Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now, we're going to talk about
the مرفوع case in Arabic, that we use for
nouns in certain circumstances.
مرفوع
is sometimes
rendered in English as the 'nominative' case. So if you have studied an inflected language with case endings and that
helps you out, good for you.
Nominative, or مرفوع is
kind of a default
setting in a lot of cases. If we don't have any other grammar
prior to a noun in a sentence that makes it something other than مرفوع, it's مرفوع.
Some specific examples of when we typically use مرفوع in a sentence are in a جملة اسمية, a
nominative sentence, both the مبتدأ and the خبر are
often
مرفوع unless there's another element that makes things more complicated. In a جملة فعلية, a
verbal sentence, the subject of the verb, the فاعل,
will typically be مرفوع. In
a
sentence with كان or one of its sisters, the
subject of كان or اسم كان, or
the subject of whatever other verb in that family, will also be
مرفوع. Again, that's kind of like a subject . A مبتدأ.
Same idea. And in a
sentence with إنّ or one of its sisters,
the خبر of
إنّ is مرفوع. It's sort of a reversal of
the situation of اسم كان. And we have videos on those
two subjects, as well as videos on
verbal sentences and nominative sentences, that you can go and check out if you need a refresher.
So to mark مرفوع in a sentence on a singular noun, we'll typically use
'Damma,' so on a definite noun, I would say
الكتاب
I would have a bomb over there, so I would pronounce it الكتابُ,
or if I were referring to an indefinite book,
it would take two 'Dammas,' which sometimes people write as kind of one
amalgamated squiggle. كتابً, or
كتابً. Sometimes computer fonts will only give you one or the other of these visual options,
but there's absolutely no difference between them. They both represent
'tanwiin,' that addition of a 'nuun' sound, so we get
'-un'
at the end. If we are
manipulating a plural that takes regular
endings,
we're going to use
ون at the end. Like if we were talking about a single employee,
We would say موظّف,
and
then if you were talking about multiple
employees, and the word in the sentence was مرفوع, we would say موظّفون, as opposed to
موظّفين, the ending that we would use for
منصوب and مجرور, our other options.
So, let's look at some examples. If
we want to say, to start with a very simple sentence. 'He is a good student.'
هو طالب جيّد.
This is what we would see in a normal text, that wasn't completely vocalized, but
If we wanted to vocalize the entire thing, هو would be our مبتدأ,
and
typically,
pronouns like that don't take any case endings,
so هو would stay the way it is, but 'he is a good student,' طالب جيّد, it's indefinite,
so both the noun and the adjective are going to take 'tanwiin.'
هو طالبٌ جيّدٌ.
is how we would read all of those words completely vocalized. Or if we wanted to say
'The employees came to the party,'
we could say it this way:
جاء الموظّفون إلى الحفلة.
Here,
الموظّفون is the فاعل, the subject of this verb. Because the verb comes first,
we conjugate it in the singular as though it were for هو, and not هم.
We could reverse the order. Instead of having a verbal sentence, we would then have a nominative sentence,
with the خبر as a verb, and then
say
الموظفون جاءوا إلى الحفلة.
Either way, الموظّفون is the فاعل, the subject, the doer of the verb.
So it's going to be مرفوع. Notice that
حفلة, الحفلة, because it's after a preposition, is actually going to be
مجرور, with a 'kasra.'
Another example, we could say
'I think that they are
Saudi engineers.'
Here we have to remember
that we have a particle, أنّ, which is a sister of إنّ.
أظنّ أنّهم مهندسون سعوديون.
Here,
because this
phrase, this noun an adjective, are the
خبر
of
أنّ,
They are مرفوع. This would be the اسم أنّ.
And because it's an attached pronoun, again, it's not going to take any any sort of case endings.
أظنّ أنّهم مهندسون سعوديون.
Or, I just dropped my chalk, so you might say 'the professor is not
excellent.'
Based on his chalk handling skills. So you could say
ليسَ الأستاذ ممتازاً
And الأستاذ, because it is the اسم of ليس
would be مرفوع.
ليسَ الأستاذُ ممتازاً.
This would be
the خبر
of ليس, so it would have to be منصوب.
We would need a different ending there.
You can go check out the video on منصوب if you want to see more about those examples. As you can see,
it's very difficult to say much of anything
without
straying from مرفوع into other cases. There are
objects of verbs everywhere, there are prepositions everywhere, there are إضافات everywhere.
so although مرفوع is the default, there are a whole lot of scenarios that sort of
demand that we switch to another case. After a preposition here, or because
we have
ليس and we have خبر ليس so it has to be منصوب.
So while the مرفوع can be kind of a beginning point, always keep your eyes open for
the other two case endings that you might need, because in reality you're going to see them
most of the time, even though مرفوع is kind of your starting point.