Impersonal Constructions in the Qur’an Indicating General Reference and Referential Flexibility

Abstract

This study examines the use of impersonal constructions in the Qur’an. Although these constructions are conventionally associated with identifiable participants, in certain qur’anic cases they can take on interpretations in which the reference extends beyond a specific individual or group to an unspecified individual or people in general. To date, no systematic linguistic analysis has investigated how these constructions function in the Qur’an as a whole. This study addressed this gap by identifying the linguistic and discursive conditions in which these pronouns act as generalised references. Three pronominal categories are dealt with: first-person forms, second-person masculine forms, and third-person masculine singular/plural forms. The analysis is based on a corpus of 100 constructions selected from approximately 200 potential constructions. Cases whose referents were recoverable from syntactic, discourse cues or the historical context were excluded. The interpretation of the impersonal constructions is based on qur’anic exegesis, primarily al-Ṭabarī’s exegesis. The findings show that qur’anic impersonal constructions do not arise from morphology alone or from the absence of a referent; rather, their interpretation derives from the interaction between grammatical form and discourse context. Impersonal constructions tend to be general when plural forms are used to refer to non-specific human participants or groups. By contrast, singular pronouns are often referentially flexible, and can simultaneously accommodate a specific contextual referent, such as the Prophet Muḥammad, and a more generic or non-specific referent. The choice of the impersonal form is closely associated with contexts related to instruction, dialogue, proclamation, and reflection, where the communicative situation encourages the hearer/reader to extend the referent beyond the immediately identifiable participant to a wider class of potential individuals.