Specification after verbs of increase (ازداد نضجا)

The Accusative of Specification (التمييز)

In Arabic, verbs that express increasing, growing, or filling up often leave a lingering question: increased in what? filled with what?

To resolve this ambiguity, Arabic uses a grammatical structure called التمييز (Specification). You simply follow the phrase with an indefinite noun in the accusative case.

This accusative noun is usually marked by a double fatha (tanween) at the end, which often requires adding an alif (ا) to the end of the word.

Filling and Overflowing

This same rule applies to verbs describing something becoming full or overflowing.

Note that when the specifying noun ends in a taa marbuta (ة), like the word for "delight" (بهجة), the accusative case is marked directly on the ة without adding an extra alif.

Expressing Emotions and Growth

The التمييز is an elegant and native-sounding way to describe swelling emotions, personal growth, and states of the heart. Instead of saying "the company became more proud," Arabic beautifully phrases it as "the company overflowed in pride."

Seeing the endings

This course writes Arabic the way books and newspapers print it, without the short-vowel marks, so the ending this lesson is about is something you hear in the audio but never see in the drills. Here are some of them with every vowel written out:

After ازداد, امتلأ and فاض, the noun that says with what is indefinite and accusative. You can see it as the alif of فَخْرًا and فَرَحًا. On بَهْجَةً the -tan is only heard.