NPs

A noun phrase (NP) in Pashto is one of the following three things:

• a noun
• a pronoun
• a participle

Noun

A noun is a word that we use to identify people, places, things, or ideas. One of these words by itself it forms a NP, one of the basic building blocks.

Adding adjectives

We can also extend our noun by adding adjectives. Let's add the adjective زوړ - zoR (old) to our NP.

Now we have two words, but it's still one NP, one building block. We can add as many adjectives as we want, and it still stays as one single building block. Click on the icon below to try adding or removing more adjectives.

It's important to note that the adjective will inflect according to the noun it's attached to.

Adding a possesor

We can also add a possesor by adding another NP sandwiched in with a د - du (of). (Notice that the word sandwiched in there will inflect if possible.) Now we have a NP inside of an NP, but it's still all one NP or one building block.

If our possesor is a noun, we can add a possesor to it. Try clicking the icon below and adding possesors to the possesors, you can go forever! 🤯

A possesor can have another possesor which can have another posseser and so-on and on forever. The nerdy word for this phenomenon where things reference/repeat themselves is recursion. 🤓

A noun is one of three starting points for making an NP. When you start with a noun you can add adjectives and a possesor to it. (The possesor is another NP, which you can keep building on in the same way.)

Pronoun

A pronoun is a word like "I", "you", "us", "them" that signifies a person or thing.

You can't add any adjectives or possesors to pronouns in Pashto. They just stand on their own as an NP.

Participle

In Pashto you can use the infinitive form of a verb as a participle, meaning you can use it as noun in a sentence. For example, we can take the verb لیکل - leekul (to write) and use it as a particple meaning either:

• "to write" or
• "writing"

Then we can use this NP just like we would any other noun in a sentence.

The important thing to know about these kinds of NPs (participles) is that they are always considered masculine plural.

Notice how in the example above we said

We could not say

We can also add subjects or objects to the participle by sandwiching them in with a possesive د - du (of).

For example, if we take the participle وهل - wahúl (to hit / hitting)

And we can add the word ماشومان - maashoomaan (children) by sandwiching it in like we did with the possesor, we get

The noun we just attached can be a subject or an object of the participle. You just have to know from context. So this NP can mean either:

• hitting children, or (the kids are the object being hit)
• children's hitting (the kids are the subject doing the hitting)

And we can use this NP block as noun in a sentence.

Overview

An NP is one of the following:

• a noun
  • w/ optional adjectives
  • and a possesor, which is an NP ↺
• a pronoun, or
• a participle
  • which can have a subject/object, which is an NP ↺

Notice how NPs can contain other NPs, and therefore go on foreeeever. So you could have like 50 words packed together and it would all be one single NP, one building block in a sentence.