A semantic investigation of the imperative and negative imperative resulting prohibition mood in the English interpretation of the Holy Quran

Abstract EN

Imperative is defined as the speaker exerts a high degree of force in deictic setting toward the addressee, who will thereby perform an action in a hypothetical setting.

Imperative mood significance is underlined in the way that the speaker requires some action on the part of the person addressed.

Imperative mood has a number of syntactic and semantic characteristics, which may be summarized as follows: syntactically, the imperative has no voice, auxiliary, modal and tense elements and, usually, no overt subject.

A problem is aggravated by its semantic potential in which the latent problem for using the imperative mood in Quran is that the hearer, the listener or the reader might face confusion whether it is a command, a negative prohibition, or entreaty of prayer.

The challenge of imperatives in Quran interpretation is that the speech act is not assigned to a particular utterance of imperative sentence.

It is not possible to know on the basis of syntactic features, whether to interpret it as a command, a piece of advice or a request without knowing the situational context.

Imperative is that performing directive speech acts which can be understood as utterances whose function is to provide the hearer with a reason to act.

Each possible interpretation would reflect the intention of the sender.

This could confirm a strong component of implicit meaning in the imperative.

Imperative mood has the attraction of being neither overly restrictive sense, it does not rule out the possibility of non-directive uses nor-overlay inclusive one, it does rule in forms that are used to perform directives Keywords: Imperative