Are Sentences that Begin with Kāna and other Similar Auxiliary Verbs Nominal or Verbal?(With an Emphasis on Their Implications)

The sentence in Arabic is divided into two categories of nominal and verbal sentences. Essentially, a nominal sentence begins with a noun, while a verbal sentence begins with a verb. Each of these sentences has its own particular implication. As Kāna and its sisters play an important role in the Arabic language in terms of their functions, this study attempts to investigate sentences that begin with them to determine whether they are nominal or verbal. Therefore, it is essential to identify whether the sentences are nominal or verbal, particularly after we saw in some contemporary grammar books that some of the sentences starting with Kāna and its sisters are considered nominal. This issue is important in terms of sentence composition that has a valuable and high status in Arabic. Kāna and its sisters are also important in providing a rigorous scientific method for the compositions of kāna and its sisters. This research was conducted to provide more insight into this field and removing ambiguities. It employed a scientific methodology for examining sentences that began with Kāna and its sisters. In this research, we relied on grammarians to show that the criteria for determining a nominal or verbal sentence are its beginning, and to reinforce our stance, we have provided reliable evidence. The results showed that sentences beginning with Kāna and its sisters were never nominal but verbal. The most important reasons are the adoption of verbal markers, the presence of semantic predicates and their occurrence after conditional particles, ease of teaching, and meanings of annullers (or al-Naskh). All of these issues are discussed in detail in this research.