الذي

Etymology
An innovation in Arabic, formed from. Compare 🇨🇬.

Pronoun

 * 1)  who, that, which

Usage notes
Although used similarly to the relative pronouns of the modern Germanic and Romance languages, it may be worth noting that "relative clauses" in Arabic are structurally identical to "nominal" (or zero-copula) sentences and "verbal" sentences with fronted nouns. Thus, when the relative pronoun is the object of a verb or a preposition, a pronominal clitic that references and agrees with the "relative pronoun" in gender and number is added after the respective verb or preposition while the relative pronoun itself remains at the beginning of the clause, though the addition of clitics after verbs and participles is optional (just as when nouns in verbal sentences are fronted).



This is also the case in fused (or nominal) relative clauses.



Syntactically, this differs from, for example, English, where relative pronouns replace nouns (as in that, which, who, and whom) and determiners (as in whose and which) in the relative clause. Hence, relative pronouns are classified in traditional Arabic grammar as a subcategory of nouns. In linguistics, such a clitic is often termed a, whose addition in the relative clause is also a feature of Hebrew (for which see the usage notes in the entry for ).

If the antecedent is indefinite, the relative pronoun is obligatorily omitted, regardless of the structure of the relative clause.



If the relative clause includes a predicative adjective qualifying an attribute of the antecedent or another referent related to or associated with it, the adjective may be moved to the front of the clause, in which case the relative pronoun is obligatorily omitted. The adjective also becomes perpetually in the singular unless the attribute or related referent is a broken plural, in which case the adjective may be pluralized, though this is relatively uncommon and some traditional grammarians criticize it. In its new position, the adjective agrees with the antecedent in case and definiteness and with the noun denoting the attribute or associated referent in gender.