Dreaming of Poetry & Grammar

Not last night but the night before, I dreamt of a line of poetry:

آليت أي أقسمت والقسم بر لو تاب من عصى لعز وانتصر

Meaning:

I swear (i.e. I take an oath), and an oath is piety,
If he who sins repents, he would become dignified and attain victory.

While externally this line seems to be talking about sin, it is actually about grammar. In Arabic, as in English, sentences can sometimes take the place of individual nouns. However, there are also places where a sentence could never be replaced by a noun, or any other single word for that matter. Arabic is a highly inflected language, and almost all nouns and adjectives are subject to inflection. Since a word can never replace sentences in these cases, inflection can never be ascribed to such sentences. Such sentences in Arabic are referred to as, "having no grammatical place" (لا محل له من الإعراب); they are:

1. Independent sentences, such as, "I swear" (آليت);
2. Explanatory sentences, such as, "(i.e. I tak an oath)" (أي أقسمت);
3. Parenthetical sentences, such as, "and an oath is piety" (والقسم بر);
4. The subject of an oath, such as, "If he he sins" (لو تاب);
5. Sentences containing the cause of a non-genitive conditional, such as, "he who sins repents" (تاب من عصى);
6. The clauses of relative pronouns, such as, "[he] sins" (عصى), as these contain an implicit pronoun that is their subject and thereby compromise a full sentence;
7. The effect of a non-genitive conditional, such as, "he would become dignified" (لعز);
8. Any sentence that is conjoined to a sentence that has no grammatical place, such as, "[he would] attain victory" (وانتصر), which is once again, a complete sentence.