# في أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال



## Saley

Hello!

Here’s an example and its translation from _A Reference Grammar of MSA_ by K. Ryding (p. 252):

في أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال
_on the farthest shore of the North Sea_​
1. Is the phrase correct? In superlative phrases, as far as I know and as her paragraph suggests, if مضاف إليه is singular, it should be indefinite.
2. Would it be correct to say في ساحل بحر الشمال الأقصى?


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## elroy

1. في أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال
2. في ساحل بحر الشمال الأقصى

The two phrases do not mean the same thing.

1. on the farthest part of the shore of the North Sea 
2. on the farthest shore of the North Sea

(Technically, #2 could also mean "on the shore of the farthest North Sea," but that's semantically implausible because we know there's only one North Sea.) 


Saley said:


> _on the farthest shore of the North Sea_


 With all due respect to Ms. Ryding, this translation is wrong.  The correct Arabic for that would be either your #2 or, more idiomatically, في أقصى سواحل بحر الشمال.


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## Mahaodeh

Saley said:


> في أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال
> _on the farthest shore of the North Sea_



While your book gives this translation, I understand it as: _on the farthest part/point of the North Sea shore, _that is it's not the farthest shore, it's the farthest point on that shore. If you wanted to say on _the farthest shore of the North Sea_ then it would be في الساحل الأقصى لبحر الشمال or the example you gave in 2. في ساحل بحر الشمال الأقصى.



Saley said:


> 1. Is the phrase correct? In superlative phrases, as far as I know and as her paragraph suggests, if مضاف إليه is singular, it should be indefinite.



Your phrase is correct. However, I'm not sure what you mean: are you saying that if it were dual or plural then it would be definite? That's not right!



Saley said:


> 2. Would it be correct to say في ساحل بحر الشمال الأقصى?



Yes, it's correct, but the meaning is different.


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## Abu Talha

Mahaodeh said:


> While your book gives this translation, I understand it as: _on the farthest part/point of the North Sea shore, _that is it's not the farthest shore, it's the farthest point on that shore.





elroy said:


> 1. on the farthest part of the shore of the North Sea


I'm curious why you both agree on this point.  Why can't أقصى ساحل mean farthest shore, like أكبر رجل means biggest/oldest man?


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## elroy

Abu Talha said:


> I'm curious why you both agree on this point.


 Because we're native speakers.  


Abu Talha said:


> Why can't أقصى ساحل mean farthest shore, like أكبر رجل means biggest/oldest man?


 أقصى ساحل _on its own_ means "the farthest shore," but أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال doesn't mean "the farthest shore of the North Sea."


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## Abu Talha

elroy said:


> Because we're native speakers.


I'm not undermining that I think, but trying to extract some underlying rule which makes you interpret it this way.


> أقصى ساحل _on its own_ means "the farthest shore," but أقصى ساحل بحر الشمال doesn't mean "the farthest shore of the North Sea."


But it's not the syntax itself right? Because we could similarly say أكبر رجل مدينة الشمال without any change in meaning.


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## elroy

Abu Talha said:


> Because we could similarly say أكبر رجل مدينة الشمال without any change in meaning.


 No, you couldn't.  You would need to say one of the following:

أكبر رجال مدينة الشمال
الرجل الأكبر من مدينة الشمال
رجل مدينة الشمال الأكبر

There _is _a syntactic rule here.  You can't use

[أفعل] + [indefinite singular noun] + [definite noun or noun phrase]

to mean

the [most X] [Y] of [Z]

I never learned this rule explicitly; I just extrapolated it for you.  Maha and I intuitively interpreted the original phrase correctly because we've internalized this rule without having had to learn it.


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## Abu Talha

elroy said:


> No, you couldn't.  You would need to say one of the following:
> 
> أكبر رجال مدينة الشمال
> الرجل الأكبر من مدينة الشمال
> رجل مدينة الشمال الأكبر


Hmm.. that's right. It seems quite obvious now that you pointed it out. thanks.


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## Saley

Many thanks!


Mahaodeh said:


> are you saying that if it were dual or plural then it would be definite?


No, I’m saying that, in other words, if the مضاف إليه is definite, it cannot be singular (e.g. I suppose أكبرُ الرجلِ is wrong).


elroy said:


> You can't use
> [أفعل] + [indefinite singular noun] + [definite noun or noun phrase]


...because the مضاف (the second element of the above formula) can’t be indefinite regardless of whether it is singular or not.


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## elroy

Saley said:


> ...because the مضاف (the second element of the above formula) can’t be indefinite regardless of whether it is singular or not.


 No.  If it’s plural it can be indefinite:

أقصى سواحل البحر


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## Saley

What do you mean by ‘indefinite’ as applied to the مضاف? It never has تنوين. In what case would you call it definite?


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## elroy

I mean no definite article.  It is of course definite by idafa! 

Although I suppose I could’ve just said “singular noun,” because no singular noun can go in that slot, whether definite or not.  Plural definite doesn’t work either.  The only option is plural indefinite.


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## Mahaodeh

Saley said:


> No, I’m saying that, in other words, if the مضاف إليه is definite, it cannot be singular (e.g. I suppose أكبرُ الرجلِ is wrong).



I see, then yes you are correct.


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## Saley

Mahaodeh said:


> _on the farthest shore of the North Sea_ ... would be في الساحل الأقصى لبحر الشمال


Could I also say في أقصى ساحلٍ لبحر الشمال with indefinite singular ساحل? Would it mean the same?


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## Mahaodeh

Yes, you can. But the meaning also changes. It becomes: _in a farthest shore of the North Sea_ as opposed to _the farthest shore of the North Sea._ However, when translating to English I would probably use the same translation using the definite article rather than the indefinite one.

It's a very subtle difference. The first implies that you don't know the shores, and the speaker is simply telling you that there are several and he is speaking about the farthest of them; while the second implies that you know the shores and know which one is farthest and that's what he's talking about. However, with regards to which shore he means on the actual ground, it's probably the same one in both.


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## Saley

Thank you for a thorough explanation!


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## elroy

Saley said:


> في أقصى ساحلٍ لبحر الشمال


 My immediate reaction was that this was not acceptable.  Then I thought about it some more and while I wasn't able to definitively rule it out as ungrammatical, I don't think it's idiomatic and I don't think this structure is likely to be used.


Mahaodeh said:


> _in a farthest shore of the North Sea_


 I'm sorry, but this doesn't work in English.  You can't use "a" with a (semantic) superlative, which, by definition, means that there is only one.  (The only time you can use "a" with a superlative is when the meaning isn't really superlative [i.e. it's a morphological superlative but not a semantic superlative], as in "That was a most inspiring speech," where it means "exceptionally inspiring.")


Mahaodeh said:


> The first implies that you don't know the shores, and the speaker is simply telling you that there are several and he is speaking about the farthest of them; while the second implies that you know the shores and know which one is farthest and that's what he's talking about.


 Are you talking about English or Arabic?

In Arabic, I don't think this variant implies anything about whether the listener already knows which shore is the farthest.  I think it means the same thing as the other variants; I just think it's less idiomatic, as I said.


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