GRAMMATICAL ELLIPSIS IN (JAMI' AL-DURUS AL-ARABIYYA) BY AL-GHULAYNI AND (MA'ANI AL-NAHW) BY AL-SAMARRAI; A STANDARDIZED STUDY

Abstract

This study examines the phenomenon of grammatical ellipsis in *Jāmiʿ al-Durūs al-ʿArabiyya* by Muṣṭafā al-Ghalāyīnī and *Maʿānī all-nighter* by Fāḍil al-Sāmarrāʾī. It adopts a comparative approach that combines theoretical grounding with practical analysis. The study proceeds from the premise that ellipsis is one of the structural phenomena involving the omission of an element of the sentence—whether a particle, noun, or verb while retaining a verbal or contextual indicator that points to the omitted element. Its principal causes include the hearer’s awareness of the omitted element, frequent usage, excessive length of expression, and poetic necessity.
The study aims to identify and examine the instances of ellipsis addressed in the two works, clarify their types and conditions, and compare al-Ghalāyīnī’s pedagogical and procedural approach with al-Sāmarrāʾī’s semantic and analytical approach to this phenomenon. The study concludes that the two works converge in their treatment of several fundamental grammatical contexts, most notably the ellipsis of the direct object, the apodosis of a conditional sentence, the response to an oath, the vocative particle, and the negative particle *lā* in the response to an oath. Nevertheless, they differ in their analytical perspectives: al-Ghalāyīnī presents ellipsis as a rule-governed grammatical phenomenon, whereas al-Sāmarrāʾī approaches it as a semantic and rhetorical phenomenon that serves meaning and concision.