Abd Allah al-Qarni
- Died
- -
- Born in
- -
Abd Allah ibn Nasir al-Qarni is a contemporary scholar of the Arabic language and linguistics, known for his morphological study Harakat Huruf al-Mudara'a ("The Vocalization of the Imperfect Prefixes") .
Linguistic Research
Al-Qarni published his treatise Harakat Huruf al-Mudara'a in 1423 AH (2002 CE) in the journal of the Islamic University of Madinah . In this study, he investigated the morphological and phonetic rules governing the short vowel markings (harakat) applied to the four prefixes introducing the Arabic imperfect verb (al-hamzah, al-nun, al-ta', and al-ya') .
He analyzed the mainstream grammatical doctrine—associated predominantly with the dialect of the Hijaz—which assigns a dammah to the imperfect prefix in four-letter past-tense verbs (quadriliterals) and a fathah in triliteral, five-letter, and six-letter past-tense verbs . Alongside this standard paradigm, al-Qarni collected and evaluated early dialectal variants documented by classical authorities such as Sibawayh, particularly the vocalization of the prefix with a kasrah .
In examining the morphological rationale for the kasrah, he highlighted that in triliteral verbs, the prefix vowel is broken (maksur) primarily to signal the underlying kasrah on the middle radical of the past-tense form (fa'ila yaf'alu), while remaining disallowed in fa'ila yaf'ilu to prevent the phonetic heaviness of successive kasrahs . He also addressed its occurrence in verbs beginning with an augmentative ta' or a connecting hamzah (hamzat al-wasl) . Al-Qarni concluded that using a kasrah on imperfect prefixes represents an authentic classical dialectal feature substantiated by strong transmitted evidence (sama'), persists widely across modern vernaculars, and should not be deemed erroneous, even though standard Arabic grammar maintains the forms supported by the broadest transmission and the strongest grammatical analogy (qiyas) .
Answer updated
List of Works
Harakat Huruf al-Mudara'a (The Vocalization of the Imperfect Prefixes) is a linguistic and grammatical treatise published in 1423 AH (2002 CE) in the Journal of the Islamic University of Madinah. The work investigates the phonetic and morphological rules governing the short vowel markings (harakat) assigned to the four prefix letters that introduce the imperfect verb in Arabic.