A Lexical-Semantic Study of Compositionality in Knowers Monologue of Imam Al-Sajjad (Peace be upon him)

Abstract

Compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is governed by the meanings of its constituents and the rules used to combine them. This study seeks to be an attempt to shed light on how the meanings of parts of expression constitute the meaning of the whole expression. The study opines to apply this principle in the Arabic prayer of Knowers Monologue of Al-Imam Al-Sjjad (Peace be upon him). The study adopts Leech and Short's lexical categories (2007) as a model for analysis. The study reveals that Arabic prayer focuses on intransitive verbs and prepositional phrases to constitute the whole intended meaning.