Published 02.12.2022

Does Ellipsis Really Exist in the Qurʾān? SFL-based Perspective

Departing from Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study, which represents preliminary findings, asserts that ellipsis in the Qurʾān, as a grammatical cohesive device, does not tend to occur more frequently. Arabic linguistics, for its part, has approached ellipsis and continues from exclusive intra-sentence relations governed by syntactic rules. Understood as such, ellipsis doesn’t contribute to the cohesiveness of text― a notion absent in the Arabic linguistic tradition.  To compensate for the ellipsis’s contribution to text, the Qurʾān employs two other strategies; the cohesive relationship of Reference, and stylistic techniques.   The study shows that SFL-based ellipsis analysis is more productive and useful for understanding the mechanisms of text building elements than the syntactic approach.  However, more research is required to get a more thorough knowledge of ellipsis in the Qurʾān, which will eventually contribute to the ellipsis theory in the Arabic language.

Sadaf K., Noura S.,Nabil A., Sayeed S.

Ellipsis, Arabic Linguistic Tradition, Taqdīr, Cohesion, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Qurʾān