Iʿrāb

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The Arabic word iʿrāb ( إﻋﺮﺍﺏ‎) designates the system of nominal and adjectival suffixes of Classical Arabic. They are written in fully vocalized Arabic texts, notably the Qur'an, and they are articulated when a text is formally read aloud, but they do not survive in any dialect of Arabic. The suffixes are -u, -a, -i for nominative, accusative and genitive case, respectively, with the addition of a final /n/ (nunation, or tanwin (-un, -an, -in) when the word is fully declinable and unmarked for definiteness. The term is cognate to the word Arab itself. These suffix vowels are not pronounced when the word occurs at the end of the sentence, according with certain rules of Arabic pronunication.

[edit] References

Aryeh Levin, "The Fundamental Principles of the Arab Grammarians' Theory of `amal", in: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 19 (1995), pp. 214-232.