how to differentiate nominative-genitive and accusative for some specific cases (arabic)

[Hashimi]

When you translate to English, every sentence will contain a verb of course, I see what you mean, but not an Arabic verb

Actually I was talking about the Arabic verb! It's there, but it's hidden. I'm sure you know about تقدير and مقدر محذوف, the underlying structure or the deep structure. For example, in this sentence: الولد مريض, there is a hidden verb فعل مستتر تقديره يكون, but we omit it for "linguistic economy".

You can read more about this here if you want:

http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=290720&r=0

[jimmy]

....IMHO Arabic works differently, there is only two types of sentences: جمل اسمية(Nominal sentences) and الجمل الفعلية (Actual sentences).

You may be surprised if tell you that all sentences in Arabic has at least one verb, and that there are no true جملة اسمية at all!

The verb in the so-called جملة اسمية is only hidden in the present tense, but it appears in the past and the future. It also appears if you negate the present. (Jimmy, what I'm going to say may confuse you as a beginner, so it's better not to read it)

hp230, let me explain it using the following examples. We can say:

1) الولد مريض = The boy is sick

2) ليس الولد مريضاً = The boy is not sick

3) كان الولد مريضاً = The boy was sick

4) لم يكن الولد مريضاً = The boy was not sick

5) سيكون الولد مريضاً = The boy will be sick

6) لن يكون الولد مريضاً = The boy will not be sick

So in all these examples the verb is obvious and we can't omit it except in the first one. Even in the negated sentence in the present tense there is a verb because ليس is actually لا + أيس which is the equivalent of of the verb "to be" or "exist".

haha,now I can understand all of these.
learning arabic is way entertaining for me