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    Cognate Acc

    Uploaded by

    Gregory from Philadelphia
    This document explains the use of the Cognate Accusative in Arabic. This is useful for those taking Arabic classes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Cognate Acc

    Uploaded by

    Gregory from Philadelphia
    68 views2 pages
    This document explains the use of the Cognate Accusative in Arabic. This is useful for those taking Arabic classes.

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    This document explains the use of the Cognate Accusative in Arabic. This is useful for those taking Arabic classes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    68 views2 pages

    Cognate Acc

    Uploaded by

    Gregory from Philadelphia
    This document explains the use of the Cognate Accusative in Arabic. This is useful for those taking Arabic classes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Arabic 432

    Handout

    Cognate Accusative

    Cognate Accusative
    The cognate accusative (

    )is a special stylistic use of

    the accusa-

    tive case in Arabic. It occurs fairly frequently, but it can usually be replaced by other expressions. Thus, you do not necessarily need to be able to use it yourself, but you do need to recognize it when you see it.
    In English, you would not usually say something like:
    He helped me a great deal of help.
    You would probably be told by your writing teacher to say instead:
    He helped me a great deal.
    or
    He gave me a great deal of help.
    This is because English style frowns on the repetition of a verb and a noun of the same
    derivation (in this case help) too close together. It is thought to be confusing.
    In Arabic (perhaps because verbs and masdars are not easily confused with one
    another) this kind of repetition is considered a mark of good style. Repeating the verbal noun
    after the verb makes the sentence more emphatic. So, to see the following would not be considered at all odd, even in very contemporary Arabic:

    You, of course, would not want to translate it literally (as " He helped me a great help " ) into
    English, but would instead want change it so that it sounds more natural in that language--as " he
    helped me greatly " or " he gave me a great deal of help."
    The cognate accusative may also take the form of an idafa. These are usually of
    two kinds. In the first kind, the first term (al-mudaf) is usually a partitive noun (like
    or
    # ,
    which will be in the accusative case) or an elative.

    We participated fully in the meeting.

    Here (as you can see) the masdar is definite. This is the usual procedure for these kinds of
    constructions.
    1

    Arabic 432
    Handout

    Cognate Accusative

    With the second kind of idafa construction, the masdar is the mudaf, and the mudaf ilayhi is
    a noun giving more information about who (or what) is doing the action.

    I left her house as a sad man would.


    (Literally: I left her house [with] the leaving of the sad man.)
    Here are some other examples of cognate accusative (all taken from Najib Mahfuz' s novel
    Al-Khan al-Khalili):

    ( . ).
    .


    ( .). K

    ( . ).

    ( . ).
    .

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