Religious Binomials in Hebrew and Arabic: A Review of Literature

Binomials (i.e., a collocation of two connected words belonging to the same word class, e.g., heaven and earth) are very frequent in every language. They are more commonly found in religious texts of Semitic languages. Compared to other types of collocations, religious binomials are sometimes idiomatic, alliterative, culture-specific, or adhere to one common word order.  However, compared to the dearth of studies on religious binomials in Hebrew, there is only one study on religious Arabic binomials used in a supplication. Studies on Hebrew focused on the constraints determining the order of binomial words, their semantic and grammatical categorization, how frequent they are, their functions, etc. Corpus-based studies on Semitic binomials were conducted for the purpose of proving that Semitic languages are similar.  Nevertheless, there are no studies that explored religious binomials in Arabic in relation to those used in Hebrew.  Thus, it might be insightful if future research on binomials focusses on religious ones in the Holy Qurʾān and Ḥadīth. 

According to Kopaczyk and Sauer (2017), labels used to describe binomials are sometimes misleading. For example, the term conjoined phrases may stand for longer constructions. On the other hand, the label word pairs generally refers to any type of collocation, whereas doublets has been used by linguists to refer to equivalents in translation (Borchers, 2007).
Other terms, including tautological pairs or repetitive pairs (Leisi, 1947;Koskenniemi, 1968), may exclude contrasting binomials while paired opposites (Cummings, 1980) is restricted to antonyms without any consideration of other types of binomials. It is important to note that the terms formulae, fixed coordinates and freezes (Abraham, 1950;Cooper & Ross, 1975;Birdsong, 1995;Fenk-Oczlon, 1989;Landsberg, 1995) draw attention to the formulaic or fixed nature of binomials (Kopaczyk & Sauer, 2017). However, not all binomials exhibit fixedness in the order of their conjuncts because diachronic corpus investigations have indicated that changes in the preferred order of elements are possible and determined by genre type (Mollin, 2014). Regardless of the label used to describe them, researchers agree with Malkiel (1959) who defined them as "a sequence of two words pertaining to the same form-class, placed on an identical level of syntactic hierarchy, and ordinarily connected by some kind of lexical link" (p. 113).

Methodological Approches to Binomials
Interest in binomials is not recent. Such constructions were analyzed and explored under various terms in English and German. A large body of research is on constraints governing their word order, and the category of binomials under investigation is irreversible binomials. According to Lohmann (2014), previous work on binomials followed one of the three methodological approaches: (a) impressionistic (i.e., a bit intuitive relying on a few examples, e.g., Malkiel, 1959), (b) experimental (i.e., psycholinguistic where data collected using judgment, production, or recognition tasks, e.g., Pinker & Birdsong, 1979), and (c) corpus based (i.e., using a big amount of electronic data, e.g., Gustafsson, 1975). However, the focus of this section is on corpusbased studies analyzing Arabic and Hebrew binomials in terms of semantic and grammatical categories and ordering constraints since binomials are considered an important feature of religious texts in Semitic languages.

Religious Binomials in Hebrew
Studies on religious binomials focused mainly on word pairs found in the Hebrew Bible. Such studies did not consider only binomials but also phrases and word groups in parallel structures. Speaking of their scope, Avishur (1984) wanted to prove how Semitic languages are similar because they share a number of binomials. However, the purpose of studies by Duke (2003) and Tvedtnes (1997) is to prove that the Book of Mormon is based on the Hebrew Bible, whereas Talshir (2013) listed the constraints that determine word order. It is important to note that all the mentioned studies are roughly corpus based. That is, Duke (2003) and Tvedtnes (1997) explored the Book of Mormon (i.e., scriptures of a religious group whose religion was founded by Joseph Smith in the US in 1830) which is of approximately 200,000 words, whereas Talshir (2013) investigated Late Biblical Hebrew, Classical Hebrew, Qumran (i.e., manuscripts discovered near Qumran), and two literatures (e.g., Tannaitic literature and Amoraic literature). On the other hand, Avishur (1984) listed religious word pairs found in Hebrew, Ugaritic (i.e., an ancient, extinct dialect of the Amorite language spoken between the 14 th and the 12 th century BC in Syria), Phoenician, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ammonite (i.e., an extinct Canaanite language), and the Bible. This section reviews studies by Duke (2003), Talshir (2013), and Landau (2017).
One of the oldest studies in the literature on religious binomials is by Avishur (1984) who listed word pairs common in the literatures of old Semitic languages (i.e., Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ammonite) and the Bible. The word pairs that were investigated were sometimes of body parts or proper names. Some are considered universal and found in Arabic (e.g., sun and moon, death and life, the earth and the sky, silver/gold, their eyes and their ears). As reported by Avishur (1984), the interest in studying binomials was because of their prosodic nature and their contribution to poetic parallelism, one of the characteristics of ancient Semitic literature. Additionally, he drew the attention to their relevance to Biblical studies since they may yield results in relation to lexicography, style, and exegesis. Avishur (1984) emphasized the importance of exploring binomials because they can provide answers to geographical questions or explanations to theological issues. He examined such word pairs as they occurred as binomial conjuncts or in parallel structures. The majority of the analyzed word pairs are nouns, and a few are verbs or adjectives. He also discussed reversible binomials. He noted that half of the pairs appeared in Semitic languages, and the other half reflected some literary affinity found in such languages. Based on findings, Hebrew is more related to Phoenician than Ugaritic.
Another similar study by Tvedtnes (1997) examined word groups (i.e., a sequence of three, four, five, or six words) in the Book of Mormon, and how such word groups relate the Book to the Biblical literature. Tvedtnes (1997) divided them into categories: (a) precious metals (e.g., gold/silver), (b) animals (e.g., flocks/herds), and (c) war weapons such as sword, spear, and dart. As mentioned above, Duke (2003) explored word pairs in the Book of Mormon. He reported that the Book of Mormon conformed to the principles of Hebrew Literature in terms of the use of conjoined and parallel word pairs. Duke (2003) focused on parallel and conjoined word pairs and differentiated between the two claiming that conjoined word pairs are connected with a conjunction, such as and, and occurred adjacent to one another and appeared on the same line. An example is good and evil which is used 17 times in the Bible and 24 times in the Book of Mormon. Additionally, he considered word pairs of four occurrences and more and included in the analysis triplets (i.e., three complementary words), quadruplets (i.e., four complementary words), other word groups such as prepositional phrases, and combinations of adjectives and nouns. According to Duke (2003), triplets and quadruplets are essentially of the complementary type because such sequences of words (e.g., grain/wine/oil) are never listed in a thesaurus; hence, they did not represent the category of synonyms. Duke (2003) noted that there are a number of functions that word pairs can serve. For example, they are used to maintain potential readers' attention because of their alliterative nature. Additionally, some pairs are used to repeat elements relevant to the Law of Moses (e.g., performances and ordinances). Other word pairs, however, are employed for theological significance (i.e., true/living God, flesh/blood, justice/mercy). Additionally, some other word pairs are universal or merisms (i.e., antonymous binomial conjuncts referring to one whole entity, e.g., heaven and earth for the whole universe  (2003), most of the word pairs he found are frequent in the Old or New Testaments. Duke (2003) recommended that any further investigation of word pairs should consider the variation in word order since some resist word order reversal while others exhibit variation in word order. Duke (2003) mentioned that Dahood (1972Dahood ( , 1975Dahood ( , 1981   Levites). Talshir (2013) did not consider only binomials but also construct phrases (e.g., in strong power), phrases with pronominal suffixes (e.g., his mighty power), and word pairs in parallel structures. According to Talshir (2013), binomial words can be near synonyms, antonyms, or co-hyponyms (i.e., complementary). Talshir (2013) focused on which constraints determine word order and reported on how frequent such constructions in religious writing. Talshir (2013) noted that power and strength and its variant strength and might occurred twice in the Hebrew Bible and twice in Qumran. Additionally, it occurred four times in the Tannaitic and Amoraic literature as strength and might and strongly and mightily. The binomial gladness and joy occurred 12 times and twice in the opposite order if it came as part of a longer string. It is used only once in Qumran. Regarding women and children without pronominal suffixes, it occurred eight times in Classical Hebrew and three times with no pronouns and in the opposite word order in Late Biblical Hebrew. Talshir (2013) stated that additional elements in a binomial will allow for its reversibility. Examples included the variants (i.e., your wives, children and your children, your wives). The binomial (i.e., women and children) appeared in Qumran twice as part of a longer sequence. In Tannaitic literature, the binomial appeared twice in different word orders. However, in Amoraic literature, the classical word order prevailed. Talshir (2013) commented that a binomial with a specific word order could reflect a specific time period.
As for antonyms such as little or big, great or small, larger and smaller, small and great, large and small, great and small, they occurred in both word orders and it is more commonly for small or little to precede great or big. In Qumran, the binomial the inferior his superior was found once. In Rabbinic literature, it is more common for big to precede small but binomials of both word orders were found. Binomials such as adult and minor sons, large or small, small or large, infants and adults, not a large and not a small are examples. As for young and old, it was used nine times in the classical books. As for the literature, the binomial with the opposite word order gained ground on four occasions and two times in Qumran. In Rabbinic literature, old and young appeared. Regarding the culture-specific binomial (i.e., priests and Levites), it was used 37 times in Late Biblical Hebrew and only once in Classical Hebrew. In Qumran, the binomial is treated as one unit, whereas in Tannaitic literature, it was employed for argumentation. As for Amoraic literature, the phrase was rarely used. Used as a single unit, the other culture-specific binomial (i.e., Judah and Benjamin) was found in Late Biblical Books with a total of 15 occurrences and it was used only once in the reverse order. The same binomial emerged also in Qumran literature and Rabbinic literature. Talshir (2013) concluded that cultural binomials do not belong to any semantic category, and that the six investigated binomials are either not used or rarely used in Classical Hebrew or exhibit the opposite word order. He also added that binomials characterize a specific time period where linguistic changes have been added gradually to religious books.
Another study is by Landau (2017) who examined the meanings of the words "morning" and "evening" in parallel structures in Biblical poetry. Landau (2017) noted that the word pair occurred twice as morning and evening and three times as evening and morning. He explained that the word pair is used as a merism referring to either "a day" or "a night" or as an instance of sequential parallelism to give the meaning that such a sequence of events lasts for a brief moment. Further, such word pairs can be also considered as an example of synonymous parallelism only when religious writers want to wrap up discussions in a faithful manner. He reported that all binomial conjuncts are nouns joined with the connector ‫و‬ 'and.' The only exception is ( ً ‫جاجا‬ ُ ‫أ‬ َ ‫و‬ ً ‫َا‬ ‫ب‬ ْ ‫َذ‬ ‫ع‬ 'sweet and saltish') which is of two adjectives. He noted that some binomials are opposites such as ‫ر(‬ ْ ‫س‬ ُ ‫ي‬ َ ‫و‬ ‫ر‬ ْ ‫س‬ ُ ‫ع‬ 'difficulty and prosperity'), ( َ ‫ر‬ َ ‫َم‬ ‫ْق‬ ‫ال‬ َ ‫و‬ َ ‫س‬ ْ ‫َّم‬ ‫الش‬ 'the sun and the moon'), etc., but some are near-synonyms including ‫وآمانه(‬ ‫أمنه‬ 'His security and protection') and ‫والفناء(‬ ‫الموت‬ 'death and mortality').

Religious Binomials in Arabic
As for ordering constraints, phonologically, the Short-Before-Long Principle (i.e., the first word is phonologically shorter than the second) applies to (

Conclusion and Suggestions for Further Research
As shown above, Duke (2003) tried to list all the word pairs in the Book of Mormon, whereas Talshir (2013) initiated a diachronic investigation of six binomial groups with their variants in Hebrew religious texts. However, it is apparent that Talshir (2013) confused lemmas with types since little or big, great or small, large and small, great and small have been treated as variants of the lemma (old and young). Nevertheless, the reviewed studies give a different categorization to binomials but added the category of figurative binomials and culture-specific ones (e.g., Duke, 2003;Talshir, 2013). In addition, binomials in religious texts can be analyzed in terms of specific semantic fields (e.g., Duke, 2003;Talshir, 2013).
In general, studies on religious binomials explored frequent pairs. Moreover, Duke (2003) set a minimum number of occurrences and noted that culture-specific binomials are more frequent than others. On the other hand, Landau (2017) explored one reversible binomial (i.e., morning and evening and evening and morning). Further, some studies focused on binomials' functions (e.g., Duke, 2003;Talshir, 2013) or their theological significance (Duke, 2003). Additionally, while Duke (2003) pointed to the importance of identifying reasons that determine variation in word order, Talshir (2013) summarized the constraints that dictate word order. However, his investigation lacks a rigorous statistical account of data. More significantly, Landau (2017) reported that each occurrence of a word pair gives a different meaning because of contextual reasons. It is important to note that studies on the Hebrew Bible drew researchers' attention to the study of binomials as an important feature of religious texts in Semitic languages. Also, in one type of texts, there will be different types of binomials that may serve different functions in which some are culture-specific, and others are considered to be universal (Bach, 2017). On the other hand, there is only one study on Arabic religious binomials by Mahdi (2016), and it explored binomials in terms of their syntactic and semantic structure besides constraints governing word order. Thus, because religious binomials in Arabic are under-researched, other relevant areas of research may address the alliterative nature of binomials in the Holy Qurʾān, factors determining the order of binomial words in the Holy Qur'ān and Ḥadīth, and their semantic and grammatical categories.

Conflicts of Interest:
The author declares no conflict of interest.