linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

, a broken plural (or internal plural) is an irregular plural form of a noun or adjective found in the

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

and other

Afroasiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

such as Berber. Broken plurals are formed by changing the pattern of consonants and vowels inside the singular form. They contrast with sound plurals (or external plurals), which are formed by adding a suffix, but are also formally distinct from phenomena like the Germanic umlaut, a form of vowel mutation used in plural forms in Germanic languages. There have been a variety of theoretical approaches to understanding these processes and varied attempts to produce systems or rules that can systematize these plural forms. However, the question of the origin of the broken plurals for the languages that exhibit them is not settled, though there are certain probabilities in distributions of specific plural forms in relation to specific singular patterns. As the conversions outgo by far the extent of mutations caused by the Germanic umlaut that is evidenced to be caused by inflectional suffixes, the sheer multiplicity of shapes corresponds to multiplex attempts at historical explanation ranging from proposals of

transphonologization In historical linguistics, transphonologization (also known as rephonologization or cheshirization, see below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast ...

s and multiple accentual changes to switches between the categories of collectives, abstracta and plurals or

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some a ...

switches.

Arabic

While the phenomenon is known from several Semitic languages, it is most productive in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

. In

, the regular way of making a plural for a masculine noun is adding the suffix (for the nominative) or (for the accusative and genitive) at the end. For feminine nouns, the regular way is to add the suffix . However, not all plurals follow these simple rules. One class of nouns in both spoken and written Arabic produce plurals by changing the pattern of vowels inside the word, sometimes also with the addition of a prefix or suffix. This system is not fully regular, and it is used mainly for masculine non-human nouns; human nouns are pluralized regularly or irregularly. Broken plurals are known as (, literally "plural of breaking") in

Arabic grammar Arabic grammar or Arabic language sciences ( ar, النحو العربي ' or ar, عُلُوم اللغَة العَرَبِيَّة ') is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with ...

. These plurals constitute one of the most unusual aspects of the language, given the very strong and highly detailed grammar and derivation rules that govern the written language. Broken plurals can also be found in languages that have borrowed words from Arabic, for instance

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...

, Turkish,

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

, Azerbaijani, and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Another estimate of all existing nominal forms gives over 90,000 forms with a sound plural and just 9540 with a broken one. This is due to the almost boundless number of participles and derived nominals in "-ī", most of which take a sound plural.

Example

Semitic languages typically utilize

triconsonantal The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels ...

roots, forming a "grid" into which vowels may be inserted without affecting the basic root. Here are a few examples; note that the commonality is in the root consonants (capitalized), not the vowels. * "book" → "books" * "writer, scribe" → “writers, scribes" * "letter" → "letters" * "desk, office" → "offices" :note: these four words all have a common root, ''K-T-B'' "to write" In the non-semitic Persian language it is current to use: * "book" → "books" * "writer, scribe" → "writers, scribes"

Patterns in Arabic

Hebrew

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, though all plurals must take either the sound masculine ( ) or feminine ( ) plural suffixes, the historical stem alternations of the so-called

segolate Segolates are words in the Hebrew language whose end is of the form CVCVC, where the penultimate vowel receives syllable stress. Such words are called "segolates" because the final unstressed vowel is typically (but not always) ''segol''. These w ...

or consonant-cluster nouns between CVCC in the singular and CVCaC in the plural have often been compared to broken plural forms in other Semitic languages. Thus the form "my king" in the singular is opposed to "kings" in the plural. In addition, there are many other cases where historical sound changes have resulted in stem allomorphy between singular and plural forms in Hebrew (or between absolute state and construct state, or between forms with pronominal suffixes and unsuffixed forms etc.), though such alternations do not operate according to general templates accommodating root consonants, and so are not usually considered to be true broken plurals by linguists.

Geʿez (Ethiopic)

Broken plurals were formerly used in some Ethiopic nouns. Examples include ''ˁanbässa'' "lion" with ''ˁanabəst'' "lions", ''kokäb'' "star" with ''kwakəbt'' "stars", ''ganen'' "demon" with ''aganənt'' "demons", and ''hagar'' "region" with ''ˀahgur'' "regions".Leslau, Wolf (1991). ''Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez (Classical Ethiopic)''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 64, 280, 198, 216 Some of these broken plurals are still used in Amharic today, but they are generally seen as archaic.

References

{{reflist

External links

''Pattern-and-root inflectional morphology: the Arabic broken plural''''The Arabic Noun System Generation''''A detailed account of plurality in Arabic''''On the way to an algorithm for forming broken plurals in Arabic''
Arabic language Semitic linguistics Linguistic morphology Grammatical number Arabic grammar