MECHANISMS OF INDICATING HYPERBOLE BEYOND HYPERBOLIC FORMS: A MORPHO-SEMANTIC STUDY IN ARABIC TEXTS

Abstract

This study revisits the concept of hyperbole (mubālaghah) in Arabic morphological scholarship, moving beyond its confinement to the conventional forms known as 'ṣiyagh al-mubālaghah', and viewing hyperbole instead as a broader morphological, contextual, and rhetorical phenomenon that may manifest across structures not belonging to that narrow terminological category. The study proceeds from the hypothesis that hyperbolic meaning may arise from morphological structure, from deviation or substitution between forms, from context, or from the interaction between morphology and rhetoric. Adopting the descriptive-analytical method, the study concludes that the rule "an increase in form necessitates an increase in meaning" is insufficient on its own to establish hyperbole, since an addition may equally indicate request, receptiveness, participation, or gradation. The study organizes the semantic indications of hyperbole outside its conventional forms into four major pathways: hyperbole arising from morphological structure, from deviation and substitution, from context and situation, and from the interaction between morphology and rhetoric - while affirming that structures vary in their degree of indicating hyperbole: some do so predominantly, some only when contextually supported, and some remain semantically ambiguous.