Document Type : research article

Author

• AliAkbar Mollaie

Abstract

Reading the Arabian poems attributed to pre-Islamic era, especially Mu’allaqat, one constantly faces a widespread linguistic phenomenon that somehow impedes the process of understanding “the signified” and the meaning of the poems. This linguistic technique is characterized by deletion of the qualified and replacement of one or more qualifiers for it. The phenomenon is today discussed in some references on meaning and locution as “figurative language based on qualifier” and in some others as “figurative semantic collocation”. The researcher hypothesises that the occurrence of this linguistic usage in pre-Islamic Arabian poetry is not a superficial and accidental occurrence, but a linguistic approach realized in the “syntagmatic axis” aimed at enriching the literariness of speech, being an eloquent selection much in line with the temperaments of those nomadic desert dwellers. In the present paper, this common linguistic occurrence is investigated in meaningful and basic connection with geography, thought, and culture of the pre-Islamic Arabs and their life conditions. The findings indicate that the process of deletion of the qualified and transfer of meaning to the qualifier creates a kind of succinctness and empowers the representational character, leading to better dynamicity of the reader’s mind.

Keywords

• Qualifier
• Qualified
• , pre-Islamic Arabian Poetry
• Language
• Semantic Collocation
• Desert Geography