Parsing of the text of Grand Qur

A sentence is the part of a speech or a written discourse that has a complete and independent meaning. Sentence segmentation refers to identifying sentences in an unstructured text. The process of sentence segmentation is a basic step for discourse analysis processing systems. It is because, any text stream need to be separated into coherent sentences in order to enable effective automatic analysis, such as information retrieval, summarization, understanding and translation.

It is very important to first define what is meant by a complete and independent sentence. Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages defines a sentence as the largest unit to which syntactic rules apply.

The primary goal of parsing a sentence using this strategy is to understand its meaning and sieve out any ambiguities. Once a person has analyzed a sentence using this method, it is nearly impossible to misunderstand the meaning, provided the parsing was done correctly.

The parsing is traditionally done by starting at the most abstract layer of the sentence. We identify the major portions of the sentence and group them. We then visit each group from right to left and recursively apply the same procedure until the most granular layer has been parsed. The most granular layer is the one in which each word is its own group. This process can be summarized as follows.

The Difference Between Hidden and Omitted

Words in Arabic sentences may be hidden as well as omitted. These two concepts seem identical prima facia, but they are wildly different. Hidden implies that the word is completely present in the sentence but it is simply not visible in script and pronunciation. As a result, it must absolutely be mentioned when parsing the sentence. An example of this is subjects of verbs; when a verb’s subject is not mentioned as an explicit noun or pronoun following the verb, the verb will be assumed to carry the subject within itself.

Omitted, on the other hand, implies that the word is no longer part of the sentence. For example, the verb “to hit” may or may not take a direct object – we can say “he hit” or “he hit his brother”. In the former case, the object of “hit” has been omitted. One of the rhetorical purposes of omitting the object in this case is to keep the verb general. If we say that the direct object is hidden as opposed to omitted, that implies that the object is still present and the rhetorical benefit has not been achieved.

Only the predicate of a nominal sentence can be an entire sentence on its own. Other major portions of a sentence must either be single words or phrases. But most phrases have the potential of being comprised of embedded sentences, as seen in the example above. Part of mastering sentence parsing has to do with developing a keen understanding of these different phrases and how they work. For this purpose, one needs to learn Arabic through the medium of regular classes taught by esteemed professionals.

The implied speaker of the Qur'an is God. Why does He employ both ‘We’ and ‘He’ as self-designations? Moreover, when He employs the first-person-plural mode, why does He sometimes refer to Himself as ‘thy Lord’ rather than simply as ‘Us’? A few decades ago, Roman Jakobson wrote essays on linguistics and poetics which, although it does not mention the Qur'an, throws some light on these questions.^[1] Jakobson states that verbal communication may be primarily expressive, conative or cognitive.^[2]

The Qur'anic discourse moves to and fro between these three functions. The cognitive function is vital in a Scripture which is intended to be a message for humankind. If God had restricted Himself to expressive or conative communication, there would have been no universal message, no statements about Him which human beings could reiterate.

Perhaps the best way in which the three above-mentioned communications are highlighted is in the stylistic feature of the Qur'an called idraj or "insertion" of a comment in the narration. Al-Zarkashi has briefly dealt with idraj in his Al-Burhān Fī-ʿUlūm al-Qur'ān.^[3] In idraj a few verses are inserted between a group of verses as a comment to send a message to the addressee. This results in the Qur'anic discourse moving between cognitive, expressive and conative functions; thus enhancing the interactive nature of its style.^[4]

The idraj in a Qur'anic narrative is used for various purposes. For example, it could be used to draw a moral from a story, as an advice, as a command, as a threat to those who commit evil, as a reward to the good-doers, to relate the past history of the people before the advent of Islam and the relevance of certain historical events, to comfort the believers or to even set up fitting prelude to a story. Let us consider a few examples before we touch upon the Christian missionaries' claim about the alleged mention of the Gospel in the time of Moses in the Qur'an in the verses Qur'an 7:155-160. The verses which are "insertion" of a comment or idraj are depicted in bold.

Here the believers are affirming their faith and earnestly asking Allah to forgive them, perhaps worried that they were not good enough. Allah interrupts their prayer by reassuring them, "On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns." Then the prayers of the believers continue.

II. An interesting example of idraj in a Qur'anic narrative comes from the story of Luqman and his son.

Here Luqman is advising his son not to join partners with Allah. An "insertion" of a comment (idraj) happens immediately after this in which Allah commands the people to be good to their parents and to show gratitude to Him and to their parents [verse 14]. But if the parents command to join worship other gods with Allah, then the command is not to obey them but be kind to them in this world and to Allah is the final return [verse 15]. After this comment Luqman's advice to his son resumes. Here the idraj has served as an advice, as a command and as a threat to those who join partners with Allah and also as a reminder of the Day of Judgment. One will also notice that the Qur'anic discourse moved between conative, cognitive and expressive functions and thereby enhancing the interactive nature of its style. The reader senses that the advice of Luqman to his son is also addressed personally to him.

Sentence fluency is the rhythm and flow of the language, the sound of word patterns, the way in which the language play to the ear - not just to the eye.

Fluent writing has cadence, power, rhythm, and movement, It is free of awkward patterns that slow a reader down, and cause the reader to stumble or to reread. Sentences vary both in length and style, and are so well crafted that reading aloud is a pleasure.

Sentence fluency is the hardest trait to master. It’s more than just knowing how to write complete and grammatically correct sentences. Fluency requires that the variety of sentences flow together easily, smoothly, and musically.

Rhythm, flow, and natural cadence [rhythm, falling tone, intonation: rise and fall of sound during speech]

Texts are of five types:
1. Narrative: Have to do with real-world events and time. They are characterized by sequencing of events expressed by dynamic verbs and adverbials; such as "and then". first, second, third. Example First we packed our bags and then we called a taxi. After that we----etc.

[A dynamic or fientive verb is a verb that shows continued or progressive action on the part of the subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb.

Dynamic verbs have duration. They occur over time. This time may or may not have a defined endpoint, and may or may not yet have occurred. These distinctions lead to various forms related to tense and aspect. For example, a dynamic verb may be said to have a durative aspect if there is not a defined endpoint, or a punctual aspect if there is a defined endpoint.

A stative verb is one that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs are static or unchanging throughout their entire duration, whereas dynamic verbs describe a process that changes over time.^[1] Many languages distinguish between these two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically

Examples of dynamic verbs are 'to run', 'to hit', 'to intervene', 'to savour' and 'to go']

2. Descriptive texts are concerned with the location of persons and things in space. State or positional verbs plus adverbial expressions are employed in descriptions.

3. Directive texts are concerned with concrete future activity. Central to these texts are imperatives; or forms which substitute for them, such as polite questions or suggestive remarks.

Narrative, descriptive and directive texts have grammatical forms associated with them which may be expanded to form sequence of textual nature.
They all are centered around real-world events and things. In contrast expository and argumentative texts are cognitively oriented, as they are concerned with explanation and persuasion, which are both mental processes.

4. Expository texts. They identify and characterize phenomenon. They include text forms such as definitions, explications, summaries and many types of essays. They may be objective or subjective. They may be analytical (starting from a concept and then characterizing its parts; e.g. definitions) or synthetic [recounting characteristics and ending with a appropriate concept or conclusion; e.g. summaries). They are characterized by state verbs and epistemic modals or by verbs indicating typical activities or qualities.

5. Argumentative texts depart from the assumption that receiver's beliefs must be changed.

2.2.2.5 Argumentation Argumentation is a special category that uses a combination of discourse types in order to fulfill a rhetorical function for the text. The goal of argumentation in the context of a directive is to convince the recipient of the value of complying to the directive. Argumentation can be implicit, found between the lines so to speak, of a series of directives, 17 or in repetition techniques such as parallelisms or key word repetitions. In other cases, argumentation can be found in the surrounding narrative context of the directives. 18 Frequently argumentation accompanies directives in the form of separate motive clauses coming before or after the directives. They may or may not be linked to adjacent sentences by means of a conjunction.

2.3 Proposed classification of directive text types I have tentatively classified directive texts into six categories – authority directives, wisdom directives, requests, demands, invitations, and wishes 32 - using a combination of the following parameters: • Social relationships between the speaker and recipient of the directive • Speaker/recipient volitive weight and informative function • Perceived beneficiary • Perception of directive validity

Elliptical Clauses

Prepositional Phrases