Qatari Arabic Grammar

The Qatari Dialect

In this course, we will be learning Qatari Arabic Grammar

Morphology and Syntax

Qatari Arabic is a form of the Arabic language It is used by the native speakers of Qatar as a dialect of Arabic.

The social structure of the Qatari society is very similar to those of the Arabian Peninsula in origin.
traditions. and customs. A dialect can be seen as a group of linguistic criteria that belong to a certain culture or society: and therefore is used by the members of this society.

It exists in the spoken form only since Qataris still use Modern Standard Arabic for writing.

As a variant of Arabic.

Qatari Arabic is similar to Standard Arabic in many respects:
nevertheless. differences in the usage of constituents of grammatical
categories do exist.

Although the majority of words in Qatari Arabic are found in Modern Standard Arabic, noticeable differences between Qatari Arabic and Modem Standard Arabic are found in the areas of phonology and semantics.

The morphological and syntactic differences exist in areas such as verb conjugations. noun pluralizations
definite, indefinite markers, sentence formation, etc.

In Qatari Arabic, there are two types of word classes: open word classes and closed word classes.

The open class members are Nouns, Verbs,
Adjectives and Adverbs.

The closed class members are pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, particles, numerals and quantifiers.
Closed class members can be shown as either separate words
(free morphemes), or as affixes (bound morphemes) as in Qatari Arabic articles.
Some classes contain sub-classes.

The class of pronouns in Qatari Arabic contains several sub-classes such as personal pronouns, demonstrative
pronouns, relative pronouns, etc.
The closed number of words classes in Qatari Arabic are restricted to a fixed and does not allow the addition or
formation of new words.

Open classes, on the other hand, have a large
number of words and allow the addition or formation of new words in both languages.

Qatari Arabic open \vord classes arc inflectional.
The role of inflections in grammar is to show ideas such as number, person. tense. aspect, etc.
\vithout changing the class membership.
For Example, the class of nouns is inflected for the plural:
Singular
kalb / chalb ‘dog’

Plural
Kilaab ‘dogs’ (Qatari Arabic)2
كلب(كلان)
The class of verbs is inflected for tense, for example:

Present
[yamshi l ·walk’ يمشي
Past
[mishaa ‘walked’ (Qatari Arabic)
مشى

Grammatical constituents such as verbs are also formed in Qatari Arabic.
There are Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, Adjective Phrases, etc. They are
named after the word class to which the most important word in the
phrase belongs, which is known as the head of the phrase. The head of a
verb phrase is the verb and the head of a noun phrase is the noun and so
on.
The verification of the data used in Qatari Arabic was done by native
Qataris in addition to the researcher who is a native Qatari, too.
The morphology of Qatari Arabic
nouns.

‘-Dr. Noor Sultan Saif Alesa with some modifications

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