Marhaba!
Right now we're going to talk about the last case ending for nouns in Arabic, which is called المنصوب.
It's typically referred to in English as the 'accusative,'
so if that helps you, if you've studied other inflected languages,
accusative and منصوب functionally are about the same thing. On
nouns, we'll see منصوب marked in a couple of ways. On singular nouns. We typically see it marked with a 'fatha.'
So الكتاب with a 'fatha' here, pronounced الكتابَ.
Or, on an indefinite noun,
with 'fatha tanwiin.' There is actually a wrinkle that distinguishes منصوب from the other case endings that you've been learning about.
When we see at the end of an indefinite noun it also gets an
'alif' at the end.
So it would not just be كتابً, with a 'baa,' like this. We would add an
'alif as well. Which means that even in a non vocalized text if we're reading a book, a newspaper article,
etc., we will
often see the 'alif,' even if we don't see the tanwiin, it'll be included in
many cases.
Because
just orthographically. that is the rule. It needs to be included, that 'alif.'
In
regular
plurals, regular masculine plurals, it
instead of the ون ending
That we see in مرفوع, sort of our default, we add ين.
So in the منصوب if I wanted to talk about 'the teachers,' I would say
المدرّسين
not المدرّسون.
When we use or see منصوب it usually indicates a couple of things. Perhaps the most common is the
direct object of a verb المفعول به, as we say in Arabic. 'I bought a book.' Well,
in Arabic 'a book,'
كتاب, would need to be
منصوب: كتاباً.
Other really common places we see it are
adverbs, and I'm going to talk a little more about that, because the meaning is a little broader than we might think of if we're
coming to this with a background in the English language.
Also, the predicate, the خبر of
'kaana' or its sisters, كان وأخواتها,
and the subject, the اسم of
إنّ وأخواتها, and there are separate videos once again, on both of
those constructions that you can go and check out for some more specific examples of how that works.
When we say
'adverbs,' in Arabic we don't just mean things that we consider adverbs in English. The
notion of 'adverbiality,' if you will, is a little bit broader.
Typically, in English, we think of an adverb that
describes how a verb was done.
'How did you come? Quickly? Slowly?' Or
'How did they drag their feet? Heavily? Sadly? Things like that, but in Arabic, that
'adverbiality,' and I hate to use the word, but I guess I just did twice,
can also extend to answering the questions of 'what?' or
'when?' كيف؟ متى؟ ماذا؟ How, what, and when.
So
for example, if I wanted to say 'I will travel
tomorrow in the morning,' an appropriate way to do that in Arabic would be to say
سأسافر غداً صباحاً.
الغد is a word in Arabic that means tomorrow, and الصباح
is a word, of course, that means morning, so in Arabic I can get away with saying 'I will travel tomorrow-ly, morning-ly,' sort of.
I'm answering the question 'when?' Not necessarily 'how will I travel,' quickly, slowly,
by plane, by bus, but I'm giving some information about the temporality, and it's also going to be in
منصوب. So when we talk about adverbs, the English language word doesn't quite contain the
same number of possibilities that it does in
Arabic. Let's take a look at some other examples. If I want to say 'I
bought a new book from the university bookstore.' I could phrase it like this:
اشتريتُ كتاباً جديداً من مكتبة الجامعة.
Here--I forgot some dots.
اشتريتُ, 'I bought.' What did I buy? ماذا؟ I bought a book.
كتاباً جديداً.
'I bought a new book.' And remember that adjectives have to agree with nouns in case. So since جديد is modifying
كتاب here, it is also
منصوب.
Notice
that here, we have this preposition, a حرف جرّ, and then after that we have a prepositional phrase, and it's not
منصوب.
مجرور, the مجرور case, kind of overrides
the منصوب in this case. It's a little more powerful.
So I would say, if I wanted to fully vocalize the rest of it, من مكتبةِ الجامعةِ.
مكتبة is مجرور because of the preposition,
And then الجامعة is also مجرور because it is
the second word of the إضافة. You can go watch a video on مجرور to watch some more examples of that
process in action.
Another example: if we wanted to say 'I think that the teacher is strange,' you
could say
أظنّ أنّ الأستاذ غريب.
so here we have أنّ, and
then
خبر أنّ and اسم أنّ
because
الأستاذ is اسم أنّ, it's sort of the subject of the new
clause or new sentence that's introduced with أنّ, It is منصوب. And since it's definite it will only take
one 'fatha.'
أظنّ أنّ الأستاذَ...
And then the خبر of أنّ will be
مرفوع.
again, you can go look at the
أنّ وأخواتها
video for more information about that, but here's a case where
الأستاذ would need to be منصوب, because it's the اسم of أنّ, the subject that leads
the new sentence or clause.
One last example. If we wanted to say 'she was short,
but she got tall,' we could say it this way:
That's probably how it would look in normal print, but if we wanted to give all of these إعراب
their full inflections, we would say
كانتْ قصيرةً، ولكن أصبحت طويلةً.
Because قصيرة and طويلة are both خبر for 'kaana,' and 'asbaHa,' respectively.
The 'ism' of 'kaana,'
and the اسم of أصبح,
is sort of implied. It's buried in that verb. There is an implied هي in our conjugations
of these verbs,
but it's not actually present.
But again,
قصيرة وطويلة
are sort of the 'news,' the information
driving the sentence. 'She was...'
What, what is it? What's the news, what are you trying to tell me? كانت قصيرةً
خبر كان
منصوب, and خبر أصبح
منصوب.
So again, that kind of answers the question
'what?' ماذا؟ What was she, what did she become? She was short, she
became tall.