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Abstract
Studies dealing with the concept of knowledge in the Qurʾān have underscored the specificity of so-called mental or cognitive verbs, such as yaʿqilūna “(they) understand” “(they) are cognizant” and yaʿlamūna “(they) know”. However, much less is known about their pragmatic grammatical functions. This study builds on Western pragmatic theories to show that cognitive verbs, particularly those that occur in āya-final words (fawāṣil) not only indicate the mental state of the addressees but also show the attitude of God toward them; namely, they express subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Based on work by Nuyts, it is shown that cognitive verbs in the 3rd person plural such as (li-qawm) yaʿqilūna “(to people who) understand” convey subjectivity. These verbs have more than a descriptive use because people are asked by God to ponder and exercise sapiential reflection on a specific form of action. Thus, they function as the expression of God’s awareness of the addressees and His evaluation of them, whose faith is based (or not) on understanding why God is omnipotent. When cognitive verbs in the 2nd person plural are used, an intersubjective meaning is produced. In this case, the cognitive verb indicates that a set of beliefs, values and perspective are projected and shared by the speaker and the addressees.
Abstract
This study focuses on the grammatical content of six Quranic exegeses dating from the fourth/tenth to the seventh/thirteenth centuries (see section 1.3). The idea of exploring grammatical aspects of Quranic exegeses is not new in modern research, yet a complete analysis based on a large corpus devoted to the collection, classification, and analysis of the grammatical content of Quranic exegeses is still lacking. This study is limited to an examination of commentaries on sūrat al-nisāʾ. In these, two types of grammatical comments can be distinguished. The first are “formal comments”, in which the commentators conduct a morphological and/or syntactical analysis of various components. Such comments usually include an explicit grammatical term, and most of these have been addressed by traditional grammarians. The second type are “functional comments”. These concern issues that are less common in classical grammatical descriptions, such as agreement, coherence, pragmatics, and other related matters. Usually in these types of comments, no syntactical term is mentioned, although such explanations make important grammatical contributions.
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