and, on the speaker’s side, his use of the expression without qualification. Yet there is no fixed criterion for this: in each instance, what first comes to the listener’s mind is whatever the evidence in that context indicates. If someone speaks of “the back of the road” or “its spine,” the back of an animal never comes to the listener’s mind; indeed, he considers it impossible that this could be intended.

The eighth response:

Your phrase, “from the unqualified use of the entire expression,” is ambiguous. If you mean that the expression is free of all qualifications, this never occurs.

For the inquiry concerns nouns as they occur in the speech of any speaker: Allah, His angels, His prophets, the jinn, and all other human beings and nations. An expression occurs only in conjunction with other words, within either a nominal or a verbal sentence. It necessarily comes from a speaker, and it can serve as evidence only when that speaker’s customary use of such an expression is known. Thus, we have a qualified expression conjoined with other words, a speaker whose customary usage is known, and a listener who knows the speaker’s customary use of that expression. These qualifications are indispensable to speech whose meaning can be understood; the expression cannot, therefore, be free of them. If he means that it is free of one qualification but not another, what he has said does not establish that.

It is thus clear that his statement comes down to what is understood when the expression is used without qualification.

The ninth response:

One may say to him: Mention whatever qualification you wish, and distinguish between a qualifier and what it qualifies. Whatever he mentions will be open to refutation. I shall show you, from the definitions you cite to distinguish literal from figurative usage, that what you classify as literal you also classify as figurative, and what