جعل Collocations | Arabic (Modern Standard) Grammar

The central meaning of جعل is causative: someone or something brings about a state or action. In جعل القرار التدريب إلزاميا, “the decision made training mandatory,” التدريب is the entity affected and إلزاميا is the resulting predicate. Other frames let جعل assign a role, cause someone to act, or—at a marked literary register—mean “begin.”

English make covers all of those uses and many more. Arabic does not. It uses فعل for “do,” صنع for making or manufacturing an object, أجبر for coercion, and various support verbs for other collocations. The frame after جعل is what identifies its Arabic sense.

The principal parts are جَعَلَ — يَجْعَلُ — جَعْلًا (Form I, root ج-ع-ل). Derived English translations should not hide the stable grammatical question: what result did the subject cause?

The broader Object–Predicate Verbs page compares causative جعل with verbs of belief and judgment.

The object–predicate frame

In the productive “make/render X Y” construction, جعل governs an object and a predicate about that object. Traditional analysis describes both as accusative. The relation can be recovered as a nominal sentence:

التدريب إلزامي “training is mandatory” → جعل القرار التدريب إلزاميا “the decision made training mandatory.”

جعل القرار التدريب إلزاميا لجميع الموظفين

jaʿala l-qarāru t-tadrība ʾilzāmiyyan lijamīʿi l-muwaẓẓafīn

The decision made training mandatory for all employees. (formal)

التدريب is the first object, the logical subject of the embedded relation. إلزاميا is the second object or object predicate, naming the state produced. English inserts no visible marker between training and mandatory; Arabic marks their syntactic roles through case in fully inflected speech.

The predicate can be an adjective or a noun phrase:

جعلت الإضاءة الخافتة الغرفة أكثر راحة

jaʿalati l-ʾiḍāʾatu l-khāfitatu l-ghurfata ʾakthara rāḥa(h)

The soft lighting made the room more comfortable.

جعلت الشركة سلامة الركاب أولوية قصوى

jaʿalati sh-sharikatu salāmata r-rukkābi ʾawlawiyyatan quṣwā

The company made passenger safety its highest priority. (formal/business)

In the second sentence the recoverable relation is سلامة الركاب أولوية قصوى. The noun predicate is not a second thing transferred to safety; it classifies the resulting status of safety.

💡

Test the two complements as “X is Y.” If that relation makes sense and the subject causes it to become true, the object–predicate use of جعل is likely.

Agreement belongs to the predicate's logical subject

The object predicate agrees with the first object just as a predicate would agree in an independent nominal sentence. This includes Arabic's feminine-singular agreement for nonhuman plurals.

جعلت الأمطار الغزيرة الطرق زلقة وخطيرة

jaʿalati l-ʾamṭāru l-ghazīratu ṭ-ṭuruqa zaliqatan wakhaṭīra(h)

The heavy rain made the roads slippery and dangerous.

Although الطرق is morphologically plural, it is nonhuman, so زلقة وخطيرة are feminine singular. Accusative case comes from the جعل frame; gender-number agreement comes from the object being described. Those are separate grammatical decisions.

With human plurals, normal human agreement applies:

جعل التدريب الجديد الموظفين أكثر ثقة عند التعامل مع العملاء

jaʿala t-tadrību l-jadīdu l-muwaẓẓafīna ʾakthara thiqatan ʿinda t-taʿāmuli maʿa l-ʿumalāʾ

The new training made the employees more confident when dealing with customers.

Comparative أكثر has one form here, while its following specification ثقة explains the scale. Do not infer from this invariant comparative that ordinary adjectives ignore agreement.

Assigning or establishing a role

A noun predicate can designate a role, rank, or responsibility. This is the sense closest to English make someone chair or appoint someone representative.

جعل المجلس مريم ممثلة له في اللجنة المشتركة

jaʿala l-majlisu maryama mumaththilatan lahu fī l-lajnati l-mushtaraka(h)

The council made Maryam its representative on the joint committee. (formal)

جعل المدير خالدا مسؤولا عن التواصل مع الموردين

jaʿala l-mudīru khālidan masʾūlan ʿani t-tawāṣuli maʿa l-muwarridīn

The director put Khalid in charge of communication with suppliers.

For a formal appointment to an office, عيّن is often more precise: عيّنت الوزارة مريم مديرة للمشروع “the ministry appointed Maryam project director.” جعل emphasizes the resulting status; عيّن names the institutional act of appointment.

عينت الوزارة مريم مديرة للمشروع لمدة ثلاث سنوات

ʿayyanati l-wizāratu maryama mudīratan lil-mashrūʿi limuddati thalāthi sanawāt

The ministry appointed Maryam project director for three years. (formal institutional alternative)

جعل + object + imperfect: causing an action

When the result is an event rather than a nominal property, جعل can take an object followed directly by an imperfect verb. The object of جعل is also the understood subject of that imperfect.

جعلني التأخير أعيد النظر في خطة السفر

jaʿalanī t-taʾkhīru ʾuʿīdu n-naẓara fī khuṭṭati s-safar

The delay made me reconsider the travel plan.

جعل الخبر السكان يتساءلون عن سلامة المبنى

jaʿala l-khabaru s-sukkāna yatasāʾalūna ʿan salāmati l-mabnā

The news made the residents question the safety of the building.

No أن appears between the object and this imperfect. Compare أجبر المدير الموظف على أن يبقى “the manager forced the employee to stay,” which explicitly expresses coercion with a different verb and complement. جعل can describe an unintended cause; it does not by itself mean force.

جعل من: foregrounding transformation

Formal prose often uses جعل من X Y to construe X as the entity transformed. Here من X identifies what acquires a new status; it need not denote literal source material. The following accusative noun or adjective identifies the result.

جعل الاستثمار في النقل من المدينة مركزا إقليميا للتجارة

jaʿala l-istithmāru fī n-naqli mina l-madīnati markazan ʾiqlīmiyyan lit-tijāra(h)

Investment in transport turned the city into a regional trade center. (formal; English uses ‘into’)

This is an important nonliteral correspondence: English requires into, while Arabic commonly says جعل من المدينة مركزا. Do not reverse-engineer an Arabic إلى merely because it appears in English.

The inchoative “begin” use

Inherited formal and literary Arabic can use جعل + imperfect with one shared subject to mean “begin to, set about.” Context and the absence of an intervening object distinguish it from causative جعل شخصا يفعل.

جلس الكاتب عند النافذة وجعل يراجع رسائله القديمة

jalasa l-kātibu ʿinda n-nāfidhati wajaʿala yurājiʿu rasāʾilahu l-qadīma(h)

The writer sat by the window and began reviewing his old letters. (literary narrative)

In neutral contemporary information prose, بدأ يراجع or بدأ مراجعة is less marked. The inchoative جعل is not wrong, but using it in an everyday instruction without a register label makes the reference misleading.

💡

Count the participants. جعلني أراجع has a causer and an affected person: “made me review.” جلست وجعلت أراجع has one continuing subject: “I sat and began reviewing” (literary).

Lexicalized versus compositional meanings

Many object–predicate combinations are compositional: if a storm makes roads dangerous, each word keeps its ordinary meaning. Other pairings become conventional rhetorical units, such as جعل الأمر أولوية “make the matter a priority” or جعل الهدف نصب عينيه “keep the goal before his eyes.” Their grammar is analyzable, but their natural English is not word-for-word.

جعلت الباحثة الدقة نصب عينيها طوال التجربة

jaʿalati l-bāḥithatu d-diqqata nuṣba ʿaynayhā ṭawāla t-tajriba(h)

The researcher kept accuracy firmly in mind throughout the experiment. (formal; literally, ‘placed accuracy before her eyes’)

The expression does not mean that accuracy was physically put somewhere. That lexicalized image coexists with the productive syntax of جعل.

Common Mistakes

Copying English into the object–predicate frame

❌ جعل القرار التدريب إلى شرط للتوظيف

Incorrect English transfer—the resulting predicate follows directly; do not insert إلى.

✅ جعل القرار التدريب شرطا للتوظيف

jaʿala l-qarāru t-tadrība sharṭan lit-tawẓīf

The decision made training a condition of employment.

Giving a nonhuman plural a plural predicate

❌ جعل المطر الطرق زلقين

Incorrect agreement—nonhuman plural الطرق takes a feminine singular predicate.

✅ جعل المطر الطرق زلقة قرب الجسر

jaʿala l-maṭaru ṭ-ṭuruqa zaliqatan qurba l-jisr

The rain made the roads slippery near the bridge.

Leaving the role predicate nominative

❌ جعلت اللجنة نادية رئيسة للجلسة

jaʿalati l-lajnatu nādiyata raʾīsatun lil-jalsa(h)

Incorrect reading—the role predicate is the second accusative: raʾīsatan, not raʾīsatun.

✅ جعلت اللجنة نادية رئيسة للاجتماع الأول

jaʿalati l-lajnatu nādiyata raʾīsatan lil-ijtimāʿi l-ʾawwal

The committee made Nadia chair of the first meeting.

Inserting أن before the caused action

❌ جعلني الخبر أن أغير رأيي

Incorrect complement frame—causative جعل takes the object followed directly by an imperfect.

✅ جعلني الخبر أغير رأيي في الاقتراح

jaʿalanī l-khabaru ʾughayyiru raʾyī fī l-iqtirāḥ

The news made me change my opinion of the proposal.

Translating every English make with جعل

❌ جعلت واجبي قبل العشاء

Incorrect calque of ‘did my homework’—جعل requires a causative result in its core contemporary use.

✅ أنجزت واجبي قبل العشاء

ʾanjaztu wājibī qabla l-ʿashāʾ

I finished my homework before dinner.

Using literary onset as an unlabeled everyday default

❌ اجعل تكتب اسمك هنا

Incorrect instruction—imperative اجعل cannot mean neutral ‘start writing’ in this frame.

✅ ابدأ بكتابة اسمك هنا

ibdaʾ bikitābati smika hunā

Start by writing your name here. (neutral instruction)

Key Takeaways

Core جعل causes a result: an object plus an accusative predicate expresses “make/render X Y.”
The predicate agrees with the affected object; nonhuman plural controllers take feminine singular agreement.
A following imperfect can express the action caused in an object, while one-subject جعل + imperfect means “begin” in literary narrative.
جعل من X Y commonly corresponds to English “turn X into Y,” but Arabic does not insert إلى.
Prefer عيّن for an explicit institutional appointment and other specific verbs where English make does not express a caused state.

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