The World of Dr. Justice: Afterpiece: Arabic irregular plurals

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Afterpiece: Arabic irregular plurals

In grief, the Arabic plurals lie

broken upon the sands …

Imru al-Qays,

lamenting over the grave

of a diptote

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About the Author

David Justice studied French at the Sorbonne, mathematics and physics at Harvard and MIT, and math and linguistics at Berkeley. He is the author of The Semantics of Form in Arabic, in the Mirror of European Languages; and of the fictional works I Don’t Do Divorce Cases (which includes stories originally published in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine) and Murphy on the Mount. He taught French at Berkeley, and linguistics at the University of Alberta, then worked at Merriam-Webster as Editor of Etymology (where he edited Webster’s Book of Word Histories) and as Editor of Pronunciation. He subsequently was editor-in-chief at Franklin Electronic Publishers. He is currently employed as a language analyst, and consultant for the University of Maryland. He lives with his bride of forty years, overlooking a peaceful lake.