Re: Sisters of kaana...asbaHaa, adHaa, zalla, amsaa, baataa

qureshna@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 schrieb:


> Dear Dr. Ibrahim, assalaamu 'alaikum,
>
> Thank you for your explanation. My original question was...
>
> For " asbaHaa Zaid(un) mariiDan", if the modern meaning is "Zaid became
> ill", what was the concept (meaning) of this sentence in an Arabic
> speaker's mind in Classical times?
>
> i.e. Did it mean,
>
> When it was morning, Zaid bwcame ill....? or can you offer a more
> accurate representatiion.

qureshna@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 schrieb:


> For " asbaHaa Zaid(un) mariiDan", if the modern meaning is "Zaid became
> ill", what was the concept (meaning) of this sentence in an Arabic
> speaker's mind in Classical times?
>
> i.e. Did it mean,
>
> When it was morning, Zaid bwcame ill....? or can you offer a more
> accurate representatiion.

May be it meant originally "he was ill when it was morning". The
existence of different words like:
 ?aSbaHa, Ghada:, ?DHa:, ?amsa:
might show the original literal meaning was in mind and sup****t your
idea. But this is the literal meaning and very unlikely that the words
were used literally for a long time after they had been coined. As you
may know times of the day are used not only lierally "congruently" but
mostly metaphorically. This is how language works. It might have meant:
he was ill as day or dawn broke.

Since Arabs are past-oriented appointments for example are made for a
time of the day rather than specific hours. So you need to know the
early Arab time concept.The time concept in the Arab world is still
traditional and additionally sup****ted by religion (praying five times
a day  (Islam).

But even in English you use the word "dawn" metaphorically: it
suddenly dawned on me...
This might give the impression: all of a sudden an idea came to me. The
Arabs might have meant it that way ie synonymous with "suddenly". These
metaphors are then lexicalised very early as I already said which we
cannot trace back so easily. We can only speculate because time and
place of the coinage of such lexical items and how long their literal
meaning was in use, can never be told precisley.