LessonsSupplementary Practice 12: Rhetorical Evidence, Competing Analyses and Reasoned RevisionQuiz

إِنَّ الْعُمَّالَ ـ وَهُمْ، وَالْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ، آمِنُونَ ـ سَيُتِمُّونَ الْعَمَلَ.
The workers—who are, praise be to God, safe—will certainly finish the work.

Wa-l-ḥamdu lillāh is an inserted expression of praise. Removing it leaves the main predication, inna al-ʿummāla ... sayutimūna al-ʿamala, intact; wa-hum āminūn still supplies a description of the workers' condition. The two insertions have different functions: independent praise and a circumstantial report.

An expression is not parenthetical simply because it sits in the middle of another. Its syntactic position, relation to the subject and rhetorical purpose must all be considered.

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Parenthesis and the main syntactic course

Supplementary Practice 12: Rhetorical Evidence, Competing Analyses and Reasoned Revision

إِنَّ الْعُمَّالَ ـ وَهُمْ، وَالْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ، آمِنُونَ ـ سَيُتِمُّونَ الْعَمَلَ.
The workers—who are, praise be to God, safe—will certainly finish the work.

Wa-l-ḥamdu lillāh is an inserted expression of praise. Removing it leaves the main predication, inna al-ʿummāla ... sayutimūna al-ʿamala, intact; wa-hum āminūn still supplies a description of the workers' condition. The two insertions have different functions: independent praise and a circumstantial report.

An expression is not parenthetical simply because it sits in the middle of another. Its syntactic position, relation to the subject and rhetorical purpose must all be considered.