Literary Quranic Researches

Literary Quranic Researches

A Cognitive Approach to the Semantic Analysis of the Qur’anic Word "Qara'a" and the Frequency of Using Its Semantic Equivalents in Fouladvand and Elahi Ghomshei's Translations

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
fatameh nosrati mumvandi 1
Hayat Ameri 2
RezaMorad Sahraei 3
Abbas Ashrafi 4
1 Department of Science and Research branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Ira
2 Corresponding Author: Associate Professor of Linguistics, Tarbiat Modarres University
3 Associate Professor of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University
4 . Associate Professor of Quranic and Hadith Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University; Email: abbas.ashrafi@yahoo.com
Abstract
Polysemy has had a special place among translators and interpreters from the far past. Analyzing semantic relations, including polysemy, is also important among linguists. Understanding the Qur’an requires understanding its various components. If the semantic relations of Qur’anic concepts are ignored, the understanding of the Qur’an will be incomplete because of being linear and partial. But understanding the semantic relations of the Qur’an based on radial networks and Qur’anic phenomena and concepts provides readers of the Qur’an with a holistic and process-like understanding. The present study aimed to study the radial network of the word "Qara'a" in all surahs taking a social cognitive approach. As a result, the usage of the radial meanings and the prototypical meaning of the aforementioned word were examined in two translations of the Qur’an by Fooladvand and Elahi Ghomshei. To this end, first, different meanings of Qara'a in three important dictionaries namely Farhang Abjadi Alefbaee Arabi Farsi, the Full Translation of Almonjad Alabjadi, Ghamous-e Qur’an, and Tarjomeh Va Tahghigh-e Mofradat Alfaz-e Qur’an Ba Tafsire Loghavi Va Adabi Qur’an, were obtained. In the next step to determine the radial meanings and the prototypical meaning of the word under study, Tyler and Evans (2003)’s criteria including confirmation of meaning, predominance in meaning network, being used in combined constructions, and grammatical prediction were used. In the final stage, how radial meanings are derived from the prototypical meaning was explained. The analysis showed that devices such as metaphorical expansion and image schema play the main role in expanding the prototypical meaning of the word "Qara'a". Meanwhile, metaphorical expansion plays the main role in expanding the prototypical meaning. Additionally, it was found that variation in finding equivalents for the word "Qara'a" based on the radial meanings and the prototypical meaning is very low and restricted.
 
Keywords
cognitive semantics
radial network
prototypical meaning
the language of the Qur’an
polysemy
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