Grammar (Qawa'id): Morphology, Syntax, and Sentence Structure
What Qawa‘id tests
Grammar questions are usually discrete: identify the word class, supply the correct verb form, fix an izafat chain, or parse a sentence into mubtada and khabar. Persian’s default order is subject–object–verb, but the ezafe (the unstressed -e/-ye linking words) is where most marks are lost.
Rules to keep active
- An ism can be mufrad or jam‘, muzakkar or mu’annas; non-human plurals take singular verbs.
- The ezafe links a noun to its adjective, possessor, or complement: کتابِ نو، کتابِ من، کتابِ روی میز.
- را marks a definite direct object; it is not “to”.
- Compound verbs (دست دادن، به کار بردن) carry meaning across two words; conjugate the light verb.
- Mubtada is the topic; khabar is what is said about it. In «هوا سرد است», هوا is mubtada and سرد است is khabar.
Worked example
Parse: «کتابِ فارسیِ من روی میزِ چوبی است.» Reasoning: کتاب is the head noun; فارسیِ is an adjective linked by ezafe; من is the possessor; the whole phrase کتابِ فارسیِ من is mubtada. روی میزِ چوبی است is khabar: روی is a preposition, میز is its complement, چوبی is an adjective linked by ezafe, and است is the copula. There is no را because there is no transitive verb.
Traps
Dropping ezafe in pronunciation; reading را as a preposition; making the verb agree with a non-human plural; and treating است as a main verb meaning “exists” in every sentence.