This volume contains sixteen contributions from the fourth conference on the Foundations of Arabic linguistics (Genova, 2016), all having to do with the development of linguistic theory in the Arabic grammatical tradition, starting from Sībawayhi's Kitāb (end of the 8th century C.E.) and its continuing evolution in later grammarians up till the 14th century C.E. The scope of this volume includes the links between grammar and other disciplines, such as lexicography and logic, and the reception of Arabic grammar in the Persian and Malay linguistic tradition.
This volume includes the reflections of leading researchers on Arabic and Semitic languages, also understood as systems and representations. The work first deals with Biblical Hebrew, Early Aramaic, Afroasiatic and Semitic. Its core focuses on morpho-syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, rhetoric and logic matters, showing Arabic grammar's place within the system of the sciences of language. In the second part, authors deal with lexical issues, before they explore dialectology. The last stop is a reflection on how Arabic linguistics may prevent the understanding of the Arabs' own grammatical theory and the teaching and learning of Arabic.
Coastal Dhofari Arabic: A Sketch Grammar, Richard Davey provides a detailed description of a hitherto neglected Arabic dialect found in southern Oman. Previously recorded by Rhodokanakis, as part of the südarabische Expedition of the Austrian Imperial Academy, the dialect presented here offers a specific account of the day-to-day language spoken by the historical sedentary, coastal community.
Using data collected during 2010-2012, Richard Davey delivers an overview of the phonology, morphology and syntax of this variety. In addition to this, a lexicon of coastal Dhofari Arabic is provided, along with a discussion of its grammaticalized features. It is a timely account of a dialect that is endangered due to development, modernization, and the resulting social changes in Dhofar.
Morphemes combined with the Arabic noun are clearly described in the literature, but their interpretation can be somewhat nebulous, and a unified scholarly analysis does not as yet exist. This book proposes a new and unified perspective regarding these morphemes, analyzing them as copulae, and the constructions in which they occur as instances of predication.
Analyzing morphemes combined with the Arabic noun as copulae explains many of their puzzling properties (rise and loss of declension, proteiform nature of nunation, etc.). Emphasis is placed on data previously marginalized in the description of these morphemes, from pre-Classical Arabic transmitted by Arab Grammarians, Semitic languages that contributed to the emergence of Arabic through language contact, and roughly 30 languages genetically unrelated to Arabic.
The Subjunctive Mood in Arabic Grammatical Thought Arik Sadan outlines the grammatical theories on the
naṣb (subjunctive mood) in Classical Arabic. Examining over 160 treatises written by 85 grammarians, lexicographers and Qurʾān commentators, the author defines and characterizes the opinions of medieval Arab grammarians concerning this mood in the verbal system of Classical Arabic. Special attention is given to the prominent early grammarians Sībawayhi (d. ca. 180/796) and al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822), who represent the Schools of al-Baṣra and al-Kūfa respectively.
The analysis of the grammarians’ views enables the author to draw several important conclusions and hypotheses on the syntactic environments of the subjunctive mood, the dialectal differences relating to its employment and the historical changes and developments it underwent.
This is the first monograph-length volume entirely devoted to the theoretical and empirical issues raised by the definition of ‘word’ and related concepts in Arabic, both at the historical and synchronic level. Some of the best-known scholars in the field of Arabic linguistics debate such issues as the technical definition of words and morphemes in the Arabic grammatical and rhetorical traditions, the theoretical status of the root and its interactions with morphology, the analysis of word in the computer treatment of Arabic texts, some relevant phenomena in the contact of Arabic with other languages. The result is a fresh portrait of some of the most interesting research currently under way in Arabic linguistics from different theoretical and methodological viewpoints.
This book presents a comprehensive portrait of the
Kitāb Sībawayhi. It offers new insights into its historical and linguistic arguments and underlines their strong correlation. The decisive historical argument highlights al-Ḥīra’s role, not only as the centre of pre-Islamic Arabic culture, but also as the matrix within which early Arab linguistics grew and developed. The
Kitāb’s value as a communicative grammar forms the crux of the linguistic argument. The complementarity of syntax and pragmatics is established as a condition
sine qua non for Sībawayhi’s analysis of language. The benefits of a complementary approach are reflected in the analysis of nominal sentences and related notions of
ibtidā’ and definiteness. The pragmatic principle of identifiability is uncovered as the ultimate determiner of word order.
Sentence types and word-order patterns in Arabic have been a matter of debate and
controversy for a long period of time. They were hotly discussed by the medieval Arab grammarians and continue to be a major topic of discussion among modern scholars. This book describes the development of the medieval grammarians' theory of sentence types; a development from the theory of
‘amal, which lies at the heart of medieval Arabic grammatical tradition.
Each major topic is discussed with a view to explore the basic principles underlying the medieval grammarians' arguments. Special attention is given to conceptual problems arising from conflicts with the theory of
‘amal. This is followed by an assessment of the contributions made by modern scholars to the analysis and description of the constructions involved. Modern Arabists and linguists are shown to have concentrated on word-order patterns rather than on sentence types, placing special emphasis on the functional aspects of word order variations in Arabic.
This volume presents a comprehensive study of Arabic morpho-phonology with its basics and intricacies, by making available a wide range of material from the 8th century A.D. until our days and exploring the main topics that arise.
It uses as its point of departure an unused source: the end of the 13th century
Marāḥ al-arwāḥ by Aḥmad b. ‘alī Mas‘ūd, which is critically edited and provided with an introduction, an English translation and an extensive commentary. It offers an analysis of many grammatical theories, paradigms, qur'anical citations, verses of poetry, dialectal variants and Semitic words and concludes with various indices that make the enormous body of information easily accessible.