Conjunctive Word “Or” and its Equivalent in Persian: A Rhetorical and Semantic Study

Conjunctions making up a group of 10 types are of importance in Arabic. One of them -or- which is equivalent to "or" in Persians relates follower and followed in terms of meaning and role. It is said to have many implications in different contexts including Qur’an. This research is focused on the properties of this conjunction in both languages and the most important semantic features of them, and their grammatical structures. Also, it investigates the relationship between context and diexis in determining the meaning of the two conjunctions. The paper is based on an inductive-analytical methodology. It is a comparative study between “or” in Arabic and Persian. The study is aimed at describing grammatical, rhetorical, and semantic differences and similarities between them. For that matter, we selected poetic and prose passages of the holy Qur’an and those of Saadi, Molavi and Hafez. Research results are: “Or” in Arabic is used between the follower and followed while in Persian it is used before follower and between follower and followed. “Or” in Arabic and in Persian has multiple semantic meanings. Some of these semantic meanings are shared between these two languages while they can differ in terms of semantic aspects such as detail and pure differentiation which are commonly used in Arabic but are absent in Persian. ​