indicates what the discourse signifies. Its apparent meaning is therefore what becomes evident through this knowledge.

The second point is that the expressions grammarians call zurūf (adverbials, literally “containers”) relate in different ways to the meanings of nouns and verbs, which grammarians call their “contents,” according to the actual nature of those contents. Whoever fails to recognize this variation will go astray on this point, as many people have done. They observed that what speakers of the language call containers and receptacles are, by their nature, distinct from the things contained within them—as with liquids in vessels, or solid bodies within the clothing, dwellings, and other things that surround them. They also saw grammarians calling certain expressions “containers,” and consequently believed that these expressions must, in the language itself, signify something surrounding and encompassing its contents, just as a vessel surrounds the milk, wine, or water it contains.

One of them says: “Fī (‘in’) denotes containment, and a container encompasses its contents.” This is mistaken. The Arabs did not say, “Fī denotes containment,” such that the meaning of one expression in their speech could be taken as the meaning of the other, on the grounds that the presumption is against equivocation. Rather, they used these