Sentence Structure
How do I know which word goes where?
First, let’s look at an English sentence:
The man hit the dog
In this sentence, there are 3 main articles: a verb (hit), a subject i.e. something carrying out the verb (the man) and an object i.e. something which has the verb being done upon (the dog). The reason we know the man is the subject in this sentence (aside from logic) is because it comes first, before “the dog”. In English, most sentences indicate the subject by putting it first. The word order is SUBJECT --> VERB --> OBJECT.
In Arabic, the word order is VERB --> SUBJECT --> OBJECT. However, what’s so special about Arabic is that even if you isolate each noun, you can tell it’s position in the sentence by looking at the final letter. First, let’s translate the words:
the man: الرَّجُل
hit: ضَرَبَ
the dog: الكَلْب
Verbs do not change their vowels, because they have to stay fixed to retain their meaning. However, “the man” can be a subject in some sentences and an object in another. How do we know which it is then? It’s almost as if each word holds a signpost saying “hey! I’m the subject” or “hey! I’m the object” where:
Dhammah (rafa3) means “subject”
Fatah (naSab) means “object”
so, الرَّجُل becomes الرَّجُلُ
and الكَلْب becomes الكَلْبَ
Now to put them in order: ضَرَبَ الرَّجُلُ الكَلْبَ
So when a noun ‘announces’ that it is a subject, it changes in a certain way with the most common change generally being the last vowel changing to a dhammah (rafa3) so we say that words that are subjects are in Haalat Marfoo3 i.e. the state of having a rafa3.
And when a noun ‘announces’ that it is an object, it changes in a certain way with the most common change generally being the last vowel changing to a fatah (naSab) so we say that words that are subjects are in Haalat ManSoob i.e. the state of having a naSab.










