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چکیده
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This study examined a semantic analysis of lexical relations in “One Thousand and One Nights”, a cornerstone of Arabic and world literature. Traditional literary criticism of the Nights has often been subjective, while a systematic, data-driven analysis of its lexico-semantic architecture has been hindered by the limitations of existing Arabic Natural Language Processing resources. To address this gap, this research employed a mixed-methods, corpus-assisted approach, synthesizing quantitative analysis of selected narratives with a close qualitative interpretation guided by Geoffrey Leech’s (1981) seven categories of meaning (conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflected, collocative, and thematic). The findings revealed, contrary to initial hypotheses, that antonymy is the most frequent and structurally prominent lexical relation, serving as the primary impetus for narrative conflict and thematic contrast. The analysis demonstrated how these relations, and most especially antonymy, are the primary tools for establishing and expanding key themes of fate, fortune, wealth, morality, and justice. Furthermore, the study identified distinct “lexical signatures” across different narrative genres (moral fables, urban tales, and adventure quests), concluding that this variety bears witness to a heterogeneous and evolving set of thematic preoccupations expressive of the Nights’ patchwork nature as a collection of stories from different historical and cultural strata. By grounding literary analysis in empirical lexicographical evidence, this research closes a methodological gap, offers a new appreciation of the text’s linguistic virtuosity, and develops a replicable model for the semantic analysis of other complex literary masterworks.
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