إِذْ قَالَ يُوسُفُ لِأَبِيهِ يَٰٓأَبَتِ إِنِّى رَأَيْتُ أَحَدَ عَشَرَ كَوْكَبًا وَٱلشَّمْسَ وَٱلْقَمَرَ رَأَيْتُهُمْ لِى سَٰجِدِينَ
Idh qāla Yūsufu li-abīhi yā abati innī raʾaytu aḥada ʿashara kawkaban wa'sh-shamsa wa'l-qamara raʾaytuhum lī sājidīn
"When Joseph said to his father: 'My dear father! I saw eleven stars, and the sun and the moon; I saw them prostrating to me.'"
In the sentence raʾaytu occurs twice, with no connective between them. The second raʾaytu is a repetition of the first; in Arabic this is called takrīr and conveys emphasis.
I record this as an observation about the structure: the sentence is built in two stages — first what was seen (eleven stars, the sun, the moon), then how it was seen (prostrating). That is, the object of the dream and the state of the dream are reported separately.
And the most conspicuous point of language here is this: sājidīn is the sound masculine plural, the form used in Arabic for rational beings. For stars, the sun and the moon one would normally expect sājidāt or a feminine singular.
This point was recorded in a table at al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/4 — there, in the discussion of the bending of necks (aʿnāq), this verse was cited as evidence. I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there:
Where the Qurʾān has something perform the act of bending or prostration, it can use the language of rational beings for it. This is an overlap verifiable from the text.
And a further note on the dream itself: what is seen in the dream are persons — indeed at the end of the sūra, when the dream is fulfilled, those who prostrate are persons (100). That is, the pattern accords with the interpretation of the dream. I give this as my own reading; its ground is the comparison of verses 4 and 100.
كَوْكَب — a bright star, a planet. The word was treated at al-Infiṭār 82/2 (wa-idhā'l-kawākibu'ntatharat) and this verse was cited there as well. I rely on that treatment.
يَٰٓأَبَتِ — "my dear father". The تِ at the end is a tāʾ used in Arabic for the vocative, and it conveys affection (the original being yā abī). The Qurʾān uses this address in several places, and in every one of them it is a conversation between father and son: Abraham to his father (Maryam 19/42-45), the young woman of Midian to her father (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/26), and in this sūra twice, Joseph to his father (4, 100).