Stylistics of Grammatical Structures: The Presence of Verbs and their Temporal Connotations in the Poetry Book "Fragments of a Woman" by Soaud Al-Sabah as a Model

Abstract

In this article, we focused on the presence of verbs and nouns in Su‘ād al-Ṣabāḥ Fatāfīt Imraʼa (Fragments of a Woman), and on the significance of tense verbs as a section of grammatical structures, which in turn are considered part of the structural methods. Fatāfīt Imraʼa, with most of its poems, is a revolutionary work for its rejection of the humiliating reality, and social postulates that made the man dominant in his relationship with women. Since the revolution is based on changing the existing reality, and change is associated with actions (verbs), rather than nouns that indicate stability and consistency. We found that most of the revolutionary poems have a notably high ratio of verbs to nouns compared to those in which the persona feels emotional, social or patriotic satisfaction. About the significance of tense verbs, we found that the poems in which the past tense predominates depict a steady state that does not change or that it depicts a state that was intended to be attached and entrenched in the minds of the readers to influencing them, while the present tense was in most of the poems that depicted continual states. The style of speech that Al-Sabah followed in many of her poems contributed to the use of imperative verbs, but in a different way. When the persona was optimistic about the change and renewal that the future would bring, to move to a better situation, the presence of imperative verbs increased, and when she did not hope for anything from the future, it was less or completely gone.