Meaning Widening in Classical Arabic via Altering Morphological Formulas: A construction Grammar Approach

Meaning Widening

Abstract

Abstract: The present study aims at investigating meaning widening in Classical Arabic (i.e. the Quran) that results from altering morphological formulas. It examines how the primary sense of a particular morphological formula may be transformed into secondary one(s). Adopting a Construction Grammar (CxG) approach, the study strives to examine language-specificity and construction-specificity. The study is limited for analyzing how the alternation of the subjective morphological formula into an objective or a verbal noun morphological formula can widen meaning due to the multifunctional nature of this form. Based on Quranic exegeses, it is found that the Quranic text enables the meaning of primary linguistic morphological formula to be transformed into secondary one(s), without favoring one over the other. This paves the way for transferring the text into a higher level of eloquence. Moreover, the results show that meaning widening in these formulas is motivated by an economic factor; brevity or/and summation. Although Arab linguists are cognizant of construction specificity, the researchers found that this is not, to a great extent, notable in the translations of the same constructions, hence; language specificity is not apparent in the major discussion of the article.

Key Words: Construction Grammar; Construction Specificity; Language Specificity; Meaning Widening; Morphological Formula.