ELLIPSIS IN THE QURANIC STORY OF JOSEPH: A TEXTUAL VIEW

Abstract

This paper describes the phenomenon of ellipsis in the story of Joseph, analysing the original Arabic text, at the structural level from a textual viewpoint. It is limited to an examination of the role of the ellipsis as a grammatical cohesive element. The textual approach to ellipsis is new to Arabic linguistic scholarship whose focus was exclusively on the formal relations, dictated by the syntactic rules, between the elements of the sentence. Ellipsis in Arabic is a multi-faceted topic elaborated under, and diffused through, different categories of grammar and rhetoric. As to the Qur’an it has been described by both grammarians & rhetoricians. Theoretical and applied considerations of the ellipsis topic are, therefore, highly interwoven. The results show that this story made use of ellipsis, as well as other devices, in particular the concealed subject pronouns and the narrative techniques, in building up cohesiveness. Further studies, both of this story and other stories, are required to shed more light on other elements involved in the text making.