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340040

Evaluating the Rendering of Definiteness and Indefiniteness in Al-Baqara and Al-A'raf into English: A Syntactic and Semantic Study

Article

Last updated: 28 Dec 2024

Subjects

-

Tags

Linguistics
Translation

Abstract

The main objectives of this study are identifying the possible purposes and functions of in/definite nouns in Al-Baqara and Al-A'raf, analyzing how these purposes and functions are rendered into English in some English translations of the Glorious Qur'an and exploring the reasons for variation, if any, in rendering the Arabic in/definiteness into English. Three approaches are followed in analyzing the data of this study; syntactic, semantic and functional. The results of the study show that the overall Arabic-definite function is identification and the two overall indefinite functions are unfamiliarity and indeterminacy. Some functions of the definite nouns are: identification of a person or a thing as unique, mental familiarity (homophora use of al-), conventional inclusiveness, real inclusiveness, situational use (context-specific), genus and class-representative, genus and restriction, genus and intensification, assuring a fact, and the non-linguistic type (denoting things that already exist). However, some functions that are found in indefinite nouns are: unidentified quality/type, glorification, singularization, despising, vagueness, continuity, ultimate negation, generality, generality and unfamiliarity, increase/decrease in quantity, non-restriction and non-identification, confirming an idea and negating another, and confirming an idea without restriction. In addition, the findings indicate that context and the syntactic position in a sentence are influential factors in addressing in/definites. The study also reveals that there are some differences in rendering Arabic in/definite nouns into English. Some reasons for these differences are: unlike Arabic, English can use bare-noun phrases to denote genus, and can use ‘all' instead of the definite article when used with plurals to denote real inclusiveness. In addition, English does not use the definite article to denote genus and type in negative sentences however Arabic does. Furthermore, unlike Arabic, English uses the generic indefinite article to pick out a member as representative of a certain class.

DOI

10.21608/ejlt.2020.201504.1012

Keywords

Translating Definites, indefinite functions, Qur'anic Studies

Authors

First Name

Ahmed

Last Name

Abu-hassoub

MiddleName

M.

Affiliation

Department of English. Faculty of Languages. Sohag University. Sohag. Egypt

Email

abuhassoub@lang.sohag.edu.eg

City

Sohag

Orcid

0000-0001-9760-2486

Volume

4

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

32458

Issue Date

2020-07-01

Receive Date

2020-04-05

Publish Date

2020-07-01

Page Start

74

Page End

388

Online ISSN

2314-6699

Link

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/article_340040.html

Detail API

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=340040

Order

340,040

Type

Research in linguistic and literary studies

Type Code

2,266

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Linguistics and Translation

Publication Link

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Evaluating the Rendering of Definiteness and Indefiniteness in Al-Baqara and Al-A'raf into English: A Syntactic and Semantic Study

Details

Type

Article

Created At

28 Dec 2024