The circumstantial clause (al-ǧumla al-ḥāliyya) is one of the syntactic structures in Arabic that received due attention in Arabic grammatical description throughout the time span from the era of classical Arabic until the present day. Various forms of the circumstantial clause were therein described, including its syndetic and asyndetic, nominal and verbal form, the form it takes depending on the time of events in the main clause and the circumstantial clause, as well as the relationship between the circumstantial clause and the circumstantial accusative as its non-finite equivalent. Still, in the extensive and widespread description of the circumstantial clause, fully justified by its frequent use in Arabic, the syntactic functions of this clause are mentioned only rarely and sporadically, lacking a systematic analysis. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is the analysis of various syntactic functions that circumstantial clauses can take in the Arabic complex sentence. Such an analysis shows that this syntactic category, special in so many ways, whose subordinating conjunction is at the same time the most frequent coordinating conjunction in Arabic, covers a wide spectrum of syntactic functions in Arabic clauses, from verb phrase modifiers to noun phrase modifiers and, although less frequently and with limited distribution, to verb phrase complements. Such a wealth of syntactic functions certainly deserves to be a subject of a systematic description.

From the point of view of syntactic analysis, the main features of texts belong­ing to literary style are the unlimited freedom and absence of rules which in other functional styles dictate the characteristic use of syntactic patterns and structures, as well as means of text cohesion. That is why it is difficult to discuss the specific features of the syntax of literary style in general. Instead, it is possible to analyze the use of syntax as an element of style of individual authors, literary movements or genres. However, it is not the syntactic features that could be analyzed as building blocks of unique, homogenous style of Yusuf Idris that served as motivation for writing of this paper. Quite the contrary, the paper draws attention to markedly different syntactic devices used by this writer in different short stories. The central focus of the paper is the analysis of these syntactic devices in several short stories of Yusuf Idris, which aims to show that the use of syntax therein is not simply means or form used by the writer to convey the content of the story. Actually, this syntactic warp and woof of the story, packed with various syntactic figures, not only works together with the story content and tells one part of it but often speaks louder than words, forming unique narrative devices.