The adverbial function of qur'ānic verbal nouns taking the position of hāl

Of Arabic verbal nouns' various functions, this article focuses on their taking the position of hāl 'circumstantial accusative'. Arab grammarians claim that a plain infinitive may replace a participle in the accusative, assuming the same meaning as the participle. I argue, however, that from the point of view of modern linguistics, these verbal nouns might be interpreted as having an adverbial function; more precisely, they perform the semantic-aspectual features of two types of adverbs: manner adverbs, which specify the mode of action, and state-of-mind adverbs, which describe a state of mind experienced by the agent of the action.