Lesson 9 of 16 · Full sentences
The sentence that starts with a noun
الْجُمْلَة الاِسْمِيَّة
After this lesson: Split a nominal sentence into its subject and the statement made about it.
A nominal sentence begins with a noun and has two parts: the thing you are talking about (mubtadaʾ) and what you say about it (khabar). Arabic supplies no word for 'is' — the two parts sit next to each other and the 'is' is understood.
Allāhu al-ṣamad is a complete sentence: 'Allah is the Self-Sufficient.' Both parts usually end in -u, the marfūʿ ending, which is the outward sign that you are looking at a subject and its statement rather than a phrase.
The test against the last lesson still holds. Two definite nouns can be a description phrase; what makes this a sentence is that a statement is being made, and the ending and context tell you which.
In the Qur'an
ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ
allāhu ṣ-ṣamad
Allah is the Self-Sufficient upon whom all depend.
Notice. Subject and statement, with no verb between them and none needed.
إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ
inna l-insāna la-fī khusr
Indeed mankind is in loss.
Notice. The statement need not be a single noun: here it is a preposition and its noun, 'in loss'.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or saved here — answering is how the rule sticks. When you want a score, the same checks are drilled to mastery below.
Where is the word for 'is' in Allāhu al-ṣamad?
Which ending normally marks both parts of a nominal sentence?
Word morphology, grammar and syntax trees are shown by the Quranic Arabic Corpus (corpus.quran.com), the annotated linguistic resource developed at the University of Leeds.