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Verse (5:6), Word 14 - Quranic Grammar

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The fourteenth word of verse (5:6) is divided into 3 morphological segments. A preposition, noun and possessive pronoun. The prefixed preposition bi is usually translated as "with" or "by". The noun is masculine plural and is in the genitive case (مجرور). The noun's triliteral root is rā hamza sīn (ر أ س). The attached possessive pronoun is second person masculine plural. Together the segments form a preposition phrase known as jār wa majrūr (جار ومجرور).

Chapter (5) sūrat l-māidah (The Table spread with Food)


(5:6:14)
biruūsikum
your heads
P – prefixed preposition bi
N – genitive masculine plural noun
PRON – 2nd person masculine plural possessive pronoun
جار ومجرور والكاف ضمير متصل في محل جر بالاضافة

Verse (5:6)

The analysis above refers to the sixth verse of chapter 5 (sūrat l-māidah):

Sahih International: O you who have believed, when you rise to [perform] prayer, wash your faces and your forearms to the elbows and wipe over your heads and wash your feet to the ankles. And if you are in a state of janabah, then purify yourselves. But if you are ill or on a journey or one of you comes from the place of relieving himself or you have contacted women and do not find water, then seek clean earth and wipe over your faces and hands with it. Allah does not intend to make difficulty for you, but He intends to purify you and complete His favor upon you that you may be grateful.

See Also

14 messages

FS

7th February, 2010

N- genitive feminine (ACQ) singular noun

Kais

7th February, 2010

Salam. ACQ sounds interesting. What does it stand for? Please forgive me if I missed this and if it was already mentioned in a previous post. I do agree with you that we should note that the word is plural in meaning, and I also agree that we should also mention that it acts as a feminine singular grammatically.

FS

7th February, 2010

W/salaam- I had suggested that we could use ACQ to stand for acquired (feminine gender) for grammatical reasons- I hope you have not used it elsewhere!

Mazhar A. Nurani

7th February, 2010

Dictionaries show the word as plural noun. Singular and plural is used in 2:196. And it is masculine since pronoun used for it is masculine in 7:150; and then it is subject of the masculine verb in 19:4:7-8.

Kais

7th February, 2010

Salam. I think the problem is that the website needs to show two types of gender, not one. Perhaps we should always display both semantic gender (gender in meaning) and also grammatical gender (gender by function), where these differ. So clearly this word is plural in meaning, but can act as feminine singular in the grammar. What does everybody think about us stating the type of gender. So instead of just saying masculine or feminine, I propose that we always add "masculine in meaning", "feminine grammatically", etc, in order to distinguish these different types of gender, which are both valid. What do you think? The grammar rule here is that a non-rational plural can act as feminine singular according to grammatical function. Perhaps if we just state "masculine" or "feminine" this might lead to confusion, given the different types of gender possible for each word.

Abdul Rahman

7th February, 2010

My view on this is that the tagging for this word as "masculine plural" is correct, insofar as it indicates that the word is the plural form of a masculine word (in the singular). There are nine occurrences of ruus in the entire Quran (including this), and nowhere is the gender RELEVANT to the analysis. So, to tag it as "feminine singular" noun would be more confusing than helpful.

Mazhar A. Nurani

8th February, 2010

Salam Abdul Rahman, Not 9 but 11 plural occurreces are in Grand Qur'aan; (1)2:196(2)2:279(3)5:6(4)14:43(5)17:51(6)21:65(7)22:19(8)32:12(9)37:65(10)48:27(11)63:5=11

Abdul Rahman

8th February, 2010

Salam Mazhar, you are right. I miscounted. But I had already looked at all the verses you listed, and nowhere is the gender of the noun relevant to the analysis.

FS

8th February, 2010

Salaam all,

That may be so, but then we are not being precise or systematic if we ignore this fact. If we tag everything correctly then why not this as well? People who learn Arabic grammar know that plural (non-human) objects regardless of their gender in the singular take on a feminine singular gender in the plural- so we should show how that happens in the Qur'an- is that not the point of all this? The gender is only grammatical and not semantic, but I suggested it for the sake of systematicity. In other verses with words such as this (non-human) that then have a feminine adjective will confuse a learner if the noun (being described) is tagged as masculine; for example (I quoted in previous posts, and there are many others) the verse in Surah al Qiyaamah (75:22)

وجوه يومئذ ناضرة the word وجوه cannot be tagged as masculine because its adjective is manifested as a feminine singular ناضرة - so we must find a way of explaining this. The students know that an adjective is like the noun it is describing in six things- and number and gender are 2 such things.

I agree it may be confusing but this is the grammar and we need to be accurate. Relevance? Not sure of the point made.

Wallahu a'alam

Mazhar A. Nurani

8th February, 2010

Salam Abdul Rahman, may be the gender of noun is relevant in 19:4:7-8.

Mazhar A. Nurani

8th February, 2010

This information may be relevant and helpul--

[http://arabic.tripod.com/Nouns1d.htm]

"It is possible though for irregular plurals that refer to humans to be treated grammatically as plural nouns rather than singular, and the gender of the noun in that case will match the gender of its singular (it will often be masculine)."

[http://arabic.tripod.com/Nouns1f.htm]

"►For names of body parts that don't have feminine markers, a general rule is that all the parts of which there are more than one are feminine and the rest are masculine."

FS

8th February, 2010

Jazakallahu khairan Br. Mazhar for the links I think this may have half solved our issue here. For sure only the body parts that are doubled are feminine and the rest are singular and in their plural well it seems we can consider some as masculine. So how do we decide? Is there is a systematic way to do this since the whole site is very systematic? I'll think about this and maybe post it out and see what you think.

Thanks

FS

8th February, 2010

Br. Mazhar to add, I think also that more and more these days with the increased use of the MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) some of the more stringent rules of grammar are laxed and this maybe one of them. If you read in the newspapers many of these plurals are treated as plurals grammatically and as masculine and other newspapers treat them in the correct medieval way, as feminine etc.... So we go back to the issue of correct tagging with the least confusion as possible.Thanks once again.

FS

8th February, 2010

Whilst we consider what to do, let's look at this in conjuction with what Br. Mazhar sent:

" However, Arabic distinguishes masculine and feminine in the singular and the dual. In the plural it distinguishes between male humans, female humans and non-human plurals (including collectives of humans, such as "nation," "people," etc.), non-human plurals being feminine singular, no matter their gender in the singular"

Have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

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Language Research Group
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