The 2iDaafe

Hi everyone!

Today we’re going to talk about a distinctively Arabic construction, the 2iDaafe (إضافة). The broad outlines of the Syrian system are more or less the same as they are in fuS7a. But as usual there are some differences in forms and usage that you need to be aware of.

What is an 2iDaafe?

The 2iDaafe is used to express all sorts of relationships between different nouns and translates most uses of the possessive ‘s, ‘of’ and juxtaposition of nouns in English. I won’t spend too long talking about the general semantics here because they’re more or less the same as their fuS7a counterparts. Note that only the last noun can carry the definite article, and that this makes the whole structure definite or indefinite:

كتاب أحمد ktaab 2a7mad Ahmad’s book	غرفة النوم ghirfet innoom the bedroom
آخر الشارع 2aakhar ishshaare3 the end of the road	كيس نايلون kiis naaylon plastic bag
عاصمة الأردن 3aaSmet il2irdon the capital of Jordan	مكتب بريد maktab bariid post office

Form of the noun

The absence of case markings and tanwiin means that most nouns have exactly the same form whether they are in 2iDaafe or not. The feminine suffix ـة, however, becomes -et (not -at as in fuS7a). Note that both -e and -a become -et:

مكتبة maktab-e bookcase	مكتبة بابا maktab-et baaba dad’s bookcase
ضيعة Dee3-a village	ضيعة ام الطنافس Dee3-et 2imm iTTanaafes the village of Umm al-Tanafis

There are two exceptions to this. With مرة mara ‘woman, wife’, the form is -t, and with words with only two root consonants, it is -at:

مرة mar-a woman	مرت محمد mar-t im7ammad Muhammad’s wife
لغة lugh-a language	لغة الأم lugh-at il2umm mother tongue

Note as well that the words for ‘father’ and ‘brother’ usually lose their double b and gain an -u in 2iDaafe (the other three of the ‘five nouns‘ aren’t really used):

أخ 2akhkh brother	أخو أحمد 2akh-u 2a7mad Ahmad’s brother
أب 2abb father	أبو سامية 2ab-u saamiya Samia’s dad

Stacked 2iDaafe

A string of possessors can be stacked:

بيت أبو أحمد beet 2abu 2a7mad Ahmad’s dad’s house

باب بيت أخو سامية baab beet 2akhu saamiya the door of Samia’s brother’s house

When the second noun isn’t really a possessor but has a more adjective-like function (a material, for example), stacking is not usually possible: speakers feel that a structure like *kiis naaylon 2a7mad for ‘Ahmad’s plastic bag’, for example, implies an independent connection between Ahmad and the plastic. The easiest way of solving this dilemma is to use the word تبع taba3 to attach a possessor to a definite 2iDaafe:

الكيس النايلون تبع أحمد ilkiis innaaylon taba3 2a7mad Ahmad’s plastic bag

شهادة السواقة تبع مريم shahaadet liswaa2a taba3 maryam Mariam’s driving licence

2iDaafe and the demonstrative

The 2iDaafe presents a bit of a problem for demonstrative structures, as we briefly noted last time. هالـ hal- ‘this’ typically replaces الـ. For many (although not all!) speakers, however, this is impermissible in the middle of an 2iDaafe structure. For these speakers, the solution is generally to prefix hal- to the whole 2iDaafe, which is made definite as usual:

هالكيس النايلون hal–kiis innaaylon this plastic bag

هاللغة الأم hal-lughat il2umm this mother tongue

That’s all for now! Next time we’ll (finally) move on to the most important part of speech: verbs.