Ahla wa sahla!
Right now we're going to talk about using fronted predicates in Arabic, especially to describe places.
In Arabic, a fronted predicate is called الخبر المقدّم.
You probably recognize that term خبر from
learning about
الجملة الاسمية, what we call in Arabic,
or rather, the Arabic name for a 'nominal sentence.' A sentence that starts with a noun, and often a sentence that has no verb at all.
خبر is one of the essential parts of a جملة اسمية, and the other is a مبتدأ.
So here are some very very simple
جمل اسمية, ,as simple as we get:
هي طالبة, 'she is a student,'
and الأستاذ غريب , 'the teacher or professor is strange.' In both these cases, the first word is the مبتدأ,
what we might call in English grammar the 'subject' of the sentence, and then the second word is the خبر.
You might recognize that جذر from the word أخبار, 'news,' and that's a helpful
way of thinking about it. The خبر is the interesting part, right?
It's giving us the information about the subject of the sentence. الأستاذ...
well,
what about him?
You've given us the beginning, a بداية, with our مبتدأ, but what's the news? What are you trying to tell me? غريب. خبر.
That's the piece of information is that he's strange.
So, in Arabic,
when we are talking about places, and
things that they have in them, we tend to start with a prepositional phrase. In English, I could say
'the apartment has of a kitchen,' or 'there is a big kitchen in the apartment,' but in Arabic, literally,
what I can say is 'in the apartment a big kitchen.'
في الشقة مطبخ كبير.
Notice with these two sentences that we don't need a verb to express that idea of 'is.'
It's just implicit.
هي طالبة,'she student,' she is a student.
Similarly, in this sentence that starts with a prepositional phrase,
the 'is' is just kind of implied there, and في الشقة is the خبر.
مطبخ كبير, 'a big kitchen,' what about a big kitchen? Well, it's in the apartment. في الشقة. So مطبخ كبير
is our مبتدأ,
and في الشقة is our خبر. If we wanted to negate the sentence all we would need to do is put
ليس in front of it in formal Arabic, and ليس wouldn't need to conjugate.
We wouldn't need to do anything to it: ليس في الشقة مطبخ كبير.
In theory and in practice we could get away with using that word هناك
to rearrange the word order here, هناك meaning 'there is,' or 'there are.'
هناك مطبخ كبير في الشقة.
But it's arguably more elegant style, and certainly much more
native to the Arabic language
to phrase the same statement
using this structure, خبر مقدّم, a fronted predicate put right in front,
Followed by a مبتدأ, which is that indefinite noun.
You can also use this structure to
express positionality using other prepositions, not just في.
Let's take an example: 'behind the building, there's a nice swimming pool.' Or in English, maybe a more native word order would be
'there is a nice swimming pool behind the building.' So I can say 'behind the building,' that's my fronted predicate...
وراء البناية مسبح جميل.
There's my خبر, put first, and there's my مبتدأ.
A nice swimming pool... what about it? Well, it's behind the building. And again,
nothing in the middle for the 'is.' It's just implied. We can also
use this structure to refer to
certain more metaphorical kinds of
positionality, if you will. If I wanted to say, oh boy, 'I have a lot of work in front of me,'
I could say that in Arabic, and I could say أمامي
أمام, meaning in front, and ي being a suffix referring to myself, أمامي عمل كثير.
Literally,
"in front of me a lot of work."
Once again,
it's tempting, especially if you are an advanced speaker of English, to fall back on a more English seeming word order.
But we're going to encounter this word order and this structure all the time in Arabic.
So it's important that we grasp it and that we know how to deploy it to make our language sound as
Arabic as it possibly can.