100.Use of Sound Plurals. Sound Plurals were defined in para. 75. It was also pointed out there that their use is considerably restricted by comparison with the Broken Plurals. In fact the Masculine Sound Plural is associated principally with the “professional” or “habitual” noun pattern KaTTāB (fallāḥ, “peasant, cultivator”; 'akkāl “glutton(ous)”), with the related-adjective ending -īy (misrīy, “Egyptian”; halabīy, “from Aleppo”), and with participles, though there are exceptions even here (we shall introduce participles in Chapter 15). The Feminine Sound Plural is associated with nouns ending in bound-t, though not by any means all of these, and with certain unpredictable masculine or feminine nouns, particularly foreign words imported into Arabic (an example of the first class is malika(h), “queen”, though madīna(h), “city”, commonly takes one of two Broken Plurals; examples of the second class are ḥayawān (see vocabulary to para. 99, p. 107); tilifūn, “telephone”; sijill, “register, record” (from Latin or Italian)). We shall add minor categories to these as we come to them. It will be noted that, while the Masculine Sound Plural is virtually limited to male beings only, the Feminine Sound Plural is not so limited.

101.Sound Plural Masculine. This is formed from the singular by adding the ending -ūna for the Nominative Case, and -ina for both the Accusative and the Genitive.