Iconic Accessories for Verb Affixes

In learning Arabic, we have started to create pictures for our letters with 28 basic animal icons.  However, now that we are getting into complex grammatical affixes for words we need to work with more elements in our memory pictures.  When an individual describes given pictures in comprehension building exercises, we target 12 specific Structure Words to guide us in observing the contents of each picture:

1) WHAT do you see in the picture?

2) SIZE - what are the relative sizes of things in a picture?

3) COLOR - what colors do you see in a picture?

4) NUMBER - do you see doubles or triples of anything in the picture?

5) SHAPE - what are the shapes of things in the picture?

6) WHERE - where is the action of the story and the picture taking place?

7) WHEN - when is the picture in time, day? night? 

8) BACKGROUND - what is the setting and background for the picture?

9) MOVEMENT - what looks like it is moving in the picture?

10) MOOD - is there a mood in the picture?

11) SOUND - is there a sound you might imagine going with the picture or story?

12) PERSPECTIVE - where are you in relation to what you see? above? below? head on?

All of these elements are rich in memory encoding options.  Each of these elements can be turned into story image symbols to encode abstract building blocks in the Arabic language.  And it's time to tap into some of these options here.

1st) WHEN: 

     A) If a story is in the daytime, it will mean it is in the present tense.

     B) If a story is in the nighttime, it will mean it is in the past tense.

There are only two tenses conjugated with different verb affixes in Arabic so this will work well.

2nd) ACCESSORIES (to add SIZE, SHAPE, and COLOR elements to our animals).

     A) We will reserve use of our animal icons for the tri-consonantal root letters of Arabic words only.

     B) We will develop new icons to clothe and decorate our animals with accessories for added affixes.

To that end I propose to conventionalize the use of the following 28 accessory icons in upcoming images and stories (see the next blog post):