Enna and Anna between Infinitive and Emphasis

The cases of enna and anna are telling examples of the normative tradition in Arabic syntax. Grammarians believe that enna and anna are both emphatic. According to them, anna can be infinitive, too, and enna is never used infinitively. The main purpose of this article is to show that enna can be used infinitively as well as emphatically and anna is not emphatic but appears at the beginning of a nominal sentence, changing it to an infinitivized sentence. For the sake of clarity for readers, this article explains the conditions of fat'h anna and kasr enna, when they are obligatory and when they are just allowed or being optional. This, very well, shows the prescriptiveness of the traditional Arabic grammars. The article pivots around two points: the first is the reasons that enna is emphatic, and the second is that the claim that enna is never used infinitively is not true. The article uses the descriptive style of Arabic syntax, which stresses the description of language not the application syntactic prescriptions or the close relationship between sounds and meaning. The article proves that there is no justification for anna to be used emphatically and there is no obstacle for enna occasionally used infinitively in the middle of sentences. The article deals with an important point that it is not important whether or not changing to infinitive is possible; what is important is the position of the sentences with enna and the meaning which comes to the mind.