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The construct state (סמיכות smikhút) — in which two nouns are combined, the first being modified or possessed by the second — is not highly productive in Modern Hebrew. Compare the classical Hebrew construct-state with the more analytic Israeli Hebrew phrase, both meaning "the mother of the child", i.e. "the child's mother": [4]
A third value for state is construct. Nouns assume the construct state when they are definite and modified by another noun in an iḍāfah (Classical Arabic: إِضَافَةٌ, iḍāfah), the Arabic realization of a genitive construction. For example, in a construction like "the daughter of John", the Arabic word corresponding to "the ...
In Egyptian Arabic, the construct-state genitive is still productive, hence either kitāb-i or il-kitāb bitā‘-i can be used for "my book" [the difference between them is similar to the difference between 'my book' and 'the book is mine'], but only il-mu‘allimūn bitū‘-i "my teachers". The declined relative pronoun has vanished.
The Arabic grammatical terminology for this construction derives from the verb أضاف ʼaḍāfa "he added, attached", verb form IV from the hollow root ض ي ف ḍ y f. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The whole phrase consisting of a noun and a genitive is known in Arabic as إضافة iḍāfah ("annexation, addition") and in English as the "genitive ...
The Arabic word insha (Arabic: انشا) means "construction", or "creation".It has been used in this sense in classical Arabic literature such as the Quran.Over time it acquired the meaning of composition, especially denoting the prose composition of letters, documents, and state papers.
(In Biblical Hebrew, the entire construct was pronounced phonologically as a single word, with no stress on the construct-state noun; this triggered sound changes associated with unstressed syllables, which typically shortened the construct-state noun.) Classical Arabic has a similar construction, but the dependent noun is also placed in the ...
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The most common term nowadays in Arabic linguistics at least is "construct state" (though I think the rest of Semitic linguistics also uses this term), which is equated with the "definite" and "indefinite" state. I propose that this article's name be changed to "construct state".--205.250.223.14 18:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)