LessonsStates of Assertoric Predication: Purposes of Reports and Three Audience StatesQuiz

رَبِّ إِنِّي وَضَعْتُهَا أُنْثَىٰ
My Lord, I have given birth to a girl.

The utterance occurs in Qur’an 3:36. It cannot be understood as an attempt to inform God of the child’s sex, which is already known to Him. Its rhetorical function includes expressing the mother’s grief or regret in that particular context of expectation.

This does not remove the sentence’s declarative structure. It reports an event, while the speaker’s dominant aim is not the ordinary conveyance of unknown information. Grammatical type and rhetorical purpose must be kept distinct.

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The report spoken by Mary’s mother

States of Assertoric Predication: Purposes of Reports and Three Audience States

رَبِّ إِنِّي وَضَعْتُهَا أُنْثَىٰ
My Lord, I have given birth to a girl.

The utterance occurs in Qur’an 3:36. It cannot be understood as an attempt to inform God of the child’s sex, which is already known to Him. Its rhetorical function includes expressing the mother’s grief or regret in that particular context of expectation.

This does not remove the sentence’s declarative structure. It reports an event, while the speaker’s dominant aim is not the ordinary conveyance of unknown information. Grammatical type and rhetorical purpose must be kept distinct.