Ahlan wa sahlan!
Right now, we're going to talk about one of the Arabic case endings for nouns. Again, case endings are called إعراب,
And right now we're going to talk about المجرور.
المجرور is typically marked with a 'kasra' on singular nouns. So if we were talking about a definite noun, like الكتاب,
If it were مجرور because of something that happened in the sentence, it would have one 'kasra' on it.
الكتابِ. is how we would pronounce it fully vocalized. If it were indefinite, it would take a double 'kasra,' which
gives it 'tanwiin.'
Again, the sound of adding a 'nuun' at the end of the word. So we would pronounce this كتابٍ.
On sound, regular masculine plurals
in فصحى the ending is ين rather than ون,
which is only for مرفوع nouns.
Where do we see مجرور? We usually see مجرور after
prepositions, that is, on nouns
that follow a preposition, and we also see مجرور endings on all of the nouns in an إضافة
except the first one, which takes whatever إعراب it normally would based on the circumstances of the
sentence thus far.
Sometimes
you hear people call المجرور the 'genitive' case. If you have studied a
language that has case endings, perhaps Russian, or Latin, or Greek, and that helps your understanding, great. If not,
I would encourage you to just think of المجرور as
المجرور.
Why
battle with two sets of terminology? Because
the logic that applies to multiple languages works, until sometimes it breaks down, so مجرور is مجرور.
It may interest you to know that المجرور is actually the most common
case ending for nouns in most texts, because
'iDaafas' are everywhere in Arabic, and prepositions are everywhere in Arabic, and we're going to look at some of them right now.
Let's start with prepositions.
In Arabic,
we call
a certain class of prepositions
حروف الجر,
and notice that جرّ and
مجرور share that same double root of
'jiim, raa, raa,' so we can think of a noun that is in مجرور as a noun that has been
'prepositioned.' Over here is a list of
حروف جرّ, many of which you're probably very familiar with, and over here are some other prepositions that are not,
strictly speaking, حروف جرّ as they are understood by the Arab grammarians who
systematized the Arabic language, but for our purposes here
they function according to pretty much the same rules, and we get the same results, and nouns that come after them are
in مجرور. Let's take a look at a few examples.
A very simple sentence: if I wanted to say 'the student is in the big house,' to be very banal.
Okay,
الطالب في البيت الكبير.
الطالب, not going to be مجرور, it's going to be مرفوع,
With a 'Damma,' you can watch a video about مرفوع, because nothing else is happened. This is the beginning of the sentence.
It's the مبتدأ, the subject of our sentence.
The rest of the sentence is the خبر, a prepositional phrase, we have في,
جرف جرّ, and now we have a noun and an adjective that come after it. Because of this في,
We need to use مجرور. It's like the في trips
The wire that makes us need to use مجرور. So it will sound, fully vocalized like this:
الطالبُ في البيتِ الكبيرِ.
So we have 'kasra' here and 'kasra' here because, both of these words are مجرور, because of our
preposition.
جرف جرّ.
Let's take another example.
If we wanted to say 'I got an excellent scholarship
for studying in the Middle East,' or 'to study in the Middle East,' I
could express it this way:
حصلتُ على منحة ممتازة للدراسة في الشرق الأوسط.
Ordinarily in print, this is how we would see it.
We probably wouldn't read this in a letter, or a book or a newspaper article, but if we wanted
to give it all its إعراب,
We would do it this way. I would say, okay حصلت, that's a verb, that's a fixed verb conjugation ending in the past, ,عل
okay, now I have a
حرف جرّ. That means the nouns and whatever adjectives modify them are also going to be مجرور, so
حصلتُ على منحة
منحة is indefinite, it's not part of an إضافة, that's an adjective, so I know that
It's really indefinite, so it gets a double
'kasra,' and so does the adjective that modifies it.
حصلتُ على منحةٍ ممتازةٍ
Okay.
للدراسة
Well, لـ is actually a preposition too, another حرف جرّ, and
we elide that 'alif in الدراسة,
because لِـ attaches right to it. للدراسة, so لِـ is a preposition modifying الدراسة, which is
definite, right? There's an 'alif-laam' in there, even if we don't see the alif.
Which means it's also مجرور, but with only one 'kasra,' because it's definite. للدراسة في
...another proposition. They're everywhere. They're all over the place. الشرقِ
Definite, one 'kasra,' الأوسط. 'awsaT' is an adjective, modifying
الشرق
so it also gets a 'kasra.' So practically everything after our initial verb is مجرور because of all those
prepositions
that we have floating around.
حصلتُ على منحةٍ ممتازةٍ للدراسةِ في الشرقِ الأوسطِ.
In an إضافة,
Every single word of the إضافة but the first will always
Take مجرور case endings. The first word is going to take whatever case endings it would have taken
depending on what had happened earlier in the sentence. When we're constructing a fully vocalized إضافة, though, there is one
extra little wrinkle,
which is that even though the words
before the end, no word in the إضافة except the final one is going to have definite markings,
they are all considered definite. They're part of a definite idea.
So even though they don't have
An 'alif-laam' on them or a possessive pronoun on them, they also don't take 'tanwiin.'
It's the only time where we're going to see nouns that look
indefinite
because they don't have 'alif-laam,' but also don't take 'tanwiin.' Let's look at a couple of examples.
if I wanted to say
'Do you know the director's son?' 'The son of the director?'
Let's assume that the director of our office is a woman. So I could say
هل تعرف...
Or let's say boy. ولد
المديرة؟
'the female director's boy,' or 'son'?
Here
since we have a verb, تعرف,
ولد is the direct object of
that verb. So
it's going to be منصوب. You can go watch the منصوب video and
learn or relearn all about that. So
that's going to take the case ending that it would normally take,
until this far in the sentence. However, because it's part of an إضافة, it's not going to take an
'alif-laam,' and it's not going to take 'tanwiin.' This is a complete
idea.
ولدَ المديرةِ
Because this is not the first word of an إضافة
it needs to take مجرور.
هل تعرفُ ولدَ المديرةِ؟
if we were pronouncing that final case ending.
Let's look at another, longer example. If I wanted to say 'I don't like the director's sons cat,' I
would need to say,
because of Arabic word order and the way it works, 'I don't like the cat of the son of the director.'
So here's how I would do it.
لا أحب قطة ولد المديرة.
This is how it would look in a normal text, but we want all of the إعراب.
Okay, 'I don't like
The cat of the son (or the boy) of the director.' Well, here,
قطة is the direct object of أحب, so again, it's going to be منصوب.
But it's part of a three-word
إضافة, so it has a definite meaning, and it isn't going to take
'tanwiin,' no, it's going to stay that way.
Now, ولد in the second word of an إضافة, which means it needs to be مجرور.
So
it takes a 'kasra,' but it's not the last word of the إضافة. So it, too, even though
we're talking about a specific boy
and a specific cat, it doesn't have that 'alif-laam' and it also doesn't have 'tanwiin,' because it's not really indefinite.
We're talking about something specific.
and now المديرة, because it's
not the first word of the إضافة, also takes a 'kasra.' It has an 'alif-laam,'
it's definite. And the whole إضافة is definite.
One last example. If I wanted to say, I've been in the office with
the cat, and the son, and the director, and I wanted to say 'I heard the murmuring or the muttering of the employees, I
could express it this way:
سمعتُ ثرثرة الموظّفين.
Here, سمعتُ, a verb with a direct object, ثرثرة, so I bet you know what happens:
It's going to be منصوب with one 'fatha' because this
is an إضافة. now موظّف in the singular
would
take a 'kasra.' However, since we are talking about multiple employees, and
since this word is مجرور because of its position in the إضافة, it's going to be marked
مجرور
with this
ين. if we were talking about the employees as the subject of a sentence,
then we would have to add
the مرفوع ending, موظّفون, but because this is the second word of an إضافة,
we say موظّفين.
سمعتُ ثرثرةَ الموظّفين.
and there is our fully vocalized إضافة.