[6] The Arabic definite article ال (il) precedes the noun or adjective and has multiple pronunciations.
A helping vowel "e" is inserted if the following word begins with a consonant cluster.
[7] It assimilates with "Sun letters", basically all consonants that are pronounced with the tip of the tongue.
[15] Inanimate objects take feminine singular agreement in the plural, for verbs, attached pronouns, and adjectives.
[16] Some foreign words that designate weights and measures such as sαnti (centimeter), šēkel (shekel), and kīlo (kilometer/kilogram) (but not mitr, meter, which behaves like other Arabic nouns) are invariable.
The dual form is not used and numbers 3–10 don't lose their final vowel when followed by these nouns: Phrasal word order is head-dependent:[1] The genitive relationship is formed by putting the nouns next to each other,[18] this construct is called Iḍāfah (lit. 'addition').
[19] Possession can also be expressed with تبع, tabaC, especially for loanwords: There is no limit to the number of nouns that can be strung together in an Iḍāfah.
[23][19] The first term must be in the construct state: if it ends in the feminine marker (/-ah/, or /-ih/), it changes to (/-at/, /-it/) in pronunciation (i.e. ة pronounced as "t").
[19] Verbal nouns (also called gerunds or masdar[24]) play an important role in Levantine.
[31] Before a small set of nouns (e.g. ألف, ʾalf, "thousand") the independent form is used in construct state (ة pronounced as "t").
[33] The elative is formed by adding a hamza at the beginning of the adjective and replace the vowels by "a" (pattern: أفعل ʾafʕal / aCCaC).
[4] Feminine plural forms modifying human females are found mostly in rural and Bedouin areas.
[40][41] Direct object pronouns are indicated by suffixes attached to the conjugated verb.
The distinction between proximal and distal demonstratives is of physical, temporal, or metaphorical distance.
The set of consonants communicates the basic meaning of a verb, e.g. k-t-b 'write', q-r-’ 'read', ’-k-l 'eat'.
Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as tense, person and number, in addition to changes in the meaning of the verb that embody grammatical concepts such as mood (e.g. indicative, subjunctive, imperative), voice (active or passive), and functions such as causative, intensive, or reflexive.
[48] Quadriliteral roots are less common, but often used to coin new vocabulary or to Arabicize foreign words.
[49][50] The base form is the third-person masculine singular of the perfect (also called past) tense.
Each form carries a different verbal idea, relative to the meaning of its root.
[52] The initial i in verb forms VII, VIII, IX, X drops when the preceding word ends in a vowel or at the beginning of a sentence.
[7] The Levantine verb has only two tenses: past (perfect) and present (also called imperfect, b-imperfect, or bi-imperfect).
The grammatical person and number as well as the mood are designated by a variety of prefixes and suffixes.
The following table shows the paradigm of a sound Form I verb, katab (كتب) 'to write'.
For regular verbs, the third-person feminine singular is written identically but stressed differently.
[79] However, in practice, passive participles are largely limited to verb forms I (CvCvC) and II (CvCCvC), becoming maCCūC for the former and mCaCCaC for the latter.
[81] The present continuous is formed with the progressive particle عم (ʕam) followed by the imperfect, with or without the initial b/m depending on the speaker.
[90][91] Enclitic personal pronouns are suffixed directly to the pseudo-verb بدّ (North: badd- / South: bidd-) to express "to want".
[92] مش miš or in Syrian Arabic مو mū negates adjectives (including active participles), demonstratives, and nominal phrases.
North Levantine has a negative copula formed by ما mā / ma and a suffixed pronoun.
[97][95][96] In formal speech, sentence complements can be introduced with the particle ʔǝnn ("that"), to which some speakers attach a personal pronoun (o or i).