“We call those things figurative, unlike the expressions used in the Quran and similar Arabic speech,” then their terminology is closer to being correct than that of those who classify most Arabic speech as figurative. Thus, Ibn Jinnī is reported to have said: “The statement ‘Zayd went out’ is figurative, because the verb denotes the verbal noun, and the verbal noun made definite by the definite article encompasses every instance of going out. This would entail that Zayd performed every kind of going out. This is the literal meaning of the expression; if a single instance of going out is intended, it is figurative.”
No one who properly conceives what he is saying would say this. Ibn Jinnī possessed learning and intelligence, and probed subtle meanings in Sirr al-Sināʿa, al-Khasāʾis, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, and elsewhere. If he did not say this, that would be more in keeping with his scholarly merit. If he did say it, even a learned man may say something that otherwise only the most ignorant would say.
The verb denotes only what the verbal noun names: the action as such, without any qualification of universality or, indeed, any other qualification. Thus, when one says, “Zayd went out,” “Bakr stood up,” or something similar, the verb indicates that an act of going out or standing up occurred on his part, without the wording indicating its kind or extent. Rather, it can apply to these as alternatives, not collectively, as in His words:
“Then the freeing of a slave.”
He has required the freeing of one slave, not every slave; and the expression encompasses all