Monday, July 28, 2008

THE IDAAFA!



Today's trauma was all about the Idaafa, which has been this ambiguous idea and term that has had no foot hold up until today. Now I am not saying that it is clear as crystal yet but I am making some headway. What the idaafa is to begin with is the noun phrase in which there is only one noun that is really being talked about and all the other nouns just refer to this one and help describe it. The example in the book is "the office directors car..." In this example both office and director just modify the car. There are several rules that determine how the idaafa is properly said. Here are the rules:

The idaafa consists of two or more nouns. If the last term of the idaafa is definite, the entire idaafa is definate. The first noun will never have an alif lam in front. The first term of the idaafa can be in any case required by the use of that word in the sentance. All terms other than the first term Must be in the genitive case. The only term in an idaafa that can have nunation is the last term of the idaafa, and it will only have nunation it it is indefinite. Once you come to a term with an alif lam or a pronoun suffix, you have reached the end of the idaafa.

Now what really gets tricky is when there are adjectives that modify any of the terms of the idaafa cause they are not part of the idaafa but must agree in gender and in other ways to the noun in the idaafa.

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