Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1
PhD Candidate, Qur’an and Hadith Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran
2
Associate Professor, Department of Qur’an and Hadith Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran;
3
Associate Professor, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran;
4
Professor, Department of Qur’an and Hadith Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran;
Abstract
The Qur’an has long been criticized in various ways and vis-a-vis Muslim scholars have strived to answer such criticism. Some criticisms aimed specifically at the literary structures of the Qur’an. “Returning the plural pronoun to the dual form”, as the Qur’an 22: 18 and 49: 9, as well as using the plural instead of dual form, as in the Qur’an 66: 4 and 5: 38, are among the most important examples of misconceptions about the issue of using plural structure for dual (al-muthannā). Concentrating the issue, this study aims to explain the use of plural form for dual from a linguistics perspective. In addition to the traditional syntactic answers, to see using the dual in one sentence as frowned upon, these views may also be criticized through the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages. Studying other Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Syriaic, etc., proves that in these languages the dual form is not used as a morphological structure but the plural form has been replaced of it. In these languages, only limited examples of dual words are found. In many Qu’anic verses, although the use of dual is done in accordance with the relevant rules, studying the unique structures of dual shows that this form in the Qur’anic Arabic language is flexible and, in some applications, like its relatives, tends to the plural structure. The use of the plural structure for the dual meaning in the Qur’an may be divided into these categories: 1- using the plural verb for dual, 2- using the plural pronoun for dual, 3- using the plural adverb for dual, 4- using the plural word for dual in the nominal case, and 5- using the plural adjective for dual.
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