Arabic: Genitive Construction
From UniLang Wiki
In this chapter we will discuss a construction expression possesion, which uses the genetive case in arabic. In English this construction is made with the preposition "of" or using "'s". For example:
- The book of the student - The student's book
In Arabic, we will literally say something like:
- Book student's
The second word (student) will be in genitive case here, the first word (book) will be in the so-called Construction State or Status Constructus.
The word in this Construction State has neither a definite article ("al"), nor nunation. So in arabic we say:
- The book of the student - (kitābu T-Tālibi) كتاب الطالب
Note the all words except the first are always in genitive case (it bears "i"). The first word is nominative in this case (it bears "u"), this depends on it's function in the sentence, it could also be in genitive or accusative case for that matter.
Also note that all words except the last are in construction state. This is important to realize when we are looking at an example with more than two words:
- The key = (al-miftāHu) المفتاح
- The door = (al-bābu) الباب
- The house = (al-baytu) البيت
- The key of the door of the house - (miftāHu bābi l-bayti) مفتاح باب البيت
A vital difference between this construction in arabic and English is that in english, we define each word in the construction to be definite or indefinite (we see we mention "the" three times in this example), while in Arabic the entire construction is made definite or indefinite.
Since every word but the last are in construction state, only the last can bear an article or nunation and determines (in)definitess of the entire construction.
