Masaa' al-kheir!
Right now I want to talk about إضافة and
adjectives, and how to describe a noun that's part of an إضافة
using an adjective. In this video
I'm going to assume that you have a good basic understanding of how إضافة structures work,
but if you need some of you there's a separate video on that subject that you can go ahead and watch.
As you probably remember, an إضافة is composed entirely of
nouns--nouns or pronouns.
A string of just nouns. And if we have anything else
separating those nouns, we don't have an إضافة anymore. The structure doesn't work.
So here are a couple of examples of
really simple إضافات.
مكتب أستاذي my professor's office
قهوة المطعم the restaurant's coffee, or the coffee of the restaurant, and
سيارة الطالبة., the student's car. This student happens to be grammatically feminine, which will become important later.
So remember that in each of these examples
both of these nouns are considered definite, but only the last term is going to look definite, either with 'alif laam',
like we have in these two examples, or with a possessive pronoun like we have in this first example: ي
But what if we want to describe
these first nouns, these first 'terms' of be إضافات, using adjectives?
Ordinarily to describe an noun using an adjective, we won't put the noun
immediately--excuse me, we put the adjective
immediately after
the noun.
Here. So if we were describing this سيارة or the قهوة or the مكتب
we would put the adjectives there, but because they're part of an إضافة, that doesn't really work. It would ruin our إضافة.
So, what's the solution?
We take those adjectives, and we put them at the end of the entire إضافة, so if we wanted to say
'My professor's big office,' 'the big office of my professor,' we would say
مكتب أستاذي الكبير
Or "the restaurant's delicious coffee":
قهوة المطعم اللذيذة
Or 'the student's new car': سيارة الطالبة الجديدة
Remember again, these nouns, technically, because they're part of an إضافة, are definite, so the adjectives
describing these things have to be definite with 'alif-laam' as well.
You'll notice though that sometimes this can create a little bit of ambiguity.
Here with the student's car,
We've described the سيارة
As جديدة, grammatically feminine,
Because سيارة, 'car,' is gramatically feminine. But so is الطالبة, so there's a little bit of
ambiguity there, and it's going to be up to us to know from context whether we're talking about 'the new student,' or
'the new car.' Similarly, up here, مكتب أستاذي الكبير--كبير can mean 'big,'
For a thing, a physical thing, but it can also mean 'old' for people. So if we're talking about an aged أستاذ
maybe we're describing
'my old professor,' 'my professor who's advanced in years.'
Again, context is going to be our guide here.
Do we know that the student is new already, from something else that was said? Or are
we
describing an أستاذ who recently moved officesو or
an أستاذ that we know to be rather old? That's probably going to clear up
some of the ambiguity.
Context is going to be key for figuring out which is which. Notice that in this middle example, قهوة المطعم اللذيذة,
--oops, I forgot a dot--
there isn't the same ambiguity. Because قهوة is grammatically feminine, and
لذيذة is a grammatically feminine adjective that also has a 'taa marbuuTa.'
مطعم isn't a feminine word. It's a masculine word. So لذيذة can't be describing مطعم here.
There is one other thing that can help clear up some of the ambiguity. In
situations where formal case endings are being used,
they can actually help clear up some of the murkiness, because an adjective describing a noun
takes the case endings of the noun that it's describing.
All post-initial terms of an إضافة--that is,
every noun in an إضافة except the very first one, is going to be
مجرور. If you need a refresher on case endings and how they work,
you can go check out videos on those subjects as well. I'm assuming you have a working knowledge here.
But
within a sentence, the first term of an إضافة
can be any case, depending on what else is going on in the sentence. So--let me clear this up a
little bit... if I wanted to say that 'my professor's
new office is beautiful,' then I would add a خبر
To the end of this جملة اسمية, nominal non-verbal sentence, right there. Now
مكتب is the beginning of the مبتدأ. There's nothing else the beginning of the sentence so مكتب is going to be
مرفوع and
أستاذ is going to be مجرور, but that 'ee'
sort of swallows the sound, so now if I want to describe
the office as 'big' or 'large,' I
would add a 'Dhamma' here because it needs to match مكتب.
مكتبُ أستاذي الكبيرُ
--because they need to match--جميلٌ.
And then there would be my خبر
which is also مرفوع. If I wanted to say that I
drank the restaurant's delicious coffee, I
could have that verb here, and then قهوة becomes the object
of that verb, it's منصوب which means it's going to have a 'fatha,' instead.
Which means that
لذيذة, because it's describing قهوة, also needs to be
منصوب with a 'kasra.' Or if I wanted to say that 'I rode in the students new car,'
Here "I rode in..."
في سيارة الطالبة الجديدة
Now because of this preposition, سيارة is going to be
مجرور which means that جديدة
is also مجرور with a 'kasra.' Here, though, because طالبة is the second term of an إضافة,
It's مجرور as well
so some ambiguity still exists.
But in cases where we are dealing with
texts that are fully vocalized, that can actually help clear up some of the ambiguity. In a case like this, though, and
as is usual, context is going to be the biggest
helper in terms of helping us determine
what an adjective is describing when it comes after an إضافة.