زَيْدٌ يَعْلَمُ النَّحْوَ وَالْعَرُوضَ لَا الصَّرْفَ
Zayd knows grammar and prosody, but not morphology.
The sentence affirms certain fields of knowledge and explicitly excludes another. Since the subject stays fixed while descriptions are compared, the limitation concerns properties attributed to a single subject.
By contrast, “Zayd knows it, not Amr” contrasts the holders of a property. One must inspect which side varies before naming the type of restriction.
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Restriction by Fronting and the Rhetorical Contrast of Qasr Methods
زَيْدٌ يَعْلَمُ النَّحْوَ وَالْعَرُوضَ لَا الصَّرْفَ
Zayd knows grammar and prosody, but not morphology.
The sentence affirms certain fields of knowledge and explicitly excludes another. Since the subject stays fixed while descriptions are compared, the limitation concerns properties attributed to a single subject.
By contrast, “Zayd knows it, not Amr” contrasts the holders of a property. One must inspect which side varies before naming the type of restriction.