menu Podcast

Happy new year, Sierra and Elias! Your latest lesson is excellent. Since you know I tend to be sparing of praise, you’ll realise that in the present instance the word “excellent” is not merely a “mujamala”.

I’ve already acquired a sizeable technical vocabulary in Arabic, and I know the Arabic terms for “protasis”, “apodosis”, “asyndetic relative clause”, “syndetic relative clause”, “cognate accusative”, etc. There is, however, one term which has so far eluded me. Is there an Arabic term that corresponds to the English word “clause” (not a clause in a contract, but a group of words containing a subject and a predicate and forming part of a compound or complex sentence)?

Dear Desmond,
In regard to the grammatical term “clause” you find in the VerbAce-Pro Arabic-English-Arabic dictionary tool the following entrances: “verbal clause”, “nominal clause”, and “conditional clause”:
( جملة فعلية ، جملة اسمية ، جملة شرطية ).

The term ( جملة ), “clause, sentence” and “altogether, collectively” according to VerbAce, is in the beginner lesson 258 “Repeat the sentence”:
( . عيد الجملة لو سمحت ).

The term ( عبارة ), “phrase, sentence, clause” according to VerbAce, was discussed as, if I recall correctly, as “phrase, term” in the beginner lesson 273 “You look confused”:
( . ما فهمت آخر عبارة ).

Regards,
Tau

Like جملة (jumlah), كلام (kalaam) also means 'clause'.

Frohes neues Jahr, Tau, and thank you for your comment.

I know a lot of online dictionaries and have over 2,000 dictionaries in my private library, but I do not yet know VerbAce.

I am familiar with all the Arabic terms you mention, and I have listened attentively to the podcasts you refer to, but I am not sure whether "jumla" can mean both "clause" and "sentence".

There are languages in which the distinction between "clause" and "sentence" is frequently blurred. German, which is presumably your mother tongue, is a case in point. In compounds like "Vordersatz", "Relativsatz" and "Bedingungssatz", "Satz" clearly corresponds to "clause", but in a word combination like "periodischer Satz" "Satz" corresponds to "sentence". Indeed, the word "Satz" is sometimes so confusing that it has to be replaced by "Teilsatz", a technical term which is much less common than "clause" and which many native speakers of German do not know.

Italian grammatical terminology can also be confusing. Thus, for instance, a relative clause may be referred to as a "proposizione relativa" or a "frase relativa".

Even in English the distinction between "clause" and "sentence" may not always be clear, for there are sentences which consist of a single clause. Nonetheless, it is essential that terms like "sentence", "clause" and "phrase" should not be used indiscrimately. A clause is not always a sentence, and most phrases can only function as sentence elements (e.g. Ger. "mit Fug und Recht").

I would render "jumla shartia" as "conditional sentence" (not "conditional clause"), for a "jumla shartia" normally consists two main segments or clauses. In English these segments are known as the protasis and the apodosis, and classical Arabic grammarians used specific terms to denote such clauses. In classical Arabic grammar the protasis is called "shart" (this can also mean "condition" or "pre-condition"), and the apodosis or consequence clause is called "jawaab" (this can also mean "answer" or "response").

"Phrase" can be rendered as "'ebaara", but "'ebaara", unfortunately, is a very fuzzy term which can also mean "expression", "idiomatic phrase", "term" or even "clause". "Mustalah", which has often been used in the intermediate and advanced podcasts, can also mean "phrase", but it often corresponds to "term", and the plural "mustalahaat" is often used as a translation equivalent for "terminology".

What I want to know is whether Arabic grammarians have an unambiguous technical term which corresponds exactly to the English noun "clause" and the French term "proposition".

Best wishes
Desmond

Happy new year, Vinod, and thank you for your contribution to the discussion. I was still writing when you posted your comment.

Yes, you're right. "Kalaam" is another of those fuzzy-edged terms that have multiple meanings. "Kalaam" can also be used in a very general sense, as in "kalaam faady" (empty talk).

Incidentally, I've just noticed a typo in my reply to Tau's comment. I meant to write "consists of two main segments" (not "consists two main segments").

Yes thanks Siera and Elias ... great lesson.

I can think of lots more attributes for animals and people that it would be useful to know

How about ...
- loyal
- gentle
- fierce
- well-behaved
- naughty

I'm sure there are lots more

Hi Desmond, I referred your question to Benjamin Geer, a friend of mine who is finishing his dissertation in Middle East Studies at SOAS. Here's what he had to say:

جملة is both clause and sentence. There might be a term for "clause within a sentence" in traditional Arabic grammar, but I've never encountered one. I know that there are terms for certain kinds of clauses. A definite relative clause (e.g. رأيته in الرجل الذي رأيته) is called a صلة (and the relative pronoun, الذي, is called الاسم الموصول). A indefinite relative clause (e.g. رأيته in رجل رأيته, with no relative pronoun) is called a صفة.

Hope that helps!

Dear Sierra,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I already know all the terms you've mentioned, and I've long suspected that "jumla" can mean both "clause" and "sentence".

There may indeed be a lexical gap here. If so, it is an extremely interesting one, and it's bound to pose dreadful translation problems. What, for instance, would an Arabic linguist do if he wanted to say something like "This sentence comsists of three clauses: one main clause and two subordinate clauses"? If "jumla" is used three times here, the sentence will sound absurd. It will be like saying "The bike consists of three bikes" or "The plant consists of three plants."

The European versions of Wikipedia all contain articles about various types of clauses, and it's easy to hop from one European language to another. In most cases, unfortunately, there are no links to the Arabic version of the encyclopedia. This leads me to suspect that the Arabic-speaking authors are deliberately avoiding certain topics because there are embarrasing gaps in their conceptual armamentarium. The Romans faced similar problems when they started to translate the works of the Greek philosophers, and English translators were confronted with formidable difficulties when they had to translate Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit".

I've hunted through Google books in eight languages and tried out various combinations of search words, but all I can find is terms that denote special types of clause. There seems to be no hypernym.

Perhaps Elias can help here. When he was at school he probably used Arabic coursebooks about French and English grammar. There must be chapters about clause structures and main and subordinate clauses in English and French.

I recently discovered an Arabic grammar written in Latin. It's very easy to understand, and all the basic grammatical concepts that are used by Arabic grammarians have been rendered very elegantly in the language of Cicero.

Best wishes
Desmond

In Arabic, (jumla جملة) is a group of words that gives complete meaning, like saying (The boy is tall الولد طويل), (I read a book قرأت كتاب)...
Looking at the difference between sentence and clause in English, if we accept that a clause consists of subject and a predicate, then I would say the word (jumla جملة) describes a clause rather than sentence.
As for the word (sentence), it seems more complicated than what ones might think, as it can be complex sentence consisting of many clauses, or it can be one clause which could be called simple sentence!
To refer to a group of (jumal جُمَل - plural of jumlah) in Arabic, the word (faqarah فقرة) is used, which could describe a paragraph as well.

Also just to go through some of the words mentioned on animal attributes:
- loyal وفي
- gentle وديع
- fierce وحشي
- naughty could be مشاكس

Hope that clarifies both matters.

hey ehab,,,,i hear "shibu jumla "often.....i have only heared it , and my ears are not the best, i took it to mean "a collection of related words.".forgive me for avoiding the technical terms of english as my interest is in the quran ...and needs a little humility on my part.

Ahlan Berry,the term is (shebh jumlah شبه جملة) which is like semi-sentence. I think we should make a lesson on that. However, briefly, shebh jumlah is not complete in the meaning, rather it tells something that complements the meaning of a sentence, like (وقفت خلف الصف - I stood up behind the class) the shebh aljumlah (خلف الصف behind the class) gives a meaning that tells us something to complete the full meaning of the sentence, but on its own (خلف الصف) does not give complete meaning.
Again, we will have that topic in a separate lesson inshallah.

Dear Ehab,

Happy new year! I greatly appreciate your latest contributions to our discussion. "Shibh jumla" has been rendered as "phrase", "semi-sentence" and "quasi-sentence", but all these renderings are more or less unsatisfactory.

"Semi-sentence" is a very rare linguistic term. It normally denotes a sentence which, considered from a grammatical viewpoint, is neither entirely correct nor entirely incorrect. "Quasi-sentence" is also very rare, un-English and obscure. "Phrase" is much better, but it is too vague.

"Behind the class" (your example) sounds odd. Do you mean "at the back of the class"? This kind of word combination could be described as an adverbial phrase.

Judging by what I have discovered on various Arabic websites, "lahu" is also a "shibh jumla", and since "lahu" does not belong to exactly the same category as "at the back of the class", I assume that "shibh jumla" can denote any kind of sentence constituent.

Let us consider an English example: "The old man had posted the letter before Easter." The sentence consists of two noun phrases ("the old man" and "the letter"), a verb phrase ("had posted") and an adverbial phrase ("before Easter"). If each of these phrases is a "shibh jumla", the best English translation equivalent for "shibh jumla" would be "sentence constituent". When these elements are put together they form a complete sentence, but when they are isolated they are only partially comprehensible.

@ berry

If you key in "LearnQuranicArabic" (written together like a single word) you'll find over 1,000 videos devoted to classical Arabic grammar. Most of the examples are from the Qu'ran.

Go to "Arabic course, lesson 3, part 1" and listen carefully. Towards the end of the video you'll hear "shibhu jumla". Your ears failed to detect thze "h", but you heard all the other sounds correctly.

"Shibh" literally means "quasi". It is used in both classical and Modern Standard Arabic. "Shibh al-qaara al-hindiya", for instance, is the Arabic equivalent of "the Indian subcontinent".

If you work through all the videos you'll soon be an expert on classical Arabic grammar, but this won't really help you to speak Modern Standard Arabic. In order to learn contemporary Arabic you'll have to listen to Ehab, Mohamed, Sierra and Elias.

@ Sierra & Elias

I've acquired a sizeable zoological vocabulary (about a thousand terms) in Arabic, and I know several Arabic words for "lizard". One of these words is bothering me at the moment. It's pronounced 'adhaaya, with a stress on the second syllable. I've seen it spelt in two different ways. How would you spell it?