One Mark, Three Scripts: Case, Ergativity and Spelling in Qawaid
You are marking the Qawaid section of an internal test: 15 one-mark items, no half marks, key fixed in advance. Item 7 asks for the nominative plural of «kitaab» (key: kitaabein; accept kutub). Item 8 prints «us ne jaldi so gaya» and asks for the correction. Item 9 asks for an Urdu sentence meaning «He has a headache» (key: us ke sar mein dard hai; accept us ko sar dard hai). Three scripts are in front of you. P gives «kitaabon» for item 7. Q, for item 8, writes «us ne jaldi sona shuru kiya». R gives «kitaabeyn» for item 7 and otherwise matches the key. The section is 15% of the test and the class average is 9.4, so each mark moves the rank list. Your head of department wants a short marking note explaining any departure from the key.
1. P writes «kitaabon» for item 7. Mark it and explain the distinction in the feedback.
Read the worked answer
Award 0.
- «Kitaabon» is the oblique plural, used after a postposition or inside an oblique phrase («kitaabon mein»). Item 7 asks for the nominative plural, with no postposition: «kitaabein» (or the Arabic plural «kutub»).
- Award 0 but write the case distinction in the margin. Many candidates learn plurals as a list and never attach them to case, so a bare cross teaches nothing.
- Check P's answer to any separate oblique-plural item. If P scored there, the profile is «knows the forms, not the labels» - a reteaching note, not grounds for changing this mark.
- Do not award a half mark: the section is one mark per item with a single correct form, and inventing fractions here would have to be repeated for every borderline script.
2. Q rewrites item 8 as «us ne jaldi sona shuru kiya». Is that a correction? What rule goes into the marking note?
Read the worked answer
Treat it as a substitution: 0, with a comment.
The fault in the printed sentence is the ergative «ne» attached to the intransitive «so gaya». The fix is to drop «ne»: «woh jaldi so gaya». Q has removed the error by replacing the verb with a transitive compound, which changes the meaning and sidesteps the point being tested.
If such rewrites are credited, you can no longer distinguish a candidate who controls ergative marking with intransitive verbs from one who avoids the construction altogether - and the item exists to make exactly that distinction.
Marking note wording: «Correct only by adjusting the postposition or verb form of the given sentence; a rewritten sentence with a different verb earns 0.» Put this in writing so all 45 scripts are treated alike, and read it out at the departmental meeting.
3. R writes «kitaabeyn». Do you accept it, and where do you draw the line on spelling?
Read the worked answer
Accept it.
- Item 7 tests plural formation, not imla. «Kitaabein» and «kitaabeyn» are readable renderings of the same grammatical form, and penalising the vowel rendering converts a grammar mark into a spelling mark the key never allocated.
- Apply one test across the section: does the written form unambiguously represent the grammatical form asked for? If yes, award. If no - for example «kitabn», where the medial vowel is dropped so that nominative and oblique cannot be told apart - withhold.
- List two or three accepted spellings in the key so later markers do not diverge from you.
- Keep script quality out of it unless the answer is genuinely unreadable; handwriting is not a Qawaid criterion, and «deducting for neatness» cannot be defended if challenged.