ABSTRACT
Cyclical modification in Qur’anic discourse is an untapped linguistic investigation – neither by Arab nor Western linguists. This is an empirical investigation based on a thorough reading of the entire Qur’anic text, looking for examples. The present analysis provides an insight into the recurrence of cyclical modification, which is a Qur’an-bound linguistic idiosyncrasy that occurs throughout the Qur’an. For instance, it occurs in the first Qur’anic āyah (bism allāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm) and in the last Qur’anic sūrah Q114. The present analysis of the grammatical cyclical process of modification presents an interesting insight into the inherent nature of the noun (phrase) that is modified recurrently by a noun, a noun phrase or a clause. A theoretical discussion of the syntactic notion of modification will be provided to set the scene for a detailed and exemplified practical analysis.
