02
Speech
باب الكلام
The matn opens here. Speech, in this science, is a useful compound utterance that people agreed to mean something. A grunt is not speech. A single noun shouted in the street is not yet this ‘kalam’. Two pieces that tell you something — that is kalam.
Every word is one of three. There is no fourth.
The matn
الْكَلَامُ هُوَ اللَّفْظُ الْمُرَكَّبُ الْمُفِيدُ بِالْوَضْعِ، وَأَقْسَامُهُ ثَلَاثَةٌ: اسْمٌ، وَفِعْلٌ، وَحَرْفٌ.
Speech is the useful compound utterance by convention. Its kinds are three: noun, verb, and particle.
اسم
Ism (noun)
A name of a person, thing, meaning, or pronoun. It takes tanwin. It takes al-.
فعل
Fi'l (verb)
An action tied to time: he wrote, he writes, write.
حرف
Harf (particle)
A word that only works with another: in, from, not, O.
Quran
Al-Fatiha 1:2
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ — al-hamdu is a noun. lillahi is a particle (li) plus a noun (Allah). There is no verb in this phrase. Nahw still has a full job: hamd is raised; Allah is lowered after li.
If you cannot sort a word into one of the three, stop. Everything after this chapter assumes you can.