# CA/MSA: sound sequences with glides (w, y)



## Saley

Hi!

This thread continues my series of questions about glides (i.e. consonants _w_ and _y_).

I’d like to know whether the sequences presented below occur in Arabic. For convenience they are grouped into three categories. (I’m certain that the sequences belonging to these categories but not shown here do occur.)

You can help me by mentioning some words that contain the existing sequences from the following list (like I did in blue) and telling which sequences don’t occur. If you’ve seen a good discussion of this topic, please share a link.

*1. Short vowel + glide (not followed by a vowel)*

ـُوْ _-uw-_, ـُيْ _-uy-_ (not followed by a vowel)
ـِوْ _-iw-_, ـِيْ _-iy-_ (not followed by a vowel)
‘Not followed by a vowel’ means that either a consonant follows or the sequence stands in the end of a word.
I found preconsonantal _-uw-_ and _-uy-_ in a grammar book in the context related to my older thread, but I doubt it’s correct.

*2. Short vowel + doubled glide + vowel*

ـُيُّ _-uyyu-_
ـِوَّ _-iwwa-_
ـِوُّ _-iwwu-_
ـِوِّ _-iwwi-_
I don’t place a restriction on the length of the final vowel in each sequence: it can be short or long; if short, it can also be followed by tanwiin.

*3. Long vowel + glide + vowel*

ـُووَ _-uuwa-_, ـُويَ _-uuya-_
ـُووُ _-uuwu-_, ـُويُ _-uuyu-_
ـُووِ _-uuwi-_, ـُويِ _-uuyi-_: تُعُووِنَ _tu3uuwina_ (_3-w-n_ VI passive), قُويِسَ _quuyisa_ (_q-y-s_ III passive)
ـِيوَ _-iiwa-_, ـِييَ _-iiya-_: إِيوَاءٌ ‎_2iiwaa2_ (_2-w-y_ IV verbal noun)
ـِيوُ _-iiwu-_, ـِييُ _-iiyu-_: اِيوُوا ‎_2iiwuu_ (_2-w-y_ I imper. m. pl. phrase-initially)
ـِيوِ _-iiwi-_, ـِييِ _-iiyi-_: اِيوِ ‎_2iiwi_ (_2-w-y_ I imper. m. sg. phrase-initially)
The same remark (as in 2.) about the final vowel applies here.
When these sequences occur at word boundaries, do they remain as such or is there any assimilation?

*P.S.* I suspect that the set of possible sequences might differ between Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, so please indicate which of them your reply refers to.


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## elroy

Do حُنُوّ and سَخِيّ count?


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## Saley

As instances of what? As far as I understand, they don’t count.

My supposed sequences of the third category contain _-uuw-_ and _-iiy-_ as opposed to quite common _-uww-_ and _-iyy-_ that are present in your examples: _7unuww-un_, _saxiyy-un_. (I understand that _-uww-_ and _-iyy-_ are represented as “long vowel + glide” in some romanization schemes, e.g. Hans Wehr writes your examples as _ḥunūw_, _saḵīy_.)

But I’m interested whether Arabic has distinct sequences that one may transcribe as _-uww-_ vs. _-uuw-_ and _-iyy-_ vs. _-iiy-_. Or are they never distinguished and therefore can be transcribed both ways (i.e. _-iyy-_ = _-iiy-_ and _-uww-_ = _-uuw-_)?


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## Ghabi

What is the difference between iy and ii, or uw and uu?


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## Saley

In my transcription, _uu_ and _ii_ are long vowels while _uw_ and _iy_ are combinations of a short vowel followed by a consonant. I know that _uw_ and _iy_ occur prevocalically (e.g. _duwal-un_, _tarbiyat-un_), but I have never encountered them in positions described in my original post.


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## Ghabi

In Arabic, "long vowels" are "combinations of a short vowel followed by a consonant". What else are they?


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## Saley

Do you mean _aa_, _uu_, _ii_ are diphthongs? I’ve always seen them transcribed as [a:], [u:], [i:] in IPA.

I’ve come across statements like yours in some books with traditional approach, but I don’t think they make much sense unless one clearly specifies what they mean.


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## Ghabi

[a:], [u:], [i:] are the phonetic realisations. The morphological forms are a+alif, uw, iy. You can transcribe سُوْد as [su:d] or suud, but the form is suwd, on a par with 7umr (CuCC).


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## fdb

Ghabi said:


> [a:], [u:], [i:] are the phonetic realisations. The morphological forms are a+alif, uw, iy. You can transcribe سُوْد as [su:d] or suud, but the form is suwd, on a par with 7umr (CuCC).



mārrun مار is definitely not *maʼrrun either phonologically or morphologically.


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## Saley

Ghabi said:


> The morphological forms are a+alif, uw, iy.


What do you consider alif?


Ghabi said:


> You can transcribe سُوْد as [su:d] or suud, but the form is suwd, on a par with 7umr (CuCC).


Do you know a reason to analyse _uu_ in, for example, _maktuub-un_ as underlying _uw_? I’m not convinced with phonological analyses of Arabic I’ve read so far that claim it has no underlying long vowels.

*EDIT:* Maybe I should clarify that my original question is about surface phonetic sequences. What they are underlyingly (and this can depend on the author) isn’t the main topic, but you may talk about this if it’s essential for understanding.


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## Ghabi

Saley said:


> What do you consider ‘alif’?


I mean a consonantal counterpart of w and y for fat7a, whose abstract existence is necessary in traditional Arabic morphology. It only exists after fat7a (a+alif= ـَا as in باب). We don't have a special sign for it on this forum. Some Arabists, like Kees Versteegh, use '' for it (thus a'' means our aa).

Traditional Arabic grammarians use '' (alif), on a par with w and y, for their analysis. For example, when Sibawayhi talks about the diminutive (see al-kitaab §359), he compares the diminutive form fu3ay3iyl with the broken plural form fa3a''3iyl, saying that they are similar except that the latter has for its third consonant an '' (alif), while the former a y, and that the latter carries a fat7a in its first letter, while the former a Damma.


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## Saley

To my impression, the traditional account doesn’t make a clear difference between spelling and pronunciation. It looks to me like they just explain phonological processes through the Arabic script which is far from being an ideal writing system for this purpose.


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## Ghabi

Saley said:


> To my impression, the traditional account doesn’t make a clear difference between spelling and pronunciation.


There's a chapter (§316) in Sibawayhi that talks about the difference between the name of a letter and the pronunciation of a letter.


> It looks to me like they just explain phonological processes through the Arabic script.


There's an opposite opinion: "It has sometimes — erroneously — been thought that the grammarians' analysis was based on the Arabic script, which indicates only the short vowels and represents the long vowels by the three letters w, y, 'alif. But rather than the writing system it was the structure of the language that led them to this analysis [...]", Kees Versteegh, _ Landmarks in Linguistic Thought Volume III: The Arabic Linguistic Tradition_, p.27.

Of course one may disagree with that. But I guess it doesn't hurt to try to understand what traditional Arabic grammar is really about before evaluating it.


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## Ectab

Hello, allow me to correct some mistakes:

In Arabic long vowels i: and u: are actually made of short vowel+glide (diphthongs) or short vowel+glide+short vowel (triphthongs) or sometimes consonant+glide+short vowel.

So in Arabic we have only two diphthongs ay and aw, the others uy, iy, iw>iy turns into long i, and uw into long u, rather than being a diphthong (actually diphthongs iy and uw are rare in most languages so they would not exist in a language with such a simple vowel system like MSA)

I believe in oldest forms of CA there existed two additional long vowels, these are e: and o: as real vowels not allophones like the emphatic a.
in MSA they turned into a:
they were made of triphthongs:
aya, ayi, ayu, awi>ayi = e:
awa, awu = o:

As for your question, I think I can't help.


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## Saley

Ghabi, thanks for the references and your advice.


Ectab said:


> In Arabic long vowels i: and u: are actually made of <...>


I suppose you mean that the long vowels présent on the phonetic level are considered by the grammarians to come from the mentioned underlying sequences, their view being based on analogy with the words possessing strong roots placed into the same grammatical form.


> consonant+glide+short vowel


“glide + short vowel, when the former is preceded by a consonant”, to be precise. (E.g. _yušiiru_ < _*yušwiru_; the consonant _š_ doesn’t belong to the sequence that turns into a long vowel.)


> in Arabic we have only two diphthongs ay and aw, the others uy, iy, iw>iy turns into long i, and uw into long u, rather than being a diphthong


Nevertheless, _uw_ and _iy_ occur as such in the combinations _uww_, _iyy_ (examples in post #3) and _uyy_ (e.g. صيّم _Suyyam-un_, pl. of صائم‎; عيّن ‎_3uyyina_, _3-y-n_ II past passive), don’t they?

* * *​
Since my question caused such a great misunderstanding, I feel it necessary to provide some comments on my original post in an attempt to make it more comprehensible. I repeat that my question is not whether these sequences are considered to occur underlyingly but whether they occur phonetically, i.e. in actual speech. In the following quotations I also add transcriptions in the IPA.


Saley said:


> *1. Short vowel + glide (not followed by a vowel or by the same glide)*
> 
> ـُوْ _-uw-_ [uw], ـُيْ _-uy-_ [uj] (not followed by a vowel or by the same glide)
> ـِوْ _-iw-_ [iw], ـِيْ _-iy-_ [ij] (not followed by a vowel or by the same glide)


A necessary addition I missed is inserted in red.

As Ectab says, the answer to this refined question is that neither of the four sequences occurs. However, أنطوان الدَّحْداح in his معجم تصريف الأفعال العربيّة (2007, p. 137) writes that the imperative of the verb يَمَنَ is اُيْمُنْ. Is the author wrong?


> *2. Short vowel + doubled glide + vowel*
> 
> ـُيُّ _-uyyu-_ [uj:u]
> ـِوَّ _-iwwa-_ [iw:a]
> ـِوُّ _-iwwu-_ [iw:u]
> ـِوِّ _-iwwi-_ [iw:i]


I can think of one situation where _-iwwi-_ can potentially occur: it’s a word on the pattern فِعِّيلٌ *CiCiCiiiC* from a _w_-medial root. Do you know such a word?


> *3. Long vowel + glide + vowel*
> 
> ـُووَ _-uuwa-_ [u:wa], ـُويَ _-uuya-_ [u:ja]
> ـُووُ _-uuwu-_ [u:wu], ـُويُ _-uuyu-_ [u:ju]
> ـُووِ _-uuwi-_ [u:wi], ـُويِ _-uuyi-_ [u:ji]: تُعُووِنَ _tu3uuwina_ (_3-w-n_ VI passive), قُويِسَ _quuyisa_ (_q-y-s_ III passive)
> ـِيوَ _-iiwa-_ [i:wa], ـِييَ _-iiya-_ [i:ja]: إِيوَاءٌ ‎_2iiwaa2_ (_2-w-y_ IV verbal noun)
> ـِيوُ _-iiwu-_ [i:wu], ـِييُ _-iiyu-_ [i:ju]: اِيوُوا ‎_2iiwuu_ (_2-w-y_ I imper. m. pl. phrase-initially)
> ـِيوِ _-iiwi-_ [i:wi], ـِييِ _-iiyi-_ [i:ji]: اِيوِ ‎_2iiwi_ (_2-w-y_ I imper. m. sg. phrase-initially)


First of all, are my transcriptions of the sequences supported by examples correct? Are past passive verbs from _w_-medial roots pronounced differently in Forms II, V compared to Forms III, VI (e.g. II جُوِّزَ vs. III جُووِزَ)?


> When these sequences occur at word boundaries, do they remain as such or is there any assimilation?


For example, is the phrase في يوم الجمعة pronounced with the sequence _-iiya-_ [i:ja] in Classical Arabic?


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## Saley

I don’t see how to better explain my previous questions, so I’m adding another category and I hope it’s not so difficult.

*4. Glide + glide (different ones)*

_-wy-_
_-yw-_
In the instances I’m aware of where these consonants meet due to morphology the combinations are realized as _-ww-_ or _-yy-_, for example:
قوي _qawiya_ > verbal noun قوّة _quwwat-un_ (pattern فعلة)
يوم _yawm-un_ > plural أيّام _‎2ayyaam-un_ (pattern أفعال)​Do we ever find _-wy-_ and _-yw-_ in actual speech?


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## Mahaodeh

Saley said:


> it’s a word on the pattern فِعِّيلٌ *CiCiCiiiC* from a _w_-medial root. Do you know such a word?



From the top of my head شَوّيب from the noun شوب  the opposite of برّيد, but that's in a dialect and it's not very common either. It means someone who easily feels hot. I can't think of a fus7a example.



Saley said:


> Do we ever find _-wy-_ and _-yw-_ in actual speech?



Assuming by w you mean waaw, and by y you mean yaa', then yes they do. For the first (wy): سويّ; for the second (yw) قيّوم.

I'm not sure if this is what you want, I can't find the phonetic signs you used so I'm using my gut feeling here.


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## Saley

Mahaodeh said:


> شَوّيب from the noun شوب


In شوّيب the first حرف is مفتوح (= the first consonant sound is followed by the sound _a_) while in the pattern I’m talking about it’s مكسور (= followed by the sound _i_), e.g. سكّير _sikkiir-un_.


> Assuming by w you mean waaw, and by y you mean yaa', then yes they do. For the first (wy): سويّ; for the second (yw) قيّوم.


By _w_ I mean the *sound* /w/ (in the Arabic script it’s represented by the letter و) as in ولد _walad-un_, قول _qawl-un_.
By _y_ I mean the *sound* /j/ (in the Arabic script it’s represented by the letter ي) as in يد _yad-un_, بيت _bayt-un_.
Isn’t it the way we romanize Arabic on the forum?
If I had had the *letters* و and ي in mind, I would’ve written و and ي. Actually, I had adjacent و and ي in my examples (قوي and يوم), but in those words the sounds are separated by a short vowel.

Using Arabic terminology, what I’m looking for in questions (3) and (4) is Arabic words or phrases that contain two neighboring حرفان, one of them واو and the other ياء (in either order), the first of them ساكن and the latter متحرّك. That is, واو ساكنة followed by ياء متحرّكة, or ياء ساكنة followed by واو متحرّكة.

Please let me know if anyone understands me.


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## Ihsiin

I think _-wy- _specifically refers to ـوْي, thus the example of قوة from a hypothesised قوية by way of assimilation. Does this sequence exist in speech? Certainly it exists in vernacular Arabic, for example بوي _būy_/_būya _'my father'. Can’t think of any such examples in Classical Arabic, however.

Edit: Crossed with #18.


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## Matat

Saley said:


> However, أنطوان الدَّحْداح in his معجم تصريف الأفعال العربيّة (2007, p. 137) writes that the imperative of the verb يَمَنَ is اُيْمُنْ. Is the author wrong?


Yes, the author is wrong. The imperative of يَمَنَ ـ يَيْمُنُ should be اُومُنْ. If there is ever a ـُيْ, then either the ي must turn to a و or the dhamma must become a kasrah. If there is an example of ـُيْ where this doesn't happen, then it would be a rare exception.

EDIT: It looks like you found one though (صُيَّمٌ), but I think this is the case because it is from the root فُعَّلٌ and since it's not two different root letters meeting, there is nothing you can do about it but keep the ـُيْ.


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## Saley

Ihsiin said:


> I think _-wy- _specifically refers to ـوْي <...> Certainly it exists in vernacular Arabic, for example بوي _būy_/_būya _'my father'.


Almost. It refers to IPA [wj], but not to [u:j] (as in your example) that belongs to my category (3) (see the original post).


> Can’t think of any such examples in Classical Arabic, however.


I included examples of _-uuy-_ [u:j] and _-iiw-_ [i:w] in the original post. Are they actually pronounced so or am I treating them in a wrong way? Wright (vol. i, p. 86 — §159) mentions the verbs قُووِلَ‎, تُقُووِلَ‎, بُويِعَ‎, تُبُويِعَ (past passive of Forms III and VI).


Matat said:


> Yes, the author is wrong. The imperative of يَمَنَ ـ يَيْمُنُ should be اُومُنْ.


Thanks, I was certain he was. Writing incorrect information in learner’s books is somewhat misleading, I think.


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## Saley

Saley said:


> I’d like to know whether the sequences presented below occur in Arabic.





Saley said:


> *4. Glide + glide (different ones)*
> 
> _-wy-_
> _-yw-_


I found two instances of _-yw-_ described in _A Grammar of Classical Arabic_ by W. Fischer (pp. 21–22):

_“yw_ and _wy_ as a rule assimilate to _yy_: _’ayyāmun_ < _*’aywāmun_ (root _y-w-m_), [...] _’ubayyun_ < _*’ubaywun_, diminutive of _’abun_ ‘father’ (root _’-b-w_). After _u_, _ww_ replaces _yy_: _quwwatun_ ‘power’ (root _q-w-y_). [...] Sometimes, _yw_ is maintained for morphological reasons: *’aywamu* = pattern _’af‘alu_ of root _y-w-m_, *judaywilun*, diminutive of _jadwalun_.”​


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## Saley

Saley said:


> *2. Short vowel + doubled glide + vowel*
> 
> ـُيُّ _-uyyu-_
> ـِوَّ _-iwwa-_
> ـِوُّ _-iwwu-_
> ـِوِّ _-iwwi-_
> I don’t place a restriction on the length of the final vowel in each sequence: it can be short or long; if short, it can also be followed by tanwiin.


Can any of the verbs حَيّا‎, زَيّا‎, غَيّا be used in the passive voice? I think the past.3pl.m form would contain _*-uyyu-*_, for example, زُيّوا _zuyyuu_.


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## cherine

Saley said:


> Can any of the verbs حَيّا‎, زَيّا‎, غَيّا be used in the passive voice?


The verb 7ayyaa can and is used in the passive form. Example from the Qur'an:
وَإِذَا حُيِّيتُم بِتَحِيَّةٍ فَحَيُّواْ بِأَحْسَنَ مِنْهَآ أَوْ رُدُّوهَآ
سورة النساء، الآية 86

I don't find حُيُّوا difficult to pronounce, nor زُيُّوا، غُيُّوا though those last two don't flow as easily on the tongue, but it could be just that my ears aren't used to them.


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## Mahaodeh

Saley said:


> Using Arabic terminology, what I’m looking for in questions (3) and (4) is Arabic words or phrases that contain two neighboring حرفان, one of them واو and the other ياء (in either order), the first of them ساكن and the latter متحرّك. That is, واو ساكنة followed by ياء متحرّكة, or ياء ساكنة followed by واو متحرّكة.


I'm sorry I didn't reply to this, I forgot about the thread .


Saley said:


> _“yw_ and _wy_ as a rule assimilate to _yy_: _’ayyāmun_



While I didn't remember this reading through the thread again, I did recall another rule: when you have a letter that is saakin (no short vowel) and it is followed by a long vowel, the sukuun changes to the corresponding short vowel (fat7a for alif, dhamma for waaw, and kasra for yaa'). Hence you can not have a case where a ياء ساكنة is followed by a واو متحركة or the opposite.

I suppose that's why it assimilates.


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## Saley

Thank you, cherine, the example is great. It seems that in the whole language _-uyyu-_ occurs only in the said form of (some of) these three verbs.


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