The Quran. Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura: Adjectives, Nouns, Proper Nouns and Verbs 9781463245238

Table of contents :
Introduction
Attribution
Corrigenda in the Tanzil.net Uthmani Text
The Suras of the Quran
Critical values of Pearson’s r for each Sura
Transcription
The Quran: Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura. Part 1
The Quran: Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura. Part 2

Citation preview

The Quran: Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura

Gorgias Islamic Studies

18

Gorgias Islamic Studies spans a wide range of subject areas, seeking to understand Islam as a complete cultural and religious unity. This series draws together political, socio-cultural, textual, and historical approaches from across disciplines. Containing monographs, edited collections of essays, and primary source texts in translation, this series seeks to present a comprehensive, critical, and constructive picture of this centuries- and continent-spanning religion.

‫القرٓان‬ The Quran Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura Adjectives, Nouns, Proper Nouns and Verbs Volume 10 Š-Ṭ / ʾātā - ʾadḫala /

‫ط‬-‫ش‬

‫ أدخل‬- ‫ٓاتى‬

Elie Wardini

gp 2023

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com 2023 Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܓ‬

1

2023

ISBN 978-1-4632-4522-1

ISSN 2637-3998

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

The Quran: Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Word Distribution and Lexical Associations by Sura, is to present key data related to the lexicon of the Quran, in terms of Key Word distribution and lexical associations as attested in each sura. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text (for attribution see below). This text is widely used, and we have conducted some comparison to pre-digital age printed editions of the Quran. All vocalized Arabic text is quoted unaltered in any shape or form from the Tanzil text. Unvocalized Arabic text and transcriptions are my own. In this volume, each Key Word (KW), here adjectives, nouns, proper nouns and verbs, in the Quran which lemma begins with Š/‫ ش‬through Ṭ/‫ ط‬is presented together with the following key data: Degree of Concentration, Distribution and Weighted Distribution by Sura and by Aya of Respective Sura, Relative Position in Ayas, Attested Forms in Respective Sura, Correlations by Sura and Collocations by Sura. The Key Words are always referenced by their lemma and are sorted alphabetically according to Arabic and UNICODE order with minor adjustments for consistency. In lemmatizing the words, no atention has been given to the semantics of each word. Only on rare occasion have similar forms of words or proper nouns been separated in order to avoid confusion. In assigning each word a lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionaries have been consulted. Deciding on these is not always obvious, since classical dictionaries and commentaries someiii

times either disagree or present divergent variant readings or root and lemma attributions. In the present series, the following definitions and computations are applied and the results presented: • Degree of Concentration (°concentration): a. nr. of attestations of the KW in the Quran b. nr. of ayas in which the KW is attested c. nr. of suras in which the KW is attested d. nr. of unique collocations* with which the KW is attested => °concentration of the KW *For a definition of collocation, see below.

Degree of Concentration is based on the four data points a, b, c and d, as described above, where each data point is a vector which magnitude influences the overall spread of the Key Word in the Quran. The resultant °concentration (in %) is therefore a normalized vector which is computed as follows: °concentration = 1/z (inverse of spread) z = normalized y (**see definition below) y = √x (in order to accommodate extreme variation) x = √(a² + b² + c² + d²) (sum of vectors in 4D) **Normalized where 1 attestation, in 1 aya, in 1 sura with 0 collocations = 100% °concentration (16 cases are attested).

• Weighted Distribution: e. nr. of attestations of the KW in each aya or sura => weighted distribution of the KW in each aya or sura

Weighted Distribution (WD) is computed as follows: WD = √w (in order to accommodate extreme variation) w = nr. of attestations of KW in aya or sura / total nr. of words in aya or sura iv

The Weighted Distribution of a certain Key Word represents therefore of the percentage that each Key Word occupies in an aya or sura relative to the total nr. of words in that aya or sura. The following graph plots the weighted value of 1 word in each sura. It forms a background base-line (in grey) for the relative Weighted Distribution of each Key Word attested in the Quran (in black under each lemma). 0

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The Weighted Distribution of Key Words across the suras is represented graphically and is placed after the list of the numbers of attestations of each Key Word in the suras. The following graph plots the weighted value of each Key Word in the ayas of each sura in which it is attested. The dot followed by a number on the x-axis represents the number of ayas in each sura. 200

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10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 260 270 280

The Weighted Distribution of Key Words across the ayas of a sura is represented graphically and is placed after the list of the numbers of attestations of each Key Word in the respective sura. • Relative Position of Kew Words in the Ayas: The Relative Position of Key Words in the Ayas is a graphical representation of the relative position(s) each Key Word occupies in the ayas of the Quran in which it is attested. Due to the large variation in aya length, the normalized relative position of a Key Word in an aya is calculated as follows:

v

absolute position of KW in an aya = x number of words in the aya = y relative position of KW in 10 tiers of 10% = ⸢x/y⸣

This calculation normalizes the position of a Key Word in an aya into a percentage of the length of the aya. The length of an aya in percent can be divided into 10 tiers of 10%, from 0.1 to 1, with 0.1 intervals. The calculation of the ceiling ⸢x/y⸣ of each attestation of each Key Word places this specific attestation of the Key Word in its respective 10% tier. The following graph represents the cumulative number of attestations of the Key Word ʾātā, as an example, in each 10% tier. The maximum (max), minimum (min) and standard deviation (st.dev) of the cumulative attestations are also presented in the graph. max: min: st.dev:

17% 2% 5%

18% 17% 16% 15% 14% 13% 12% 11% 10% 9% 8% 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% ► 0%

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• Attested Forms of the Key Words: The attested forms and frequency of each Key Word in the respective suras are listed alphabetically. • Correlations: Correlations are relative distribution patterns of Key Words within each sura. Correlations are calculated with Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient r for each Key Word attested in a sura relative to every other attested Key Word in the same sura. In the present work, correlations are based on the Weighted Distribution (as defined above) of each Key Word in every aya in which it is attested within a sura. r ranges from -1 (100% inversely correlated) to 1 (100% correlated). The (statistically significant) critical value for n=nr. of ayas in each sura is |r|≥r.Critical (see table below), vi

0,4 0,6 0,8 0

where α=0.05 and p≤0.05. The null and alternate hypotheses (H0 & Ha) are as follows: H0: the distribution of KW1 is statistically different from KW2 Ha: the distribution of KW1 is statistically similar to KW2

Key Words that have a relative correlation coefficient that is less than the critical value |r|