Lesson 81 – الدَّرْسُ الحادِي والثَّمانون
The followers (4) The confirmative - التَّــوَابِع (٤) الـتَّـوْكِيد
The rules of the confirmative – أحكام التوكيد
- Let's Continue to learn Arabic through our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course contains Arabic grammar, Arabic syntax, Arabic morphology and more.
- Following are the rules related to the Arabic confirmative:
1- The confirmative is a follower, i.e. it follows the confirmed part in the declension case (nominative, accusative, or genitive) as all followers.
2- The confirmative mustn’t be separated from the confirmed noun, i.e. it has to be placed after the confirmed noun directly. Therefore it is wrong to say:
Rather the correct is as follows:
Correct |
Muhammad, Muhammad sat on the chair |
- The moral confirmative also cannot be separated from the confirmed noun, and so it is wrong to say:
While the correct is to say:
Correct |
The book itself is in the bag |
- The above mentioned sentence is correct because the confirmative is placed after the confirmed noun directly (the confirmed here is الكِتاب). Therefore it is also correct to say:
Correct |
The book is in the bag itself |
- The above mentioned sentence is correct, but the meaning is different, because the confirmed in this sentence is (الحَقِيبة).
3- The confirmed noun cannot be indefinite noun, rather it has to be definite (if it is a noun), as it is clearly noticed in all previous examples.
4- The moral confirmative has to be attached to a genitive pronoun related to the confirmed noun. The genitive attached pronoun has to match the confirmed noun in gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular, dual, or plural). Consider the following examples:
Structure | Example | |||||
Attached pronoun | Confirmative | Confirmed | English | Arabic | ||
Number | Gender | Noun | ||||
Singular | Masculine | The student came in person | ||||
Singular | Feminine | The girl, married in person | ||||
Dual | Masculine | The students went out, both of them | ||||
Plural | Masculine | The boys slept, all of them |
5- The moral confirmative has different form for each of the singular, dual and plural, as follows:
a- The moral confirmative of the singular noun is formed of the singular noun (نَفْس - عَيْن) attached to the proper singular genitive pronoun, as in the following examples:
English | Arabic |
The player won, himself | |
The female player herself lost |
b- The confirmative of the plural noun is one of the plural words (أَنْفُس – أَعْيُنُ – جَمِيع - عامَّة) attached to the proper genitive plural pronoun, as in the following examples:
Confirmative | English | Arabic |
The thieves escaped themselves | ||
The officers themselves went behind (after) them | ||
The students lived in a hotel, all of them |
c- The confirmative of the dual noun is formed of one of the dual nouns (كِلا - كِلْتا) attached to a dual genitive pronoun, as in the following examples:
Confirmative | English | Arabic |
The two players clashed with each other | ||
I ate the two chicken, both of them | ||
The child kissed his parents, both of them | ||
The two years passed, both of them |
6- We learnt earlier that the confirmed noun can be an attached pronoun or a latent pronoun, and in these cases the confirmative has to be a separate pronoun. Let’s study more examples of this with the declension of the pronoun (the confirmative):
Declension of the confirmative | The pronoun | Examples | ||
The confirmative | The confirmed | English | Arabic | |
Indeclinable in place of nominative | You came to Egypt | |||
Indeclinable in place of nominative | We went out of Egypt | |||
Indeclinable in place of nominative | He returned to his house | |||
Indeclinable in place of accusative | I forgave them, them not you | |||
Indeclinable in place of genitive | I came to visit you | |||
Indeclinable in place of genitive | I will live with him |
- We now clearly understand that the pronoun can be a confirmative of another pronoun. But the noun cannot be a confirmative of a preceding pronoun. Therefore it is wrong to say:
Wrong |
- Also, the pronoun cannot be a confirmative of a preceding noun as follows:
Wrong |
- Therefore the correct is to confirm a noun by a noun, or a pronoun by a pronoun as we learnt earlier.
- N.B.: the following sentence includes two pronouns:
Correct |
- The first pronoun is a latent pronoun, and it is confirmed noun, while the second (هُوَ) is a confirmative indeclinable noun in place of nominative because it is a confirmative of the doer of the verb.