Benefit in relation to Madina book 2:

Someone asked a good question regarding the following sentence: أطولُ طالبٍ في الفصلِ إبراهيمُ The tallest student in the class is Ibrahim When we analysed this sentence in class, we said: أطولُ = مبتدأ إبراهيمُ = خبر QUESTION: Is it possible to analyse it the other way round and say: أطولُ = خبر مقدم إبراهيمُ = مبتدأ مؤخر ANSWER: The grammatical analysis of sentences is based on the intent of the speaker - not the listener/reader. The words in this sentence (namely أطول and إبراهيم) carry two possibilities; they could either be mubtada or khabar, hence the question. So if we restructure the sentence, we can create two possible meanings: أطولُ طالبٍ...إبراهيمُ 1. The tallest student in the class is Ibrahim. إبراهيمُ أطولُ طالبٍ... 2. Ibrahim is the tallest student in the class. So how do we determine the meaning intended by the speaker? The intent is determined by the way the speaker structures and orders their words. If the speaker wanted to inform about the tallest student being Ibrahim, أطول comes before إبراهيم, and if they wanted to inform about Ibrahim being the tallest student, إبراهيم comes first. Therefore, we know the speaker intends the first meaning and not the second because they mentioned أطول first. That is why we said: أطولُ = مبتدأ إبراهيمُ = خبر However, the are other sentences where the structure has no effect on the grammatical analysis. For example: محمدٌ في المسجدِ في المسجدِ محمدٌ Muhammad is the مبتدأ in both sentences.