Acoustic Prepositional Deletion in the Quran: The Case of إلى , ilā. A Constructional Grammar Approach

The purpose of this study is to investigate the linguistic phenomenon of Acoustic Prepositional Deletion (APD) ( نزع الخافض سماعيا , nazʿi al-khāfiḍ smaʿyan) in the Quran. It mainly addresses deleting thepreposition إلى , ilā from some verses of the Quran despite being preceded by an intransitive verb. Thestudy applies the perspective of Cognitive Linguistic (CL) theory and its relevant approaches to the analysis of the data included. Construction Grammar (CxG) is mainly used to examine to what extent the (non)existence of an element (i.e. preposition) of a particular construction may lead to the alternation of the spatial relationships existing between its elements, and what consequences may appear due to the manipulation of the existing relationships. The study finds that APD results in new partially or totally different, opposite or negative, abstract or manner spatial relationships between the construction entities which in turn result in different semantic conceptualization of these relationships. It also finds out that the degree of loyalty to the spatial scene in the Target Text (TT) varies from partially loyal to disloyal. This validates Croft’s (2001-2017) hypothesis that meaning is both construction and language specific.