Aspects of Syntactic Ambiguity in Arabic Language and Their Impacts on the Translation of the Holy Quran

• Published in: Pizhūhish/hā-yi tarjumah dar zabān va adabiyyāt-i ̒arabī (Online) Vol. 6; no. 15; pp. 84 - 59
• Main Author: Yousef Nazari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Persian
• Published: Allameh Tabataba'i University Press 01.09.2016
• Subjects: quran; syntactic ambiguity; translation
• ISSN: 2980-7735; 2538-2608
• DOI: 10.22054/rctall.2016.7217

Syntactic ambiguity is divided into linguistic and literary types. Grammatical ambiguity is a type of linguistic ambiguity which is in turn divided into group and structural types. This type of ambiguity refers to situations when the arrangements of words make different meanings. The meanings can be integrated, but, they sometimes are in conflict with each other. Addition of the infinitive to the subject or object, the reference of a pronoun, using conjunctions to connect the modified or modifiers, having declarative or compositional sentences, clauses, having several cases, similarity of case roles, genitive conjunction, cognate object, cause, adverbial and object, statement, the similarity between conjunctives and connectives, subsidiary subject and predicate, and several meanings of prepositions are aspects of syntactic ambiguity that have been considered in this study and are effective in translations of the Holy Quran. Attention to the linguistic and non-linguistic contexts of the utterances can to a large extent resolve difficulties in understanding meaning. The problem lies in situations where there are not enough clues for understanding meanings, and it is not possible to integrate different meanings.