Hi everyone! Sorry for the long hiatus.
Today we’ll be looking at a distinctive feature of Levantine that fuS7a has no straightforward counterpart to. We’ve already looked at how normal object pronouns attach to verbs. In this post, we’re going to look at another kind of attached pronoun: the -l- forms.
What is a -l- form?
The -l- pronoun suffixes attach to verbs, just like normal object suffixes. Instead of a direct object noun, however, they generally (but not always) correspond to a noun with the preposition لـ la- ‘for’ or ‘to’:
بعتلها مسج
b3at-la masej
send (to) her a message
اشتريتلو هدية
shtareet-illo hdiyye
I bought a present for him
What forms does it take?
As with normal pronouns, the -l- pronouns have slightly different forms depending on what they follow. In this case, however, the form is different depending on whether the pronoun follows a consonant cluster or not:
| After a vowel or single consonant | After a consonant cluster |
| ـلي -li to me |
ـلي -illi to me |
| ـلك -lak to you [masculine] |
ـلك -illak to you [masculine] |
| ـلك -lek to you [feminine] |
ـلك -illek to you [feminine] |
| ـلو -lo to him |
ـلو -illo to him |
| ـلها -l(h)a to her |
ـلها -il(h)a to her |
| ـلنا -lna to us |
ـلنا -ilna to us |
| ـلكن -lkon to you [plural] |
ـلكن -ilkon to you [plural] |
| ـلهن -l(h)on to them |
ـلهن -il(h)on to them |
Complications
These suffixes cause all the normal changes to the words they attach to. But there are some extra complications.
The first is that with verbs ending in ـيت -eet or -iit (that is, perfective, defective verbs in the ‘I’ or ‘you (masculine)’ form, speakers tend to use the forms on the right, even though there is no cluster:
حكيتلك
7akeet-illak
I told you
The second is that when a ‘basic’ form beginning with two consonants (-lna, for example) follows a single consonant, and this would produce an unpronounceable cluster, a helping vowel is inserted:
زبطلنا الخاتم
zabbaT-ilna lkhaatem
he adjusted the ring for us
This ends up looking quite like the ‘cluster’ form given on the right above, but note that the stress here is on ba, since the helping vowel can’t be stressed.
The third important point is that with hollow verbs, these suffixes trigger a shortening of the long stem vowel. Remember that both ii and uu become i:
الزلة جبلي كولا
izzalame jab-li koola
the guy brought [for] me cola (جاب ‘he brought’)
بدي قللك شغلة
biddi 2il-lak shaghle (قول ‘I say’)
I want to say something to you
Interactions with other pronouns
When a -l- form is attached to a verb that already has a direct object pronoun attached, it pushes that direct object off onto the carrier يا yaa, just as happens when two normal pronouns are competing for the same verb:
ترجملي ياها
tarjim-li yaa-ha
translate it for me
عدتلكن ياهن
3addit-ilkon yaa-hon
she counted them for you [plural]
That’s all for today. These pronouns have a number of idiomatic uses, but there’s no space here to talk about them – perhaps in a future post!