The Agents of Genitive Case (Jarr) in Arabic Grammar: An Foundational Comparative Study Between Agreed-Upon and Disputed Factors

Abstract

This study examines the governing factors of the Genitive Case in Arabic Syntax, which is a fundamental pillar of Arabic sentence structure. The research divides these factors into two main categories: agreed-upon factors and disputed factors. The agreed-upon factors, which form the stable foundation accepted by the majority of grammarians, include prepositions, the construct state, and syntactic dependency. The study affirms that prepositions and the construct state are the primary agents of the genitive case, while dependency generally traces back to the action of the preposition or the construct state. The disputed factors include the phenomenon of speculative causation and adjacency. The analysis shows that speculative causation is fundamentally a return to the action of the preposition or the construct state, and adjacency is considered an anomaly, as the resulting Kasrah is an imitative movement rather than a true grammatical case marking. The study concludes that the core agents of the genitive case are essentially limited to two: the preposition and the construct state. This research highlights the structural flexibility of Arabic and the importance of these elements in ensuring the semantic integrity and grammatical correctness of texts.