Moderation of five Persian sentences: را, plural, and copula placement
At a half-yearly moderation meeting, a Class 10 Persian teacher has ten minutes to settle five sentences in the 'Correct the sentence' section. The marking scheme gives 2 marks per item and states: award marks only for an obligatory grammatical correction; do not penalize stylistic variation. The student's sentences are: (1) من دیروز دو کتابها را خریدم. (2) او به خانه رفت و مادرش را دید. (3) این کتاب است بسیار خوب. (4) من نمی‌دانم که او کی می‌آید. (5) به او گفتم که فردا بیاید. A colleague wants to mark all five wrong because they 'sound like Hindi/Urdu word order'. The teacher must separate real errors from natural variation, make minimal corrections, and record a reason for each decision so the answer script can be returned without an appeal. The class has been taught را, ezafe, and the copula; the textbook avoids colloquial forms but allows omission of که after دانستن.
1. Which of the five sentences contain obligatory grammatical errors? Give a minimal correction for each error and state why the remaining sentences should not be marked wrong.
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Only (1) and (3) contain obligatory errors.
- (1) دو کتابها is ungrammatical: a numeral and the plural suffix -ها cannot both attach to the same counted noun in this way. Minimal correction: من دیروز دو کتاب خریدم. If the sense is 'those two books', write آن دو کتاب را خریدم.
- (3) The predicate بسیار خوب must come before the copula. Minimal correction: این کتاب بسیار خوب است. The order است بسیار خوب is not Persian.
- (2) is correct: دیدن is transitive, so مادرش را دید is normal Persian, not a Hindi/Urdu calque.
- (4) is acceptable formal Persian; که after نمی‌دانم is optional here, and the question word order او کی می‌آید is right.
- (5) is correct: گفتن به کسی که... is a standard complement construction.
The colleague's 'sounds Hindi/Urdu' test is not a grammatical test; it would wrongly penalize (2) and (5).
2. Explain to the colleague why 'دو کتابها' is impossible but 'آن دو کتاب' is possible, and how definiteness controls the use of را in this pair.
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دو کتابها fails because دو already counts the noun: the head is کتاب, and دو is its numeral modifier. Adding -ها would make the noun both counted and plural-marked in the same phrase, which Persian does not allow in this pattern. To express 'those two books', Persian uses a demonstrative plus the counted noun: آن دو کتاب. The demonstrative carries definiteness; the noun stays singular after the numeral.
را marks a specific direct object. دو کتاب خریدم means 'I bought two books' in a non-specific way, so را is normally absent. آن دو کتاب را خریدم means 'I bought those two books'; the object is definite, so را is required. A bare دو کتاب را خریدم can occur when the context makes the pair specific, but it is not the neutral form and should not be demanded as the only correct answer.
3. The colleague now wants to mark sentence (2) wrong because 'را with دیدن is redundant'. Evaluate that claim.
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The claim is wrong. دیدن is a transitive verb and takes a direct object; مادرش را دید means 'he saw his mother'. The را is not redundant: it marks مادرش as the specific object. Without را, مادرش دید is still parseable in some contexts, but the marked-object construction is the normal, taught form. The confusion may come from comparing Hindi/Urdu maa ko dekha, where ko also marks the object; the presence of a similar pattern in Hindi/Urdu is not evidence of error in Persian. Mark (2) correct and explain that را is the object marker, not a copy of a Hindi particle.