Volume 3 – Issue 1 (June 2017)

Board of Reviewers

Abdelaziz Boudlal (Choaib Doukkali University – Morocco)

Afnan Fatani (King AbdulAziz University - Saudi Arabia)
Ahmed Al-Jallad (Leiden University – Netherlands)
Ahmed Berrissoul (Mohamed V University - Rabat, Morocco)
Alexander Magidow (University of Rhode Island – USA)
Angeles Vicente (University of Zaragoza - Spain)
Catherine Miller (Aix-Marseille University– France)
Christophe Pereira (INALCO – France)
David Wilmsen (American University of Beirut – Lebanon)
Dominique Caubet (INALCO - France)
Dragana Djordjevic (Oniversity of Belgrade – Serbia)
Emad Abdul Latif (Qatar University - Doha)
Enam Al-Wer (University of Essex - England)
Fransesco Grande (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice – Italy)
George Grigore (University of Bucharest – Romania)
Hamid Ouali (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)
Hassan Abdeljawad (Qaboos University - Oman)
Islam Youssef (University College of Southeast Norway)
Jacob Høigilt (Peace Research Institute - Oslo (PRIO)
Jamal Ouhalla (University College - Dublin)
Kristen Brustad (University of Texas at Austin – USA)
Lazhar Zanned (University of Manouba - Tunisia)
Mohamed Erradi (Mohamed V University, Morocco)
Mohamed Lahrouchi (CNRS & Paris 8 University - France)
Mohamed Yeou (Choaib Doukkali University – Morocco)
Naima Boussofara (University of Kansas – USA)
Nasserel-Din Abu Khdair (Birzeit University - Palestine)
Reem Bassiouney (The American University - Cairo)
Yahya Dkhissi (Choaib Doukkali University - Morocco)
Zeinab Ibrahim (Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar)
Zeinab Taha (The American University - Cairo)
 Contents

1- Ahmed Seddik Al Wahy (Ain Shams University – Cairo). Towards a

Methodology for Measuring Lexical Density in Arabic. pp. 1-33

2- Yehudit Dror (University of Haifa). The Perfective Indication

of kāna in Clauses of the kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman Type. Pp.

34-56

3- Khalsa Al Aghbari (Sultan Qaboos University). The Base Does Not

Count: A Special Pattern of Reduplicative Verbs in Omani Arabic.

pp. 57-76
 Towards a Methodology for Measuring Lexical Density in Arabic 1

Ahmed Seddik Al-Wahy

Faculty of Languages (Al-Alsun),
Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

‫ﻣﻠﺨﺺ‬
‫ ﻓﮭﻲ ﺗﮭﺪف أوﻻ إﻟﻰ ﺑﯿﺎن ﻣﺎ إذا ﻛﺎﻧﺖ ھﻨﺎك ﻓﺮوق ﻓﻲ اﻟﻜﺜﺎﻓﺔ اﻟﻠﻔﻈﯿﺔ ﺑﯿﻦ ﻣﺴﺘﻮﯾﯿﻦ‬.‫ﺗﺤﺎول ھﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﺗﺤﻘﯿﻖ ھﺪﻓﯿﻦ ﻣﺘﺮاﺑﻄﯿﻦ‬
‫ ﻛﻤﺎ ﺗﺴﻌﻰ ﺛﺎﻧﯿﺎ إﻟﻰ اﻟﺘﻮﺻﻞ إﻟﻰ اﻟﻄﺮﯾﻘﺔ اﻟﻤﻨﺎﺳﺒﺔ ﻟﻘﯿﺎس‬،‫ وھﻤﺎ اﻟﻔﺼﺤﻰ اﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮة واﻟﻔﺼﺤﻰ اﻟﻮﺳﯿﻄﺔ‬،‫ﻣﻦ ﻣﺴﺘﻮﯾﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ‬
‫ وﻟﺘﺤﻘﯿﻖ‬.‫ ﺑﻤﺎ ﺗﺘﻤﯿﺰ ﺑﮫ ﻣﻦ ﺧﺼﺎﺋﺺ ﻧﺤﻮﯾﺔ وﺻﺮﻓﯿﺔ وأﻋﺮاف ﻣﺘﻔﻖ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ طﺮق اﻟﻜﺘﺎﺑﺔ‬،‫اﻟﻜﺜﺎﻓﺔ اﻟﻠﻔﻈﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ‬
،‫ وھﻤﺎ طﺮﯾﻘﺔ ﺟﯿﻨﯿﻮر وطﺮﯾﻘﺔ ﻣﺎﯾﻜﻞ ھﺎﻟﯿﺪاي‬،‫ ﺗﻘﺎرن اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻄﺮﯾﻘﺘﯿﻦ اﻟﺮﺋﯿﺴﯿﺘﯿﻦ ﻟﻘﯿﺎس اﻟﻜﺜﺎﻓﺔ اﻟﻠﻔﻈﯿﺔ‬،‫ھﺬﯾﻦ اﻟﮭﺪﻓﯿﻦ‬
.‫ ﻣﻊ ﻣﺤﺎوﻟﺔ اﻗﺘﺮاح اﻟﺤﻠﻮل ﻟﻠﺘﻐﻠﺐ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ﻛﻠﻤﺎ أﻣﻜﻦ ذﻟﻚ‬،‫وﺗﻨﺎﻗﺶ ﻣﺎ ﯾﻜﺘﻨﻒ ﻛﻼ ﻣﻨﮭﻤﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺻﻌﻮﺑﺎت ﻋﻨﺪ ﺗﻄﺒﯿﻘﮭﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ‬
‫ واﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﻨﺘﻤﻲ‬،‫وﺑﻌﺪ ذﻟﻚ ﺗﻄﺒﻖ اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﻛﻼ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻄﺮﯾﻘﺘﯿﻦ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻋﺪد ﻣﻦ اﻟﻨﺼﻮص اﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﻤﺜﻞ اﻟﻤﺴﺘﻮﯾﯿﻦ اﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺨﯿﯿﻦ اﻟﻤﺬﻛﻮرﯾﻦ‬
‫ وإن‬،‫ وﺗﺸﯿﺮ ﻧﺘﺎﺋﺞ اﻟﻤﻘﺎرﻧﺔ إﻟﻰ وﺟﻮد اﺧﺘﻼف ﻓﻲ اﻟﻜﺜﺎﻓﺔ اﻟﻠﻔﻈﯿﺔ ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻤﺴﺘﻮﯾﯿﻦ‬.‫إﻟﻰ ﺟﻨﺲ ﻟﻐﻮي واﺣﺪ وھﻮ اﻟﺴﺮد اﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺨﻲ‬
‫ ﻛﻤﺎ ﺗﺸﯿﺮ إﻟﻰ أن طﺮﯾﻘﺔ ھﺎﻟﯿﺪاي ھﻲ اﻷﻧﺴﺐ ﻟﻘﯿﺎس اﻟﻜﺜﺎﻓﺔ‬،‫ﺗﻌﺎرﺿﺖ اﻟﻄﺮﯾﻘﺘﺎن ﻓﯿﻤﺎ ﺑﯿﻨﮭﻤﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺗﺤﺪﯾﺪ أي اﻟﻤﺴﺘﻮﯾﯿﻦ أﺷﺪ ﻛﺜﺎﻓﺔ‬
.‫ وأﻧﮭﺎ ﺗﻈﮭﺮ ﻓﺮوﻗﺎ ذات ﻣﻐﺰى ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻔﺼﺤﻰ اﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮة وﻧﻈﯿﺮﺗﮭﺎ اﻟﻮﺳﯿﻄﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻨﺼﻮص ﻣﺤﻞ اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ‬،‫اﻟﻠﻔﻈﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ‬

Abstract
The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it aims to show whether there are differences in lexical density
between two historical varieties of Arabic, namely, Late Middle Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.
Second, it seeks to find out the method of measuring lexical density that best suits the Arabic language,
with its orthographic and morpho-syntactic peculiarities. To this end, it compares the two main methods
for measuring lexical density, Ure’s and Halliday’s, and discusses the difficulties that arise when each of
them is applied to Arabic, suggesting solutions where possible. Each method is then used to measure
lexical density in a selection of texts representing the two varieties of Arabic and belonging to the
historical narrative genre. The results of the comparison indicate that the two varieties display different
degrees of lexical density, though the two methods of measurement yield opposing results. However, it is
shown that Halliday’s method is more appropriate for Arabic and that it consistently reveals significant
differences between the historical varieties as represented by the texts analysed.
Keywords: lexical density, grammatical intricacy, lexical variation, Late Middle Arabic, Modern Standard
Arabic

1
An earlier version of this study was presented at the First International Conference on Literature, Linguistics and
Translation, held at the Faculty of Languages, Ain Shams University, in March 2016. I would like to thank my
audience there for their stimulating questions and remarks. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees from
IJAL for their careful reading and their comments on an earlier draft of the present paper. It goes without saying that
I remain solely responsible for any shortcomings that may remain.

© The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) Vol. 3 Issue 1 (pp.1-33)

 1. Introduction
Since its introduction by Ure (1971), the concept of lexical density has been applied to a
wide range of languages, mainly to compare their varieties for descriptive or applied purposes.
Few studies, however, have applied this concept to Arabic, in spite of its potential to cast new
light on the differences between its genres and its social and historical varieties. This is probably
due to the fact that Arabic is typologically different from English and most of the other languages
that have been studied in terms of lexical density, which is manifest in its morpho-syntactic
features and orthographic system. Measuring lexical density in Arabic may require modifying the
existing models or adopting a functional rather than a traditional approach to Arabic grammar.
The present study is based on the hypothesis that one of the main differences between the
modern and earlier varieties of Arabic has to do with the degrees of lexical density they display.
To test this hypothesis, the study compares the two methods for measuring lexical density,
namely, Ure’s (1971) and Halliday’s (1989, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014),with respect to
their applicability to Arabic and suggests solutions to the problems encountered in this respect.
After that, each method is applied to texts belonging to two historical varieties of Arabic to see
which of them reveals more significant differences between them with respect to lexical density.
The importance of applying the concept of lexical density to Arabic lies in its potential for
opening up new avenues of research and practical applications in many language-related fields.
These include the study of language variation, genre analysis, translation studies, and language
teaching. Lexical density can work as an explanatory tool for differences between historical and
other varieties of Arabic and can provide new insights into the processes and directions of the
Arabic language development. Another important area is the study of the readability of different
Arabic texts, which can have a wide range of applications. For instance, it is useful in evaluating
textbooks and other works for appropriateness for the young or non-expert reader. This is based
on the idea that texts with low lexical density are generally more accessible than those with high
density (e.g., Halliday, 1989; Stubbs, 2004). The same idea can be useful for translation and
translation evaluation. Translators into Arabic may choose to reduce the lexical density of their
target texts to make them more accessible to the intended recipients, as in the case of translating
an encyclopedia entry for children or a specialized text for the general reader. This technique can
be regarded as a type of explicitation, which is assumed to be one of the universals of translation.
In order to make the best use of such potential, it is necessary to adopt a method of measurement

2
that reflects the realities of the Arabic language and suits its morphological and syntactic features.
Only an appropriate method can add to the value of the studies based on lexical density and can
ensure the reliability of their results.
The texts examined in this study belong to two historical varieties of Arabic. The first is
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the contemporary standard variety generally used
across the Arab world in formal writing, news bulletins, and formal political speeches. As Owens
(2006, p. 5) describes it, MSA is “a largely standardized form of the Classical language … which
is close to the language of contemporary journalism in the Arabic world.” The second variety is
the written Arabic of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This variety falls under the
general label “Middle Arabic”—a polysemous term that has been used to refer to the period of
transition from Classical to Modern Arabic and also to the generally standard varieties of Arabic
that incorporate elements of colloquial dialects (Owens, 2006, pp. 46–47). These two senses
apply to the source chosen to represent this variety in the present study, and as such the second
variety can well be described as “Middle Arabic.”It is more accurate, however, to use the term
“Late Middle Arabic” (LMA), to represent the period of time to which the text belongs. LMA is
thus the standard variety of Arabic which immediately precedes its first major contact with
Western civilization in modern times, which begins with the French Expedition to Egypt (1798-
1801). The LMA source examined here chronicles the events of the French Expedition, among
many other events.
While both LMA and MSA follow the rules of Arabic grammar concerning case
inflections, word endings, sentence structure, and word order (which is not the case, for example,
with colloquial varieties of Arabic), MSA is more influenced by Western culture and civilization
as well as modern European languages, especially English and French, which are the languages
with which Arabic has had the most contact in modern times. Conversely, LMA is closer to
Classical Arabic in terms of structural patterns, phraseology, and lexis. It may include local or
obsolete words, but it is neither influenced by Western civilization nor by modern languages.
This feature, which distinguishes LMA as a variety of Arabic, also applies to varying degrees to
those contemporary Arabic texts that would be described as “Heritage Standard Arabic” (fuṣḥᾱ
al-turᾱth) by Arabic sociolinguists (e.g., Badawi, 1973, pp. 89–90), which is almost used only by
Muslim scholars in the religious register.

3
 One of the difficulties in this respect is to find comparable texts belonging to the same
genre in LMA and MSA to use as data for comparison. Genres belonging to a given historical
variety do not necessarily have counterparts in others, and this has various reasons, including
incomparability (as in the case of canonical religious texts), disappearance of the genre in
question (as in the case of maqāmāt, a rhymed prose literary genre common in Middle Arabic), or
newness (as in the case of modern sciences and modern literary genres). One genre that exists
across both varieties is that of history, which has therefore been chosen as the source of data for
the present study. The texts chosen for analysis are drawn from cAjā’ib al-’Āthārfī al-Tarājimwa
al-’Akhbār ‘Wonders of Traditions in Biographies and Events’ (1880/1997) by Abdurrahman al-
Jabarti (1753-1825) for LMA, and Suqūṭ Niẓam ‘The Downfall of a Regime’ (2013) by Mohamed
Hassanein Heikal (1923-2016) for MSA. Both books were written by Egyptian historians and
deal with important periods of transition in the history of Egypt.
Given the lack of corpus tools that can accurately test lexical density in Arabic using both
methods, the analysis is performed manually based on selected passages drawn from each book.
A number of conditions have been applied to ensure the highest possible degree of consistency
and reliability of measurement. For instance, proper names consisting of more than one word
(e.g., Muhammad Nagīb and Yūsuf ibn ’Ayyūb) have been regarded as single words, since they
refer to single entities. The same applies to numbers and years, which are written in the LMA
texts as separate words (e.g., thamānin wakhamsīna wasitti mi’ah ‘six hundred and fifty-eight’),
but written in figures in the MSA texts. In the analysis, these have been joined with hyphens so as
to count them as single words (e.g., sanata thamānin-wa-khamsīna-wa-sittimi’ah ‘the year 658’).
The passages selected from each variety are of approximately the same length (738 words for
LMA and 744 words for MSA) and are mainly narrative, i.e., passages based on dialogue and
lists of separate items have been avoided. In addition, passages including translations from
English (which are abundant in Suqūṭ Niẓām) have been excluded to avoid any possible source
language influence.

2. Lexical Density and Related Terms

This section deals in some detail with the basic terms and concepts upon which the
present study is based. First, it defines lexical density, and then it elaborates on the distinction
between content words and function words, which is essential for its measurement, and discusses

4
how it applies to Arabic. It also refers to some other terms that are related to, and sometimes
confused with, lexical density, such as grammatical intricacy and lexical variation.

2.1 Lexical Density

Most definitions of lexical density focus on the quantitative aspect of the term, which is
related to the frequency of content words in a text (e.g., Linnarud, 1977, p. 86; Laviosa, 1998, p.
10; Stubbs, 2002, p. 41, 2004, p. 122). A typical definition states that “lexical density is the term
most often used to describe the proportion of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and often
also adverbs) to the total number of words” (Johansson, 2009, p. 146). Such characterizations,
however, do not define the concept of lexical density, but rather state how it is measured. It is
more revealing to define lexical density as the degree of richness of a text in terms of meanings,
ideas, and information. Halliday (1989, p. 62) describes lexical density as “the density with
which the information is presented.” Lexical density, therefore, is mainly the density of the
informational and ideational load of texts, which is realized by content words, as opposed to
function words.
The concept of lexical density has been particularly used to distinguish between written
and spoken varieties of language, where written language has been shown to be lexically denser
than spoken language (Ure, 1971; Halliday, 1989). One of Ure’s(1971) findings is that spoken
English texts tend to have a lexical density of less than 40%, whereas written texts tend to have a
lexical density higher than 40%.According to Halliday (1989, p. 80), “the lexical density of
written language is likely to be of the order of twice as high as that for speech.” Lexical density is
also inversely proportional to text readability; the denser a text is, the harder it is to process and
understand (e.g., Harrison & Bakker, 1998; Stubbs, 2004; Castello, 2008).
Lexical density has also been used for the description and characterization of scientific
and technical texts (Vande Kopple, 2003), for assessing the writing proficiency level of foreign
language learners in comparison with that of native speakers (Linnarud, 1976), for comparing
newspaper discourse over periods of time (Štajner & Mitkov, 2011), for comparing translated and
non-translated texts (Laviosa, 1998; Xiao & Yue, 2009),and for comparing different registers
within the same languages (Yates, 1996) and across languages (Neumann, 2014).
As far as Arabic is concerned, there is clear lack of studies that deal with lexical density
or provide a detailed discussion of its theoretical basis and applicability to Arabic. In addition, the

5
few studies that have attempted to measure lexical density in certain genres of Arabic have
generally used the Ure’s method, which, as suggested below, does not suit the morphological and
orthographic characteristics of the Arabic language. For instance, El-Farahaty (2015, p. 48, p.
149) refers to lexical density as one of the characteristics of legal Arabic, which she attributes to
the recurrent listings of consecutive nouns joined by a coordinating conjunction, especially wa
‘and’ and ‘aw ‘or’. El-Farahaty does not state the method she uses to measure lexical density, nor
does she define the term itself, though her reference to Dickins et al. (2002) and her use of the
terms “syndetic” (using connectives) and “asyndetic” (without connectives) suggest that she
associates the term with lexical repetition. Dickins et al. (2002, p. 59) have used these terms to
refer to the phenomenon of semantic repetition in Arabic, which is achieved through the use of
synonyms or near synonyms. Lexical density, however, is much broader than lexical and
semantic repetition, which is only one among several factors that contribute to the lexical density
of a text. It is noted that El-Farahaty’s main concern is with legal translation between English and
Arabic, which is probably why she does not elaborate on the theoretical basis for using the term,
nor does she refer to other genres to see the norm against which it is judged that legal Arabic is
lexically dense. However, El-Farahaty is quite right in her observation that coordination and the
use of lists of nouns are among the factors that increase lexical density in Arabic.
In a different vein, Mat Daud et al. (2014), who subscribe to the view that lexical density
is inversely proportional to readability, develop an index for Arabic text readability for
pedagogical purposes, in which lexical density is one of the main factors. Like other researchers
using corpus tools, they measure lexical density in terms of the ratio of content words to the
overall number of words in the text, which is the method that lends itself more easily to corpus
analysis, again without discussing the extent of its applicability to Arabic.
In a study published in Arabic, Al-Wahy (2014) examines lexical density in sociology
texts from different historical varieties of Arabic, using different methods of measurement. The
study discusses the difficulties that arise when Ure’s method is applied to Arabic and experiments
with the idea of taking grammatical morphemes into account when measuring lexical density in
Arabic. One of the findings of the study is that MSA is generally lexically denser than earlier
varieties of Arabic in the sociology genre, which is corroborated by the present study with
reference to history texts.

6
 2.2 Content Words and Function Words
Measuring lexical density, irrespective of which method is used, depends on the
theoretical distinction between content words and function words. This distinction is well-
established in English linguistics and has been discussed under various labels, including “lexical
items” and “grammatical items” (Halliday, 1989), and “open-set items” and “closed-set items”
(Cruse, 2011). It goes back to the 19th century grammarian Henry Sweet (Stubbs, 2002), and has
also been used by Fries (1952), the American structural linguist, as the basis for his taxonomy of
English word classes, where words are divided into four classes (roughly corresponding to nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, which are usually content words) and fifteen groups (representing
function words). However, research into the characteristics of each type in Arabic and the word
classes associated with it is rather lacking. It is necessary, before attempting to measure the
lexical density of Arabic texts, to decide on the criteria for distinguishing between the two types.
Content words, to begin with, are words that express meanings that can be understood
relatively independently of the verbal or non-verbal context; they carry the ideational load of any
text. Function words are connected to the verbal or situational context in which they occur and
they have little meaning outside this context. Words like huwa ‘he’, hādhā ‘this’, or alladh ī
‘who/which’ do not have an independent semantic content, but depend on their referents in the
context. They perform a grammatical rather than a semantic role. As Stubbs (2002, p. 39) puts it,
“content words tell us what a text is about, and function words relate content words to each
other.”
In the Arabic lexicographic tradition, many function words do not appear as headwords—
a fact which reflects the nature of these words as devoid of independent semantic content
compared with content words. In English lexicography, however, the dictionary is regarded not
only as a reference book that defines the meanings of words, but also as a record of the
vocabulary of the language (Jackson, 2002), which explains why it defines all its headwords,
including common words and function words, though the latter are defined in terms of their
usage. In Arabic lexicography, function words are defined rather vaguely (if at all they appear as
headwords in dictionaries), as in the definition of hiya ‘she’ in Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāḥ (Al-Razi,
1907/1995), where the word occurs under huwa ‘he’, and where both are defined scantily as
“huwa is for masculine and hiya for feminine”, without even stating that they are pronouns. In al-
Mucjam al-Wasīṭ, issued by the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo (Majmac al-Lughah al-

7
c
Arabiyyah, 1985), and currently considered the standard dictionary of Modern Arabic, there are
no entries for the pronouns huwa ‘he’ or hiya ‘she’, though there is one for ’anta/’anti ‘you
(singular)’ (masculine and feminine, respectively).
In addition, content words are regarded as open classes, as opposed to function words,
which are closed classes (e.g., Cruse, 2011). New nouns and verbs can enter the Arabic language,
either by borrowing or by derivation, but it is not expected to coin or borrow a new pronoun or
preposition into the Arabic language. Function words may become obsolete and disappear from
current usage, just as some lexical words do, but such changes are gradual and may take centuries
to occur. Changes in function word systems are usually associated with the colloquial varieties
rather than the standard ones, as in the case of the disappearance of the dual forms from the
pronominal system in colloquial Arabic varieties. Though limited in number, function words
occur more frequently in discourse than content words if the proportion of each type in the
language is taken into consideration. Generally, the words most frequently used in language are
function words rather than content words.
If the traditional Arabic classification of the parts of speech (where the word classes are
only three: nouns, verbs, and particles) is accepted, content words will be included under the
classes of nouns and verbs, whereas function words will be included under particles. This,
however, is rather a generalization, for not all nouns and verbs in Arabic are content words. For
instance, demonstratives and most pronouns are included in traditional Arabic grammar under
nouns, though they are function words in the light of the criteria listed above. The same applies to
certain classes of verbs, such as kāna ‘be’ and “its sisters,”2 which precede nominal sentences and
assign the accusative case to their predicates. Therefore, the traditional Arabic part-of-speech
taxonomy does not provide reliable grounds for distinguishing between content words and
function words. It is more useful to depend on the above criteria, particularly whether the word
has an independent semantic content and whether it belongs to an open set or a closed set of
words.
There are two points that seem problematic in this respect. First, some words are
ambiguous, in the sense that they are lexical in one sense and functional in another. This applies
to verbs that are mainly functional but are also used lexically. For instance, a verb like kāna ‘be’
is usually used as an defective verb (ficl nāqiṣ), where it is simply a tense carrier, in which case it

2
For the English translation of Arabic grammatical terms, I have mainly depended on Cachia (1973).

8
is a function word, but it is sometimes used as a full verb (ficl tāmm), as in wa-ka’anna shy’an
lam yakun ‘as if nothing had happened’ (Text 4 MSA), in which case it is a content word.
Another problem with the content-function word dichotomy is that it suggests that function words
are devoid of semantic content, or that they only have grammatical meaning, which is contrary to
the realities of language. As is the case with most linguistic taxonomies, there are borderline
cases that are neither fully lexical nor fully functional. An example from English is modal
auxiliary verbs. While modal auxiliaries represent a closed system, occur with, or assume, lexical
verbs and are used as grammatical words in questions and negation, they are not totally devoid of
semantic content; otherwise there would not be any differences in meaning among them. An
example from Arabic is the category of verbs known as ’afcāl al-muqᾱrabah wa-al-rajā’ wa-al-
shurūc ‘verbs of appropinquation, hope, and beginning’. These resemble modal auxiliaries in
English in that they represent a closed set and typically occur with fully lexical verbs to modify
aspects of their meanings, such as kāda yabkī ‘he was about to cry’ or bada’at tatakallam ‘she
started to talk’. Items in many closed systems perform a grammatical function and have semantic
content at the same time.
This suggests that the difference between content and function words is rather a matter of
degree. As Halliday (1989, p. 63) observes, “there is a continuum from lexis into grammar,” with
the result that there are “intermediate cases” between lexical and grammatical items. Similarly,
Cruse (2011, p. 268) explains that “in reality there is not a strict dichotomy between closed-set
and open-set items, but rather a continuous scale of lexicality/grammaticality.” He roughly orders
categories of words according to the semantic richness they display, starting with full content
words, followed by prepositions, classifiers, and then other items, including “light verbs” (i.e.,
verbs that do not add much to the meaning, such as make in make a move), auxiliaries, articles,
pronouns, and conjunctions (Cruse, 2011, p. 269). The idea of degrees of lexicality has also been
raised in syntax. For example, while Corver and van Riemsdijk (2001, p. 10) recognize the
usefulness of the content/function-word distinction, they believe that “there are content words
with a degree of ‘functionalness’ and there are function word [sic] having a degree of
‘lexicalness’.” They argue for a third category, namely that of “semi-lexical” words, which
combine features of both lexical and functional words.
The problem of ambiguity can be overcome by examining each possible case individually
to decide its category before measurement. As for the borderline cases, it has to be decided

9
whether to include them as content or function words in all cases. One might also consider the
option of assigning an intermediate value to such words, though the results will still be
approximate. The most important point in this regard is to remain consistent in all cases
(Halliday, 1989). In this paper, I have regarded borderline cases as function words if they are
members of closed sets.

2.3 Grammatical Intricacy

Grammatical intricacy is the type of complexity associated with spoken language, where
sentences tend to consist of many clauses that are related to one another through parataxis and
hypotaxis (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014, p. 726). The information represented by content words
is distributed among these clauses, resulting in the lower degree of lexical density that is typical
of spoken language. In writing, sentences tend to consist of fewer clauses, each packed with a
larger number of content words. The same information that is expressed by one clause or a few
clauses in written language can be expressed by a larger number of grammatically related clauses
in spoken language. This results in “lexical sparsity,” a term presented by Halliday (1989, p. 79)
as the opposite of lexical density and as the direct result of grammatical intricacy.
Eggins (2004, p. 97) suggests a measure of grammatical intricacy based on dividing the
number of clauses in the text by the number of sentences (or clause complexes). If, for instance, a
given text has a number of 20 sentences and 80 clauses, its grammatical intricacy will be 4. This
method can be represented by the following equation:

The difficulty of measuring grammatical intricacy in Arabic lies in the lack of clear
sentence boundaries in Arabic texts. Punctuation use in Arabic is not as strict as it is in English,
and the use of coordinating conjunctions such as wa ‘and’ and fa ‘and so’ is rather ambiguous, as
these can be used to join clauses within larger sentences or to introduce new sentences. This
feature applies particularly to the earlier historical varieties of Arabic, where long stretches of
text can be regarded as single sentences, but it is sometimes encountered in MSA as well.

2.4 Lexical Variation

Another related concept is that of lexical variation (also called “lexical variety” (e.g.,
Johansson, 2009) and “lexical diversity” (e.g., Jarvis, 2013)). Like lexical density, lexical

10
variation has been the focus of many corpus-based studies that aim to measure text readability for
a variety of purposes, ranging from examining different registers (e.g., Sotov, 2009) to the
analysis of learner corpora (e.g., Linnarud, 1976). Lexical variation refers to the range of
vocabulary used by the text writer; it is concerned with the degree of diversity of the content
words used in the text, i.e., with “how many different words are used in a text” (Johansson, 2009,
p. 141). In measuring lexical variation, it does not matter how many times a word is repeated in
the text; what counts is whether or not the word is new, in the sense that it has not occurred in the
preceding co-text.
Of particular relevance in this context is the distinction made in corpus linguistics
between word-tokens and word-types (or tokens and types, for short). In a given text, the number
of tokens is the total number of words, whereas the number of types is the number of different
words. As a text proceeds, any word will count as a token, but only new words will count as
types (Stubbs, 2002, p. 133). Lexical variation is calculated in terms of the type/token ratio, i.e.,
the ratio of the number of types to the number of tokens (Stubbs, 2002). Other things being equal,
the higher the percentage of lexical variation, the less readable the text will be (Stubbs, 2004),
since different words normally represent different concepts that add complexity to the text being
processed. Conversely, low lexical variation indicates relative repetitiveness, which facilitates
text readability. The measure of lexical variation can be represented by the following equation
(cf. Linnarud, 1976, p. 46):

There seems to be some confusion in the literature between lexical density and lexical
variation. For instance, Crystal (2008, p. 276) defines lexical density as “a measure of the
difficulty of a text, using the ratio of the number of different words in a text (the ‘word types’) to
the total number of words in the text (the ‘word tokens’),”adding that it is “also called type/token
ratio”. Similarly, in their study of lexical density in translated and native Chinese fiction, Xiao
and Yue (2009, p. 253) state that “there are two common measures of lexical density,” the first
being “the ratio between lexical words (i.e., content words) and the total number of words,” and
the second being “the type-token ratio.” As has been seen, the content-word/running-word ratio is
a measure of informational load, while lexical variation is a measure of its informational range. In
spite of aspects of similarity between them, lexical variation and lexical density refer to two
different concepts, and it is better to keep them distinct.

11
 3. Measuring Lexical Density in Arabic
This section reviews the two methods suggested for measuring lexical density by Ure
(1971) and by Halliday (e.g., 1989) and discusses some problems that emerge when each is
applied to the Arabic language, suggesting solutions where applicable. In the transliteration of the
Arabic examples, I have used the Library of Congress (LOC) Romanization system (available at:
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf). Admittedly, this system does not
represent the natural pronunciation of words in connected speech, but it has the advantage of
clearly showing the word boundaries and the exact number of words in the Arabic examples,
which serves the purposes of the present study. The transliteration is followed by a glossing that
reflects as closely as possible the relevant syntactic and morphological structure, and an idiomatic
translation that shows the meaning of the text.

3.1 Ure’s Method

Ure’s (1971) method is based on counting the lexical words of a text and then calculating
their percentage in relation to all the words of the text. This method has been adopted by many
scholars, such as Linarud (1976), Eggins (2004), and Johansson (2009). It is also the method
favoured by corpus linguists, such as Stubbs (2002) and Castello (2008). Lexical density in this
method is expressed as a percentage; it is the result of dividing the number of content words by
the total number of words multiplied by one hundred, as shown by the following equation:

The word in this model is understood in the orthographic sense, i.e., it is a unit of writing
consisting of a sequence of letters (or sometimes a single letter) with spaces before and after it.
This means that a solid compound would count as a single word, while an open compound would
count as two words. For instance, Linnarud (1976, p. 46) counts phrasal lexemes such as turn up
as two words, with turn as a content word and up as a function word.
If this method is applied to Arabic, a number of problems will emerge. First, in Arabic
orthography, some particles (which represent a separate word class) are always attached to the
following words, such as the coordinating conjunctions wa ‘and’ and fa ‘then’, the prepositions bi
‘with’ and ka ‘as’, and the preverbal li of purpose ‘in order to’, while others are written as
separate words. This is an orthographic rule in Arabic, where the particles written as single letters

12
are consistently attached to the following words. If Ure’s method is adopted, a word with an
attached conjunction (e.g., huwa wa-hiya ‘he and she’) will be counted as one word, while the
same word with a separate conjunction (e.g., huwa ‘aw hiya ‘he or she’) will be counted as two
words. The same applies to causative particles, such as li-ya cīsh ‘in order for him to live’, which
counts as one word, as opposed to kay yacīsh, which has the same meaning but counts as two
words. These orthographic conventions are thus not related to the meaning or the use of the
particle, though they affect lexical density in Ure’s method. If lexical density, as shown above, is
essentially density of information, then the above expressions, which are similar in meaning and
in form, should have the same lexical density.
Another problem is that Arabic is a highly synthetic language in which many grammatical
morphemes are attached to the lexical word in writing, which is not the case with analytic
languages such as English, where many such forms are typically written as single words.
Therefore, it is possible to find a full grammatical clause in Arabic realized by a single word. An
example from the corpus is wa-hazama-hum ‘and-defeated-he-them’ (Text 2 LMA), which
consists of a conjunction, a verb whose conjugation denotes a third-person singular masculine
subject, and a bound pronoun functioning as object. Measured by Ure’s method, the lexical
density of this one-word clause would be 100%, while its English translation ‘and he defeated
them’ would have a density of 25%, since in English translation the clause has to be broken down
into its component morphemes, resulting in four orthographic words. Though the English and
Arabic clauses have the same informational load, which is regarded here as the essence of lexical
density, they vary considerably when measured by Ure’s method.
This shows that if the measurement is based on orthographic words and on the ratio of
content words to the total number of words, the results will not always reflect the true
informational density of Arabic texts. One possible way to overcome this problem would be to
break down Arabic orthographic words into their component grammatical morphemes, which can
significantly reduce lexical density in Arabic texts, but it will not show significant differences
between varieties of Arabic, since it will result in the reduction of lexical density in all cases (Al-
Wahy, 2014). In addition, it is not the standard practice in measuring lexical density to include
bound morphemes, even with agglutinative, polysynthetic languages (e.g., Stegen, 2007;
Johansson, 2009).

13
 3.2 Halliday’s Method
Problems of the kind shown above will not emerge if Halliday’s method is used. Halliday
(1996/2007, p. 104) criticizes measuring lexical density as the ratio of lexical words to function
words, arguing that in languages “where the ‘function’ elements more typically combine with the
‘content’ lexeme to form a single inflected word, such a measure would not easily apply.”The
alternative method He suggests, which can presumably apply to all types of language, links
lexical density with the number of clauses in the text, not with the total number of words.
Meanings do not exist in a vacuum, but are expressed within linguistic frames, normally the
clauses, that organize their presentation in the text. Words, as Halliday (1989, p. 66) explains,
“are not packed inside other words; they are packaged in larger grammatical units – sentences
and their component parts.” For Halliday, lexical density is represented by the number of lexical
words in a ranking clause. In the case of whole texts, lexical density is the result of dividing the
number of lexical words by the number of ranking clauses in the text, as shown in the following
equation:

Lexical density here is not a percentage as it is in Ure’s method, but a figure whose value
is proportional to the informational density of the text. In applying this method, it is not required
to count the number of function words in the text, nor is there any need to count the number of
grammatical morphemes attached to the word. All that is needed is the number of lexical words
and the number of ranking clauses in the text. This point can be illustrated by the example
discussed in 3.1 above (wa-hazama-hum ‘and-defeated-he-them’), where it is shown that Ure’s
method would give strikingly different results for the Arabic sentence and its English translation.
By contrast, Halliday’s method would give the same value for both the Arabic sentence and its
English translation, namely, the value of 1, since the ranking clause in both languages contains
one content word. This indicates that Halliday’s method measures density at the deeper level of
information, even if it is expressed in a different language.
However, Halliday’s method involves difficulties of a different type when it is applied to
Arabic. In particular, these have to do with the differences between traditional Arabic grammar
and Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) regarding certain clause types. In SFG (e.g., Halliday,
1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), clauses are divided into two main types: ranking clauses,

14
which are counted when measuring lexical density, and embedded, or rank shifted clauses, which
are not included in the counting. Ranking clauses are those that do not perform a grammatical
function typically performed by units lower in the rank scale like words and groups, such as the
subject or object functions, which are typically performed by nouns or nominal groups. If a
clause performs such a function in a larger clause, it is regarded as embedded. Ranking clauses
fall into three categories: independent clauses, paratactic clauses (roughly corresponding to
clauses joined by coordination in traditional grammar), and hypotactic clauses (roughly
corresponding to clauses joined by subordination).In Arabic, these types are represented by
examples (1)–(3), respectively:
(1) ||| qaṣada al-’Ifrinj al-diyār al-Miṣriyyah fī
headed the-Franks the-lands the-Egyptian in
c
jaysh aẓīm |||
an-army huge
‘The Franks headed for the Egyptian lands in a huge army.’ (Text 1, LMA)
(2) ||| Fa-cinda dhālika malaka al-Nāṣir al-qaṣr
So-at that seized al-Nasir the-palace
c
|| wa-ḍayyaqa alā al-khalīfah |||
and-tightened-he on the-Caliph
‘And then, al-Nasir seized the palace and tightened it on the Caliph.’ (Text 1,
LMA)
(3) ||| Wa-lammā qutila ||wallaw ibna-hū
And-when was-killed-he put-they-in-office son-his
c
al-Muẓaffar Alī |||
al-Muzaffar Ali
‘And when he was killed, they put in office his son, al-Muzaffar Ali.’(Text 2,
LMA)
There are two points where SFG differs from traditional Arabic grammar in this
connection. First, when it comes to measuring lexical density, SFG distinguishes between
defining and non-defining clauses—a distinction which has not been observed by traditional
Arabic grammarians but which still exists in the Arabic language with its different varieties. Of
the two types, defining clauses are regarded as rank shifted, and thus are not counted as separate

15
clauses when measuring lexical density, while non-defining clauses are regarded as hypotactic
clauses and are included in the measurement. Examples (4) and (5) below represent defining and
non-defining relative clauses in Arabic, respectively.
(4) ... ’anna al-mucāhadah [[allatī waqqaca c
alayhā]]
… that the-treaty which signed-he on-it
hiya al-mumkin fī zamānihā
it the-possible in time-its
‘… that the treaty which he signed was the possible at its time.’ (Text 3, MSA)
(5) …wa-mucāhadat Virsay ||allatī rattabat natā’iga-hā ||
…and-Treaty Versailles which arranged-it outcomes-its
‘… and the Treaty of Versailles, which arranged its outcomes.’ (Text 1, MSA)
Second, in SFG, projected clauses are regarded as ranking clauses, with quoted speech
being paratactic and reported speech hypotactic, though in traditional Arabic grammar both types
are regarded as embedded clauses functioning as object. For the sake of consistency with the SFG
theory, this paper adopts the Hallidayan approach to such clause types, which is essential for the
measurement of lexical density. If, for the sake of simplicity, all clauses were counted in the
calculation of lexical density, whether they are ranking or rank shifted, content words would have
to be counted twice, once as part of the rankshifted clause and once for the ranking clause in
which it is embedded (Van de Kopple, 2003), which would obviously detract from the reliability
of the results.
Most corpus-based studies of lexical density have used Ure’s method, not least because it
is easier to apply automatically to large corpora. Halliday’s method seems to require much pre-
editing of texts to prepare them for the use of corpus linguistic tools, to distinguish between
ranking and embedded clauses and exclude the latter from the calculation. For instance, Castello
(2008, p. 53) observes that Halliday’s method “is not ready-made, in that its calculation needs the
same manual tagging that has to be carried out for measuring grammatical intricacy,” and
therefore adopts Ure’s method instead. Similarly, in his corpus-based analysis of computer-
mediated communication, Yates (1996) refers to Halliday for the differences in lexical density
between spoken and written language, though in the application he adopts Ure’s method. In the
same vein, while Neumann (2014, p. 76) admits that Halliday’s method “is certainly better
suited” to the type of contrastive genre analysis she performs, she uses “the less accurate” method

16
of measurement suggested by Ure because of its applicability to corpus analysis. As noted above,
lexical density is measured manually in the present study, given the lack of corpus tools that can
accurately apply the Hallidayan method, with its distinction between ranking and rankshifted
clauses, to the Arabic language. Manual analysis is also more appropriate than electronic
counting for the size of the texts (about 700 words for each variety) and can produce more
reliable results.

4. Lexical Density in Sample LMA and MSA Texts

The two methods outlined above are applied here to sample texts from LMA and MSA,
first to illustrate how each method can be practically applied to the Arabic language and, second,
to see if they display significant differences between the two varieties regarding lexical density.
Only one sample short text from each variety is shown in detail here, while the eight texts that
have been examined are given in the Appendix. To avoid repetition, each text is written once
using the conventions of delimiting clause boundaries used in SFG (e.g., Halliday & Matthiessen,
2014), which are required in Halliday’s method only. The content morphemes are printed in bold
face.

4.1 Sample Text 1 (LMA)

(6) |||Fa-cinda dhālika malaka al-Nāṣir al-qaṣr
So-at that seized al-Nasir the-palace
c
||wa-ḍayyaqa alā al-khalīfah ||wa-ḥabasa ’aqāriba-hū
and-tightened-he on the-caliph and-imprisoned-he his-relatives
|| wa-qatala ’acyān dawlati-hī || wa-stawlā c
alā
and-killed-he nobles rule-his and-seized-he on
[[mā fī al-quṣūr min al-dhakhā’ir wa-al-’amwāl
what in the-palaces of the-treasures and-the-money
wa-al-nafā’is]] || bi-ḥaythu istamarra al-bayc fī-hi
and-the-valuables so-that continued the-selling in-it
c
ashra sinīn ghayra [[mā iṣṭafā-hu Ṣalāḥuddīn
ten years apart-from what selected-it Salahuddin
li-nafsi-h]]. |||

17
 for-self-his
‘And then, al-Nasir [Salahuddin] seized the palace, tightened it on the Caliph,
imprisoned his relatives, killed the notables of his rule, and seized all the treasures,
valuables, and money that the palaces contained, such that selling them continued
for ten years, apart from what Salahuddin kept for himself.’ (Text 1, LMA)

4.1.1 Ure’s method.

The number of running words in Sample Text 1 is 33, of which 21 are content words.
Since Ure’s method is based on the orthographic word, the bound morphemes are not counted
separately. Thus the lexical density in Ure’s method is 64%, which is a high percentage.

4.1.2 Halliday’s method.

Halliday’s method requires breaking down the text into clauses, marking and excluding
rankshifted clauses, and then dividing the number of content words by the number of ranking
clauses. This is shown in (6) above, in which ranking and embedded clauses and clause
complexes as represented differently. Sentence (6) is a single clause complex consisting of 8
clauses, of which 6 are ranking and 2 are embedded, both performing nominal group functions
and beginning with mā ‘what’. In this method, the total number of words is irrelevant; what
counts is the number of content words and the number of ranking clauses. The resulting lexical
density is 3.5, which is of a median value in Halliday’s account.

4.2 Sample Text 2 (MSA)

(7) |||Kānat bidāyatal-Ḥarb al-cĀlamiyyah al-Thāniyah
Was-it beginning the-War the-World the-Second
Yawma thalāthah Sibtambir ‘alf-wa-tiscimi’ah-wa-tiscah-wa-
day three September thousand-nine-hundred-and-nine-and-
thalāthīn
thirty
||| wa-qad nashabat bayna ’Almānya al-Nāziyyah min
and-indeed erupted-it between Germany the-Nazi on
nāḥiyah wa-bayna Briṭānya wa-Faransā min

18
 one-side and-between Britain and-France on
al-nāḥiyah al-’ukhrā |||Wa-sababu-hā al-mubāshir
the-side the-other. And-cause-its the-direct
raghbat Hitlar (za cīm ’Almānya al-Nāziyyah) fī
desire Hitler (leader Germany the-Nazist) in
isticādat minṭaqat Danzig fi Bulandā ||kay
restoration area Danzig in Poland so-that
tacūda ’ilā ’Almānya ||bacda ’an sulikhat min-hā
return-itto Germany after that was-stripped-itfrom-it
natīgah li-al-Ḥarb al- Ālamiyyah al-’Ūlā wa-mucāhadat
c

result of-the-War the-World the-First and-Treaty

Virsay ||allatī rattabat natā’iga-hā |||
Versaille which arranged-it outcomes-its
‘The beginning of the Second World War was on September 3 rd, 1939. It erupted
between Nazi Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other. Its
direct cause was the desire of Hitler(the leader of Nazi Germany) to restore the
area of Danzig in Poland, after it had been stripped from Germany as a result of
the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, which arranged its
outcomes.’(Text 1, MSA)

4.2.1 Ure’s method.

The total number of words in (7) is 52, of which 37 are content words. Thus, the lexical
density of this text is 71%. Like the sample text in (6), this is a high percentage in Ure’s account.

4.2.2 Halliday’s method.

The text in (7) has 2 clause simplexes and 1 clause complex, consisting of 4 ranking
clauses, including the final non-defining relative clause. Accordingly, the total number of ranking
clauses in the text is 6. Since the text has 37 content words, its lexical density according to
Halliday’s method is 6.1, which is much higher than the density of the LMA text.

19
 The results obtained for the sample texts are in line with those yielded by measuring
lexical density in the eight other texts taken from the same sources (see Appendix), four
representing LMA and four representing MSA (Table 1).
Table 1
Lexical density (LD) in LMA and MSAtexts using Ure’s and Halliday’smethods
LMA Texts Mean MSA Texts Mean
Method 1 2 3 4 LD 1 2 3 4 LD
in in
LMA MSA
Ure’s 74% 77% 74% 72% 74% 64% 70% 63% 57% 64%
Halliday’s 3.6 2.7 3.2 2.8 3.0 6.7 8.5 7.2 10.5 8.2

5. Discussion of the Results

A number of observations can be made based on the analysis of the texts and the results
shown above. As shown in Table 1, it is noted that Ure’s method yields high lexical density
irrespective of the variety of the text, though the mean lexical density is about 10% higher in
LMA than it is in MSA. This percentage is not in itself significant, given that the density in both
varieties is high, but the fact that the lexical density in LMA is almost consistently higher than
that of MSA warrants some explanation. As shown above, Arabic is a synthetic, agglutinating
language that attaches many grammatical items to content words, which is why the lexical
density is high in Ure’s method in both varieties. However, the slightly higher values of lexical
density in LMA suggest that this variety tends to attach more grammatical morphemes to lexical
items than MSA. In other words, LMA uses fewer function words, and is therefore more
synthetic, than MSA. An illustrative example is the final bound pronoun in the phrase wa-fī
ṣabīḥat yawm al-sabt sādis cishrīna-h ‘and-on the-morning [of] Saturday its-twenty-sixth’
(Text4, LMA). This structure is not used in MSA, but has to be rephrased more explicitly into
something like wa-fī ṣabaḥ yawm al-sabt al-sādis wa-al-cishrīn min dhālika al-shahr ‘and-in the-
morning [of] Saturday the-twenty-sixth of that month’, where the preposition min ‘of’ and the
demonstrative dhālika ‘that’ replace the bound genitive morpheme. Since Ure’s method measures
orthographic words rather than morphological units, it is only natural that it yields higher lexical

20
density with more agglutinating varieties. Generally, however, Ure’s method yields only minor
differences between LMA and MSA regarding lexical density, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Differences in lexical density between the LMA and MSA texts by Ure's method
By contrast, Halliday’s method displays sharp differences between the two varieties, with
LMA being much lower in lexical density than MSA (Figure 2). On average, Halliday’s method
indicates that lexical density in MSA is more than double that of LMA, which is even greater
than the ratio observed by Halliday for written and spoken English. The reason for this striking
difference can be attributed to the fact that LMA uses more, but shorter, ranking clauses than
MSA, usually joined by coordination. These clauses, which are usually verbal, are used as the
divisor in calculating lexical density, and thus decrease the result obtained. On the other hand,
MSA tends to use longer clauses and clause complexes, which are fewer in number than those of
LMA but carry more content words. The content words are divided by fewer ranking clauses,
resulting in higher lexical density.

21
Figure 2. Differences in lexical density between the LMA and MSA texts by Halliday's method
It is significant that Ure’s method yields higher lexical density in LMA while in
Halliday’s method it is quite the opposite. This apparent contradiction suggests that the two
methods do not measure the same phenomenon, or at least that they measure two different kinds
of lexical density. Ure’s measure is single-layered and rather static, as it is based only on the
lexical distinction between content and function words, without showing how the ideas
mentioned in individual clauses contribute to the density of the whole text. By contrast,
Halliday’s method is multi-layered and more dynamic. It incorporates the lexical level as well as
the grammatical level, with an additional deeper distinction between ranking and rankshifted
clauses. It takes into consideration the role of smaller grammatical units by showing how
meanings are presented in individual clauses and how they build up the lexical density of the text
as a whole. The two methods may happen to give similar results in the case of English (though
this claim may require further research), but, as has been seen, in a language like Arabic, the
results are contradictory. The fact that only Halliday’s method reveals significant differences
between the two historical varieties of Arabic suggests that it is more illuminating than Ure’s
method. This supports Halliday’s (1996/2007) view that depending on the number of content
words as a ratio against the total number of words fits only languages like English, where
grammatical items are often lexicalized.

22
 The examination of the texts suggests that there are different patterns of lexical density in
LMA and MSA. Lexical density in LMA usually stems from the modification of nouns by the use
of coordinating conjunctions, with the coordinated constituents being short and structurally
similar to each other, reflecting the ornamental rhetorical device of parallelism (or ḥusn al-taqsīm
‘beautiful division’)—a feature which in frequently encountered in LMA texts. In example (8),
the coordination of nouns results in lexical density of 10 if calculated by Halliday’s method,
which is remarkably higher than the other parts of the text.
(8) ||| Wa-‘asarū [[man bi-hā min jumhūr
And-captured-they who in-it from nobles
c
al-Muslimīn wa-al-fuqahā’ wa-al- ulamā’ wa-al-’a’immah
the-Muslims and-the-jurists and-the-scholars and-the-imams
wa-al-qurrā’ wa-al-muḥaddithīn wa-’akābir
and-the-readers and-the-hadith-scholars and-chief
al-’awliyā’ wa-al-ṣaliḥīn]] |||Wa-fīhā khalīfat
the-devout and-the-righteous and-in-it vicegerent
c
Rabb al- ālamīn wa-’imām al-muslimīn wa-ibn
Lord the-worlds and-imam the-Muslims and-son
c
amm Sayyid al-Mursalīn|||
‘They captured the Muslim nobles, jurists, scholars, imams, hadith scholars, and
eminent devout and righteous people living in it.In it, there was the Caliph—the
Vicegerent of the Lord of the Worlds, the Ruler of Muslims, and the cousin of the
Master of Messengers.’ (Text 3, LMA)
It is observed that the coordination of verbs, as in example (9), which is more common in
LMA, does not have a similar effect on lexical density, since any verb is necessarily an
obligatory component (rukn) of a verbal clause, with an explicit or an implicit subject. A verb
necessarily results in a new clause that is counted when measuring lexical density if it is a
ranking clause, which lowers the lexical density of the text. The frequency of successive verbal
clauses in the LMA texts can be the main reason for their lexical sparsity:
(9) … bacda ’an kānū || malakū mu cẓam
… afterthat had-they seized-they most
al-macmūr min al-’arḍ || wa-qaharū al-mulūk

23
 the-populated of the-land and-vanquished-they the-kings
|| wa-qatalū al-cibād || wa-akhrabū al-bilād.||
and-killed-they the-people and-damaged-they the-lands.
‘… after they had conquered most of the populated parts of the earth, vanquished
kings, killed people, and devastated lands.’ (Text 2, LMA)
If measured by Ure’s method, the lexical density of (9) will be 64%, which is a high
percentage. If measured by Halliday’s method, it will be 2.3, which is a low figure. This
conforms to Eggins’ (2004) view that lexical density mainly results from nominalization and
noun modification, rather than the use of other content words, including verbs. Noun
modification, she explains, adds more content words to the nominal group, such as those denoting
the number, description, and class of the noun, in addition to relative clauses and prepositional
phrases qualifying it, while most forms of verb modifications add only function words related to
tense, aspect, voice, and modality (Eggins, 2004, pp. 96–97).
In MSA, where lexical density is always higher if measured by Halliday’s method, there
are different factors that contribute to such density through loading clauses with content words.
First, the MSA texts abound in examples of nominalization, such as ’iclān ḥālat al-ṭawāri’ ‘the
declaration of the state of emergency’, isticmālmarāfiqMiṣr ‘the use of Egypt’s public utilities’,
and cadam al-mushārakah fī mayādīn al-qitāl ‘non-participation in the battlefields’ (Text 2,
MSA). Second, there is the heavy modification of nouns, whether by adjoining other nouns to
make possessives or multiple possessives, as in isticādat minṭaqat Danzig ‘the restoration of the
area of Danzig’ (Text 1, MSA) and siyāsat tagnīb miṣr waylāt al-ḥurūb ‘the policy of saving
Egypt the horrors of war’ (Text 2, MSA), both consisting of successive content words, or by
relative clauses and tawābic (through coordination, apposition, and qualification (or post-
modification)). This, however, occurs without attending to parallelism, as is the case with LMA.
A third source of density is the use of parenthetical phrases, which are sometimes long and full of
content words. An example is: —’ay bacda arba cat shuhūr min nushūb al-qitāl wa thalāthat
shuhūr min suqūt Būlandā— ‘—that is, four months after the eruption of the fighting and three
months after the fall of Poland—’ (Text 1, MSA). In addition, the frequency of embedded clauses
increases the lexical density in MSA texts, since such clauses come loaded with content words
but are not counted in the measurement of lexical density.

24
 6. Concluding Remarks
The present study has shown that Ure’s and Halliday’s methods display more differences
than similarities between them when applied to Arabic and that they possibly measure two
different linguistic phenomena. Ure’s method presents a rather static, single-layered view of
lexical density, while Halliday’s provides a more dynamic, multi-layered view that reveals how
the framing of meanings within grammatical units contributes to the overall density of a text. Of
the two methods, Ure’s is easier to apply and more suitable for corpus analysis. However, since it
is based on the orthographic word, it is not appropriate for languages like Arabic, where many
grammatical items are attached to content morphemes and are not counted as separate words. In
addition, it does not show significant differences between the LMA and MSA regarding lexical
density. Halliday’s method, on the other hand, does not easily lend itself to corpus analysis, since
it requires much manual pre-editing to distinguish between ranking and rankshifted clauses. It
also requires adopting a functional approach to the analysis of Arabic sentences, which can be
different from the traditional approach in many cases. However, Halliday’s method has
advantages that outweigh these difficulties. First, it is universal and applicable to different
language typologies. Second, it can reveal significant differences between historical varieties of
Arabic. Third, it is based on the plausible idea that meanings do not exist in a vacuum but occur
within the framework of syntactic structures that organize them in the text. It is hoped that this
will encourage researcher to consider the Hallidayan method before pronouncing on lexical
density in Arabic.
The study also indicates that in the cases where lexical density exists in the two varieties,
this is usually due to different reasons. When LMA displays lexical density, this is mostly due to
the high rate of use of noun coordination, which often aims to create parallelism as an ornamental
rhetorical device. In MSA texts, lexical density stems from loading clauses with many content
words and the frequent use of embedded clauses, parenthetical phrases, in addition to
nominalization and the qualification of nouns by adjectives, adjectival phrases, and defining
relative clauses.
If, as most of the literature on lexical density suggests, lexical density is inversely
proportional to text readability, then it can be claimed that, all other things being equal, LMA
texts are more accessible to the reader than MSA texts. Similarly, if lexical density is a feature
that is associated with writing rather than with speech, then the study leads to the conclusion that

25
LMA, though still a written variety of Arabic, is closer to orality than MSA, which is more
influenced by the patterns and structures of modern European languages. Before this conclusion
can be generalized, however, it needs to be confirmed by further studies on a wider range of texts
representing different genres of Arabic.
The results of the study can be applied to various purposes that involve the analysis of the
Arabic texts, as has been done with other languages. In addition to comparing and characterizing
various genres and language varieties, both historical and otherwise, measuring lexical density
can be used for pedagogical purposes, such as evaluating the appropriateness of textbooks for
students at different stages and comparing the product of learners and native speakers of Arabic
or describing the development of learners’ writing skill. Measuring lexical density in Arabic is
also particularly relevant both to translation theory and practice. It can be used for comparing
translated and non-translated Arabic texts to see if there are divergences between them in terms
of informational density. In addition, since lexical density affects text readability, translators can
use it as a tool for making target texts more accessible to a certain readership by spreading the
information over a larger number of clauses to make it more suitable for the intended reader.
Reducing density can then be a means of explicitation, which is a common feature of target texts.
This is another area in which there are possibilities for further research.

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 ‫‪Appendix‬‬
‫‪The Arabic Texts Used in the Study‬‬
‫‪I. LMA texts‬‬
‫‪Text 1‬‬
‫ﻗﺼﺪ اﻹﻓﺮﻧﺞ اﻟﺪﯾﺎر اﻟﻤﺼﺮﯾﺔ ﻓﻲ ﺟﯿﺶ ﻋﻈﯿﻢ وﻣﻠﻜﻮا ﺑﻠﺒﯿﺲ وﻛﺎﻧﺖ إذ ذاك ﻣﺪﯾﻨﺔ ﺣﺼﯿﻨﺔ ووﻗﻌﺖ ﺣﺮوب ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﯿﻦ ﻓﻜﺎﻧﺖ‬
‫اﻟﻐﻠﺒﺔ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻤﺼﺮﯾﯿﻦ وأﺣﺎطﻮا ﺑﺎﻹﻗﻠﯿﻢ ﺑﺮا وﺑﺤﺮا وﺿﺮﺑﻮا ﻋﻠﻰ أھﻠﮫ اﻟﻀﺮاﺋﺐ‪.‬‬
‫ﺛﻢ إن اﻟﻮزﯾﺮ ﺷﺎور أﺷﺎر ﺑﺤﺮق اﻟﻔﺴﻄﺎط ﻓﺄﻣﺮ اﻟﻨﺎس ﺑﺎﻟﺠﻼء ﻋﻨﮭﺎ وأرﺳﻞ ﻋﺒﯿﺪه ﺑﺎﻟﺸﻌﻞ واﻟﻨﻔﻮط ﻓﺄوﻗﺪوا ﻓﯿﮭﺎ اﻟﻨﺎر ﻓﺎﺣﺘﺮﻗﺖ ﻋﻦ‬
‫آﺧﺮھﺎ واﺳﺘﻤﺮت اﻟﻨﺎر ﺑﮭﺎ أرﺑﻌﺔ وﺧﻤﺴﯿﻦ ﯾﻮﻣﺎ وأرﺳﻞ اﻟﺨﻠﯿﻔﺔ اﻟﻌﺎﺿﺪ ﯾﺴﺘﻨﺠﺪ ﻧﻮر‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ وﺑﻌﺚ إﻟﯿﮫ ﺑﺸﻌﻮر ﻧﺴﺎﺋﮫ ﻓﺄرﺳﻞ إﻟﯿﮫ‬
‫ﺟﻨﺪا ﻛﺜﯿﻔﺎ وﻋﻠﯿﮭﻢ أﺳﺪ‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ‪-‬ﺷﯿﺮﻛﻮه واﺑﻦ أﺧﯿﮫ ﺻﻼح‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ‪-‬ﯾﻮﺳﻒ ﻓﺎرﺗﺤﻞ اﻹﻓﺮﻧﺞ ﻋﻦ اﻟﺒﻼد وﻗﺒﺾ أﺳﺪ‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻮزﯾﺮ‬
‫ﺷﺎور اﻟﺬي أﺷﺎر ﺑﺤﺮق اﻟﻤﺪﯾﻨﺔ وﺻﻠﺒﮫ وﺧﻠﻊ اﻟﻌﺎﺿﺪ ﻋﻠﻰ اﺳﺪ‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ اﻟﻮزارة ﻓﻠﻢ ﯾﻠﺒﺚ أن ﻣﺎت ﺑﻌﺪ ﺧﻤﺴﺔ وﺳﺘﯿﻦ ﯾﻮﻣﺎ ﻓﻮﻟﻰ‬
‫ھﻤﺘﮫ وأﻋﻤﻞ ﺣﯿﻠﺘﮫ ﻓﻲ إظﮭﺎر اﻟﺴﻨﺔ وإﺧﻔﺎء اﻟﺒﺪﻋﺔ‪.‬‬ ‫اﻟﻌﺎﺿﺪ ﻣﻜﺎﻧﮫ اﺑﻦ أﺧﯿﮫ ﺻﻼح‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ وﻗﻠﺪه اﻷﻣﻮر وﻟﻘﺒﮫ اﻟﻨﺎﺻﺮ ﻓﺒﺬل‬
‫ﻓﺜﻘﻞ أﻣﺮه ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺨﻠﯿﻔﺔ اﻟﻌﺎﺿﺪ ﻓﺄﺑﻄﻦ ﻟﮫ ﻓﺘﻨﺔ أﺛﺎرھﺎ ﻓ ﻲ ﺟﻨﺪه ﻟﯿﺘﻮﺻﻞ ﺑﮭﺎ إﻟﻰ ھﺰﯾﻤﺔ اﻷﻛﺮاد وإﺧﺮاﺟﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﺑﻼده ﻓﺘﻔﺎﻗﻢ اﻷﻣﺮ‬
‫واﻧﺸﻘﺖ اﻟﻌﺼﺎ ووﻗﻌﺖ ﺣﺮوب ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﯿﻦ أﺑﻠﻰ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ اﻟﻨﺎﺻﺮ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ وأﺧﻮه ﺷﻤﺲ‪-‬اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ ﺑﻼء ﺣﺴﻨﺎ واﻧﺠﻠﺖ اﻟﺤﺮوب ﻋﻦ‬
‫ﻧﺼﺮﺗﮭﻤﺎ ﻓﻌﻨﺪ ذﻟﻚ ﻣﻠﻚ اﻟﻨﺎﺻﺮ اﻟﻘﺼﺮ وﺿﯿﻖ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺨﻠﯿﻔﺔ وﺣﺒﺲ أﻗﺎرﺑﮫ وﻗﺘﻞ أﻋﯿﺎن دوﻟﺘﮫ واﺳﺘﻮﻟﻰ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘﺼﻮر ﻣﻦ‬
‫اﻟﺬﺧﺎﺋﺮ واﻷﻣﻮال واﻟﻨﻔﺎﺋﺲ ﺑﺤﯿﺚ اﺳﺘﻤﺮ اﻟﺒﯿﻊ ﻓﯿﮫ ﻋﺸﺮ ﺳﻨﯿﻦ ﻏﯿﺮ ﻣﺎ اﺻﻄﻔﺎه ﺻﻼح‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻟﻨﻔﺴﮫ‪.‬‬
‫وﺧﻄﺐ ﻟﻠﻤﺴﺘﻀﻲء اﻟﻌﺒﺎﺳﻲ ﺑﻤﺼﺮ وﺳﯿﺮ اﻟﺒﺸﺎرة ﺑﺬﻟﻚ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺑﻐﺪاد وﻣﺎت اﻟﻌﺎﺿﺪ ﻗﮭﺮا وأظﮭﺮ اﻟﻨﺎﺻﺮ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ اﻟﺸﺮﯾﻌﺔ اﻟﻤﺤﻤﺪﯾﺔ‬
‫وطﮭﺮ اﻹﻗﻠﯿﻢ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺒﺪع واﻟﺘﺸﯿﻊ واﻟﻌﻘﺎﺋﺪ اﻟﻔﺎﺳﺪة وأظﮭﺮ ﻋﻘﺎﺋﺪ أھﻞ اﻟﺴﻨﺔ واﻟﺠﻤﺎﻋﺔ وھﻲ ﻋﻘﺎﺋﺪ اﻷﺷﺎﻋﺮة واﻟﻤﺎﺗﺮﯾﺪﯾﺔ وﺑﻌﺚ إﻟﯿﮫ‬
‫أﺑﻮ‪-‬ﺣﺎﻣﺪ‪-‬اﻟﻐﺰاﻟﻲ ﺑﻜﺘﺎب أﻟﻔﮫ ﻟﮫ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﻘﺎﺋﺪ ﻓﺤﻤﻞ اﻟﻨﺎس ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻌﻤﻞ ﺑﻤﺎ ﻓﯿﮫ وﻣﺤﺎ ﻣﻦ اﻹﻗﻠﯿﻢ ﻣﺴﺘﻨﻜﺮات اﻟﺸﺮع وأظﮭﺮ اﻟﮭﺪي‪.‬‬
‫وﻟﻤﺎ ﺗﻮﻓﻲ ﻧﻮر‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ اﻟﺸﮭﯿﺪ اﻧﻀﻢ إﻟﯿﮫ ﻣﻠﻚ اﻟﺸﺎم وواﺻﻞ اﻟﺠﮭﺎد وأﺧﺬ ﻓﻲ اﺳﺘﺨﻼص ﻣﺎ ﺗﻐﻠﺐ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ اﻟﻜﻔﺎر ﻣﻦ اﻟﺴﻮاﺣﻞ وﺑﯿﺖ‬
‫اﻟﻤﻘﺪس ﺑﻌﺪ ﻣﺎ أﻗﺎم ﺑﯿﺪ اﻹﻓﺮﻧﺞ ﻧﯿﻔﺎ وإﺣﺪى وﺗﺴﻌﯿﻦ ﺳﻨﺔ وأزال ﻣﺎ أﺣﺪﺛﮫ اﻹﻓﺮﻧﺞ ﻣﻦ اﻵﺛﺎر واﻟﻜﻨﺎﺋﺲ‪.‬‬
‫وﻟﻢ ﯾﮭﺪم اﻟﻘﯿﺎﻣﺔ اﻗﺘﺪاء ﺑﻌﻤﺮ رﺿﻲ ﷲ ﻋﻨﮫ واﻓﺘﺘﺢ اﻟﻔﺘﻮﺣﺎت اﻟﻜﺜﯿﺮة واﺗﺴﻊ ﻣﻠﻜﮫ وﻟﻢ ﯾﺰل ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟﻚ إﻟﻰ أن ﺗﻮﻓﻲ ﺳﻨﺔ ﺗﺴﻊ‬
‫وﺛﻤﺎﻧﯿﻦ وﺧﻤﺴﻤﺎﺋﺔ وﻟﻢ ﯾﺘﺮك إﻻ أرﺑﻌﯿﻦ درھﻤﺎ وھﻮ اﻟﺬي أﻧﺸﺄ ﻗﻠﻌﺔ اﻟﺠﺒﻞ وﺳﻮر اﻟﻘﺎھﺮة اﻟﻌﻈﯿﻢ‪(Al-Jabarti 1880/1997, .‬‬
‫)‪pp. 24–26‬‬

‫‪Text 2‬‬
‫وﻟﻤ ﺎ اﻧﮭ ﺰم اﻹﻓ ﺮﻧﺞ وﻣ ﺎت اﻟﺼ ﺎﻟﺢ وﺗﻤﻠ ﻚ اﺑﻨ ﮫ ﺗ ﻮران‪-‬ﺷ ﺎه اﺳ ﺘﻮﺣﺶ ﻣ ﻦ ﻣﻤﺎﻟﯿ ﻚ أﺑﯿ ﮫ واﺳﺘﻮﺣﺸ ﻮا ﻣﻨ ﮫ ﻓﺘﻌﺼ ﺒﻮا ﻋﻠﯿ ﮫ وﻗﺘﻠ ﻮه‬
‫ﺑﻔﺎرﺳﻜﻮر و ﻗﻠﺪوا ﻓﻲ اﻟﺴﻠﻄﻨﺔ ﺷﺠﺮة‪-‬اﻟﺪر ﺛﻼﺛﺔ أﺷﮭﺮ ﺛﻢ ﺧﻠﻌﺖ وھﻲ آﺧﺮ اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ اﻷﯾﻮﺑﯿ ﺔ وﻣ ﺪة وﻻﯾ ﺘﮭﻢ إﺣ ﺪى‪-‬وﺛﻤ ﺎﻧﻮن ﺳ ﻨﺔ‪.‬ﺛ ﻢ‬
‫ﺗﻮﻟﻰ ﺳﻠﻄﻨﺔ ﻣﺼﺮ ﻋﺰ‪-‬اﻟﺪﯾﻦ‪-‬أﯾﺒﻚ‪-‬اﻟﺘﺮﻛﻤﺎﻧﻲ‪-‬اﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﻲ ﺳ ﻨﺔ ﺛﻤ ﺎن‪-‬وأرﺑﻌ ﯿﻦ‪-‬وﺳ ﺘﻤﺎﺋﺔ وھ ﻮ أول اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ اﻟﺘﺮﻛﯿﺔ ﺑﻤﺼ ﺮ‪.‬وﻟﻤ ﺎ ﻗﺘ ﻞ‬
‫وﻟﻮا اﺑﻨﮫ اﻟﻤﻈﻔﺮ‪-‬ﻋﻠﻲ ﻓﻠﻤﺎ وﻗﻌﺖ ﺣﺎدﺛﺔ اﻟﺘﺘﺎر اﻟﻌﻈﻤﻰ ﺧﻠﻊ اﻟﻤﻈﻔﺮ ﻟﺼﻐﺮه وﺗﻮﻟﻰ اﻟﻤﻠﻚ اﻟﻤﻈﻔﺮ‪-‬ﻗﻄﺰ وﺧﺮج ﺑﺎﻟﻌﺴﺎﻛﺮ اﻟﻤﺼ ﺮﯾﺔ‬

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‫ﻟﻤﺤﺎرﺑﺔ اﻟﺘﺘﺎر ﻓﻈﮭﺮ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﻢ وھﺰﻣﮭﻢ وﻟﻢ ﺗﻘﻢ ﻟﮭﻢ ﻗﺎﺋﻤﺔ ﺑﻌ ﺪ ذﻟ ﻚ ﺑﻌ ﺪ أن ﻛﺎﻧﻮا ﻣﻠﻜ ﻮا ﻣﻌﻈ ﻢ اﻟﻤﻌﻤ ﻮر ﻣ ﻦ اﻷرض وﻗﮭ ﺮوا اﻟﻤﻠ ﻮك‬
‫وﻗﺘﻠﻮا اﻟﻌﺒﺎد وأﺧﺮﺑﻮا اﻟﺒﻼد‪(Al-Jabarti 1880/1997, pp. 26–27) .‬‬

‫‪Text 3‬‬
‫وﻓﻲ ﺳﻨﺔ أرﺑﻊ‪-‬وﺧﻤﺴﯿﻦ‪-‬وﺳﺘﻤﺎﺋﺔ ﻣﻠﻜﻮا ﺳﺎﺋﺮ ﺑﻼد اﻟﺮوم ﺑﺎﻟﺴﯿﻒ وﻓﻲ اﻟﺒﺤﺮ‪.‬‬
‫ﻓﻠﻤﺎ ﻓﺮﻏﻮا ﻣﻦ ذﻟﻚ ﻧﺰل ھﻮﻻﻛﻮ‪-‬ﺧﺎن وھﻮ اﺑﻦ طﻮﻟﻮن‪-‬ﺑﻦ‪-‬ﺟﻨﻜﯿﺰ‪-‬ﺧﺎﻧﻌﻠﻰ ﺑﻐﺪاد وذﻟﻚ ﺳﻨﺔ ﺳﺖ‪-‬وﺧﻤﺴﯿﻦ وھﻲ إذ ذاك ﻛﺮﺳﻲ‬
‫ﻣﻤﻠﻜﺔ اﻹﺳﻼم ودار اﻟﺨﻼﻓﺔ ﻓﻤﻠﻜﮭﺎ وﻗﺘﻠﻮا وﻧﮭﺒﻮا وأﺳﺮوا ﻣﻦ ﺑﮭﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺟﻤﮭﻮر اﻟﻤﺴﻠﻤﯿﻦ واﻟﻔﻘﮭﺎء واﻟﻌﻠﻤﺎء واﻷﺋﻤﺔ واﻟﻘﺮاء‬
‫واﻟﻤﺤﺪﺛﯿﻦ وأﻛﺎﺑﺮ اﻷوﻟﯿﺎء واﻟﺼﺎﻟﺤﯿﻦ وﻓﯿﮭﺎ ﺧﻠﯿﻔﺔ رب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﻦ وإﻣﺎم اﻟﻤﺴﻠﻤﯿﻦ وأﺑﻦ ﻋﻢ ﺳﯿﺪ اﻟﻤﺮﺳﻠﯿﻦ ﻓﻘﺘﻠﻮه وأھﻠﮫ وأﻛﺎﺑﺮ‬
‫دوﻟﺘﮫ وﺟﺮى ﻓﻲ ﺑﻐﺪاد ﻣﺎ ﻟﻢ ﯾﺴﻤﻊ ﺑﻤﺜﻠﮫ ﻓﻲ اﻵﻓﺎق‪.‬‬
‫ﺛﻢ إن ھﻮﻻﻛﻮ‪-‬ﺧﺎن أﻣﺮ ﺑﻌﺪ اﻟﻘﺘﻠﻰ ﻓﺒﻠﻐﻮا أﻟﻒ‪-‬أﻟﻒ‪-‬وﺛﻤﺎﻧﻤﺎﺋﺔ‪-‬أﻟﻔﻮزﯾﺎدة ﺛﻢ ﺗﻘﺪم اﻟﺘﺘﺎر إﻟﻰ ﺑﻼد اﻟﺠﺰﯾﺮة واﺳﺘﻮﻟﻮا ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﺮان‬
‫واﻟﺮھﺎ ودﯾﺎر‪-‬ﺑﻜﺮ ﻓﻲ ﺳﻨﺔ ﺳﺒﻊ‪-‬وﺧﻤﺴﯿﻦ ﺛﻢ ﺟﺎوزوا اﻟﻔﺮات وﻧﺰﻟﻮا ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﻠﺐ ﻓﻲ ﺳﻨﺔ ﺛﻤﺎن‪-‬وﺧﻤﺴﯿﻦ‪-‬وﺳﺘﻤﺎﺋﺔ واﺳﺘﻮﻟﻮا ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ‬
‫وأﺣﺮﻗﻮا اﻟﻤﺴﺎﺟﺪ وﺟﺮت اﻟﺪﻣﺎء ﻓﻲ اﻷزﻗﺔ وﻓﻌﻠﻮا ﻣﺎ ﻟﻢ ﯾﺘﻘﺪم ﻣﺜﻠﮫ‪.‬‬
‫ﺛﻢ وﺻﻠﻮا إﻟﻰ دﻣﺸﻖ وﺳﻠﻄﺎﻧﮭﺎ اﻟﻨﺎﺻﺮ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ‪-‬ﺑﻦ‪-‬أﯾﻮب ﻓﺨﺮج ھﺎرﺑﺎ وﺧﺮج ﻣﻌﮫ أھﻞ اﻟﻘﺪرة ودﺧﻞ اﻟﺘﺘﺎر إﻟﻰ دﻣﺸﻖ وﺗﺴﻠﻤﻮھﺎ‬
‫ﺑﺎﻷﻣﺎن ﺛﻢ ﻏﺪروا ﺑﮭﻢ وﺗﻌﺪوھﺎ ﻓﻮﺻﻠﻮا إﻟﻰ ﻧﺎﺑﻠﺲ ﺛﻢ إﻟﻰ اﻟﻜﺮك وﺑﯿﺖ اﻟﻤﻘﺪس ﻓﺨﺮج ﺳﻠﻄﺎن ﻣﺼﺮ ﺑﺠﯿﺶ اﻟﺘﺮك اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﺗﮭﺎﺑﮭﻢ‬
‫اﻷﺳﻮد وﺗﻘﻞ ﻓﻲ أﻋﯿﻨﮭﻢ أﻋﺪاد اﻟﺠﻨﻮد ﻓﺎﻟﺘﻘﺎھﻢ ﻋﻨﺪ ﻋﯿﻦ ﺟﺎﻟﻮت ﻓﻜﺴﺮھﻢ وﺷﺮدھﻢ ووﻟﻮا اﻷدﺑﺎر وطﻤﻊ اﻟﻨﺎس ﻓﯿﮭﻢ ﯾﺘﺨﻄﻔﻮﻧﮭﻢ‪.‬‬
‫ووﺻﻠﺖ اﻟﺒﺸﺎﺋﺮ ﺑﺎﻟﻨﺼﺮ ﻓﻄﺎر اﻟﻨﺎس ﻓﺮﺣﺎ‪(Al-Jabarti 1880/1997, pp. 27–28) .‬‬

‫‪Text 4‬‬
‫وﻓﻲ ﺻﺒﯿﺤﺔ ﯾﻮم اﻟﺴﺒﺖ ﺳﺎدس‪-‬ﻋﺸﺮﯾﻨﮫ ﺧﺮج اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﺎن إﻟﻰ ﺧﺎرج اﻟﻘﺎھﺮة ﻣﻦ ﺑﺎب ﻗﻨﺎطﺮ‪-‬اﻟﺴﺒﺎع واﺟﺘﻤﻌﻮا ﺑﺎﻟﻘﺮب ﻣﻦ ﻗﺼﺮ‪-‬‬
‫اﻟﻌﯿﻨﻲ وﻣﻌﮭﻢ اﻟﻤﺪاﻓﻊ وآﻻت اﻟﺤﺮب ﻓﺘﺤﺎرب اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﺎن ﻣﻦ ﺿﺤﻮة اﻟﻨﮭﺎر إﻟﻰ اﻟﻌﺼﺮ وﻗﺘﻞ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﯿﻦ ﻣﻦ دﻧﺎ أﺟﻠﮫ وأﯾﻮب‪-‬ﺑﻚ‬
‫وﻣﺤﻤﺪ‪-‬ﺑﻚ ﺑﺎﻟﻘﺼﺮ‪.‬‬
‫ﺛﻢ ﺗﺮاﺟﻊ اﻟﻔﺮﯾﻘﺎن إﻟﻰ داﺧﻞ اﻟﺒﻠﺪ وﺗﺄﺧﺮت طﺎﺋﻔﺔ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻌﺰب ﻓﺄﺗﻰ إﻟﯿﮭﻢ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ‪-‬ﺑﻚ‪-‬اﻟﺼﻌﯿﺪي واﺣﺘﺎط ﺑﮭﻢ وﺣﺎﺻﺮھﻢ وﺑﻠﻎ اﻟﺨﺒﺮ‬
‫ﻗﺎﻧﺼﻮه‪-‬ﺑﻚ ﻓﺄرﺳﻞ إﻟﯿﮭﻢ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ‪-‬ﺑﻚ وﻣﺤﻤﺪ‪-‬ﺑﻚ وﻋﺜﻤﺎن‪-‬ﺑﻚ ﻓﺘﻘﺎﺗﻠﻮا ﻣﻊ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ‪-‬ﺑﻚ‪-‬اﻟﺼﻌﯿﺪي وھﺰﻣﻮه وﺗﺒﻌﻮه ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﻨﻄﺮة اﻟﺴﺪ‬
‫وﻗﺪ ﻛﺎن أﯾﻮب‪-‬ﺑﻚ داﺧﻞ اﻟﺘﻜﯿﺔ اﻟﻤﺠﺎورة ﻟﻘﺼﺮ‪-‬اﻟﻌﯿﻨﻲ ﻓﻠﻤﺎ رأى اﻟﺤﺮب رﻛﺐ ﺟﻮاده وﻧﺠﺎ ﺑﻨﻔﺴﮫ ﻓﺒﻠﻎ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ‪-‬ﺑﻚ ﺑﺄﻧﮫ ﺑﺎﻟﺘﻜﯿﺔ‬
‫ﻓﻘﺼﺪوه واﺣﺘﺎطﻮا ﺑﺎﻟﻘﺼﺮ ﻓﺄﺧﺒﺮھﻢ اﻟﺪراوﯾﺶ ﺑﺬھﺎﺑﮫ ﻓﻠﻢ ﯾﺼﺪﻗﻮھﻢ وﻧﮭﺒﻮا اﻟﻘﺼﺮ وﺧﺮﺑﻮه وأﺣﺮﻗﻮه وﻋﺎدوا إﻟﻰ ﻣﻨﺎزﻟﮭﻢ‪.‬‬
‫وﻓﻲ ﺻﺒﯿﺤﺔ ﯾﻮم اﻷﺣﺪ ذھﺐ ﯾﻮﺳﻒ‪-‬ﺑﻚ‪-‬اﻟﺠﺰار وﻧﮭﺐ ﻏﯿﻂ إﻓﺮﻧﺞ أﺣﻤﺪ اﻟﺬي ﺑﻄﺮﯾﻖ ﺑﻮﻻق‪ .‬ﺛﻢ اﺟﺘﻤﻌﻮا ﻓﻲ ﻣﺤﻞ اﻟﺤﺮب‪،‬‬
‫وﺗﺤﺎرﺑﻮا وﻟﻢ ﯾﺰاﻟﻮا ﻋﻠﻰ ذﻟﻚ‪ ،‬وﻓﻲ ﻛﻞ ﯾﻮم ﯾﻘﺘﻞ ﻣﻨﮭﻢ ﻧﺎس ﻛﺜﯿﺮ‪.‬‬
‫وﻓﻲ ﺛﺎﻧﻲ أﯾﺎم ﺟﻤﺎدى‪-‬اﻷوﻟﻰ اﺟﺘﻤﻊ اﻷﻣﺮاء اﻟﺼﻨﺎﺟﯿﻖ ﺑﻤﻨﺰل ﻗﺎﺋﻤﻘﺎم وﺗﻨﺎزﻋﻮا ﺑﺴﺒﺐ ﺗﻄﺎول اﻟﺤﺮب واﻣﺘﺪاد اﻷﯾﺎم ﺛﻢ اﺗﻔﻘﻮا‬
‫ﻋﻠﻰ أن ﯾﻨﺎدوا ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﺪﯾﻨﺔ ﺑﺄن ﻣﻦ اﺳﻤﮫ ﻓﻲ وﺟﺎق ﻣﻦ اﻟﻮﺟﺎﻗﺎت اﻟﺴﺒﻌﺔ وﻟﻢ ﯾﺤﻀﺮ إﻟﻰ ﺑﯿﺖ أﻏﺎﺗﮫ ﻧﮭﺐ ﻣﺎﻟﮫ وﻗﺘﻞ‪(Al-Jabarti .‬‬
‫)‪1880/1997, pp. 85–86‬‬

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‫‪II. MSA texts‬‬
‫‪Text 1‬‬
‫ﻛﺎﻧﺖ ﺑﺪاﯾﺔ اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﺔ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ ﯾﻮم ‪ 3‬ﺳﺒﺘﻤﺒﺮ ‪ ،1939‬وﻗﺪ ﻧﺸﺒﺖ ﺑﯿﻦ "أﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺎ اﻟﻨﺎزﯾﺔ" ﻣﻦ ﻧﺎﺣﯿﺔ وﺑﯿﻦ "ﺑﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺎ" و"ﻓﺮﻧﺴﺎ"‬
‫ﻣﻦ اﻟﻨﺎﺣﯿﺔ اﻷﺧﺮى‪ ،‬وﺳﺒﺒﮭﺎ اﻟﻤﺒﺎﺷﺮ رﻏﺒﺔ "ھﺘﻠﺮ" ) زﻋﯿﻢ أﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺎ اﻟﻨﺎزﯾﺔ( ﻓﻲ اﺳﺘﻌﺎدة ﻣﻨﻄﻘﺔ " داﻧﺰﯾﺞ" ﻓﻲ ﺑﻮﻟﻨﺪا ﻛﻲ ﺗﻌﻮد إﻟﻰ‬
‫أﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺎ ﺑﻌﺪ أن ﺳﻠﺨﺖ ﻣﻨﮭﺎ ﻧﺘﯿﺠﺔ ﻟﻠﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﺔ اﻷوﻟﻰ )وﻣﻌﺎھﺪة ﻓﺮﺳﺎي اﻟﺘﻲ رﺗﺒﺖ ﻧﺘﺎﺋﺠﮭﺎ(‪.‬‬
‫وﺗﻤﻜﻨﺖ اﻟﻘﻮات اﻷﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺔ ﻣﻦ اﺣﺘﻼل "ﺑﻮﻟﻨﺪا" ﻛﻠﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺳﺒﻌﺔ ﻋﺸﺮ ﯾﻮﻣﺎ ﺛﻢ ﺗﻮﻗﻒ اﻟﻘﺘﺎل‪ ،‬وﺑﺪا أن اﻟﺤﺮب ﻧﺎﻣﺖ‪ .‬ﻷن "أﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺎ"‬
‫ﺧﻄﺖ اﻟﺨﻄﻮة اﻷوﻟﻰ وﻧﻔﺬت ﺑﺎﻟﺴﻼح ﻣﺎ أرادﺗﮫ ﻓﻲ "ﺑﻮﻟﻨﺪا" ‪ ،‬ﺛﻢ ﻋﺠﺰت "ﺑﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺎ" و"ﻓﺮﻧﺴﺎ" ﻋﻦ ﻧﺠﺪة "ﺑﻮﻟﻨﺪا" ﻓﻲ اﻟﺸﺮق‪،‬‬
‫وﺗﻼ ذﻟﻚ أن اﻟﺠﺒﮭﺔ اﻟﻐﺮﺑﯿﺔ )اﻟﻔﺮﻧﺴﯿﺔ( ﻣﻊ أﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺎ ﺑﻘﯿﺖ ﺧﻨﺎدق ﻣﺘﻘﺎﺑﻠﺔ وﺳﺎﻛﻨﺔ‪ ،‬وﻣﻊ أن اﻟﺴﻜﻮن ﯾﺘﺤﻮل إﻟﻰ ﺻﺨﺐ ﻓﻲ ﺑﻌﺾ‬
‫اﻷوﻗﺎت ﺣﯿﻦ ﺗﺘﺒﺎدل اﻟﺠﺒﮭﺎت وراء اﻟﺨﻨﺎدق ﺿﺮﺑﺎت اﻟﻤﺪاﻓﻊ‪ ،‬إﻻ أن ذﻟﻚ ﺑﺪا ﻗﺼﺪا ﺳﯿﺎﺳﯿﺎ ﻗﺼﺎراه ﺗﺬﻛﯿﺮ اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻢ ﺑﺄن اﻟﺤﺮب ﻋﻠﻰ‬
‫اﻟﺠﺒﮭﺔ اﻟﻐﺮﺑﯿﺔ ﻣﺎ زاﻟﺖ داﺋﺮة!‬
‫وﻣﻊ أواﺋﻞ ﺳﻨﺔ ‪ – 1940‬أي ﺑﻌﺪ أرﺑﻌﺔ ﺷﮭﻮر ﻣﻦ ﻧﺸﻮب اﻟﻘﺘﺎل‪ ،‬وﺛﻼﺛﺔ ﺷﮭﻮر ﻣﻦ ﺳﻘﻮط "ﺑﻮﻟﻨﺪا" – ﻛﺎن ﺻﻮت اﻟﺤﺮب ﺧﺎﻓﺘﺎ‬
‫ﻟﺪرﺟﺔ دﻋﺖ إﻟﻰ وﺻﻒ ھﺬه اﻟﻤﺮﺣﻠﺔ ﺑـ "اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻔﺎرﻏﺔ" ﻷن ﺟﯿﻮش ﺑﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺎ وﻓﺮﻧﺴﺎ ﺗﻮﻗﻔﺖ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻧﺎﺣﯿﺔ ﻣﻦ ﺟﺒﮭﺔ اﻟﻘﺘﺎل‪،‬‬
‫ووﻗﻔﺖ اﻟﻘﻮات اﻷﻟﻤﺎﻧﯿﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻨﺎﺣﯿﺔ اﻷﺧﺮى‪ .‬ﺛﻢ إن اﻟﺠﯿﻮش اﻟﺒﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺔ اﻟﺘﻲ ﻋﺒﺮت ﺑﺤﺮ اﻟﺸﻤﺎل إﻟﻰ اﻟﺸﻮاطﺊ اﻟﻔﺮﻧﺴﯿﺔ ظﻠﺖ‬
‫ھﻨﺎك‪ ،‬ﻷن اﻟﻘﯿﺎدة اﻟﻌﻠﯿﺎ اﻹﻣﺒﺮاطﻮرﯾﺔ رأت إﺑﻘﺎء ﻗﻮاﺗﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻣﻘﺎطﻌﺔ ﻧﻮرﻣﺎﻧﺪي ﺷﻤﺎل ﻓﺮﻧﺴﺎ ﺣﺘﻰ ﺗﻈﻞ ﻣﻮاﺻﻼﺗﮭﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺒﺤﺮ‬
‫ﻣﻔﺘﻮﺣﺔ‪ ،‬ﻗﺮﯾﺒﺔ وﺳﺎﻟﻜﺔ إﻟﻰ ﻗﻮاﻋﺪھﺎ اﻟﺒﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺔ – وﻓﻲ ﻛﻞ ذﻟﻚ ﻓﺈن اﻟﺤﺮب ﻟﯿﺴﺖ وﻗﻮﻓﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺨﻄﻮط اﻟﺪﻓﺎﻋﯿﺔ – ﺳﻮاء ﺧﻂ‬
‫"ﻣﺎﺟﯿﻨﻮ" اﻟﻔﺮﻧﺴﻲ أو ﺧﻂ "ﺳﯿﺠﻔﺮﯾﺪ" اﻷﻟﻤﺎﻧﻲ – وﻻ اﻧﺘﻈﺎرا ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺸﺎطﺊ اﻵﺧﺮ ﻣﻦ ﺑﺤﺮ اﻟﺸﻤﺎل‪(Heikal, 2003, pp. .‬‬
‫)‪15–16‬‬

‫‪Text 2‬‬
‫وﺑﺼﺮف اﻟﻨﻈﺮ ﻋﻦ إﻋﻼن ﺣﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻄﻮارئ وﻣﺎ ﯾﺘﺮﺗﺐ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈن اﻟﻤﻠﻚ "ﻓﺎروق" ظﻞ ﻣﺘﺮددا ﺑﺴﻨﺪ وﺗﺸﺠﯿﻊ ﻣﻦ رﺟﺎل أﺣﺎطﻮا‬
‫ﺑﺎﻟﻘﺼﺮ وﻗﺘﮭﺎ‪ ،‬وأوﻟﮭﻢ "ﻋﻠﻲ‪-‬ﻣﺎھﺮ"‪)-‬ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( اﻟﺬي ﻛﺎن رﺋﯿﺴﺎ ﻟﻠﻮزراء ﻋﻨﺪﻣﺎ ﻗﺎﻣﺖ اﻟﺤﺮب‪.‬‬
‫وﺿﻤﻦ ھﺬا اﻟﺘﺮدد اﻟﻤﻠﻜﻲ ﻓﺈن وزارة "ﻋﻠﻲ‪-‬ﻣﺎھﺮ"‪)-‬ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( أﻋﻠﻨﺖ ﻣﺎ ﺳُﻤﻲ وﻗﺘﮭﺎ‪ ،‬ﺳﯿﺎﺳﺔ "ﺗﺠﻨﯿﺐ ﻣﺼﺮ وﯾﻼت اﻟﺤﺮب" ‪،‬‬
‫وﻣﺆدى ھﺬه اﻟﺴﯿﺎﺳﺔ أن ﻣﺼﺮ ﺗﻨﻔﺬ اﻟﻤﻄﻠﻮب ﻣﻨﮭﺎ ﺑﻨﺼﻮص ﻣﻌﺎھﺪة ﺳﻨﺔ ‪ ) 1936‬وذﻟﻚ ﺗﺤﻘﻖ ﺑﺈﻋﻼن ﺣﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻄﻮارئ( ﻟﻜﻨﮭﺎ‬
‫ﺗﺤﺘﻔﻆ ﻟﻨﻔﺴﮭﺎ ﺑﻤﺴﺎﻓﺔ ﻣﻦ ﻣﯿﺎدﯾﻦ اﻟﻘﺘﺎل‪.‬‬
‫وﻛﺎن اﻟﺸﯿﺦ "ﻣﺤﻤﺪ‪-‬ﻣﺼﻄﻔﻰ‪-‬اﻟﻤﺮاﻏﻲ" )ﺷﯿﺦ اﻷزھﺮ( ﻗﺪ ﻋﺰز ذﻟﻚ ﺑﺸﻌﺎر أطﻠﻘﮫ ﯾﻘﻮل ﺑﺄن ذﻟﻚ اﻟﺼﺮاع ﻓﻲ أوروﺑﺎ " ﺣﺮب ﻻ‬
‫ﻧﺎﻗﺔ ﻟﻤﺼﺮ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ وﻻ ﺟﻤﻞ"‪.‬‬
‫وﻣﻊ أن ﺗﻠﻚ ﺑﺪت ﺗﻌﺒﯿﺮات ﻋﻦ ﺳﯿﺎﺳﺔ "ﺗﻌﺎﻧﺪ اﻹﻧﻜﻠﯿﺰ" وﻻ ﺗﻌﺎرﺿﮭﻢ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈن ﻟﻨﺪن ﺳﻜﺘﺖ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ؛ ﻷن ھﺬه اﻟﺴﯿﺎﺳﺔ ﺳﺎﻋﺘﮭﺎ ﻛﺎﻧﺖ‬
‫أﻛﺜﺮ ﺗﺤﻘﯿﻘﺎ ﻟﻤﺼﺎﻟﺤﮭﺎ‪ ،‬ﻓﮭﻲ ﺗﺘﯿﺢ اﺳﺘﻌﻤﺎل ﻣﺮاﻓﻖ ﻣﺼﺮ ﻟﺼﺎﻟﺢ اﻟﻤﺠﮭﻮد اﻟﺤﺮﺑﻲ )وﻓﻖ ﻣﻌﺎھﺪة ﺳﻨﺔ ‪ .(1936‬وﻓﻲ ﻧﻔﺲ اﻟﻮﻗﺖ‬
‫ﻓﺈن ﻋﺪم اﻟﻤﺸﺎرﻛﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻣﯿﺎدﯾﻦ اﻟﻘﺘﺎل ﺑﻤﻨﻄﻖ "ﺗﺠﻨﯿﺐ ﻣﺼﺮ وﯾﻼت اﻟﺤﺮب" ‪ ،‬ﯾﻔﺮض ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻄﻠﯿﺎن واﻷﻟﻤﺎن ﻧﻮﻋﺎ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺤﺬر ﻓﻲ‬
‫ﻧﺸﺎطﮭﻢ اﻟﺤﺮﺑﻲ ﺿﺪ اﻷراﺿﻲ اﻟﻤﺼﺮﯾﺔ ﺣﺘﻰ ﻻ ﺗﺘﺤﻮل اﻟﻤﺸﺎﻋﺮ واﻟﻤﻮاﻗﻒ ﻣﻦ ﻧﺼﻒ ﺗﺒﻌﯿﺔ إﻟﻰ ﺗﺒﻌﯿﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﻜﺎﻣﻞ ﻟﻼﺳﺘﺮاﺗﯿﺠﯿﺔ‬
‫اﻟﺒﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺔ! )‪(Heikal, 2003, p. 21‬‬

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‫‪Text 3‬‬
‫ﻛﺎﻧﺖ ﻧﮭﺎﯾﺔ اﻟﺜﻼﺛﯿﻨﯿﺎت ﻓﺘﺮة اﺧﺘﺒﺎر ﻗﺎس ﻟﺤﺰب اﻟﻮﻓﺪ وزﻋﯿﻤﮫ " ﻣﺼﻄﻔﻰ‪-‬اﻟﻨﺤﺎس")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ(‪.‬‬
‫ﻛﺎن اﻟﺤﺰب ﺑﻼ ﺟﺪال ھﻮ ﻣﻤﺜﻞ اﻷﻏﻠﺒﯿﺔ اﻟﻮطﻨﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺼﺮ‪ ،‬وﻣﻮﺿﻊ اﻟﺜﻘﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﻨﺴﺒﺔ ﻟﺠﻤﺎھﯿﺮ ﺷﻌﺒﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺗﻠﻚ اﻟﻔﺘﺮة‪ ،‬وﻛﺎن زﻋﯿﻤﮫ‬
‫رﻣﺰا ﻟﻠﻤﻘﺎوﻣﺔ اﻟﻤﺼﺮﯾﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻣﻮاﺟﮭﺔ اﻻﺣﺘﻼل اﻟﺒﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﻲ‪ ،‬وﻓﻲ ﻣﻮاﺟﮭﺔ اﻟﺘﺠﺎوز اﻟﻤﻠﻜﻲ ﻟﻠﺪﺳﺘﻮر‪ ،‬ﺳﻮاء ﺑﻨﺰﻋﺎت اﻻﺳﺘﺒﺪاد ﻟﺪى‬
‫اﻟﻤﻠﻚ "ﻓﺆاد" ‪ ،‬أو ﺑﻤﻨﺎورات اﻟﻘﺼﺮ‪ ،‬وﻗﺪ راﺣﺖ ﺗﻜﺮر ﻧﻔﺴﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻋﮭﺪ اﺑﻨﮫ اﻟﺼﺒﻲ اﻟﻤﻠﻚ "ﻓﺎروق"‪.‬‬
‫وﻣﻊ أن وزارات اﻟﻮﻓﺪ ﻟﻢ ﺗﻜﻦ ﺗﺠﻲء إﻟﻰ اﻟﺤﻜﻢ إﻻ ﺑﺈﺷﺎرات ﺑﺮﯾﻄﺎﻧﯿﺔ‪ ،‬ﻓﺈن "اﻟﻨﺤﺎس")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( ﻟﻢ ﯾﻜﻦ ﯾﻌﺘﺒﺮ ﺗﻠﻚ ﻣﻨﺤﺔ ﻣﻦ دوﻟﺔ‬
‫اﻻﺣﺘﻼل ﺑﻘﺪر ﻣﺎ ھﻲ اﺣﺘﯿﺎج إﻟﻰ ﺷﺮﻋﯿﺔ اﻟﻮﻓﺪ‪ ،‬ﺧﺼﻮﺻﺎ زﻣﻦ اﻷزﻣﺎت‪.‬‬
‫وﻋﻨﺪﻣﺎ وﺿﻊ اﻟﻨﺤﺎس)ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( ﺗﻮﻗﯿﻌﮫ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﻌﺎھﺪة ‪ 1936‬ﻛﺎن ﯾﺪرك أﻧﮭﺎ اﺳﺘﻘﻼل ﻣﻨﻘﻮص‪ ،‬ﻟﻜﻨﮫ ﯾﺘﻔﮭﻢ أن دوﻟﺔ اﻻﺣﺘﻼل ﻟﻦ ﺗﻌﻄﯿﮫ‬
‫أﻛﺜﺮ ﻓﻲ ذﻟﻚ اﻟﻮﻗﺖ‪ ،‬ﺑﯿﻨﻤﺎ ﻧﺬر اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﺔ ﺗﻈﮭﺮ ﻓﻲ أورﺑﺎ )وﻣﻘﺪﻣﺎﺗﮭﺎ ﻗﯿﺎم إﯾﻄﺎﻟﯿﺎ ﺑﻐﺰو اﻟﺤﺒﺸﺔ واﺣﺘﻼﻟﮭﺎ ﺳﻨﺔ ‪ (1935‬ﺛﻢ ﻣﺎ‬
‫ﺗﺒﻊ ذﻟﻚ ﻣﻦ ﺗﺮﻛﯿﺰ اﻟﻮﺟﻮد اﻹﯾﻄﺎﻟﻲ أﻛﺜﺮ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺒﺤﺮ اﻷﺑﯿﺾ ﺑﺘﻌﺰﯾﺰ ﻣﻮاﻗﻌﮫ ﻓﻲ ﻟﯿﺒﯿﺎ‪.‬‬
‫وﻣﻊ أن "ﻣﺼﻄﻔﻰ‪-‬اﻟﻨﺤﺎس")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( ﺗﻌﺮض ﻟﻨﻘﺪ ﺷﺪﯾﺪ ﻋﻨﺪ ﺗﻮﻗﯿﻊ ﻣﻌﺎھﺪة ﺳﻨﺔ ‪) 1936‬ﺣﺘﻰ ﻣﻦ ﺑﻌﺾ أﻧﺼﺎره وﺑﯿﻨﮭﻢ رﺋﯿﺲ‬
‫ﻣﺠﻠﺲ اﻟﻨﻮاب اﻟﻮﻓﺪي وﻗﺘﮭﺎ "أﺣﻤﺪ‪-‬ﻣﺎھﺮ")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ((‪ ،‬ﻓﻘﺪ ﻛﺎن ﯾﻘﯿﻦ "اﻟﻨﺤﺎس")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( )وھﻮ ﺳﻠﯿﻢ( أن اﻟﻤﻌﺎھﺪة اﻟﺘﻲ وﻗﻊ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ھﻲ‬
‫اﻟﻤﻤﻜﻦ ﻓﻲ زﻣﺎﻧﮭﺎ‪ ،‬ﺧﺼﻮﺻﺎ ﻋﻨﺪ دﻋﻤﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﺎم اﻟﺘﺎﻟﻲ ﺑﻤﻌﺎھﺪة إﻟﻐﺎء اﻻﻣﺘﯿﺎزات اﻷﺟﻨﺒﯿﺔ ﺧﻼل ﻣﺆﺗﻤﺮ ﻋﻘﺪ ﻟﺬﻟﻚ اﻟﻐﺮض‬
‫)‪ (1937‬ﻓﻲ ﻣﻮﻧﺘﺮو )ﺳﻮﯾﺴﺮا(‪.‬‬
‫واﻟﺤﺎﺻﻞ أن "اﻟﻨﺤﺎس")ﺑﺎﺷﺎ( ﻛﺎن ﻣﺮﺗﺎح اﻟﻀﻤﯿﺮ ﻣﻄﻤﺌﻨﺎ‪ .‬وﻟﺬﻟﻚ ﻓﺈن إﻗﺎﻟﺔ وزارﺗﮫ ﺑﻌﺪ أﺳﺎﺑﯿﻊ ﻣﻦ ﻋﻮدﺗﮫ اﻟﻈﺎﻓﺮة ﻣﻦ ﻣﺆﺗﻤﺮ‬
‫ﻣﻮﻧﺘﺮو – دﯾﺴﻤﺒﺮ ‪ – 1937‬ﻧﺰﻟﺖ ﺻﺪﻣﺔ ﺛﻘﯿﻠﺔ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ‪(Heikal, 2003, p. 51) .‬‬

‫‪Text 4:‬‬
‫وھﻜﺬا ﻛﺎن اﻟﻠﻮاء "ﻣﺤﻤ ﺪ‪-‬ﻧﺠﯿ ﺐ" اﻟ ﺬي ﺟﻠﺴ ﺖ أﻣﺎﻣ ﮫ ﻓ ﻲ ﺑﯿﺘﮫ رﺟ ﻞ اﻟﺴ ﺎﻋﺔ )وﺳ ﻂ ذروة اﻷزﻣ ﺔ( رﺑﻤ ﺎ دون أن ﯾﻘﺼ ﺪ‪ .‬ذﻟ ﻚ أﻧ ﮫ‬
‫ﻣﻌﺮوض ﻋﻠﯿﮫ – أوﻻ – ﻣﻦ ﺗﻨﻈﯿﻢ اﻟﻀﺒﺎط اﻷﺣﺮار أن ﯾﻘﻮد ﺧﻄﺘﮭﻢ اﻟﺠﺪﯾ ﺪة ﺑﺎﻟﺴ ﯿﻄﺮة ﻋﻠ ﻰ اﻟﺠ ﯿﺶ )وﻗ ﺪ ﻋﺠﻠ ﻮا ﺑﮭ ﺎ ﺷ ﮭﺮا ﻋﻤ ﺎ‬
‫أﺑﻠﻐﻮه ﺑﮫ ﻷﻧﮭﻢ وﺟﺪوا اﻟﻈﺮف اﻟﺴﯿﺎﺳﻲ ﻣﻨﺎﺳﺒﺎ إﻟﻰ ﺟﺎﻧﺐ اﻋﺘﺒﺎر أﻣﻨﻲ ﻓﺮﺿﮫ ﻣﺎ ﺑﻠﻐﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ ﺗﻮﺻﻞ أﺟﮭﺰة اﻷﻣﻦ إﻟ ﻰ ﻗﺎﺋﻤﺔ ﺑﺄﺳ ﻤﺎء‬
‫ﻣﻌﻈﻤﮭﻢ(‪ .‬ﺛﻢ أﻧﮫ ﻣﻄﻠﻮب ﻣﻨﮫ – ﺛﺎﻧﯿﺎ – ﺑﺘﻜﻠﯿﻒ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻘﺼﺮ اﻟﻤﻠﻜﻲ واﻟﻮزارة اﻟﻘﺎﺋﻤﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺤﻜﻢ وﻋﻠ ﻰ ﻟﺴ ﺎن "ﻣﺮﺗﻀ ﻰ‪-‬اﻟﻤﺮاﻏ ﻲ"‬
‫– "أن ﯾﺒﺬل ﺟﮭﺪه ﻟﻔﺾ اﻋﺘﺼﺎم أو ﻋﺼﯿﺎن ﻗﺎم ﺑ ﮫ ﻣﺠ ﺎﻧﯿﻦ ﻣ ﻦ ﺿ ﺒﺎط اﻟﺠ ﯿﺶ ﻧﺰﻟ ﻮا إﻟ ﻰ اﻟﺸ ﻮارع وإﻗﻨ ﺎﻋﮭﻢ ﺑ ﺎﻟﻌﻮدة إﻟ ﻰ ﺑﯿ ﻮﺗﮭﻢ‬
‫وﻛﺄن ﺷﯿﺌﺎ ﻟﻢ ﯾﻜﻦ ﺗﺠﻨﺒﺎ ﻟﻔﻀﯿﺤﺔ أو ﻣﺼﯿﺒﺔ ﺳﻮف ﺗﻘﻊ ﻗﺒﻞ أن ﯾﻄﻠﻊ اﻟﺼﺒﺢ!")‪(Heikal, 2003, p. 555‬‬

‫‪33‬‬
 The Perfective Indication of kāna in Clauses of the
kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman Type1

Yehudit Dror
University of Haifa

‫ﺗﻠﺨﯿﺺ‬
‫اﻟﺤﺎﺿﺮ‬
ِ ‫ﺑﺎﻟﺰﻣﻦ‬
ِ ‫ﺑﻨﺎ ًء ﻋﻠﻰ ﺗﻔﺴﯿﺮ اﻟﺒﺎﺣﺜﯿﻦ اﻟﻐﺮﺑﯿﯿﻦ ﻟﻠﻔﻌﻞ " ﻛﺎن" ﻓﻲ ﺟﻤﻞ ﻣﺜ َﻞ "ﻛﺎن ﷲُ ﻋﻠﯿ ًﻤﺎ ﺣﻜﯿ ًﻤﺎ" ﻓﮭﻮ ﯾﺪ ّل ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﺪث ﯾﺤﺼﻞ‬
‫ ﺟﻤﻞ ﻣﻦ ھﺬا اﻟﻨﻮع ﺗﺸﯿﺮ‬.‫أو ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﺪث اﺑﺘﺪأ ﺑﺎﻟﻤﺎﺿﻲ وﻻ ﯾﺰال ﻣﺴﺘﻤﺮّ ا؛ ھﺬا ﯾﻌﻨﻲ أن اﻟﺤﺪث ﻓﻲ ھﺬه اﻟﺤﺎﻟﺔ ﻻ زﻣﻦَ ﯾﺤﺼﺮُ ه‬
‫ﺟﻤﻞ ﻣﻦ ھﺬا‬
ٍ ُ
‫ﻗﻤﺖ ﺑﺘﺤﻠﯿﻞ‬ ‫ ﺑﻌﺪﻣﺎ‬. ٌ‫ ﻟﺬﻟﻚ ﺗﺸﺘﺮك ھﺬه اﻟﺠﻤﻞ ﺑﺎﻻﻋﺘﻘﺎد ﺑﻘﻮّ ة ﷲ اﻷزﻟﯿّﺔ اﻟّﺘﻲ ﻻ ﯾﺤ ّﺪھﺎ زﻣﺎنٌ أو ﻣﻜﺎن‬،‫إﻟﻰ ﻗﻮّة ﷲ‬
‫ ھﺬا ﻻ ﯾﻨﺎﻗﺾ دﻻﻟﺔ اﻟﺠﻤﻠﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﻮّ ة ﷲ‬،‫أن اﻟﻔﻌﻞ "ﻛﺎن" ﻓﻲ ﺑﻌﺾ اﻷﺣﻮال ﯾﺪ ﱠل ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﺪث ﺣﺼﻞ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﺎﺿﻲ‬ ‫اﻟﻨﻮع ﺗﺒﯿّﻦَ ﱠ‬
‫إن اﻟﻨﺘﯿﺠﺔ اﻟﻤﺮﻛﺰﯾّﺔ ﻟﮭﺬا اﻟﺘﺤﻠﯿﻞ ھﻲ ﱠ‬
‫ ﯾﺪلّ ﻋﻠﻰ‬،‫ أوّ ﻻ‬:‫أن اﻟﻔﻌﻞ "ﻛﺎنَ " ﯾﺪلﱡ ﻋﻠﻰ أﻣﺮﯾﻦ‬ ّ . ٌ‫اﻷزﻟﯿّﺔ اﻟّﺘﻲ ﻻ ﯾﺤ ّﺪھﺎ زﻣﺎنٌ أو ﻣﻜﺎن‬
.‫ ﯾﺪلّ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻷﺳﺒﺎب اﻟّﺘﻲ أ ّدت إﻟﻰ ﺣﺪوث ھﺬا اﻟﺤﺪث‬،‫ث ﺣﺼﻞ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﺎﺿﻲ وﻏﺎﻟﺐ اﻟﻤﻔﺴّﺮﯾﻦ ﯾﻮﺿﺤﻮن ﻣﺎھﯿّﺔ اﻟﺤﺪث؛ ﺛﺎﻧﯿًﺎ‬ ٍ ‫ﺣﺪ‬

Abstract
According to traditional Arab and Western grammarians, kāna in clauses of the kāna llāhu ʻalīman
raḥīman type expresses an action in the present or at no specific time, having started in the past and still
continuing. Clauses of this type reveal various aspects of God's nature and share one notion: God is not
limited by time or space and is eternal. My examination showed that in some cases kāna indeed has a
perfective meaning, something that does not necessarily contradict God's infinity because kāna has two
references: to a past action (mentioned in the verse or implied by Qur’ānic exegetes) and still to the
circumstance that enabled this action’s occurrence. For example, in Q 33:9 the implied past event is the
triumph of the Muslims in the battle of the Trench. This happened because God saw (kāna llāhu baṣīran)
the Muslims’ effort before and during the battle, digging ditches and devising their military strategy.

Keywords
Clauses of the kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīmsan type; Perfective indication; Time boundaries; Circumstance
and action

1
I would like to thank the three IJAL anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve
this article.

© The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) Vol. 3 Issue 1 (pp.34-56)

 1. Introduction
In monotheistic religions such as Islam, the idea of one God may well be considered a
foundation for the entire idea of monotheism. Accordingly, a major concept treated in the Qur’ān,
if not the most important, is God. However, the great descriptions of God and His nature in the
Qur’ān are strictly functional. They intend to present God as the Creator and Sustainer of the
universe and of man, He who guides the people onto the right path and He who judges man,
individually and collectively, and metes out merciful justice.2 Thus, both man and nature operate
independently of God because everything is related to Him; absent God's activity, nature’s and
man’s activity becomes delinquent, purposeless, and self-wasting. The idea of God-oneness
recurs throughout the Qur’ān to emphasize God's omnipotence. However, this emphasis also has
a historical dimension ‒ namely, the fight against polytheism or pagan Arabs, who invoked and
worshiped many deities besides God.3 Time and again throughout the text, this asserts that there
is no other God but He will repel all polytheistic notions or atheists who deny God’s existence.
The Qur’ānic passages intent on emphasizing God’s power are constructed differently, as,
for example, in Q 59:22-24 the idea of this power is expressed in short nominal sentences. God as
Creator is described as follows: huwa llāhu l-ḫāliqu l-bāriʻu l-muṣawwiru “He is the God, the
Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner.” An additional (syntactic) structure attributing omnipotence to
God are clauses following the kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥalīman pattern (Q 33:51) “and Allāh is All-
knowing forbearing”; these clauses are the focus of my discussion. Such clauses are called al-
fawāṣil and they are explained by Zarkašī as the final clauses in the verse, which serve as a break
or pause in speech to improve the delivery. These structures are called fawāṣil “separatives”
because these final clauses in the verse separate themselves from what follows. Therefore, they
are not labeled or considered asğāʻ, a form of rhymed prose.4
The fawāṣil exhibit five patterns: (1) the conjunctive particle wa- followed by the noun
Allāh, a personal pronoun and an adjective, e.g., Q 2:247; (2) wa- preceding the noun Allāh,
which is followed by a prepositional phrase and nominal predicate, e.g., Q 8:41; (3) wa-
preceding the verb kāna, which is followed by the noun Allāh and a nominal predicate in
accusative, e.g., Q 4:130; (4) wa- preceding the noun Allāh, which is followed/not followed by

2
Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’ān (Chicago and London, 1980), p. 1.
3
Ibid., p. 1.
4
Zarkašī, al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qur’ān (Cairo, 1957), I, pp. 53-54.

35
the negation particle (±lā) and a verbal predicate, e.g., Q 3:86; (5) a verbal predicate followed by
the nominal subject Allāh, e.g., Q 9:15.5
According to Bell, the pattern wa-llāhu ʻalīmun ḥakīmun “And God is All-knowing,
wise” or wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥalīman “And Allāh is All-knowing forbearing” essentially
conclude a subject. They press home a truth by repetition and clinch the authority of what is laid
down and they act as a type of refrain.6
My primary concern in the structure of kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥalīman is the usage of the
verb kāna “was.” The traditional Arab grammarians distinguish two kinds of kāna: kāna t-tāmma
“the incomplete kāna” and kāna n-nāqiṣa “the complete kāna.” The difference between the two
types is that while kāna t-tāmma is regarded as a complete verb because it denotes both an action
and time, kāna n-nāqiṣa does not denote an act but only time, and thus lacks one of the elements
expressed in most verb forms. Additionally, kāna t-tāmma is an ordinary intransitive verb that
takes a subject in the nominative, e.g., kāna l-’amru “this thing happened.” kāna n-nāqiṣa,
however, is a verb that acts like a copula, taking a subject in the nominative (called ’ism kāna)
and a predicate in the accusative (called ḫabar kāna), e.g., kāna r-rağulu faqīran “The man was
poor.”7 Moreover, when kāna n-nāqiṣa is introduced in a nominal sentence it has a temporal
indication; that is, the situation described in the sentence occurred in the past or will happen in
the future. The treatment of the verb kāna as a time locator, which locates the situation in the
past, present and future, is the core of this discussion since it raises the following problem: The
central doctrine in the Qur’ān is that God is not limited by time or space, He is present at every
point everywhere, and His infinite presence establishes the idea that He is eternal ‒ He has
always existed and will always exist, there was never a time He did not exist, nor will there be a
time when He ceases to exist. How can we thus explain structures like kāna llāhu ʻalīman
ḥalīman, which locates God's description in the temporal boundaries of the past and consequently
implies the finitude of His omnipotence? Arab grammarians, Qur’ān commentators and Western
scholars seemingly have not remained indifferent to the usage of the verb kāna in Qur’ānic verses

5
Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (Berlin, 1981), pp. 161-163.
6
Bell, Introduction to the Qur’ān (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 67-71.
7
Levin, “Sībawayhi's View on the Syntactical Structure of kāna wa-’axawātuhā.” In: Arabic Linguistic Thought and
Dialectology (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 185. Cf. Levin, “kāna wa-’axawātuhā.” In: Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language
and Linguistics (Leiden-Boston, 2008), II, pp. 548-549.

36
that refer to God’s unlimited time and space—His omnipotence. They offer some possible
solutions to this temporality issue within the Qurʼānic discourse. The solutions are summarized in
Wolfgang Reuschel’s (1968)8 short paper entitled wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman “and Allāh is
All-knowing All-Compassionate”:
1. The first solution: Western scholars generally agree that the perfective kāna does not
always indicate that the situation described in the sentence is set in the past tense, as in the case
of wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman. kāna can indicate the present tense, as (for example) Wright
explains:
The imperfect yakūnu has in this case the usual meaning of the imperfect: whilst the
perfect kāna admits of four significations; viz. (a) of the historical tense or Greek
aorist, in which case it has, according to the Arab grammarians, the sense of ṣāra, to
become, (b) of the actual perfect, (c) of the actual imperfect, as if it were a shortening
of kāna yakūnu, which also occasionally occurs; and (d) sometimes, especially in the
Ḳor’ān, of the present, but only by giving a peculiar turn to its use as a perfect, as in
’inna llāha kāna ʻalaykum raqīban, verily God is a watcher over you (Sūra iv.). The
kāna in the perfect tense expresses the present in particular after the negative particle
mā, and the interrogative particles, such as ’a e.g., mā kāna llāhu li-yuḍīʻa ’īmānakum,
God is incapable of letting–lit. is not (the one) to let–your belief perish (i.e., go
unrewarded).9
2. The second solution: Reuschel refers to Sīrāfī, who distinguishes two types of kāna:
munqaṭiʻ “discontinued,” “disjoined” and ġayr munqaṭiʻ “continued not disjoined.” Reuschel
8
Reuschel, “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), pp. 147-153.
This article is a chapter from his habilitation thesis entitled “Aspekt und Tempus in der Sprache des Korans.” The
work was written in 1968 and was published as a monograph in 1996.
9
See: Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language (Cambridge, 1971), part III, §131, p. 266.
Two additional scholars who are mentioned in this context by Reuschel are: Fleischer, Kleinere Schriften:
gesammelt, durchgesehen und vermehr (Osnabruck, 1968), I, p. 124; Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Grammaire de
l'arabe Classique (Paris, 1952), p. 247.
Additional scholars who mention the durativity, iterativity and (general-)present indications of the perfect in Arabic
are Bauer, Tempora im Semitischen (Berlin, 1910), p. 43; Reckendorf, Arabische Syntax (Heidelberg, 1921), p. 12;
Aartun, Zur Frage altarabischer Tempora (Oslo, 1963), pp. 40-41; Kurylowicz, Studies in Semitic Grammar and
Metrics (London, 1973), p. 82; Blau, “The use of Arabic stative verbs in the suffix-tense to mark the present.” In:
Studia Orientalia Memoriae D.H Baneth (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 185-186, 189.

37
says that it is not quite clear what is meant by these two types, and munqaṭiʻ probably refers to an
action that occurred on one occasion (einmal akzidentelles Sein) and occurred in the past, while
ġayr munqaṭiʻ refers to a state or an action which is still being performed, an incomplete action,
or an action which has no time limitation.10 Zarkašī also mentions that kāna may indicate ’inqiṭāʻ
“discontinuance,” which is explained as tağaddud “renewal”: the activity or the state of affairs is
resumed after a pause or interruption. Alternatively, kāna may indicate not ’inqiṭāʻ but dawām
“continuance,” “duration” and ’istimrār “continuity.” 11
Indications of the durative aspect of kāna are also found in the Qur’ānic exegesis, as in:
yā-’ayyuhā llaḏīna ’āmanū lā ta’kulū ’amwālakum baynakum bi-l-bāṭili ’illā ’an
takūna tiǧāratan ʻan tarāḍin minkum wa-lā taqtulū ’anfusakum ’inna llāha kāna
bikum raḥīman (Q 4:29)
“O believers, consume not your goods between you in vanity, unless there be trading,
by your agreeing together. And kill not one another. Surely God is compassionate to
you.”
Ṭabarī explains this verse as follows:
wa-’amma qawluhu ğalla ṯanā’uhu (’inna llāha kāna bikum raḥīman) fa-’innahu yaʻnī
’anna llāha tabāraka wa-taʻālā lam yazal raḥīman bi-ḫalqihi wa-min raḥmatihi bikum
kaffu baʻḍikum ʻan qatli baʻḍin ’ayyuhā l-muʼminūna, bi-taḥrīmi dimā’i baʻḍikum ʻalā
baʻḍin ’illā bi-ḥaqqihā12
As for the words of God, may His glory be praised (surely God is compassionate to
you), it means that God, blessed and exalted be He, is still compassionate toward His
creation (i.e., mankind), His compassion toward you [is expressed by] refraining from
your killing one another, O believers, through the prohibition of shedding each others’
blood, unless there is a justification.

10
Reuschel, “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), pp. 147-148. Cf. Sāmarrāʼī,
Maʻāni an-naḥw (Amman, 2000), I, p. 210.
11
Zarkašī, al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʼān (Cairo, 1957), IV, pp. 121-122. Cf. Sāmarrāʼī, Maʻāni an-naḥw (Amman,
2000), I, p. 211.
12
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān fī ta’wīl al-Qur’ān (Beirut, 1992), IV, p. 38; Cf. Ṭabarsī, Mağmaʻ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-
Qur’ān (Tehran, 1959), III-IV, p. 37.
Additional verses in which kāna is replaced by the commentators with lam yazal are: Q 4:43; 4:56; 4:58; 4:85; 4:96;
4:99; 4:104; 4:126; 4:130; 4:127; 4:147; 4:152; 4:158; 4:165; 25:6; 48:7; 48:11; 48:14; 48:26.

38
Ṭabarī replaces the verb kāna with lam yazal, which is also one of the associates of kāna and
according to ’Astrābāḏī13 is introduced to indicate ’istimrār “duration,” “continuation,” i.e., the
event is unbounded in time.
The following example does not relate to Allāh but also includes the verb kāna:
allaḏīna ’āmanū yuqātilūna fī sabīli llāhi wa-llaḏīna kafarū yuqātilūna fī sabīli
ṭ-ṭāġūti fa-qātilū ’awliyā’a š-šayṭāni ’inna kayda š-šayṭāni kāna ḍaʻīfan (Q 4:76)
The believers fight in the way of God, and the unbelievers fight in the idol's way. Fight
you therefore against the supporters of Satan. Surely the cunning/artful plot of Satan is
wicked.
According to Ṭabarsī and Rāzī, the verb kāna was introduced to indicate and emphasize that the
weakness of Satan's cunning obtains in all situations and time periods − past, present and future.14
Thus, Q 4:76 is no different from the previous verses where kāna indicates continuity.
3. The third solution: Ibn Manẓūr argues that the verb kāna in the clause kāna llāhu
ġafūran raḥīman “God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate” is zā’ida “redundant” (lit.
“appendix”) and is used li-ta’kīd “for emphasis.” For example, in the sentence kāna Zaydun
munṭaliqan “Zayd is going” (lit. “was going”) is semantically equivalent to Zaydun munṭaliqun −
the verb kāna appended to the sentence has no effect on the meaning of the sentence. 15 As for the
terms ta’kīd or tawkīd, Reuschel explains them as meaning that kāna occupies the position of a

13
’Astrābāḏī, Šarḥ kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥāğib (Beirut, 1998), II, p. 174; Cf. Zarkašī, al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʼān (Cairo,
1957), vol. IV, pp. 123, 125 says that kāna and mā zāla are synonyms when they are used with adjectives describing
God. Cf. Sāmarrāʼī, Maʻāni an-naḥw (Amman, 2000), I, p. 213.
14
Ṭabarsī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān fī ta’wīl al-Qur’ān (Beirut, 1992), III-IV, p. 76; Cf. Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ġayb (Beirut, 2000),
X, p. 147.
15
See: Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʻarab (Beirut, 1994), V, p. 453. Cf. ’Anbārī, ’Asrār al-ʻarabiyya (Damascus, 1957), p.
136. He adds that kāna z-zā’ida is ġayr ʻāmila “does not function as a governor”; Ibn Yaʻīš, Šarḥ al-mufaṣṣal
(Beirut: 1994), VII, 99. According to Ibn Yaʻīš, adding kāna z-zā’ida to the sentence does not affect its meaning
(duḫūluhā ka-ḫurūğihā), as in, for example, ’inna min ’afḍalihim kāna zaydun “Surely the most distinguished among
them is Zayd.” The meaning of this sentence is the same as ’inna min ’afḍalihim zaydun, while adding the verb kāna
is a type of ta’kīd, because it means to say that he is the most distinguished now (fī l-ḥāl) and it is not meant to
indicate that he was the most distinguished in the past. Furthermore, if kāna had functioned as kāna n-nāqiṣa, i.e.,
indicating the past tense and requiring the predicate to be in the accusative, then the sentence should have been
structured as ’inna zaydan kāna min ’afḍalihim “Surely Zayd was the most distinguished among them.”

39
copula in a nominal sentence that has a general/generic-present indication,16 which also exists in
sentences without kāna, such as wa-llāhu ʻalīmun raḥīmun.
To conclude, Reuschel says that kāna in nominal clauses may indicate three tenses: (a) the
perfect kāna indicates past tense, and therefore can be translated as “was”; (b) the imperfect
yakūnu indicates future tense, and therefore can be translated as “will be”; (c) 0-form indicates
present tense, while in our case the position of the 0-form is occupied by the verb kāna in the
perfect.17 Examples are wa-kāna ’amru llāhi qadaran maqdūran (Q 38:33) “And the Command
of Allāh is a decree determined,” wa-kāna ḏālika ʻalā llāhi yasīran (Q 30:4) “And that is easy for
Allāh,” and kuntum ḫayra ’ummatin ’uḫriǧat li-n-nāsi (Q 3:110) “You are the best of peoples
ever raised up for mankind.” In these, kāna is in the perfect, but according to Reuschel it
indicates generell-Präsens, i.e., this term describes an action not limited in time and not relating
to any specific time. This action started in the past and continues in the present, as well as in the
future.18 Additionally, two primary reasons for using kāna are mentioned: first, structures with
and without kāna are positioned at the end of the verse in order to maintain the rhyme in the
Qur’ān. kāna is introduced to keep the assonance –an: its predicate must be in the accusative,
ending in that vowel.19 Secondly, as has been noted, kāna is used for tawkīd “emphasizing,” so it
serves purely as a stylistic device and has nothing to do with aspect and time.20

16
See Reuschel “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), p. 148: “Es erfüllt hier die
positionelle Funktion der Kopula und wird deshalb als tawkīd empfunden, weil es in einem (generell-)präsentischen
Nominalsatz eine Stelle besetzt.”
17
Reuschel “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), p. 148
18
Ibid., p. 149. Cf. Reuschel, Aspekt und Tempus in der Sprache des Korans (Frankfurt, 1996), p. 94; Sāmarrāʼī,
Maʻāni an-naḥw (Amman, 2000), I, p. 214. Sāmarrāʼī mentions Q 3:110, indicating that there is disagreement among
the Arab grammarians regarding the indication of kāna since it can be viewed as verb in the perfect or as a verb
expressing continuance (tağaddud).
19
Reuschel “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), p. 151. Cf. Bell, Introduction to
the Qur’ān (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 70-71. Kirmānī, ʼAsrār at-takrār fī l-Qurʼān. (Cairo, 2008), 207.
20
Reuschel “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), p. 94 says in his monograph that
kāna is used for tawkīd in the structure kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman, and therefore it can be understood as “and Allāh
is without any doubt All-knowing All-compassionate.”

40
 2. Objectives of the Article
In this article I seek to manage the following lacunas that appeared in our reading the
various explanations for kāna:
(a) The links between the verse and the succeeding fawāṣil are not examined because
the context is not considered.21 Zarkašī notes that the aspectual value of kāna can be
determined only when the ways in which context contributes to meaning are considered and
examined.22
(b) Scholars generally assume that kāna is a stylistic device expressing ta’kīd;
however, they ignore two important facts that might invalidate this assumption: first, the Arab
grammarians maintain that kāna z-zā’ida, which is used for emphasis, cannot be regarded as
governor (ʻāmil). It is redundant, and therefore can be omitted without affecting the structure’s
semantics and syntax. However, in the case of kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman, which consists of
a subject and a nominal predicate, kāna causes the latter to be in the accusative. Secondly, the
concept ta’kīd is not quite clear: one might wonder, particularly in light of a case such as ’inna
llāha kāna ʻafuwwan ġafūran (Q 4:43), why there is any need for a double emphasis ‒ kāna
and the particle ’inna. According to Sībawayhi, the particle ’inna is tawkīd li-qawlihi zaydun
muntaliqun. wa-’iḏā ḫaffafta fa-hiya ka-ḏālika tu’akkidu mā yatakallamu bihi wa-li-yaṯbuta l-
kalāma23 “[The particle ’innā is used for] emphasizing the [sentence] ‘Zayd is going.’ Even
when you pronounce it without tašdīd], it also emphasizes what is being said and is used so
the statement will stand firm”. Ibn Yaʻīš also mentions the ta’kīd function of ’inna, yet he
explains its essence by saying that a sentence such as ’inna zaydan muntaliqun is a substitute
for saying this sentence twice (nāba manāba takrīri l-ğumlati marratayni). Thus, instead of
saying zaydun muntaliqun zaydun muntaliqun “Zayd is going, Zayd is going” the speaker may
shorten the speech by introducing ’inna, and thereby maintaining the emphasis of the
utterance.24

21
For the types of relations between the fawāṣil and the previous sentences, see: Dror, “Is each particle in the
Qurʼān translatable? The case of wāw al-istiʼnāf preceding the fawāṣil,” Babel: International Journal of Translation,
LXI/1 (2015), pp. 22-42.
22
Zarkašī, al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʼān (Cairo, 1957), IV, p. 126. He cites this argument from the book of Manṣūr
Ibn Fallāḥ al-Yamanī entitled al-Kāfī.
23
Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb (Cairo, 1980), IV, p. 233.
24
Ibn Yaʻīš, Šarḥ al-mufaṣṣal (Beirut, 1994), VII, p. 59.

41
 (c) It was argued that kāna indicates habit and persistence; however, the tense most
identified with these aspects is the imperfect. Habit is defined by Comrie as follows: “The feature
that is common to all habitual actions, whether or not they are also iterative, is that they describe
a situation which is characteristic of an extended period of time, so extended in fact that the
situation referred to is viewed not as an incidental property of the moment but, precisely, as a
characteristic feature of whole period.”25 This raises the question of why a verb in the perfect is
used in the Qur’ān, when the imperfective yakūnu could equally be used. Reuschel also refers to
this issue, but the answer he provides is not sufficiently convincing. He explains laconically that
kāna (not yakūnu) is typically used to indicate a connotatively and continuous state, as in the
Qur’ānic verse kuntum ḫayra ’ummatin ’uḫriǧat li-n-nāsi (Q 3:110) “You are the best nation ever
brought forth to men,”26 where kāna indicates a continuous state.
Furthermore, it seems that these explanations have been made because clauses such as
kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥalīman, which have a perfective indication, do not agree with God’s being
infinite. However, we would like to show next that in some clauses of the kāna llāhu ʻalīman
ḥalīman type, kāna does have a perfective indication. In the textual approach which I take in this
article, I look first at the text to understand what is being said. I also believe that a text must be
examined in its context, because information about the background of the text is necessary to
help construct the bigger picture. Thus, when the larger picture becomes clear, i.e., the event the
whole discourse surrounds, we can identify that the clauses of kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥalīman type
are strongly connected to the described event which usually occurred in the past. To understand
the context in which the studied clauses are introduced, I used the exegetical literature of the
Qurʼān. It should be mentioned that I examined various exegeses, beginning with some early
commentators such as Ṭabarī (d. 310H/923AD) Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān, Zaǧǧāǧ
(d. 311H/923AD) Maʻānī al-Qurʼān al-karīm and Naḥḥās (d. 338H/950AD) Maʻānī al-Qurʼān
wa-ʼiʻrābuhu and ending with modern commentators such as Ṭanṭāwī (d. 1431/1922) al-Waṣīṭ fī
tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-karīm and Riḍā (d. 1354/1935) Tafsīr al-manār. As I saw, the commentators
rarely refer to the studied structures, particularly the aspectual value of kāna, simply because they
assume that the verb indicates habit and persistence—it is a verb with no time limitation.

25
Comrie, Aspect (Cambridge, 1995), p. 28.
26
See: Reuschel, Aspekt und Tempus in der Sprache des Korans (Frankfurt, 1996), p. 102. He translates Q 3:110
“Ihr seid die beste, (je) für die Menschen hervorgebrachte Gemeinde.

42
Strikingly, however, the few commentators that do provide an explanation confirm my
assumption that in some cases (18 out of 88 examined) kāna does have time boundaries: it
indicates an accomplished situation that happened in the past at a defined point in time, and thus
it should be translated as “was” and not “is.”27

3. The Perfective Indication of kāna

(1) ḥurrimat ʻalaykum ’ummahātukum wa-banātukum wa-’aḫawātukum
wa-ʻammātukum wa-ḫālātukum wa-banātu l-’aḫi wa-banātu l-’uḫti
wa-’ummahātukumu llātī ’arḍaʻnakum wa-’aḫawātukum mina r-raḍāʻati
wa-’ummahātu nisā’ikum wa-rabā’ibukumu llātī fī ḥuǧūrikum min nisā’ikumu llātī
daḫaltum bihinna fa-’in lam takūnū daḫaltum bihinna fa-lā ǧunāḥa ʻalaykum wa-
ḥalā’ilu ’abnā’ikumu llaḏīna min ’aṣlābikum wa-’an taǧmaʻū bayna l-’uḫtayni ’illā
mā qad salafa ’inna llāha kāna ġafūran raḥīman (Q 4:23)
Forbidden to you are your mothers and daughters, your sister, your aunts paternal
and maternal, your brother's daughters, your sister's daughters, your foster-mothers
and foster-sisters, your wives' mothers, your stepdaughters under your guardianship
whom you raised up, born to women you have married and with whom you have
consummated the relationship. However, if the relationship has not been
consummated, the stepdaughters are not unlawful to you and you may marry them.
(You are forbidden to marry) the spouses of your sons who are of your loins, and to
take two sisters together in marriage, unless it be a thing of the past/except what
happened prior to this commandment; God was28All-forgiving, All-compassionate.
The status of women in Muslim society had to be determined and regulations promulgated
to instruct the people how to deal with women and to shape a society of equal justice. Therefore,

27
Reuschel “wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman.” In: Studia Orientalia (Halle, 1968), p. 155 and (1996), p. 104 says
that kāna appearing in the cases examined in his work are translated into German as “ist” (he is).
28
kāna is translated as “is”; however, I decided to add my translation to show that this verb indicates the past and not
the present or the future. I should note in this context that a survey of some Western translations (in various
languages) of the Qurʼān shows that kāna in the studied verses is usually translated as “is”. Among the translations
are: Arberry, The Koran (London, 1967); Bobzin, Der Koran (Munich, 2010); Rubin, The Qurʼan: Hebrew
Translation (Tel Aviv, 2015). Blachère, Le Coran (Paris, 1957) translates only three verses in the past (as: a été): Q
4:47; 4:113; 17:87.

43
in verses 1-24 of Sura 4 rules were prescribed for marriage, and the rights of wife and husband
were apportioned fairly and equitably. However, how is the clause ’inna llāha kāna ġafūran
raḥīman, which concludes verse 23, connected to this theme? Ṭabarī explains:
(’inna llāha kāna ġafūran) li-ḏunūbi ʻibādihi ’iḏā tābū ’ilayhi minhā (raḥīman) bihim
fī-mā kallafahum mina l-farā’iḍi wa-ḫaffafa ʻanhum wa-lam yuḥammilhum fawqa
ṭāqatihim29
(God was All-forgiving) toward the sins [committed] by his servants, when they
return30/returned their sins (All-compassionate) toward them because of the laws which
He imposed on them, and He eased them, and He did not burden them beyond their
limits.
It is inferred from this explanation that even when God's laws were not kept fully, He always was
forgiving toward the sinners, if they repeated their deeds. God was also All-compassionate when
He gave the people these laws (described in verses 1-23) and God was considerate when he
decided that the given laws would not be a burden on the people but easy to follow.31
(2) wa-l-muḥṣanātu mina n-nisā’i ’illā mā malakat ’aymānukum kitāba llāhi ʻalaykum
wa-’uḥilla lakum mā warā’a ḏālikum ’an tabtaġū bi-’amwālikum muḥṣinīna ġayra
musāfiḥīna fa-mā stamtaʻtum bihi minhunna fa-’ātūhunna ’uǧūrahunna farīḍatan wa-
lā ǧunāḥa ʻalaykum fī-mā tarāḍaytum bihī min baʻdi l-farīḍati ’inna llāha kāna
ʿalīman ḥakīman (Q 4:24)
And all married women (are forbidden unto you to marry) except those whom your
right hand possesses. It is a written legislation of Allāh unto you; and lawful for you
beyond all that, is that you may seek, using your wealth, in wedlock and not in license.
Then as to those of whom you seek content (by temporary marriage), give them their

29
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), III, p. 665. The same explanation is mentioned by
him when he refers to Q 4:129 (III, p. 316) and 4:170 (III, p. 371).
30
The verb following the particle ʼiḏā is in the perfect, but it can indicate either past or future. See: Reckendorf,
Arabische Syntax (Heidelberg, 1921), p. 463-464. I tend to interpret it as a past action in this context.
31
An additional example is Q 33:50, where the clause kāna llāhu ġafūran raḥīman indicates that God showed his
grace to Muḥammad when God allowed those wives who were not the Prophet’s relatives to marry him. In this way,
God prevented Muḥammad from committing a sin/misdeed by marrying someone whom it was forbidden to marry.
See Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʼ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), X, p. 312.

44
 bridal-due as a duty/obligation; and there is no blame on you in whatever you mutually
agree after the duty. Verily Allāh was All-Knowing, All-Wise.
Many misunderstandings seem to persist about the right to marry a slave-girl. For this
reason, various regulations on this issue were formulated, some of which are presented Q 4:24.
Concluding this verse with the clause ’inna llāha kāna ʿalīman ḥakīman means that God was
aware of this misunderstanding or, more precisely, he knew what was good and right for you in
the matter of taking in marriage a woman who was captured or any other issues related to
marriage, and accordingly he sent down this verse.32
(3) yā-’ayyuhā llaḏīna ’āmanū lā ta’kulū ’amwālakum baynakum bi-l-bāṭili ’illā ’an
takūna tiǧāratan ʻan tarāḍin minkum wa-lā taqtulū ’anfusakum ’inna llāha kāna
bikum raḥīman (Q 4:29)
O you who believe! In your transactions with one another, do not consume one
another’s property wastefully; let your commerce be conducted in good faith, with the
agreement of all concerned. Do not kill one another for the sake of the things of this
world, for God has always shown mercy for you.
Examination of the Qur’ānic exegesis shows that some of the commentators give ’inna
llāha kāna bikum raḥīman a perfective meaning. Zamaḫšarī says that God was merciful/has
shown mercy to you when He did not impose those laws (presented in verses 1-29) which would
be difficult to obey.33 Bayḍāwī34 says that it means that God was merciful to you, the believers,
when he commanded the Children of Israel to kill each other, while He forbids the Muslims from
doing so.35 However, in contrast to the previous commentators, Ṭabarī replaces the verb kāna

32
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), IV, p. 16-17.
A similar case is Q 4:35, where it is said that if you fear a breach between the couple, then appoint a judge from his
people and a judge from her people if they both desire agreement. Verily, Allāh was All-Knowing that the two
judges will be able to settle the things between the two sides, and All-Aware regarding the necessity of referring to
two judges in the described situation. See Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), IV, p. 80.
33
Zamaḫšarī, al-Kaššāf (Beirut, 1995), I, pp. 492-493.
34
Bayḍāwī, ’Anwār at-tanzīl wa-’asrār at-taʼwīl (Beirut, 1996), II, p. 177.
35
An additional example is Q 17:66 ’innahū kāna bikum raḥīman “Verily He was merciful to you.” See: Ṭabarī,
Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), VIII, p. 112; Ṭabarsī, Mağmaʻ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qur’ān
(Tehran, 1959), V-VI, p. 427 and Ibn Kaṯīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʼān

45
with lam yazal “still” (God still shows his mercy towards the people) indicating that this clause
has no perfective meaning but rather a durative meaning.36
(4) yā-’ayyuhā llaḏīna ’āmanū ḏkurū niʻmata llāhi ʻalaykum ’iḏ ǧā’atkum ǧunūdun fa-
’arsalnā ʻalayhim rīḥan wa-ǧunūdan lam tarawhā wa-kāna llāhu bi-mā taʻmalūna
baṣīran (Q 33:9)
O believers, remember God's blessing upon you the day you were surrounded by the
enemy, and We loosed against them a wind, (together with) hosts you did not see, and
God saw the things you do.
Q 33:9, as well as Q 33:10, discusses one of the most important events in the history of
Islam, the Battle of al-’Aḥzāb (the confederates), also known as the Battle of the Trench (ġazwat
al-ḫandaq). This war in fact changed the balance of forces between Islam and infidels to the
benefit of the Muslims. The Jews, the pagans and the hypocrites resolved to occupy Medina in a
surprise attack. Muḥammad and the Muslims decided to dig a ditch around Medina to defend it
against the enemy. According to Q 33:9, Allāh helped the Muslims by blowing winds and
sending down hidden powers which under Allāh’s command operated in human affairs and of
which men were entirely unaware. Thus, Q 33:9 refers to an actual historical event, while
according to the Qur’ānic commentators a cause-and-effect relationship existed between the verse
and its final clause. wa-kāna llāhu bi-mā taʻmalūna baṣīran means that God saw what you did
before and during the war: you dug ditches, you planned your military strategy, your recourse to
God, your hoping to receive his mercy. God saw all actions; therefore this battle ended with the
triumph of the Muslims.37
(5) wa-ḏkurna mā yutlā fī buyūtikunna min ’āyāti llāhi wa-l-ḥikmati ’inna llāha kāna
laṭīfan ḫabīran (Q 33:34)
And remember that which is recited in your houses of the signs of God and the
wisdom. God was All-subtle, All-aware.
Both Ṭabarī and Ibn Kaṯīr explain this verse:

al-ʻaẓīm (Cairo, 2000), p. 776, according to these commentators, the clause refers to a past event when God made the
ship sail through the sea in order that they could easily move from one place to another. That is how God showed His
mercy to the people.
36
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), V, p. 45.
37
’Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-maʻānī fī tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʻaẓīm wa-s-sabʻ al-maṯānī (Cairo, 1964-1969), VII, p. 13.

46
 wa-qawluhu: (’inna llāha kāna laṭīfan ḫabīran) yaqūlu taʻālā ḏikruhu: ’inna llāha
kāna ḏā luṭfin bikunna ’iḏ ğaʻalakunna fī l-buyūti llatī tutlā fīhā ’āyātuhu wa-l-
ḥikmatu, ḫabīran bikunna ’iḏā ḫtārakunna li-rasūlihi ’azwāğan38
And in His words (God was All-subtle, All-aware) God exalted his memory, saying:
God was kindness to you when He put you in houses where the signs of God [the
Qur’ānic verses] are recited. All-aware regarding you, since He chose you to be the
spouses of his messenger.
It can be inferred from this explanation that kāna indicates that the given circumstance,
namely God’s being All-subtle and All-aware, concerned a specific event at a specific moment in
the past: God made the chosen women the Prophet's wives and by virtue of their close and
constant social association and attachment to the Prophet they knew and experienced many
things. Living with the prophet inevitably encompassed his wisdom, and hearing his sayings and
his reciting the verses of the Qur’ān.
(6) ’inna llāha yumsiku s-samāwāti wa-l-’arḍa ’an tazūlā wa-la-’in zālatā ’in
’amsakahumā min ’aḥadin min baʻdihī ’innahu kāna ḥalīman ġafūran (Q 35:41)
God holds the heavens and the earth, lest they cease to function. And if ever they do
cease to function, none would hold them after Him. Surely He was Forbearing,
Forgiving.
Q 35:41 is part of a discourse meant to warn and reprove the non-believers for their
antagonistic attitude to God. Verses 38-39 relate that God is aware of every secret thing in the
heavens and on earth: He even knows the hidden secrets of the heart. He it is who has made you
vicegerents on the earth. As for the non-believers, they gain nothing except more loss. Verse 40
starts by asking: Have you ever seen those associates of yours whom you invoke instead of God?
Did these idols do something significant like the creation of the earth? The fact is that Allāh alone
could do it, and He alone sustains the heavens and the earth from falling into oblivion.
The clause ’innahū kāna ḥalīman ġafūran can be understood only when the context
(verses 38-41) is taken into account. Despite the disbelief of the non-believers, which only
increased Allāh’s anger, He was always forgiving when they turned to Him repentantly or asked
His forgiveness.

38
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), X, p. 299 Cf. Ibn Kaṯīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʼān al-ʻaẓīm
(Cairo, 2000), p. 1089.

47
 The perfective indication is also inferred from Ṭabarī's exegesis, as he keeps kāna in the
perfect and does not replace it with lam yazal:
wa-qawluhu (’innahu kāna ḥalīman ġafūran) yaqūlu taʻālā ḏikruhu: ’inna llāha kāna
ḥalīman ʻamman ’ašraka wa-kafara bihi min ḫalqihi fī tarkihi taʻğīla ʻaḏābihi lahu,
ġafūran li-ḏunūbihi man tāba minhum wa-’anāba ’ilā l-’īmāni bihi wa-l-ʻamali bi-mā
yurḍīhi39
In his words (surely he was Forbearing, Forgiving) God exalted his memory saying:
Surely God was forbearing to those who associated idols with God and disbelieved in
Him, when He [decided not to] expedite the punishment [of these people], and [God
was] forgiving [i.e., He forgave] the deeds of those who abandoned them and turned
repentantly to believing in God and doing whatsoever pleased God.
(7) wa-maġānima kaṯīratan ya’ḫuḏūnahā wa-kāna llāhu ʻazīzan ḥakīman (Q
48:19)
And many spoils that they will take/capture. And God was All-mighty, All-wise.
The perfective indication of the clause wa-kāna llāhu ʻazīzan ḥakīman can be clarified
only after a close examination of its historical background, which is given by Ṭabarī. Verse 18
states that God was satisfied with the believers pledging allegiance to their Prophet at
Ḥudaybiyya, and He was aware that their pledge was insincere. As a result, God showed His
might and His discretion as He rewarded the believers: He sent down serenity upon them, He
rewarded them with a triumph at the Battle of Ḫaybar and the abundant spoils that they would
capture.40 In light of this explanation, the final clause might be understood as: Allāh was
powerful when he took revenge on his enemies and guided his believers in His will.
The following example is also mentioned by Reuschel (1996), although he classifies it
together with additional examples in another group because the noun Allāh is a part of a noun
phrase, where the noun Allāh is in genitive case functioning as nomen regens (e.g., ’amru llāhi),
or following a preposition (e.g., ʻalā llāhi). Despite this difference, Reuschel claims that these
structures, similar to the previous ones, function as general timeless statements.41

39
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), X, p. 421.
40
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), XI, p. 350
41
Reuschel, Aspekt und Tempus in der Sprache des Korans (Frankfurt, 1996), p. 106.

48
 (8) fa-lammā qaḍā zaydun minhā waṭaran zawwaǧnākahā li-kay lā yakūna ʻalā l-
muʼminīna ḥaraǧun fī ʼazwāǧi ʼadʻiyāʼihim ʼiḏā qaḍaw minhunna waṭaran wa-kāna
ʼamru llāhi mafʿūlan (Q 33:37)
But when Zayd had accomplished his concern with her (i.e., divorced her), we joined
her in marriage to you, so that there should not be a difficulty for the believers in
respect of the wives of their adopted sons when they have accomplished their
concerns with them (i.e., have divorced them), and the command of Allah shall be
performed.
The context refers to the story of Zaynab and Zayd, who was the adopted son of the prophet.
After their divorce, the prophet married Zaynab.
According to Ṭabarī and Zamaḫšarī, the expression ʼamru llāhi means qaḍā’, therefore
the final clause can be interpreted as God's decision to marry Zaynab and the prophet
Muḥammad, whereupon the marriage indeed was sanctified.42
(9) wa-law-lā faḍlu llāhi ʻalayka wa-raḥmatuhu la-hammat ṭā’ifatun minhum ’an
yuḍillūka wa-mā yuḍillūna ’illā ’anfusahum wa-mā yaḍurrūnaka min šay’in
wa-’anzala llāhu ʻalayka l-kitāba wa-l-ḥikmata wa-ʻallamaka mā lam takun taʻlamu
wa-kāna faḍlu llāhi ʻalayka ʻaẓīman (Q 4:113)
Had it not been for God's abundant Grace and Mercy, some of the traitors would have
exercised their cunning and tried to mislead you into making a wrong judgment. But
they mislead none but themselves, and they cause you no loss whatsoever. God has
sent down to you the Book and the wisdom and has taught you what you did not know,
and could not have known, before. He taught you how to show the old customs as null
and void, and how you should discard them for something better; the simple principle
of oath and evidence. And God's infinite Mercy was ever great.
Ṭabarsī refers to the word faḍl, saying that it means that God's mercy to you, Muḥammad,
from the moment you were born until you were sent as a messenger, was ever great, in particular
when he made you the seal (i.e., the last) of the Prophets.43

42
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), X, p. 304. Cf. Zamaḫšarī, al-Kaššāf (Beirut,
1995), III, p. 527.
43
Ṭabarsī, Mağmaʻ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qur’ān (Tehran, 1959), III-IV, p. 109.

49
 The temporal limitation mentioned by Ṭabarsī strengthens the argument that the clause
wa-kāna faḍlu llāhi ʻalayka ʻaẓīman has a perfective meaning and no persistence of this situation
is involved here. Furthermore, verse 113 could be explained as follows: there is an address to the
Prophet in which Allāh's grace toward him is described: God prevented the non-believers from
leading Muḥammad astray and he revealed the Book and wisdom to him and taught him what
you did not know. The verse wa-kāna faḍlu llāhi ʻalayka ʻaẓīman concludes this section by
asserting that in retrospect God indeed was merciful to Muḥammad.
(10)’illā raḥmatan min rabbika ’inna faḍlahu kāna ʻalayka kabīran (Q 17:87)
(Whatever you have received) is nothing but grace from your Lord: for his bounty is
to you (indeed) great.
Q 17:87 is not much different from Q 4:113 because both verses refer to God’s grace,
which he showed toward the prophet Muḥammad. In his commentary on Q 17:87, Rāzī
repeatedly uses the verb kāna when explaining the meaning of the clause ’inna faḍlahū kāna
ʻalayka kabīran. According to him, there are two possible meanings of this clause: first, that
God's bounty to Muḥammad was great because God gave him the knowledge and the Qur’ān;
second, God's bounty to Muḥammad was great because he made him the lord/master of Adam's
children and God sealed through him the chain of Prophets and gave him a place of honor in
Islam.44
As for the connection between the verses and the clause ’inna faḍlahū kāna ʻalayka
kabīran, it is known that the Prophet had been instructed to adhere firmly to his position
discounting the opposition and difficulties he encountered; he should never think of making a
compromise with unbelief. However, Q 17:86 states that if God so wished, he could take back
from him all that he had revealed to him: then Muḥammad would find no one to help him regain
what he had lost. The fāṣila which concludes the section referring to Muḥammad comes as a
reminder and a warning: everything Muḥammad has received is by the favor of his Lord. Indeed
His favor to you (until now) has been very great.
(11) ’ašiḥḥatan ʻalaykum fa-’iḏā ǧā’a l-ḫawfu ra’aytahum yanẓurūna ’ilayka tadūru
’aʻyunuhum ka-llaḏī yuġšā ʻalayhi mina l-mawti fa-’iḏā ḏahaba l-ḫawfu salaqūkum
bi-’alsinatin ḥidādin ’ašiḥḥatan ʻalā l-ḫayri ’ulā’ika lam yu’minū fa-’aḥbaṭa llāhu
’aʻmālahum wa-kāna ḏālika ʻalā llāhi yasīran (Q 33:19)

44
Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ġayb (Beirut, 2000), XXI, p. 45.

50
 Being niggardly toward you. And when fear came, you saw them looking at you, their
eyes revolving like one being overcome by death. But when fear has departed, they
lash you with sharp tongues, being niggardly to possess [any] good. Those have never
believed, so Allāh has rendered their deeds worthless, and that was easy for Allāh.
The clause wa-kāna ḏālika ʻalā llāhi yasīran is syntactically and semantically related to
the previous sentence. According to Ṭabarī, the demonstrative pronoun ḏālika refers to ’iḥbāṭu
llāhi ’aʻmālahum “rendering their deeds.” Since the verb ’aḥbaṭa is in the perfect, indicating a
complete action, it might be argued that the final clause (“doing this was easy for him”) also has a
perfective indication.
Finally, the discussion of the aspectual indications of kāna would be incomplete without
reference to ambiguous cases, where two interpretations of the verb kāna are plausible and the
intended meaning cannot be definitively determined because the context in this case could not
operate in settling the ambiguity, as the following example shows:
(12) ’in tubdū ḫayran ’aw tuḫfūhu ’aw taʻfū ʻan sū’in fa-’inna llāha kāna ʻafuwwan
qadīran (Q 4:149)
If you keep doing good—whether openly or secretly—or pardon the evil, surely God
is/was All-Pardoning and All-powerful.
Rāzī mentions three possible explanations of the clause fa-’inna llāha kāna ʻafuwwan
qadīran: first, kāna indicates continuity, so the clause means that God has forgiven and will
forgive those who do good or those who disbelieved and asked God's forgiveness; second, kāna
indicates a past situation, where the clause should be understood as “God has forgiven and he
had the power/the ability to bring recompense to those who were forgiven”; third, kāna is used
for emphasis and the clause means God is the most forgiving—He can forgive you more than
your friend could.45
(13) wa-qul li-ʻibādī yaqūlū llatī hiya ’aḥsanu ’inna š-šayṭāna yanzaġu baynahum
’inna š-šayṭāna kāna li-l-’insāni ʻaduwwan mubīnan (Q 17:53)
And say to my servants, that their words are more kind. For surely Satan provokes
strife between them, and Satan was/is ever a manifest foe of man.
The final clause in Q 17:53 does not refer to Allāh but to the devil; however, it also
includes the verb kāna. According to Ṭabarī and Ṭabarsī, the final clause refers to a past event in

45
Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ġayb (Beirut, 2000), XI, p. 73.

51
which the Satan was a manifest foe to ’Ādam and to his descendants thoughout history. Satan's
hostility to ’Ādam was manifested when he seduced him until ’Ādam was forced to leave
paradise.46 Šawkānī, however, identifies a causal connection between the final clause and what
precedes it; therefore these clauses should be understood as indicating that it is Satan who
provokes strife among the people because he is patently an enemy to mankind.47

4. Discussion and Conclusions

Zarkašī noted that the verb kāna might indicate that the action or situation occurred in the
past; alternatively, it may indicate persistence; the context or the discourse of the verses
containing kāna helps to determine its interpretation. Scholars generally disregard this context,
and they analyze kāna entirely by distinguishing two types of the verb: munqaṭiʻ “discontinues”
and ġayr munqaṭiʻ “continues.” This article shows that limiting the analysis to the observation
that kāna indicates generelles-Präsens can be misleading because that term indicates an
indefinite duration of an action in progress or a situation with no set limits. The Qur’ānic
exegetes point out that kāna also indicates perfect tense, which concerns the endpoint of the
actions and their result. Still, the argument that perfective is taken to describe an event that has
reached an end is problematic: if we look at a clause such as kāna llāhu ʻalīman raḥīman we fail
to identify the event. Based on the Qur’ānic exegesis, I argue that such a clause is not merely
descriptive in nature; instead, there is a diffusion of circumstance and event/action, the two
ending simultaneously. The term circumstance applies to a situation which allowed the
performance of the action in the past. To clarify this argument, I start with Q 4:23 ’inna llāha
kāna ġafūran raḥīman (see example 1) and Q 4:24 ’inna llāha kāna ʻalīman ḥakīman (see
example 2). The event to which these two verses refer establishes the regulations of marriage.
The circumstance under which these events could be executed is the point at which God was All-
forgiving and All-compassionate, All-knowing and All-wise. Understanding that He should
comfort the people, since there are various issues relating to marriage that might lead to
misunderstanding, God has set forth Islamic laws concerning types of marriage, types of divorce
and the rights of married women.

46
Ṭabarī, Ğāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl ʼāy al-Qurʼān (Beirut, 1992), VIII, p. 93. Cf. Ṭabarsī, Mağmaʻ al-bayān fī tafsīr
al-Qur’ān (Tehran, 1959), VI, p. 321.
47
Šawkānī, Fatḥ al-qadīr (Mansoura, 1964), III, p. 327.

52
 According to Bayḍāwī, the event referred to in Q 4:29 (example 3), ’inna llāha kāna
bikum raḥīman, is God commanding the Children of Israel to kill each other, while He forbids the
Muslims to do likewise. This command was given or could have been given under the
circumstance that at that point in time God showed his mercy to the Muslims, otherwise they
would have killed each other. Q 4:29 also exemplifies the difficulties in determining the
indication of kāna. While Rāzī gives it a perfective meaning, Ṭabarī replaces it with lam yazal ‒
indicating the opposite. These differences among the commentators are exhibited in other cases,
such as Q 4:99, where Zağğāğ mentions the dual indication of kāna: perfective or durative.48
The hypothesis regarding the perfective indication of kāna receives convincing support
from Zarkašī's explanation in his reference to Q 4:170:
(wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥakīman) wa-maʻnāhu l-inqiṭāʻu fī-mā waqaʻa ʻalayhi l-ʻilmu
wa-l-ḥikmatu lā nafsu l-ʻilmi wa-l-ḥikmati49
(Verily Allāh was All-Knowing, All-Wise) means the discontinuance of [the
action/situation] which knowledge and wisdom have an impact on [and it does not
mean the cessation of] knowledge and wisdom itself.
In other words, God can observe past, present and future, which allows Him to know all and to
act accordingly. According to Zarkašī, it is the acting—a consequence of God’s ability to know
absolutely everything and His wisdom—that is complete, not God's Omniscience, namely His
ability to have full knowledge and all-wisdom. Zarkašī’s comments indicate that he was also
aware of the difficulty in interpreting kāna as a perfective verb because it might stand as opposed
to the infinite nature of God; that is, God is not limited by time or space and we should refer to
Him with terms like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. Therefore, his explanation
stresses not that the idea of God's omnipotence and his infinite power is limited in time, but the
actions that precede clauses such wa-kāna llāhu ʻalīman ḥakīman are thus limited.
As for examples 8-11, where structures such as wa-kāna ’amru llāhi mafʻūlan are
presented, the contextual approach taken in this paper noted that such structures not only have a
perfective indication, they have pragmatic factors as well, namely the aspectual choice is
governed by an external consideration. Muslims are to be inspired or urged to face the enemy
bravely; to beware of their mistaken religious conceptions, their immorality and their evil acts; to

48
Zaǧǧāǧ, maʻānī al-Qurʼān al-karīm (Beirut, 1988), II, 95.
49
Zarkašī, al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʼān (Cairo, 1957), IV, p. 126.

53
be convinced that their achievements in the future will rest only on God's power and
omniscience. To that end, some evidence of past events attesting that God is indeed All-mighty
and All-powerful is to be presented, whereby the idea of God All-mighty becomes concrete and
less abstract. In Q 4:113 (example 9), wa-kāna faḍlu llāhi ʻalayka ʻaẓīman it becomes clear from
the beginning of this verse that the Muslims are warned to be on their guard against the
hypocrites and the unbelievers and the people of the Book. To encourage them to keep their faith,
some evidence from the past is adduced, showing that God's infinite Mercy was always great.
Another example is wa-kāna ḏālika ʻalā llāhi yasīran (Q 33:19) (example 11). Allāh
has notified the Muslims that among them is a group who create hindrances (against the war
effort). They encourage the people to fight alongside them, but when danger threatens they are
afraid. However, when the war ends (and the warriors return victorious), they receive them
warmly, and try to impress them with a glib tongue that they too have contributed to the
victory—because they want to share in the booty. To warn and to prevent such behavior it is
said that Allāh made all their works fruitless, which was an easy thing for Him.

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 The Base Does Not Count: A Special Pattern of
Reduplicative Verbs in Omani Arabic 1

Dr. Khalsa Al Aghbari

Sultan Qaboos University

‫ﻣﻠﺨﺺ‬
‫ ﯾﺘﻤﺘﻌﺎن ﺑﺎﺧﺘﻼﻓﮭﻤﺎ اﻟﻜﻠﻲ ﻋﻦ اﻟﻤﻌﻨﻰ اﻟﺬي‬،‫ﺗﺘﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺔ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ اﻟﻌﻤﺎﻧﯿﺔ ﺑﻮﺟﻮد أﻓﻌﺎل ذات ﻣﻘﻄﻊ واﺣﺪ ﯾﺘﻀﺎﻋﻒ إﻟﻰ ﻧﻤﻄﯿﻦ‬
‫ وﻧﻈﺮا ﻟﻜﻮن ھﺬه اﻷﻓﻌﺎل طﻮﯾﻠﺔ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻨﺎﺣﯿﺔ اﻟﺘﺮﻛﯿﺒﯿﺔ وذات ﻣﻌﻨﻰ ﯾﺼﻌﺐ اﻟﺘﻜﮭﻦ ﺑﮫ وﻟﮭﺎ دﻻﻻت‬.‫ﯾﺸﯿﺮ إﻟﯿﮫ اﻟﺠﺬر ﻓﻲ اﻷﺳﺎس‬
‫ إﺿﺎﻓﺔ إﻟﻰ أﻧﮭﺎ ﻻ ﺗﻤﺖ ﺑﺼﻠﺔ إﻟﻰ ﺟﺬورھﺎ ﻓﻘﺪ‬.‫ ﻓﮭﻲ ﺗﺸﻜﻞ ظﺎھﺮة ﻟﻐﻮﯾﺔ ﻓﺮﯾﺪة ﻓﻲ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺔ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ اﻟﻌﻤﺎﻧﯿﺔ‬،‫ﺑﺮﺟﻤﺎﺗﯿﺔ ﻣﺘﻨﻮﻋﺔ‬
‫ ﺣﯿﺚ ﺗﻔﯿﺪ اﻟﺘﺄﻛﯿﺪ وﺗﻌﺒﺮ ﻋﻦ ﻣﺸﺎﻋﺮ ﻋﻤﯿﻘﺔ ﻟﻠﻤﺘﺤﺪث ﺗﻘﻮد إﻟﻰ‬،‫وﺟﺪ أﻧﮭﺎ ﺗﺴﺘﺨﺪم ﺑﺮﺟﻤﺎﺗﯿﻜﯿﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺳﯿﺎﻗﺎت اﻟﺘﺬﻣﺮ واﻟﻨﺼﺢ واﻟﺘﺮﻓﯿﮫ‬
‫ ﻻ ﺗﻮﺟﺪ وﻓﺮة ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﺮاﺟﻊ اﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﺪرس اﻟﻤﻀﺎﻋﻔﺎت اﻟﻠﻐﻮﯾﺔ ﻣﻦ‬.‫ﺗﻘﻮﯾﺔ اﻟﻌﻼﻗﺎت ﺑﯿﻦ ﻣﻦ ﯾﺴﺘﺨﺪﻣﻮن ھﺬه اﻷﻓﻌﺎل ﻓﻲ ﻣﺤﺎدﺛﺎﺗﮭﻢ‬
‫ وﺑﺎﻟﺘﺎﻟﻲ ﺳﺘﻮﻓﺮ ھﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﻓﮭﻤﺎ‬.‫اﻟﻨﺎﺣﯿﺔ اﻟﺒﺮﺟﻤﺎﺗﯿﺔ وﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﻘﺎﺑﻞ ﺗﻜﺜﺮ اﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﮭﺘﻢ ﺑﺪراﺳﺔ ﻣﻌﺎﻧﻲ ھﺬه اﻟﻤﻀﺎﻋﻔﺎت‬
.‫ﻟﻠﺒﻌﺪﯾﻦ اﻟﺴﯿﺎﻗﻲ واﻟﺒﺮﺟﻤﺎﺗﻲ‬

Abstract
Omani Arabic has a large number of reduplicative verbs whose base is composed of a single syllable
C1aC2. The base reduplicates into two distinct shapes C1aC2C1aC2 or C1aC2C2aC2 which are semantically
intriguing as they acquire a new lexical meaning distinct from that expressed by the base. Being
structurally long, semantically inaccessible and pragmatically succinct, OA reduplicative verbs predict an
unprecedented shift in word formation in OA. Not only do they stand in a strange semantic relation with
their bases, they are observed to be pragmatically versatile as they are used to serve the functions of
griping, advising and entertaining. Such functions are untapped; previous work on reduplication has been
devoted to the meanings of reduplication at the lexical level. The functions at the level of discourse and
context have long been overlooked. This paper describes reduplicative verbs structurally and semantically.
Dialogues where OA reduplicative verbs surface are presented to explore their functions as used within
the youth circle. This helps contextualize the level at which reduplicative verbs surface hoping to offer an
understanding to both the contextual and discoursal levels of reduplicative verbs.

Key words: Omani Arabic, reduplicative verbs, semantic difference, pragmatic functions, linguistic shift

1
I would like to thank the anonymous IJAL reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this
paper.

© 57(IJAL) Vol. 3 Issue 1 (pp.57-76)

The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics
 1. Introduction
Reduplication is a morphological process that repeats the base or part of the base to
indicate lexical, morphological or grammatical contrasts. In Omani Arabic (henceforth OA), the
base, composed of a single syllable C1aC2, reduplicates into two distinct shapes C 1aC2C1aC2 or
C1aC2C2aC2. The vowels in the reduplicated verbs are invariantly {a}, forming a unique
linguistic phenomenon due to 1) the semantic divergence between these verbs and their bases and
2) the freedom enjoyed by these verbs to switch the order of the base consonants to express a
different meaning (see 1.e and 1.f below).
1. C1aC2C1aC2 verbs
Base Gloss reduplicative verb Gloss
a. kar Flee Karkar Giggle
b. far throw; flip the Farfar loiter, wander aimlessly
book pages
fast
c. xaT handwrite; xaTxaT stagger; walk with
draw a line intense care
d. ʃaħħ Diminish ʃaħ-ʃaħ dance happily
e. Taʃ stand up Taʃ-ʃaʃ splash water
f. Taʃ stand up Taʃ-Taʃ feel panicky

Reduplication in Arabic marks a lexical meaning with various semantic functions

including, but not limited to, emphasis, repetition, intensification and frequency. Close
observations of these verbs reveal that they also enjoy conversational meanings and
metalinguistic functions. Past studies of reduplication in other dialects of Arabic (Pidgin Arabic
dialects by Avram: 2011; Modern Standard Arabic by McCarthy and Prince 1990 and by Suçin
2010; Iraqi by Igaab nd; Jordanian by Anani 2012; Juba Arabic, Turku, Gulf Pidgin Arabic,
Pidgin Madam and Romanian Pidgin Arabic by Avram 2011) were limited to the lexical
dimensions. Since OA reduplicative verbs enjoy a special status which merits exploration, and in
light of the fact that they are on the rise in the language, this paper is an attempt to expose the
contextual functions of OA reduplication within the framework of Interactional Sociolinguistics
(IS) which posits that social contexts and accurate manifestations of accompanied
contextualization cues are crucial to disambiguate the meanings of an utterance.

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 As this paper is the first work on OA reduplicative verbs, to the best of my knowledge,
and the second on the conversational functions of reduplication (Hasan, nd), it hopes to
holistically describe the scope of this phenomenon by answering the following research
questions:
1. How are reduplicative verbs formed?
2. What are the meanings taken by them? Is there a correlation between the meaning
of the base and its derived reduplicative verb? How are they related or different?
3. What are the metalinguistic functions played by these verbs? What are the
conversational cues that signal these functions?
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 lists the generic features of OA reduplicative
verbs. I discuss OA reduplicative verbs in relation to scholarships in Arabic reduplication in
section 3. In section 4, I report information about data collection and methodology. Section 5
presents the results and discussion. This section also outlines the semantic and pragmatic
functions of the reduplicative verbs. In section 6, I conclude the paper.

2. Generic Features of Reduplicative Verbs

The collected reduplicative verbs were analyzed and observed to have the following
linguistic features:
1) Semantically, not all the bases are in active use in OA, nor do all carry a meaning (e.g.
[naq] 'no gloss' [naqnaq] 'talk continuously and annoyingly'). In fact, the reduplicative verbs are
more commonly heard and used than their bases (e.g. [ʕassas] 'clean' is more often heard than
[ʕas] 'clean', with the latter indicating a single wipe incapable of removing dust or dirt. This
places caution about assigning a specific meaning to the base or identifying a unified semantic
function for the resulting reduplicative verbs. However, it is fairly clear from the responses of
native OA speakers that the scope of semantic functions includes intensity, repetition of action,
and may serve as onomatopoeic forms.
2) When the bases carry meaning, their meaning is vastly different from that of the
reduplicative verbs. Around 38 reduplicative verbs belonging to this type are collected and will
be semantically and pragmatically analyzed in the subsequent sections:

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 2) Reduplicated verbs with meaning different from bases
Base Gloss reduplicative verb gloss
kan Hide something Kankan wear heavy clothes to feel
inwardly warm
fat break into small pieces Fatfat rat on; cannot keep a secret
daq Knock Daqdaq feel extremely tired
Mak drink directly from the Makmak do things sluggishly
bottle
3) The majority of reduplicative verbs come from nonexistent bases (about 111 forms
belong to this type). In other words, neither do the bases exist in the language nor do they have
any meaning. How and from where reduplicative verbs acquire their unique meanings are not
known. Greenberg (nd), who analyzed verbal reduplication in Hebrew, listed similar
reduplicative verbs such as [ɡirɡer] 'gurgled' and [riʃreʃ] 'rustle’. These are observed not to be
related to any existing binary or ternary form (p.4). To illustrate, [ɡirɡer] does not semantically
relate to [ɡar] 'lived', nor does [raʃ] 'poor' relate to [riʃreʃ]. Observe the following examples from
OA:
3) Underived reduplicated verbs
Base gloss reduplicated verb Gloss
- TarTar spoil someone too
much; unnecessarily
- - laʕlaʕ talk nonstop
- - Faqfaq laugh loudly in an
unacceptable manner
- - Katkat crawl like a baby

3. Previous Studies on Arabic Reduplicative Verbs

Although the phenomenon is phonologically and pragmatically intriguing, reduplicative
verbs have not been studied in OA, to the best of my knowledge. Other dialects of Arabic like
Egyptian, Iraqi and Jordanian also exhibit reduplicative verbs which were mainly explored
semantically. I observe that these dialects also exhibit reduplication on other lexical units like
nouns and adjectives while OA mainly exploits verbal reduplication. For instance in Turku, "a

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pidginized variety of Arabic, formerly used in Chad" (Avram 2011) and borrows from Sudanese
Arabic, only nouns and adverbs are reduplicated to express an intensifying or distributive
meaning. Moreover, these dialects may also suffix a string of segments to the reduplicative form
to exhibit a grammatical contrast (a shift from verb to noun or vice versa), a behavior nonexistent
in OA. I observe that Omani youth constantly reduplicate verbs and are not heard to repeat nouns
and adverbs. In other dialects of Arabic such as Saudi, the adverbs wajidwajid and ʃwajʃwaj,
meaning [many] and [few] respectively are very common.
Verbs are considered to be the core component of grammar in Arabic (Badawi et al 2004;
Ryding, 2005). Since Arabic heavily relies on root and pattern morphology, each word is referred
to the tri-consonantal verb which has been viewed as the reference to the semantics of the word.
Like Arabic, OA seems to place importance on verbs whose semantics come mainly from their
tri-consonantal bases. Reduplicative verbs in OA enjoy special semantics (intensity, repetition,
onomatopoeic, etc.). However, unlike Arabic which references the root as the only encoder of
meaning, OA reduplicative verbs relinquish the role of the base as the sole determinant of
meaning since they bear different meanings, as apparent by the behavior of reduplicative verbs in
OA. There are two pieces of evidence to back up the claim, First, the verb [Tafar] means 'to make
an unprecedented, revolutionary move', while in OA it bears the meaning of 'to leave for good'.
Second, the OA verb [waddaf] has two opposite meanings. In the interior dialects of Oman, it is
used to mean 'add', while in the coastal areas [waddaf] means 'to be over; finish'. This reveals that
verbs in OA may take unique meanings regardless of the meanings taken by their bases.
Avram (2011) mentions reduplication of verbs as part of his thorough discussion of the
meanings expressed by the various lexical forms (nouns, adjectives and adverbs) exhibiting
reduplication in five Arabic varieties: Juba Arabic, Turku, Gulf Pidgin Arabic, Pidgin Madam
and Romanian Pidgin Arabic. According to Avram, reduplication of verbs is by far the most
frequently occurring type as it expresses a sense of plurality or diffuseness, and illustrates
intensification and distributiveness. In Juba Arabic, there is an intriguing type of reduplication
whereby reduplicated nouns acquire lexical meaning as in [nus] ‘middle; half’ > nus-nus
‘average’ and [saba] ‘morning’ >[sabá-sabá] ‘dawn’. The reduplicative verbs in OA also acquire
a lexical meaning distinct from that expressed by the base. Observe the data in 4 below:

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 4) Reduplicative verbs with Meaning different from the Bases
Base gloss reduplicative verb Gloss
kar flee kar-kar Giggle
ħan miss; feel ħan-ħan clear throat
homesick
xaʃ hide xaʃ-xaʃ shake things repeatedly
daq hit mdaq-daq feel tired or drained out
qaT complete; qaT-qaT Giggle
finish
fax remain seated yet-fax-fax live in luxury; be proud of
but is something
unwanted
ʃak doubt ʃakkak Sew
xaʃ hide xaʃ-ʃaʃ move between two things
das hide das-sas spy on someone
maT Stretch maT-TaT walk slowly
ħam develop a fever ħam-ħam say hmmmm
mak drink directly mak-mak do tasks sluggishly
from the
bottle's mouth
γar deceive γar-γar Gurgle
ħas touch; feel ħas-sas be emotional or sensitive
about things
tam2 finish; complete tam-tam speak intangibly
mal3 feel bored mal-mal Stagger
fax sit fax-fax hide behind something
Saħ recover Saħ-ħaħ mark correctly
ʃab lit fire ʃab-bab chill down oneself
raq be thin; soft raq-qaq knead the dough

2
In Modern Standard Arabic, the form is [tamm]. But in OA, the {m} is not geminated.
3
Similarly, the last consonant in [mal] is not geminated in OA. It is, as rightly pointed out by an IJAL anonymous
reviewer, geminated in Modern Standard Arabic.

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 ħab love ħab-bab when the fabric of cloth
produces an ane-like dots
laħ insist laħ-laħ live in luxury
xaD shake xaa-xaD rinse one's mouth
ʃab lit fire ʃab-ʃab lit so much fire
xaʃ hide something xaʃ-xaʃ shake too much
Taʃ stand up Taʃ-ʃaʃ splash water
daħ hit daħ-daħ study really hard
daʕ "leave it!" daʕ-daʕ talk unwantingly; say too
much; not keep a secret.
Dam hide Dam-Dam Criticize
bax snort bax-bax feel lazy
taf spit taf-taf to tear into pieces
xaT write xaT-xaT; xat-xat Stagger
mar pass mar-mar Torture
hab go; leave hab-hab walk aimlessly
tar pull tar-tar be at the very end of a queue
of walking individuals
ɡaz cut ɡaz-ɡaz be in extreme pain
ʃaħħ diminish ʃaħ-ʃaħ dance happily
Sal when the dates Sal-Sal spill too much water
secrete black
syrup like honey
Despite the prevalence of reduplicated verbs in Gulf Arabic, reduplication discussed in
Avram only focused on Gulf Pidgin Arabic. Thus, the study only listed a single reduplicated verb
and a few reduplicative nouns and adverbs borrowed from Hindi, which Gulf Arabs use to make
themselves understandable to Hindi expatriates.
Avram also reports an undocumented function for reduplication that relates mostly to
adjectives which "may be reduplicated to correspond to the plural in the noun being qualified” (p.
234). This semantic function is quite common cross-linguistically as it has also been documented
to relate to reduplication in the Indonesian languages (Dalrymple 2012).

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 In Juba Arabic, a base reduplicates twice yielding three similar words consecutively
following one another. More dramatically, it has also been observed that "reduplication of a verb
and repetition of a noun can co-occur in the same sentence" (Avram 2011:236). These two
features are not present in OA reduplicative verbs. None of the conversations reported or
reconstructed include three repetitions to the base. Furthermore, OA reduplicative verbs have not
been studied in relation to their context. Thus, no conclusion can be made here with regard to the
co-occurrence of nouns and reduplicative verbs.
Igaab's (nd) study of reduplicative compounds in Iraqi Arabic identifies four groups into
which reduplicative compounds are classified: "the two elements can be of the same meaning or
different from each other in meaning; or one of the two parts is meaningless; or the whole
compound is meaningless.” (p. 1). Her classification which is mainly based on the meaning of
both the base and reduplication raises a concern about the role and function of the base in OA
reduplicative verbs. The base's meaning does not seem to link in any way to the meaning taken
up by the reduplicative verbs (e.g. [ħan]4 means to 'miss; feel homesick'). When it reduplicates,
[ħan-ħan] means 'to clear one's throat'. Such a vast difference in meaning is unexpected, let alone
inaccessible. In fact, it is extremely hard, if not impossible at all, to predict the meaning of OA
reduplicative verb from the meaning of its base. Most probably, the meaning of the reduplicative
verb has evolved to have its own lexical entry that does not relate to the meaning of the base.
Reduplicative verbs are extremely common in the current dialects of Arabic. This can be
confirmed by Anani (2012), who explores more than 123 Arabic reduplicative verbs in relation to
their semantic functions. He argues that the stem from which these are derived is semantically
transparent and often refer to onomatopoeic or kinesthetic functions, increase or decrease in size,
motion, or muscular effort. I counted 32 forms with these functions or similar in OA. These
conform to the general semantics assumed to be taken up by reduplication in Arabic dialects and
other languages as well. Investigating the most frequent words that co-occur with reduplicative
verb, Anani concludes that reduplicative verbs determine the semantic reference of the whole
expression. This consistent semantics of Jordanian reduplicative verbs serve to illustrate that
reduplicative verbs need to fit the context in which they occur. Both the verbs and their
collocations work hand in hand to determine the meaning of reduplication.

4
Since the {n} in [ħan] is not doubled or geminated, unlike Modern Standard Arabic, then the reduplicated verb is
onomatopoeic. I thank an I JAL reviewer for drawing my attention to this fact.

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 Both Hasan's and this study are concerned about the contextual and discoursal functions
of reduplication, an area believed to be untapped. Hasan (nd) explores these crucial aspects in
light of the dense use of reduplication in nursery rhymes. Hasan shows that reduplication is
mainly employed by nursery rhymes to "instill values and refine morals in the hearts and souls of
children" (p.1). Therefore, reduplication constitutes a word play that can enrich language. The
current study also goes beyond the semantic functions to reveal the performative acts and
discoursal usage of OA reduplicative verbs.
On a structural level, McCarthy and Prince (1990) studied reduplication in Standard
Arabic morphologically and phonologically. They identified three morphological tendencies of
reduplicative verbs in Arabic: their prosodic shape takes two close syllables CVC CVC, they
lengthen the second syllable by inserting a vowel {a} CVC CVVC, and they suffix –ah to turn
the reduplicative verb into an abstract noun. OA only takes the first strategy, shaping into two
closed syllables. In OA reduplicative verbs, the reduplicant always follows the base. Kreitman
(2003) explored diminutive reduplication in Modern Hebrew. Similar to OA reduplicative verbs,
diminutives in Hebrew shape into a bisyllabic form with a pre-specified vocalic material.
Different from OA, the last syllable gets repeated and infixed in the middle of the base form.
Hebrew examples of this pattern include [gezer] ‘carrot’ → [gzarzar] ‘baby carrot’, [lavan]
'white' → [levanvan] 'white-ish' and [zakan] 'beard' → [zkankan] ‘little beard’ (pp. 101 and 112).

4. Data Collection and Methodology

This study explores two types of data: collected reduplicative verbs and a survey on the
pragmatic and contextual use of these verbs. In Fall 2014, Spring 2015 and Fall 2015 semesters,
the researcher taught the course ENGL2327 Phonology and Morphology to three sections of 60
Arts and Education students majoring in English as a Foreign Language. In that course, students
are exposed to reduplication as one of the common morpho-phonological processes observed in
the world languages. They were taught about the definition, types, and meanings of this linguistic
phenomenon. They were also given data relevant to reduplication from languages other than
English to analyze morphologically. They were then asked to affirm if the phenomenon also
exists in OA and they managed to come up with a few examples. They were, then, asked to
collect as many reduplicative verbs as they could think of, to give their meaning(s), their bases,
and note if the bases express similar or different meaning(s) than the collected reduplicative

65
verbs. A total of 195 reduplicative verbs were collected and classified into four patterns: those
which express intensity and repetition of the base, those which express meanings different from
the bases, those that are underived from bases, or those whose bases are semantically null.
Relevant to this study are reduplicative verbs whose meanings are significantly different from
their bases. Those are about 38 forms of the whole corpus (listed in the discussion section).
The same students were later given a survey to report on the pragmatic, contextual and
conversational uses of the reduplicative verbs they collected. There were five questions on the
survey, the first of which asked respondents to pick up two reduplicative verbs and record two
situations or real conversations in which these verbs occur. If they did not have any, they were
asked to reconstruct one or two. The four additional survey questions asked the students to
describe the context when reduplicative verbs surface, the gender of the users, their age, the
relationships of the interlocutors and the feelings incurred when such reduplicative verbs surface
in the conversations. The respondents were also asked to speculate on any social or cultural
functions served when interlocutors decide to use reduplicative verbs.
The context of reduplicative verbs, gender and age were elicited to be provided when
reduplication occurs. The relationships of the interlocutors were explored if the use of
reduplication is restrictive to family circle, relatives or may extend to include friends, classmates
and strangers (i.e. outsiders). The question about feelings was asked to gain a sense of the nature
of reactions and emotions involved in the turns of conversation where a reduplicative verb
occurs.
Interlocutors employ strings of words with an assented meaning to inform, reflect,
apologize, promise, gripe or complain and carry out endless speech acts. The Speech Act Theory
(henceforth SAT) founded by Austin and Searle posits that utterances are mapped into a set of
performative acts associated with intended meanings and tied up to social contexts. According to
Goffman (quoted in Schiffrin 1994: 97), language is "situated in social circumstances".
Therefore, language does not function in isolation from social contexts because the "use of
language is socially and culturally relative" (Schiffrin 1994:98). Therefore, an ambiguous
utterance will only be elucidated through familiarity with the setting, social context and other
indispensably accompanying non-verbal speech aspects including, but not limited to, gestures,
facial expressions and supra-linguistic elements like stress, intonation and pitch. The current

66
study employs the parameters of Speech Act Theory to identify the performative acts emerging
from the use of reduplicative verbs by Omani youth.

5. Results and Discussion

5.1. Semantics
The morphology in the verbs via gemination, affixation or reduplication tends to express
plurality of action (hence called pluractionality), repetition in time, distribution in location, etc.
(Greenberg: nd). The Arabic of Oman and Zanzibar is one variety of Arabic in which the verbal
measure CieC suggests various types of pluractionality (Greenberg 1991). However, OA
reduplicative verbs contradict the long-held assumption that reduplicated forms are related to the
forms postulated as their bases. There is no relation between the meaning encoded in the base and
that expressed by reduplicating it. Linguistically, derivatives follow their bases in meaning. The
deviation in meaning between the bases and their reduplicative forms, if noted, stems from
normal functions admitted to operate as a result of repetition (please see examples above).
The range of meanings expressed by OA reduplicative verbs are variable but seem at most
to be directional. When the base expresses a state or feeling, its reduplicative verb expresses
action. To illustrate, the bases in a., b. and c. in 5 below relate to mental states while their derived
reduplicative verbs express some sort of action. On the other hand, bases in d., e. and f. are action
or physical verbs whose reduplicative verbs relate to emotional state. Still, there is no connection
in meaning between the two. This directionality is by no means applicable to the whole corpus. A
legitimate question here is from where OA reduplicative verbs acquire their special meanings. I
propose that these reduplicative verbs initially had the meaning of their bases with the regular
semantics encoded in Arabic reduplication like intensity, repetition, etc. But, later on, they
acquire their own meaning and become separate entities unrelated to their bases. This semantic
change, of course, has led to their having their own entry in the lexicon of OA speakers who
identify them with different meanings from their bases.
5) Varied but directional reduplicative verbs
a. ħan miss; feel homesick ħan-ħan clear throat

b. ʃak doubt ʃakak Sew

67
 c. ħab5 love ħab-bab when the fabric of cloth produces an
ane-like dots
d. daq hit mdaq-daq feel tired or drained out
e. bax snort bax-bax feel lazy
f. ɡaz cut ɡaz-ɡaz be in extreme pain

Another semantic function exploited by reduplicative verbs is the incassative which

indicates no "attempt to do anything in particular, merely an aimless or undirected activity"
(Wonderly, 1951: 83-84, quoted in Greenberg, 1991). Quite a significant number of this type of
reduplicative verbs and other types refer to aimless talk, intangible speech, and unwanted chatter.
However, this reading to these reduplicative verbs is problematic as it only refers to the meanings
expressed by the resultant verbs ignoring the relation between reduplicative verbs and their bases.
The forms in 6 below are a few representative examples.
6) Reduplicative verbs with the incassative function
a. hab go; leave hab-hab walk aimlessly
b. tam finish; complete tam-tam speak intangibly
c. mal feel bored mal-mal stagger
d. daʕ "leave it!" daʕ-daʕ to talk unwantingly;
say too much; does
not keep a secret.
In the following section, I will discuss the social contexts where reduplicative verbs
surface and their associative discoursal meanings.

5.2. Social Contexts

One approach to discourse analysis is Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) which entails the
importance of social contexts and accurate manifestations of accompanied contextualization cues
to disambiguate the meanings of an utterance. In the literature of Arabic reduplication, it was
noted that it is pointless to explore the meanings of reduplication through sense or denotation as
the meaning cannot be inferred from the meaning of its individual parts (Anani 2011:3).
Therefore, the meaning of reduplication should be investigated through looking at the various
5
In response to an IJAL reviewer's comment that "The base comes from Arabic ‘hubb’ but the reduplicated form is
related to ‘habb’ (grain), I would like to stress that (1) hub and not hubb In fact, ‘habbab’ would not be a case of
reduplication but an instance of Form II".

68
contexts in which they occur. In order to do so, I conducted a survey to elicit the contexts of the
occurrence of reduplicative verbs. A total of 21 conversations were recorded to serve as data to
this linguistic phenomenon.
Conversations reveal that reduplicative verbs are used by both genders in their casual
everyday speech. They are found in conversations between a mother and her daughter, a daughter
and her grandmother, a grandfather with his grandson, two roommates in a college dormitory,
and two sisters watching a movie. Thus, they surface in the family circle or between persons with
the same or similar social distance/ relationship. They mainly surface between people of
similar/same social distance or people with high rank addressing those of low rank, but never the
opposite.
The nature of the recorded conversations is casual. The ambiance reveals intimacy and a
desire to initiate or sustain genuine solidarity. The mutual understanding of these verbs between
the interlocutors is evident through smooth turn-taking and willingness of the respondent to use
another reduplicative verb to accommodate to the conversational mode.
The social contexts are varied and range from casual conversations between two close
friends to two colleagues in ministerial posts. The study reveals that OA reduplicative verbs are
mostly used to mock, incite, blame, emphasize, annoy and entertain (make someone laugh).
Respondents confirm that they resolve to reduplicative verbs in their conversations to emphasize
their points and avoid saying too much by selecting a reduplicative verb that expresses much
meaning. So, added up to the meanings of these reduplicative verbs are meanings of
intensification and strength or urgency of situations or topics discussed.
There is no particular age at which reduplicative verbs surface. I specifically asked the
respondents if they could limit their use to particular age groups. They unanimously agreed that
the reduplicative verbs are used by adults, teenagers and the elderly. However, more research is
needed to substantiate these intuitions. The study aimed at exploring the extensive use of
reduplicative verbs in the speech of young Omanis (teenagers and youths). When asked whether
young children can use reduplicative verbs, they stated that children do not use them. Therefore,
there is an underlying assumption that only teenagers, adults and the elderly use reduplication.

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 5.3. Socio-cultural Functions of Reduplicative Verbs
It is evident that the meaning of reduplicative verbs is culturally attributed. Since the
meaning of the base does not contribute to the new meaning acquired by the reduplicative verb, it
is safe to assume that through mutual communication speakers reach a consensus about the
meaning of the reduplicative verb which is not devoid of the cultural elements surrounding
interlocutors. Moreover, there are emergent conversational cues that support the function played
by the reduplicative verb. I reckon that many surfacing meanings of these reduplicative verbs are
specific to the dialect of Arabic spoken in Oman.
When analyzing the social occurrence of reduplicative verbs, it is crucial to focus on the
actual social events embedded in the cultural web in an attempt to discern how interlocutors
create social order and employ conversational strategies like managing topics, turn-taking and
adjacency pairs. Below, I discuss the prevalent social functions of reduplicative verbs supported
by real and reconstructed conversations.

5.3.1. Commiseration
Not only is language restricted to such crucial functions, it, "as a powerful interactional
tool, also enables interlocutors to sustain good relations and interact effectively" (Goffman
1967:299). Surveying the real and reconstructed conversations where OA reduplicative verbs
surface, it is evident that interlocutors have understanding of the intended meaning and
commiserate with their interlocutors. Each interlocutor attunes to the intention of their
interlocutor and commiserates through the use of reduplicative verbs. Conversations are observed
to run smoothly, affectionately and easily. Below I show the context of a number of recorded
conversations followed by the actual conversations translated into English.
Conversation (a)
Amira expressed her frustration at her unsuccessful attempt to make a cake, through the
use of two reduplicative verbs. She was seeking the commiseration of her friend, Noura, by
telling her that she always makes gooey and moist cakes, but today, her cake was fluffy and hard.
a.1) Noura: "Ɂaxbariʃ Amira?"
News.[2pf] Amira
“What is up, Amira?”
Amira: "sawe:t ke:kah w ɡa:tmit falfal-ah w taftaf-at. Fi alʕa:d-ah ɁđbuTha!"
Made[past] cake & turned [past] fluffy & hard into pieces. In mostly cooked properly

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 “I made a terrible fluffy and hard cake. Usually, my cake is perfect!”
Noura expressed empathy towards Amira. It is evident from Noura's response that she could not
visualize how the cake looked. As a speaker of OA, I see the use of these two reduplicative verbs to be
successful at two levels: vivid description and catchy language that invites empathy. The response given
by Noura below illustrates mutual understanding of the topic discussed and proper reaction.
a.2) Noura: ma ʕali:h ma kul marah jiđbuT alɁakl w inti: tawiʃ titʕlmi aTTabx.
No on Not every time perfect cooking & you just learn cooking.
Don’t worry. It is not every time we make perfect meals. You just learned how to cook.
Despite her miserable feeling at how her cake turned t, Amira told her friend that she was
more frustrated at her brother who made fun of her cake. She also used reduplicative verbs to
show how annoyingly her brother was. The reduplication she used was very effective as it
entertained Noura who laughed and, in turn, managed to draw a smile in her upset friend's face.
a.3) Amira: "ma bas ha:ð ailli:[pronoun, pl]xalla:ni ɁaʕaSab"
Not only this what made me angry
“This is not the only thing that made me angry.”
Noura: "ʕaɡab Ɂe:ʃ baʕad"
So what else
“So, what else?”
Amira: "Ɂaxoȷi ȷiɡlis ȷitkarkar w ȷitfaqfaq ʕalliȷi: w ʕala alke:kah illis awe:tha"
My brother sat laughing uncontrollably & too much on me and the cake I made
“My brother was uncontrollably laughing at me and the cake I made.”
Noura:"hahahaha tʕi:ʃi w ta:kli γe:rha"
“hahahaha may you make another unsuccessful cake and be made fun of!”
Amira: [smiled]

5.3.2. Making Accusation

Conversation (b)
In a college dormitory during the period of final examination, Mariam was trying to
concentrate on studying, while her friend kept chattering and talking about her day at college. To
show her annoyance, Mariam used a reduplicative verb to show how unbearable her friend's
chattering was:

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 b.1) Mariam: "Hajoor waaȷid tdaʕdaʕitra:ʃ"
Hajoor (nickname for Hajer) too much chatter I see
"I see you are chattering too much today!"
Two linguistic cues show absolute anger at Hajer: First, the use of a derogatory nickname
to address Hajer, and second the reduplicative verb which implicitly expresses infuriation. Hajer,
of course, needed to equally respond to her friend's frustration. She also used two consecutive
reduplicative verbs to (1) defend herself and (2) accuse her friend of being the one who wastes
time.
b.2) Hajer:"tara:ni Ɂabaak tSaħSaħe:n. Ɂarohi ma Ɂaʃofik tra:ɡʕi:n."
Because I want wake you up. Myself no see revise
"Because I want to wake you up. I do not see you studying"
"min ðe:k assaʕah ɡalsah tfarfari:n ha Ɂawra:q"
from that hour sat turning the pages
"For an hour now, I see you only turning the pages aimlessly"
In many conversations, intensity is obvious. This is illustrated in the conversation below
where a mother woke up to find out that the housekeeper did not tidy up the mess created in the
dining hall the night before. Her older daughter used a reduplicative verb to announce that the
housekeeper, instead of working, had only been whining uselessly since early morning. The verb
qamqam6 is specific to the Omani variety and exclusively used with someone who is good at
complaining about things without trying to do something about them. The verb is associated with
continuous verbal complaint.
Conversation (c)
c.1) Mother: "we:n haðia ʃaγa:lah? Albe:t mitlaʕwaz! na:hđah min aSSaba:h mu
tsawi:?!"
Where this maid the house untidy woke up from morning what did
“Where is this housemaid?! The house is a mess! She woke up too early to do what?”
Older sister: "ma aħi:dha, ɡa:lash ʕinda TTa:wlah titqamqamm"
Not know, sat beside table whining!
“I really don't know. She was sitting at the table complaining!”

6
An anonymous IJAL reviewer draw my attention to the fact that in some North African varieties, gemgem is used
with more or less the same meaning.

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 Six of the recorded conversations indicate that the social function of frustration is
accompanied with pain (be it physical or emotional). Observe the following conversation where a
fire ant bit Amel who used a reduplicative verb to intensify the physical pain she had.
Conversation (d)
d.1) Amel:"ladaγni sqa:T!
Bit me fire ant
“A fire ant bit me!”
Friend:"Allah ȷʕi:niʃ"
Allah help you
“May Allah be with you in your pain!”
Amel: "wallah Ɂaħisuh ȷitsamsam"
By Allah feel hurting
“I swear I feel it is hurting a great deal”
Most often, a solution or cure is suggested as the conversation below illustrates. But, it
seems above that the friend has no cure for the fire ant's bite. In the conversation between a little
sister and her mother, not only did the mother propose a solution, she also offered to prepare it
herself. For the mother to make sure the solution would be effective, she reduplicated the action
verb 'gurgle', emphasizing that the gurgling cannot be done only once.
d.2) Little sister: "mah ħalqi ȷʕawarni"
Mom throat hurting
“Mom, I have a sore throat!”
Mother: "Ɂaswiliʃ ma:ȷ w malħ"
Make you water and salt
“Shall I prepare for you water and salt?”
Little sister: "muh Ɂasuwi:boh"
d.3) “What will I do with it?”
Mother: "tγarγari boh"
Gurgle by it
“Gurgle it!”
A generic socio-cultural function observed in the conversations is expressing annoyance.
Two women were sitting opposite to two teenage girls. One of the them said:

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 Conversation (e)
e.1) Woman (1): "do:m bas ɡa:lsa:t ȷitsasaranw ȷitkarkaran"
Always only sat confining secrets& giggling
“The always spent their time talking and giggling!!”
The other woman also used two reduplicative verbs in order to show agreement and
mutual annoyance.
e.2) Woman (2): "mbu:nhin ma ʕindhin ʃuγlah kuluh tlaʕli:ʕ w tfaqfi:q7"
Usually no have work all talking & laughing
“They usually do not do any serious work except talking and laughing”
Reduplicative verbs are also used by mothers to warn their girls not to do something
strange to the Omani culture or to imitate fashions of other cultures. Observe the following
frequently repeated piece of advice by concerned mothers:
Mother:"la titdawdawni!"
No innovate
"Don't innovate!”
The verb [dawdaw] is quite strong in the Omani culture. It encodes doing a culturally and
religiously unacceptable deed. Usually, the deed is innovative or unknown to the original culture
and habits of Omanis. To sum up, I highlighted the most frequent social functions of
reduplicative verbs through selected conversations. It is evident that reduplicative verbs are used
often in casual conversations and they serve varied social and cultural functions. More discussion
will follow.

5.4. Constraints on Reduplication

It is apparent from the conversations above that reduplicative verbs are commonly used
on various casual occasions. They surface in conversations between two sisters, two friends, a
mother and her daughter, two brothers, a daughter with a grandmother, etc. Individuals that have
intimate relations frequently use reduplicative verbs; no reduplicative verb is used between a
person of high status (e.g. a professor) and low status (e.g. a student). This restricts the use of
reduplication to the family circle or the circle of persons of similar social status.

7
The vowel in the second syllable of the reduplicated forms is {i:} here because these are the nouns of the
reduplicative verbs.

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 It has also been observed that reduplicative verbs can freely be used by teenagers, adults
and elders. It is worth noting that some of these reduplicative verbs sound funny. They are
definitely pure dialectal in nature. They are commonly used since they are expressions that bond
and tie people who come to see that their interlocutors speak the same down-to-earth language.
Such broad use of reduplicative verbs reveals the high frequency enjoyed by these verbs.
The survey reveals that they are on the rise as they express true feelings and emotions. People are
becoming more open to each other confiding their problems and concerns to others and looking
for expressions accurately conveying their intentions.

6. Conclusion
OA reduplicative verbs constitute an intriguing understudied socio-linguistic phenomenon
whose semantics and pragmatics reveal current linguistic and communicative preferences of
Omanis. They are on the rise and quite productive as they frequently surface in intimate and
familial conversations. Further studies may be needed to investigate their occurrence and
frequency of use in adults' speech.
The fact that the meaning expressed by the derived reduplicative verbs does not relate in
any way to the meaning encoded in the base illustrates sophistication in assigning a derived form
a new lexical meaning. Such independence requires special understanding as the meaning can
hardly be guessed from the base. Overall, it is quite surprising that Omanis tend to lengthen a
verb and assign it a new meaning in a world where people take short-cuts, simplify
communication, and use abbreviations and props.

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