Chapter 1.4

The verb doesn't rhyme with فَعَلَ. We've already learned about baabs where the middle letter of a verb can have any of the 3 vowels, which is one reason that verbs don't always rhyme with فَعَلَ. Here we have another reason.

In Arabic, the letters و and ي can sometimes lead to pronunciation issues. There are many rules in Sarf that exist to stop these pronunciation issues from occuring. One of these rules is taking place here, where a واو or a ياء can change into an الف. We will teach you the exact rule later, but for now know that the original root letters are ج ي ء, but the ياء changed to an الف. The verb قَالَ is similar, in that the root letters are ق و ل, but the واو changed to an الف giving us قَالَ.

We have ((You are not leaving with us.)) which is a statement. The Hamza at the front is a حرف that is used for asking questions. It is called a ((Particle of Interrogation)). It takes the statement and turns it into a question, "Are you not leaving with us?".

Why is Ibraheem here using #9, the second person plural masculine? The idols are non-human plurals after all, so if he is speaking to them he should be using #10, the second person singular feminine. The answer is that when we speak about non-human plurals, what we mean is non-rational and non-sentient beings. It's not the human aspect that is important, but sentience and rationality. That is why the word can be treated feminine because it is morphologically feminine (because of the ة), or it can be treated as masculine.

When Ibraheem is speaking to the idols, even though he knows for certain that they are rock, without any sentience or rationality, he humours them, and speaks to them as if they are rational, sentient beings.

This is a significant sentence as there is a lot going on here. First of all, we have the verb سَكَتَتِ. The author is speaking about the idols, so we expect it to be conjugation #4, but there is no sukoon on the ت, and we have a Kasrah instead. This is because, if it had been saakin, then we would have had a gathering of two saakins - إِلْتِفَاتُ السَاكِنَيْنِ, and that is not allowed due to pronunciation issues. Therefore, in these cases, the third person singular feminine conjugation will be read with a Kasrah on the ت.

The next point of interest is لِأَنَّهَا. This is actually 3 words joined together. We have the preposition لِ which means "for", we have أنّ which means "the fact that", along with the منصوب 3rd person singular feminine attached pronoun هَا which is referring to the idols. All together, it literally means "for the fact that", which we can simplify and translate as "because".

You may have some bells ringing. This sounds a lot like the مفعول له that we've studied, which represents the reason and cause for a verb being done. And while the preposition لِ here is indeed coming for that very purpose, to give us the reason that the idols are silent, we do not label it as مفعول له. The preposition will instead combine with its object and be متعلّق for the verb. The same way that some verbs can't have a direct object and require a preposition, similarly we can use a prepositional phrase for the reason and cause as well.

We move over to the أنّ. You already know that أنّ is a sister of إنّ, and is one of the حُرُوْف مُشَبَّهَة بِالْفِعْل. It enters upon a جملة إسمية and waters it down to the level of a phrase, allowing that structure to take up one of the 22 places where a sentence cannot occupy, such as مفعول به.

Had the أنّ not been here, the sentence would be ((They are stone which do not speak)). In this case we would bring the مرفوع third person singular feminine pronoun هي. When أنّ comes to do its thing, it takes the مبتدأ and makes نصب, so we bring the منصوب third person singular feminine attached pronoun هَا.

We now come to the final section of this sentence, and here we learn something quite significant. We have ((stones which do not speak)).

is a full sentence, and before that we have which is a noun. From the translation, you can see that we have a descriptive phrasal relationship going on. The stone is being described using a full sentence. In English, if we want to describe a noun using a sentence we are required to insert a word like "who", "which", "that", "those". These types of words are called Relative Pronouns. We have relative pronouns in Arabic as well, however, if the noun that you're describing is indefinite, then in Arabic a relative pronoun is not brought. Only if the noun being described is definite would you require a relative pronoun. But when we translate, since a relative pronoun is always required in English, we add it into our translation. This is similar to the "is" issue, where Arabic has no word for "is" since it does not use a word to separate between the subject and the predicate like we do in English.

The reason we require a relative pronoun when describing a definite noun, and we don't in the case of the indefinite, is because informative sentences in Arabic are considered to be indefinite, so they satisfy the requirement of matching the موصوف when the موصوف is indefinite. When the موصوف is definite, the relative pronoun is required to convert the sentence to a definite value so it can satisfy the requirement of matching the definite موصوف.

Finally, when a sentence is coming as a صفة, it will need to have a pronoun inside it which refers back to the موصوف. In this case, has a هي pronoun embedded inside it which refers back to the حِجَارَةٌ.

You will see many, many examples of sentences coming as صفة, including examples where relative pronouns are required. With that said, we can now analyse this sentence fully:

literally means, "What is for you?". But it is often used in a negative and blameworthy sense.

means "to be/become silent", and that is how we translated it the first time. But given Ibraheem did everything he did, and they are still silent, we translate it as, "they remained silent." This is just another example of translating in a more eloquent manner.

Once again we draw your attention to differences in English and Arabic. In English, we say, "he hung the axe on its neck." In Arabic the preposition used is فِيْ which means "in". That's fine. We do what is required in our language and don't always translate word for word. That would be a mistake. Whether Arabic requires a preposition or can have a direct object, and if it requires a preposition, what preposition is decides to use, will not mean we change the requirements of English to match. We will instead understand the Arabic and translate it so the English is correct and captures the meaning, not the word for word translation.