The Role of the Syntactic Context in Meaning Widening via Altering Morphological Formulas in Classical Arabic: A Construction Grammar Approach

Meaning Widening

Abstract

Abstract

   The present study attempts to investigate the semantic widening of meaning in Classical Arabic (i.e., the Quran) that results from altering morphological formulas. It examines how a primary meaning of a particular morphological formula may be transformed into a secondary meaning. It adopted the Construction Grammar (CxG) approach to examine both language and construction-specificity. The study is limited to analyzing how the alternation of a subjective morphological formula in an objective or a verbal noun morphological formula can broaden semantics due to the multifunctional nature of this form. The findings showed that Quranic text enables the meaning of primary linguistic morphological formula to be transformed into secondary semantics without favoring one over the other. This paves the way for transferring the text to a higher level of eloquence.

The results show that widening meaning 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.