# I saw a man playing with his dog.



## Tony C

Hello, 

please could you tell me if the below sentence is correct (I want to use active participle). I would like to translate “I saw a man playing with his dog”

رايت رجلاً الملعِب مع كلبه

Many thanks in advance


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## analeeh

The sentence in fus7a would be:

رأيت رجلًا يلعب مع كلبه

With a verb, not with a participle. The participle of لعب is لاعب _laa3ib_, not _mal3ib/mul3ib_. There are a lot of threads on here about the different usages of the participle, but suffice it to say that it should not at all be taken as an equivalent of the English '-ing' form.


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## Tony C

Thank you for your reply. So if I said ريت رجلاً لاعب مع كلبه... this would not make sense or it would sound strange?


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,


Tony C said:


> So if I said ريت رجلاً لاعب مع كلبه...


I think the word لاعب  must be accusative because it is an adjective of the word رجلاً ...


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## Samer11

You could say رأيت رجلًا يلاعب كلبه (using the يفاعل form of the verb). The active participle doesn't work in such a sentence, I believe.


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## Tony C

Thank you so much


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## Tilmeedh

analeeh said:


> رأيت رجلًا يلعب مع كلبه



I thought of translating the sentence as you did, but adding

(وكان)

before

(يلعب).

I think that would be redundant, though.

If the English sentence was

'I saw a man (while I was) playing with my dog,'

would it be best to translate it like this?

(رأيت رجلًا وكنت العب مع كلبي.)


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## elroy

رأيت رجلاً وكان يلعب مع كلبه is fine, but less elegant (in my opinion) than رأيت رجلاً يلعب مع كلبه.  It’s the same as the difference between “I saw a man playing...” and “I saw a man, and he was playing...” in English. 


Tilmeedh said:


> 'I saw a man (while I was) playing with my dog,'


 رأيت رجلاً *وأنا* ألعب مع كلبي


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## Tony C

Thank you for your reply. So I think I was getting confused with past continuous which would translate as: 

رايت رجلاً وكان يلعب مع كلبه

If I wanted to use the active participle it would need to be in the present tense right? (I see a man playing with his dog)?

أرى رجل لاعب مع كلبه - does this sentence make sense?

Many thanks


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## elroy

No.  أرى رجلاً يلعب مع كلبه


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## Tony C

Does هو لاعب مع كلبه make sense? I am just trying to make sense of how active participles work.


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## elroy

I don’t think it works in MSA (unless you mean “He is a player with his dog”).


Tony C said:


> I am just trying to make sense of how active participles work.


 This is one of the trickiest things for foreigners to master.  One example isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid.  I suggest searching for previous threads on the topic.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> One example isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid.


I totally agree.

And I tried using a different verb and found myself saying:
رأيت رجلاً ماشيًا في الطريق
رأيت رجلاً نائمًا
رأيت رجلاً سعيدًا برؤية صديقة
But couldn't say
رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه (though I wouldn't be surprised if this is ok in Classical Arabic)

The only difference I could sense between these, is the ماشيًا، نائمًا، سعيدًا are from intransitive verbs يمشي، ينام، يَسْعَد, while يلعب is transitive. So maybe this has a role in "deciding" which form to use. I'm really not sure. I hope the previous threads will offer an answer.


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## Tony C

Thanks a lot - although I do not not have any immediate answers I know that I need to go away and do much more reading around..


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## jack_1313

cherine said:


> And I tried using a different verb and found myself saying:
> رأيت رجلاً ماشيًا في الطريق
> رأيت رجلاً نائمًا
> رأيت رجلاً سعيدًا برؤية صديقة
> But couldn't say
> رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه (though I wouldn't be surprised if this is ok in Classical Arabic)
> 
> The only difference I could sense between these, is the ماشيًا، نائمًا، سعيدًا are from intransitive verbs يمشي، ينام، يَسْعَد, while يلعب is transitive. So maybe this has a role in "deciding" which form to use. I'm really not sure. I hope the previous threads will offer an answer.


I don't see any prescriptive reason to reject لاعبا مع كلبه as this is, after all, one of the ways to form a حال phrase (not to mention its grammatical validity here as a potential adjective). As for the transitive/intransitive distinction, I'm not sure it's significant because we have no problem using other transitive verbs in a similar manner, e.g.: راسل الحريري المزيد من الدول طالبا مساعدة لبنان. So I wonder whether the aversion to لاعبا here has more to do with the fact that certain أسماء فاعل have become so associated with particular a meaning (i.e. لاعب usually corresponds to the English noun "player" rather than "playing" in an adjectival sense) that it becomes strange to use them in other ways.


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## elroy

No, it has nothing to do with the use of لاعب as a noun meaning “player.”  I’m afraid I have trouble articulating when an active participle can and can’t be used (@analeeh can probably do a better job), but I can tell you that in this sentence, it can’t be used as a حال or a نعت.  Your example with طالبًا feels totally different.


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## jack_1313

elroy said:


> I’m afraid I have trouble articulating when an active participle can and can’t be used (@analeeh can probably do a better job), but I can tell you that in this sentence, it can’t be used as a حال or a نعت.



I think it's hard to articulate because so far, the distinction appears arbitrary. To commandeer Cherine's example:

رأيت رجلاً ماشيًا في الطريق
رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه

Grammatically, there is - as far as I can tell - no difference whatsoever between these two sentences, yet one is fine and the other is wrong. And if we want to conflate Classical Arabic with modern Arabic, then we can also cite an example of لاعب being used as a حال in the Quran, albeit modifying the subject (as opposed to the object) of a verb and without a subsequent prepositional phrase: وما خلقنا السماوات والأرض وما بينهما لاعبين. So I have a feeling we're once again heading into prescriptivism vs. descriptivism territory (i.e. Is correctness determined by codified rules or by the way people use a language? Is a sentence that just sounds "off" wrong or unidiomatic?).

Note that this question of how active participles can be used is even more relevant to the dialects, where certain participles have taken on present tense meanings while others have taken on present perfect tense meanings, but the case for descriptivism is obviously much stronger when it comes to dialects.


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## elroy

@jack_1313, you seem to be drawing a bunch of unwarranted conclusions.  Perhaps you're frustrated because, as I said, this particular Arabic nut is very hard to crack?

It's hard for me to articulate the reasons because they are complex and I never learned them explicitly.  I'd rather leave it to someone like @analeeh, a highly advanced L2 speaker, to take a stab at it.  I am certain that the use of the active participle is by and large rule-governed and based on patterns.


jack_1313 said:


> Grammatically, there is - as far as I can tell - no difference whatsoever between these two sentences


 That is neither here nor there.  Semantics often impacts what sentences are grammatical and which ones are not.  I'm sure you've heard of Chomsky's famous sentence: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."  It doesn't violate any morphosyntactic rules of English, but it is semantically meaningless, so it is an unacceptable sentence.  Just because you can string together a group of words without violating any syntactic rules doesn't mean you've wound up with a viable sentence.


jack_1313 said:


> we can also cite an example of لاعب being used as a حال in the Quran


 I never said لاعب could _never_ be a حال.  I said


elroy said:


> I can tell you that *in this sentence*, it can’t be used as a حال or a نعت.


 Your example from the Qur'an is completely fine and would also work in MSA.


jack_1313 said:


> So I have a feeling we're once again heading into prescriptivism vs. descriptivism territory (i.e. Is correctness determined by codified rules or by the way people use a language? Is a sentence that just sounds "off" wrong or unidiomatic?).


 I am a descriptivist through and through, but I don't think prescriptive and descriptive approaches diverge in this particular case.  I think you are being distracted by the fact that so far we haven't been able to provide a clear rationale and that the distinction "seems" arbitrary to you.  Please bear in mind that some of us Arabic native speakers are often careful not to make categorical statements about MSA, since at the end of the day it is not our (or anyone's) native language, so although we generally have strong intuitions about it, we can't rely on them as well as we can on our intuitions about our respective native dialects.  That's probably why we all hedged a bit in this thread:


Samer11 said:


> The active participle doesn't work in such a sentence,* I believe.*





elroy said:


> *I don’t think *it works in MSA





cherine said:


> But *couldn't say*
> رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه


 However, just because we weren't categorical doesn't mean that our judgments don't carry a lot of weight or that we are being wishy-washy.  In fact, the fact that three of us agree about this is a strong indicator that more than likely, the usage is in fact incorrect in MSA.

Furthermore, if I consider my dialect -- for which, as I said, my intuitions are much more reliable -- the sentence شفت زلمة لاعب مع كلبه does work but _*only*_ in the meaning "I saw a man _*who had played*_ with his dog."  This, to my knowledge (see, I'm hedging again), is not a possible use of the active participle in MSA.  Unless this is an active-participle use that is valid in MSA and _not_ in Palestinian Arabic (and that I am not familiar with), these facts further bolster the proposal that it is incorrect in MSA.


jack_1313 said:


> the dialects, where certain participles have taken on present tense meanings while others have taken on present perfect tense meanings


 Among other meanings!  At least in Palestinian Arabic, the active participle can also refer to the past and to the future, depending on the context.  That's one of the reasons this is such a tricky feature of Arabic.

To sum up, the question here is in all likelihood not _whether_ the sentence is incorrect, but _why_ it is.


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## jack_1313

elroy said:


> @jack_1313, you seem to be drawing a bunch of unwarranted conclusions. Perhaps you're frustrated because, as I said, this particular Arabic nut is very hard to crack?
> 
> It's hard for me to articulate the reasons because they are complex and I never learned them explicitly. I'd rather leave it to someone like @analeeh, a highly advanced L2 speaker, to take a stab at it. I am certain that the use of the active participle is by and large rule-governed and based on patterns.


I don't mean for my tone come off as frustrated here. I lean toward prescriptivism in both English and Arabic for a variety of reasons but not to the extent that I don't see the value of descriptivism. What sounds correct to native speakers IS important and should be a guide for foreign speakers. At the same time, the value of descriptivism has been undermined in the case of ٍModern Standard Arabic by the extreme diglossia (which has led to weaker grammatical knowledge, less consensus on usage, weaker intuition, dialect spillover, and so on), as you suggested later in your post, and that's exactly the reason that it's also good to question native intuition and seek out justifications for unexplained judgments.



> It's hard for me to articulate the reasons because they are complex and I never learned them explicitly. I'd rather leave it to someone like @analeeh, a highly advanced L2 speaker, to take a stab at it. I am certain that the use of the active participle is by and large rule-governed and based on patterns.


Yes, if we can find a rule or pattern or objective grounds explaining why رأيت رجلا ماشيا مع كلبه is okay (I assume?) but رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه isn't, then great - we can conclusively demote it from unidiomatic and potentially incorrect to categorically incorrect. That's why I proposed the idea that it might have something to do with certain participles becoming exclusively associated with one particular shade of meaning in my earlier post, but I was just brainstorming.



> That is neither here nor there._ Semantics often impacts what sentences are grammatical and which ones are not_. I'm sure you've heard of Chomsky's famous sentence: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." It doesn't violate any morphosyntactic rules of English, but it is semantically meaningless, so it is an unacceptable sentence. Just because you can string together a group of words without violating any syntactic rules doesn't mean you've wound up with a viable sentence.(Emphasis added)


I'm afraid I disagree with you here. Semantics affect whether a sentence makes sense, not whether it is "grammatical", i.e. syntactically correct. You're conflating the two concepts when the very point of Chomsky's sentence was to show the distinction between them. I'm going to be lazy and quote Wikipedia:


> *Colorless green ideas sleep furiously* is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical ... Although the sentence is grammatically correct, no obvious understandable meaning can be derived from it, and thus it demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics.


So the Chomsky's sentence wasn't incorrect unless by "incorrect" we mean "doesn't make much sense".


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## elroy

Again, I think there are reasons even if I can't immediately produce them.  I'll try to introspect and see if I can identify them.


jack_1313 said:


> the value of descriptivism has been undermined in the case of ٍModern Standard Arabic by the extreme diglossia (which has led to weaker grammatical knowledge, less consensus on usage, weaker intuition, dialect spillover, and so on)


 I have a hunch you're overstating the case.  Diglossia does complicate matters to a certain extent, but not nearly as much as you seem to be making it out to. 


jack_1313 said:


> Semantics affect whether a sentence makes sense, not whether it is "grammatical"


 Maybe the Chomsky sentence wasn't the best example.  Semantics can indeed determine what sentences are _grammatical_.  For example, "I offered John the job" is grammatical while "I mentioned John the job" is ungrammatical, and this is most likely related to the semantics of each verb.  (This example is in fact very similar to the case we have here.)

Both of these topics (diglossia's impacts on MSA judgments, and the effect of semantics on grammaticality) are very complex, and in this thread we shouldn't delve into them but focus on the sentence under discussion.


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## jack_1313

I won't veer off into and more ranting about the general state of MSA, then. But I would like to comment on this:



elroy said:


> For example, "I offered John the job" is grammatical while "I mentioned John the job" is ungrammatical, and this has nothing to do with syntax.


But it has everything to do with syntax. "Offer" is a ditransitive verb (as well as transitive and intransitive), which means that it can take two objects (a direct object and an indirect object). Good dictionaries will mark it as ditransitive. This is a class of verbs that is well documented and understood across languages (أعطى is the obvious example in Arabic). "Mentioned", on the other hand, is a (regular) transitive verb, so it cannot take two objects and the recipient can only be added using a prepositional phrase. So the sentence is wrong because we can't pair verbs with more objects than the number allowed by the type of verb ("He slept the cat", "She gave him the bag the books"). Are you suggesting that the concept of transitivity is not part of syntax?

As for the Arabic sentences, I've sent out a little survey to my friends to see if they can give any insight into why the the ماشيا example is fine but the لاعبا example is wrong (assuming they agree), so hopefully I can come back an contribute something more on topic.


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## Qureshpor

رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه 

For a Haal construction, the Haal has to be indefinite, which it is ( لاعبا). Also صاحب الحال should be definite (almost always) and here it is indefinite (رجلا).  So, it can not mean..

I saw man (who was) playing with his dog.

However, if we consider صاحب الحال as the pronoun "I" of the verb which is definite, then the sentence would mean...

I saw a man while I was playing with a dog.

Just my understanding which is not that much!


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,



Qureshpor said:


> رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه
> 
> For a Haal construction, the Haal has to be indefinite, which it is ( لاعبا). Also صاحب الحال should be definite (almost always) and here it is indefinite (رجلا). So, it can not mean..
> 
> I saw man (who was) playing with his dog.


I understand the sentence like you (assuming this sentence is correct)... Because for me the word لاعبا is an adjective of the word رجلا.
I would also translate it by a relative sentence (in French : "_J'ai vu un homme *qui* jouait avec son chie_n"  or by an infinitive : "_J'ai vu un homme *jouer* avec son chie_n").

It is the same with the sentence  رأيت رجلًا *يلعب *مع كلبه, for me *يلعب * is also an adjective of the word رجلا and I would translate the sentence the same as the sentence : رأيت رجلا *لاعبا *مع كلبه (assuming this sentence is correct)...



Qureshpor said:


> However, if we consider صاحب الحال as the pronoun "I" of the verb which is definite, then the sentence would mean...
> 
> I saw a man while I was playing with a dog.


 Yes in this case, to make the difference with the adjective and to take into account the definition of haal, I would not translate using a relative sentence... I would use a connector which expresses the simultaneity of the two events (whereas, while ...), in French : "_J'ai vu un homme *alors que* je jouais avec mon chien_".


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,


jack_1313 said:


> Note that this question of how active participles can be used is even more relevant to the dialects, where certain participles have taken on present tense meanings while others have taken on present perfect tense meanings, but the case for descriptivism is obviously much stronger when it comes to dialects.


 It seems that time is also a condition in classical Arabic, right? I mean the active participle can act like a verb but (when it is not defined by article al) there are conditions for that, the tense must be the present or the future :



> *إذا لم تتصل ( أل ) باسم الفاعل، فإنه يأتي نكرة ومنوناً ولا يعمل عمل فعله إلا بشرطين :
> 
> &أن يكون بمعنى الحال [أي الآن] أو الاستقبال أي ليس على الزمن الماضي .
> 
> &أن يسبقه مبتدأ أو نفي أو استفهام أو موصوف أو نداء . *
> Source : اسم الفاعل



It seems that if this condition is not respected the active participle is used as a simple noun. For example, in this case, the word  لاعب  would rather mean "player"...


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## Ibn Nacer

Cette phrase  رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه (si elle est correcte) correspondrait au cas 4 :



> *&4 - يسبقه موصوف :
> 
> مثل : مررت برجلٍ حازمٍ أمتعته = مررت برجل يحزم أمتعته .
> 
> حازم : صفة مجرورة بالكسرة , وحازم اسم فاعل ، والفاعل ضمير مستتر تقديره : هو .
> 
> أمتعته : مفعول به منصوب لاسم الفاعل , و الهاء مضاف إليه .*
> Source : اسم الفاعل


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## jack_1313

I mentioned in my earlier post that I would conduct an informal survey, which I have now done. There are seven respondents. Firstly, I showed them the sentences رأيتُ رجلا ماشيا مع كلبه and رأيتُ رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه and asked them whether they thought neither, one, or both of the sentences were correct. If they didn’t indicate a preference for ماشيا at that stage, I then asked directly whether they thought لاعبا might be less correct than ماشيا. Finally, I explained the nature of the debate and asked whether they could explain why لاعبا might be less acceptable than ماشيا. Below are the responses:

Persons A and B are educated computer programmers with no special expertise in Arabic language.

A said that both sentences appear correct but seem odd in MSA. He thought the active participle in isn’t used in this manner very often in MSA. When I followed up by asking whether لاعبا might seem odder than ماشيا, he said yes and suggested that it could be because شفته ماشي is used in dialect. But he then reemphasized that both sentences seem odd/unidiomatic.

B thought that both were correct but sound “fucked up”. When I asked whether لاعبا seemed worse than ماشيا, he said, “Now that you mention it, yeah”. But he didn’t know why.

Persons C, D, and E are all (primarily) Jordanian dialect teachers. One has some expertise in Classical Arabic and MSA and is the editor of a publication. Their responses can be addressed together because they all said unequivocally that ماشيا is fine and لاعبا is correct but unidiomatic.

Persons F and G are both expert Arabic linguists. F is a MSA teacher and copyeditor. G is an MSA teacher/professor and translator and runs a centre/organization/website that scrutinizes MSA use in the media (something like a language watchdog).

F simply said that both sentences are correct. Unfortunately, she hasn’t (yet) responded to follow-up questions about whether she sees لاعبا as less desirable that ماشيا and, if so, why that might be the case.

G said that both sentences are correct and contain no grammatical errors, but الصياغة أفضل in the ماشيا sentence. Unfortunately, he hasn’t (yet) responded to my question about why the phrasing becomes worse when we use لاعبا.

Respondents A, B, C, D, E speak Jordanian-Palestinian dialect (Amman). Respondent G’s dialect is Palestinian. Responded F speaks Syrian dialect.

So those are the results so far. Unfortunately, with the two most knowledgeable respondents not responding to my follow-up questions, we're no closer to identifying the reasons for our aversion to لاعبا in this context.


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## Abbe

لاعبا cant be hal because رجل is indefinite. Would it make any difference if we said

هذا رجل لاعب مع كلبه

if tish is considered correct then لاعبا in the discussion above has to be correct as well.


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## Qureshpor

I spoke with our local mosque Imam who teaches Classical Arabic and asked him if the sentence

رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه was correct and if لاعبًا was Haal. He said yes, the sentence was correct and لاعبًا can be Haal even though it is indefinite and it can be sifah as well. He went onto add that appropriate context will differentiate whether it is one or the other.


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## jack_1313

Abbe said:


> لاعبا cant be hal because رجل is indefinite.


I hadn't read about this rule before, and it renders what I said earlier in the thread about ماشيا/لاعبا being _either_ a حال or a نعت incorrect. However, the rule doesn't affect the grammatical accuracy of the sentence because if the word can't be حال then it is - at least theoretically and until we can identify the reasons for disqualifying لاعبا that Elroy was talking about earlier - a نعت. The reason that grammar references apparently give for not allowing a حال to come immediately after an indefinite noun is, specifically, to eliminate this very confusion over whether to classify the word as a حال or نعت when صاحب الحال is accusative. There are, however, a range of other circumstances wherein صاحب الحال may be indefinite.


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## Abbe

I just wanted to see if Elroy and the others would feel differently about the nominative. 
As for the indefinite sahib al hal none of the conditions apply to the sentence we are dealing with


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,



jack_1313 said:


> So those are the results so far. Unfortunately, with the two most knowledgeable respondents not responding to my follow-up questions, we're no closer to identifying the reasons for our aversion to لاعبا in this context.


Maybe the reason is simpler than we thought ???

In theory the active participle can act like the verb from which it derives but in practice I have the impression that certain active participles (such as for example: تاجر ، معلم ، مسلم ...) are mainly used as a noun (substantive) to the point that when they are not used as a noun (substantive), the sentence doesn't sound idiomatic  ???



Abbe said:


> As for the indefinite sahib al hal none of the conditions apply to the sentence we are dealing with


This question reminds me of this thread: فلَمَّا رَبَضَ أتَى إِلَيْهِ جُرَذٌ يَمْشِي عَلى ظهْرِهِ فوَثَبَ قائِما

The discussion is long, the rule " الجمل بعد النكرات صفات وبعد المعارف أحوال " was recalled but Cherine gave two examples with explanations to the message #26. Some consider that  صاحب الحال can be indefinite under certain conditions but it would seem that  سيبويه (and perhaps others than him) consider that it can be undefined without conditions ...

But maybe in some cases the difference between na'at and haal is not very important, I am thinking of Cherine's post #48...


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## jack_1313

Ibn Nacer said:


> In theory the active participle can act like the verb from which it derives but in practice I have the impression that certain active participles (such as for example: تاجر ، معلم ، مسلم ...) are mainly used as a noun (substantive) to the point that when they are not used as a noun (substantive), the sentence doesn't sound idiomatic  ???



This is explanation that I proposed in post #15, but Elroy seemed quite certain that it is not the case.


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,

Jack,
Je suis tombé sur ce passage :


4 ـ ربما *يتجرد اسم الفاعل من الدلالة على الحدث* ، *فهو حينئذ لا يعمل عمل الفعل* .

مثل : المعلم ، الطالب ، المزارع ، التاجر ، القاضي ، المجتهد .

وكذا إذا أصبح علماً لشخص مثل : عابد ، راجح ، ياسر ، كارم ، ومحسن ومرشد .​

Source : موقع اللغة العربية


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## jack_1313

Ibn Nacer said:


> Salut,
> 
> Jack,
> Je suis tombé sur ce passage :
> 
> 
> 4 ـ ربما *يتجرد اسم الفاعل من الدلالة على الحدث* ، *فهو حينئذ لا يعمل عمل الفعل* .
> 
> مثل : المعلم ، الطالب ، المزارع ، التاجر ، القاضي ، المجتهد .
> 
> وكذا إذا أصبح علماً لشخص مثل : عابد ، راجح ، ياسر ، كارم ، ومحسن ومرشد .​
> 
> Source : موقع اللغة العربية



Again, this seems like the obvious explanation, but Elroy already dismissed it.

Regarding the aforementioned informal survey I conducted, one of the two "experts" I consulted, namely the MSA teacher and copy editor/مدققة لغوية, recently noticed my original messages in which I asked her to elaborate further. She said  فليس هناك سبب للرفض سوى أن الاستخدام  غير شائع... لكن ما من خطأ.

At this point, I don't really know how this topic can move forward. Elroy and, to a lesser extent, Cherine and Samer seemed mostly certain that لاعبا is incorrect. However, despite the insistence that it violates rules, nobody has been able to produce any except ones that have been discounted (namely the idea that the verb's transitivity has some role, which I deemed unlikely via analogy in post #15, or the idea that it's wrong because some words have taken on specific nominal meanings and therefore are not used with verbal meanings, which Elroy dismissed in post #16). At the same time, when I suggested that it might merely be unidiomatic and therefore only incorrect if we consider unidiomatic to mean incorrect, Elroy called the idea "unwarranted conclusions" drawn out of frustration. Yet the informal poll I conducted (post #26), which included both laypeople and linguists, and Qureshpor's contribution (post #28) clearly favor this explanation. So in short, I don't think there's any chance of a consensus on this matter unless we can identify rules that it breaks and introduce them into the discussion, agree on one of the rules previously mentioned and dismissed, or agree that it simply violates common usage and is therefore descriptively incorrect but not prescriptively incorrect.


----------



## cherine

Hi,

I didn't have enough energy to read all the posts again, but when I re-read mine I was surprised at myself (and embarrassed too, really). I, now, don't see why I said that رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه is incorrect  it sounds perfectly fine.
Sorry if I caused any confusion.


----------



## Qureshpor

jack_1313 said:


> At this point, I don't really know how this topic can move forward. Elroy and, to a lesser extent, Cherine and Samer seemed mostly certain that لاعبا is incorrect. However, despite the insistence that it violates rules, nobody has been able to produce any except ones that have been discounted (namely the idea that the verb's transitivity has some role, which I deemed unlikely via analogy in post #15, or the idea that it's wrong because some words have taken on specific nominal meanings and therefore are not used with verbal meanings, which Elroy dismissed in post #16).





jack_1313 said:


> So in short, I don't think there's any chance of a consensus on this matter unless we can identify rules that it breaks and introduce them into the discussion, agree on one of the rules previously mentioned and dismissed, or agree that it simply violates common usage and is therefore descriptively incorrect but not prescriptively incorrect.


The general consensus amongst our Arabic speaking friends appears to be that the sentence رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه does not sound right whereas رأيت رجلًا يلعب مع كلبه is perfectly fine. From amongst these friends @cherine has had a re-think and does not now feel there is anything wrong with this sentence. Nevertheless, there is obviously something in the Arab psyche which tells them that something is not quite right. What that is, no one has hitherto been able to agree on.

0) رأيت لاعبًا مع كلبه

I saw a player with his dog. (Here لاعبًا is *مفعول به*)

1) رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه (here رجلاً is *موصوف* and لاعباً is *صفة*)

I saw a man (who is) playing with his dog

2) رأيت رجلاً يلعب مع كلبه

I saw a man (who is) playing with his dog (here رجلًا is *موصوف* and یلعب is *صفة*)

To my mind, I can not see any difference in meaning between sentences 1) and 2) whether they fall into the صفة or حال category.

3) رأيتُ رجلاً ماشياً مع كلبه

I saw a man (who was) walking with his dog (here رجلاً is *موصوف* and ماشياً is *صفة*)

1) and 3) are identical in their construction apart from the fact that 1) has لعب as its second verb and 3) has مشی. Once again I can not think of any reason why 3) would be perfectly fine while 1) isn't.



Ibn Nacer said:


> In theory the active participle can act like the verb from which it derives but in practice I have the impression that certain active participles (such as for example: تاجر ، معلم ، مسلم ...) are mainly used as a noun (substantive) to the point that when they are not used as a noun (substantive), the sentence doesn't sound idiomatic ???


I have tried to search for the word لاعباً on the net. The interesting thing is that there is hardly any citation from older literature within the Arabic language but only material to do with football! So, I am inclined to think on the lines of @Ibn Nacer and @jack_1313 that this has something to do with the word لاعب becoming a "player" and it losing all semblence of "playing", just like perhaps the word تاجر has come to mean " a merchant" rather than "trading" as in a "trading partner".

@jack_1313 has provided one example of the use of the word لاعباً in its plural form in the Qur'an.

4) وما خلقنا السماوات والأرض وما بينهما *لاعبين*

And we did not create the heavans and the earth and that between them in jest. (*مفعول له*)

Arabic - English Lexicon by Edward William Lane (London: Williams & Norgate 1863) provides the basic meaning of "لاعب" as "playing", "sporting", "gaming", "jesting" or "jesting" while the word "لَعَّاب" is allocated the meaning of "a player by profession". It also quotes a Hadiith...

5) لا یأخُذَنَّ أحدُکم متاعَ أخیهِ *لاعباً جادّ*اً

By no means will any one of you take the property of his brother in play and in earnest. (*لاعباً جادّاً* are *مفعول له*)

My intuition tells me to equate the meaning of لاعباً "playing" in 1) with 4) [albeit here it is in the plural] and 5). I would like to conclude that لاعباً to imply the new meaning "player" has supplanted "playing", the meaning that was in vogue in the older language and this is the cause for the "unease" in accepting sentence 1) as sound and correct.


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## HotIcyDonut

Suppose we try to clarify the sentence somehow to denote "playing" instead of "player".

For example, adverbially:

رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا أمامي مع كلبه

Does ظرف المكان make the sentence to be perceived as "I saw a man playing with his dog in front of me" by default? Because "I saw him as a player with his dog in front of me" doesn't really make much sense.


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## analeeh

My feeling on this is basically that the rules dictating idiomaticity for many speakers (and behind many of our responses here) are heavily influenced by dialect. In dialect, the semantics of the participle are dictated by semantics and what linguists call 'lexical aspect' - that is, the natural time properties of the verb. Verbs of motion, verbs of posture and verbs that express a lasting state can form participles with ongoing meaning, while other verbs cannot. I think this explains the difference between people's perceptions of ماشي and لاعب, whether they consider the latter completely incorrect or simply unidiomatic.

My understanding is that in Classical Arabic, all verbs can have continuous meaning with the participle. I don't know how true this is as a point of historical linguistics - I'm not aware of any studies - or how true it is in terms of usage. The classical grammarians are often a bit confusing on these sorts of issues because it seems to me that they often extended rules بالقياس and sometimes relied on the reasoning (as we have in this thread) that if there is no logical reason why a form should not be correct, then it must be correct. This obviously is not how natural languages tend to work.

In any case, I think this is an unresolvable problem. Insofar as Classical Arabic merges into modern usage and insofar as native speakers' own intuitions are informed on the one hand by dialect and on the other hand by prescriptive rules, whether something is correct or not can be answered in very different ways, all of which have authority. I do think, however, that in terms of actual modern usage, it is far less common to see participles that would not have continuous meanings in dialect appearing in these kinds of structures (and I'd say our survey of native speaker evidence seems to support this conclusion), and the verbal form seems more common. Pedagogically I'm generally inclined to discourage learners to think of ism faa3il as equivalent to the English participle precisely for this reason (and for the other confusions it gives rise to). But that's not to say the form with the faa3il is incorrect, just less likely, and more likely to be judged as incorrect or ungrammatical.


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## elroy

I’m not sure this has to do with dialect.

انظر إلى الرجل. إنه يلعب بالكرة 
انظر إلى الرجل. إنه لاعب بالكرة 

The second one sounds totally wrong to me. I’ve never encountered this in any version of Arabic.

There are many MSA structures that are not found in my dialect that still intuitively feel correct in MSA.  This one doesn’t.


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## Qureshpor

HotIcyDonut said:


> Suppose we try to clarify the sentence somehow to denote "playing" instead of "player".
> 
> For example, adverbially:
> 
> رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا أمامي مع كلبه
> 
> Does ظرف المكان make the sentence to be perceived as "I saw a man playing with his dog in front of me" by default? Because "I saw him as a player with his dog in front of me" doesn't really make much sense.


I don't think it matters where the dog was playing. The inclusion of ظرف does not affect لاعباً.


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## Qureshpor

elroy said:


> I’m not sure this has to do with dialect.
> 
> انظر إلى الرجل. إنه يلعب بالكرة
> انظر إلى الرجل. إنه لاعب بالكرة
> 
> The second one sounds totally wrong to me. I’ve never encountered this in any version of Arabic.
> 
> There are many MSA structures that are not found in my dialect that still intuitively feel correct in MSA.  This one doesn’t.


If you look at these two links below, you'll see how the word has been given a slot with a fixed meaning "player" and "playing" is not mentioned once. This is what I and others are suggesting that because the semantics of لاعب have been narrowed down, when someone is suggesting its alternative or base meaning, it is perceived as not sounding right. This is quite understandable.

إنه لاعب كرة في ترجمة إنجليزي

لاعب كرة قدم بالأنجليزية

PS: Even Google translate gives the translation for your second sentence as, "Look at the man. He is a ball player"!


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## Qureshpor

cherine said:


> Hi,
> 
> I didn't have enough energy to read all the posts again, but when I re-read mine I was surprised at myself (and embarrassed too, really). I, now, don't see why I said that رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا مع كلبه is incorrect  it sounds perfectly fine.
> Sorry if I caused any confusion.


May I please ask why you now think this sentence sounds perfectly fine?


----------



## Qureshpor

analeeh said:


> The classical grammarians are often a bit confusing on these sorts of issues because it seems to me that they often extended rules بالقياس and sometimes relied on the reasoning (as we have in this thread) that if there is no logical reason why a form should not be correct, then it must be correct. This obviously is not how natural languages tend to work.


I am pleased to hear that I am being compared with classical grammarians!  Did the classical grammarians have views on their adverseries who couldn't offer a logical explanation for a construction but simply said, "This doesn't sound right!"? I am not of course suggesting that there is necessarily always a logical explanation.


----------



## analeeh

Well, in this analogy the people saying 'it doesn't sound right' would be the Badw they elicited judgements from, rather than other grammarians.

Like I said, though, I think this is an intractable question. If you want to use a form that certainly isn't very common, and that most contemporary native speakers find at best idiomatic and at worst ungrammatical, then nobody can stop you. If you wanted to go around saying 'thou' to people in English all the time because it is only logical that if the first and third person pronouns have singular and plural counterparts the second person pronoun must also have a plural counterpart, that would ultimately be your decision too. And of course the situation with native judgements in Arabic is less straightforward than in English because of the diglossia issue. 

I don't think the lexicalisation point explains it, because you absolutely do have a lot of these forms being used verbally in some contexts. If you check Arabicorpus, yes, the majority of the citations are 'player', as you might expect. But there are plenty of examples of لاعبا بذلك على معنى كذا كذا for 'thereby playing on the meaning of...' and similar same-subject 7aals. Similarly, this wouldn't explain why a word like ضارب, with no similar lexicalised counterpart, would pattern the same way, never being used as a main clause or relative clause 'hitting' (with continuous meaning) but sometimes being used in a same-subject 7aal with a continuous translation.


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## Qureshpor

analeeh said:


> Well, in this analogy the people saying 'it doesn't sound right' would be the Badw they elicited judgements from, rather than other grammarians.


Thank you for this.



analeeh said:


> If you want to use a form that certainly isn't very common, and that most contemporary native speakers find at best idiomatic and at worst ungrammatical, then nobody can stop you.



I think you might have meant to write "unidiomatic". But are there any "native speakers" of Fus7aa? By all accounts there aren't any, which I think is rather sad for the Arabic language but that's another topic for another day.



analeeh said:


> If you wanted to go around saying 'thou' to people in English all the time because it is only logical that if the first and third person pronouns have singular and plural counterparts the second person pronoun must also have a plural counterpart, that would ultimately be your decision too.


I don't think this is a relevant analogy as nothing in the sentence under discussion could be construed as "archaic" in itself.



analeeh said:


> Like I said, though, I think this is an intractable question.


I do believe we'll get to the bottom of this.



analeeh said:


> But there are plenty of examples of لاعبا بذلك على معنى كذا كذا for 'thereby playing on the meaning of...' and similar same-subject 7aals.



Thank you for this. So, are you saying لاعب, لاعباً does exist in the sense of "playing" in MSA?



analeeh said:


> Similarly, this wouldn't explain why a word like ضارب, with no similar lexicalised counterpart, would pattern the same way, never being used as a main clause or relative clause 'hitting' (with continuous meaning) but sometimes being used in a same-subject 7aal with a continuous translation.



I was thinking about the same too. One also finds ذاھب "going" regularly even in grammar books.


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## analeeh

Yes, it does exist with continuous meaning - but only in a specific context, I think. Like the French _-ant _form, for example, which can be used as a continuous in 7aal constructions (_je lui parle en mangeant_) but not as a main verb (*_il est mangeant?_).

I think basically you have three verbal-ish uses of the participle (as opposed to substantivised nouns) in modern fuS7a:

1) In same-subject 7aals.  رد عليه قائلا or خرج من البيت ضاربا الباب are examples of this from the corpus.

2) In semi-adjectival stative constructions like ضارب في أعماق التاريخ or حاملون الكتاب or الرجل جالس. The sense here is usually resultative, and corresponds directly to their use in dialect. Although the translation is sometimes continuous, the meaning is not the same as the English continuous. هو جالس means 'he is [in the position of] sitting', not 'he is [in the middle of the movement of] sitting up', for example. 

3) With certain classes of verbs, such as verbs of motion, they have 'ongoing' meaning (ذاهب, آتٍ). Again, this corresponds to dialect. 

I haven't really encountered any examples in the Qur'an that can't be explained by reference to one of these structures, with the exception of the future use (although I don't really see this use in modern fuS7a, there is a direct counterpart to it in Levantine at least, presumably its descendant). Similarly, I couldn't find any unexpected forms in Arabicorpus when I searched yesterday. Of course, it may be that you can find examples from Classical Arabic - I don't know! But I think this is where the argument becomes circular, because our premises are different.


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## Qureshpor

Just looking through my notes....I haven't always written the source details I am afraid.

"Participles are adjectives. Active and Passive Participles can both have perfect and imperfect meanings.

"If the meaning of the فاعل of a transitive verb is imperfect, then it can be construed with a genitive or an accusative.." I presume لَعِبَ can be thought of as intransitive and transitive. One can just be playing or one can be playing a game.

*أنا کاتب مقالة  *I am writing an article.

*أنا لاعب لعبة   *I am playing a game. (?)

......................................................................................................

One example of the use of the active participle for near future/future is:

*و إذ قال ربّک للملٰئکة إنّي جائل في الأرض خلیفةً*

.........................................

*ھدیاً بالغَ الکعبة *an offering coming to the Ka'ba

........................................

The following I think has been taken from 1001 nights which I am told has plenty of colloquial language.

*و صاحبنا رائح یموت*

Does this mean... and our master is going to die / about to die?

...........................................

*أعرف الرجلَ الساکنَ في ھذا البیت* I know the man living in this house.

*قابلتُ الطلابَ الدارسینَ اللغة العربیّة *I met the students studying the Arabic Language.

*قابلتُ الطلابَ اللاعبین في المدرسة  *  I met the students playing in school. (?)

*ھن عاملات في المصنع * They are working in the factory.


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## elroy

analeeh said:


> I don't think the lexicalisation point explains it


Yes, this is a red herring.

رأيت رجلاً فاتحًا الباب
رأيت رجلاً شاربًا عصيرًا
رأيت رجلاً راسمًا صورة

فاتح، شارب، راسم do not have any (widespread) established lexicalized meanings, and my judgment here is exactly the same.  These sentences sound just as wrong as رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا بالكرة.

If the man is *currently* playing with a ball, opening the door, drinking juice, or drawing a picture, I would say
الرجل *يلعب* بالكرة، *يفتح* الباب، *يشرب* عصيرًا، *يرسم* صورة
-- *not* لاعب/فاتح/شارب/راسم.

When the man verb backshifts to the past, the tense of the other verb doesn't change:
رأيت رجلاً *يلعب/يفتح/يشرب/يرسم*

It also doesn't change if the main verb moves to the future:
سأرى رجلاً *يلعب/يفتح/يشرب/يرسم*


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## Ghabi

Qureshpor said:


> "If the meaning of the فاعل of a transitive verb is imperfect, then it can be construed with a genitive or an accusative.."


In modern written Arabic, a faa3il doesn't take an object directly, unless the faa3il is a 7aal (i.e. with the -an ending), or if the object is something like المفعول المطلق. The usage of the faa3il in classical Arabic, that in dialects, and that in modern written Arabic are all a bit different. (Can't give you a source, just amateurish observations. They should write a book about it.)


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## Qureshpor

Qureshpor said:


> 5) لا یأخُذَنَّ أحدُکم متاعَ أخیهِ *لاعباً جادّ*اً


Another quote from Arabic - English Lexicon by Edward William Lane (London: Williams & Norgate 1863)

إِنَّمَا أَنْتَ لَاعِبٌ "[Thou art only playing]: said to anyone who does what is unprofitable."

I have been trying to search in Lisaan-al-3arab but so far without success.


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## ayed

رأيت رجلاً يلاعب كلبه


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## Qureshpor

elroy said:


> رأيت رجلاً فاتحًا الباب
> رأيت رجلاً شاربًا عصيرًا
> رأيت رجلاً راسمًا صورة
> 
> فاتح، شارب، راسم do not have any (widespread) established lexicalized meanings, and my judgment here is exactly the same. These sentences sound just as wrong as رأيت رجلاً لاعبًا بالكرة.


It seems then the problem is not just with the participle لاعب in the accusative but also with participles of other verbs following the verb رأی.

I did find the following on the net...

وقد وعد حينها بربح الحرب، _راسما صورة_ وردية عن الأوضاع الأمنية۔ (....painting a rosy picture...)

Would رأيت رجلاً ضاحکاً also fail the test?

Going back to the original sentence, would رأيت رجلاً و ھو لاعب مع کلبه pass the test?


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## Mahaodeh

I don’t know if this is helpful, but I personally find that رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه is perfectly fine.

Moreover, when I first saw the title of the thread (I hadn’t seen it in 2020, or I don’t remember it) I thought it was a request for translation and my first instinct was actually to say لاعبا rather than use the verb.

I am very surprised that some find it wrong, I can’t explain why they feel it’s incorrect.

With regards to it being a حال, I don’t think it is, it seems to me that its صفة.


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## Qureshpor

ayed said:


> رأيت رجلاً يلاعب كلبه


I believe the controversy is over the use of لاعباً, whether its usage in the said sentence is accurte or not.


----------



## Qureshpor

Mahaodeh said:


> I don’t know if this is helpful, but I personally find that رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه is perfectly fine.
> 
> Moreover, when I first saw the title of the thread (I hadn’t seen it in 2020, or I don’t remember it) I thought it was a request for translation and my first instinct was actually to say لاعبا rather than use the verb.
> 
> I am very surprised that some find it wrong, I can’t explain why they feel it’s incorrect.


Thank you @Mahaodeh for your contribution. I asked a friend of mine to ask his Egyptian friend (who taught Arabic in Saudi Arabia) about this sentence and the response came back that this sentence is perfectly fine. This makes two persons (you and @cherine - both Arabs?) in this group who say the sentence is fine and a third person, also an Arab, to say the same. I don't know if @jack_1313 is an Arab or not but I do know he is interested in motorbikes! 

However, having said this, there does appear to be a strange lack of existence of the word لاعب to imply "playing" whereas there is no real dearth of its existence as "player". Perhaps, football has killed the formal meaning in the psyche of the Arabic speaking peoples of modern times! @elroy is also of the view that in this construction لاعباً is not alone. He has provided examples for فاتحاً، شارباً، راسماً which he also thinks do not sound right. So, there is something not quite right.


----------



## Qureshpor

cherine said:


> The only difference I could sense between these, is the ماشيًا، نائمًا، سعيدًا are from intransitive verbs يمشي، ينام، يَسْعَد, while يلعب is transitive. So maybe this has a role in "deciding" which form to use.


Michal Marmorstein in her book "Tense and Text in Classical Arabic" on page 127 states..

The participle rarely occurs with transitive lexemes. When it does, it is often realised in the passive form, so that the verb phrase is instransitive.

إذ کان الاختلافُ في ذلک موجوداً بینا ذوي النظر فیهِ

As the controversy about that [matter] exists between those holding a view about that. (تاریخ 1,86)

The participle may also be realised in the active form. However, in these cases transitivity is not exercised, since the verb occurs wothout an explicit object compliment.

و قال لأُختهِ أعطینی ھذہ الصحیفة۔۔۔۔۔۔ أنظرُ ما ھذا الّذی جاء بهِ محمّد و کان عمرُ کاتباً

And he said to his sister, "Give me the leaf [of book...] so that I may take a look at that which Muhammad has brought, for 3umar was literate (lit. "writer") (سیرۃ1, 226)


on page 138 states...

".....Example [8.57] demonstrates the functional opposition between the *participle *and *یفعلوا* with regard to transitivity: the first is used in *intransitive verb-phrases* whereas *the latter takes an object complement*.

فخرجنا خائِفینَ نخافُ الرَصَدَ

We set out afraid; we were fearing an ambush. (مغازی 28)

On page 148

The same as the asydetic participle, the circumstantial participle occurs as a rule in in intransitive verb-phrases, either with intransitive lexemes or transitive lexemes, in the passive form.

لَقِيَه سفیه من سفھاءِ قریش و ھو عامداً اِلی کعبة

One of the Quraish fools came across him while he was heading towards the Ka'ba. (سیرۃ 1, 146)

لأنّه لا شيءَ یتوھّمُه متوھِّم في قولِ قائلِ ذلک إلّا و ھو  موجوداً في قولِ قائل

Because there is nothing which one may presume [to be implied] in this statement without existing in a statement such as.... (تاریخ 1, 58)

On rare occasions the participle takes an object compliment. We observe, however, that the object in such cases is not a prototypical one, i.e an individualised affected entity, but in fact forms a collocation with the verbal form:

و کیف یستطیع ذلک و ھو آکل عُشباً

How is he able to do that while being a grass-eater? (کلیلة و دمنة 92)

...............................................................

I don't know if this has been of any use to solve the mystery why لاعباً does not seem to fit the sentence in question.


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## Qureshpor

Would the following sentence be acceptable?

These players are playing a game of football.

ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون لاعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم

Or do we still have to use the verb instead of the participle?

ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون یلعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم


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## elroy

Qureshpor said:


> ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون لاعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم


This sounds horrible to me. 



Qureshpor said:


> ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون یلعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم


This is good, but it doesn't necessarily indicate progressive aspect, if that's what you're after.


----------



## Qureshpor

Qureshpor said:


> ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون لاعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم





elroy said:


> This sounds horrible to me.





Qureshpor said:


> ِهؤلاء اللّاعبون یلعبون لعبةَ كرّةِ القدم





elroy said:


> This is good, but it doesn't necessarily indicate progressive aspect, if that's what you're after.


I am attempting to find the root cause behind the unacceptability of the sentence ...

رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه


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## Qureshpor

Mahaodeh said:


> I don’t know if this is helpful, but I personally find that رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه is perfectly fine.
> 
> Moreover, when I first saw the title of the thread (I hadn’t seen it in 2020, or I don’t remember it) I thought it was a request for translation and my first instinct was actually to say لاعبا rather than use the verb.
> 
> I am very surprised that some find it wrong, I can’t explain why they feel it’s incorrect.
> 
> With regards to it being a حال, I don’t think it is, it seems to me that its صفة.


I am fast coming to the conclusion that the reason رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه sounds awkward or even wrong to a number of native speakers of Arabic language in this forum could be that the word لاعب in the current day to day language has become a noun through and through (a player) and the verbal meaning of the present participle's (i.e اسم الفاعل) as shown by past usage in the sentence below.....

إِنَّمَا أَنْتَ لَاعِبٌ "[Thou art only playing]: English Lexicon by Edward William Lane (London: Williams & Norgate 1863)

.... has completely disappeared.

If you search the net for لاعب، لاعبون، لاعبین the results show practically everything linked to players.

This short thread also confirms my line of thought.

Those girls are playing

Frm a grammar perspective, the sentence...

رأيتُ رجلاً لاعباً مع كلبه  I saw a man (who was) playing with his dog.

... is a perfectly correct sentence.

If رأیتُ رجلاً ضارباً کلبَه is correct, then there is no reason why..

رأیتُ رجلاً لاعباً لعبةً I saw a man playing a game...

is not correct.                                            
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## elroy

Qureshpor said:


> I am fast coming to the conclusion that the reason رأيت رجلا لاعبا مع كلبه sounds awkward or even wrong to a number of native speakers of Arabic language in this forum could be that the word لاعب in the current day to day language has become a noun through and through (a player)


At least for me that’s not the reason.  I already addressed this many posts ago.


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