Lebanese: Difference between revisions

==Grammar==

Modern Lebanese is partly analytic, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than morphological cases (a few dialects still retain the old accusative case in some words, but generally the accusative form became the same as the nominative one). On the other hand, Lebanese is also a fusional synthetic language: inflection plays a role in the formation of verbs and nouns (displaying [[w:Nonconcatenative morphology|non-concatenative]] morphology) and pronominal suffixes. For example, 𐤀𐤁-𐤍𐤌 ''abū-nom'' "father-3stPerson.Plural.Possessive", "their father". Like other Semitic languages, Lebanese morphology (the way words are formed) is based on the consonantal root. The root generally consists of two or three consonants and has a basic meaning, for example, 𐤊𐤕𐤁 k-t-b has the meaning of "writing". This is then modified by the addition of vowels and other consonants to create different nuances of the basic meaning:

* 𐤊𐤕𐤁𐤕 ''kathavti'', I wrote;

* 𐤀𐤊𐤕𐤁 ''ekhtab'', I shall write;