Breakdown of لم يتغيب المعلمون عن النشاط إلا معلم واحد.
الal
the
واحدwâhid
one / the same, uniform
إلاillâ
except
عن'an
about / from (far from) / on the basis of (merit)
لمlam
did not
معلمmu'allim
teacher
نشاطnashât
activity
تغيبtaghîbu
to be absent (from work or school) / to absent oneself
Questions & Answers about لم يتغيب المعلمون عن النشاط إلا معلم واحد.
Why is معلم in the nominative case instead of the accusative?
This is a "negative complete" exception. It is negative because it starts with لم, and "complete" because the whole group (المعلمون) is mentioned. In this structure, the word after إلا can either be accusative, or act as a بدل (apposition), copying the grammatical case of the general group. Here, it copies the nominative case of the subject المعلمون.
المعلمون ends in ون but معلم takes a damma. How are they in the same case?
They are both nominative (مرفوع), but show it differently based on their noun type. المعلمون is a sound masculine plural, so its nominative marker is the letter و. معلم is a singular noun, so its nominative marker is the short vowel damma (or in this indefinite case, the double damma/tanwin).
Would it be grammatically correct to say إلا معلماً واحداً here?
Yes, absolutely! Because this is a negative complete sentence, you have two valid choices. You can make it a matching بدل (as shown here with the nominative معلمٌ), or you can use the standard accusative of exception (مستثنى منصوب), which would be معلماً. Both are perfectly correct in MSA.
The translation says "were not absent", which is past tense. Why does يتغيب look like a present tense verb?
The negative particle لم is always followed by a present tense verb in the jussive mood (مجزوم), but it flips the meaning of the verb to the past tense. So, لم يتغيب literally uses a present tense verb form but translates to "did not absent themselves" or "were not absent".
Do we strictly need the word واحد here, or could we just say إلا معلم?
You could just say إلا معلم and the sentence would still mean "except one teacher" or "except a teacher". Adding the adjective واحد (which also takes the nominative case to match the noun) simply adds emphasis, stressing that exactly one single teacher was absent.
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