Lesson 45 – الدَّرْسُ الْخامِسُ والأرْبَعُونَ

Pronouns (2 of 5) – الضَّمَائرُ (٢ من ٥)

The nominative attached pronouns – ضَّمَائِرُ الرَّفْع المُتَّصِلَةُ

The Nominative Pronouns attached to the past verb

• We are still in lesson forty five of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
• The following table summarizes the all the Arabic attached pronouns as agents of the past verb with the example of verb to write كَتَبَ:

• From the above mentioned table we learn the following:
• There is no nominative attached pronoun for the third person singular masculine, we just say the verb in its original stem, (كَتَبَ), which means (he wrote).
• The pronouns related to all the pronouns of the first and the second persons and to the feminine plural of the third person are preceded with Sukūn. This means that the past verb attached to them is indeclinable on Sukūn. This sukūn makes morphological/ phonetic effect in the conjugation of the weak/irregular verbs. Let's see how does this affect verbs like (قال he said), (مَرَّ He passed), and (دَعَا he invited) as follows:

1.   قَالَ he said:

2.   مَرَّ he passed:

3.   دَعَا he invited or prayed.

• There is no nominative attached pronoun for the third person singular feminine, although we add (tā') letter in the end (كَتَبَتْ). Our grammarians say that the (tā') signed with sukūn is not an attached pronoun, rather it is just a feminine sign ending. To be convinced of this fact consider the following explanation:
• When we express the agent by an evident noun we drop the prominent pronoun obligatorily and put the evident noun. This happens in all persons, but we don’t drop the (tā') letter from the conjugation of the third person singular feminine. This means that this (tā') letter is not a pronoun. Consider these examples and explanations:

• Unlike the examples above we don’t drop the (tā') letter from the conjugation of the verb with the third person feminine singular, as the following example:

• Here is an important phonetic information:
• Some of the nominative attached pronouns are ended with a short vowel as:

ـْنَ - ـْتُنَّ - ـْتِ - ـْتَ - ـْتُ

• Some others are ended with a long vowel as:

ـُوا- ـَتَا- ـَا- ـْتُمَا- ـْنا

• And there is only one ending with sukūn:

ـْتُمْ

• Those pronouns ending with short vowel don’t have any problem or phonetic changes when connected to any following words.
• But those ending with a long vowel when they are followed by sukūn, the long vowel in the end of the pronoun will be dropped in the pronunciation (not in the writing) as follows:

• You can notice from the above mentioned examples that due to the drop of the long vowel from the pronunciation we will find some similar sounds in this context as follows:

Katabad-darsa = كتب الدرس  and كتبا الدرس  = he wrote the lesson and they (dual) wrote the lesson.

Katabnad-darsa = كتبن الدرس  and كتبنا الدرس = they (3rd. pl. f.) wrote the lesson and we wrote the lesson.

• Finally in the pronoun ending with a sukūn (ـْتُمْ), the sukūn will be changed (phonetically) into đammah when it meets another sukūn in the following word:

Katabtumud-darsa = كَتَبْتُمُ الدَّرْسَ = you (2nd.pl.m.) wrote the lesson.

• By this phonetic notice we end the nominative attached pronoun as an agent of past verb. Let’s now see some exercises of that type of pronouns.