Tunisian Arabic morphology

The grammar, the conjugaison and the morphology of Tunisian Arabic is very similar to that of other Maghrebi Arabic varieties. It is based on Classical Arabic and influenced by Berber languages and Latin, with some morphological inventions. The Berber influence is more noticeable in Pre-Hilalian dialects.

Tunisian Arabic has 7 personal pronouns since gender differentiation of the 2nd person in the singular form is absent.

Example : آنا زادة « Āna zāda. » — "Me too."

The possessive pronouns are used as possessive articles when put as a suffix to a preposition or a noun. When it is used after a verb, their functions are rather direct object pronouns. The ones between parenthesis are the ones used after a structure finishing by a vowel.

Note, that with feminine words which are generally finished with an ة a, a ت t is added before the suffixes which become tī, tik, tū, thā, tnā, tkum and thum

Indirect Object Pronouns are used as a suffix after the verb and before the ش- -š of the negation. When there is a combination of direct and indirect object pronouns, indirect object pronouns are always written in the end. Furthermore, the first short i for the indirect Object pronoun is always dropped when it is written after a vowel.

Indefinite pronouns are used as a subject to explain general ideas or to report the facts which were done by an unknown person:

The next interrogative pronouns are used when asking a question in Tunisian Arabic.

Translated in English as "The" Article, "il-" (ال) is used as an added prefix to denote nouns as definite. If the defined nouns begins with a Sun Consonant (n, ṇ, t, ṭ, d, dz, s, ṣ, š, z, ẓ, j, ŧ, đ, ḑ, l, r and ṛ), "il-" would be pronounced as i + the Sun Consonant with which the noun begins. For example:

Like in Standard Arabic, Demonstrative Articles can be used as demonstrative pronouns when they are put alone as subjects. When they are articles, they can be written before or after the considered noun which should be definite by "il-".

For example: "This book" could be written in Tunisian as هٰاذا الكتاب hāđā il-ktāb or even as الكتاب هٰاذا il-ktāb hāđā.

When the demonstrative article is before the noun, it can be substituted by an abbreviated form which is ها hā for this and these, هاذْ hāđ for this and هٰاكْ hāk for that and those.

...
Wikipedia