The Delayed Ism: Parsing «لعلَّ في المكتبةِ كُتُباً» in a Board Script
During a revision period at a government school in Bareilly, a teacher puts a twelve-mark i'rab question on the board for an Intermediate Arabic (Code 125) group of thirty-four students. The sentence, taken from a prose lesson in the prescribed book, is: «لعلَّ في المكتبةِ كُتُباً جديدةً لم يَقرأْها الطلابُ». Four students give four different analyses of كُتُباً: (a) mubtada' marfu'; (b) khabar of لعلَّ, marfu'; (c) ism of لعلَّ, delayed and mansub; (d) na't for an implied noun. A fifth question follows at once: what is the grammatical function of «لم يَقرأْها الطلابُ» - a second khabar, a na't, or a hal? One student also asks whether the ـها can refer back to كُتُباً at all, since books are plural and non-human. The teacher has forty scripts to return by evening and wants a ruling that is correct, defensible, and short enough to be written inside a board answer sheet in three lines.
1. Which analysis of كُتُباً is correct? Dismantle the three wrong options in the form the examiner will accept.
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Correct option: (c).
- The rule. لعلَّ is one of إنّ وأخواتها: it governs a following noun in nasb and takes a marfu' khabar. Here the khabar is the fronted shibh jumla «في المكتبةِ», which is permitted because the ism is nakira; the ism therefore stays delayed and mansub, marked by the fatha on كُتُباً.
- Why (a) fails. A nakira cannot open a nominal sentence as mubtada' while لعلَّ is present - the particle is entitled to the first noun, and nothing can be mubtada' after a ناسخ without a reason.
- Why (b) fails. The khabar of لعلَّ is not a single mansub noun but the prepositional phrase; moreover a khabar is marfu', and كُتُباً carries fatha, not damma.
- Why (d) fails. A na't needs a man'ut already mentioned before it, with matching in definiteness and case. Nothing precedes كُتُباً for it to describe.
Model answer line: «كُتُباً: اسم لعلَّ مؤخَّر منصوب، وعلامة نصبه الفتحة الظاهرة، و«في المكتبة» خبر مقدَّم، و«جديدةً» نعت منصوب.»
A marker should also accept the brief justification «تقدَّم الخبر لأن الاسم نكرة» - that phrase alone shows the candidate knows the rule rather than guessing.
2. What is «لم يَقرأْها الطلابُ» doing grammatically, and does the pronoun ـها matter to the analysis?
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Preferred analysis: jumlah fi'liyya in mahall nasb, na't for كُتُباً.
The reasoning chain a candidate should show:
- The clause follows a nakira (كُتُباً). The standard rule is: a jumla after a nakira is na't; after a ma'rifa it is hal.
- A jumla used as na't must contain a رابط referring to the man'ut. Here the attached pronoun ـها does exactly that, and it is correctly feminine singular because a non-human plural takes the feminine singular pronoun in Arabic (كُتُبٌ ← قرأتُها, not قرأتُهنَّ).
- Because the jumla has no ending, we say it is «في محل نصب» - the mahall takes the case that a single-word na't would have carried.
The alternative reading, khabar thānī for لعلَّ (two khabars are permitted), is grammatically possible and produces 'perhaps there are books in the library, and the students have not read them.' Board keys usually prefer na't because of the pronoun link and proximity. The fair ruling: award full marks for na't with the رابط argument; award full marks for khabar thānī only if the candidate states it as an alternative and justifies it. Deduct nothing for mentioning both - that is a sign of a strong script.
3. A student objects: 'A na't must match the man'ut in case, and a whole sentence has no case ending.' Write the two-sentence reply the teacher should give.
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Reply: When the na't is a jumla, the matching is not done by endings - a jumla is mabni in form but occupies a position, so we say «في محل نصب نعت», and the case is carried by that position, not by a final vowel. What replaces the matching of gender, number and definiteness is the رابط (the pronoun ـها) that ties the clause back to the man'ut; matching in the ordinary sense applies only to a single-word na't.
A useful addition for the class: this nakira actually carries two na'ts - the single word «جديدةً» (agreeing in indefiniteness, femininity and nasb) and the clause «لم يقرأها الطلاب» (linked by the pronoun). Showing both in the answer sheet is what separates a 10/12 script from a 12/12 one, because it demonstrates that the candidate can see a word-na't and a clause-na't operating on the same noun at once.