Was there nunation?

In Classical Arabic, nouns without a definite article that are not in the construct state receive so-called nunation, which is a literal translation of Arabic tanwīn 'Adding the letter nūn'. This gives paradigms such as:

	Definite	Construct	Indefinite
Nom.	al-baytu البيت <ʔlbyt>	baytu بيت <byt>	baytu-n بيت <byt>
Gen.	al-bayti البيت <ʔlbyt>	bayti بيت <byt>	bayti-n بيت <byt>
Acc.	al-bayta البيت <ʔlbyt>	bayta بيت <byt>	bayta-n بيتا <bytʔ>

(Note that nunation does not necessarily denote indefiniteness. Names, which are semantically definite, take nunation due to the absence of the definite article, e.g. muḥammadu-n)

Despite the name nunation you can see that in the actual orthography there is no nūn to be seen. The only 'reflection' of the phenomenon nunation that we can see in the orthography is the final alif on the accusative with nunation. We will discuss this orthographic (and probably phonetic) device in a later blog post, for now the important point is, is that any indication that there is a consonant n at the end of the word is completely absent in the orthography.

This of course suggests that the dialect which lies at the origin of the Classical Arabic orthography did not have nunation at all. The absence of nunation in the orthography is normally explained as being the result of a spelling convention that writes all words in their 'pausal' form.

In traditional Classical Arabic grammar, words can take a shortened form in pausal (utterence final) position:

• Word-final short vowels are lost in pause
• Nunation (as well as the case vowels that precede it) are lost, except for the accusative -an is said to shift to -ā (hence the orthography with final alif).
• Feminine nouns are said to have their ending -at- + case vowels + nunation shift to -ah in pause. (This development is somewhat problematic in terms of regular sound laws, and will be discussed in a later blog post).

If it is indeed true that Arabic was written pausally, it would make certain predictions that do not fully coincide with the reality. For example, In pause, the sound masculine plural suffix -ūna becomes -ū in construct. This is always written as such in construct, and never with an unexpected nūn. As such, these forms are certainly not written in pausal form in all contexts.

The idea that there is such a thing as 'pausal forms' seems to me a construct of the Classical Arabic language being imposed over the QCT. The original composition of the Qurʔān was written in rhyme, but the rhyme only works with what later became 'pausal' pronunciations, but which I think were just the "regular" pronunciations.

This idea is not completely a completely ad hoc solution. There's real reason to think that the Classical Arabic register did not have pausal pronunciations. If we look at the only other real source of Classical Arabic, we have to look at the Pre-Islamic poetry. Like Qurʔānic Classical Arabic, this poetry is rhymed, but unlike Qurʔānic Classical Arabic, at least some of the poetry does use final short vowels for the rhyme.

e.g. This fragment of muʕallaqah of imruʔu l-Qaysi:

فَفَـاضَـتْ دُمُـوْعُ الـعَـيْـنِ مِنِّي صَبَابَةً

fa-fāḍat dumūʕu l-ʕayni minnī ṣabābatan

عَلَـى النَّـحْرِ حَتَّى بَـلَّ دَمْعِـي مِحْـمَلِـي

ʕalā n-naḥri ḥattā balla damʕī miḥmalī

ألاَ رُبَّ يَــوْمٍ لَــكَ مِــنْــهُــنَّ صَــالِــحٍ

ʔalā rubba yawmin laka minhunna ṣāliḥi

وَلاَ سِـــيَّــمَــا يَــوْمٌ بِــدَارَةِ جُــلْــجُــلِ

wa-lā siyyamā yawmun bi-dārati ǧulǧuli

ويَـوْمَ عَـقَــرْتُ لِــلْـعَــذَارَي مَـطِـيَّـتِي

wa-yawma ʕaqartu li-l-ʕaḏārā maṭiyyatī

فَـيَـا عَـجَـبـاً مِـنْ كـورهـا الـمُـتَـحَـمَّلِ

fa-yā ʕaǧaban min kūri-hā lmutaḥammali

Notice that the rhyme rhymes both word final long ī with word-final short i in pause. In the Qurʔān such rhyme never occurs, as in pause short i is elided.

So, if the spelling of the QCT does not represent pausal pronunciation but actual pronunciation, this would imply that nunation was lost in the dialect, as it is not written consonantally. It is not just in the noun that word-final n before a short vowel is lost, we actually find several examples of this development in verbal forms of the QCT as well.

The verb kāna 'to be' has an imperfect yakūnu, the jussive is formed by removing the word final -u, and the superheavy syllable *yakūn that would be created is avoided by shortening the long vowel to yield the form yakun. This final sequence -un would be exactly the same sequence that is lost in, e.g. baytun. While analogy could obviously restore the form, as the n is part of the root, one would expect it to be regularly lost if there was a soundlaw *n#> Ø. And indeed we find this in Q19:9:

qāla ka-ḏālika qāla rabbu-ka huwa ʕalayya hayyinun wa-qad xalaqtu-ka min qablu wa-lam taku šayʔan

<qʔl kḏlk qʔl rbk hw ʕlỳ hyn wqd xlqtk mn qbl wlm tk šyʔ>

[An angel] said, "Thus [it will be]; your Lord says, 'It is easy for Me, for I created you before, while you were nothing.' "

(Notice that even in the normal reading tradition the word-final nūn is absent, which cannot be understood as the result of a regular sound law within Classical Arabic, nor as a pausal pronunciation, since it is clearly not in pause)

Surprisingly a little later we find the same verb stem, this time in the 3sg.m. form, with the etymological consonant in place, Q19:14:

wa-barran bi-wāliday-hi wa-lam yakun ǧabbāran ʕaṣiyyan.

<wbrʔ bwldyh wlm ykn ǧbʔrʔ ʕṣyʔ>

And dutiful to his parents, and he was not a disobedient tyrant.

And as might be expected, it is exactly in this verse that the Ṣanʕāʔ Qurʔān differs from the current text, and has <wlm yk> instead (see also a 8th century codex from Caïro <wlm yk>).

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Nunation is a feature that is almost completely unattested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions. In Safaitic it is clearly only vestigially present (Al-Jallad 2015: 69). It is therefore not surprising that there would be dialects in the early Islamic period that would have lost nunation.

At the same time, it should be pointed out that even today there are dialects that retain nunation. This is most prominently visible in Yemen in the Ṣaʕdah and Tihama regions (Behnstedt 1985:60, 1987). In these regions all indefinite nouns (except for some cases which will be discussed later) end in -in, -un or -ū all reflexes of the final nunation.

Also Najdi Arabic seems to retain some traces of marking indefiniteness with Nunation (Ingham 1994: 47).

Conclusion

The orthography of the Qurʔān does not reflect nunation. This suggests that the language of the Qurʔānic orthography did not have it. The fact that other the jussive stem of kāna occasionally loses final n in the exact same environment that it is lost in the noun, suggests that final nunation was indeed also specifically lost in the language of the QCT. Also the absence of rhymes based on nunation in the QCT, may suggest absence of nunation.

Comments

[Lameen]

There are quite a few examples of lam yakun in the Qur'an - are they all missing the n in the Sanaa manuscript? That would be a lot more telling than a single case.

There's one context where you might expect the n to be retained given such a sound change, and that's before a vowel. It actually is in the first example that comes to mind: lam yakuni llađīna kafarū... (surat al-Bayyinah, v. 1). That would also explain away yuhini: http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=hwn .

[PhoeniX]

Well, it is not just the missing n in the Sanaa manuscript that is telling, of course. The fact that it is missing in the Quranic text, even the canonical one, at all is surprising. Why would the n ever drop out in these cases?

Reintroducing the n is easy. Removing the n for no reason has no obvious explanation. I've found 16 attestations, versus 57 with final n:

Q8:53 lam yaku muġayyiran
Q16:120 wa-lam yaku mina 'l-mušrikiina
Q19:9 wa-lam taku šayʔan
Q19:20 wa-lam ʔaku baġiyyan
Q19:67 wa-lam yaku šayʔan
Q40:50 ʔa-wa-lam taku taʔtīkum
Q40:85 fa-lam taku yanfaʕuhum
Q75:37 ʔa-lam yaku nuṭfatan

Q31:16 ʔin taku miṯqāl
Q40:28 wa-ʔin yaku kāḏiban
Q40:28 wa-ʔin yaku ṣādiqan
Q4:40 wa-ʔin taku ḥasanatan

Q11:17 fa-lā taku fī miryatin
Q11:109 fa-lā taku fī miryatin
Q16:127 wa-lā taku fī ḍayqin

Q9:74 taku xayran

There doesn't seem to be much rime or reason behind when the n-less forms show up. Which to me suggests that it is an archaism.

This could either be free variation in the speech of the prophet. Or the prophet consistently had n-less forms, and the n-spellings have been creeping into the QCT over time.