In Arabic, nominal sentences typically begin with a subject (مبتدأ), which can be a noun or a pronoun, e.g.
الولد طويل.
‘The boy is tall.’
هي طالبة.
‘She is a student.’
A noun that occurs as a subject is often definite, e.g. a proper noun like (محمد) or (نادية), a noun that begins with ال, e.g. (الولد) or (الطالبة), or a noun that has a possessive ending, e.g. (كتابي) or (صديقتي).
In some cases, when the subject is indefinite, it appears after the predicate. The predicate in this case is often made up of a prepositional phrase or the expression (هناك), i.e. ‘there is’. In this case, the predicate occurs at the beginning of the sentence (خبر مقدم) and the subject appears after it (مبتدأ مؤخر), e.g.
هناك أماكن جميلة في العالم العربي.
‘There are beautiful places in the Arab world.’
في الكتاب الجديد قصص جميلة.
‘In the new book, there are lovely stories.’
This is important with regard to the case marking of these sentences, as many students often miss the fact that these sentences are nominal sentences with fronted predicates. The subject that comes at a later position in the sentence must be marked nominative, e.g.
في الكتاب الجديد قصصٌ جميلةٌ.
Comments:
Scheich Josef:
مرحبا يا عزيزة
To avoid confusion replace
“it appears after the subject.”
by
“it appears after the predicate (خبر).”
and “with regards to” by “with regard to”.
شكرا جزيلا
يوسف
aziza:
@Scheich Josef شكرا جزيلا يا يوسف
Yusuf:
تحياتي الطيبة يا عزيزة وبعد
Thank you for your great site! I was wondering if you know of sites or can provide some examples of this topic- identifying the mubtada and the khabar, when you are reading a paragraph with long sentences in it.
I am expecially interested in good examples of identifying the mubtada and the khabar in the mansoub after the verb kaana or one of its sisters has acted on the khabar, but I am looking for examples from a paragraph. Usually the examples and exercises that are given for this topic present very short sentences of 3 or 4 words, whereas I am looking for examples from an article or a story, or at least from a whole paragraph of information.
وشكراً
يوسف
aziza:
@Yusuf Thank you very much for your kind message Yusuf. Please chek my posting today and the next one tomorrow for the answers.
Salaam,
Aziza
Khaleel:
سلام يوسف
That was indeed an interesting issue you raised Yusuf, for both elements (al-khabar and a-mubtada’) might sometimes be very complex, as with the addition of a relative proposition like كان الرئيس الذي اغتيل أمام الآلاف من الناس المحبين الآتون من كل مكان لاستقباله رمزا من أعظم الرموز في الديمقراطية الحقيقية والحرية الفردية والجماعية في التعبير عن الآراء مهما كانت اتجاهاتها
You see how long they are?
Good luck for the analysis!