Attributive Relative Clauses Introduced by Adverbial Relativizers in Arabic

Abstract

Attributive relative clauses introduced by adverbial relativizers are rarely used in Modern Standard Arabic, and are completely absent in its syntactic description. The intriguing aspect of this type of relative clause lies in the fact that their attributive function is opposed to the main purpose of the use of adverbial relativizers, namely the formation of adverbial clauses. The main task of this paper is the analysis of examples of attributive relative clauses introduced by the adverbial relativizers ḥayṯu, ḥīna, ʻindamā, kamā and munḏu found in works belonging to Modern Standard Arabic. The analysis is based on the analytical–descriptive method and the typological–functional approach, which allow examining of attributive relative clauses introduced by adverbial relativizers from different perspectives.

Although the analysis will include exploring syntactic functions of head nouns in main and relative clauses, whereby the relative clause formation strategy using the relative word to encode the syntactic function of head noun in the relative clause is illustrated, this is not the only goal of the paper. The paper also aims to demonstrate that attributive relative clauses introduced by adverbial relativizers, although formally functioning as attributive modifiers, tend to convey diverse semantic content. Moreover, this type of Arabic relative clause is not only an embodiment of the law of linguistic economy but it also represents an exceptionally effective means of stylistic choice.