Category: الدرس الثالث: دراسة اللغة العربيّة

Lesson 3 GRAMMAR NOTE 1.+ أسماء في الجمع  من التبعيضيّة ‘partitive min’+ plurals

Followed by a plural noun, which naturally can be modified by adjectives, participles etc.,  the preposition  من  signifies ‘one (or a number) of, some of, among’. This prepositional phrase is a high frequency construction used as predicate, usually preceding its subject, which you have encountered and which occurs in this and previous lessons. Here are some of its properties:

1. When the noun that follows the preposition is a non-concrete countable noun, the subject is usually a verbal noun or a nominalized clause (مصدر صريح او مؤوّل) . Thus,

من اسباب تسمية عصر ما قبل الاسلام بـ«عصر الجاهِلِيَّة» انّ معظم العرب كانوا لايؤمنون بالله

 Among the reasons for calling the pre-Islamic era ‘the era of ignorance’ is that most Arabs did not believe in God.

من اسباب ذلك رغبة العرب الشديدة في …        Among the reasons for this is the Arabs’ strong desire to …

It can also be a repetition of that concrete noun:

من المشاكل التي يواجهها دارسو اللغة العربية مشكلتان اساسيتان

Among the problems that students of Arabic face are two basic problems.

However, when the subject is a concrete noun, the noun after the preposition must be concrete:

من الكتب التي نقرأها كتاب “الأيام” لطه حسين    One of the books that we read is ‘Al-Ayyaam’ by Taha Hussein.

من أشهر هؤلاء الشعراء «أُمْرُؤ القَيْس» و…      ِAmong the most famous of these poets is…

2. The subject may also precede the predicate, unless it is indefinite (as in the third example above) or is  a   مصدر مؤوّل  as in the first example as in:

من اسباب ذلك . رغبة العرب الشديدة في …      The Arabs’ desire to …is among the reasons.

كتاب “الأيام” لطه حسين من الكتب التي نقرأها    One of the books that we read is ‘Al-Ayyaam’ by Taha Hussein.

3. We can quantify the items that follow the preposition, using the following constructions:

سبب من الأسباب/واحد من الأسباب/أحد الأسباب ‘one of the reasons’   

سببان من الأسباب /  إثنان من الأسباب            ‘two of the reasons’

ثلاثة من الأسباب/الأسباب الثلاثة                   ‘three of the reasons/the reasons’

كلّ/ بعض الأسباب                                  ‘all/ some of the reasons

4. A related construction is ممّا where ما is the indefinite relative pronoun (see lesson 5 lexical note 5)

ممّا يجب ذكره أنّ الطالب العربي يواجه …        Among the things that should be mentioned is the fact that the Arab student faces …      

2. المَصْدَرُ/The Verbal Noun

As you know, the verbal noun/المَصْدر is a noun that is derived from a verb; it is an abstraction naming the action, quality, or state of existence denoted by the source verb. It possesses the properties of the verb it is derived from, such as being intransitive, transitive with one or more objects, requiring specific prepositions before their objects or predicates, etc.  It is equivalent to English infinitives (e.g. “to use, to denote, to read”) or gerunds (e.g. “understanding, delivering, reading, using”).

As the مصدر /verbal noun is an abstract statement of the meaning of the verb it is derived from, it normally takes the definite article, as in the following illustration:

قلّ الاتّصال.                                         Making contact is now rare.

A transitive verbal noun requiring a prepositional phrase for its object will also take the definite article:

رغبة العرب في المحافظة على تراثهم.     the Arabs’ desire to preserve their heritage

When indefinite the verbal noun implies “some kind of, any kind of…” and often appears in adverbial prepositional phrases of manner:

لم يَلْقَ قبولًا.                                         It did not gain acceptance.

يظهر هذا الخلافُ بوضوحٍ…                       This difference clearly appears...

Many examples of مَصادِرُ occur in this lesson. In what follows we will briefly review the verbal noun phrase and its functions in the sentence.

a) Verbal noun phrases. As in the case of the English gerund, the verbal noun is often used alone but is also often followed by a subject (that is, a topic or an agent) or an object or both, as in

القراءة مُلْهِيَةٌ Reading is fun The verbal noun stands alone as clause subject and is nominative.

قراءةُ رسائِلِك ملهيةٌ  Reading your mail is fun. The verbal noun takes an object as the second term of an idafa, رَسائِلِك, which is in the genitive case.

ليست قراءةُ زيدٍ رسائلَك بملهيةٍ Zaid’s reading your mail is not fun. The verbal noun has an agent in the genitive case, زيدٍ, and an object in the accusative, رسائلَك.

To summarize, the verbal noun will have the case required by its function in the clause such as subject or object in the following sentences; the verbal noun itself may be followed by one noun which is in the genitive whether it is the subject or the object of the verbal noun; and a transitive verbal noun may take an agent in the genitive and also an object in the accusative or a prepositional object in the genitive. Further illustrations:

يسود اليوم استعمال الناسِ العامّيّةَ.        People’s use of the colloquial is predominant today.

عند دخولِهٍ المدرسةَ .on his entering school

دُهِشت من فوزِ فريقِنا بالجائزة.ِ   I was surprised at our team’s winning the prize. 

The verbal noun of a transitive verbal noun may have active or passive meaning, and its مضاف اليه will be either agent or patient (receiver of the action), as in قتلُ زَيدٍ Zaid’s killing (s.o.) or Zaid’s being killed.

Further, a verbal noun from a linking verb may be followed by a topic/subject in the genitive and an accusative predicate:

وذلك لكون العامّيّةِ في الأساس لغةً محكيّةً .That is basically because of the colloquial’s being a spoken language.

b) In addition to the usual functions of any noun phrase in the clause, such as subject or object of a verb, object of preposition, etc., there are some functions specific to verbal nouns, such as the مَفعول مُطـْلَـَق/cognate accusative, تَمْييز/accusative of specification and مفعول لأجْلِهِ/accusative of purpose or cause, as well as the حال/circumstantial construction. These topics have already been or will be dealt with in separate notes.

3. Nominalized Clauses. In most instances the verbal noun/مصدر is interchangeable with a nominalized clause (See…), after nominalizers such as أنَّ plus indicative that and أنْ plus subjunctive that (See…), and ما المصدرية /nominalizing ما (See…). Compare:

I will send him his books:

           عند دخولِهِ المدرسةَ on his entering school                     and

         عندما يدخلُ المدرسةَ when he enters school

وذلك:   لكون العامّيّةِ لغة ً مَحكيّةً = لأنّ العامّيّةَ  لغةٌ محكيةٌ    

          That is so:          because of the colloquial’s being a spoken language

        = because the colloquial is a spoken language.

Unlike English that-clauses, these أنْ– and أنّ–clauses can occur even after expressions of desiring, necessity, etc., as in

من المُمكِن  أنْ تُقرأَ = من الممكن قراءتـُه     It is possible to read it, it can be read.

يحاول استعمالَ الفصحى = يحاول أنْ يستعملَ الفصحى He tries to use Modern Standard

GRAMMAR 3  افعال المقاربة ‘Verbs meaning ‘about to, almost’

In Lesson 1 we took up the auxiliary verb عاد/لم يعد  and in lesson 2 the auxiliary verb  كان .  In this lesson we meet another subclass of auxiliaries, افعال المقاربة  ‘the verbs of ‘to be about to/on the verge of’(to do/doing s.th.), also called “verbs of appropinquation”. Two of these are of common occurrence كاد يكاد   and أوشك يوشك and here are their major properties:

1. Unlike most other auxiliaries (but like كان) they can appear in either tense, and may be followed by an imperfect indicative verb or by أنْ and a verb in the subjunctive. It is more common for كاد   to be used without ان and for أوشك to be used with it.

يكاد الحزن ينفرجُ                                   Sorrow is about to be dispelled.

اوشك الليلُ ان ينتهِيَ                                          The night is almost over.

اوشك ان ينتهيَ الليلُ                                The night is/was almost over.

الليل يوشكُ ان ينتهيَ                                          The night is almost over.

2. We encounter those auxiliaries in two constructions:

a. The auxiliary is followed by its subject then its predicate (with or without ان ). Here, like كان, the auxiliary is in the singular, and the verb in the predicate must agree with the subject of the auxiliary. It is also possible for the subject to occur in first position, in which case both the auxiliary (like all verbs) and the verb in the predicate agree with the subject.

اوشك الليلُ ان ينتهِيَ                                          The night is almost over.

الليل يكاد ان ينتهيَ                                  The night is almost over.

القرّاء اوشكوا ان لا يستعملوا هذه الحركات        The Arab reader hardly ever uses (almost does not use these vowels.

الفصحى تكاد تكون واحدة        Modern Standard Arabic is almost uniform.

كاد المعلّم ان يكون رسولا         A teacher is close to being a prophet.

b. The auxiliary is followed directly by ان and a verb in the subjunctive and is in the singular. As mentioned above,  كاد  is more likely to occur without  ان  than أوشك  is.

الناس هناك يكادون ان يموتوا جوعاً      People there are about to die of hunger.

c. Unlike كان ,  neither auxiliary can occur in the imperative.

d. The مصدر مؤوّل cannot be turned into مصدر صريح, without further modification.

5. Particular properties of each auxiliary:

a. كاد يكاد (ان)

The following observations apply to كاد يكاد but rarely if ever  to أوشك يوشك :

(i) كاد، يكاد  may be negated with/ لم  ، لا   ما , respectively, or they may have their predicate in the indicative negated by لاا :

كادت الطائرة ان لا تغادر المطار بسبب الأمطار  The plane was about not to depart from the airport because of rain.

 (ii) A construction of common usage is a sentence with a negative form of  كاد  followed by a sentence headed by the conjunction  حَتّى

ما كاد ينهي خطابه حتّى حَيـَّوْه  بهتاف عاصف.   No sooner did he finish his speech than he was greeted with wild applause.

(iii) كاد can be used elliptically after a sentence. Such usage is rare in Arabic, which in this situation typically would require a repetition of the predicate. Here is an example, taken from the Basic Text:

وقد انتشر هذا الاسلوب عند الجميع او كاد         This style is widely spread among all or about to be.

Cf

لا أعرفه انا ولا يعرفه أحد       I do not know him and neither does anyone else.

b. أوشك، يوشك

(i) أوشك but not كاد has an active participle form in use: موشِكٌ .

هم موشكون ان يغادروا البلاد نهائيّا                They are about to leave the country definitively.

(ii) أوشك but not كاد  can be followed by the preposition على . In this case it can take a مصدر whether صريح ‘verbal noun’ or مؤوّل  ‘أنْ clause’:

أوشكا على الانتحار/انْ ينتحرا                      The two of them were about to commit suicide.

(iii) It but not  كاد  has a Form I verbal noun وَشْك which is used in the phrase على وشْكِ followed by a مصدر whether صريح ‘verbal noun or مؤوّل  ‘أنْ clause’ to mean ‘on the point of, on the verge of’:

كان الضيف على وشكِ الرَحيل/انْ يرحَل             The guest  was on the verge of departing.

Note: (ii) and (iii) are the only cases of auxiliaries other than التامّة  كان where we can use both  مصدر   صريح ‘verbal noun’ or مؤوّل  ‘أنْ clause’.

(iv) Finally, أوشك but not كاد has an adjectival Form I form in useوَشيكٌ  ‘forthcoming, impending’, mostly used  as نعت سببي ‘adjectivalإضافة   (see Lesson 7 Grammar Note 1):

الحرب هناك وشيكة الوقوع                                War there is imminent .

1. أما . ف   ‘as for’.

When you want to highlight a word or a phrase in a sentence you can us this construction: place the noun to be highlighted after أمّا ‘as for’ with the noun in the nominative case, and then put the rest of the sentence after فَ.  To illustrate with the sentence

كان الحضرُ يعيشون في المدنَ ‘The sedentary people lived in cities.’  

If you want to highlight الحضرُ ‘the sedentary population’ in contrast with البدْوُ ‘the nomads, the Bedouin’, you remove الحضرُ from within the sentence and place it after أما in the nominative case: أما الحضرand place فَ at the beginning of the basic sentence without its highlighted word:

  أما الحضر فكانوا يعيشون في المدن

Finally, the highlighted word after اما   must be tied to the sentence after فَ : if the word that was removed was the subject of the verb, then the verb must be made to agree with the highlighted word, thus:

أما الحضر فكانوا يعيشون في المدن  ‘As for the Bedouin, they inhabited the cities’ where the verb was changed from masculine singular in the original to masculine plural in the final sentence.

If the highlighted word was not the subject of the verb, then a pronoun that agrees with it must be inserted to fill its place:

عاش عند البدو سنتين          ‘He lived with the Bedouins two years.’

اما البدو فعاش عندهم سنتين ‘As for the Bedouins, he lived with them for two years.’

The topic can be several things besides a noun: it can be a prepositional phrase, a noun clause (“an أن-clause”), etc.:

اما بالنسبة الى المناخ فالجو صافٍ ودرجة الحرارة معتدلة ‘As for in respect to the weather, the sky is clear and the temperature is moderate.’

اما انْ يقولَ ذلك فهذا مستَحيلٌ ‘As for him to say that/his saying that, that’s impossible.’

This kind of sentence is called a Topic – Comment sentence: اما introduces the topic and فَ  provides commentary about it. A common variant is to retain the same structure but omit اما…فَ  giving these versions of the two sentences above:

الحضر كانوا يعيشون في المدن ‘The sedentary, they lived in the cities’ = ‘The sedentary lived in the cities.’

البدو عاش عندهم سنتين ‘the Bedouins, he lived with them two years.’ = ‘he lived with the Bedouins two years.’`

In English we say “This one I want; that one I don’t.’  In Arabic we would say “This one I want it; that one I do not want it.’

 

3.  من … أنْ / أن

1.1 You are quite familiar by now with the following sentences from this and other lessons and are aware of the pattern here: a predicate (underscored), which in each sentence precedes  المُبتدأ .

من اسباب تسميته بـ«عصر الجاهِلِيَّة» ان معظم العرب كانوا لايؤمنون بالله

من المشاكل التي يواجهها دارسو اللغة العربية مشكلتان اساسيتان

من العادات العربية ان يخضع جميع افراد الاسرة للوالد

من التقاليد الامريكية ان تجتمع العائلة في يوم الشكر

من أهم أَحْداثِ القرن التاسع عشر انتشار الامبريالية

من اغراض هذا الكتاب تعليم العربية للأجانب

This construction with various variations is very widely used in Arabic today: here the predicate is a prepositional phrase consisting of the preposition  مِن  followed by countable nouns in the plural. Other types of words can occur as nominals, after  من  .  These include:

 1.2 adjectives:

من الجدير بالذكر ان التعليم في معظم المدارس حكومي تشرف عليه وزارات التربية والتعليم

It is worth mentioning that education in most schools is public, controlled by Departments of Education.

من الضروري جداً تَشْجيعُ الطلبة على دراسة اللغات الاجنبيّة

It is necessary to encourage students to study foreign languages.

               من السهل على طلاب العربية الجدد ان يخلطوا بين شَكْلَي الفاء والغين في وسط الكلمة.

It is very easy for new students of Arabic to confuse  الفاء والغين 

 من الصعب عليه الآن  ان يَصْعَدَ إلى رأس الجبل لأنه في السبعين من عمره.

It is difficult for him to climb to the top of the mountain because he is in his seventies.

1.3 Active Participles                                                                                                 

مِنَ المُمْكِن التنقل بين اوروبا وامريكا في ساعات قليلة

It is possible to travel between Europe and America in just a few hours

من الظاهر أنّ مبدأ «الحقُّ للقويّ» أو كما يقال بالانجليزية «القُوَّةُ هي الحَقُّ» هو المبدأ السائد بين الأمم والأفراد.

It looks like the principle that right reside with  the powerful, or as is said n English “might s right”a, is prevalent among nations and individuals.

1.4 passive participles      اسم المفعول                                                                                                                           

من المعروف ان الاوروبيين قدِ اقْتَبَسوا الأرقام العربية عن العرب

It is well known that Europeans have borrowed the Arabic numerals.

من المعتقَد ان قيام دول مختلفة في حدود معيّنة من اهم التطورات التي شهدها العالم منذ بدء التاريخ.

It is believed that the rise of nations with well defined boundaries is one of the most developments which the world has witnesses since the dawn o History.

1.5 elatives

من اهمّ نتائج هذا الامتداد ان الفصحى اصبحت لغة علم وفنّ وبحث وفلسفة

The most important result of this expansion is that Classical Arabic became a language of Science, Arts, and Philsophy.

من أصعب الأمور ان نحدد أركان أي قومية بدقة

It is most difficult to define the basic elements of nationality with any precision.

المضارع المرفوع  ‘The Imperfect Tense’

The Imperfect Tense in the indicative mood (المضارع المرفوع) has, as you know, a number of possible translations in Arabic. This text has several uses of the imperfect tense verb as a main verb:

• habitual action, something that is done repeatedly or customarily:

وكان من أولئك الذين يخلطون بين القلب والمعدة ‘He was one of those who [typically] confuse their heart with their stomach.’

يوضَعُ، يُغَطّى، تُحَمَّرُ، يُضافُ إلَيْهِ ‘[whenever this dish is prepared] it is placed…, it is covered, it is browned, [there] is added to it’

• generic action, an action that is predictable for a class of individuals or objects and serves

to characterize that class, as in “Dogs bark at cars” and “Winds blow from west to east.”  Proverbs often have verbs with generic sense, as in “Love conquers all” and “A stitch in time saves nine.”  The following verb is generic in function:

الاذن تعشق قبل العين احياناً .‘The ear sometimes falls passionately in love before the eye does.’

• Stative verbs are verbs that denote a state, condition or quality, like “to want, to need, to matter”; they denote a lack of any activity and are sometimes called “actionless verbs”.  Basically they denote existence plus some additional layer of meaning; for example, “to have” means “to exist in possession of” and “to like” means “to exist with a liking for”.  A feature of stative verbs is that, since they do not denote actions, they are not put in the progressive construct: you can say “I have fifty dollars on me” but not “I am having fifty dollars on me.”  If a stative verb is used in the progressive it takes on a different meaning: “I am having a good time” = “I am enjoying myself”, an activity. Some stative verbs can be transitive, like “to have, to know” and can be used in the imperative form.

Curiously, “to want” cannot occur in the present progressive (“I am wanting to see that movie”) but does occur in the past progressive: “I was wanting to ask you this question:…” In this case the progressive takes on the meaning of volition—desire, intent.

The following stative verbs occur in the Text: 

هل تعرفها؟‘Do you know her?’ اعرف ‘I know’

تريدان تملكَ قلبَه .‘she wants to possess his heart.’

It is important to repeat that stative verbs never denote actions; the perfect tense, however, only denotes events (except, of course for كان): something happened.  So what happens when a stative verb is put in the perfect tense?  Tense trumps stativity: the stative verb in the perfect tense denotes the action of entering the state or quality denoted by the verb–a change of state.  Thus, the stative verb يَحْسُنُ in the imperfect means “is good”, but the perfect حَسَنَ  has the meaning “entered the state of goodness” = “became good”. “It was good”, of course, is expressed with كان: كان حسناً. Likewise, يَعْرِفُ means ‘he knows’ but the perfect عَرَفَ means “he came to know, learned, found out”.  So, remember: a stative verb in the perfect means “to acquire the quality or condition depicted by the verb”.

• future.  In a context referring to a subsequent situation the imperfect verb may predict afuture action or state; in the following citation the verbs are in questions about future action:

هل يضحك؟ هل يبكي؟ ‘Shall he laugh? Shall he cry?’

Usually the prefix –سَ or the word سَوفَ precedes the imperfect verb to predict future action or state:

ستُسْعِدُني ‘she will make me happy, she is going to make me happy’

• progressive: an action in progress, a continuing action, as in

 ماذا تفعلُ، يا زيد؟ ‘What are you doing, Zaid? and خليل ينتظر اخاه احمد ‘Khalil is waiting for his brother Ahmad.’

• dispositional: disposed to or capable of doing the action: تتكلم العربية والكردية ‘She

speaks Arabic and Kurdish.’

• narration: reporting an action as it takes place, or narrating the events in a story. In this  latter function it is equal to the perfect tense.  This is often called “the historical present’.

The meaning of a particular verb in the imperfect tense will depend on, first, its semantic class and then the context in which it is found.