Lesson 46 – الدَّرْسُ السَّادِسُ وَالأرْبَعُونَ

Pronouns (3 of 5) – الضَّمَائرُ (٣ من ٥)

The Accusative Attached Pronoun - ضَّمير النَصْبِ المُتَّصِل

The Accusative Attached Pronoun in position of direct object

• We are still in lesson forty six of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
• In the table mentioned below there is a full division of the accusative attached personal pronouns, when they represent direct object suffixes connected to the verb:

• If we look attentively at the above mentioned table we may have the following observations:

First:

• When the accusative pronoun is attached to the verb, this does not prevent the grammatical sign of the verb to appear at the end of the verb, i.e. if the verb is in the indicative case (Rafξ) it should be signed originally with đammah. This đammah appears on the last letter of the verb preceding the pronoun e.g.

Second:

• The pronoun of the 1^st. person singular masculine (anā) has to be preceded by letter (n) Nūn which is called in Arabic نون الوقاية meaning the Nūn of protection, this is because it protects the ending of the verb from being signed with Kasrah, (the Kasrah is the only available sign before a long vowel (ī) which is the main pronoun for the 1^st. person s. m.). The verb cannot be signed with Kasrah, because the Kasrah is characteristic of the nouns (verbs can be indicative, accusative or jussive, and never being genitive).
• The result of this conflict is to put the “Nūn of protection”, after the grammatical sign of the verb as in the following example:

Third:

• All the third person pronouns contain the letter (hā’ هـ). It is noticeable that there are two alternatives in the table regarding the pronunciation of that (hā’ هـ ):
• The first is to sign it with đammah, 
• The second is to sign it with Kasrah.
• It is not random choice, but it is according to some phonetic factors as follows:
• We always sign the (hā’ هـ ) with Fatħah when the pronoun is (hā ها ) related to the 3^rd. person singular feminine, e.g. (يَعْرِفُها),  because it is not possible to sign any letter with Kasrah when it is followed by an Alif.
• Regarding the rest of the 3^rd. person pronouns we sign the (hā’ هـ ) sometimes with đammah and sometimes with Kasrah.
• We sign it with đammah when the preceding verb is ended with:
• đammah (original indicative sign) as in:يَعْرِفُهُ – يَعْرِفُهُما – يَعْرِفُهُمْ – يَعْرِفُهُنَّ
• Fatħah (original accusative sign) as in: أنْ يَعْرِفَهُ – أن يَعْرِفَهُما – أنْ يَعْرِفَهُمْ – أنَ يَعْرِفَهُنَّ
• pausing sukūn, i.e. on a consonant (the original jussive sign) as in:لَمْ يَعْرِفْهُ – لَمْ يَعْرِفْهُما – لَمْ يَعْرِفْهُمْ – لَمْ يَعْرِفْهُنَّ  
• Prolongation sukūn, on alif or wāw (of weak verb) as in: ينساهُ – ينساهُما – يدعوهُمْ - يدعوهُنَّ
• And finally we sign the (hā’ هـ ) of these pronouns with Kasrah when the preceding verb is ended with:
• Prolonging sukūn on yā’ (of a weak verb) as in: يُعْطِيهِ - يُعْطِيهِما - يُعْطِيهِم - يُعْطِيهِنَّ
• The yā’ of the 2^nd. Person singular feminine, i.e. when attached to the imperative اكتبيهِ
• The Kasrah remains after the omission of the yā’ ending of weak verb in the jussive present or in the imperative, as in: لَمْ يُعْطِهِمْ – أَعْطِهِمْ أنْتَ

Fourth:

• We can notice here that these pronouns (accusative attached pronouns) are available attachments to both present and past verb. This is unlike the nominative attached pronouns which have different forms for each tense.
• As we said earlier above that this kind of pronoun has no affect on the endings of the verb, so the past verb remains indeclinable on the Fatħah when it’s connected to these pronouns (while the nominative pronouns make the past verb indeclinable on sukūn, and one of them makes it indeclinable on đammah) please see these examples:

• It is also noticeable that for the past verb we never use the Kasrah sign for the letter (hā’) of the third person that we mentioned in the previous point, just because the past verb is originally ended with Fatħah.

• These were the rules of the accusative attached pronoun when it represents a direct object suffix in a verbal sentence. After the exercises we will learn the rules of the accusative pronoun when it falls as a subject of nominal sentence preceded by indeed and its sisters (إَنَّ وَأَخَواتهَا).