Grammar (Qawaid): Labelling, Agreement and Tasheeh
The Qawaid section is applied grammar: you are not asked to recite definitions but to label a word in a sentence, correct an error, change tazkeer-o-tanees or wahid-jama, supply mutradif and mutazad, and use a muhawara. The habit that lifts marks fastest is naming the category before applying the rule.
Categories to name on sight
- Ism: aam, khaas, jins, zaat; ism-e-fa'il, ism-e-maf'ool
- Zameer: mutakallim, hazir, ghaeb; muttasil and munfasil
- Sifat: zaat, kam, miqdar, nisbat
- Fail/Kalma: mazi, haal, mustaqbil, amr, nahi
- Harf: jarr, atf, nida, istifham, nafi
Agreement rules that carry marks
- The fail agrees with the fa'il in gender and number: ladka parhta hai / ladkiyan parh rahi hain.
- Mubtada and khabar agree in number and gender.
- Tazkeer-o-tanees is lexical, not logical: kitab is mu'annas, qalam is muzakkar - learn the noun with its gender.
- Izafat keeps its connector: kitab-e-Urdu, not kitab Urdu.
Worked example
Correct: 'Ladkiyan kitab parha raha hai.' Reasoning: find the fa'il first - ladkiyan, jama and mu'annas. The fail must match: parh rahi hain, with the feminine plural ending. The maf'ool kitab stays unchanged, because the verb agrees with the doer, not the object. Corrected sentence: 'Ladkiyan kitab parh rahi hain.' Tarkeeb labels: ladkiyan = fa'il, kitab = maf'ool, parh rahi hain = fail-e-haal.
Traps
- rendering a muhawara literally instead of idiomatically;
- calling a harf-e-jarr a verb because it is short;
- leaving the izafat connector unwritten;
- pluralising the object to match a plural doer.