الِاسْتِفْهَامُ بِبَاقِي الْأَلْفَاظِ
Interrogation with the remaining expressions.
Hal primarily requests assent and may precede both nominal and verbal clauses, while unusual fronting and the future sense of the imperfect demand careful treatment. The nominal/verbal contrast in the Qurʾānic gratitude example is part of the same larger rhetoric of questioning.
The next subsection treats mā, man, ayy, kam, kayfa, ayna, matā, ayyāna, annā and similar words. They characteristically seek particular kinds of unknown components, in contrast with hal’s principal yes/no function.