Discourse functions of opposition in Classical Arabic: The case in Ḥadīth Genre

This article offers a new perspective on Arabic antonymy 'al-ṭibāq' and opposition 'al-muqābala' in the Ḥadīth discourse by remodeling these two phenomena in Classical Arabic and developing a provisional typology of their discourse functions (e.g., co-ordination, sub-ordination, interrogation, comparison) in terms of their syntactic frameworks or environments (e.g., X and Y, if X then Y, X or Y?, X more/less [adj] than Y). These syntactic frames function as parametrical triggers of both canonical and non-canonical oppositions in the prophetic discourse. The provisional typology employs quantitative and qualitative approaches, adding substantial data-driven changes and introducing new data-based categories. Two full datasets have been manually mined and collected from the two major Ḥadīth collections, then tested quantitatively and qualitatively against the remodeled typology.1 Results demonstrate that the syntactic environments hosting canonical antonyms trigger oppositions between other items that are (non)canonical opposites and non-opposites and that represent a variety of (in)human, (in)animate and (in)concrete entities. The proposed typology may serve as a new toolkit for investigating aspects of lexical-semantic opposition in other discourses and languages.