pronoun ذا (dha). Arabic has the حرف تنبيه (particle of calling attention) ها which is written in its defective form هـ when attached to the demonstrative pronouns. And so ذا becomes هذا (haadha). When the Hebrew demonstrative takes the definite article it becomes הזה (ha-zeh) and looks very much like the Arabic هذا . So perhaps the Hebrew ה , in addition to functioning as the definite article, also has a meaning of calling to attention. Or the definite article is derived from some particle of calling attention. Or something like that. Who knows.

Edit: It's interesting that we were talking about Aramaic not having the definite article. A random thought I had was what if proto-Hebrew had no articles as well, and the ה which was originally the particle of attention evolved into the definite article.

My only problem with Hebrew ha- and Arabic ها being cognate is that Hebrew ha- functions more like Arabic الـ than like ها.

Hebrew ha- causes gemination in the following segment. In the case of the word hazeh this is traditionally hazzeh because the definite article doubles of the following consonant. In Hebrew the rules are slightly different. The doubling occurs in all consonants except: 2, 3, 7, r, h. (I might be forgetting one or two). This gemination in Arabic is different and is ال except in front of [+coronal] segments. I believe some have said that the ancestral form of both is hal- and that in Hebrew the gemination became near complete, and that in Arabic the h- was lost. There is a problem with this: why consonants that don't double in Hebrew don't have l- in front. It may be that they used to double but don't anymore. We know that ع easily doubles in Arabic but never does so grammatically in Hebrew despite it being phonologically possible. So the theory is not complete. However, in support of it, we find dialects which geminate even more consonants than Classical Arabic, thus promoting less [l] : j in the Levant, and apparently (I'm not 100% about this but I read it somewhere) k and g in Egypt.

Since هذا is not *haadhdha I have a feeling that it is actually Hebrew ha- and Arabic al- that are somehow cognate and that Arabic ha- is a separate form.

There are few basic possibilities:

1. The two ha-s are in fact cognate, however there is a morpheme [DEFINITE] which causes gemination in many following segments, and whichever prefix maps to [DEFINITE] receives this property. The problem with this solution is that it posits a complicated higher level of structure which may not be parsimonious.

2. Hebrew ha and Arabic al are cognate, in which case [HA/AL-] causes gemination in following segments as a specific property, while Arabic ha- is a different case. The problem with this is how to account for complete loss of /-l-/ in Hebrew.

3. Hebrew ha and Arabic ha are cognate, however Arabic ha has lost its geminating property. This may be because high frequency words like هذا and هذه, due to their frequency have internally simplified. The problem with this solution is how to account for the loss of gemination, considering that gemination is present in all sorts of high frequency words in Arabic without loss.

As an aside, it is clear that Hebrew zeh and Arabic ذا are cognate and dh > z from Hebrew to Arabic is a normal rule (as it is in many dialects as well). (Compare "ear" udhn > ozen).

Note, I don't believe Akkadian had articles (like Aramaic). Not that Akkadian is directly ancestral or anything, but it is pretty old so that may account for something. This is definitely posited for PIE and languages in Europe that have since evolved articles and have done so using the number 'one' as the basis for indefiniteness and some sort of demonstrative pronoun as the basis for definiteness. It is not surprising if it is a later development in Semitic languages as well.

clevermizo said:

My only problem with Hebrew ha- and Arabic ها being cognate is that Hebrew ha- functions more like Arabic الـ than like ها.

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Yes, that is definitely the case with modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew. My completely unfounded conjecture is that it could have evolved from a particle of attention (used in a very early form of Hebrew or some proto-Semitic language) and it is now only known and used as the definite article. I do realize that is completely off the wall thinking and an attempt to find connections where none exist.

I agree with your assessment and do realize that there is most likely no connection between Hebrew ה and Arabic ها, but if you'll indulge me for another moment here's some more crazy thinking (I'm bored today, nothing better to do):

Definite articles could be thought of as similar to a particle of calling attention in that when an object is defined it singled out from other objects of the same kind; that is, the definite article calls attention to a particular thing and separates it from the group. For example:

"They are going to the house."

In this sentence they are not going to any house, but to "the house." This focuses our attention (or the speakers' attention and listeners' attention) on the particular house in question.

"Give me the book."
I don't want any book, I want "the book" (that I am pointing to or whatever). I am directing your attention to a specific book that I want.

The demonstratives also call attention to specific things (e.g. I want that book over there). And we see in Arabic that many demonstratives have a particle of attention prefixed to them.

In Hebrew forms like ההוא (ha-huu) and ההיא (ha-hii), in which the definite article ה is attached to the independent pronouns (הוא (huu) is he/it and cognate with Arabic هو ;lהיא (hii) is she/it and cognate with Arabic هي ), are also used with a demonstrative meaning:

הקלב ההוא גדול
(ha-kelev ha-huu gadol)
This dog is big.

These Hebrew demonstrative forms look very much like the Arabic ها هو (haa huwa) and ها هي (haa hiya) (in which we have the article of attention used with the independent pronouns). These phrases, while used differently from the Hebrew, are used to call attention:

ها هو الكلب
Here's/There's the dog.

If you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance, baffle 'em with your bull$#!+, I suppose:D.

I had never heard the argument that the ancestral definite article in both Arabic and Hebrew is 'hal.' In my Hebrew grammar they have a historical note in which they list some demonstrative pronouns used in Biblical Hebrew. I thought they were interesting in that they might add support to that argument of the ancient 'hal' (but I'm not really sure):

הללו
hallalu

הלזו
hallezu

הלז
hallaz

הלזה
hallaze

(The transliteration I used here is the one the authors used in the book. In each case the lamed (ל ) after the he (ה ) was doubled.)

I say I am not really sure because in the example sentences they provide the other defined words only have the ה . But it could be that these demonstratives are remnants of a time when the 'hal' was used. The last one is particularly interesting because it is like the modern Hebrew הזה (ha-zeh), but with the added lamed.

(I'm not 100% about this but I read it somewhere) k and g in Egypt.

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Yes, you are correct, these letters can be geminated or left as is in Egyptian.

If the noun is definite due to the definite article, then I'm not sure it can be followed by a demonstrative (at least I've never seen an example of such a structure). In other words, in MSA and CA, you aren't likely to find something like الرجل هذا. This is not the case in spoken Arabic in the Peninsula, however, where الرجّال ذا is, in my opinion, much more common than ذا الرجّال. You'll also hear هالرجّال and هالرجّال ذا (where the noun seems to be "inserted" in the middle of هذا, so to speak). This is possibly a residue of some ancient Arabic dialects that were not incorporated into "Standard Arabic".

However, if the noun is definite due to idhafa, then the demonstrative must come after the noun, if it is to be used at all. For example ابنتيّ هاتين from the Quran, or بعد عامكم هذا in Muhammad's "farewell sermon."

Actually, I don't see how a demonstrative can attach to anything but the definite (unless it's a khabar, e.g. هذا رجلٌ).

As to the "ha", I can't really judge for myself, but I would like to note two things. First, Arabic descends from a set of "Old North Arabian" dialects that did in fact use the definite article "ha-" in the same way as Hebrew, so the relationshp is not that far-fetched. Secondly, the "ha-" of tanbiih is often used as a replacement for the demonstrative in the Mashriq (minus Egypt, Sudan, and the Hejazi cities) in a way that sometimes resembles a definite article.

I kept forgetting to come back to this thread. Your post is quite interesting and enlightening, Wadi Hanifa. I guess it could be the case that the Arabic definite article and Harf tanbiih, as well as the Hebrew definite article, all have a common ancestor in some ancient definite article 'hal'.

Thanks to all of you for your comments which have definitely added insight to this issue.