By John Mace
Publisher: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
Pages: 276, Publication Date: 1999-12
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0844226858
pdf scan, no ocr, 4.59MB, credit to "MasteringArabic"
Description: A reference to over 1000 Arabic verbs, this work also provides associated essential grammar. It should be suitable for all levels of students of modern standard Arabic once they have mastered the alphabet and basic grammar.
this book is essentially a summary of arabic grammar, with particular attention paid to verbs but lots of detail on other subjects as well. time and again i've consulted this book, as it contains concise and thorough descriptions of most aspects of arabic grammar. its focus is completely on *modern* standard arabic and as such it contains clear descriptions of modern usages (including things such as "short" vs. "full" pronunciation, colloquial numerals and other important subjects that don't appear in most other grammar summaries [e.g. "A New Arabic Grammar", Haywood/Nahmad]), and carefully distinguishes usages that are technically part of the language but in fact obsolete or rarely used today. even the verb tables that fill much of the book are interesting because
[among other things] the author chooses the most useful verbs and roots to exemplify the various possible types and includes lists of all the other common verbs, nouns, etc. made from the same root. my biggest complaint has to do with what's omitted. in particular, the "verb-based" focus means that the usage of verbs gets complete coverage, but other topics are skimped on. there is a real need for a concise but *complete* summary of the grammar of the *modern* literary language. another complaint is with the coverage of pronunciation -- there is a lot of good info on "full" vs. "short" pronunciation and on other topics [e.g. i didn't know that form VII and VIII verbs are never stressed on the first syllable in literary], but it's scattered throughout. it needs to be gathered together and augmented with the "informal" pronunciation [no case endings before pronoun suffixes, -ak/ik/uh instead of -ka/ki/hu, etc.], which this book denies even exists, but which must exist since it appears in "teach yourself arabic" and other places.
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