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In Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs are morphologically marked for number. Three categories of number are recognized by both medieval and modern grammarians: singular ( mufrad), dual ( mut̲annā), and plural ( jamʿ). The singular in general refers to a single item in a class, the dual to two items of a class, the plural to three or more. An important exception to this generalization is that for a small set of nouns, termed ‘collectives’, the unmarked singular form refers to a collection or group, and a singulative ( ism al-waḥda lit. ‘noun of the…

1. Analogy in affixational morphology In historical linguistics, analogy is generally defined as a process by which words or morphemes are created or recreated on the model of existing linguistic patterns. Analogy operates independently of sound change and often regularizes irregularities brought about by sound change. The most widely discussed form of analogy is proportional analogy: A is to A' as B is to B'. It has been suggested that analogy operates in the direction of maximizing ‘semantic iconicity’, i.e. the one-to-one matc…