Marked word order in the Qur’ān: Functions and translation

Abstract

Word order in English is relatively fixed and the meaning of a sentence depends on the position of words in that sentence (Biber et al. 1999:898). Arabic, on the other hand, is more flexible as far as word order is concerned, thanks to its elaborate case marking and verb inflection systems. Moving elements within a sentence are called ‘foregrounding’, ‘inversion’, ‘preposing and postposing’ etc., in English and al-Taqdīm wa al-Ta’khīr in Arabic. The Qur’ān, rather than only using unmarked word orders, employs this linguistic feature of altering the order of elements within a clause for certain discursive functions. Drawing on the Arabic balāghah (Arabic art of eloquence) literature, this paper attempts, first, to establish some of the functions that are realised through using marked word order in the Qur’ān and, second, emphasise that word order in the Qur’ān is used to realise specific discursive functions, which should be taken into consideration when translating it into other languages, including English.