ABSTRACT
This construction in Arabic is simplicity itself, in comparison with English.
The man whom I saw, the man I saw, the man that I saw are three perfectly acceptable spoken and written usages in English. Furthermore, dialects may say The man who (’oo) I saw; the man what (wot) I saw, not to mention the man as I saw and the man worr I saw, etc. All of these are rendered in practically every dialect through the Arabic-speaking world as follows:
ir-rajul ’iilee shufto
The complexities of English are not to be found in Arabic. (‘This is a thing up with which I will not put’ ‘A preposition is something which you should not end a sentence with’)
Rules
1 illee is invariable for all genders and numbers: case does not arise because 2 ’illee is best regarded as a word linking two co-ordinate sentences (as its name in Arabic grammar implies) 3 When the antecedent is indefinite, ’illee is omitted.
