VERBAL TENSE AS A LEXICOGRAPHICAL DEVICE: THE MADI–MUDARI'–AMR DISTRIBUTION IN AL-ZAMAKHSHARI’S ASAS AL-BALAGHA

Abstract

This article examines how the three finite forms of the Arabic verb al- madī (perfect), al-mudariʿ (imperfect) and al-amr (imperative) are distributed within the microstructure of the dictionary entry in Maḥmūd al-Zamakhsharī’s Asas al- balagha (composed before 538/1144). Working from the critical edition of ʿUyūn al- Sūd (al-Zamakhsharī, 1998) and from a sample of entries drawn from nine alphabetical chapters, the study shows that the three forms are not interchangeable stylistic variants but occupy fixed and functionally distinct positions. The madī opens the entry and anchors the literal (ḥaqīqī) sense; the mudariʿ follows immediately, discloses the vocalic pattern of the root and, in the illustrative material, becomes the preferred vehicle of processual, imminent and personified readings; the amr appears almost exclusively inside quoted Qurʾanic, prophetic and proverbial material, where it carries pragmatic rather than lexical information. The paper argues that this distribution constitutes independent lexicographical evidence bearing on the long-standing debate over whether the Arabic verb encodes tense or aspect, since a dictionary reveals which form its compiler treated as the unmarked citation form. It further shows that a substantial portion of the figurative layer introduced by the formula wa-min al-majaz is carried by the mudariʿ rather than by the perfect, which links verbal morphology directly to the rhetorical purpose announced in the work’s title.