Emphatic Verbal Constituent in the Holy Qur’an: An Analytical Study

Document Type : Original Article

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English Language Department, College of Language Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA

Abstract

This article discusses the emphatic component in the Qur’anic discourse. The word order, the syntactic construction and stress affixes achieve the rhetorical aim of emphasis that might be unattainably in the target language. Of Arabic, the emphasis is attained by attaching “noon-ن” onto a given verb and by other stress particles. Consequently, the semantico-stylistic feature, in Arabic, aims at enhancing the meaning based on the contextual requirements. Of English, emphasis is performed in terms of lexicality and/or interrogation to which the context leads the addressee to conclude the emphatic content. Linguistically and analytically, certain instances from the Qur’an will be investigated across three authentic translation versions; namely Arberry, Asad, and Al-Hilali and Khan and some related exegeses are consulted. The “noon-ن” emphasis illuminates rhetorical acts such as persuasion, irony and Oath. The paper shows the loss of the Qur’anic emphatic content’s intentionality and informativity as well as the inability to render such stylistic equivalence.    

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