Nunation

There are three variations of this diacritical mark: -un (nominative), -in (genitive), and -an (accusative). The ـً badge is most often written in combination with the letter alif (ـًا), that marbut (ةً), or isolated hamza (ءً). Nunation is inherent only in literary Arabic, in conversational dialects it is not. Some textbooks even serve a literary language without these endings.

Certain Nouns with Nunation

Since there is no indefinite article in Arabic, those words in front of which there is no definite article are indefinite. Therefore, the thought may arise that nunation is an indispensable sign of the indefinite state of nouns and adjectives. However, the presence of nunation in a word does not necessarily make it indefinite. Many specific nouns have nunation, for example in Arabic: أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّداً رَسُولُ الله [ ʔ a ʃ h a d u ʔ a n n a m u ħ a m m a d a n r a s u ː l u ‿ l l a h ]: “I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of the Almighty”), the name Muhammad (محمد) has nunation (مُحَمَّداً). Names of people are considered as certain nouns in the grammar of the classical and modern standard Arabic.

The definite article al (ال, al-) is incompatible with nunation ^[2] .

At the ancient stage of the Stavavilonian dialect of Akkadian, nunation lost the function of forming certainty, and then completely disappeared from Akkadian ^[2] .

In north-central languages, nunation also very early disappeared from the singular, however, in the plural it remained, becoming part of the plural formant ^[2] . Instead of nunation, the southern peripheral and Central Semitic languages ​​developed a new definite article: ٭- (h) ān in the Sabine language , ٭- (h) ā in the Aramaic language , ٭ ha (n) in the Hebrew language ^[2] .