The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics iii

Studies inSemitic Languagesand Linguistics

Editorial Board

Aaron D. Rubin and Ahmad Al-Jallad

volume 94

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The Foundations ofArabic Linguistics iii

The Development of a Tradition:Continuity and Change

Edited by

Georgine AyoubKees Versteegh

leiden | boston

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Contents

List of Contributors vii

Introduction 1Georgine Ayoub and Kees Versteegh

Case and ReferenceThe Theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in Sībawayhi’sKitāb 11

Georgine Ayoub

The Grammatical and Lexicographical TraditionsMutual Foundations, Divergent Paths of Development 50

Ramzi Baalbaki

ATwelfth Century League Table of Arab Grammarians 76Michael G. Carter

Blind Spots in Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Grammar of Numerals 96Jean N. Druel

Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics in al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā 115Manuela E.B. Giolfo andWilfrid Hodges

Early Pedagogical Grammars of Arabic 146Almog Kasher

What is Meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara? 167Aryeh Levin

Demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb 178Arik Sadan

HowHave the Descriptions of taḥḏīr Changed? 190Haruko Sakaedani

vi contents

Origin and Conceptual Evolution of the Term taḫṣīṣ in ArabicGrammar 203

Manuel Sartori

The Classification of the Verb in the Arab Grammatical TraditionFrom Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī 229

Zeinab A. Taha

Learning Arabic in the IslamicWorld 245Kees Versteegh

Index 269

List of Contributors

Georgine Ayoubis professor of Arabic linguistics at the Institut national des langues et civil-isations orientales (inalco), Paris, France, and a researcher at Cermom inthe same university. Her fields of research include theoretical linguistics, thehistory of the Arabic language, Arabic linguistic thought, and ancient Ara-bic poetry. Her books include Prédicat, figures, catégories: La question de laphrase nominale en arabe littéraire (Lille, 1996). She has published widely onSībawayhi’s Kitāb and on syntax and semantics in Arabic linguistic theory.

Ramzi Baalbakiis the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Chair of Arabic at the American Univer-sity of Beirut and the Head of the Academic Council of the Doha HistoricalDictionary of the Arabic Language. He has published extensively on Arabicgrammatical theory and Arabic lexicography. His books include The legacy ofthe Kitāb: Sībawayhi’s analytical methods within the context of the Arabic gram-matical theory (Leiden, 2008) and The Arabic lexicographical tradition from the2nd/8th to the 12th/18th century (Leiden, 2014). Hehas also produced critical edi-tions of numerous Classical Arabic texts and co-authored with his late fatherMounir Baalbaki the famous English-Arabic dictionary al-Mawrid and its com-prehensive counterpart, al-Mawrid al-ʾakbar (Beirut, 2005).

Michael G. Carterafter a D.Phil. (Oxon) taught at Sydney University (1968–1985), then Duke(1985–1986), NewYorkUniversity (1986–1996) andOslo University (1996–2004)until retirement. His research interests are Sībawayhi and early Arabic gram-matical theory, and the relationship between grammar, law and philosophy inMedieval Islam.

Jean N. Druelis a researcher in the history of Arabic grammar; since October 2014, he hasbeen the director of ideo (Institut dominicain des études orientales) in Cairo.After a Master’s degree in theology and Coptic patristics (Institut catholiquede Paris, 2002), he obtained a Master’s degree in teaching Arabic as a foreignlanguage (American University in Cairo, 2006), and in 2012 he obtained hisPh.D. at the University of Nijmegen with a thesis on the Arabic grammarians’theories about the syntax of numerals.

viii list of contributors

Manuela E.B. Giolfowas lecturer in Arabic at the University of Exeter (2008–2013). In 2013 shemoved to the University of Genoa, where she is researcher in Arabic languageand literature and lecturer in Arabic language and philology. From 2014 she isalso chercheuse associée at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le mondearabe et musulman (iremam)—cnrs—Aix-Marseille Université. She holdsan m.a. in philosophy from the University of Milan, and a Ph.D. in Arabic lin-guistics from Aix-Marseille University. She edited Arab and Arabic linguistics:Traditional and new theoretical approaches ( Journal of Semitic Studies, Suppl.34, 2014) and, with M. Sartori and Ph. Cassuto, Approaches to the history anddialectology of Arabic in honor of Pierre Larcher (Leiden, 2016).

Wilfrid Hodgestaught at LondonUniversity (BedfordCollege and thenQueenMary) from 1968to 2006, researching in mathematical logic, and writing five textbooks of logicat different levels (one joint-authored). Since his retirement in 2006 he hasworked mainly in history of logic, concentrating on the logic and semantics ofIbn Sīnā in comparison with other Arabic writers. He is a Fellow of the BritishAcademy (Philosophy section).

Almog Kasherhas a Ph.D. degree (2007) in Arabic; he is lecturer in Bar-Ilan University. Hismain field of study is the Medieval Arabic grammatical tradition, with theemphasis on its early history, Sībawayhi’s commentaries, and pedagogicalgrammars.

Aryeh Levinwas born in Israel in 1937. He is professor emeritus of Arabic at The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on The ʾimāla in the Arabicdialects (The HebrewUniversity of jerusalem, 1971). His main fields of researchare: ArabicMedieval grammatical thought and terminology, history of the Ara-bic language, andmodern Arabic dialects. He was the Head of the Departmentof Arabic Language and Literature, 1987–1992, and the Head of the Institute ofAsian and African Studies of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992–1998.In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious “Israel Prize in General Linguistics” forhis achievements in the field of Arabic linguistics.

Arik Sadanholds a b.a. in linguistics and Arabic language and literature (2001) and anm.a. (2004) and Ph.D. (2010) in Arabic language and literature, all from The

list of contributors ix

Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research fields are Arabic grammaticalthought, Arab grammarians, Classical, Modern and Colloquial Arabic linguis-tics, manuscripts in Arabic grammar and other fields. He teaches variouscourses in various academic institutions in these fields. After the publicationof several articles, he published two books: A critical edition of the grammaticaltreatiseTaḏkirat jawāmiʿ al-ʾadawātbyMuḥammadb.Aḥmadb.Maḥmūd (Wies-baden, 2012) and The subjunctivemood in Arabic grammatical thought (Leiden,2012), the latter being a revised English version of his Ph.D. thesis.

Haruko Sakaedaniis part-time lecturer in Arabic at Keio University, the University of Tokyo, TokaiUniversity and Waseda University. She holds an m.a. in Teaching Arabic as aForeign Language from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Arabiclinguistics from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Manuel Sartoribecame, after graduating in Comparative Politics at the Institut d’études poli-tiques (Aix-en-Provence, 1999) and in Arabic studies at Aix-Marseille Univer-sity (2004), senior teacher (professeur agrégé) in Arabic (2009). He completedhis Ph.D. in Arabic language and linguistics at Aix-Marseille University (2012).During his study, he spent several years in the Arab world, in Cairo and mainlyin Damascus. He is now lecturer and head of Arabic teaching at the Institutd’études politiques (iep/ScPo) in Aix-en-Provence and researcher at the Insti-tut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (iremam). Hisresearch interests includeArabic grammar and linguistics (diachronic and syn-chronic, Medieval and contemporary) and the history of the Arabic language.

Zeinab A. Tahais associate professor of Arabic language and linguistics at the tafl Mastersprogram at the American University in Cairo. She received her Ph.D. fromGeorgetown University in 1995. Her research interests are Medieval grammat-ical theory and language variation and change. Her recent publications areDevelopment of Arabic grammatical thought (Cairo, 2011; in Arabic) and “Syn-tactic variation inModernWrittenArabic” in theHandbook forArabic languageteaching professionals in the 21st century, ii (2017).

Kees Versteeghis emeritus professor of Arabic and Islam at the University of Nijmegen (TheNetherlands). He specializes in historical linguistics and the history of linguis-tics, focusing on processes of language change, language contact, and pidgin

x list of contributors

and creole languages.His books includeTheArabic linguistic tradition (London,1997), and The Arabic language (Edinburgh, 1997, revised ed. 2014). He was theeditor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics (Leiden,2006–2009).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_002

Introduction

Georgine Ayoub and Kees Versteegh

The present volume brings together a number of papers that were presentedat the Third Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, hosted byGeorgine Ayoub in Paris at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, on October 23 and24, 2014. The conference constituted a sequel to the first two conferences onthe same topic that had been organized by Amal Marogy at the University ofCambridge in 2010 and 2012 (for the proceedings of the first two conferencessee Marogy 2012a and Marogy and Versteegh 2015).1

The original aim of this series of conferences was to focus on the firstmajor grammarian in the Arabic grammatical tradition, ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibnʿUṯmān Sībawayhi (d. 177/793?). The analysis of theArabic language in hisKitābremains the most frequently cited source within this tradition, and his lin-guistic legacy in the Arabic grammatical tradition is unparalleled. The topicof the conferences also included the reception of the Kitāb in modern schol-arship, because, as Marogy (2012:x) formulates it, “the study of the Kitāb in theWest over the last one hundred and twenty years (from de Sacy’s Anthologiegrammaticale arabe of 1829) has been a continuous application of prevail-ing Western linguistic theories as they successively emerge, with no end insight”.

The original aim of concentrating on Sībawayhi was indeed realized in thesense that out of a total of thirty-four papers published in the proceedingsof the three conferences, twenty-seven dealt with the early period of Arabicgrammar, in particular with the theories contained in the Kitāb Sībawayhi,whereas the remaining seven were concerned with its impact in the latertradition. Sībawayhi’s figure continues to loom large in this field, not only in the

1 In the present volume, we have followed more or less the same editorial guidelines as inthe previous volumes. The transcription of Arabic follows the system of the Encyclopedia ofArabic Language and Linguistics (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006–2009), with one major difference,ḫ instead of x. Initial hamza is transcribed when it is morphological, but not when it ismerely phonetic (thus: wa-ktub ‘and write!’, but wa-ʾaktib ‘and make write!’). Declensionaland inflectional endings are represented fully in Qurʾānic and poetic quotations and ingrammatical examples; in other quotations and book titles we have opted mostly for asimplified system, inwhich pausal rather than contextual forms are used. Yet, in somepapers,we have allowed authors to use full representation throughout.

2 ayoub and versteegh

historical period, when to some extent all grammarians followed his footstepsand considered themselves to be his successors, at least since the times of al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), but also amongmodern scholars working in the field ofthe history of linguistics.

This is not to say that the study of the Arabic grammatical tradition hasremained the same. As a matter of fact, one of the fascinating developmentsis precisely that there are so many new discoveries in the field, ranging fromthe discovery of new texts to the study of ‘forgotten’ grammarians. What ismore, this field continues to attract young scholars who are putting theirmark by bringing in entirely new insights. Looking at this development fromthe point of view of a historian of linguistics, one cannot help but noticethat the field went through a revival at the end of the 1970s and through the1980s, with the publication of such works as Michael Carter’s Arab linguis-tics (1981), Georges Bohas and Jean-Patrick Guillaume’s Etudes des théories desgrammairiens arabes (1984) and Jonathan Owens’ (1988) study of the theoreti-cal foundations of Arabic grammatical theory. The 1980s also saw the establish-ment of the field in the form of workshops that were organized, among otherplaces, in Nijmegen, Haifa, Budapest, Bucharest, and Paris.

This revival was also manifest in the role Arabic grammar began to playin the general field of the history of linguistics, for instance in the new jour-nal Historiographia linguistica (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins), and in the interna-tional conferences on the history of linguistics, organized by Konrad Koerner(the first one of which took place in Ottawa in 1978). Large scholarly enter-prises, such as theHistoire des idées linguistiques, edited by SylvainAuroux et al.(Liège: Mardaga, 1989–1992) and the Handbuch für die Geschichte der Sprach-und Kommunikationswissenschaft, edited by Sylvain Auroux, Konrad Koerner,Hans-Josef Niederehe and Kees Versteegh (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000–2006), paid due attention to Arabic grammar within the growing field of thehistory of linguistics. These projects also marked a new development in thecooperation between scholars working atWestern universities and thosework-ing at universities in the Arab world, which has grown slowly but steadily,in spite of political and cultural differences. In the field of the history of theArabic grammatical tradition, this cooperation was imperative, if only for theimmense work done by scholars working at Arab universities in editing andpublishing new manuscripts. At the beginning of the 1980s, many works thatwere either unknown or existed only in manuscript form were edited, such asIbn al-Sarrāj’s (d. 316/928) Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī in 1985, andthe edition of al-Sīrāfī’s (d. 368/978) commentary on the Kitāb by RamaḍānʿAbd al-Tawwāb andMaḥmūd Fahmī Ḥigāzī, which started in 1986, to mentiononly two of them.

introduction 3

At the end of the 20th century, the focus of research in the Arabic grammati-cal tradition shifted to longer periods. The historical developmentwas outlinedin studies like The Arabic linguistic tradition (1990) by Georges Bohas, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel-Eddine Kouloughli and, for the first period,Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standardization (1990) byJonathanOwens.Multiple answers have been given concerning the underlyingtrends of the grammatical tradition through the centuries of its development.The renewed interest in Sībawayhi’s work in the 2010s, as demonstrated by thefirst three volumes of Foundations of Arabic linguistics appears to be an eter-nal return to the first source of this tradition. To what deeper trend does thiscorrespond?

One might say that by scrutinizing the founding principles of Sībawayhi’sKitāb, researchers themselves contribute to shaping its history from a differ-ent perspective. The tension between continuity and innovation in the his-tory of the Arabic grammatical tradition is a complicated issue, because, tosome extent, all later grammarians acknowledge their indebtedness to earlygrammatical theory, sometimes even to the point of preserving its terminology,while assigning to the inherited terms a different meaning. In other words, thetradition itself tends to emphasize continuities in its development. Centuriesof grammatical theories seem, at first sight, to be centuries of continuity andstability.Yet, beneath this stability, there are hidden changes, constant readjust-ments, imperceptiblemovements, which the researcher has to learn to discern.The only way to become aware of these imperceptiblemovements and to graspthe innovations, is by a meticulous study of the concepts and the theories,startingwith the first andmost authoritative one, the Kitāb. The number of dis-tinguished scholars in the Arabic tradition, who for centuries have scrutinizedthework of Sībawayhi in all its aspects, is so large thatmodern researchers can-not avoid seeing Sībawayhi’s Kitāb through the eyes of his successors. And, ifwe let ourselves be led uncritically along this path, any chance of perceivingchange and transformation in the linguistic theories is doomed to fail.

The analysis of Sībawayhi’sKitābbymeticulous attention to the text is ahugetask in itself. The Kitāb employs a mass of concepts that have to be classifiedand placed in relation to one another in order to form a systematic network.These concepts and systems resonate with those of later grammarians’ theo-ries, with which they must be compared. Only then does one have a chance ofseeing significant changes emerge.When linked to their context, these changesallow us to better understand the shifts in language views and to appreciatethe impact of the cultural and historical context on Arabic grammar. Continu-ities and changes through long periods cannot be apprehended without thispainstaking labor. Understanding diachrony requires a study of synchrony, as

4 ayoub and versteegh

already emphasized by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1916 and by Roman Jakobsonin 1928 in his address to the Premier Congrès International de Linguistes.2

To this work researchers bring tools that are partly inherited and partlyof their own making. Some of these necessarily derive from modern linguis-tic theories. One cannot take the measure of a theory taking as its object aparticular language without reflecting on languages and on the notion of lan-guage.More generally, one cannot take themeasure of a theory without havingothermeasures to grasp the scope of the theory studied. This necessity explainsthe continued use of prevailing Western linguistic notions in the study of themajor texts of the Arabic tradition. Failing to do so would mean reducing theanalysis to a naive literalism, by which a concept is ignored as concept andunderstood and translated from its current lexical meaning alone. This leadsto another possible pitfall, that of rephrasing the theory without understand-ing its true explanatory power as to the phenomena studied. The principles ofArabic grammatical theories have indisputably gained in intelligibility by beinginterpreted within a framework of general linguistic principles.

Yet, this approach itself brings newdangers, in the first place the teleologicaltrap of precursorism, which regards ancient theories as a prefiguration ofmodern ones. Old texts are then interpreted exclusively within the frameworkof modern theories. All that exceeds these theories, is passed over in silence oreven condemned as unscientific. A second danger is to identify single notionswithin the old theory fully with single notions in contemporary linguistics. Ifthe traditional notion corresponds to a universal property of language, it oughtto have parallels in more than one modern theory, in different forms and withdifferent names. What is more, the traditional notion could be larger than themodern one. It could have multiple facets, each of which could be comparedpertinently with more than one modern theoretical notion.

Even such a cautious approach is not always sufficient in the historicalanalysis, since old grammatical theories may well go beyond the domain oflinguistics and form part of the cultural context and the common episteme ofthe time. To miss such links is tantamount to missing the specificity of the oldtheory. In short, researchers are forced to forge their own epistemological toolsin order to establish networks of notions, to determine cultural influences, toestablish continuities or discontinuities, and to study the internal coherence ofold theories.

2 We thankfully acknowledge the input of an anonymous referee, to whom we owe this lastreference.

introduction 5

Thepapers in thepresent volumeare a representative sample of old andnewperspectives on the study of the Arabic grammatical tradition. Their centralissue is precisely the tension between continuity and innovation in the historyof the tradition. Three papers focus on the terminology used by the grammar-ians, taking as their point of departure a term that is infrequent (or even non-existing) in early grammar, but more common in later grammar. Aryeh Levinstudies the ḥāl al-muqaddara, which as a technical term, does not occur untilthe 8th/14th century. Yet, the concept of a ḥāl that must be interpreted by thegrammarianoccursmuch earlier, and sodoes the standard example of this kindof construction, marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘I passedby a man who had a hawk with him, intending to hunt with it tomorrow’, inwhich the accusative of ṣāʾidan is explained by an underlyingmeaningmuqad-diran al-ṣayda ‘intending to hunt’. This example goes back to Sībawayhi, whouses it, however, in a different context. This example shows how material bor-rowed from older grammarians may be put to a different use in later grammar.InHaruko Sakaedani’s paper the point of departure is the term taḥḏīr ‘warning’,which is not a frequent term in Arabic grammar, but one that often occurs inthe analysis of expressions of the type ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada ‘Keep away from thelion!’. In Austin’s framework of speech act theory, such an expression wouldbe called a ‘primary performative’. Sakaedani shows that later grammariansborrowed a great deal of their material from Sībawayhi, but added numerousnew examples, sometimes shifting their focus to the syntactic features of theseexpressions. Manuel Sartori investigates the development of the term taḫṣīṣ,usually translated as ‘particularization’ and equated with partial determina-tion. The term is infrequently mentioned in the secondary literature on theArabic linguistic tradition, and ofen ignored completely. In the first three cen-turies of the Arabic tradition, taḫṣīṣ is hardly used at all, and it is not until the4th/10th century that it starts to be used in the work of authors such as IbnJinnī (d. 392/1002) and especially al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078). Sartori traces the evo-lution of the term and its numerous related or complementary notions, suchas tankīr, taʿrīf, tamyīz, tawḍīḥ, making clear that specification and determina-tion are primarily semantic and pragmatic notions, which becamemuchmorepopular in the literature on ʾuṣūl al-fiqh.

Three other papers in the present volume take as their point of departurea grammatical category or topic and investigate how this category is analyzedin the Kitāb and in later grammar. Jean Druel looks into the treatment of thegrammar of numerals by three grammarians, Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad, and Ibnal-Sarrāj and compares their approach to later developments of the theory inthe work of al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. ca. 700/1300) by exploring the blind spots ineach theory. He concludes that whereas the blind spots in earlier grammar

6 ayoub and versteegh

concerned the presumed consistency and logical coherence in the structure ofnumeral constructions, al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s blind spot had to dowith the axiomaticbelief in the native speaker’s competence. Arik Sadan deals with the manyvariants of deictic elements in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, which, as he demonstrates,belonged to the category of ʾasmāʾmubhama lit. ‘vague, ambiguous nouns’. Oneof the interesting aspects of some of the demonstratives is that as non-verbalelements they still exihibit verblike properties, because of their relationshipwith imperatives meaning ‘see!’ or ‘behold!’. Georgine Ayoub’s paper addressesthe thorny question of full (māyanṣarif ) and partial (mā lā yanṣarif ) inflectionas part of a discussion about the relationship between case and reference.This relationship has been studied earlier on from the point of view of theverb’s valency (the assignment of accusative to objects on account of the verb’ssemantics), and that of themubtadaʾ in assertive and non-assertive utterances(in the latter it has accusative marking, see Ayoub 2015). In the present article,Ayoub approaches this question from a new perspective, the use of propernames to study the variation in declension when the reference of the nounvaries, either referring to a specific individual identified by the listener, orreferring to a specific individual not identified by the listener. It turns out thatit is not reference that determines ṣarf, i.e. the presence of tanwīn, but theinternal criteria of the system of the language within a scale of hierarchies thatreminds us of markedness theory.3

The interplay between continuity and innovation is the central issue of twoother contributions. Michael Carter takes as his point of departure a list drawnby al-Baṭalyawsī (d. 521/1127) of grammarians’ views on the meaning of theword rubba. The debate about rubba concerned the question of whether itmeant ‘how many!’ or ‘how few!’, or perhaps both. Carter’s most interestingconclusion is that al-Baṭalyawsī is almost exclusively interested in the semanticaspect of the matter: apparently, he found the syntactic construction of rubbamuch less fascinating (or perhaps less problematic). Zeinab Taha looks at theclassificatory schemes for verbs in early grammatical theory, specifically in thework of Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj, and compares these schemeswith those found in two later grammarians, al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949) and al-Jurjānī(d. 471/1078). Taha shows that there was an increasing effort to distinguishbetween the syntactic and the semantic aspects of the relationship betweenthe verb and other sentence constituents. The main change came with al-

3 The use of proper names as a testing device for morphological rules is, of course, a tool thatis well-known after the classic article by Carter (1983; see also Marogy 2012b).

introduction 7

Jurjānī, who took into account themeaning of thewhole utterance, rather thanconcentrating exclusively on the verbal element.

The relationship between grammar and other disciplines is studied in twopapers in the present volume. Ramzi Baalbaki, who recently published anauthoritative handbook of Arabic lexicography (Baalbaki 2014), focuses on thedifferences between the twodisciplines of grammar and lexicography. Alhoughthe two were closely connected and often combined in one person, there aresome basic differences. Baalbaki mentions, for instance, the use of Ḥadīṯmate-rial in lexicographical works, which contrasts with the reluctance in grammarto use this material (see also Sadan 2015). Perhaps, the most telling differencewas that lexicography was not theory-driven in the way grammar was. As aresult, no semantic theories were developed in this discipline, a task left tolater theoreticians in ʿilmal-balāġa and ʿilmal-waḍʿ.ManuelaGiolfo andWilfridHodges engage in a search for the relationship between logic and grammar. Intheir contribution they compare the approach of the grammarian al-Sīrāfī andthe logician Ibn Sīnā (d. 427/1037) to such topics as negation anddefiniteness. Itshould be understood that they do not assume any direct contact or influencebetween the logician and the grammarian: their aim is to explain the under-lying grounds for their views, which include a shared criticism of Peripateticlogic. A major conclusion is that if there was Greek philosophical influence, itmay have come to Arabic logic through the linguists rather than the other wayround. At any rate, both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā use a linguistic assessment of thedata in their analysis of such notions as definiteness and the scope of negation.

Finally, two studies are concernedwith the pedagogical side of Arabic gram-mar addressing the question of how students used the grammatical texts inorder to learn Arabic. Recent dissertations by Sartori (2013) and Viain (2014)have shown how important the study of the propagation and dispersion ofelementary treatises is for understanding the context inwhichArabicwas stud-ied, showing, among other things, that there was a certain extent of regionaldiversification in the popularity of the treatises. Viain makes the importantobservation that a treatise like the famous ʾAlfiyya by Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274),which tends to be regarded as the elementary treatise par excellence, is actuallya kind of graduation test, the last treatise to bememorized by thosewho do notspecialize in grammar, but proceed to other disciplines.

In the present volume,AlmogKasher dealswith pedagogical grammars froman original point of view. He wishes to find out when grammatical doctrinewas developed with a special pedagogical purpose, and he does so on the basisof a comparison of the treatment of two terms, ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūf al-rafʿ,in a corpus of pedagogical grammars from the early period, including Luġda’s(3rd/9th century) Kitāb al-naḥw, al-Naḥḥās’ (d. 338/950) Tuffāḥa, al-Zajjājī’s

8 ayoub and versteegh

Jumal, anda fewothers.He concludes thatwemaydiscernadifferencebetweenthe treatment of these terms in pedagogical and mainstream grammars, uptill the 4th/10th century. After this period, grammar went through a phase ofcanonization, in which the special approach of pedagogical grammar gave wayto the mainstream treatment. This means that later pedagogical grammarsstill differ from the mainstream, but mainly in their structure, rather thantheir content. Of a more general nature is the study by Kees Versteegh onlearning Arabic grammar outside the Arabic-speakingworld, inwhich the laterpedagogical treatises play a central role. His paper provides information onthe canon of textbooks of Arabic grammar available in different parts of theIslamic world and shows that the curriculum for second language learnersof Arabic was remarkably similar to that for native speakers in the Arabic-speaking world. In both cases, memorization served to familiarize studentswith the language, and at the same time helped to preserve the canon of texts.Discussions on internet forums show that in modern times young Muslims allover the world still continue to use these methods to learn Arabic.

Within the present collection of studies on continuity and innovation inthe Arabic linguistic tradition, there is one notion that springs to mind, whichbinds together the scholarly interests of the contributors, that of (in)definite-ness, which is central to at least five of the papers in this volume. The samenotion was also discussed in a number of contributions to the first two confer-ences on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, and it was the central issue ofseveral contributions to the Fourth Foundations of Arabic Linguistics Confer-ence, organized by Manuela Giolfo at the University of Genova in September2016. The interest in the notions of definiteness and determination is a strikinginnovation, compared to the scant interest in them in earlier literature. Twoearly exceptions are Helmut Gätje’s article (1970) on determination and inde-termination, and Nadia Anghelescu’s article (1983) on the notions of generaland particular in a treatise by al-Marzūqī (d. 421/1030), but apart from these,only a few publications, mainly in the field of ʾuṣūl al-fiqh, seem to have pickedup this interest. It is gratifying to see that the present series of conferences hasrekindled this topic, contributing in this way to both continuity and innovationin our field.

The editors wish to express their thanks to André Miquel for his invalu-able help in organizing the Third Conference on the Foundations of ArabicLinguistics and the Singer-Polignac Foundation for its wonderful hospitality.The editorial staff at Brill’s, in particular Maarten Frieswijk and Pieter te Velde,deserve our thanks for their support in publishing the proceedings.

introduction 9

Bibliographical References

Anghelescu, Nadia. 1983. “Observations sur la genèse de la signification générale etparticulière dans une épître de al-Marzuqi”.The history of linguistics in theNear East,ed. by Konrad Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh, 1–12. Amsterdamand Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Ayoub, Georgine. 2015. “Some aspects of the relation between enunciation and utter-ance in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb: A modal category, wājib/ġayr wājib”. Marogy and Ver-steegh (2015:6–35).

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2014. The Arabic lexicographical tradition from the 2nd/8th to the12th/18th century. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Bohas, Georges and Jean-Patrick Guillaume. 1984. Etude des théories des grammairiensarabes. i. Morphologie et phonologie. Damascus: Institut français de Damas.

Bohas, Georges, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel Eddine Kouloughli. 1990. TheArabic linguistic tradition. London and New York: Routledge.

Carter, Michael G. 1981. Arab linguistics: An introductory classical text with translationand notes. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.

Carter, Michael G. 1983. “The use of proper names as a testing device in Sībawayhi’sKitāb”. The history of linguistics in the Near East, ed. by Konrad Koerner, Hans-JosefNiederehe, andKeesVersteegh, 109–120. AmsterdamandPhiladelphia: J. Benjamins.

Gätje, Helmut. 1970. “Zum Begriff der Determination und Indetermination im Arabis-chen”. Arabica 17.225–251.

Jakobson, Roman. 1928. “Proposition au Premier Congrès International de Linguistes:Quelles sont les méthodes les mieux appropriées à un exposé complet et pratiquede la phonologie d’une langue quelconque?”. Actes duPremierCongrès Internationalde Linguistes tenu à La Haye du 10–15 avril 1928, 33–36. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff.

Marogy, Amal Elesha, ed. 2012a. The foundations of Arabic linguistics: Sībawayhi andearly Arabic grammatical theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Marogy, Amal Elesha. 2012b. “Zayd, ʿAmr and ʿAbdullāhi: Theory of proper names andreference in early Arabic grammatical tradition”. Marogy (2012a:119–134).

Marogy, Amal Elesha, and Kees Versteegh, eds. 2015. The foundations of Arabic linguis-tics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission. Leiden: E. Brill.

Owens, Jonathan. 1988.The foundations of grammar: An introduction toMedieval Arabicgrammatical thought. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Owens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standard-ization. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.

Sadan, Arik. 2015. “Sībawayhi’s and later grammarians’ usage of ḥadīṯs as a grammaticaltool”. Marogy and Versteegh (2015:171–183).

Sartori, Manuel. 2013. Le Šarḥ al-Kāfiyat de Ibn al-Ḥāǧib: Edition critique d’unmanuscritgrammatical arabe du viie/xiiie siècle. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Provence.

10 ayoub and versteegh

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale, ed. by Charles Bailly andAlbert Séchehaye. Lausanne and Paris: Payot.

Viain, Marie. 2014. La taxinomie des traités de grammaire arabe médiévaux (ive/xe–viiie/xive siècle), entre représentation de l’articulation conceptuelle de la théorie etvisée pratique: Enjeux théoriques, polémiques et pédagogiques des modélisations for-melles et sémantiques du marquage casuel. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris-3.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_003

Case and ReferenceThe Theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in Sībawayhi’sKitāb

Georgine Ayoub

InGreco-Latin grammar and inourpresent general linguistic paradigm, the sta-tus of nominal and verbal syntactic declensions is not the same. The nominaldeclension refers to case, the verbal one tomood. Mood is an enunciative cate-gory linking the utterancewith the attitude of the speaker and the listener, thatis to say with the extralinguistic situation. Case describes the internal relationsbetween the elements of the utterance.1

As we know, in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, and after him, in the Arabic linguistic tra-dition, the same set of notions, those of the theory of ʿamal, is used to describeformally the way syntactic declension is assigned, regardless of whether it is amood or a case. Nevertheless, we can argue plausibly that the verb’s syntacticdeclensions are analyzed in theKitāb as having a tight linkwith reference,moreprecisely with the reference of the verb and of the utterance, through notionslike wājib/ġayr wājib, waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ.2

The analyses of ambiguous contexts with fāʾ, ʾiḏan, ḥattā prove this link.For instance, in ambiguous contexts with the fāʾ, Sībawayhi argues that if theevent expressed by the verb following the fāʾ has effectively taken place, i.e. ifthis event is factual (qad waqaʿa), there is only one declension possible for theverb: the -u declension (rafʿ). Conversely, if the event is virtual (ġayrwāqiʿ), thedeclension has to be the -a declension (naṣb):

You say ḥasibtu-hu šatama-nī fa-ʾaṯiba ʿalayhi ‘I thought he had insultedme, so that I wanted to leap on him’, if the leap did not take place. Thismeans: ‘If he had insulted me I would have leapt on him’. But if the leaphas taken place, there is no other possibility than the rafʿ (wa-taqūluḥasibtu-hu šatama-nī fa-ʾaṯiba ʿalay-hi ʾiḏā lam yakun-i l-wuṯūbu wāqiʿanwa-maʿnā-hu ʾan law šatama-nī la-waṯabtu ʿalayhi wa-ʾin kāna l-wuṯūbuqad waqaʿa fa-laysa ʾillā l-rafʿu)

Kitāb i, 376.7 f.

1 See Chomsky (1981) for a theory of abstract Case and its relation to morphological cases inlanguage; for a general theory of mood and modality in language, see Palmer (2001).

2 We have tried to prove this thesis by an extensive study of these notions. See Ayoub (1991:72–81), and especially Ayoub (2010:22–42). See also Carter (2015:208).

12 ayoub

We have argued elsewhere that waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ, which is always appliedto events or actions (ḥadaṯ, fiʿl), can be reasonably translated by the fac-tual/virtual pair of modal studies. Themeaning of wājib/ġayrwājib is very closeto waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ when it qualifies fiʿl ( fiʿl wājib/ġayr wājib). But when itqualifies kalām (kalām wājib/ġayr wājib), it can be reasonably translated byassertive/non assertive. These categories are general. They apply not only toverbal declension. But we can say that every time we have an -a declension(naṣb) or a -ø declension ( jazm) on a verb, the event is analyzed in the Kitābas not having taken place in the speaker’s view, at the moment of enunciation(lam yaqaʿ/ġayr wāqiʿ; laysa fī ḥāli ḥadīṯika fîʿlun ṯābitun), confirming the linkbetween verbal declension and reference in Sībawayhi’s view. That is the casefor the action expressed by the verb after ʾan and kay:

For the verb which follows them [refers to an action which] does not takeplace and does not refer to a well-established action in the speech situ-ation (li-ʾanna l-fiʿla baʿdahumā ġayru wāqiʿin wa-laysa fī ḥāli ḥadīṯikafîʿlun ṯābitun).

Kitāb i, 366.20–23

If we are correct to assume that the verbal declension is linkedwith reference,3the question is: does Sībawayhi link case with reference and if so, how? Severalanswers could be found in theKitāb. Someof themhave already been explored.A first answer concerns the case of the nouns that are in the first position of theutterance. As we know, this case could be the nominative (an -u declension;rafʿ), assigned in the Kitāb by ibtidāʾ (Kitāb i, 52.18),4 if the noun is amubtadaʾ;or it could be the accusative (an -adeclension; naṣb), if the noun is the object ofan elided verb, which assigned it its case, if ištiġāl is involved. The crucial pointis that, in ambiguous contexts, the choice between the two cases depends onthe assertive or non-assertive status of the utterance, in other words it dependson the referential value of the utterance. In interrogation, injunction, order,prohibition, and other forms which are kalām ġayr wājib, the accusative has tobe chosen.5

3 This link is not the reason why the ‘assimilated verb’ (muḍāriʿ) bears a syntactic declension,neither for Sībawayhi nor for the later grammarians. On this issue, see the appendix.

4 It will be reinterpreted later as assigned ‘by default’, depending on the absence of any formalʿāmil, al-tajarrud min al-ʿawāmil al-lafẓiyya, as Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (Inṣāf 44) states.

5 See references of note 1 and Ayoub (2015), who tries to establish that the case of the frontednoun in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb depends on the modality of the speech.

case and reference 13

Another important answer concerns the complements of the verb.We knowthat, in the Kitāb, the verb governs a direct object because of its semanticproperties, assigning to it the accusative case.6 This is also the reason why itassigns the accusative to the adverbials of time and place.7 The task of thepresent study is to investigate a third answer, still unexplored, linking casewithreference in the Kitāb, the one provided by the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mālā yanṣarif, i.e. of fully and partially inflected nouns. As is well known, nounswith three case endings are fully inflected. Nounswhich take only two syntacticdeclensional endings and lack, when non-definite, a distinct genitive form, aswell as the ‘syntactically, non-definite’ suffix -n (tanwīn) are partially inflected.For the sake of clarity, I will call ‘non-definite’ a nounbearing the suffix -n, whenthis noun is out of discourse, as it can be indefinite and inherently definiteas well, as will be shown below. I will reserve the term ‘indefinite’ for thosecontexts in which the noun has indeed an indefinite reference.

We shall see below that the question of tanwīn is at the center of thechapter of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb. We have dealt withthe question of tanwīn elsewhere, from two distinct points of view, that ofmodern linguistics (Ayoub 1991, 1996), and that of the Arabic grammaticaltradition (Ayoub 2009). However, these analyses have left aside the questionof the proper name. The present study, which focuses only on the grammaticaltradition, aims to account for the analysis of the Kitāb, and will be carried outon the basis of the relation between case and reference in Sībawayhi’s book.It will largely integrate the question of proper names, which has remainedmarginal in our earlier studies, but which is central in the analysis of the Kitāb.

The Kitāb of Sībawayhi devotes thirty-two chapters to the question of māyanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif. Although it exhibits a proliferation of morpholog-

6 The object is literally a ‘thing done’ (mafʿūl). It “is assigned the accusative by the verb becauseit is a thing done [an object] affected by the act of an agent [a subject]” (intaṣaba zaydun li-ʾannahu mafʿūlun bihi taʿaddā ʾilayhi fiʿlu l-fāʿil; Kitāb i, 11.1). More explicitly, some verbs are“actions that go accross you to someone else and make it happen to him” (al-ʾafʿālu llatī hiyaʾaʿmālun taʿaddāka ʾilā ġayrikawa-tūqiʿuhābihi;Kitāb ii, 224.14). Nevertheless, the termmafʿūland the justification of the accusative, which literally refers to the transfer of the action froma certain subject to a certain object, seem in most cases a metonymy where a denominationcharacterizing some cases, is applied to all the cases. See Levin (1979), who shows that inmostcases taʿaddā refers to the grammatical/syntactic effect of the verb and not the semantic one;see also Carter (2004:88f.). But even if the term taʿaddā is used bymetonymy for a lot of cases,its proper use as a semantic term is the main argument presented by Sībawayhi to justify theaccusative. The term ʾawqaʿa in particular, which refers to the inscription of an action in theworld is, in this respect, very significant.

7 Cf. Ayoub (2010:4 f.).

14 ayoub

ical and lexical data, and is often considered to be ‘complex’ in its reasoning,Sībawayhi’s approach through all these chapters can nevertheless be summedup in one question:What kind of declensional and/or morphological variationwould a given linguistic unit x go through, if used in the discourse as indefinite(nakira) or inherently definite (maʿrifa), that is to say as a proper name? Forinstance, what happens to the words ʾabyaḍ ‘white’, or ʾarbaʿ ‘four’, if they areused as indefinite in an utterance, and what happens if a man is called ʾAbyaḍor ʾArbaʿ, in which case these words become inherently definite?

The general task of these chapters pertains to the interface between mor-phology on the one hand, and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, on the otherhand. In order to define accurately the general principles which give the the-ory developed by Sībawayhi its conceptual homogeneity, I will seek to answerthree questions in what follows:

i. According to which criteria is the linguistic unit x selected?ii. Why is the indefinite/inherently definite pair taken as the variation pa-

rameter through all the chapters?iii. What is the general structure of these thirty-two chapters?

1 The Notions of ṣarf and tanwīn

I will start with the third question, after clarifying the terminology. As usual inSībawayhi’s terminology, mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif functions as an oppo-sitional pairwith the samenotion having two values, positive andnegative. Thenotion inṣarafa and its derivates inṣirāf and munṣarif are used exclusively forone single syntactic category, that of nouns, and they are introduced as early asthe second chapter of the Risāla without any definition, as is often the case inthe Kitāb.

As for its general lexical meaning in the common language of the 2nd/7thcentury, inṣarafa is used as the medio-passive of ṣarafa and includes the ideaof being shifted from one state, considered as the usual or the canonical state,to another, and then the idea of change. The word ṣarafa itself includes amongits meanings the idea of changing something from its way.8 In the Kitāb, both

8 The Lisān al-ʿArab has, s.v. ṣarafa: qalaba-hu ʿan wajhi-hi: ṣarafa-hu; and ṣarafa-hu yaṣrifu-hu fa-nṣarafawa-l-ṣarf raddu l-šayʾ ʿanwajhi-hi. The same idea is attested in Kitāb al-ʿayn (vii,109): ṣayrafiyyāt al-ʾumūr:mutaṣarrifātuhā ʾay tataqallabu bi-l-nās; taṣrīf al-riyāḥ; taṣarrufuhāminwajhin ʾilāwajhinwa-minḥālin ʾilāḥālin. The editor of theKitābal-ʿayn (vii, 110) adds fromal-ʾAzharī’s Tahḏīb: al-ṣarf ʾan taṣrifa ʾinsānān ʿalā wajhin yurīduhu ʾilā maṣrifin ġayri ḏālika.

case and reference 15

ṣarafa and inṣarafa9 are used as early as the Risāla. The verb ṣarafa/yaṣrifhas the speaker—hum—as its subject: “Then, they [the speakers] did notfully decline what is plural” (ṯumma lam yaṣrifū mā jāʾa mina l-jamīʿ; Kitāb i,5.22). The verb inṣarafa/yanṣarif has a particular stem or word as its subject:“ʾafkal ‘tremor’ and ʾaklub ‘dogs’ are declinable if indefinite” (ʾafkal wa-ʾaklubyanṣarifāni fī l-nakira; Kitāb i, 5.19)

In the terminology of the Kitāb, mā yanṣarif seems, at first glance, to des-ignate the property of being fully inflected for a noun, i.e. of having the threecases and the tanwīn. This technical meaning is in accordance with the lexicalmeaning of the term. Actually, if we consider this lexical meaning, we wouldexpect lā yanṣarif to designate the nouns which are not inflected at all. Butthis is not the case. In fact, lā yanṣarif refers to partially inflected nouns. This issurprising, since these nouns,which receive two cases onlywithout tanwīn, stillchange their vowel endings even if they do not go through the entire change.So, how can we explain this terminology?

The Kitāb al-ʿayn, a dictionary which is approximately contemporaneous tothe Kitāb and which is said to have been conceived by al-Ḫalīl (d. 175/791), theteacher of Sībawayhi, helps us to understand the logic of the denomination.Even at this early time, it gives a technical definition of ṣarf, defining ṣarf al-kalima as ʾijrāʾuhā bi-l-tanwīn, whichmeans “to make the word fully declinableby assigning it the suffix -n after the casemarker” (ʿAyn vii, 109).10 Interestingly,the term ʾijrāʾ used in this definition is the causative form of the term used bySībawayhi in the Kitāb to describe the syntactic variation of the end of theword.11 This common terminology suggests a connection between the Kitāband the Kitāb al-ʿayn. But it is not only this term that makes this definitionsignificant. Several arguments lead to the conclusion that in the Kitāb, justas this is the case in the definition of the Kitāb al-ʿayn, the denominationyanṣarif/lā yanṣarif only refers to the presence or absence of the tanwīn as acriterion of full or partial declinability, respectively:

9 According to Troupeau (1976:123f.), ṣarafa, in this morphological meaning, has 192 occur-rences in the Kitāb; inṣarafa has 122 occurrences. If we include inṣirāf andmunṣarif withinṣarafa, we count 150 occurrences.

10 The Lisān s.v. ṣ-r-f gives exactly the same definition.11 See for instance Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 1.9 f.: hāḏā bābumajārī ʾawāḫiri l-kalimimin al-ʿarabiy-

yati wa-hiya tajrī ʿalā ṯamāniyati majārin. In the chapters studied in the present article wefind ʾinna hāḏā l-miṯāla [i.e. ʾafʿal] mā kāna ʿalayhi min al-waṣfi lam yajri fa-ʾin kāna smanwa-laysa bi-waṣfin jarā (ii, 5.7 f.), and in the causative form ʾujriya lafẓuhu (i, 5.12).

16 ayoub

i. in several passages of the Kitāb, tanwīn and ṣarf [yuṣrafū] seem inter-changeable, as in the following quotation: “As for [the word] miʿzan(‘goat’), it has only one form [in all dialects]. It takes the tanwīn (tunaw-wan) when it is indefinite. The same for [the word] ʾarṭā ‘a kind of tree’.All these words are fully declinable (yuṣraf )” (wa-ʾammā miʿzan fa-laysafīhā ʾillā luġatun wāḥidatun tunawwanu fī l-nakirati wa-kaḏālika l-ʾarṭākulluhum yuṣrafu; Kitāb ii, 8.14 f.).

ii. Conversely, the avoidance of the tanwīn is seen, explicitly and repeatedlyin the Kitāb, as the only criterion of mā lā yanṣarif. Several passages statethere is no problem, for a partially inflected noun, to be assigned the -ideclension of the genitive when the definite article is prefixed to it (al-ʾabyaḍi), or when it is annexed to a term (ʾabyaḍi l-yadi), because thespeakers avoid the tanwīn: “You should know that each partially declin-able (lā yanṣarif ) noun is marked [notwithstanding] for the genitive casewhen it is the first noun of an annexion, or when it is prefixed by the def-inite article al-. The essential thing for them [the speakers] is to avoid thetanwīn” (wa-ʿlam ʾanna kulla smin lā yanṣarifu fa-ʾinna l-jarra yadḫuluhuʾiḏā ʾaḍaftahu ʾaw ʾadḫalta ʿalayhi l-ʾalifa wa-l-lāma wa-ḏālika ʾannahumʾaminū l-tanwīn; Kitāb ii, 13.12 f.)

This thesis (ʾaminū l-tanwīn) is asserted in the Risāla as well as in the thirty-two chapters devoted to declinability. In sum, yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif alreadyhas a technical meaning in the Kitāb: only the tanwīn is referred to in thisdenomination as a criterion of full or restricted syntactic declension. Thisterminology goes back at least to al-Ḫalīl, and may even be earlier than al-Ḫalīl since Sībawayhi also mentions in these chapters, apart from al-Ḫalīl andYūnus (d. 182/798), the analyses of ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/770), and[ʿAbdallah Ibn] ʾAbī ʾIsḥāq (d. 117/735) (Kitāb ii 22.11 f.). If only the tanwīn iscriterial, we understand why it is said of the partially inflected noun that itlā yanṣarif, even though it still changes its vowel endings: after all, such anoun never displays tanwīn at its end. On the other hand, the i-declensionof the genitive is not selected as a criterion because the partially inflectednoun is assigned this declension in some contexts, as we have just seen. As forthe nouns that do not change their vowel endings, such as ʾayna, which arecalled in later grammar mabnī, they are called in the Kitāb (i, 2.18) ʾasmāʾ ġayrmutamakkina. Sībawayhi’s approach, which considers only the criterial featurefor the denomination of lā yanṣarif, is slightly different from al-Mubarrad’sdefinition (Muqtaḍab iii, 309) of lā yanṣarif, which is more descriptive andrefers to both characteristics of the partially inflectednoun: lā yanṣarif, for him,describes a noun that is not assigned either the -i inflection or the tanwīn (lāyanṣarif ʾay lā yadḫuluhu ḫafḍ wa-lā tanwīn).

case and reference 17

Yet, some of Sībawayhi’s approach seems to have been retained in the latertradition. Versteegh (1995:173) in his commentary on al-Zajjājī’s (d. 340/950)Īʾḍāḥ observes that “ṣarf and tanwīn are sometimes very close in meaning”.An even later grammarian than al-Zajjājī, al-Širbīnī (11th/17th century), in hiscommentary on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, speaks of “the noun […]munṣarif ” which “iscalled munṣarif because it bears the tanwīn al-ṣarf, also known as tanwīn al-tamkīn” (Carter 1981b:72f.).

In sum, if we are correct, yanṣarif, for a noun x,means ‘to bear the tanwīn’ asa criterion of being fully declinable; conversely, lā yanṣarif means ‘not to bearthe tanwīn’ as a criterion of being partially declinable.12 The definition of theKitāb is the same as the one in the Kitāb al-ʿayn. But what is the value of thetanwīn in the Kitāb, and what is the value of full or partial declinability?

2 The Notions of tanwīn, tamakkun, ʾawwal

As early as the Risāla, the tanwīn is linked with a theory about the hierarchi-cal organization of grammatical categories, according to which one value of abinary grammatical category is considered to be ‘first’ (ʾawwal) compared tothe other. This applies to the noun compared to the verb, indefinite (nakira)to definite (maʿrifa), masculine to feminine, and singular to plural. Conse-quently, these ‘first’ categories are ‘lighter’ (ʾaḫaff ) and ‘more firmly established’(ʾašaddu tamakkunan),13 with the tanwīn serving as the sign (ʿalāma) of thistamakkun, and its dropping as the sign of something the Arabs perceive as‘heavy’:

You should know that some parts of speech are heavier than others. Verbsare heavier than nouns because nouns are first and they are more firmlyestablished (ʾašaddu tamakkunan) […] The noun is before the qualifier(ṣifa) and it is before the verb […], the indefinite is lighter for them [thespeakers] than the definite and it is more firmly established becausethe indefinite is first, […] the singular is more firmly established thanthe plural because the singular is first, […] the masculine is lighter than

12 Our conclusion is similar to that of Baalbaki (1979:16), who believes yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif torefer to a restricted aspect of declinability, namely tanwīn, as a criterion of full or partialdeclinability.

13 We borrow this translation from Carter (2004). We will come back below to the notionof tamakkun, its different translations in the literature and its theoretical meaning, i.e. towhat kind of characteristics the notion refers exactly.

18 ayoub

the feminine because the masculine is first and it is more firmly estab-lished (wa-ʿlam ʾanna baʿḍa l-kalāmi ʾaṯqalu min baʿḍin fa-l-ʾafʿālu ʾaṯqalumina l-ʾasmāʾi li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiya l-ʾawwalu wa-hiya ʾašaddu tamakku-nan[…]al-ismaqabla l-ṣifati kamā ʾannahuqabla l-fiʿli […]wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-nakirata ʾaḫaffu ʿalayhimmin al-maʿrifati wa-hiya ʾašaddu tamakkunan li-ʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu […]wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-wāḥida ʾašaddu tamakkunanmina l-jamīʿi li-ʾanna l-wāḥida l-ʾawwalu […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-muḏakkaraʾaḫaffu ʿalayhim mina l-muʾannaṯi li-ʾanna l-muḏakkara ʾawwalu wa-huwaʾašaddu tamakkunan)

Kitāb i, 5.8

Linked with these hierarchies, the tanwīn suffix is considered to be the markof what is the ‘most firmly established’ or the most powerful (al-ʾamkan) andthe lightest for them (al-tanwīn ʿalāmatun li-l-ʾamkani ʿindahum wa-l-ʾaḫaffiʿalayhim; Kitāb i, 6.1). The same statement is repeated several times in theKitāb: “The tanwīn is themarkof what is firmly established” (al-tanwīn ʿalāmatul-mutamakkin; Kitāb ii, 157). Note that the Kitāb first uses the elative form(al-ʾamkan) and then, the active participle (al-mutamakkin). They seem to besynonymous in these assertions.

These hierarchies were noted first by Baalbaki (1979), and have been dis-cussed extensively in recent literature.14 As we have noted elsewhere (Ayoub2009:442), there is a hierarchical order between the three notions themselves,tamakkun, ḫiffa/ṯiqal and ʾawwal. Actually, tamakkun and ḫiffa/ṯiqal are, in thepassage cited above, a consequence of being ʾawwal.15 For each category, theli-ʾanna statement invokes this status of being ʾawwal: li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiyal-ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna l-muḏakkara ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna l-wāḥida l-ʾawwalu. This statement is later made explicitly: “The first is morefirmly established for them” ( fa-l-ʾawwal huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahum;Kitāb i, 22.6 f.).

This means that the status of being ʾawwal will be the fundamental notionto understand. But before we go into this, we need to look at the question ofhow exactly these hierarchies are linked to the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lāyanṣarif.

14 See, among other studies, Owens (1988:204–206, 218–220); Carter (2004:65–69); Baalbaki(2008:113 ff.), Ayoub (2009), and recently Marogy (2015).

15 We shall not examine the categories ḫiffa/ṯiqal in this study. These notions, closely linkedto tamakkun in the Kitāb, are commonly considered to be synonymous with it.

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3 The Structure of the Chapters

While the thirty-two chapters in the Kitāb dealing with this topic have beendeemed “complex and often obscure”16 in their argumentation, and do seem,at first glance, to be difficult to classify and confusingly rich in content, theyacquire an immediate intelligibility in the light of these hierarchies. For theirfirst part, the thirty-two chapters are structured in the same order as the hier-archies announced in the Risāla, showing the coherence of the Kitāb. Theycomplete these hierarchies in a second part, adding new categories. The fol-lowing list presents a rough skeleton of the structure:

i. noun/verb/ṣifa ch. 285–290ii. masculine/feminine ch. 291–296iii. singular/plural ch. 297–299iv. actual proper names (foreign names, proper names

masc./fem, toponyms, names of tribes, suras)ch. 300–306

v. particles as proper names ch. 307vi. indeclinable locatives (ẓurūf ) as proper names ch. 308vii. ʿadl (pattern modified from another pattern with the

same meaning)ch. 309

viii. demonstratives, relatives and temporal locatives asproper names

ch. 310–312

ix. surnames ch. 313x. compound names ch. 314xi. proper names with final /y/ and /w/ ch. 315xii. proper names composed of a syllable or a phoneme ch. 316xiii. verbatim quotation (ḥikāya) as a proper name ch. 317

Chapters i. to iv. are devoted to three of the grammatical categories mentionedin the hierarchies of the Risāla (syntactic categories, number and gender).Chapters v. to xiii. deal with other linguistic elements, largely in connectionwith nomination. Following Lyons, we use this term to refer to the act of assign-ing a name hitherto not assumed (cf. below). These last chapters introducenew priorities expressed in terms of ʾawwal or ʾaṣl. The latter term seems to besynonymous to ʾawwal since ʾaṣl, just like ʾawwal, leads to tamakkun: a morpho-logically simple pattern is an ʾaṣl and, consequently, more mutamakkin than a

16 Carter (2004:118).

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compound one;17 an Arabic name is ʾawwal compared to a non-Arabic one; amorphologically regular pattern is ʾaṣl compared to a modified one (maʿdūl).18Finally, it should be noted that the definite/indefinite category is absent as aparticular chapter in the list. The reason for this is simple: this grammaticalcategory structures each chapter, as we shall explain in the next paragraph.

The grammatical categories of the Risāla are not the only key to the struc-ture. But the thesis developed in the Risāla regarding hierarchy and tamakkunis repeated at the end of several chapters with the same set of concepts as inthe Risāla: mutamakkin/ʾaḫaff /ʾawwal, where ʾawwal, ʾaṣl and qablu are inter-changeable:

The masculine is first and better established, in the same way that theindefinite is more firmly established than the definite […]. Therefore, themasculine is first andmore firmly established. So, for them [i.e. the speak-ers], the first is more firmly established ( fa-l-taḏkīru ʾawwalu wa-huwaʾašaddu tamakkunan kamā ʾanna l-nakirata ʾašaddu tamakkunan min al-maʿrifati […] fa-l-taḏkīru qablu wa-huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahumfa-l-ʾawwalu huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahum).

Kitāb ii, 22.6–10

In addition, explicit cross-reference to the Risāla is made, as in the followingquotation: “I have explained this question in more detail, at the beginning ofthe book” (wa-qad ʾawḍaḥtuhu fī ʾawwali l-kitābi bi-ʾakṯara min hāḏā; Kitāb ii,13.3). In sum, the treatment of the question of declinability is very coherent.But the parameters that organize this coherence are not the same as thosedeveloped after Sībawayhi.

4 The Notions of Non-definite and Indefinite

As noted above, there is an important point in these thirty-two chapters whichdeserves attention: the presence of the pair indefinite/inherently definite (na-kira/maʿrifa) throughout these chapters, constituting an always relevant pa-

17 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 46.19–21: laysa šayʾun yajtamiʿu min šayʾayn fa-yujʿalu sman sum-miya bihi wāḥidun ʾillā lamyuṣraf … li-ʾannahu laysa ʾaṣla bināʾi l-ʾasmāʾ… lamyakunhāḏāl-bināʾu ʾaṣlan wa-lā mutamakkinan.

18 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii 14.9 f.: wa-ʾammā ʿumaruwa-zufaru… humāmaḥdūdāni ʿani l-bināʾillaḏī huwa ʾawlā bi-himā wa-huwa bināʾuhumā fī l-ʾaṣli fa-lammā ḫālafā bināʾahumā fī l-ʾaṣli tarakū ṣarfahumā.

case and reference 21

rameter to test the inṣirāf of the linguistic unit x examined, even thoughwholesections are devoted, in addition, to actual proper names, i.e. to inherentlydefinite nouns. What exactly does this mean?

A first immediate ‘meaning’ is negative: if we have to examine each nounto determine if it is assigned tanwīn, in its definite and indefinite values, thismeans that for Sībawayhi, tanwīn is not the marker of indefiniteness. Other-wise, the question would engender no debate.19 Indeed, we would say, withmodern terminology, that tanwīn is neutral as to definiteness and indefinite-ness. This is the reason why the noun suffixed by tanwīn must be consideredto be outside of discourse, not indefinite, but non-definite (in fact syntacticallynon-definite), in the sense that for Sībawayhi, a noun suffixed by -n has in thiscase both values.

For a positive answer to the question, it should be noted that an interestingway to link the thirty-two chapters together consists in relating their structure,as indicated by the headings cited above, to the basic syntactic, morphological,and phonological units, as well as to the different word classes. Each of theseunits is studied systematically in the course of one ormore chapters, in the lightof the definiteness parameter, or, more exactly, its morphological variation isstudied systematically in this light.

The general question addressed throughout these chapters may be subdi-vided into two parts. Firstly, if x belongs to the category of nouns, morphosyn-tactic variation has to do with full or partial declinability resumed by the pres-ence or absence of the tanwīn. What is ʾawwal and consequently mutamakkinbears the tanwīn. Secondly, if the term x belongs to another syntactic category(i.e., a verb, such as daḥraja, or a particle, ‘which is neither noun nor verb’, suchas law), or if the term x is a meremorphological or phonological unit, such as asyllable or a phoneme, it has to go to awidermorphological variation. The rulesunder debate then are the rules of transposition from one category to another.

Actually, the definiteness parameter, as it is linked with nouns, applies intwodifferent orders through the chapters, as a corollary to the kind of referencethat the linguistic unit studied has. In chapters examining nouns, the indefinitevalue of the noun is studied before its definite form, as the indefinite is prior tothe definite. But verbs and particles do not refer like nouns do. Phonemes donot refer at all. So all these elements have to be transposed to nouns by nomi-nation. Theywill be examined, at first, as proper names inherently definite, and

19 As we know, this question is hotly disputed in modern linguistics, a common analysisbeing that this suffix is themarker of indefiniteness. The same idea is found in some stud-ies analysing tanwīn in the grammarians’ theories, to the extent that it impossible to knowwhether it is the researchers’ analysis or the analysis they attribute to the grammarians.

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then they could be examined as indefinite, referring to the class of individualsbearing this name. However, in both cases, the definiteness parameter is thevariation parameter adopted. Why is this so?

Note that chapters i. to iii. and the definiteness parameter not only link thesechapters with the hierarchies indicated in the Risāla, but these grammaticalcategories are essential, inmodern linguistic terms, in buildingup the referenceof a term. The syntactic categories of chapter i. (noun/verb/qualifier), build upa part of the meaning of a term. This meaning, defined by Lyons (1977:159)as “the set of essential properties which determines the applicability of aterm to an object or to a class of objects”, allows the reference to an object,without being itself a real reference. It is a potentiality of reference, a ‘virtualreference’.20Whenwe say ‘table’, we cannot refer to a specific table in theworld.It lacks determination. This virtual reference, given in Arabic by the lexicalmeaning of the root and the pattern of the word, becomes an ‘actual’ or realreference, referring to a real object in the world, when it is actualized totallyor partially by the value of different grammatical categories in the discourse:mood, tense for verbs, definiteness, gender, number and case for nouns. This isthe difference between ‘table’ and ‘[I see] the table in the hall’. Only ‘the tablein the hall’ has an actual reference, i.e. refers to an object in the world.

Some of the grammatical categories that actualize the reference of nounsare precisely the headings of chapters ii. and iii. (gender and number), but theprincipal category of this actualization is the parameter determining the exam-ination of the linguistic elements throughout all chapters. It is definiteness.For example, the inherently definite noun, the proper name, is equivalent toa deictic category in the Kitāb. It is fully actualized and has a deictic value. ForSībawayhi, saying zayd is equivalent to saying hāḏā l-rajulu, when the speakermeans a specific individual identified by the listener, as we will see below insection 6.

If we follow the development of the chapters, and relate it to our categories,we can easily see why the definite/indefinite parameter is a constant one,throughout these chapters. As noted above, Sībawayhi takes the syntactic,morphological, and phonological units as subject of his examination, namelythe parts of speech, the patterns of morphology, the syllables or phonemes.In the first chapters of the section, the linguistic units x examined are of twotypes: on theonehand, there arepatternsmarkedby their structure for thenon-ʾawwal value of the grammatical category selected: mafāʿil inherently marked

20 The notion of virtual reference, inspired by the work of Bally (1932), was introduced byMilner (1978). It has been widely adopted in semantic studies.

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for the plural, or faʿlāʾ inherently marked for the feminine with the augment(ziyāda) [-āʾ] analyzed as part of the noun, vs. faʿīl-at, where the suffix [-at](called hāʾ al-taʾnīṯ) is not part of the structure of the stem and has the samestatus for Sībawayhi as “amorpheme joined to anothermorpheme, so that theybecome as if they are one single morpheme” (ismun ḍumma ʾilā smin fa-juʿilāsman wāḥidan; Kitāb ii, 12.19). On the other hand, there are word classes orpatterns notmarked for any value of the grammatical category examined, suchas the first pattern discussed, ʾafʿal, which is not inherently marked for anysyntactic category: ʾafʿal can be a verb ʾaḏhab; a substantive ʾarbaʿ; a qualifierʾaḥmar. The samecanbe said for somenames of tribes, aswell as toponyms (e.g.dābiq,minan, hajar) or names of suras, which can be regarded as masculine orfeminine. All of these ambiguous items are treated in detail by Sībawayhi.

Moreover, the value of each grammatical category of the Risāla hierarchy isfirst investigated in these chapters in the morphological pattern or the wordclass, as inherently shown by it. But if patterns in Arabic can be inherentlymarked for number, gender, and sometimes plural (ʾafʿal for instance is inher-entlymasculine, singular,mafāʿil is inherently plural), definiteness is not inher-ently marked in the pattern. Only the discourse can distinguish between thedefinite and indefinite value of a term. This means that, outside of discourse,they are both present. Outside of discourse, kilābun is (syntactically) non-definite. It can refer to a set of individuals of an undetermined number (a set ofdogs) or to a specific individual uniquely identified (a tribe called Kilāb). This isthe reason why this parameter is always present in every chapter. Its presenceis founded on two implicit postulates: i. outside discourse, every word can havean indefinite or an inherently definite reference; and ii. proper names are inher-ently definite. The latter postulate is formulated explicitly

zayd does not have the same status as [the article] al-. One of the thingsshowing that it does not have the same status as al- is its being inherentlydefinite. It is not rendered definite by some [morpheme] affixed to it orby what it follows it ( fa-laysa zaydun bi-manzilati l-ʾalifi wa-l-lāmi wa-mimmāyadulluka ʿalā ʾannahu laysabi-manzilati l-ʾalifiwa-l-lāmi ʾanna-humaʿrifatun bi-nafsihi lā bi-šayʾin daḫala fīhi wa-lā bi-mā baʿdahu)

Kitāb i, 268.2–4

When a noun is inherently definite, it refers to “a specific man known to theaddressee”. Contrariwise, when a noun is nakira, it refers to “someone amongthose denotedby this noun, and youdonot intend [then] a specificmanknownto the addressee” (wāḥidun mimmā yaqaʿu ʿalayhi l-ismu lā turīdu rajulan bi-ʿaynihi yaʿrifuhu l-muḫāṭabu; Kitāb i, 187.20–21).

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Wemay therefore conclude,with respect to our purpose in this study, that byadopting definiteness in these chapters as the main parameter to examine themorpho-phonological variation of a term, but also by considering its syntacticcategories and the grammatical categories of number and gender, the Kitābpostulates that tanwīn—and declinability—have something to do, in someway, with reference. But in what way precisely? And can the reference explainall usages of tanwīn?

5 Nomination

Between nakira and maʿrifa, there is a discrepancy. Only nouns can be nakira,i.e. they can refer, according to Sībawayhi, to an unidentified individual, “some-one among those denoted by this noun”. But if definiteness is a parameterlinked with nouns, the following question may be asked: are elements inher-entlymaʿrifa (i.e., proper names) always nouns?

Sībawayhi’s methodology leads him in these chapters to further questionspertaining to what Lyons (1977), and modern linguists studying proper namesafter him, called ‘nomination’, more precisely performative nomination. Withrespect to the functions of proper names, Lyons distinguishes between voca-tive, (performative and didactic) nomination, and reference. For the first twofunctions, the differences are summarized by Colman (2014:70):

With vocatives, prior nomination is assumed: they identify the personaddressed by their name; whereas nominations assign identity. Lyon’sperformative nomination assigns a name hitherto not assumed whiledidactic nomination informs of a name known at least to the informer.21

In his study of mā yanṣarif and mā lā yanṣarif, Sībawayhi studies what wouldhappen to hundreds of words if they become proper names, being aware thatthey are not actually used as proper names and “never became ones”, as Carter(1981a:109) remarks. In other words, Sībawayhi is led to the grammar of per-formative nomination, as nomination produces inherently definite nouns. Thefollowing implicit questions are answered: What is the stock of nomination,i.e. the stock fromwhich the proper name is selected?What happens to a word

21 Cf. also Lyons (1977:217): “By the vocative function of names is meant their being used toattract the attention of the person being called or summoned”, and Langendonck (2007):“Roughly performative nomination is when you assign a name hitherto not assumed”.

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when it is used as a proper name, i.e. when it is inherently maʿrifa?What kindof declensional and morphological changes does it go through?

The answer to the first question is simply that the entire language servesas the stock. All syntactic categories can be proper names, even the mostimplausible nouns such as plurals; the demonstrative hāḏā; the relatives allaḏī,allatī, ʾūlāʾi; verbs in their different conjugations (the imperatives irmi, iḍrib,the passive ḍuriba, etc.); particles such as lā, law, layta; prepositions such asmin, etc., as well as utterances like lam yaḍrib. The procedure is not limited tomeaningful linguistic units, but evenmiṯāls, prototypicalwords invented by thegrammarian and not used in speech (later to be called wazn), such as fuʿal, orfuʿūl, ʾafʿal are examined as proper names, as well as any syllable taken from aword (the ḍa of ḍaraba, or the ḍu of ḍuriba) or every single phoneme of Arabic.Carter (1981a), in a classic study investigating these chapters, pointed out thisenormous mass of data of highly fictitious names in the Kitāb and assignedthem an epistemological function: they are a testing device. They “test nounbehaviour”22 for morphological rules. Carter also points out that “nearly allthe examples are either attributed to him [al-Ḫalīl] or elicited from him”.23 Itshould be stressed that nowhere else—in syntax or semantics at least—, doesSibawayhi, by this speculative methodology, approximate the doctrine of histeacher al-Ḫalīl in the Kitāb al-ʿayn as closely as here: just like al-Ḫalīl seeks tocover not only the attested words of the language, but also all virtual wordsderived by any possible combination of consonants, Sībawayhi’s systematicapproach to nomination does not restrict itself to attested proper names, buthe seeks to cover all virtual names as well, by studying the possibility of usingany linguistic unit of the language as a name.

Before examining the grammatical processes that nomination implies, itssemantic and referential aspects should be highlighted. This approach implic-itly asserts important properties of language. To transform every sound intoa name by nomination, is tantamount to asserting that any sound or combi-nation of sounds, even the ones that have no meaning, can be linked to theworld immediately. Sounds can become instantly referential when used as thename of a specific, uniquely identified individual.24 This approach by itselfoffers a masterful way to link language and reference, as well as linking syntac-tic declensions to reference and pragmatics. So, what is the reference of propernames, according to the Kitāb?

22 Carter (1981a:115).23 Carter (1981a:116).24 A similar thesis exists inmodern linguistics, cf.Wilmet (1995:5): “La dénomination propre

attache un signifié à un référent”.

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6 Proper Names Have Actual Reference. Do They Have LexicalMeaning?

As Langendonck (2007:20) notes, the referential and the semantic status ofproper names has been for the last century “a question of hot debate”: in whatway do proper names refer? Do proper names have lexical meaning or onlypragmatic meaning or both?25

Sībawayhi’s Kitāb seems to have addressed this fundamental problem. Itsapproach, assuming that any sound of the language could be a proper name,may suggest that proper names have no lexical meaning. This does not seemto be the case. What the Kitāb explicitly asserts is that a proper name hasno predicative meaning which would permit it to be an attribute (lā yakūnuṣifatan): a proper name cannot be a ṣifa since it is not a quality (ḥilya), likeal-tawīl, a relational noun denoting relationship (qarāba), like ʾaḫūka, or adeictic demonstrative (mubham), like hāḏā.26 It is uniquely identified by thespeaker and the listener by a general ‘meaning’ added to pragmatic crite-ria:

When you say hāḏā zaydun ‘This is Zayd’, zaydun is the denomination ofwhat you are referring to when you say hāḏā l-rajulu ‘this man’, if youintend an individual (šayʾ) itself, whom the interlocutor knows by hisqualities or by something heard about him, which singles him out fromamong all the persons the interlocutor knows (ʾiḏā qulta hāḏā zaydun fa-zaydun ismun li-maʿnā qawli-ka hāḏā l-rajulu ʾiḏā ʾaradta šayʾan bi-ʿaynihiqad ʿarafahu l-muḫāṭabu bi-ḥilyatihi ʾaw bi-ʾamrin qad balaġahu ʿanhu qadiḫtaṣṣa bihi dūnaman yaʿrifu)

Kitāb i, 224f.

25 Cf. Langendonck (2007:23): “Mill accorded denotation (referential status) to propernames, but no lexical meaning, and Frege also assigned a Sinn, which seems to com-prehend both lexical and associative (pragmatic) meaning. Husserl argued for a one-to-one correspondence between extension (reference) and intension (meaning). For Russell,Wittgenstein and Searle, proper names could not be understood or retrieved withoutsome description(s). Then comeKripke andDonnellanwith their radical view that propernames function without any contribution of meaning or descriptions, in whatever waythese are to be understood”. See alsoWilmet (1995).

26 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 190:12 for these examples.

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The function of the proper name in the utterance hāḏā zaydun seems to bereferential here: you inform your listener that Zayd is coming.27 The general‘meaning’ of the proper name is a deictic one. It is the meaning of the demon-strative: saying zayd is equivalent to saying ‘this man’. But with this deicticreference, there is some ‘description’ involved, description resulting from prag-matic criteria: this individual is uniquely identified by his qualities (ḥilyatuhu)or by some matters that identify him excluding any other person.

7 Rules of Transposition of Word Classes

As for the second question concerning the morphosyntactic variation of theelement x, we are introduced, as Carter (1981a) points out, to the entire set ofmorphological rules: triliteralism, nominal and verbal patterns, the status ofnominal and verbal affixes, and so on. According to Carter (1981a), the functionof this approach, as noted above, is to use proper names as a testing deviceto check the validity of the rules. But to use proper names as a testing devicepresupposes knowing exactlywhat a proper namemeans:what is its definition,its syntactic category, its reference? So, the procedure itself, if it is rigorous,presupposes a careful study of the grammatical and referential status of propernames.28Moreover, to use proper names as a testing device to check the validityof the rules works indeed for real names. The grammarian can verify if hisrules generate the right form of the proper name in actual use. But this isless valid for fictitious names. For these names, usage cannot serve as a testof the validity of the rules. Accordingly, a different function of Sībawayhi’sapproach seems to use themorphological and phonological rules to determinethe rules of transposition from one category or word class to another, that ofproper names, which is what the heading of ch. 310 literally says: “This is thechapter of the modifications the demonstratives go through if they becomeproper names” (hāḏā bābu taġyīri l-ʾasmāʾi l-mubhamati ʾiḏā ṣārat ʿalāmātḫāṣṣa).29 Numerous other chapters are devoted to rules of transposition, froma verbal stem to a proper name, or from a verbal syntagm to a proper name,etc. Langendonck (2007:7) points out that it is widely admitted “that linguists

27 The proper name could also be a didactic nomination in this utterance. But in that case,the addressee would not know the qualities or the particular events related to this person.

28 This statement is similar to that by Carter (1981a:110): “Both he [Sībawayhi] and al-Ḫalīlmake such a self-conscious and technically fruitful use of proper names that we cannotdoubt that they fully understood the peculiar status of proper names.”

29 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.

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have hardly discussed the status of proper names, or, more generally, the so-called transposition of word classes”. In the light of these chapters, we can saythat by and large in the 2nd/8th century, these questions were discussed in theKitāb.

We have seen above that a proper name has a peculiar semantic status.As for its grammatical status, a proper name is a noun and it is declined likea noun. This may seem to be evident to us, after more than 1,200 years ofgrammatical tradition. But it is not, as there is at least one alternative choicepossible: a proper name could retain its original status, remain a sentence, asyllable, or a phoneme, and behave in accordance with this status, withoutany sound change, since it is possible for proper names not to have a lexicalmeaning. Indeed, all proper names are transposed as nouns, according tothe Kitāb, but some proper names, even nominals, are verbatim quotations,without any sound change. This is the case of names taken from utterances,for example, taʾabbaṭa šarran ‘he bore evil under his arm’, which producessome amazing forms in the vocative. For a man named al-rajulu munṭaliqun‘the man is leaving’, the vocative would be yā l-rajulu munṭaliqun, which issurprising because yā l-rajulu is not possible in Arabic. This vocative provesthat the sequence al-rajulu munṭaliqun has been reanalyzed as a single noun,rather than a noun preceded by the article al-. The role of the theory is todetermine when the proper name has to be a verbatim quotation,30 and whenit has to be declined. Al-Ḫalīl determined the case of verbatim quotations interms of the theory of ‘government’ or ‘operation’ (ʿamal) with a very generalrule that ultimately pertained to the principle of locality in the application ofrules.31 In general linguistics, this principle asserts that the application of rulesinvolving two elements in the sameminimal domain (a ‘local’ domain, such asa minimal sentence) takes precedence over rules that imply distant elements.Sībawayhi, following al-Ḫalīl, asserts that no sequence of words linked byrelations of ʿamal, which are by definition relations between elements in aminimal domain, changes its form when used as a proper name. In modernlinguistic terms, one might say that relations of locality inside the name haveprecedence on any other relations of ʿamal involving the sentence where thisname is mentioned:

30 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.18: al-ḥikāyatu llatī lā tuġayyaru fīhā l-ʾasmāʾu ʿan ḥālihā fī l-kalām.31 The principle of locality is an important notion in Generative Grammar. In this frame-

work, the ‘local’ or minimal domain that constrains the application of rules for a categoryx is generally constituted by theminimal sentence containing x and the governor of x. SeeChomsky (1981:5, 211, 1986:2, 19).

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This is the usage of the Arabs when they call a man Taʾabbaṭa šarran‘He bore evil under his arm’. They say ‘This is Taʾabbaṭa šarran’, and theysay ‘This is Baraqa naḥruhu [‘His chest gleaned’],32 and ‘I saw Baraqanaḥruhu’. [All] this does not change the form it had before becoming aname […] and so it is for everything inwhichone term is alreadyoperatingsyntactically on the other (wa-ḏālika qawlu l-ʿArabi fī rajulin yusammātaʾabbaṭa šarran hāḏā taʾabbaṭa šarranwa-qālū hāḏā baraqa naḥruhuwa-raʾaytubaraqanaḥruhu fa-hāḏā lā yataġayyaru ʿanḥālihi llatī kāna ʿalayhāqabla ʾan yakūna sman […] wa-kullu šayʾin ʿamila baʿḍuhu fī baʿḍin fa-huwa ʿalā hāḏihi l-ḥāl)

Kitāb ii, 59.18

The exercise of trying to know what happens in others cases, which seems tobe an academic or pedagogical exercise, is in fact of great heuristic value: itis really an investigation of rules of transposition to names, which determinewhat happens to a sound, an expression, an utterance, a word, a verb, whenit becomes a noun. What happens next, when it becomes a name, in otherwords a noun whose reference is uniquely identified? Let us take an exampleto illustrate what is involved in the debate. If you wish to call a man by theconsonant ḍ of ḍaraba, the ḍ of ḍirābi, or the ḍ of ḍuḥan, what do you haveto do? Sībawayhi gives us the answer of al-Ḫalīl: your man will be calledḍāʾun, ḍuwwun, ḍiyyun, respectively.33 But, first, Sībawayhi gives us the rulesinvolved.34 Since names are nouns, you start by transforming the phoneme intoa nominal stem. There are no nouns of less than three consonants,35 thereforethe resulting nounhas its second and third consonant elided.These second andthird consonants must be a /y/ or /w/, as those are the consonants that can beelided.36 Taking into account the vowel /a/ after the /ḍ/ in ḍaraba, you twiceadd the related glide ʾalif, the first being realized as [ā], the second37 as hamza,so you end up with ḍāʾ. Since the intended name is masculine, which is priorto feminine and more powerful, it receives declension. Eventually, your man

32 The translation of the two proper names is borrowed from Carter (1981a:115).33 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.14–16 wa-ʾin sammayta rajulan bi-l-ḍādi min ḍaraba qulta ḍāʾun

wa-ʾin sammaytahu bihāmin ḍirābi qulta ḍiyyunwa-ʾin sammaytahu bihāmin ḍuḥan qultaḍuwwun wa-kaḏālika hāḏā l-bābu kulluhu.

34 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57 f.35 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57.15 laysa fī l-dunyā smun ʾaqallu ʿadadan min smin ʿalā ṯalāṯati

ʾaḥrufin.36 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57.17–19.37 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 58.6–8.

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will be called ḍāʾun. If you wish to call him with the ḍ of ḍirābi, you say ḍiyyunfor similar reasons. And if you wish to call him with the ḍ of ḍuḥan, you sayḍuwwun, again for similar reasons.38

The investigation addresses questions in a systematic fashion. When I callsomeone rajulāni, do I say hāḏā rajulānu or hāḏā rajulāni? Andwhen I call himṯamma or lā or law, do I say hāḏā ṯamma or hāḏā ṯammun, hāḏā law or hāḏālawwun?

The investigation of the rules of transposition does not limit itself to onlyone shift. From a category or element x (state 1 = s1) to a proper name (s2)represents one shift, but when it is possible, the transposition may shift fromx to a proper name, and then to a common name (s3), as in the case ofyazīd (as a verb: s1) to Yazīd as a proper name (s2), referring to a personuniquely identified, and then to Yazīd, as referring to a class of persons whosename is Yazīd (nakira: s3). In the latter case, Yazīd is inflected completely:jāʾa yazīdu wa-yazīdun ʾāḫaru ‘Yazīd came, and then another [person called]Yazīd’. The same reasoning applies to ʾaḥmar ‘red’ with a first state partiallydeclined, as its form resembles that of a verb (ʾaḥmar is like ʾaḏhab) and itis a qualifier (ṣifa), qualifiers being less powerful and less well-establishedthan nouns. In s2, ʾAḥmar, which becomes a proper name, retains partialdeclension since definite is less powerful than indefinite. And in s3, ʾaḥmar alsoretains its partial declension: jāʾa ʾaḥmaru wa-ʾaḥmaru ʾāḫaru ‘ʾAḥmar came,and then another [person called] ʾAḥmar’. Contrariwise, ʾafʿal minka is fullyinflected in s3 and behaves differently from ʾaḥmar, if minka is omitted fromthe name. One has to say jāʾa ʾAkbaru wa-ʾAkbarun ʾāḫaru ‘ʾAkbar came, andthen another [person called] ʾAkbar’, since declension depends on the historyof the category. According to Sībawayhi, it is not ʾakbar which is a ṣifa butʾakbar minka.39 So when ʾakbar refers to a class (of persons named ʾAkbar),it is fully declined like a noun. On the contrary, ʾaḥmar is by itself a ṣifa andwhen it is indefinite, referring to a class of proper names, it remains partiallydeclined, since it returns to its first state s1.40 We suppose that this differencebetween ʾakbar and ʾaḥmar is due to their syntactic use and semantic value:ʾakbar is an elative by its form and it is used in discourse as a predicate. Inthis case, it is accompanied by an—explicit or implicit—minka. It needs minto express the comparison of the quality. Otherwise it is used as the first termof a qualificative annexion, or with the article. In these two cases, it is fully

38 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57.20–58.1 and Kitāb ii, 58.1–4.39 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 4.21 wa-ʾinnamā yakūnu hāḏā ṣifatan bi-minka. Cf. Kitāb ii, 4.21.40 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 4 f.

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declinable. Conversely, ʾaḥmar refers to the quality by itself. But if ʾakbaruminka is used as a proper name, it remains partially inflected in s3: jāʾa ʾakbaruminka wa-ʾakbaruminka ʾāḫaru ‘ʾAkbar minka came, and then another [personcalled] ʾAkbarminka’.41 This kind of investigation is carried out for almost everyterm considered.

8 Regularities and Analogies in Grammar

The analyses mentioned in the preceding section, which are founded on rulesobtained by analogy, raise heuristic questions. Inevitably, they raise the ques-tion of what is regularity in grammar and how to deduce analogies. Let usreturn to the proper names constructed with ḍ (ḍāʾun; ḍiyyun; ḍuwwun). Actu-ally, the rules that give these names follow al-Ḫalīl’s theory (wa-hāḏā qiyāsuqawli l-Ḫalīl; Kitāb ii, 59.16). But other grammariansmake another first hypoth-esis, restituting the consonant, andnot only the vowel afterḍ (wa-manḫālafahuradda l-ḥarfa llaḏī yalīhi; Kitāb ii, 59.16 f.). This results in totally different propernames, presumably ḍarun; ḍirun; ḍuḥun.

Divergent analogies are also the heart of a debate between Yūnus and al-Ḫalīl in ch. 315, in which Sībawayhi reports Yūnus’ views to al-Ḫalīl. The ques-tion is: what analogy has to be applied if we call a woman jawārin ‘slave girls’,a word which ends in a weak consonant /y/? Yūnus treats the word as if itconsisted of three sound radical consonants. The analogy for him is inside thecategory of the (inherently) definite and it goes from the definite sound formto the definite weak form, from fawāʿil with sound consonants to fawāʿil witha weak final consonant.42 One says fawāʿila in the accusative and the geni-tive, this pattern being partially declinable since it is exclusive for the plurals,and plurals are known to be less powerful than singulars. So, one should saymarartu bi-jawāriya, when a woman is called jawārin. In other words, Yūnus’view restores the diptotic pattern in jawārin as a proper name, disregardingthe fact that jawārin as a common noun, although it has the pattern jawāriyu,has a genitive jawāriyin > jawārin. These relations may be represented as fol-lows:

41 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 4 f. fa-ʾin sammaytahu ʾafḍala minka lam taṣrifhu ʿalā ḥālin.42 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 53.13 ʾammā Yūnus fa-kāna yanẓuru ʾilā kulli šayʾin min hāḏā ʾiḏā

kānamaʿrifatan kayfa ḥālu naẓīrihi min ġayri l-muʿtallimaʿrifatan.

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definite (maʿrifa)sound final consonant (ġayr muʿtall) → weak final consonant (muʿtall)fawāʿila jawāriya

As for al-Ḫalīl, he assigns to this word a specific morpho-phonological sta-tus with its final /y/, setting up the analogy inside the category of the weaknouns, and going from the indefinite to the definite. Since the common nounis jawārin (marartu bi- jawārin), when a woman is called jawārin, one shouldalso saymarartu bi-jawārin.43 The analogy in this case is as follows:

noun with a glide in final position (muʿtall)indefinite (nakira) → definite (maʿrifa)

In other words, one might say that the prior category for Yūnus is seman-tic and referential (definiteness). For al-Ḫalīl, the prior category is morpho-phonological (noun with a final glide), as the rule discussed is a morpho-syntactic one.

This debate proves that there are no grammatical (morphosyntactic) prop-erties that could be said to be unique to proper names, at least according to theKitāb. The rules of transposition lead to the conclusion that proper names, i.e.nouns that refer to unique individual entities identified by the listener, do notimply, by their referential status, a unique and exclusive grammatical behav-ior or case behavior. Some proper names have a particular behavior they sharewith other categories that are marked, by their form or/and their signification.They do not bear the tanwīn after the case marker. So, what is the key to thisparticular grammatical behavior?

In sum, if the reference of nouns, through the parameter of definiteness, isthe key to understand the debate of these thirty-two chapters, and to under-stand why some grammatical categories (such as syntactic categories, num-ber, gender, and definiteness, proper names being included in this last cate-gory), but not others, are selected to be examined, reference, whether virtualor actual, does not directly provide the key to the morphosyntactic behavior

43 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 52.18 f. huwa fī ḥāli l-jarri wa-l-rafʿi bi-manzilatihi qabla ʾan yakūnasman wa-law kāna min šaʾnihim ʾan yadaʿū ṣarfahu fī l-maʿrifati la-tarakū ṣarfahu qablaʾan yakūnamaʿrifatan. Actually, as Kees Versteegh pointed out to me, the ending -n in thisclass of words is not an ordinary tanwīn but a compensatory tanwīn. This is the analysisof al-Ḫalīl (Kitāb ii, 52.22) and of the tradition after him (see Versteegh 1995:169ff.). So,everything happens as if the shift to the category of proper names is not strong enough tooverride the special rules for words in -iyun.

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of nouns known as mā lā yanṣarif. Actually, mā lā yanṣarif includes at leasttwo opposite types of nouns in terms of reference: nouns referring to the bestknown and identified individual for the speaker and the listener, the propername, on the one hand, and nouns referring to the most unidentified specificindividual, “someone among those denoted by this noun”, the indefinite noun,on the other hand.

In order to find the key to the interface between morphology and syntax,semantics and pragmatics, and the reason for the presence or absence oftanwīn, we need to return to the Risāla and to the notion of tamakkun, as“tanwīn is the mark of mutamakkin” (al-tanwīn ʿalāmatu l-mutamakkin; Kitābii, 157).

9 Tamakkun

Tamakkun is a rather well-known category in the literature. Though well stud-ied, this notion has been interpreted differently by researchers.44 For the pur-pose of the present article, namely the relation between case and reference,we will focus on certain distinctive properties of the notion in the Kitāb, thatmakes its acceptation different from the one developed in the later tradition.

The word, as we know, refers to both power and space: tamakkana min Xmeans ‘to becomepossessed of mastery’,45 or ‘power, strength, proficiency, overa thing’; tamakkana bi- X means also ‘to become settled, established in a place’.Is the first acceptation a figurative meaning, obtained by metaphor from thesecond one? In the Classical Arabic dictionaries, only the first acceptation

44 Baalbaki (1979:16, 2008:113) translates tamakkun in the Kitāb as ‘declinability’, ʿadam ta-makkun as ‘indeclinability’, and ʾašadd tamakkun as ‘more declinable’ (2008:118). Owens(1988:134ff.) studied this notion together with other notions that have been connectedwith it throughout the tradition. Although he deals with the general model rather thanwith the individual notions, his analysis may be useful to understand ʾawwal in the Kitāb(cf. below, section 11 11). Versteegh (1995:179), in his commentary on al-Zajjājī’s ʾĪḍāḥ, andCarter (2004:115) translate tamakkunwith ‘flexibility’.Wewill comeback to this translationbelow.We have studied this notion in its relation with tanwīn briefly in Ayoub (1996) andin Ayoub (2009:442–446). Our present study of tamakkun is along the same line as Ayoub(2009), and congruous with Danecki (2009:429–432) in many points (cf. infra). Cf alsoChairet (2000) and finally, see Talmon (2003:287f.) who surveys in a note all the differenttranslations of this notion in the Arabist literature.

45 The Lisān al-ʿArab s.v. says: tamakkana minhu: ẓafira. The simple form of the verb, too,refers to strength and power: tamakkana ka-makuna.

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is attested or underlined.46 And, even in the second acceptation, the semeof power, strength, is present, as tamakkana means ‘to be firmly established[somewhere]’. By this metaphor of firm settlement, power, vigor and strength,a grammatical concept is built which designates a property of the language.What property—or properties—does it designate in the Kitāb?

The grammatical notion functions as a binary pair,mutamakkin/ġayr muta-makkin, but unlike munṣarif/ġayr munṣarif, mutamakkin admits degrees andcomparison, as noted by Owens (1988:134). This comparison would be positive:x is more mutamakkin (ʾašaddu tamakkunan) than y. For instance, nouns aremoremutamakkin than verbs, as we hve seen above;47 temporal adverbials aremore mutamakkin than spatial ones.48 The comparison could be negative aswell (Kitāb i, 28.7): “mā ʾaḥsana ʿabdallāhi ‘how good ʿAbdallāh is!’ functions asa verb although it is not asmutamakkin as the verb” (mā ʾaḥsana ʿabdallāhi yajrīmajrā l-fiʿli wa-lam yatamakkan tamakkunahu).

As already noted,49 there is a difference between the acceptation of tamak-kun in Sībawayhi and in late grammatical treatises. In late grammarians’ work,tamakkunmeans declinability, ġayrmutamakkinbeing at that point equivalentto mabnī, that is to say uninflected or invariable in case form. So it is for al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 686/1287), who claims (Šarḥ i, 13) that tamakkun designatesthe mere fact that the noun is declinable (kawnu l-ismi muʿraban). But it isdifficult to assume that tamakkun in the Kitāb means declinability, for bothindeclinable nouns (ʾayna, matā, etc.) and partially declinable nouns (dajājatuas the proper name of a man) are described as lā yatamakkan: “ʾayna, matā,kayfa, ḥayṯu, and similarwords donot have a diminutive form […].These nounsare not firmly established” (wa-lā yuḥaqqaru ʾayna wa-matā wa-lā kayfa wa-lāḥayṯu wa-naḥwuhunna […] wa-laysat ʾasmāʾa tamakkanu; Kitāb ii, 137.18–20).

46 The word is absent from the Kitāb al- ʿayn. Ibn Durayd ( Jamhara 983) gives only tamakka-na minhu. Lisān presents incidentally tamakkana bi-l-makān but underlines tamakkanaminhu. As for the later grammarians, Ibn Yaʿīš (Šarḥ ix, 30), for instance, associatestanwīn al-tamakkun once with makāna ‘high rank or standing, an honorable place inthe estimation of a king’ (makāna min al-ṣultān), and then with makān: al-dāllu ʿalā-l-makānati ʾay ʾanna-hu bāqin ʿalā makāni-hi mina l-ismiyyati. Recent studies by Arabistshave argued for a reinterpretation of the relation between makān and tamakkana (seeLarcher 1999:108).

47 Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 5.8 fa-l-ʾafʿālu ʾaṯqalumina l-ʾasmāʾi li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiya l-ʾawwaluwa-hiya ʾašaddu tamakkunan.

48 Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7: wa-ʿlam ʾanna ẓurūfa l-dahri ʾašaddu tamakkunan fī l-ʾasmāʾi minal-ʾamākini.

49 Cf. Chairet (2000:218), Danecki (2009:431 f.), Ayoub (2009:442f.).

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Likewise, Sībawayhi says: “Any noun not firmly established cannot bear thetanwīn when it is definite; it bears it when it is indefinite” (kullu smin laysayatamakkanu lā yadḫuluhu l-tanwīnu fī l-maʿrifati wa-yadḫuluhu fī l-nakirati;Kitāb i, 351.20).50

Moreover, tamakkun is not always associated with declinability and, to takea few examples, in all the following contexts, tamakkun cannot be translatedat all by declinability: ġayr, which is fully declinable, is nevertheless ġayrmutamakkin.51 Temporal adverbials (ẓurūf al-dahr) aremoremutamakkin thanspatial ones, aswehave seen above,52 but someof themare fully declinable andsome indeclinable. Lāta resembles laysa, but doesnothave the same tamakkun,while both of them are indeclinable.53 Thus, the notion of tamakkun is widerthan declinability in the Kitāb. In syntax and semantics, it affects all the basicword classes and grammatical categories. Besides this usage, tamakkun is anotion used in morphology and phonology as well. It applies to all the basicunits of grammar. The following list is far from being exhaustive:

– the triliteral consonantal root is mutamakkin in the language, as if this rootwere ‘the first’ (kaʾannahu huwa l-ʾawwalu; Kitāb ii, 336f.). In this context,mutamakkin seems to mean ‘the most frequent in the language’ (ʾakṯar al-kalām).54

– similarly, the semi-consonants /w/, /y/ and the long vowel /ā/ (representedby the ʾalif ) aremutamakkin fī l-kalām (Kitāb ii, 384.4). The criteria here arethe frequency and the multiplicity of their phonological and morphosyn-

50 At first sight, Sībawayhi’s reasoning seems very strange in this last quotation; it presentsa generalization that seems to be the opposite of what we know from the later traditionabout the partially declinable nouns. We know that these nouns are partially declinableif they are indefinite, and that they become fully declinable when definite. But definite,in this last presentation, means morphologically definite with the article al-, while Sīb-awayhi, when he says definite, always means ‘inherently definite’. A simple illustration ofhis generalization is presented by the nouns to which -at is suffixed. As this suffix is amarker of feminine gender, and, as feminine is not powerful like masculine, every nounwhich has this -at, like dajāj-at or qarqar-at, will be fully declinable when indefinite (dajā-jatun, qarqaratun) and will be partially declinable if a man is called like that (dajājatu,qarqaratu). Cf. Kitāb ii, 12 f.

51 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 138.4: ġayr ʾayḍan laysa bi-smin mutamakkinin.52 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7.53 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 22.3–5.54 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 336f. wa-ʾammā mā jāʾa ʿalā ṯalāṯati ʾaḥrufin fa-huwa ʾakṯaru l-

kalāmi fī kulli šayʾinmin al-ʾasmāʾi wa-l-ʾafʿāli wa-ġayrihimā […] wa-ḏālika kaʾannahuhuwal-ʾawwalu fa-min ṯamma tamakkana fī l-kalāmi.

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tactic values: as long vowels, as markers of plurals (for /y/ and /w/): /ā/ is amarker of the feminine, /y/ is an augment in diminutives and ʾiḍāfa, etc.

– the amṯila ‘patterns’ of morphology themselves could be mutamakkin forsome category, for instance fiʿāli, which ismutamakkin in words whose rootdoes not include glides.55

Does the notion of mutamakkin relate to reference when applied in syntax?

10 Tamakkun, Analogy (muḍāraʿa) and Syntactic Categories

The notion of tamakkun seems indeed to involve referential properties. Inthe following quotation, the Arabicized words, lijām ‘bridle’ and dībāj ‘silkbrocade’ are said to be firmly established in the discourse (tamakkana fī l-kalāmi) because they perform one of the referential properties of nouns, to bedefinite and indefinite:

Any foreign noun which is Arabicized and which becomes firmly estab-lished in the discourse, bearing the definite article al- and being indefi-nite, will have the tanwīn if it becomes a proper name for aman […], suchas al-lijām and al-dībāj (ʾinna kulla smin ʾaʿjamiyyin ʾuʿribawa-tamakkanafī l-kalāmi fa-daḫalathu l-ʾalifuwa-l-lāmuwa-ṣāra nakiratan, fa-ʾinnakaʾiḏā sammayta bihi rajulan ṣaraftahu […] naḥwu l-lijāmi wa-l-dībāji).

Kitāb ii, 18 f.

Along the same lines, the noun ġayr, mentioned above, is not mutamakkinsince it is always indefinite in its interpretation. It cannot be pluralized anddoes not accept the definite article prefix al-.56 The words ʾayna, matā, kayfa,ḥayṯu are notmutamakkin, either, since they cannot be definite, do not receivethe article, and cannot be qualified.57

In all of these cases, tamakkun denotes the referential properties of nouns.The ability to be both definite and indefinite for a noun means a much widerand more precise referential applicability than for nouns that can only be def-inite or indefinite. For Sībawayhi, this is a sign of tamakkun. It is interestingto compare this argument with the one presented by al-Zajjājī, two centuries

55 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 191.2: fiʿāl […]mutamakkinatun fī ġayri l-muʿtalli.56 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb, ii, 138.4.57 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb, ii, 137.18.

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later, and attributed by him to the Basran school. This argument was meantto justify flexibility within the category of nouns itself. Indefinite nouns, saysal-Zajjājī, are lighter than definite ones as they signify an underlying referent“and there is no need to think about the question which individual is meant.But when a definite noun is mentioned, it is necessary to single it out as anindividual from among the other individuals who share the same name” (Ver-steegh 1995:177). The argument seems to relate to the process of cognition—theeffort to identify the referent. More generally, the definite nouns, as noted byVersteegh (1995:179), are seen to be heavier than the indefinite, because theyare “more restricted in their referential applicability and, hence, in their flex-ibility”. Although the arguments of the Kitāb and of the ‘Basrans’ seem verysimilar, Sībawayhi’s argument is different in scope: it is the ability of the nounto be definite and indefinite, i.e. to adapt to the different needs of communica-tion, that makes itmutamakkin.

But tamakkun is not limited to reference only, and it is not only a mor-phosyntactic notion likemunṣarif/ġayrmunṣarif, either.When applied to partsof speech, its comprehension is complex and involves the syntactic, semantic,morphological and phonological properties of the syntactic category exam-ined. In more than one context, ḫiffa and tamakkun seem synonymous as theyindicate this same grammatical property of an element, its ability to performall the properties expected of the syntactic category. These properties are pre-sented asmawāḍiʿ, i.e. functions or grammatical contexts. For instance, the ʾalifal-waṣl in the nouns ʾaym and ʾaymun, which enter in the oath formula ʾaymullāh and ʾaymun llāh, is prefixed to a noun less mutamakkin than ibn or ismbecause it is used in only one context, i.e. the context of oath (wa-ʾinnamā hiyafī smin lā yustaʿmalu ʾillā fī mawḍiʿin wāḥidin; Kitāb ii, 296.16–19).58 The samerelation is found between tamakkun and the restriction of mawāḍiʿ in the anal-ysis of the interrogative pronounsmatā, ʾayna, etc.: “They are not nouns that arefirmly established […]. They have grammatical functions they do not exceed”(wa-laysat ʾasmāʾ tamakkanu […] ʾinnamā lahunna mawāḍiʿu lā yujāwiznahā;Kitāb ii,137.18); and “[ḥayṯu and ʾayna are] words that are not firmly establishedin discourse. They have limited grammatical functions in discourse” (ḥurūfunlam tatamakkan fī l-kalām ʾinnamā lahā mawāḍiʿu talzamuhā fī l-kalāmi; Kitābi, 250.15).

58 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 296.16–19: al-ʾalifu llatī fī ‘aym’ wa-‘aymun’ lammā kānat fī smin lāyatamakkan tamakkuna l-ʾasmāʾi llatī fīhā ʾalifu l-waṣli naḥwa ‘bnin’ wa-‘smin’ wa-‘mriʾin’wa-ʾinnamā hiya fī smin lā yustaʿmalu ʾillā fī mawḍiʿin wāḥidin.

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This argumentation often recurs in the Kitāb. As is well known, in syntaxand semantics, nouns aremoremutamakkin than verbs but they are also lighteras they have a wider syntactic distribution and wider referential properties: tomake an utterance, a verb needs a noun, but a noun does not need a verb.59 Iftemporal adverbials (ẓurūf al-dahr) are more mutamakkin than spatial ones,this is because of their ability to have different grammatical functions: inaddition to their circumstantial function, they may be subject and object, andso on.60 Thus, their wider syntactic distribution, linked to their referentialproperties, is the criterion of their tamakkun. If lāta is less mutamakkin thanlaysa, this is because laysa has a personal inflection marking the speaker andthe addressee, and you can use laysa to inform about someone who is absentfrom the situation of enunciation. So you can ‘build’ it on a mubtadaʾ as inʿabdullāhi laysaḏāhiban ‘ʿAbdallāh is not going’. It is not the same for lātawhichis more restricted in its usage and does not bear the persons’ markers (Kitāb i,22.3–5).

A non-mutamakkin element displays distributional restrictions in its syntac-tic functions. Its referential and semantic functions can also be restricted andit does not necessarily admit all the morphological derivations of the noun.This is the case of the noun ġayr, the interrogative pronouns ʾayna, matā andkayfa already mentioned. The noun ġayr is always indefinite in its interpreta-tion; it does not accept the definite article prefix al-; it cannot be pluralized(Kitāb ii, 138.4). Likewise, the interrogative pronouns ʾayna,matā and kayfa donot accept the morphology of diminutives; they cannot be qualified, and theydo not accept the definite article prefix al-(Kitāb ii, 137.18).

These examples and many others link tamakkun with an underlying theoryof syntactic categories. These syntactic categories are not a monolithic block:they are constituted by a conjunction of referential, semantic, syntactic, mor-phological, and phonetic properties. It is this conception which makes it pos-sible to set up an analogy, one category resembling another by one propertyand not resembling it by another property. It is this conception, too, which is atthe origin of the tamakkun. The more an element x performs these propertiesor these mawāḍiʿ, the more it is mutamakkin. Conversely, less a term performsthese properties and is restricted in its properties, less it ismutamakkin.

The notion of tamakkun refers to mobility in syntactic position, semanticmobility, morphological flexibility, and wide referential capability. These prop-

59 As noted by Versteegh (1995:137), the same argument is used by al-Zajjājī in the discussionabout the lightness of the nouns as compared to the heaviness of the verbs.

60 Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7.

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erties constitute, in fact, flexibility, but the kind of flexibility that ultimatelyallowswhatmodern linguists interested in language activity and cognition con-sider to be one of themost important properties of language, itsmalleability orits plasticity, which permits communication, adjustment, and correction, bothintegral parts of language activity.61

Themore flexible a word is, i.e. the more taṣarruf it has, the lighter it is, andthe more it allows communication and adjustment. Some modern linguistictheories study this plasticity mostly in the lexicon, but it is not implausible toconsider that what Sībawayhi points out as the tamakkun of linguistic termsfalls under the general property of plasticity.

The terms flexibility and plasticity have a long history in Arabic studies.Plasticity was already used in the 19th century in tandem with aplasticity inHowell’s Grammar of the Classical Arabic language to translate the term taṣar-ruf and ʿadam taṣarruf in morphology, phonology, and syntax.62 It was takenup by Baalbaki (1979:16, 18) following Howell, for taṣarruf. Baalbaki points outthat taṣarruf and tamakkun are sometimes synonymous in the Kitāb. The twoterms taṣarruf and tamakkun come, indeed, very close to each other semanti-cally, and they refer to the same properties. Sometimes the two terms seems tobe interchangeable in the Kitāb, as in the following quotation, the second partof whichwehave cited above:ḥayṯuwa-ʾayna lā yataṣarrafāni taṣarrufa taḥtakawa-ḫalfaka […] ġayra ʾannahumā ḥurūfun lam tatamakkan fī l-kalām (Kitābi, 250.15). So, taṣarruf is a general concept in grammar, and has to be distin-guished carefully from yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif, which is only a morpho-syntacticnotion, limited in its applicability to nouns. It is also the notion of flexibilitywhichwas chosen byVersteegh (1995:179) to translate tamakkun.63 The theoret-ical notions of plasticity and flexibility were taken up by Chairet (2000:217 f.) to

61 See for instanceAntoineCulioli’s theoretical framewhodevelopeda theoryof malleabilityof human language founded on the lexicon and the usage. This theory is different fromwhat we are discussing here, but emphasizes the same properties, as we can see inthe following quotation: “Stability should not be confused with rigidity or immutability.Linguistic phenomena form dynamic systems which are regular but which have a marginof variation due to a great variety of factors: they are phenomena which are both stableand malleable […] Deformation is a transformation that modifies a configuration so thatsome properties remain invariant throughout while others vary. In order for there to bedeformability, there has to be a schematic form (such that theremay be bothmodificationand invariance), and deforming factors as well as a margin of flexibility” (translated fromCulioli 1990:129f., in French-English glossary of linguistic terms).

62 See Howell (1883, Part i, xxxviii, lii) and the index of Howell (1911, iv, Part 2, xxxviii), forthe occurrences of plasticity/aplasticity in the grammar.

63 And accessory ‘mobility’ (Versteegh 1995:174).

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translate tamakkun. Carter (2004:115) adopts for tamakkun the notion of flexi-bility, presenting the tanwīn in the Kitāb as “the mark of syntactic flexibility”.Our analysis is, therefore, consistent with previous analyses about this notion.

In sum, clear conceptual differences can be seen between tamakkun andyanṣarif/lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb. Tamakkun, just like taṣarruf, designates ageneral property of the language, its flexibility and ultimately its plasticity,as realized by some of its elements. Yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif is a morphosyntacticproperty referring to declinability, summarized by the presence or the absenceof the tanwīn. But tanwīn is the sign of tamakkun, in other words of the generalproperty as it applies to nouns. It is not only a morphosyntactic property ofnouns. So, going back now to the thesis asserted repeatedly in the Kitāb that“tanwīn is the mark of mutamakkin”, we may say that tanwīn is the mark of theplasticity of nouns, when this property is fully achieved by the noun.

As we have observed above, the reason why a linguistic element x is muta-makkin is the fact that it is ʾawwal. The li-ʾanna statement of tamakkun invokesthis status of ʾawwal for more than one category, as this quotation, trans-lated above, reminds us (Kitāb ii, 22.6–10):wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-nakirata […]ʾašaddutamakkunan li-ʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-wāḥida ʾašaddutamakkunan mina l-jamīʿi li-ʾanna l-wāḥida l-ʾawwalu […]. Thus, the plasticityof nouns is due to the fact that nouns are ʾawwal. But what about ʾawwal?Whatexactly does this notion mean?

11 The Notion of ʾawwal

So far we have studied grammatical categories, their relations to the theoryof declinability and nomination, their role in the construction of reference,while attempting to see the link between case and reference. But ʾawwal seemsto pertain to a hierarchy inside the language rather than to its relation to theworld. What is the property of language behind it? It would be very delicate toassimilate completely such a general notion as ʾawwal to only one contempo-rary theoretical notion. This would be difficult for several reasons: first, if thisnotion really corresponds to a universal property of language, it will be notedby more than one modern theory. We know, indeed, that the notion of hier-archy as a universal property of language is present under different forms inmany contemporary syntactic and lexical models and linguistic theories.

The second reason is that general notions have multiple facets, and maybe compared to more than one model; besides, some of its aspects may becompared to a specific notion of one model, and other aspects to anothernotion from another model. Despite these reservations, the resemblance of

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Sībawayhi’s hierarchies to the theory of markedness is striking, as pointed outbyOwens (1988:199–226) andhelps to understand it.Whenwe take a look at thelist of categories that Owens (1988:209) established on the basis of Sībawayhi’sRisāla and completed from theworks of later grammarians,we find that in eachoppositional pair, regarded as ʾaṣl and farʿ in the work of later grammarians,only the first term is called ʾawwal by Sībawayhi:

ʾaṣl farʿ

noun verbnoun ṣifaindefinite definitemasculine femininesingular pluralArabic names foreign namessimple compound [morphologically]regular modified pattern without change of meaning (ʿadl)

The first striking observation is that the selected categories of this table, if theyseem more complete than the categories involved in the hierarchies of theKitāb’s Risāla, match the headings of the chapters of the theory of mā yanṣarifwa-mā lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb as seen above. Not only are the grammaticalcategories selected with their oppositional pairs the same, but the correlationbetween the non-ʾawwal/non-ʾaṣl status of a category and restrictions of distri-butionare also the same.Thismeans that the later grammarians identified theircategories on the basis of an in-depth study of the structure of the chapters ofthe Kitāb, especially those dealing with mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif. Whatreinforces this hypothesis is that, first, the terminology of Sībawayhi (ʾawwal,qabl) sometimes reappears in thewritings of the later grammarians,64 and, sec-ondly, the most important domain dealt with by this theory, is the question ofdeclinability of nouns and verbs, i.e. the issue for which these categories withtheir hierarchies are developed in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb.

Owens (1988) correlates the ʾaṣl/farʿ distinction and the hierarchies of theKitāb’s Risāla with the categories unmarked/marked in modern linguistics, asdescribed by Greenberg (1966). The theory of markedness, developed in the

64 Cf. Owens (1988:204f.).

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realm of phonology andmorphology by structuralism, considers that betweentwomembers of an oppositional pair, one of them is more basic, or unmarked,on the basis of different types of characteristics, morphological, phonologicalor syntactic. These characteristics can be summarized by a wider syntacticdistribution, a wider development of morphological forms, a higher degreeof irregularity. Without going into the details of the analysis, it is easy to seethat these characteristics correspond to what Sībawayhi describes in terms oftamakkun and ḫiffa, which we correlate with the capacity of a category to bealtered and to adapt to different contexts, i.e. with a general property of thelanguage, its malleability or flexibility.

The comparison with markedness theory remains interesting, because itallows us to compare Arabic linguistic thought with modern linguistic theory,with attested correlations between marked elements and restrictions of distri-bution. The notion of malleability is more general, but it too grants a bettercomprehension and provides a unifying thread to what otherwise appear to beerratic facts in the Arabic theory itself. More precisely, it helps us to interpretthe categories considered as ʾawwalwithout inconsistency by bringing togethertwo sets of facts under the same notion of markedness. On the one hand, thereare semantic and pragmatic categories and facts like the ones discussed ear-lier on. On the other, there are purely morphological categories and facts likethe ones discussed in sections vii. and x. of the list above (p. 19), in particu-lar marked patterns, called ʿadl, compound names, like ḥaḍramawt, and mor-phophonological and even phonetic facts and categories, which seem at firstglance very different from the semantic and pragmatic ones.

In addition, markedness theory, as understood by Jakobson (1973:i, 185)among others, helps us to understand the logic of the typical denominationsin the Kitāb: in markedness theory, each pair has one element asserting apositive property a, which is the marked element. The other element assertsnothing about a, but is mainly used to indicate the absence of a. This isexactly the logic of the denomination of pairs likemāmaḍāwa-mā lam yamḍi;waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ; munqaṭiʿ/ġayr munqaṭiʿ; mustaqīm/ġayr mustaqīm; mun-ṣarif/ġayr munṣarif, and so on. The negative element here is more generalthan the positive one. It encompasses all those cases that are not covered bythe positive property. But, contrary to the theory of markedness, it does notencompass the positive property itself, in the way masculine includes bothmasculine and feminine.

Yet, there are also significant divergences between the Medieval and themodern theory. Sībawayhi, and Arabic grammarians after him, linked theirhierarchies, ordered them or, more exactly, reduced them to only one. Indeed,the double declensions of nouns concerns case and case is a syntactic phe-

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nomenon presupposing speech and discourse. But, from all the grammaticalcategories listed by Sībawayhi, only the first pair enumerates discourse ele-ments, i.e. the two parts of speech, verbs and nouns. Thus, the ultimate modelof all hierarchical categories, with respect to their syntactic behavior, is that ofthe noun and the verb:

Every [category] where the ṣarf has been dropped (mā turika ṣarfuhu)is likened to the verb,65 insofar as it is not as firmly established as other[categories], following the example of the verb which is not as firmlyestablished as the noun ( fa-jamīʿu mā yutraku ṣarfu-hu muḍāraʿun bihi l-fiʿlu li-ʾanna-hu laysa lahu tamakkunu ġayrihi kamā ʾanna l-fiʿla laysa lahutamakkunu l-ismi).

Kitāb i, 6.5 f.

The inflectional restrictions on the noun are ultimately intelligible by the factthat the noun has (taken over some of) the behavior of the verb. The linkbetween case and reference in this domain is partial and indirect. Some ofthe marked values of grammatical categories—some referential, others not—make the noun lose some of its declensional properties and retain only thesame declensional markers as the verb.

As we have seen above, this statement of the Kitāb, which is followed by theentire Arabic grammatical tradition, encounters a universal property of lan-guages. Actually, the link between case and grammatical categories is knownto exist in many languages. In some languages, definiteness and case are inter-dependent. An interdependence between gender and case can be noted inIndo-European languages.66

In sum, in Arabic, according to Sībawayhi, if a noun is unmarked for all cat-egories (is ʾawwal), it has more flexibility and more plasticity (tamakkun) thannouns marked for some category and it will be suffixed with the tanwīn afterthe case marker. Just as the theory of government, which is a formal theory,includes case and mood without inconsistency and without excluding subtlesemantic analysis of the verb, the theory of elements ʾawwal includes seman-tic and pragmatic facts, together with morphological and phonological facts,without inconsistency and without excluding a subtle analysis of reference.The formal character of the theory gives it more explanatory power.

65 Lit. “the verb is likened to it” (muḍāraʿun bihi l-fiʿl); but the following sentence of thequotation gives the verb as the model.

66 Cf. Lyons (1970:226f.).

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12 Conclusion

What about the changes after Sībawayhi concerning the theory of mā yanṣarifwa-mā lāyanṣarif, and thenotions correlated to it?At first glance, there appearsto be only a redistribution of the terminology, with the change being a matterof notational variation rather than of conceptual difference, since we find thesamehierarchies and the same theory of markedness formulated inother terms(ʾaṣl/farʿ). This continuity, togetherwith other continuities, provides content tothe notion of tradition.

Actually, in the later grammatical tradition there is a shift tonormative gram-mar. In this regard, the denominationmamnūʿmina l-ṣarf is significant, wherethe term mamnūʿ ‘prohibited’ resonates with the norm of the grammarian, asopposed to the purely descriptive termmā lā yanṣarif. Moreover, the approachof later grammarians tends to be more taxonomical, classifying the reasonsfor partial declinability into two types, those partially inflected for one rea-son, and those for two reasons. Thus, this approach loses the heuristic value ofSībawayhi’s approach, with the definiteness parameter adopted as a variationparameter and the implications of this approach for the analysis of languagein its relation to the world.

The most important shift remains the value of the tanwīn. As noted above,there is a shift in the terminology from ʾawwal, qablu, and marginally, ʾaṣlin Sībawayhi, to an elaborated terminology of ʾaṣl/farʿ. The notion of farʿis almost non-existent in the Kitāb. According to Troupeau (1976:159), theterm farʿ occurs only twice in the Kitāb, in phonology and phonetics. Thesecond occurrence of farʿ comes in opposition to ʾaṣl: there are twenty-nineconsonants (ḥurūf ) inArabic, but this number could be increased to thirty-five,if we add those consonants that are furūʿ wa-ʾaṣluhā min al-tisʿati wa-ʿišrīn,67i.e. allophones of the twenty-nine. In Sībawayhi’s terminology, the propertiesof the ʾawwal categories are tamakkun, as we have seen above, and ḫiffa. Theseproperties are summarized by a marker, the tanwīn. What is striking in latertheory is the dissociation between tamakkun and ʾaṣl/farʿ, as tamakkun is onlyunderstood as full or partial declinability, i.e is reduced to ṣarf.

Understanding mutamakkin as declinability amounts to asserting that tan-wīn is the sign of full declinability and not of what we call the plasticity ofnouns. A real difference exists between the two assertions, the first one beingmore formalistic, and the second one being founded on the properties of syn-tactic categories, referring ultimately, if we are right, to a universal property of

67 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 452.8 f.

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languages. In the former case, the link between tanwīn and the properties ofsyntactic categories is blurred.

In sum, in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, the theory of mā lā yanṣarif is at the heart ofthe grammar and its principles are at the crossroads of important subtheoriesand postulates of the Kitāb, i.e. hierarchy, definiteness, the theory of grammat-ical categories, the theory of syntactic categories, the theory of case or, moreexactly, of syntactic declension, and the analysis of proper names. Not justone parameter, definite/indefinite, is included, but a subtle scale of param-eters relates the theory of mā lā yanṣarif to reference. This theory gives usthe key to the value of the tanwīn for Sībawayhi. No wonder then that Sīb-awayhi placed such an amazing emphasis and energy on finding out whichdeclension the most implausible and fictitious proper names in Arabic wouldhave!

Appendix

Actually, the analysis linking verbal declension with reference in the Kitāb is bothsemantic and enunciative, and answers the following implicit question: According tothe Kitāb, what is the reference of the ‘assimilated verb’ (muḍāriʿ), when it bears itsdeclension? As amatter of fact, the answer coincides with two other analyses that havebeen present in the tradition ever since Sībawayhi, providing an answer to two otherquestions:Why does the assimilated verb bear declension? Andwhen does it bear eachof its declensional endings?

The answers to these two last questions differ between the Kūfan and Baṣrantradition, and even within the Baṣran tradition. The debate seems to have taken placeat the end of the 2nd/8th century. We have tried to resume it in Ayoub (2007), basingourselves on al-ʾAstarābāḏī (Kāfiya ii, 223–232). In the Baṣran tradition, the answer tothe first question is: the assimilated verb bears declension by analogy with the noun.This is identical with Sībawayhi’s answer in the Kitāb and it is followed by the Baṣrangrammarians. The arguments given by Sībawayhi and by the later tradition in orderto justify this analogy are not the same, yet, in both cases, the analogy is essentiallyreferential, rather than formal. The first argument is well-known, the similarity of theassimilated verb to the active participle. This similarity is aspectual for Sībawayhi,whereas it is temporal for the later tradition. A second argument is added by the latertradition: without context, the assimilated verb is indeterminate (mubham) as it ispolysemic (muštarak), referring to both present and future, like the noun which isoutside context indeterminate. Thus, in the same way that the noun needs the articleal- to have a univocal reference to a specific individual, the verb needs particles (sa-,sawfa) to have a univocal reference to the future.

46 ayoub

For the Kūfan school, the verb bears its declension by principle and not by analogy.Since the particles governing the verb are polyvalent—lā for instance could be pro-hibitive or negative—, verbal declension serves to disambiguate the particle. So, thisdeclension has differentmaʿānī.

As for the second question—when does the muḍāriʿ bear each of its declensionalendings—theBaṣrananswer seemsat first viewpurely structural, basedon thepositionof this assimilated verb. It has, for instance, -a declension when it is governed by ʾan.But, as we have just seen, ʾan with the verb has a referential value, and in the entiretradition, the semantic and enunciative analysis is transferred to these particles in theirrelation with the verb, rather than to the declension of the verb, because the particlesare specialized, either operating on the verb or on the noun. Al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/114),known as a good semantician, asserts that the verbal declensions have no maʿānīlike the nominal ones (see Ermers 1999:74f.). Presenting the different declensionsof the verb, (wujūh ʾiʿrāb al-fiʿl), he asserts: wa-laysat hāḏihi l-wujūhu bi-ʾaʿlāmin ʿalāmaʿānin ka-wujūhi ʾiʿrābi l-ismi (Mufaṣṣal 244f.). He justifies this absence of maʿānī, andafter him, his commentator, Ibn Yaʿīš does the same, by arguing that the verb has itsdeclension only by analogy with the noun (Šarḥ vii, 10). Al-Zamaḫšarī’s assertion isvery significant. It allows us to measure the distance between his analysis—and thatof his commentator, Ibn Yaʿīš—, and Sībawayhi’s analysis. It is beyond the presentpaper to examine here all consequences of this discrepancy. Two observations areimportant at this point. In the first place, the notion of wājib/ġayr wājibwas little usedafter Sībawayhi. Secondly, the linguistic situation itself could explain the discrepancy.Speakers of Arabic spoke a language fromwhich syntactic declension had disappeared.As a result, they were increasingly distant from the variety of Arabic described bythe Arabic grammarians, hence, the value of verbal endings was no longer felt bythem.

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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Mukarram Ibn Manzūr,Lisān al-ʿArab. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, n.d.

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbū Bakr ibn al-Sarī Ibn al-Sarrāj, Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed. byʿAbd al- Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassassat al-Risāla, 1985.

Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ = Muwaffaq al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Baqāʾ Yaʿīš ibn ʿAlī Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal.Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub and Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbī, n.d.

Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad, Kitāb al-muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿUḍayma. 3 vols. Cairo: Lajnat ʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-ʾIslāmī, 1968.

Murādī, Janā = Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥasan ibn Qāsim al-Murādī, al-Janā al-dānī fī ḥurūf al-maʿānī. Ed. by Faḫr al-Dīn Qabāwa. Aleppo: al-Maktaba al-ʿArabiyya, 1973.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān ibn Qanbar Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed.by Hartwig Derenbourg. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881. (Repr. Hildesheim andNew York: G. Olms, 1970.)/ Ed. Būlāq, 2 vols. 1316a.h. (Repr., Baghdad: Librairie al-Muṯannā, n.d./Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1966–1977.

Sīrāfi, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi, i. Ed. byRamaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb, Maḥmūd Fahmī Ḥijāzī and Muḥammad Hāšim ʿAbd al-Dāyim; ii. Ed. by Ramaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmmali-l-Kitāb, 1986–1990.

Zajjājī, ʾĪḍāḥ= ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbdal-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī,al-ʾĪḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-naḥw.Ed. by Māzin al-Mubārak. Cairo: Dār al-ʿUrūba, 1959.

Zamaḫšarī, Mufaṣṣal = ʾAbū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamaḫšarī, al-Mufaṣṣal fīʿilm al-ʿarabiyya. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, n.d.

b Secondary SourcesAyoub, Georgine. 1991a. “La forme du sens: Le cas du nom et le mode du verbe”. The

Arabist, Budapest studies in Arabic 3–4.37–87.Ayoub, Georgine. 1991b. “La nominalité du nom ou la question du tanwīn”. Arabica

38.151–213.Ayoub,Georgine. 2009. “Tanwīn”. Encyclopedia of Arabic languageand linguistics, ed. by

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Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, KeesVersteegh,ManfredWoidich, andAndrzej Zaborski,iv, 442–445. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Ayoub, Georgine. 2010. “al-fiʿl wa-l-hadaṯ: La description sémantique du verbe dans leKitāb de Sībawayhi”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 37.1–51.

Ayoub, Georgine. 2015. “Some aspects of the relations between enunciation and utter-ance in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb: A modal category: wājib, ġayr wājib”. The foundations ofArabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission, ed. by AmalMarogy and Kees Versteegh, 6–35. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Ayoub, Georgine. 2016. “L’emprunt dans le dictionnaire arabe des premiers sièclesde l’Hégire”. Approaches to the history and dialectology of Arabic in honor of PierreLarcher, ed. byManuel Sartori,Manuela Giolfo and Pierre Cassuto, 289–326. Leiden:E.J. Brill.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1979. “Some aspects of harmony and hierarchy in Sībawayhi’s gram-matical analysis”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 2.7–22.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2008.The legacy of theKitāb: Sībawayhi’s analyticalmethodswithin thecontext of the Arabic grammatical theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Bally, Charles. 1932. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Bern: Francke.Bohas, Georges. 1981. “Quelques aspects de l’argumentation et de l’explicitation chez

les grammairiens arabes”. Arabica 28.204–221.Carter, Michael G. 1981a. “The use of proper names as a testing device in Sībawayhi’s

Kitāb”. Historiographia Linguistica 8:2–3.345–356.Carter, Michael G. 1981b. Arab linguistics: An introductory classical text with translation

and notes. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.Carter, Michael G. 2004. Sībawayhi. New York: I.B. Tauris.Chairet, Mohamed. 2000. “ḫiffa, ṯiqal et tamakkun: Régime d’ incidence et classes de

mots”. Langues et Littératures duMonde Arabe 1.213–226.Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. (= Linguistic InquiryMonograph, 13.) Cambridge,Mass.:

mit Press.Chuquet, Jean, EricGilbert,HélèneChuquet. French-Englishglossaryof linguistic terms.

Available at: http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossary_fe/defs/TOEFr.asp.Colman, Fran. 2014.The grammar of names in Anglo-Saxon England: The linguistics and

culture of the Old English onomasticon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Culioli, Antoine. 1986. “Stabilité et déformabilité en linguistique”. Lausanne: Université

de Lausanne. (Repr., Pour une linguistique de l’ énonciation, opérations et représenta-tions, i. Paris: Ophrys, 1990.)

Danecki, Janusz. 2009. “Tamakkun”. Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics,ed, by Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Kees Versteegh, Manfred Woidich, and AndrzejZaborski, iv, 431–433. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Ermers, Robert. 1999. Arabic grammars of Turkic: The Arabic linguistic model applied to

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foreign languages and translation of ʾAbūḤayyānal-ʾAndalusī’sKitāb al-ʾidrāk li-lisānal-ʾAtrāk. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Howell, Mortimer Sloper. 1883–1911. A grammar of the Classical Arabic language, i–iv.Allahabad.

Jakobson, Roman. 1973. Essais de linguistique générale. Paris: Minuit.Langendonck, Willy van. 2007. Theory and typology of proper names. Berlin: W. de

Gruyter.Larcher, Pierre. 1999. “Vues nouvelles sur la dérivation lexicale en arabe classique”.

Tradition and innovation: Norm and deviation in Arabic and Semitic linguistics, ed.by Lutz Edzard and Mohammed Nekroumi, 103–123. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Levin, Aryeh. 1979. “The meaning of taʿaddā l-fiʿl ʾilā in Sībawayhi’s al-Kitāb”. Studiaorientalia memoriae D.H. Baneth dedicata, 193–210. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics: Introduction. Some basic terms and concepts. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Lyons, John. 1970. Linguistique générale: Introduction à la linguistique théorique. Transl.

by Françoise Dubois-Charlier and David Robinson. Paris: Larousse. (1st ed., Intro-duction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.)

Marogy, Amal. 2015. “The notion of tanwīn in the Kitāb: Cognitive evaluation of func-tion and meaning”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Inter-pretationand transmission, ed. byAmalMarogyandKeesVersteegh, 160–170. Leiden:E.J. Brill.

Milner, Jean-Claude. 1978. De la syntaxe à l’ interprétation. Paris: Seuil.Mosel, Ulrike. 1980. “Syntactic categories in Sibawaihi’s Kitāb”. Histoire Epistémologie

Langage 2:1.27–37.Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The foundations of grammar. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:

J. Benjamins.Owens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standard-

ization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.Sadan, Arik. 2008. “The technical terms ḫiffa and ṯiqal in the usage of the Arabic

grammarians”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 48.58–74.Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi. Paris: Klincksieck.Versteegh, Kees. 1995. The explanation of linguistic causes: Az-Zaǧǧāǧī’s theory of gram-

mar. Introduction, translation, commentary. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Ben-jamins.

Versteegh, Kees. 2015. “What’s it like to be a Persian: Sībawayhi’s treatment of loan-words”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation andtransmission, ed. by Amal Marogy and Kees Versteegh, 202–222. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Wilmet, Marc. 1995. “Pour en finir avec le nom propre?”. L’ information grammaticale65.3–11.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_004

The Grammatical and Lexicographical TraditionsMutual Foundations, Divergent Paths of Development

Ramzi Baalbaki

1 The Emergence of the Study of luġa (Philology) and naḥw (Syntax)

The Arabic linguistic sciences have been traditionally classified in the sourcesinto four types: ṣarf (morphology/morphophonology), naḥw (syntax), balāġa(rhetoric) and ʿarūḍ (metrics). All four are included, for example, in al-Sakkākī’s(d. 626/1229) Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm, a work generally regarded as a synopsis of themain norms set by scholars of these types for more than four centuries. Apartfrom ʿarūḍ—which naturally has a much narrower scope than the other threetypes—ṣarf and naḥw were closely linked ever since Sībawayhi (d. 180/796)authored his Kitāb. Although there are early works exclusively devoted toṣarf—most notably al-Māzinīʾs (d. 249/863) al-Taṣrīf—both fields were jointlystudied in most works throughout the tradition, and the terms naḥw andnaḥwiyyūn could refer to both fields. As for balāġa, some of itsmost fundamen-tal topics are syntactic in nature, e.g. issues related to the musnad (predicate)and musnad ʾilayhi (mostly referring to the subject of a nominal sentence, butalso to the agent in a verbal sentence), and the rules that govern the omissionof the verb. In fact, al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) asserts that the semantic and syn-tactic interrelationships among the constituents of the utterance, or what hecalls naẓm (lit. organization of the elements of the utterance), is nothing otherthan the proper adherence to the discipline of grammar (laysa l-naẓm ʾillā ʾantaḍaʿa kalāmaka al-waḍʿ allaḏī yaqtaḍīhi ʿilm al-naḥw).1 Furthermore, he iden-tifies the study of naẓm with the seeking of what he calls syntactic meanings(al-naẓm huwa tawaḫḫī maʿānī l-naḥw).2 Accordingly, this syntactic dimensionof balāġa may well be considered an offshoot of what is usually referred to asthe Arabic grammatical tradition, whose two main components are ṣarf andnaḥw.

1 Jurjānī, Dalāʾil 64; cf. 282, 403.2 Jurjānī, Dalāʾil 276, 282, 310, 403f.; cf. Jurjānī, ʾAsrār 65. See also Baalbaki (1983:7–23;

2008:282f.).

the grammatical and lexicographical traditions 51

The sources use the term luġa to refer to the field that studies word mean-ings in the attested material amassed in the process of collecting linguisticdata ( jamʿ al-luġa) as well as the dialectal variations particularly in the realmof ‘strange usage’ (ġarīb). The term luġawiyyūn may be translated as ‘philol-ogists’ or preferably ‘lexicographers’ in order to account for authors of bothmubawwab and mujannas lexica (see section 3 below). As of the 4th/10th cen-tury, authors refer to the study of luġa as fiqh al-luġa, ʿilm al-lisān, or ʿilm al-luġa.3 Accordingly, the Arabic grammatical tradition is paralleled by the Arabiclexicographical tradition. Boundaries between naḥw (which includes ṣarf ) andluġa are obviously difficult to draw for the early stages of linguistic enquiry as ofthe 2nd/8th century. In this respect, one would question the accuracy of someof the biographical sources (the earliest monographs of which were authoredin the 4th/10th century) in their sharp distinction between naḥwiyyūn andluġawiyyūn. The most obvious example is al-Zubaydī’s (d. 379/989) Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn wa-l-luġawiyyīn, which is structured on the basis of this distinction.Indeed in certain cases al-Zubaydī himself seems undetermined in classifyinghis entries, as in the case of the Basran scholar ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/771),whom he lists with both groups.4 At times, his inclusion of a certain scholarin one group seems to contradict evidence from primary sources. For exam-ple, he lists ʾAbū l-Ḫaṭṭāb al-ʾAḫfaš al-Kabīr (d. 177?/793?) with the naḥwiyyūn,whereas each of the fifty-eight instances in which he is quoted in the Kitābhas to do with luġa, not naḥw.5 That the boundaries between naḥw and luġawere often blurred in the early stages of linguistic enquiry is also corroboratedby the fact that some of the most influential scholars of the period were stu-dents of naḥwiyyūn and luġawiyyūn alike. For instance, ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī(d. 351/962) describes ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī (d. 215/830), ʾAbū ʿUbayda Maʿmaribn al-Muṯannā (d. 209/824) and al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831) as the three mastersof luġa. In addition to ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, from whom they acquired luġa,naḥw and šiʿr (poetry), their teachers included two of the most prominentnaḥwiyyūn of the time, namely, ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766) andYūnus ibnḤabīb(d. 182/798).6

3 The first term occurs in the title of Ibn Fāris’s (d. 395/1004) book al-Ṣāḥibī; the second in IbnSīda’s (d. 458/1066) al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ i, 14; and the third in IbnḪaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) Muqaddima1055.

4 Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt 35, 159.5 Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt 61. Note also that the only majlis in which al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949) mentions

ʾAbū l-Ḫaṭṭāb (Majālis 124) is related to luġa. See also Baalbaki (2008:14).6 ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib, Marātib 70.

52 baalbaki

2 Foundations Common to Both Disciplines

The lack of a clear distinction between the naḥwiyyūn and the luġawiyyūn inthe early stages is far from surprising. Both naḥw and luġa are closely relatedto other linguistically oriented sciences, such as qirāʾāt (Qurʾānic readings),Ḥadīṯ (Prophetic tradition), fiqh (jurisprudence), and tafsīr (exegesis), buttheir similitude to each other obviously sets them apart from the other do-mains. Not only is this dictated by the proximity of their subject matter, butit is promoted by several factors which emerged at a very early stage of theirdevelopment and which may be regarded as foundations common to bothfields. The most substantive factors may be summed up as follows:

i. Both naḥw and luġa owe much of their material to the process of data col-lection (referred to above), which took place mainly in the second half of the2nd/8th century and the first few decades of the 3rd/9th. Most of the majorlinguists of that period took part in this activity and are reported either tohave transmitted and commented on dialectal usage or made the journey tothe desert (bādiya) in order to record data directly from the ʾAʿrāb (Bedouins).Among these scholars are ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766), ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ(d. 154/770), al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad (d. 175/791), Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb (d. 182/798), al-Kisāʾī (d. 189/805), Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 202/818), al-Naḍr ibnŠumayl (d. 203/819), ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Šaybānī (d. 206/821), al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822),ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī (d. 215/830), al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831), ʾAbū ʿUbayd al-Qāsimibn Sallām (d. 224/838), and Ibn al-ʾAʿrābī (d. 231/845).7 The list may be fur-ther expanded, but it is sufficient to demonstrate that scholars who are moreclosely identified with either of the two domains were active participants inthe collection of linguistic data. As a result, grammatical works and lexicacontain a sizable amount of common šawāhid8 or attested material cited asevidence, whether in specific lexical items, lines of poetry, Qurʾānic verses orproverbs. A particularly telling example is Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿArab, particularly because its author incorporated into it five earlier lexica.A cursory look at the indices that list the sources in which the grammati-cal šawāhid are cited9 readily reveals that the Lisān is frequently mentionedamong these sources. Moreover, the Lisān is replete with discussions pertain-

7 For more details and for Sībawayhi’s contact with the Bedouins, see Baalbaki (2008:24–26).8 For a study of šawāhid, see Gilliot (1996).9 Cf. Hārūn (1972); Ḥaddād (1984); Yaʿqūb (1992, 1996).

the grammatical and lexicographical traditions 53

ing almost to the entire scope of the subject matter of grammar books, as isevident in the classification of its grammatical data prepared by R. Samāra(1995–1996).

In both naḥw and luġa, the reliable Bedouins, who were the source of thecollected data, are referred to as fuṣaḥāʾ (pl. of faṣīḥ ‘eloquent’), and theirlanguage is consistently characterized by purity, clarity, precision and freedomfrom error.10 Given the reliance on fuṣaḥāʾ, the two domains share several oftheir fundamental principles. For example, in both domains these fuṣaḥāʾwereconsidered arbiters in linguistic controversies due to the perceived purity oftheir formof Arabic.11Moreover, scholars of both disciplineswere in agreementconcerning the duration of ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj, or epochs of reliable usage (but seesection 3 below), which in prose were open roughly up to the 2nd/8th centuryin urban areas (ʾamṣār) and the 4th/10th century for the ʾAʿrāb.12

ii. As early as the first stages of linguistic enquiry, the naḥwiyyūn and theluġawiyyūn, in addition to recording and commenting on widespread usage,were greatly interested in strange (ġarīb) and rare, uncommon (nādir) mate-rial—an interest that is primarily the result of their focus on dialectal usageand poetry. It is evident that much of the ġarīb (which hereafter refers to bothġarīb and nādir) occurs in dialectal variants recorded during the period of datacollection. Dialects cited in the Kitāb, for example, include in addition to thetwo major dialects, the Ḥijāzī and the Tamīmī, those of ʾAsad, Bakr ibn Wāʾil,Fazāra, Ġaniyy, Ḫaṯʿam, Huḏayl, Kaʿb, Qays, Rabīʿa, Saʿd, Sulaym, and Ṭayyiʾ.13 Itis also a well established fact that the grammarians, throughout the tradition,were largely preoccupiedwith rare and irregular dialectal usage derivedmainlyfrom poetry, and also from prose (kalām) and proverbs, and they painstakinglytried to interpret it in accordance with their analytical methods. In lexicogra-phy, early monographs on plants, animals, human body, natural phenomena,abodes, saddle and bridle, etc. are replete with lexical items that occur in spe-cific dialects and require explanation by the authors of these monographs.Similarly, early lexica that are arranged according to form (i.e. root) ratherthan theme include a vast body of dialectal material, as in al-Ḫalīl’s (d. 175/791)Kitāb al-ʿayn, ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Šaybānī’s (d. 206/821) Kitāb al-jīm, and Ibn Durayd’s(d. 321/933) Jamharat al-luġa. The last author in particular frequently cites the

10 See Baalbaki (2014:7–16) for a detailed study of the characteristics of Bedouin speech asportrayed by the luġawiyyūn.

11 Cf. Blau (1963:42–51).12 Baalbaki (2008:40f.; 2011:102).13 Cf. Baalbaki (2008:38–40).

54 baalbaki

Yamānī dialect (217 times in all, more than any other dialect),14 as well as othernon-standard ones, such as the Šaʾāmī and ʾAzdī dialects.15 IbnDuraydwas crit-icized for the inclusion of the ġarīb material which these dialects contained.A few decades later, al-ʾAzharī (d. 370/981) even questioned the authenticityof some of Ibn Durayd’s quadriliterals and quinqueliterals, such as ḥardama‘wrangling’, ḥurqūf ‘small reptile’, ḥubaqbīq ‘ill-tempered’, and qalaḥdam ‘lightand swift’.16 Al-ʾAzharī’s assertion that he could not find confirmation in othersources that some of Ibn Durayd’s lexical items were actually used attests totheir ġarīb status, although al-ʾAzharī concludes that Ibn Durayd was in thehabit of falsifying Arabic and introducing neologisms (iftiʿāl al-ʿArabiyya wa-tawlīd al-ʾalfāẓ).17 In fact, the lexical items uniquely reported by Ibn Duraydshould come as no surprise, given that there is evidence that a number of lexi-cal items found their way into the lexica although they were attested only oncein the speech of the Arabs. For example, Ibn Durayd himself reports that anʾAʿrābī used the word al-qiṣāṣāʾ in appealing to an Iraqi prince for retaliation.18This account is mentioned by al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), who describes the wordqiṣāṣāʾ/quṣāṣāʾ as rare and anomalous (nādir šāḏḏ).19 Yet in spite of al-Suyūṭī’sassertion that a word attested in the speech of one ʾAʿrābī should be viewedwith caution, qiṣāṣāʾ (also cited as quṣāṣāʾ and qaṣāṣāʾ) is recorded in severallater lexica, obviously based on Ibn Durayd’s riwāya.20 Another example is theword buḫduq (also reported as buḥduq), which a well known ʾAʿrābiyya, ʾUmmal-Hayṯam, usedwhen asked by ʾAbūḤātimal-Sijistānī (d. 255/869) about a cer-tain seed. In spite of ʾAbū Ḥātim’s assertion that he never heard this word fromanyone other than ʾUmm al-Hayṯam, Ibn Durayd includes it in the Jamhara, asdo several later lexicographers.21 A large number of rare lexical items are alsocited by Sībawayhi, as will be noted in section 3 below.

14 Ibn Durayd, Jamhara, index, iii, 1742.15 Cited twenty-four and fourteen times respectively; index, iii, 1741.16 ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb v, 334, 338.17 ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb v, i, 31. See also Asad (1996:42–45) for al-ʾAzharī’s quotations from and

comments on al-Jamhara. Note, however, that al-ʾAzharī at times simply cites, withoutcomment, words of Yamānī origin reported by Ibn Durayd, as in Tahḏīb (ġ-d-n; viii, 74)and (ġ-d-f ; viii, 76).

18 Ibn Durayd, Jamhara iii, 1230.19 Suyūṭī,Muzhir i, 254.Al-Suyūṭī supports his descriptionof thewordas rare andanomalous

by noting that the pattern fuʿālāʾ does not occur in the Kitāb.20 Cf. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān (q-ṣ-ṣ); Fīrūzābādī, Qāmūs (q-ṣ-ṣ). Al-Zabīdī, Tāj (q-ṣ-ṣ) mentions

that the word is reported by Ibn Durayd and is šāḏḏ.21 Ibn Durayd, Jamhara ii, 1116; Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān (b-ḫ-d-q); Fīrūzābādī, Qāmūs (b-ḥ-d-q);

Zabīdī, Tāj (b-ḫ-d-q). See also Suyūṭī, Muzhir i, 252.

the grammatical and lexicographical traditions 55

The second source of ġarībmaterial in both naḥw and luġa is poetry, whosecentrality to linguistic sciences in general is indisputable. In commenting onthe saying al-šiʿr dīwān al-ʿArab ‘Poetry is the register of the Arabs’, Ibn Fāris(d. 395/1004) says that poetry is the channel through which language was com-prehended (wa-minhu tuʿullimat al-luġa), and that it is the authoritative source(ḥujja) in the problematic ġarīb of the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīṯ of the Prophet,his Companions (Ṣaḥāba) and those next in the order of time (Tābiʿūn).22 Inspite of certain differences between the naḥwiyyūn and the luġawiyyūn in deal-ing with poetry material (see section 3 below), both groups of scholars viewedpoetry as the main source of šawāhid, which naturally included a lot of ġarīb.For example, the number of poetry šawāhid in the Kitāb exceeds the numberof šawāhid drawn from all other types put together. Furthermore, the termšawāhid is often used by later grammarians to refer to poetic šawāhid exclu-sively.23 In luġa, the link between poetry and ġarīb is perhaps nowhere moreevident than in Ibn Ḫālawayhi’s (d. 370/980) Laysa fī kalām al-ʿArab, whichdeals mainly with morphological patterns and phenomena which are so rarethat the lexical items representing them can be classified within a closed set.The book aboundswith expressions that limit the occurrence of a certainword,pattern, etc. to a single line of poetry—e.g. the dual of waḥdahu appears onlyin a line of poetry by ʿUmāra (i.e. ibn ʿAqīl; d. 239/835).24

Among the sixteenmeters, rajaz is the onemost closely identifiedwithġarīb,probably because of its strong association with subjects related to desert lifeand hence with the uncommon words and structures that are often used inconnection with these subjects.25 Asked about the vast amount of rajaz hememorized, al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831) firmly declared that rajaz “waswhatweweremost after and we most cared for” (ʾinnahu kāna hammanā wa-sadamanā).26Statements of this type attest to the fact that rajaz was for the early scholarsthe embodiment of the Bedouinsʾ linguistic ‘purity’. It is therefore not unex-pected that the number of rajaz lines in the Kitāb is 294, whereas that of all

22 Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī 275.23 Note, for example, the numerous works that are devoted solely to poetry šawāhid, yet

whose titles simply mention šawāhid without any further specification; e.g. Ibn Hišām’s(d. 761/1360) Taḫlīṣ al-šawāhid wa-talḫīṣ al-fawāʾid and al-Suyūṭī’s (d. 911/1505) Šarḥ šawā-hid al-Muġnī. See Baalbaki (2008:44).

24 Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa 231; cf. also 294, 375, 380. See also Baalbaki (2014:43f., 93 f.). For asimilar phenomenon in the Kitāb, see Baalbaki (2011:114, n. 47).

25 See Kaššāš (1995:172–195) and ʿUbaydī (1970:134–143) for the various characteristics ofrajaz, both in form and content.

26 ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib, Marātib 95.

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other meters put together is 937.27 In grammatical controversies, rajaz fea-tures strongly in the šawāhid that illustrate dialectal usage in conflict with thenorm.28 Similarly in luġa, there is a disproportionately high ratio of rajaz com-pared to šiʿr, for example, in Ibn Durayd’s (d. 321/933) Jamharat al-luġa, whichis famous for the inclusion of unfamiliar usage in spite of its author’s claim tothe contrary.29 The total number of poetry šawāhid in the Jamhara is 5,605, outof which 2,603 alone are in the rajaz meter.30 Another example in luġa is ʾAbūZayd al-ʾAnṣārī’s (d. 215/830) al-Nawādir fī l-luġa, whose title indicates that itis devoted to rare and unfamiliar usage. It consists of fifteen chapters, two ofwhich are on šiʿr, seven on rajaz, and six on nawādir, which in turn contain alarge amount of rajaz. The rajaz šawāhid in al-Nawādir amount to two thirdsof those in all other meters.31

iii. During the earliest stages of linguistic activity in the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9thcenturies, many scholars straddled both disciplines. Among these, al-Ḫalīl(d. 175/791) is undoubtedly themost influential. The numerous technical terms,axioms and tools of analysis which Sībawayhi borrowed from al-Ḫalīl in gram-mar need no proof. In luġa, as has been argued elsewhere by the author, Kitābal-ʿAyn is most probably the result of al-Ḫalīl’s probing intellect—particularlyin devising the lexicon’s plan as detailed in its introduction—and his ‘intuitive’approach to the phonetic traits of the language, as reflected, for instance, inthe lively discussions which took place between him and his disciples con-cerning the sampling (ḏawāq) of letters based on his Sprachgefühl.32 Al-Ḫalīl’sprofound influence on the founding principles of both disciplines obviouslycontributed to their common grounds. Although it is not within the presentscope to dwell on these, we canmention for the sake of illustration themutualinterest of Sībawayhi and al-Ḫalīl in determining the characteristics of Arabicin order to detect forgery and recognize words of non-Arabic origin. Sībawayhiregularly accuses the group he calls naḥwiyyūn, whom he mentions twenty-

27 See Hārūn’s index to the Kitāb v, 44–102.28 See, for example, the šawāhid adduced by the Kufans (Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾInṣāf i, 341–343)

in support of the permissibility of the construction yā ʾAllāhumma (O Lord!), which iscontrary to standard usage.

29 See my introduction to Jamhara i, 25–27.30 Jamhara’s indices, iii, 1381–1508.31 ʾAbū Zayd, Nawādir’s indices, 648–738.32 Baalbaki (2014:54–58, 282f.). For further discussion of the authorship of al-ʿAyn, see Schoe-

ler (2006).

the grammatical and lexicographical traditions 57

one times,33 of using analogy (qiyās) in a purely speculativemanner in order toinvent forms and utterances that do resemble actual usage, but do not occurin the speech of the Arabs. The same principle of examining data to deter-mine its conformity with the characteristics of Arabic is evident in al-ʿAyn’sintroduction. Other than the aim of discovering the criteria for differentiatingbetweenArabic andborrowedwords (li-yuʿraf ṣaḥīḥbināʾ kalāmal-ʿArabminal-daḫīl),34 al-Ḫalīl attacks a group called naḥārīr (pl. of niḥrīr ‘skillful or learned’)on grounds similar to Sībawayhi’s attack on the naḥwiyyūn. He accuses them ofcreating neologisms (muwalladāt) which, despite their resemblance to otherwords and patterns (ʾašbaha lafẓahumwa-taʾlīfahum) are impermissible in thespeech of the Arabs.35 Just as the rules of syntax and analogy described by Sīb-awayhi reveal the violations of the naḥwiyyūn—e.g. the analogy they establishbetween wayḥ and tabb (both: ‘woe unto’)36—the rules of word compositionand phonotactics described by al-Ḫalīl reveal those of the naḥārīr—e.g. quin-queliterals such as kašaʿṯaj, which they invent in violation of the rules stipulat-ing that no Arabic quadriliteral or quinqueliteral could be devoid of liquids orlabials, with the exception of some ten anomalous words.37

The profound influence of Sībawayhi and al-Ḫalīl on the grammatical tra-dition, and the latter on the lexicographical tradition (through the method hedevised in al-ʿAyn’s introduction for exhausting Arabic roots, be they used ornot) is one of the prime reasons for continuity in both traditions. Sībawayhiwasoften challenged by later grammarians concerning specific views or interpre-tations, and some Kufan grammarians did have views that differed from thoseof Sībawayhi and other Basran grammarians.38 Yet throughout the grammati-cal tradition, the basic notions, axioms, syntactic function and tools of analy-sis utilized in the Kitāb have not been seriously challenged, with the possibleexception of Ibn Maḍāʾ’s (d. 592/1196) attempt at discrediting the grammari-ans’ views on cause (ʿilla) and suppletive insertion (taqdīr) in his al-Radd ʿalāl-nuḥāt, which attempt made little impact on subsequent authors. A similarpicture vis-à-vis continuity and change emerges in lexicography. The Kitāb al-

33 Carter (1972:76, n. 1); cf. Talmon (1982:14 f.; 2003:12)—where twenty-eight loci of contro-versy with the naḥwiyyūn are identified in the Kitāb—and Baalbaki (2008:18–20).

34 Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 54.35 Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 52 f.; cf. ii, 286.36 Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 334.37 Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 52 f.38 Baalbaki (1981) identified thirty-seven controversial issues in Ibn al-ʾAnbārī’s (d. 577/1181)

al-ʾInṣāf fī masāʾil al-ḫilāf in which the reported differences between Basrans and Kufanscan be authenticated from the extant sources of the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries.

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ʿayn remained for several centuries the source of inspiration for prominentlexicographers: al-Ḫalīl’s method of phonetic arrangement and root permuta-tions (taqālīb) was almost entirely adopted by al-Qālī (d. 356/967) in al-Bāriʿ,al-ʾAzharī (370/981) in al-Tahḏīb, al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (d. 385/995) in al-Muḥīṭ,and Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066) in al-Muḥkam. Even 4th/10th century authors whogave up al-Ḫalīl’s phonetic arrangement in favor of the alphabetical systemstill preserved his method of permutations—e.g. Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933) in al-Jamhara—or of dividing the material into chapters based on the number ofradicals—e.g. Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) in al-Maqāyīs and al-Mujmal. In fact, allsubsequent authors of mujannas lexica (see section 3 below) are indebted toal-Ḫalīl for his scheme that achieves exhaustiveness based on three basic prin-ciples: (a) that the letters of the alphabet form a closed set; (b) that the numberof radicals in words ranges from two to five; and (c) that root permutationsof biliteral and triliteral roots is two and six respectively. True, modificationswere introduced to mujannas lexica authored after al-ʿAyn—e.g. in mattersrelated to arrangement of roots, divisions of chapters, extent of šawāhid, veri-fication of data, etc.—but no alternative scheme needed to be invented fromscratch.

3 Divergence of the Two Disciplines

The two independent, but related disciplines of naḥw and luġa emerged inthe earliest period of linguistic writing—witness Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, Kitāb al-ʿayn (for mujannas lexica), and monographs restricted to a specific theme (formubawwab lexica). By mujannas—a term borrowed from Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/1066) introduction to al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ39—is meant the semasiological type, thatis, lexica inwhich sign leads tomeaning sincematerial is arranged according toprinciples related to form (lafẓ) andnotmeaning (maʿnā). Such lexica normallyaim at listing all lexical items of the language and thus are not specializeddictionaries. On the other hand, the onomasiological type—which Ibn Sīdacalls mubawwab—refers to lexica or thesauri in which meaning leads to signsince they deal with one or several topic areas, although some works in certaingenres—such as Arabizedwords (muʿarrab) andwords with two contradictorymeanings (ʾaḍdād)—may be arranged based on form, e.g. alphabetically. Itis in mubawwab lexica in particular that one finds a considerable amount ofmaterialwhich they sharewithbooks onnaḥw. This commonmaterial is largely

39 Ibn Sīda, Muḫaṣṣaṣ i, 10, 12.

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attributable to the mutual foundations discussed in section 2 above, and thefollowing three examples demonstrate the close affinity between naḥw andsome genres of themubawwab type:

i. Masculine and feminine (al-muḏakkar wa-l-muʾannaṯ): There are more thanthirty independent monographs on the subject, most of which are lost.40 Theextant ones were authored by scholars who were either better known as naḥ-wiyyūnor as luġawiyyūn, including al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822), ʾAbūḤātimal-Sijistānī(d. 255/869), al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Salama (d. 290/903 or300/913), ʾAbū Bakr Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 328/940), Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), Ibn Fāris(d. 395/1004), and ʾAbū l-Barakāt Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 577/1181). In comparing thetopics discussed by authors of the 3rd/9th century with those in contemporarygrammar works, the congruity between the two fields is readily recognizable.Among the common topics are: feminine markers; the suffix -h in masculinenouns (e.g. ʿallāma ‘a very learned person’); patterns that are used with bothmasculine and feminine (e.g. faʿīl, as in qatīl ‘murdered’); words that can betreated either as masculine or feminine (e.g. ʿunuq ‘neck’); adjectives that areonly used with the feminine and hence have no marker (e.g. ṭāliq ‘divorced’);feminine nouns that are diptotes; etc.41

ii. Abbreviated and prolonged patterns (al-maqṣūr wa-l-mamdūd): Out of fiftyor so works referred to in the sources,42 about a dozen survived. As in thegenre of masculine and feminine, monographs were authored throughout thetradition, and the earliest go back to the 3rd/9th century. The genre coversmostof the material available in grammatical works, beginning with the earliestworks, but the authors’ focus shifted visibly to the patterns of the maqṣūr andmamdūdwords and to the distinction between the two types in form,meaningand writing conventions.

iii. Patterns (al-ʾabniya): Most independent monographs that deal with mor-phological patterns share their notions and much of their subject matter withworks on naḥw. The bulk of issueswhich Sībawayhi discusses in that part of theKitāb which deals with morphology also features in these monographs. As faras morphological patterns are concerned, they amount in the Kitāb to 342, out

40 See ʿAbd al-Tawwāb’s introduction to Mufaḍḍal, Muḫtaṣar 23–31 and ʾIqbāl (2011:271).41 For further detail, see Baalbaki (2014:239ff.).42 See a full list in Harīdī’s introduction to Qālī, Maqṣūr 36–77; cf. ʿAbd al-Tawwāb’s list in his

introduction to al-Waššāʾ, Mamdūd 15–23; ʾIqbāl (2011:272–279); Baalbaki (2014:241 ff.).

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of which 308 are for nouns and 34 for verbs.43 Al-Zubaydī (d. 379/989) notesthat the grammarians believe that, except for three patterns overlooked by Sīb-awayhi, his list exhausts all Arabic patterns.44 This notwithstanding, al-Zubaydīfound the number of patterns ignored by Sībawayhi to be about eighty.45 Thereare also monographs that deal with specific patterns or morphological notionsand sharemuch of theirmaterial with grammarworks. These includeworks onthe verbal patterns faʿala and ʾafʿala, the earliest extant one of which is ʾAbūḤātim al-Sijistānī’s (d. 255/869) Faʿaltu wa-ʾafʿaltu, and works that deal withdiminutives (taṣġīr), dual (taṯniya), plural ( jamʿ), and blending (naḥt).46

Yet in spite of the closeness of the mubawwab lexica in certain genres togrammar works, in several other genres the two disciplines followed divergentpaths of development, resulting at times in a relationship of complementarity.It has already been noted in Section 3ii above that there was a visible shift inthe focus of authors ofmubawwab lexica in their study ofmaqṣūr andmamdūd,and in 3iii that they expanded the scope of morphological patterns by addingthose patterns which seem to have been ignored by the grammarians. Oneis strongly reminded in this respect of the complementarity between naḥwand balāġa, as the balāġiyyūn—most notably in the pioneering works of al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078)—discuss several topics that belong to naḥw and oftenuse the same šawāhid cited by the grammarians, but they concentrate on themeaning of the utterance in contrast to the predominant concern of mostgrammarians with formal considerations such as case-endings or uttered andelided operants.47 As early as the first half of the 3rd/9th century, al-Jāḥiẓ(d. 255/869) accuses the grammarians of being interested in poetry only fromthe perspective of ʾiʿrāb, that is, the justification of case inflection (wa-lamʾara ġāyat al-naḥwiyyīn ʾillā kull šiʿr fīhi ʾiʿrāb).48 Although this statement is

43 See a detailed list of the types of these patterns in ʿUmar (1995:12 f., 69–75); cf. Ibn al-Qaṭṭāʿ,ʾAbniya 89.

44 Zubaydī, Istidrāk i.45 Cf. ʿUmar (1995:70), who specifies this number as eighty-eight. See also a list of patterns

alleged to be ignored by Sībawayhi in Sīrāfī, Fawāʾit 67–99.46 For a discussion of these types, see Baalbaki (2014:237f., 254–258).47 The difference in approach between the naḥwiyyūn and the balāġiyyūn is discussed in

Baalbaki (1983, 1991). See also Baalbaki (2008:231 ff.) for a study of how Sībawayhi’s vividanalysis of speech and the delicate balance he establishes between form and meaninggradually gave way to an increasing interest by the grammarians in formal considerationsat the expense of meaning.

48 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān iv, 24.

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evidently exaggerated and oversimplified, it ingeniously captures the essenceof the approach of the naḥwiyyūn. Turning to poetry narrators—who surelyinclude those whom we refer to as philologists or lexicographers—al-Jāḥiẓ’sjudgment is similarly overgeneralized, but equally true in essence. He assertsthat they are interested merely in strange use and difficult meanings (wa-lamʾara ġāyat ruwāt al-ʾašʿār ʾillā kull šiʿr fīhi ġarīb ʾawmaʿnā ṣaʿb).

As argued above, ġarīb is one of themost fundamental notions in both naḥwand luġa, but the discussion to follow will try to demonstrate—among otherthings—how the authors of mubawwab lexica developed new perspectives intheir study of ġarīb. The distinctive characteristics of naḥw and luġawhichwillbe established later with regards to ġarīb may be considered part of a widerdivergence between the two disciplines in the field of semantics. We proposeto address the core issues of this intricate subject in the following three points:

i. In the Risālaof theKitāb, i.e. its introductory part, Sībawayhi brieflymentionsthree types of semantic relationships, namely, divergence of form andmeaning(iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn li-ḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn), divergence of form and coincidenceof meaning (iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn wa-l-maʿnā wāḥid), and coincidence of form anddivergence of meaning (ittifāq al-lafẓayn wa-ḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn).49 Given thatthese three types are not further developed by Sībawayhi to become part of hisgrammatical analysis, their mention in the Risāla is most probably intended todemarcate the boundaries between them and the syntactical andmorphologi-cal issues which he analyzes. The impact of this position on both the grammat-ical and lexicographical traditions was far-reaching: grammarians followed inthe footsteps of Sībawayhi,50 whereas lexicographers introduced genres specif-ically devoted to the semantic dimension excluded by Sībawayhi. Accordingly,the genres that deal with synonyms (mutarādif ) and homonyms (muštarak)correspond to Sībawayhi’s second and third types of semantic relationships,respectively. Furthermore, a third genre, words with two contradictory mean-ings (ʾaḍdād), is related to muštarak since it examines a specific branch ofhomonymous polysemic words. From a chronological perspective, muštarak,ʾaḍdād and mutarādif became independent genres at a very early stage, andextant works in all three types go back to the beginning of the 3rd/9th century.Examples from that century and the first few decades of the 4th/10th include:(a) inmuštarak, al-ʾAjnās min kalām al-ʿArab wa-mā štabaha fī l-lafẓ wa-ḫtalafa

49 Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 24.50 Al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), for instance, adopts Sībawayhi’s position and even cites some

of his examples; cf. Mā ttafaqa 3.

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fī l-maʿnā, claimed by an anonymous author to be compiled from ʾAbū ʿUbayd’s(d. 224/838) Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ; Mā ttafaqa lafẓuhu wa-ḫtalafa maʿnāhu by ʾAbū l-ʿAmayṯal (d. 240/854); al-Munajjad fī l-luġa by Kurāʿ al-Naml (d. 310/922); andal-Malāḥin by Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933); (b) in al-ʾaḍdād, books by the title al-ʾAḍdād by Quṭrub (d. 206/821), al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831), ʾAbū ʿUbayd, al-Tawwazī(d. 233/847), Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244/858), and ʾAbūḤātim al-Sijistānī (d. 255/869);and (c) in mutarādif, Mā ḫtalafat ʾalfāẓuhu wa-ttafaqat maʿānīhi by al-ʾAṣmaʿī;al-ʾAlfāẓ by Ibn al-Sikkīt; al-ʾAlfāẓ al-kitābiyya by al-Hamaḏānī (d. c. 320/932);al-ʾAlfāẓ, al-kitāba wa-l-taʿbīr by Ibn al-Marzubān al-Bāḥiṯ (d. c. 330/941); andJawāhir al-ʾalfāẓ by Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar (d. 337/948). Moreover, multithematicworks of the 3rd/9th century, such as al-Ġarīb al-muṣannaf by ʾAbū ʿUbayd andʾAdabal-kātibby IbnQutayba (d. 276/889), include somematerial on these gen-res.51

Data on ġarīb feature prominently in several genres of lexicographical writ-ing developed by the luġawiyyūn. In the realmof muštarak, for example, Kurāʿ’sal-Munajjad contains a large number of words which have one or more mean-ings that obviously belong to ġarīb. These account for the strikingly high num-ber of supporting šawāhid which this relatively short work embraces—a totalof 709, many of which consist of more than one line.52 Furthermore, there area number of works that form a subgenre within the study of muštarak and byvirtue of their subject matter are largely devoted to ġarīb. These are knownas ʿašarāt since they are divided into chapters that normally contain a groupof ten, mostly unfamiliar words that share a common feature (e.g. pattern orrhyme) or one word that has numerous meanings. The first extant book of thisgenre is by ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid (i.e. ĠulāmṮaʿlab; d. 345/957) al-ʿAšarāt fī ġarībal-luġa, whose very title highlights the link between ʿašarāt and ġarīb. In his al-ʿAšarāt fī l-luġa, al-Qazzāz al-Qayrawānī (d. 412/1021) considerably expands oneof al-Zāhid’s chapters and divides the rest of the book into 167 alphabeticallyarranged words, to each of which he ascribes ten different meanings. Anothersubgenre related to ġarīb is the one known asmušajjar (branched), ormudāḫal(intertwined), or musalsal (serialized). Primarily aiming at demonstrating theextensive vocabulary of Arabic, particularly in the domain of ġarīb, chaptersin monographs of this subgenre consist of chains that typically begin with awordwhich is explained by another, itself explained by a third, and so on.Ġarībwords in the beginning of each chapter are usually explained by familiar ones,

51 See, for example, ʾAbū ʿUbayd,Ġarīb ii, 616–618; iii, 971 (naʿāma), 999 (lawā); IbnQutayba,ʾAdab 177–181.

52 Kurāʿ, Munajjad, index 389–404.

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which in turn have ġarībmeanings thatmaintain the chain further. The earliestextantmonograph of this subgenre is, as in the ʿašarāt, al-Zāhid’s al-Mudāḫal fīl-luġa, but much more extensive is ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī’s (d. 351/962) Šajaral-durr fī tadāḫul al-kalām bi-l-maʿānī l-muḫtalifa.

ii. Sībawayhi does not normally provide any explanation of the meanings ofthewords that he cites, even if they occur extremely rarely and clearly belong toġarīb. Examples include qahbalis ‘hugewoman’, jaḥmariš ‘oldwoman’, ṣahṣaliq‘vehement voice’, bulaʿbīs ‘wonder, marvel’, duraḫmīl ‘calamity’, qarṭabūs ‘ca-lamity’, hammariš ‘old woman’ and hammaqiʿ ‘fruit of a thorny tree’.53 Sīb-awayhi’s practice was followed by other grammarians, such as al-Mubarrad(d. 285/898) in al-Muqtaḍab and, to a lesser extent, Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/929) inal-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw,54 although later grammarians, such as Ibn Yaʿīš (d. 643/1245)and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), give the meaning of ġarīb words cited in theirstudy of patterns more regularly.55 The ġarīb words cited but not explainedby Sībawayhi were assembled by Ibn al-Dahhān (d. 569/1164) in the form ofan alphabetically arranged lexicon, Kitāb šarḥ ʾabniyat Sībawayhi. We are alsoin possession of a similar work by al-Jawālīqī (d. 540/1145) titled Šarḥ ʾamṯi-lat Sībawayhi—an abridgement of a book by Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿUṯmānal-ʿAṭṭār, whose dates are not known, but who was a student of al-Sīrāfī’s(d. 368/979).56 Moreover, most of the lexica that specialize in morphologi-cal patterns (e.g. faʿala and ʾafʿala) normally explain cited words, particularlyġarīb—yet another instance of the complementarity of the grammatical andlexicographical traditions. In this respect, it is highly significant that as earlyas the second half of the 2nd/8th century, ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Šaybānī (d. 206/821),one of Sībawayhi’s contemporaries,57 authored Kitāb al-jīm, a mujannas lexi-con that essentially belongs to the genre of ġarīb.58 ʾAbū ʿAmr arranges wordsin alphabetical order, based on their first radicals, and consistently explains

53 Sībawayhi, Kitāb iv, 302–303, 330.54 Cf. Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab i, 66–68; ii, 107–109; Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl iii, 184–210.55 Cf. Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ vi, 136–143; Suyūṭī, Hamʿ ii, 158–160.56 Suyūṭī, Buġya i, 206.57 Although ʾAbū ʿAmr died about a quarter century earlier than Sībawayhi, he is said to have

lived up to the age of ninety (or 119 in one riwāya; cf. Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, Nuzha 80), andmightwell have been older than Sībawayhi, who died (in 180/796 according to most sources)when he was about forty (Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 57).

58 Note al-Qifṭī’s comment (ʾInbāh i, 261) that ʾAbū ʿAmr’s aim in the Jīm was to collectunfamiliar words and not those that are commonly used ( jamaʿa fīhi l-ḥūšī wa-lam yaqṣidal-mustaʿmal).

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them. Accordingly, one of the main distinctive features between the grammat-ical and lexicographical traditions is evident from the earliest available sources:the semantic component of ġarīb, which was almost totally ignored by Sīb-awayhi, was the focus of lexical works that were fully devoted to it.

A more specific genre related to meanings of words is the one that dealswith the etymology of proper nouns. Mubawwab lexica of this genre belongto the earliest stage of lexical writing. From this stage is extant al-ʾAṣmaʿī’s(d. 216/831) Kitāb ištiqāq al-ʾasmāʾ, in which are discussed the etymologies andmeanings of 133 names. Kurāʿ al-Naml’s (d. 310/922) lengthy chapter on ištiqāqin al-Muntaḫabminġarīb kalāmal-ʿArab ismostly devoted to proper nouns andplace names,59 but the most extensive work in the early period is Ibn Durayd’s(d. 321/933) Kitāb al-ištiqāq—also referred to as Kitāb ištiqāq al-ʾasmāʾ60—which systematically lists proper nouns, beginning with the Prophet’s name,Muḥammad, followed by the names of his ancestry and the various othertribes.61 Also noteworthy is al-Zajjājī’s (d. 337/949) Kitāb ištiqāq ʾasmāʾ ʾAllāh,which discusses the names (ʾasmāʾ) and attributes (ṣifāt) of God.

iii. Qurʾānic material is one of the main sources of data in the grammati-cal tradition. Sībawayhi quotes 447 Qurʾānic verses in the Kitāb62 and mainlycomments on their syntactic characteristics. There are also a number of early,linguistically oriented exegetical works that belong to the grammatical tra-dition, most notably al-Farrāʾ’s (d. 207/822) Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, ʾAbū ʿUbayda’s(d. 209/824) Majāz al-Qurʾān, and al-ʾAḫfaš al-ʾAwsaṭ’s (d. 215/830) Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Themeanings of Qurʾānicwords, however, are largely outside the scopeof such works. In contrast, the genre ġarīb al-Qurʾān embraces a number ofmubawwab lexica whose primary purpose is to explain Qurʾānic words whichare judged to be ġarīb or which acquire a specific meaning in a Qurʾānic con-text.63 The genre spans the whole duration of the lexicographical tradition,and among its earliest extant monographs are Ġarīb al-Qurʾān wa-tafsīruhu byʿAbdallāh ibnYaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 237/851),TafsīrĠarīb al-Qurʾānby IbnQutayba (d. 276/889),Ġarībal-QurʾānorNuzhatal-qulūbbyMuḥammad

59 Kurāʿ, Muntaḫab ii, 661–678; see also ii, 740–762.60 ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb i, 31.61 Note also that several hundred entries in the Jamhara (see index, iii, 1699–1722) contain

proper nouns derived from the roots under discussion.62 See Hārūn’s index to the Kitāb v, 44–102.63 For example, IbnQutayba includes inTafsīr 47 theword ṣabr ‘patience’, obviously because

he believes that, in the verse wa-staʿīnū bi-l-ṣabri wa-l-ṣalāti ‘Seek [God’s] help withpatience and prayer’ (q. 2/45), it means ‘fasting’ (ṣawm).

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ibn ʿUzayr (or ʿUzayz) al-Sijistānī (d. 330/941), Yāqūtat al-ṣirāṭ fī tafsīr ġarīb al-Qurʾān by ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid (d. 345/957), and Kitāb al-Ġarībayn fī l-Qurʾānwa-l-Ḥadīṯ by ʾAbū ʿUbayd al-Harawī (d. 401/1011).

Unlike the Qurʾān, early grammarians quoteḤadīṯ very sparingly. For exam-ple, the Kitāb contains only seven or eight ḥadīṯs,64 and Ibn al-Sarrāj’s al-ʾUṣūlno more than three.65 As part of the mubawwab lexicographical tradition, thegenre of Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ is primarily concerned with explaining ġarīb words inProphetic ḥadīṯ. Among the earliest works are ʾAbū ʿUbayd’s (d. 224/838) Ġarībal-Ḥaḏīṯ and Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 276/889) and ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq al-Ḥarbī’s (d. 285/898)books by the same title. Compared with ġarīb al-Qurʾān, the ġarīb material inthese works is muchmore extensive, and the most comprehensive book in thegenre is Ibn al-ʾAṯīr’s (d. 606/1210) al-Nihāya fī ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ wa-l-ʾAṯar, one ofthe five lexica that make up Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿArab.

The degree of the use of Ḥadīṯ is one of themost prominent issues onwhichthe grammatical and lexicographical traditions deeply differ, particularly inthe 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries since most later grammarians seem to havegiven up their predecessors’ reservations about citing Ḥadīṯ.66 The discrepancybetween the two traditions is not restricted tomubawwab lexica, since authorsof mujannas lexica obviously had no qualms about using Ḥadīṯ as linguistictestimony. In sharp contrast to Sībawayhi’s seven or eight citations of Ḥadīṯ,the number of ḥadīṯs and ʾaṯars (i.e. sayings of the Prophet’s Companionsor Successors) in Kitāb al-ʿayn is stunningly 428.67 Continuing this approach,al-Bandanījī (d. 284/897) cites 121 ḥadīṯs and ʾaṯars in al-Taqfiya, Ibn Durayd(d. 321/933) 508 in al-Jamhara, and al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144) 495 in ʾAsāsal-balāġa.68 Unlike the early grammarians, who did not find it appropriateto cite Ḥadīṯ as linguistic testimony on syntactical matters given that it wasnot always transmitted verbatim and some of its transmitters were not evennative speakers of Arabic,69 the lexicographers did not hesitate to cite andexplain words in Ḥadīṯ most probably on the assumption that for this specificpurpose it made little difference whether the Ḥadīṯ was transmitted verbatimor paraphrased. In other words, they might have assumed that if Ḥadīṯ was

64 Note that oneḥadīṯ is quoted in twodifferent versions in theKitāb, hence the twodifferentpossible enumerations; see Hārūn’s index, v, 32.

65 Cf. Ṭanāḥī (1986:35).66 Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 9–15; cf. Ḥadīṯī (1981:13–29); Fajjāl (1997:99–136).67 See ʾĀl ʿUṣfūr’s index of K. al-ʿayn 23–46.68 Cf. the indices of Taqfiya 725–730 and Jamhara iii, 1359–1374. For the number in ʾAsās al-

balāġa, see Jubūrī (2004:100).69 Suyūṭī, Iqtirāḥ 53f.; Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 11 f.

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not transmitted in its original form, this would primarily affect its structure,whereas the transmitter ismore likely to preserve the lexical items, particularlythose which constitute the šawāhid.

The lexicographers also differ with the grammarians concerning the citingof poetry from the period following ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj or epochs of reliable usage,albeit to a lesser degree than in the case of Ḥadīṯ. Ibn Harma (d. 176/792) issaid to be the last poet in those epochs,70 and grammar works hardly evercite šawāhid by later poets, such as ʾAbū Nuwās (d. 198/814), ʾAbū l-ʿAtāhiya(d. 211/826), ʾAbū Tammām (d. 231/846), Ibn al-Rūmī (d. 283/896), al-Buḥturī(d. 284/898), al-Mutanabbī (d. 345/965), and al-Maʿarrī (d. 449/1057). In thelexicographical tradition, as in grammar works, the vast majority of šawāhidare by pre- or early Islamic poets such as al-ʾAʿšā, Umruʾ al-Qays, ʾAws ibnḤajar, Dū l-Rumma, Ruʾba, Zuhayr, al-Šammāḫ, Ṭarafa, al-Ṭirimmāḥ, al-ʿAjjāj,al-Kumayt, al-Nābiġa al-Jaʿdī, al-Nābiġa al-Ḏubyānī and ʾAbū l-Najm al-ʿIjlī.71Yet, the lexicographers were somewhat more tolerant than the grammariansin citing later poets and thus disregarding the generally accepted temporallimitations imposedonpoetry after ʿuṣūral-iḥtijāj. Among authors ofmujannaslexica, for example, Ibn Manẓūr attributes three šawāhid to ʾAbū Nuwās, eightto ʾAbū Tammām, one to al-Buḥturī, eleven to al-Mutanabbī, and three to al-Maʿarrī.72 It is also noteworthy that al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144), who in ʾAsāsal-balāġa cites šawāhid in support of metaphorical and extended meanings,does not link faṣāḥa exclusively to the early epochs, but often cites verses byʾAbū Nuwās, ʾAbū Tammām, al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī.73

Another difference between the grammatical and lexicographical traditionsis that the latter is largely free from the partisan divide between the Basransand Kufans, which by the 4th/10th century was evident in the former. Obvi-ously, the theoretical differences pertaining to syntactical analysis—in partic-ular concerning not just the validity of, but the extent to which notions suchas analogy (qiyās), cause (ʿilla), operant (ʿāmil), suppletive insertion (taqdīr),and origin (ʾaṣl) may be utilized—were hardly applicable to the question ofthe inclusion or otherwise of certain lexical items within the corpus. Althoughearly Kufan lexicographers were primarily interested in including in the corpuslexical items derived from dialectal material and poetry of the various tribes,

70 See Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 425: wa-Ibn Harma ʾāḫir al-šuʿarāʾ allaḏīna yuḥtajj bi-šiʿrihim.71 The order of the names of these poets follows that in the indices of ʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ and

ʿAmāyira (1987, iii); cf. also ʾAyyūbī (1980:90, 290, 370, 433).72 ʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ and ʿAmāyira (1987: iii, 721 ff.); cf. Ḥamza (2011:60–62).73 Cf. Zamaḫšarī, ʾAsās (ʾ-h-b, s-r-w, s-ʿ-ṭ, n-ʿ-d, n-b-ṭ); for other muwallad poets cited in the

ʾAsās, see ʿUbaydī (1990:297–299).

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as is evident in the works of ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Šaybānī (d. 206/821), ʾAbū ʿUbayd(d. 224/838), and Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244/858), their non-Kufan contemporaries,such as al-Ḫalīl (d. 175/791), al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831), al-Bandanījī (d. 284/897),and Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933), were equally keen on recording dialectal dataand adducing supporting poetry šawāhid. In the case of mujannas lexica, thefact that most authors aimed at exhausting the roots and derivatives of thelanguage may have made it necessary for them to include lexical items fromall available sources of riwāya. For example, al-Qālī (d. 356/967) in al-Bāriʿderives the bulk of his material from both Basran and Kufan scholars. Hismain sources (in order of frequency) are al-Ḫalīl, ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī, Ibnal-Sikkīt, al-ʾAṣmaʿī, ʾAbū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī, ʾAbū ʿUbayda, Ibn Durayd, ʾAbūʿAmr al-Šaybānī, ʾAbū ʿUbayd, al-Farrāʾ, al-Kisāʾī, and Ibn Kaysān.74 In laterextensive works, such as Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/1066) al-Muḥkam and Ibn Manẓūr’s(d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿArab, the ultimate aim of including all the previouslyavailable data meant that there was hardly any room for partisan inclina-tion.

On a broader scale, the existence of an Arabic grammatical theory—whichhas its own technical terms, notions, methods of analysis, etc. cannot be de-nied. Works which examine the fundamental principles of grammar (ʾuṣūl al-naḥw) and the methodological and epistemological issues it embraces alsostrongly point in that direction. The same statement, however, cannot bemadeof the lexicographical tradition. The very question of the existence of a dis-cernible theory may be irrelevant in the case of the mubawwab lexica sincethey comprise a wide variety of themes, ranging from words that pertain toa particular topic (e.g. plants, animals, human body) to Arabized words, sole-cisms andmorphological patterns. As far as themujannas lexica are concerned,lexicographers had to deal with a number of theoretical issues, including ques-tions of authenticity and correctness of lexical items, the principles that governthe internal arrangement of the data, and the extent of the inclusion of propernouns, new notions, technical terms, and even vernacular usage not recordedin earlier lexica. There was little agreement on those issues, more importantlya remarkable absence of the elements that are vital for a clear and precise def-inition of cited words, and of a template that determines the order in whichpatterns and derivatives are to be included in each lemma and assigns the rolewhich semantic relationships should have in the structuring of the lemmata. Inspite of certainbasic principles thatwere commonly applied—for instance, theadoption of ‘root’ in the arrangement of the lemmata and the citing of šawāhid

74 Cf. al-Bāriʿ ’s indices, 745–752.

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as evidence of correct usage—the lexicographers did not develop a theory thatwould resolve the semantic issues posed by the nature of their field. This isparticularly unfortunate because, apart from the interest of some grammari-ans in demonstrating the interrelatedness between form and meaning in theconstructions under analysis, the grammatical tradition itself did not developa semantic theory in any meaningful way. Accordingly, semantic issues weremoreprofoundlydiscussedby thebalāġiyyūn and, at a later stage, by thebranchof study known as ʿilm al-waḍʿ.

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lafẓuhuwa-ḫtalafamaʿnāhu. Ed. byMaḥmūd Šākir Saʿīd. Jedda: Nādī Jāzān al-ʾAdabī,1991.

ʾAbū Ḥātim, ʾAḍdād = ʾAbū Ḥātim Sahl ibn Muḥammad al-Sijistānī, al-ʾAḍdād. Ed. byMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʾAḥmad. Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1991.

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ʾAbū Zayd, Nawādir = ʾAbū Zayd Saʿīd ibn ʾAws al-ʾAnṣārī, al-Nawādir fī l-luġa. Ed. byMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʾAḥmad. Beirut: Dār al-Šurūq, 1981.

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Baġdādī, Ḫizāna = ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿUmar al-Baġdādī, Ḫizānat al-ʾadab wa-lubb lubāblisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 13 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Kātibal-ʿArabī, 1967–1986.

Bandanījī, Taqfiya = ʾAbū Bišr al-Yamān ibn al-Yamān al-Bandanījī, al-Taqfiya fī l-luġa.Ed. by Ḫalīl ʾIbrāhīm al-ʿAṭiyya. Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿĀnī, 1976.

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Ḫalīl, ʿAyn = ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-ʿayn. Ed. byMahdī al-Maḫzūmī and ʾIbrāhīm al-Sāmarrāʾī. 8 vols. Baghdad: Dār al-Rašīd, 1980–1985.

Hamaḏānī, ʾAlfāẓ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿĪsā al-Hamaḏānī, al-ʾAlfāẓ al-kitābiyya. Ed. by Louis Cheikho. 9th ed. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāṯūlīkiyya, 1913.

Harawī, Ġarībayn = ʾAbū ʿUbayd ʾAḥmad ibnMuḥammad al-Harawī, Kitāb al-Ġarībaynfī l-Qurʾānwa-l-Ḥadīṯ. Ed. by ʾAḥmadFarīdī al-Mazyadī. 6 vols.Mecca:MaktabaNizārMuṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1999.

Ḥarbī,Ġarīb = ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Ḥarbī,Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ. Ed. by Sulaymānibn ʾIbrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-ʿĀyid. 3 vols. Mecca: Dār al-Madanī, 1985.

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Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾInṣāf = ʾAbū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-ʾAnbārī, al-ʾInṣāf fī masāʾil al-ḫilāf bayna l-naḥwiyyīn al-Baṣriyyīn wa-l-Kūfiyyīn. Ed. byMuḥam-mad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijāriyya, 1955.

Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, Nuzha = ʾAbū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-ʾAnbārī,Nuzhat al-ʾalibbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-ʾudabāʾ. Ed. by ʾIbrāhīm al-Sāmarrāʾī. Baghdad: Mak-tabat al-ʾAndalus, 1970.

Ibn al-ʾAṯīr, Nihāya = Majd al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Saʿādāt al-Mubārak ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-ʾAṯīr, al-Nihāya fī ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯwa-l-ʾAṯar. Ed. byṬāhir ʾAḥmad al-Zāwī andMaḥmūdMuḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī. 2nd ed. 5 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979.

Ibn al-Dahhān, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Muḥammad Saʿīd ibn al-Mubārak Ibn al-Dahhān, Šarḥʾabniyat Sībawayhi. Ed. by Ḥasan Šāḏilī Farhūd. Riyadh: Dār al-ʿUlūm, 1987.

IbnDurayd, Ištiqāq = ʾAbū BakrMuḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan IbnDurayd, al-Ištiqāq. Ed. byʿAbd al-SalāmMuḥammad Hārūn. Cairo: Muʾassasat al-Ḫānjī, 1958.

Ibn Durayd, Jamhara = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Durayd, Jamharat al-luġa. Ed. by RamzīMunīr Baʿalbakī. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1987–1988.

IbnDurayd,Malāḥin = ʾAbūBakrMuḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan IbnDurayd, al-Malāḥin. Ed.by ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm Iṭfayyaš al-Jazāʾirī. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Salafiyya, 1347a.h.

Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris, Muʿjam Maqāyīs al-luġa. Ed. byʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 6 vols. Cairo: Dār ʾIḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya,1946–1952.

IbnFāris,Mujmal= ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad IbnFāris,Mujmal al-luġa. Ed. byZuhayr ʿAbdal-Muḥsin Sulṭān. 4 vols. in 2 [beginning of vol. 4 not indicated]. Beirut: Muʾassasatal-Risāla, 1984.

Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-luġa wa-sunanal-ʿArab fī kalāmihā. Ed. by Muṣṭafā l-Šuwaymī. Beirut: Muʾassasat Badrān, 1963.

Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥusayn ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa fīkalām al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʾAḥmad ʿAbd al-Ġafūr ʿAṭṭār. 2nd ed. Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1979.

Ibn Ḫaldūn, Muqaddima = Waliyy al-Dīn ʾAbū Zayd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn MuḥammadIbn Ḫaldūn, al-Muqaddima. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1956.

Ibn Hišām, Taḫlīṣ = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf Ibn Hišām,Taḫlīs al-šawāhid wa-talḫīṣ al-fawāʾid. Ed. by ʿAbbās Muṣṭafā al-Ṣaliḥī. Beirut: Dāral-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1986.

Ibn Jinnī, Munṣif = ʾAbū l-Fatḥ ʿUṯmān Ibn Jinnī, al-Munṣif, šarḥ Kitāb al-taṣrīf li-l-Māzinī. Ed. by ʾIbrāhīm Muṣṭafā and ʿAbdallāh ʾAmīn. 3 vols. Cairo: Muṣṭafā l-Bābīal-Ḥalabī, 1954–1960.

Ibn Maḍāʾ, Radd = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Maḍāʾ al-Laḫmī, al-Radd ʿalā l-nuḥāt. Ed. by Šawqī Ḍayf. 3rd ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1988.

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Mukram Ibn Manẓūr,Lisān al-ʿArab. 15 vols. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968.

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Ibn al-Marzubān, ʾAlfāẓ = ʾAbūManṣūrMuḥammad ibn Sahl Ibn al-Marzubān al-Bāḥiṯ,al-ʾAlfāẓ, al-kitāba wa-l-taʿbīr. Ed. by Ḥāmid Ṣādiq Qunaybī. Amman: Dār al-Bašīr,1991.

Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist = ʾAbū l-FarajMuḥammad ibn ʾAbī Yaʿqūb Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist.Ed. by Riḍā Tajaddud. Tehran, 1971.

Ibn al-Qaṭṭāʿ, ʾAbniya = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Jaʿfar Ibn al-Qaṭṭāʿ, ʾAbniyat al-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾafʿāl wa-l-maṣādir. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Dāyim. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dāral-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1999.

IbnQutayba, ʾAdab = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuslim IbnQutayba al-Dīnawarī,ʾAdab al-kātib. Ed. by Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Hamīd. 4th ed. Cairo: Maṭ-baʿat al-Saʿāda, 1963.

IbnQutayba,Ġarīb = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuslim IbnQutayba al-Dīnawarī,Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh al-Jubūrī. 3 vols. Baghdad:Wizārat al-ʾAwqāf, 1977.

IbnQutayba,Tafsīr = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuslim IbnQutayba al-Dīnawarī,Tafsīr ġarīb al-Qurʾān. Ed. by al-Sayyid ʾAḥmad Ṣaqr. Cairo: Dār ʾIḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1958.

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbū BakrMuḥammad ibn Sahl Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed.by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1985.

Ibn Sīda, Muḫaṣṣaṣ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʾIsmāʿīl Ibn Sīda, al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ. 17 vols. Būlāq,1316–1321a.h.

Ibn Sīda, Muḥkam = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʾIsmāʿīl Ibn Sīda, al-Muḥkam wa-l-muḥīṭal-ʾaʿẓam. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Hindāwī. 11 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,2000.

Ibn al-Sikkīt, ʾAḍdād = ʾAbū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn ʾIsḥāq Ibn al-Sikkīt, al-ʾAḍdād. Ed. byAugust Haffner, Ṯalāṯat kutub fī l-ʾaḍdād, 163–220. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāṯūlīkiyya,1913.

Ibn al-Sikkīt, ʾAlfāẓ = Tibrīzī, Kanz.Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ =Muwaffaq al-Dīn Yaʿīš ibn ʿAlī Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal. 10 vols. Cairo:

al-Maṭbaʿa al-Munīriyya, n.d.Jāḥiẓ, Bayān = ʾAbū ʿUṯmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn. Ed. by ʿAbd

al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 4th ed. 4 vols. Cairo: Lajnat al-Taʾlīf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Našr, 1948–1950.

Jawālīqī, ʾAmṯila = ʾAbū Manṣūr Mawhūb ibn ʾAḥmad al-Jawālīqī, Šarḥ ʾamṯilat Sīb-awayhi. Ed. by Ṣābir Bakr ʾAbū l-Suʿūd. Asyut: Maktabat al-Ṭalīʿa, 1979.

Jurjānī, ʾAsrār = ʾAbūBakr ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jurjānī, ʾAsrār al-balāġa.Ed. by Hellmut Ritter. Istanbul: Government Press, 1954.

Jurjānī, Dalāʾil = ʾAbū Bakr ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jurjānī, Dalāʾil al-ʾiʿjāz.Ed. by Muḥammad Rašīd Riḍā. Repr. from the Cairo edition, Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa,1981.

Kurāʿ,Munajjad = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Hunāʾī Kurāʿ al-Naml, al-Munajjad

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fī l-luġa. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Muḫtār ʿUmar and Ḍāḥī ʿAbd al-Bāqī. 2nd ed. Cairo: ʿĀlamal-Kutub, 1988.

Kurāʿ, Muntaḫab = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Hunāʾī Kurāʿ al-Naml, al-Munta-ḫab min ġarīb kalām al-ʿArab. Ed. by Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-ʿUmarī. 3 vols.Mecca: Jāmiʿat ʾUmm al-Qurā, 1989.

Māzinī, Taṣrīf = Ibn Jinnī, Munṣif.Mubarrad, Mā ttafaqa= ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad, Mā ttafaqa

lafẓuhuwa-ḫtalafamaʿnāhumin al-Qurʾān al-majīd. Ed. by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Maymanīal-Rājakūtī. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1350a.h.

Mubarrad,Muqtaḍab= ʾAbū l-ʿAbbāsMuḥammad ibnYazīd al-Mubarrad,al-Muqtaḍab.Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍayma. 4 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Taḥrīr, 1965–1968.

Mufaḍḍal, Muḫtaṣar = ʾAbū Ṭālib al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Salama ibn ʿĀṣim, Muḫtaṣar al-Muḏakkar wa-l-muʾannaṯ. Ed. by Ramaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Miṣriyya, 1972.

Qālī, Bāriʿ = ʾAbū ʿAlī ʾIsmāʿīl ibn al-Qāsim al-Qālī, al-Bāriʿ fī l-luġa. Ed. by Hāšim al-Ṭaʿʿān. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Nahḍa and Beirut: Dār al-Ḥaḍāra al-ʿArabiyya, 1975.

Qālī, Maqṣūr = ʾAbū ʿAlī ʾIsmāʿīl ibn al-Qāsim al-Qālī, al-Maqṣūr wa-l-mamdūd. Ed. byʾAḥmad ʿAbd al-Majīd Harīdī. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1999.

Qazzāz, ʿAšarāt = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Qazzāz al-Qayrawānī, al-ʿAšarāt fī l-luġa. Ed. by Yaḥyā ʿAbd al-Raʾūf Jabr. Amman, 1984.

Qifṭī, ʾInbāh = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī, ʾInbāh al-ruwāt ʿalāʾanbāh al-nuḥāt. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm. 4 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Fikral-ʿArabī and Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Kutub al-Ṯaqāfiyya, 1986.

Qudāma, Jawāhir = ʾAbū l-Faraj Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar al-Kātib al-Baġdādī, Jawāhir al-ʾalfāẓ. Ed. by Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. Repr. from the Cairo edition,Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, 1979.

Quṭrub, ʾAḍdād = ʾAbū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn al-Mustanīr Quṭrub, al-ʾAḍdād. Ed. by HansKofler. Islamica 5 (1931–1932) 241–284, 385–461, 493–544.

Ṣāḥib, Muḥīṭ = al-Ṣāḥib ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʾIsmāʿīl Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Muḥīṭ fī l-luġa. Ed. byMuḥammad Ḥasan ʾĀl Yāsīn. 11 vols. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1994.

Sakkākī, Miftāḥ = ʾAbū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf ibn ʾAbī Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Sakkākī,Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm. Ed. by Naʿīm Zarzūr. 2nd ed. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1987.

Šaybānī, Jīm = ʾAbū ʿAmr ʾIsḥāq ibn Mirār al-Šaybānī, Kitāb al-jīm. Ed. by ʾIbrāhīm al-ʾAbyārī et al. 4 vols. Cairo: Majmaʿ al-Luġa al-ʿArabiyya, 1974–1983.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by ʿAbd al-SalāmMuḥammad Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1977.

Sijistānī, Ġarīb = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿUzayr al-Sijistānī, Ġarīb al-Qurʾān al-musammā bi-Nuzhat al-qulūb. Ed. by Muṣṭafā ʿAnānī. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Raḥmā-niyya, 1342a.h.

Sīrāfī, Fawāʾit = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Fawāʾit Kitāb Sībawayhi min

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ʾabniyat kalāmal-ʿArab. Ed. byMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib al-Bakkāʾ. Baghdad: Dāral-Šuʾūn al-Ṯaqāfiyya, 2000.

Suyūṭī, Buġya = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Buġyatal-wuʿāt fī ṭabaqāt al-luġawiyyīnwa-l-nuḥāt. Ed. byMuḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm.2nd ed. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979.

Suyūṭī, Hamʿ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Hamʿal-hawāmiʿ šarḥ Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ fī ʿilm al-ʿArabiyya. 2 vols. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda,1327a.h.

Suyūṭī, Iqtirāḥ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, al-Iqtirāḥ fī ʿilm ʾuṣūl al-naḥw. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Muḥammad Qāsim. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1976.

Suyūṭī, Muzhir = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, al-Muzhir fī ʿulūm al-luġa wa-ʾanwāʿihā. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾAḥmad Jād al-Mawlā, ʿAlīMuḥammad al-Bijāwī andMuḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm. 2 vols. Cairo: Dār ʾIḥyāʾal-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, n.d.

Suyūṭī, Šarḥ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Šarḥšawāhid al-Muġnī. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Ẓāfir Kūjān. 2 vols. Damascus: Lajnat al-Turāṯ al-ʿArabī, 1966.

Tawwazī, ʾAḍdād = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuḥammad al-Tawwazī, al-ʾAḍdād.Ed. by Muḥammad Ḥusayn ʾĀl Yāsīn, Ṯalāṯat nuṣūṣ fī l-ʾaḍdād, 67–124. Beirut: ʿĀlamal-Kutub, 1996.

Tibrīzī, Kanz = ʾAbū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī al-Ḫaṭīb al-Tibrīzī, Kanz al-ḥuffāẓ fī tahḏībal-ʾalfāẓ. Ed. by Louis Cheikho. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāṯūlīkiyya, 1895.

Waššāʾ, Mamdūd = ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-Waššāʾ, al-Mamdūd wa-l-maqṣūr. Ed. by Ramaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1979.

Yazīdī, Ġarīb = ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbdallāh ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī,Ġarīb al-Qurʾān wa-tafsīruhu. Ed. by Muḥammad Salīm al-Ḥājj. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1985.

Zabīdī, Tāj = ʾAbū l-Faḍl Muḥammad Murtaḍā ibn Muḥammad al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūsmin jawāhir al-Qāmūs. 10 vols. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḫayriyya, 1306a.h.

Zāhid, ʿAšarāt = ʾAbū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Zāhid Ġulām Ṯaʿlab, al-ʿAšarāt fī ġarīb al-luġa. Ed. by Yaḥyā ʿAbd al-Raʾūf Jabr. Amman, 1984.

Zāhid, Mudāḫal = ʾAbū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Zāhid Ġulām Ṯaʿlab,al-Mudāḫal fī l-luġa. Ed. byMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Jawād. Cairo: Maktabat al-ʾAnglo al-Miṣriyya, 1956.

Zāhid, Yāqūta = ʾAbū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Zāhid Ġulām Ṯaʿlab,Yāqūtat al-ṣirāṭ fī tafsīr ġarīb al-Qurʾān. Ed. byMuḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Turkistānī.Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, 2002.

Zajjājī, Ištiqāq = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī, Ištiqāq ʾasmāʾ Allāh.Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Mubārak. 2nd ed. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1986.

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Zajjājī, Majālis = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī, Majālis al-ʿulamāʾ.Ed. by ʿAbd al-SalāmMuḥammad Hārūn. 2nd ed. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1983.

Zamaḫšarī, ʾAsās = ʾAbū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamaḫšarī, ʾAsās al-balāġa.Beirut: Dār Ṣādir and Dār Bayrūt, 1965.

Zubaydī, Istidrāk = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī al-ʾAndalusī, al-Istidrāk ʿalā Sībawayhi fī Kitāb al-ʾabniya wa-l-ziyādāt ʿalāmā ʾawradahu fīhi muhaḏ-ḏaban. Ed. by Ignazio Guidi. Rome: Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 1890.

Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī al-ʾAndalusī, Ṭaba-qāt al-naḥwiyyīn wa-l-luġawiyyīn. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm. 2nd ed.Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1973.

b Secondary SourcesʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ, ʾAḥmad and Ḫalīl ʾAḥmad ʿAmāyira. 1987. Fahāris Lisān al-ʿArab. 7 vols.

Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla.ʾĀl ʿUṣfūr, Muḥsin. 1410 a.h. Fahāris al-ʿAyn. Tehran: Muʾassasat Dār al-Hijra.ʾAsad, Nāṣir al-Dīn. 1996. “Kitāb al-Jamhara li-bn Durayd wa-ʾaṯaruhu fī l-luġa”. Buḥūṯ

ʿArabiyya muhdāt ʾilā l-daktūr Maḥmūd al-Samra, ed. by Ḥusayn ʿAṭwān and Mu-ḥammad ʾIbrāhīm Ḥuwwar, 29–59. Amman: Jāmiʿat al-Banāt al-ʾUrduniyya.

ʾAyyūbī, Yāsīn. 1980. Muʿjam al-šuʿarāʾ fī Lisān al-ʿArab. Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn.Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1981. “Arab grammatical controversies and the extant sources of the

second and third centuries a.h.”. Studia Arabica et Islamica: Festschrift for IḥsānʿAbbās on his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Wadād al-Qāḍī, 1–26. Beirut: American Uni-versity of Beirut.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1983. “The relation between naḥw and balāġa: A comparative study ofthe methods of Sībawayhi and Ğurğānī”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 11.7–23.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1991. “A balāġī approach to some grammatical šawāhid”. Proceedingsof the Colloquium on Arabic Grammar, ed. by Kinga Dévényi and Tamás Iványi, 89–100. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University and Csoma de Kőrös Society.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2008.The legacy of theKitāb: Sībawayhi’s analyticalmethodswithin thecontext of the Arabic grammatical theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2011. “The historic relevance of poetry in the Arab grammatical tra-dition”. Poetry and history: The value of poetry in reconstructing Arab history, ed. byRamzi Baalbaki, Saleh Said Agha and Tarif Khalidi, 95–120. Beirut: American Uni-versity of Beirut.

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2014. The Arabic lexicographical tradition from the 2nd/8th to the12th/18th century. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Blau, Joshua. 1963. “The role of the Bedouins as arbiters in linguistic questions and themasʾala az-zunbūriyya”. Journal of Semitic Studies 8. 42–51.

Carter, Michael G. 1972. “Les origines de la grammaire arabe”. Revue des études isla-miques 40.69–97.

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Fajjāl, Maḥmūd. 1997. al-Ḥadīṯ al-nabawī fī l-naḥw al-ʿArabī. Riyadh: ʾAḍwāʾ al-Salaf.Gilliot, Claude. 1996. “Les citations probantes (šawāhid) en langue”. Arabica 43.297–

356.Ḥaddād, Ḥannā Jamīl. 1984. Muʿjam šawāhid al-naḥw al-šiʿriyya. Riyadh: Dār al-ʿUlūm.Ḥadīṯī, Ḫadīja. 1981. Mawqif al-nuḥāt min al-iḥtijāj bi-l-Ḥadīṯ al-šarīf. Baghdad: Dār al-

Rašīd.Ḥamza, Ḥasan. 2011. “al-Mudawwana al-qāmūsiyya al-ʿArabiyya al-ḥadīṯa bayna l-luġa

wa-l-ḫiṭāb”. Majallat al-Muʿjamiyya 27.53–79.Hārūn, ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad. 1991. Fahāris al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ li-l-ʾImām Ibn Sīda al-

Luġawī. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl.ʾIqbāl, ʾAḥmad al-Šarqāwī. 2011. Muʿjam al-maʿājim: Taʿrīf bi-naḥw ʾalf wa-niṣf ʾalf min

al-maʿājim al-ʿArabiyya al-turāṯiyya. 3rd ed. Beirut: Dār al-Ġarb al-ʾIslāmī.Jubūrī, ʿAbdallāh. 2004. Buḥūṯ fī l-muʿjamiyya al-ʿArabiyya: al-Muʿjam al-luġawī. Bagh-

dad: al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī.Kaššāš, Muḥammad. 1995. al-Rajaz fī l-ʿaṣr al-ʾUmawī. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub.Samāra, Rāʾif. 1995–1996. Manhaj Ibn Manẓūr fī Lisān al-ʿArab. Ph.D. thesis, Damascus

University.Schoeler, Gregor. 2006. “Who is the author of the Kitāb al-ʿAyn?”. The oral and the

written in early Islam, ed. by James E. Montgomery, 142–163. London and New York:Routledge.

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Ṭanāḥī, Maḥmūd Muḥammad. 1986. Fahāris Kitāb al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Cairo: Maktabatal-Ḫānjī.

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ʿUbaydī, Rašīd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. 1990. “Šawāhid al-Zamaḫšarī fī ʾAsās al-balāġa”. Majal-lat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 41:1.294–318.

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_005

ATwelfth Century League Table of ArabGrammarians

Michael G. Carter

This paper is divided into three parts, an introduction to al-Baṭalyawsī, anexamination of his League Table of grammarians, and a discussion of thegrammatical issue for which they are mentioned, namely whether the wordrubba signifies ‘howmany …!’ (hereafter takṯīr) or ‘how few …!’ (taqlīl).

1 Al-Baṭalyawsī

ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī (some-times referred to as Ibn al-Sīd), was born in Bajadoz (hence his nisba) in444/1052, and spent most of his career in Valencia, where he died in 521/1127.Of his private life we know only that he was forced to leave Cordova after com-posing an indiscreet poem about the three sons of the city governor. Being agrammarian, al-Baṭalyawsī could not resist making erotic puns on the namesof these youngmen, ʿAzzūn, Raḥmūn andḤassūn,1 which he echoes as verbs inpleading for forgiveness, ʿazzū-nī ‘console me’ for my love of ʿAzzūn, irḥamū-nī‘have mercy on me’ for my love of Raḥmūn, and ḥassū-nī ‘give me somethingto sip’ to cure my thirst for Ḥassūn.2

About forty titles are credited to al-Baṭalyawsī fromvarious sources, coveringa wide range of topics: he wrote a commentary on the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik ibnʾAnas, at least three works of theology and philosophy, commentaries on thepoetry of al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī, and, the work he is perhaps best knownfor in the West, al-Iqtiḍāb fī šarḥ ʾAdab al-kuttāb, a three-part commentary onthe ʾAdab al-kātib of Ibn Qutayba.

1 The origin of this -ūn suffix is disputed: Roman (1996:527) sees it as probably Andalusian, butcf. Fleisch (1961:i, 453f.) for the possibility that it is South Arabian.

2 The verb ḥassa ‘be tender or compassionate’ is ruled out here, as its imperative would beḥissū-nī; the preceding ʾin ẓamiʾat nafsī ʾilā rīqi Ḥassūnin confirms that the intended verb isḥassā ‘give someone some broth or soup (ḥasāʾ) to sip’. The editor of Ḥulal (7 f.) refuses tobelieve the story.

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Of his linguistic works the most relevant to us are as follows (i) Masāʾil wa-ʾajwiba fī l-naḥw, a selection of questions and answers on grammatical themes,of which the fiftieth Masʾala (henceforth Mas. 50) is a detailed discussion ofrubba occupying pages 137–156 of the printed text; (ii) a two-volume com-mentary on the famous Jumal of al-Zajjājī, the first, ʾIṣlāḥ al-ḫalal al-wāqiʿ fīl-Jumal (with variations in the title, henceforth ʾIṣlāḥ) dealing with what al-Baṭalyawsī calls the deficiency (ḫalal) of the Jumal, the second, al-Ḥulal fī šarḥʾabyāt al-Jumal, being a commentary on the poetic verses quoted as šawāhid;(iii) al-ʾInṣāf fī l-tanbīh ʿalā l-maʿānī wa-l-ʾasbāb allatī ʾawjabat al-iḫtilāf bayna l-muslimīn fī ʾārāʾihim, which includes (105–108) a short treatment of rubba; (iv)Risāla fī l-ismwa-l-musammā, whichdealswith grammaticalmatters in ahighlyphilosophical manner.

2 The League Table of Grammarians

There has always been disagreement aboutwhether rubba denotes takṯīr (‘howmany …!’) or taqlīl (‘how few …!’), and indeed the issue was polarized into oneof the points of dispute between the Baṣrans and the Kūfans (cf. Ibn al-ʾAnbārī,ʾInṣāf 354f.).

In Mas. 50, 138, al-Baṭalyawsī lists a number of grammarians, classified intothree groups by their status and their position on rubba. In the text the order isGroups b, a, c but for convenience they are arranged as follows here:

(Group a) Those who hold the correct view that rubba denotes taqlīl(i) “Major and well-known Baṣrans” (kubarāʾ al-Baṣriyyīn wa-mašāhīruhum)

1. al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad (d. 160/776 or 175/791)2. Sībawayhi (d. 180/796)3. ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766)4. Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb (d. 182/798)5. ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī (d. 215/830)6. ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/771 or 157/774)7. al-ʾAḫfaš [al-ʾAwsaṭ] Saʿīd ibn Masʿada (d. 215/830)8. al-Māzinī (d. 248/862 or 249/863)9. ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Jarmī (d. 225/839)10. ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898 or 286/899)11. ʾAbū Bakr [ibn] al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928)12. ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjāj (d. 311/923)13. ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987)14. ʾAbū l-Ḥasan al-Rummānī (d. 384/994)

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15. Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002)16. al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979)

(ii) “All the Kūfans” ( jumlat al-Kūfiyyīn)31. al-Kisāʾi (d. 189/805)2. al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822)3. Muʿāḏ al-Ḥarrāʾ (d. 187/804)4. [Muḥammad] ibn Saʿdān al-Ḍarīr (d. 231/846)5. Hišām [ibn Muʿāwiya] (d. 209/824)

(Group b) Those who hold the incorrect view that rubba denotes takṯīr(i) “Minor grammarians” (ṣiġār al-naḥwiyyīn)

1. ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949 or 339 or 340)2. ʾAbū Jaʿfar [ibn] al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950)3. “Similar minor grammarians” (naḥwuhumāmin ṣiġār al-naḥwiyyīn)

(not named)(ii) “The author of Kitāb al-ʿayn” (ṣāḥib Kitāb al-ʿayn) (also not named)

(Group c) Those who hold that rubba denotes both taqlīl and takṯīral-Fārābī (d. 339/950)

The names are listed in approximate chronological order and all are easilyidentifiable, though among the “Major Baṣrans” in Group a the name ʿUmar ismisspelt as ʿAmr in (i) 3, and what is printed as Ibn Ḥunayyī in (i) 15 is probablya mistake, as no such grammarian could be found. The obvious correction isIbn Jinnī, especially since he is quoted in other works of al-Baṭalyawsī.

The chronological and geographical constraints of the list are striking: itcontains no grammarians after the end of the 4th/10th century (Ibn Jinnī beingthe last),4 andnot a singleMaġribī grammarian ismentioned, either fromNorthAfrica or Andalus.

The chronological limitation may reflect a prevailing Maġribī view of gram-mar as a Mašriqī creation, including the traditional division into Baṣrans andKūfans, and ending in the 4th/10th century rather in the way that in law andḥadīṯ the gate of ijtihādwas closed at about the same time to mark the perfec-tion of the legal system, along with the definitive establishment of the qirāʾāt.

3 The printed text has jullat al-Kūfiyyīn, which is lexically obscure, and jumla is restored fromal-Suyūṭī, Hamʿ ii, 25.

4 The latest grammarian referred to by al-Baṭalyawsī in other works may be Ibn Bābāšāḏ(d. 469/1070), in Ḥulal 173.

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Manyprominent earlyMašriqī scholars aremissing from the list. But bearingin mind that al-Baṭalyawsī has told us (Mas. 50, 138) that he searched through“all the grammarians” ( jumlat al-naḥwiyyīn), it ismost likely that he has namedhere only the ones who expressed an opinion on rubba.

The geographical limitation, the failure to name a single Maġribī grammar-ian, tends to confirm that Maġribī grammar was still working towards a senseof regional autonomy. References to fellow Andalusians are also rare in al-Baṭalyawsī’s other works. Only one ismentioned, and frequently, in his Iqtiḍāb,namely ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Qālī (d. 356/967), but that is almost certainly due to thefact that the adoptive Andalusian al-Qālī (still called al-Baġdādī, as if to remindeveryone of his Mašriqī origins) was the principal transmitter of Ibn Qutayba’sʾAdab al-kātib in the Maġrib.5

Turning to the “Minor Grammarians” in Group b, we find the name of oneof the best known of all the Eastern grammarians, ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Zajjājī. Thisis all the more surprising because his pedagogical grammar al-Jumal was sopopular in the Maġrib that it is said to have generated some 120 commentariesbyMaġribī authors alone, andwhile this figure is undoubtedly exaggerated, it isnevertheless true that of the fifty or so commentaries listed in Sezgin, no fewerthan thirty-nine are by Maġribīs.6

Among those many commentators al-Baṭalyawsī may be unique in the in-tense animosity he shows towards al-Zajjājī, which he makes no effort to con-ceal in his two-part treatise on the Jumal. He begins the first volume (ʾIṣlāḥal-ḫalal) by admitting that al-Zajjājī was generally competent, but the exces-sive brevity of his work left it open to criticism (taʿaqqub al-mutaʿaqqibīn), withthe author often being unaware of his mistakes (ʾIṣlāḥ 57f.).When not actuallywrong (ġayr ṣaḥīḥ, ʾIṣlāḥ 129; ḫaṭaʾ, ʾIṣlāḥ 1737) his definitions are frequentlynot universally valid (lā yaṣiḥḥ ʿalā l-ʾiṭlāq, ʾIṣlāḥ 100) or they are defective( fīhi ḫtilāl, 98), even “corrupt” ( fāsid, ʾIṣlāḥ 279), and his terminology is sloppy(sahw, ʾIṣlāḥ 189) and loosely formulated (tasāmuḥ, musāmaḥa, ʾIṣlāḥ 91, 127),“vague” (mubham, ʾIṣlāḥ 269), or lacking precision (“needs to be be restrictedor straightened up” yaḥtāj ʾilā taqyīd wa-taṯqīf, ʾIṣlāḥ 182), with the result thatal-Zajjājī is often misleading (“creates a false impression” yūhim, ʾIṣlāḥ 204) orcontradictory ( fīhi tanāquḍ, ʾIṣlāḥ 58). On one occasion al-Baṭalyawsī accuseshim of “combining a lie with an error” ( jamaʿ al-kiḏb wa-l-ḫaṭaʾ, ʾIṣlāḥ 223), forboth misreporting Sībawayhi and misinterpreting him.

5 Al-Qālī also supplies a poetic riwāya for al-Baṭalyawsī (Ḥulal 101).6 See Carter (2011:45 f. and notes).7 References are selective to items which may occur more than once.

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Typical systematic verdicts of al-Baṭalyawsī are that al-Zajjājī “has done hisbest to limit this topic, more than he has before, but is still open to questionfor not limiting it enough” (ʾIṣlāḥ 250),8 and one of his statements is dismissedas “thoughtless” (min ġayr taʾammul, ʾIṣlāḥ 300), while several times we readthat al-Zajjājī has fallen short “as usual” (ʿalā ʿādatihi, ʾIṣlāḥ 338). And in casewe fail to notice just how little al-Baṭalyawsī thinks of al-Zajjājī, he invents forus the following example to illustrate the use of ʾinnamā to indicate contempt(taḥqīr), namely (ʾIṣlāḥ 349) “when you hear a man boasting about how muchhe has donated to charity you say to him, ʾinnamā ʾaʿṭayta dirhaman ‘all youhave donated is a dirham’, and when you hear him boasting about being agrammarian you say to him, ʾinnamā qaraʾta Kitāb al-jumal ‘all you have everstudied is the Jumal’ ”.

Clearly al-Baṭalyawsī was not impressed by this work, and although he maybe rather isolated in his hostility to al-Zajjājī (a later grammarian, Ibn al-Ḍāʾiʿ, d. 680/1281, evidently sprang to al-Zajjājī’s defence with a refutation ofal-Baṭalyawsī’s objections),9 we can at least accept that his classification ofal-Zajjājī as a “minor grammarian” has been argued at length and with greatconviction.

For [Ibn] al-Naḥḥās (more commonly simply al-Naḥḥās) it is difficult tofind such an explicit and detailed condemnation. Al-Baṭalyawsī quotes himfrequently enough for us to be sure that he was familiar with his works, andhe does disagree with him as often as not (e.g. ʾIṣlāḥ 126), but there is no overtpolemic, nor even a hint that he assigned him a lower rank than themany othergrammarians in whose company he is named, so wemust conclude that this isa personal viewof al-Baṭalyawsī. Forwhat it isworth, al-Naḥḥās does have quitea lot to say about Sūra 15/2 (ʾIʿrāb al-Qurʾān ii, 375f.) but makes no mention atall of the taqlīl/takṯīr issue.

As for the unnamed “similar minor grammarians” (naḥwuhumā min ṣiġāral-naḥwiyyīn) in Group b, we can only guess: they are presumably the sameanonymous group that he refers to inMas. 50, 138 as “some of the grammariansof our own time and the time near to that of [al-Fārābī]” (qawmmin naḥwiyyīzamāninā hāḏā wa-min qurb zamānih): these, he says, wrongly believe thatrubba denotes takṯīr, and furthermore they assert that the “older grammarians”(al-naḥwiyyūn al-mutaqaddimūn) erred in thinking that it denoted taqlīl.10

8 ‘Limiting’ here renders taqyīd, the process of formulating a definition so that it is muṭlaq‘absolute, unqualified’; al-Baṭalyawsī frequently criticizes al-Zajjājī for offering definitionswhich cannot be applied absolutely ʿalā l-ʾiṭlāq.

9 Reported in Sezgin (1984:92 inf.).10 By “older grammarians” here al-Baṭalyawsī surely means those listed in Group a, but in

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Common sense suggests that these “minor grammarians” should be amongthose whose names appear elsewhere in al-Baṭalyawsī’s works, on the groundsthat at least he was directly or indirectly acquainted with their ideas, but thisdoes not rule out those not named by him, whom he could judge by theirreputation alone. We may never know.

Item (ii) in Group b, Ṣāḥib Kitāb al-ʿayn, may at first seem contradictory,since the author of the Kitāb al-ʿayn is usually taken to be al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad,the first grammarian to be listed in Group a among those with the correctunderstanding of rubba as denoting taqlīl. The answer is fairly simple: al-Baṭalyawsī must be one of those who did not regard al-Ḫalīl as the author ofthe Kitāb al-ʿayn.11 In fact authorship has been ascribed to his close friend al-Layṯ ibn al-Muẓaffar (d. 190/805), and opinion is still divided onhowmuch theyeach contributed to the work: as Sezgin points out (1982:159), some Medievalwriters avoided the issue by saying qāla Ṣāḥib Kitāb al-ʿayn, as al-Baṭalyawsīdoes here.

In Group c the solitary authority named by al-Baṭalyawsī is a visitor from adifferent universe, thephilosopher al-Fārābī,whowasof theopinion that rubbacould equally denote both taqlīl and takṯīr. This in itself is unproblematical—others held a similar view, but there is a difficulty with the source named byal-Baṭalyawsī, al-Fārābī’s Kitāb al-ḥurūf.

The work itself is well known and published, but nowhere does it mentionrubba. The problem is compounded firstly by the fact that thework also bore analternative title, Kitāb al-ʾalfāẓ wa-l-ḥurūf, and secondly that it appears to havecirculated in different versions. This has been studied by Larcher, with regard todiscrepancies in thewording of a passage dealingwith the relative purity of theArabic spoken by the tribes during the period of the Islamic revelation. Larcherargues that the differences arose when al-Fārābīmodified the text for doctrinalreasons, to give more prominence to Qurayš as speakers of the best Arabic.12We can perhaps surmise that his view on rubba was known to al-Baṭalyawsīfrom some version of the Ḥurūf which has not come to light.

ʾIṣlāḥ 259 he notes a disagreement over ḥattā between al-naḥwiyyūn al-mutaqaddimūnqabl al-Ḫalīl wa-Sībawayhi, from which we must conclude that even this early group wasnot united on every issue.

11 Although al-Baṭalyawsī tells us that the author “states clearly” (ṣarraḥa) that rubba exclu-sively denotes takṯīr, this does not appear in the lemma for rubba in the printed editionof Kitāb al-ʿayn, viii, 258.

12 Larcher (2006). Another version of this same text, from a manuscript said to be in al-Fārābī’s own hand, is given by ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnāṭī in Taḏkira 573–575.

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Al-Fārābī’s views on rubba are quoted by a later Andalusian grammarian,ʾAbūḤayyān al-Ġarnāṭī (d. 754/1344), in his Irtišāf al-ḍarab.13 But itmay be thatal-Baṭalyawsī has oversimplified the situation, if we can judge by al-Suyūṭī’sparaphrase of another work of ʾAbū Ḥayyān,14 which tells us that al-Fārābīand his school (ṭāʾifa) believed that rubba was predominantly for taqlīl butrarely (nādiran) for takṯīr, an opinion favouredby al-Suyūṭī over theother sevenpossibilities.

As it happens, al-Baṭalyawsī was the first Andalusian to cite al-Fārābī at all,in a treatise on al-Fārābī’s enumeration of the Categories of Aristotle.15We alsoknow that al-Baṭalyawsī was an admirer of al-Fārābī, whom he quotes withapproval in his commentary on the Jumal (ʾIṣlāḥ 65 on nouns, 73 on verbs, 77on particles). But oddly he does not mention him in his Risāla fī l-ism wa-l-musammā, which treats the ism andmusammā from amarkedly philosophicalperspective—perhaps al-Fārābī never dealt with it.

3 TheMeaning of rubba

Somuch for the LeagueTable, now it is time to look at al-Baṭalyawsī’s treatmentof rubba, beginning with some general observations:

13 Larcher (2006:118 f.), citing Irtišāf 456. ʾAbū Ḥayyān does not mention al-Fārābī amongthe grammarians named in Taḏkira 5–9 during a discussion of rubba, although he ismentioned once elsewhere in that work (see previous note).

14 His commentary on the Tashīl of IbnMālik. I am grateful to my friend and colleague KeesVersteegh for providing me with a copy of the relevant passage in the Irtišāf, not only forits reference to al-Fārābī, but also because it contains (455) a list of grammarians whichis almost identical with that of al-Baṭalyawsī (Mas. 50, 138), lacking only the classificationintoMajor andMinor, and the names of the Baṣran Ibn al-Naḥḥās (!) and the KūfanMuʿāḏal-Ḥarrāʾ. Furthermore al-Suyūṭī in Hamʿ ii, 25 has exactly the same list as the Irtišāf, withboth sources ascribing it to awork entitled al-Basīṭ, which has not yet been identified. Theobvious candidate is the Basīṭ of Ibn ʾAbī Rabīʿ al-ʾIšbīlī (d. 688/1289, see Sezgin 1984:93),a commentary on the Jumal, where wemight expect the author to raise the matter underthe topic of rubba, but he does not (see Basīṭ 859–872). Ironically the editor of the Basīṭ(p. 859) quotes al-Baṭalyawsi’s own list in a footnote, though he leaves out the two ‘Minor’grammarians., see Hamʿ ii, 25. In passing it should be noted that the edition of the Irtišāfis not entirely reliable: p. 455 informs us that rubba denotes taʿlīl, instead of taqlīl, andimplausibly attributes a Kitāb al-ḥurūf to al-Fārisī.

15 Cruz Hernández (1992:784).

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Mas’ala 50 is a virtual monograph, citing no fewer than 55 verses of poetry,someof themmore thanonce. Such a treatment of rubba is possibly the longestin the literature.

At no time does al-Baṭalyawsī discuss the syntax or linguistic status of rubba:his entire concern is the semantics and pragmatics of the word, and again thismay be unique. In passing we have to forget altogether that etymologicallyrubba is related to words for very large quantities in other Semitic languages:this aspect was never considered by the Arab grammarians.

The word rubba does not occur by itself in the Qurʾān, but appears once inthe form rubbamā in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (15), verse 2, rubbamāyawaddu llaḏīnakafarūlaw kānū muslimīna, to which we shall return. As is clear from al-Baṭalyawsī’sanalysis, he is far more interested in the rhetorical features of rubbamā thanthe eschatology of the verse.

In his handling of evidentiary verses (šawāhid) al-Baṭalyawsī is unusual intwo ways. Firstly he draws on his own repertoire of memorized dīwāns ratherthan the inherited corpus of isolated verses found in grammatical works, andperhaps to assert his independence he even neglects to mention, with oneexception, any of the nine verses involving rubba topics in the Kitāb, whichhe must surely have known about.16

Secondly he self-consciously introduces lines from what he calls (Mas. 50,145, 147) “poems of the moderns” (ʾašʿār al-muḥdaṯīn), among them ʾAbū Tam-mām, al-Mutanabbī, Ḏū l-Rumma and Ibn al-Rūmī, seldom quoted by thegrammarians, who regarded pre-Islamic poetry as the only authoritative data.For both these reasons most of the lines quoted by al-Baṭalyawsī are absentfrom the standard reference works of šawāhid.

Here follows a summary of the contents of Mas. 50, with minimal citationof the many examples from prose and poetry.

Al-Baṭalyawsī begins his Masʾala with a conventional Introduction (137),thanking his questioner for asking, and then proceeds directly to the problem,the paradox that rubba, which denotes taqlīl, is often used in contexts whereit can only denote takṯīr. He illustrates this by some prose examples and twopre-Islamic verses, one by Imruʾ l-Qays:

17لـجـلـجةرادـبموـيامـيـسالو٭امهـنـمكـلحلاصموـيبرالا[1]

16 He quotes a verse rhyming in al-bašaru (Mas. 50 139, Kitāb i, 22 Derenbourg/i, 29 Būlāq),and in Ḥulal 352 he quotes a verse rhyming in al-fami which appears in Kitāb i, 426Derenbourg/i, 477 Būlāq. Neither of these is a direct šāhid for rubba, however.

17 Evidently a key verse for al-Baṭalyawsī, who quotes it three times in Mas. 50, 137, 150, 155.

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These, he says, have misled scholars into the false belief that rubba actuallydoes denote takṯīr, an error compounded by their misinterpretation of Sīb-awayhi’s statement that “the meaning [of kam] is like the meaning of rubba”(maʿnāhā ka-maʿnā rubba).18

He now introduces his League Table (138) and also paraphrases the views ofal-Fārābī, and concludes his introductory remarks by showing how Sībawayhi’swords have been misinterpreted. However, even though the evidence suggeststhat rubba was used for both taqlīl and takṯīr, he will not accept al-Fārābī’sposition that they are equivalent (yataʿādal al-ʾamrāni): instead al-Baṭalyawsīproposes to explain how takṯīr is a special extension of the original meaning oftaqlīl.

This he does in the form of three chapters (ʾabwāb) of varying length.Chapter 1 (140–142) briefly asserts that the primary imposition (waḍʿ) of

rubba is to denote taqlīl and that of kam is to denote takṯīr, but, althoughkam and rubba are antonyms, they can exchange meanings under certain cir-cumstances, namely in metaphor, hyperbole, irony, sarcasm and other motifs(ʾaġrāḍ). Since the purpose of this chapter is only to state the general principle,al-Baṭalyawsī gives no examples of kam or rubba, but simply illustrates variouskinds of oxymoron, among them the following line of poetry:

19كحضلاةدشنمنانيعلاعمدتدقف٭هـتدجودجوليعمداوبسحتالـف[2]

Chapter 2 (142–150). On this basis al-Baṭalyawsī now demonstrates at lengththe use of rubba in its authentic primary imposition of taqlīl, in quotationsfrom prose and verse, all chosen because they unambiguously imply taqlīl, forexample:

Several published translations are available. Here we offer a plain and literal version: “Hasthere not been many a day which was good for you because of those two [fine ladies],especially one particular day at Dāra Juljul!?”.

18 What Sībawayhi actually says is maʿnāhā maʿnā rubba (Kitāb i, 250 Derenbourg/i, 291Būlāq, also i, 252 Derenbourg/i, 293 Būlāq) “the meaning [of kam] is the same as themeaning of rubba”, but this must be taken in conjunction with Kitāb i, 300 Derenbourg/i,345 Būlāq, where Sībawayhi says that rubba and kam have the samemanzila, i. e. syntacticstatus, becausebothdenote anamount or quantity (ʿidda). It doesnot follow fromthis thatthey are synonyms: the maʿnā they have in common is to denote an unspecified amountor quantity, i.e. a grammatical, not lexical meaning.

19 Mas. 50, 141. The line may be translated as: “Do not suppose my weeping is for some griefI feel, for the eyes may well shed tears from intense laughter”.

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20فـلـكأفعاطـتسـيالامفـلـكأ٭امـبرلويـلئاسيـطـعأليـنإ[3]

It is no accident that this section contains so many poetic quotations, some35 verses, because, as al-Baṭalyawsī was doubtless aware, in practice the use ofrubba for takṯīr is far more common than taqlīl, so he is here bombarding uswith heavy artillery in order to distract us from that fact.21

Chapter 3 (150–156) deals with cases where rubba has the meaning of takṯīrfiguratively (ʿalā ṭarīq al-majāz). This happens mostly with boasting, prideand vaingloriouness (iftiḫār, faḫr, mubāhāh), as it is natural to boast of anabundance rather than a paucity. Again the examples are chosen carefully,with takṯīr as the only possible interpretation, and the verse of Imruʾ l-Qays(quotation [1] above), is repeated (150). The feature is extremely common inpoetry, and it reflects the principle laid down already about the exchange ofmeaning between opposites as described in Chapter 1.

Indeed the alternation is so free that either kam or rubba can be used fortakṯīr, and it is a compelling piece of evidence that al-Baṭalyawsī is able to quotetwo consecutive lines in which kam and rubba both denote takṯīr:

بذعدرابىدصلاميغهبتيـفش٭برشمبتبرـشدقموـيبرايف[4]

22بـلـقلاةمعـفمنيلجحلاةيجاسب٭مـثآريـغاهـتـبدقةـليـلمـكو

Here (153) al-Baṭalyawsī digresses to answer an objection: how, it is asked,can rubba be used in such way, when in reality it is the antonym of kam? Al-Baṭalyawsī’s answer reprises the argument he has already made above (Chap-ter 1), that in some situations people say the opposite of what they mean. Hisexamples include laʿanahu llāhu mā ʾafṣaḥahu ‘God curse him, how eloquenthe is!’ (in praise); yā ʿāqilu ‘O, intelligent one!’ (to a stupid person); kam baṭalinqatala zaydun ‘how many heroes Zayd has killed!’ (actually very few).

20 Mas. 143. “I give [generously] to anyone who asks me. Sometimes I am charged with morethan I can bear, and yet I undertake the task”.

21 Fleisch (1979:110, n. 3) cites this as the view of al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. between 684–688/1285–1289), Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 308.

22 Mas. 50, 152. These are lines 2 and 3 of a triplet which is also found in the ʾAmālī of al-Qālī,2:63 with slight variations. We adopt al-Qālī’s reading sājiyati for šājiyati in the last linein order to make sense of it, but obviously we must prefer al-Baṭalyawsī’s wa-kam laylatinover al-Qālī’s wa-min laylatin. The lines may be rendered: “O, how many days there havebeen when I have drunk a draught, cold and sweet, which cured me of my raging thirst.And how many nights which I have spent without sin beside a girl, her [jingling] ankletsquiet and still, her heart filled to overflowing”.

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This time there is a more subtle development of the idea: by choosingrubba, a term which properly denotes taqlīl, the speaker is following the sameprinciple as already defined above in using pejorative terms to praise someone,because it ismore eloquent (ʾablaġ) to use taqlīl to imply that the good qualitiesare rare in everybody, than simply to say that those qualities are abundant in asingle person.23 The poetic example

24لـكولازجاعلااهنععـجضـتاذا٭اهبتيرـسدقلوهةليـلبراي[5]

illustrates this usage: when the poet boasts about how many (rubba) nights ofterror he has spent travelling, he means that what he has done often (takṯīr)has seldom been done (taqlīl) by anybody else.

This leads al-Baṭalyawsī to some more abstract speculations (154), wherehe invokes other dualities (he calls them nisbatān muḫtalifatān) which occurelsewhere in the language. He compares the double sense of rubba with suchanalogousphenomena (naẓīr) as the variationof thedefinite article inpersonalnames, where we sometimes (rubbamā!) find al-Ḥasan, treated as a ṣifa, there-fore requiring formal definiteness, and sometimes (rubbamā) we find Ḥasan,treated as a proper noun, lacking the article because it is definite by nature,and, more delicately, the inner contradiction of using the verb ‘to know’ withindirect questions, qad ʿalimtu ʾa-zaydun ʿindaka ʾam ʿamrun ‘I knew whetherZayd or ʿAmr was with you’, evidently seeking information already known! In apoetic example of this phenomenon:

25دوـفودوـفوـلادـعـبهـبماقأ٭امبرـفءانـفلاروجهمسـمـتنإـف[6]

he returns to the topic of rubba, here to show that rubbamā, which shoulddenote infrequency, here denotes frequency, scil. ‘And if [now you are dead]

23 The commentary of al-ʾArdabīlī (active in the 7th/13th century?) on the ʾUnmūḏaj ofal-Zamaḫšarī offers a fine specimen of casuistry in accounting for this: rubba rajulinkarīmin laqītuhu is paraphrased ‘The generous men that I have met, even though theyare numerous, are few by comparison with the [generous] ones I have not met’ (ʾinna l-rijāla l-kirāma llaḏīna laqītuhumwa-ʾin kānū kaṯīrīnawa-lākinnahumbi-l-qiyāsi ʾilā llaḏīnamā laqītuhum qalīlūn, Unmūḏaj, Arabic text 101; French translation 243).

24 Mas. 50, 154. “O how many a night of terror there has been, where I have journeyed onwhile the sluggardly weakling slept through it”.

25 Mas. 151 and 155. The translation offered is purely ad hoc. Others quote this verse for adifferent reason, to illustrate the use of conditional ʾin with a temporal sense ‘when, nowthat’, as the translation reproduces.

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your camping ground becomes deserted [of future guests], well, delegationsupon delegations of [past] guests have sometimes (i.e. often) resided there’.26

He concludes his examination of rubba in its secondary function of takṯīrwith an analysis of the psychological advantage of asserting paradoxically thatsomething is more than it should be by using a word (rubba) which signifiesthat it is less than it should be. Thus (155) a man might boast of meeting manyscholars but, out of modesty, will say rubba ʿālimin qad laqītu ‘there are a fewscholars [whom] I have met’, which is more eloquent (ʾablaġ again), because apersonwhohumbles himself in thiswaywill increasehismerit, in the samewaythat a personwho elevates himself above his stationwill losemeritwhen testedand found wanting. This, says al-Baṭalyawsī, is the general principle behind allthe previous instances of rubba being used to denote takṯīr.

This argument reaches its climaxwhen it is applied (155) to theQurʾānic rub-bamā yawaddu llaḏīna kafarū law kānū muslimīna (Sūra 15/2). The rhetoricalstatus of the verse is compared to one in which a person disobeys a commandand is warned lā tuʿādinī fa-rubbamā nadimta ‘do not oppose me, for you maywell regret it’. Here the expected sense of rubbawould be takṯīr, implyingmuchregret for the disobedience, but the intention is to say that ‘even if the regretfor this [disobedience] would have only been small, it would still be necessaryto refrain from what might lead to [that regret], so how much more [should itbe avoided]when that regret would be very great?’ (ʾanna l-nadāmata ʿalā hāḏālawkānat qalīlatan la-wajaba ʾanyataḫallafamāyuʾaddī ʾilayhā fa-kayfawa-hiyakaṯīratun?).27 In this way rubbamā still has its formal meaning of taqlīl but therhetorical impact is stronger than it would be if an explicit expression of takṯīrwere used. In that light the literal translation of the Qurʾānic verse should be‘now and then those who disbelieve might wish that they had been Muslims’,as a kind of veiled threat of something which in reality may happen often.

This a fortiori interpretation of the verse solves the problem for al-Baṭalyaw-sī, but Western translators of the Qurʾān have had difficulties with it. Somerender rubbamā as ‘perhaps’ or a synonym thereof, ‘perchance, it may come,it may be’, etc., but these modernisms are anachronistic (see further below).Those who favour ‘many a time, sometimes, often, more than once’ are surely

26 Al-Baṭalyawsī is not quite so sure, as the interpretation has been disputed. He com-promises by offering an alternative reading, that the abundance of arriving guests wascrammed into a short lifetime, that is, rubbamā here genuinely means ‘for not very long’.

27 Al-Baṭalyawsī has almost identical wording in his ʾInṣāf 106 (with var. yatajannaba foryataḫallafa). The main problem for the commentators is the imperfect verb yawaddu, asthe perfect tense is normally required after rubbamā, hence the poem in no. [6] above isoften quoted as the paradigm in this context.

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closer to the mark, with the original sense of ‘in a few cases’ being intended toimply ‘very often indeed’, as argued by al-Baṭalyawsī.28

With that al-Baṭalyawsī’s answer to the Masʾala is complete, and he roundsit off (155) by quoting three poetic verses which have already been used before,one of them twice (no. [1] above), and repeats his verdict that those whointerpret rubba here as intrinsically denoting takṯīr just because it does sosuperficially have missed the point.

In conclusion some general aspects of the syntax of rubba and rubbamāwillbe briefly discussed. They are not directly related to al-Baṭalyawsī’s animadver-sions, but other grammarians found them interesting, and they are still relevantto rubba today.

(1) It is significant that al-Baṭalyawsī nowhere considers that rubba mightbelong to the category of the ʾaḍdād, nor, it seems, does any other grammarian.This is in the end common sense: for the majority, including al-Baṭalyawsī,rubba does not have two meanings, it always denotes taqlīl, but, under certainconditions, it is understood as denoting takṯīr. In this, rubba resembles theEnglish word ‘few’: normally this means ‘not very many’, as in ‘I have writtena few books’, i.e. not a lot, but when you say, ‘I’ve had a few drinks’, it will betaken to mean exactly the opposite.

(2)The status of thequalifying element after the rubbaphrase, e.g. rubba rajulinkarīm (the inflection of karīm is left open for the time being) and rubba rajulinlaqītu/laqītuhu, is disputed by the Medieval grammarians. In fact they wouldreject the obvious parsings ‘many a man is noble’ and ‘many a man have Imet’, on the grounds that the qualifying elements karīm and laqītu[hu] cannotbe predicates of rajul, unlike the exclamatory kam in kam ġulāmin laka qadḏahaba ‘howmany a slave boy of yours has run away!’, kamrajulin ʾafḍaluminka‘how many a man is more virtuous than you!’.29

The instinct of the Medieval grammarians is perfectly sound, since rubbais an old exclamatory form,30 with the qualifying elements functioning asattributive adjectives or asyndetic relative qualifiers (ṣifa) inwhat are originallyelliptical structures. The literal translation of rubba rajulin karīmin shouldtherefore be ‘O how many a noble man [there is]!’ with karīmin agreeing with

28 The issue of Qurʾān translation is not central to this paper, so individual translators willnot be identified.

29 These are from Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 252 Derenbourg/i, 293 Būlāq.30 Some time ago (see Fleischer 1885–1888:i, 419, for early references) it was noted that rubba

is originally a vocative ‘O, howmany a … there is!’.

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rajulin, and of rubba rajulin laqītu/laqītuhu ‘O how many a man whom I havemet [there is]!’ with laqītu/laqītuhu as an attributive clause.31

In this regard it is revealing that Kouloughli translates one such sentencerubba mraʾatin faʿalat kaḏā with such an attributive clause “il y a bien euquelque(s) femme(s) qui a/ont fait telle chose”,32 rather than a postposedverbal predicate ‘many a woman/women has/have done such a thing’.33

(3) It is well known that rubba (unlike rubbamā) has disappeared altogetherfrom vernacular Arabic, but in contemporary written Arabic it may be that ithas been re-analyzed so that the second element is now indeed regarded as apredicate, and accordingly we find rubba rajulin karīmun not karīmin. This isdifficult to demonstrate with the unvowelled corpus we usually have to dealwith in modern Arabic, but it happens that three editions of the Kitāb presentthree different explicit vocalizations of this construction which indicate veryclearly that the system is now in chaos:

(i) Derenbourg i, 256: rubba tawkīdin lāzimin ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahuminal-kalima

(ii) Būlāq i, 298: rubba tawkīdun lāzimun ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahuminal-kalima

(iii) Hārūn ii, 171: rubba tawkīdin lāzimun ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahuminal-kalima

The editors faced two problems here, whether rubba was in the metalanguageor not, and what would be the corresponding inflection for each of thesepossibilities.

For Derenbourg this is not a statement about rubba, and he has accordinglyvocalized the sentence in the correct Medieval form for the exclamatory sense,lit. ‘O how many a permanently attached emphatic element there is, so muchso that it becomes like part of the word!’.

The Būlāq editor has read the sentence as a non-exclamatory statementabout rubba, “rubba is a permanently attached emphatic element, so much so

31 The syntactic uncertainty ismanifest in the variation laqītu/laqītuhu, but that is a separateissue which cannot be pursued here.

32 Kouloughli, Unmūḏaj 161 n. 4.33 There is an interesting syntactical parallel with the categorical negative lā, in the (calque)

structure lā rajula yaqūlu ḏālika, where the verb phrase should be analyzed as a relativeclause “there is noman [in existence] who says that”, rather than as a postposed predicate“no man says that”. Of course lā yaqūlu ḏālika rajulun is the more traditional pattern.

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that it becomes like part of the word”, with tawkīdun lāzimun vocalized as apredicate. Prima facie this is not likely to be what Sībawayhi intended.

Hārūn reads it as a general statement, like Derenbourg, but vocalizes itaccording to the modern convention as a subject (rubba tawkīdin) and a pred-icate (lāzimun), with no exclamatory connotation: we can translate it directlyas “Many an emphatic element is permanently attached, so much so that itbecomes like part of the word”.

(4) Rubbamā has undergone a semantic shift in modern Arabic, written andspoken, where it now has the dominant meaning of ‘perhaps, maybe’, whichit never had in Classical Arabic.34 Of the twenty three examples in Cantarino(1974–1975:ii, 207–209, iii, 225–227), twenty are translated as ‘perhaps’ or‘might’, and of the three remaining, two with the older meaning of ‘sometimes,at times’ could be deliberate archaisms.35

The nearest we find in Classical Arabic is the meaning ‘occasionally, [only]sometimes’: al-Baṭalyawsī himself gives us an illustration of rubbamā in thatsense from al-Mubarrad, rubbamā tataqaddamumraʾatun fī ṣināʿatin wa-qalla-mā yakūnu ḏālika ‘sometimes a woman excels in an art, but that will be sel-dom’,36 which admittedly could be rendered ‘might well excel’ in a transitionalsense approaching ‘perhaps’, but a more typical usage is seen in an examplefrom al-Fārābī (not from Mas. 50, though al-Baṭalyawsī would probably havebeen aware of it), rubbamā ʾaḥraqat wa-rubbamā lam tuḥriq, speaking of thepotential effect (quwwa) of fire on straw, ‘sometimes it would burn [the straw]and sometimes it would not’.37

As an academic exercise thisMasʾala exhibits a fullymature Islamic scholas-ticism. It is a highly structured and coherent treatise which may be entirelyoriginal in its length and in the number and selection of verses quoted.

As for its originality in other aspects, there are two issues to be considered.Al-Baṭalyawsī may be drawing on an earlier tradition for the notion of the

regret (nadāma) experienced by the unbeliever on Judgment Day, as threat-ened in Sūra 15/2, rubbamā yawaddu llaḏīna kafarū law kānūmuslimīna. There

34 It is not easy to see how the passage referred to by Fleisch (1979:ii, 110, n. 3), demonstratesthat the meaning ‘perhaps’ was already noted by al-Zamaḫšarī, not least because thepassage in question is by al-ʾArdabīlī (see above, n. 23).

35 The final example is translated as an optative, iii, 226, rubbamāmannā llāhu ʿalayya ‘MayGod bestow his favors uponme’, but rubbamā probably has the newmeaning of ‘perhaps’here too.

36 Mas. 50, 143. Here qallamā reinforces the taqlīl sense of rubbamā.37 Kitāb al-Ḥurūf p. 33 (= latter half of §93).

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are two precedents of which he was most likely aware. One is in the com-mentary on this verse by al-Farrāʾ (Maʿānī ii, 82), who compares it with thesituation of a disobedient person who is told ʾa-mā wa-llāhi la-rubba nadā-matin laka taḏkuru qawlī fīhā ‘By God, won’t there surely be some little regretfor you [when] you recall what I said about it!?’, because the speaker knows thatthere certainly will be regret.38 A second precedent is in the commentary of al-Zajjāj on this same verse (Maʿānī iii, 172f.), where he explains that it followsthe thinking of the ‘Arabs’ (i.e. Bedouin) when they utter threats (tahaddud):in the equivalent paraphrase rubbamā nadima l-ʾinsān etc. the person makingthe threat knows well that people generally have regrets for what they do, andthat therewill be regret in each individual case, especially for seriousmisdeeds.This fact is in itself a reason to refrain from the action, says al-Zajjāj, thus rub-bamā here still denotes taqlīl. Al-Baṭalyawsī’s own argument is an elaboration(it is perhaps too much to call it a conflation) of these two earlier approaches:as we have seen above, he formally develops them into an exquisite a fortioriargument to justify his interpretation of rubbamā.

A second issue of originality is the observation that rubba can be usedfor takṯīr in circumstances of boasting or pride (see above in al-Baṭalyawsī’schapter 3). This notion is linked to his name by ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnāṭī, asquoted inHamʿ ii, 25,where al-Suyūṭī tells us that the seventhopinionon rubbais that “it denotes takṯīr in the situation of vaingloriousness and boasting ( fīmawḍiʿ al-mubāhāh wa-l-iftiḫār), but taqlīl everywhere else, which is the viewof al-ʾAʿlam and Ibn al-Sīd”, i.e. al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī (d. 476/1083) and oural-Baṭalyawsī, who died forty-four years later. If we knew what al-Šantamarī’sposition on rubba was, we might be able to determine whether al-Baṭalyawsīwas influenced by it, and if so, how, but a quick check of the available sourcesyieldedno information, and thequestionmust remainunanswered for the timebeing.

4 Postscript

In all the above we have to keep in mind that etymologically rubba mustoriginally have denoted takṯīr, and that al-Baṭalyawsī’s argument is back tofront. In the words of one Western source, “it is curious to note that بر has

38 As a Kūfan, al-Farrāʾ would assume that rubba here denoted taqlīl, but he is actually moreconcerned about the use of imperfect yawaddu (see n. 27), implying that the speakeralready knows that this is going to happen.

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passed, like the German manch, the Fr. maint, and Eng. many a …, from itsoriginal signification of multitude, into one which is almost the opposite, viz.not a great many”.39

This may be so, but the Arab scholars had good reason to disagree on thesense of rubba. From their perspective the word had always been used in bothmeanings, and although we might challenge their interpretation of particu-lar lines of verse, we must accept the Sprachgefühl of the majority who knewenough examples of rubba to conclude that it primarily denoted taqlīl, eventhough it also occurred in themeaning of takṯīr. But a simple appeal to author-ity, based on the professional standing of scholars, could not be intellectuallysatisfying, and still less could it eliminate the divergent opinions tabulated inal-Baṭalyawsī’s League Table, which is the starting point of his Masʾala.

What al-Baṭalyawsī did was to bring to bear the techniques of scholasticargument to account logically for what he (and the majority) believed thehistorical process to have been. He was not required to demonstrate whathappened—this is a matter of record—but to explain how and why it cameabout. Given his ideological background it is not be expected that he would,as Western scholars have done, simply note that this change of meaning isuniversal (albeit in the other direction), though he does point out that suchcomplementary phenomena are not limited to rubba within the Arabic lan-guage itself.

Where he engages with our Western perceptions is in his assumption thatlanguage is an activity of rational speakers, and follows rational principles,and therefore that the change of meaning in rubba correlates directly withcertain human motives. There is no need to look for modern equivalents tothis approach (terms such as pragmatics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysiscould easily be mapped retrospectively on to his argumentation), as the prin-ciples of Islamic law provided a framework which had already been appliedin Arabic grammar from the very beginning, in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi, wherethe rationality of both the speaker and listener underpins the criteria of cor-rect speech. As developed explicitly by later grammarians, speech is only validwhen it issues from a speaker capable of forming an intention, thus exclud-ing from the domain of grammar the irrational utterances of lunatics, minors,those asleep, parrots and the like. And if this begins to look like a purely juridi-cal approach to language, let us not forget that al-Baṭalyawsī is styled al-faqīh(either by himself or the transmitter of thework) in the opening lines of parts 2and 3 of his philological commentary al-Iqtiḍāb.

39 Wright ii, 216, reproducing Caspari, and adding the English ‘many a’.

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Bibliographical References

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al-ḍarab fī lisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by Muṣṭafā ʾAḥmad al-Nammās. 2 vols. Cairo, 1984–1987.

ʾAbūḤayyān,Taḏkira = ʾAbūḤayyānMuḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī,Taḏki-rat al-nuḥāh. Ed. by ʿAfīf ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Beirut, 1968.

ʾArdabīlī, Šarḥ = al-ʾArdabīlī, Šarḥ al-ʾUnmūḏaj. Ed. by Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy.Paris 1829, [Arabic text, 99–118.]

ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya = Raḍī al-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya. 2 vols., Istanbul,1275/1858–1859.

Baṭalyawsī, Mas. = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyaw-sī, Masāʾil wa-ʾajwiba fī l-naḥw, Ed. by ʾIbrāhīm al-Samarrāʾī, Rasāʾil fī l-luġa, 111–158.Baghdad 1964. [Masʾala no. 50 on rubba, 137–156.]

Baṭalyawsī, Risāla = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭal-yawsī, Risāla fī l-ism wal-l-musammā. Ed. by Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal, “La questiondu nom et du nommé (al-ism wa-l-musammā) entre la dialectique et la grammaire:À propos d’une épître d’al-Baṭalyūsī”, Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 15 (1985)80–93.

Baṭalyawsī, ʾIṣlāḥ = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭal-yawsī, ʾIṣlāḥ al-ḫalal al-wāqiʿ fī l-Jumal (or Kitāb al-ḥulal fī ʾiṣlāḥ al-ḫalal min Kitābal-jumal). Ed. by Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Karīm Saʿūdī. Baghdad, 1400/1980. (https://uqu.edu.sa/page/ar/93205238)

Baṭalyawsī,Ḥulal = ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyaw-sī, al-Ḥulal fī šarḥ ʾabyāt al-Jumal. Ed. by Yaḥyā Murād, Beirut 2002.

Baṭalyawsī, Iqtiḍāb = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭal-yawsī, al-Iqtiḍāb fī šarḥ ʾAdab al-kuttāb. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh Effendī al-Bustānī. Beirut,1901.

Fārābī, Ḥurūf = ʾAbū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-hurūf. Ed.byMuḥsinMahdī, Alfarabi’s Book of Letters. Beirut, 1969. [Cited from an anonymouspdf accessed at www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_2664.pdf]

Farrāʾ, Maʿānī = ʾAbū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā ibn Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. byʾAḥmad Yūsuf Najātī and Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Najjār. 3 vols. Cairo, 1955–1972.

Ḫalīl, ʿAyn = ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-ʿayn. Ed. byMahdī al-Maḫzūmī and ʾIbrāhīm al-Sāmarrāʾī. 8 vols. Beirut, 1988.

Ibn ʾAbī Rabīʿ, Basīṭ = Ibn ʾAbī Rabīʿ al-ʾIšbīlī, al-Basīṭ fī šarḥ Jumal al-Zajjaji. Ed. byʿIyyād ibn ʿĪd al-Ṯubaytī, Book 1 Beirut, 1986.

Naḥhās, ʾIʿrāb = ʾAbū Jaʿfar al-Naḥḥās, ʾIʿrāb al-Qurʾān. Ed. by Zuhayr Ġāzī Zāhid. 5 vols.Beirut, 1988.

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Qālī, ʾAmālī = ʾAbū ʿAlī ʾIsmāʿīl ibn al-Qāsim al-Qālī al-Baġdādī, Kitāb al-ʾamālī. 3 vols.Cairo, 1324a.h.

Qifṭī, ʾInbāh = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī, ʾInbāh al-ruwāh ʿalāʾanbāh al-nuḥāh. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm. 4 vols. Cairo, 1950–1973.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by HartwigDerenbourg, Le livre de Sibawaihi. 2 vols. Paris: 1881–1889. (Repr., Hildesheim: G.Olms, 1970.)/Kitāb Sībawayhi. 2 vols. Būlāq, 1898–1900. (Repr. Baghdad, [1965].)/Ed.by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo, 1968–1977. (Later editions 1977,1983.) [This edition is cross-paginated with Būlāq and will not be cited here.]

Suyūṭī, Hamʿ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Hamʿal-hawāmiʿ. Ed. by Badr al-Dīn al-Naʿsānī. 2 vols. Cairo, 1327.

Yāqūt, ʾIršād = Šihāb al-Dīn ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Yāqūt ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī al-Baġdādī, ʾIršād al-ʾarīb fī maʿrifat al-ʾadīb. Ed. by D.S. Margoliouth. 7 vols. 2nd ed.,London, 1923–1931. (Repr. [Baghdad?]: n.d.)

Zajjāj, Maʿānī = ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm ibn al-Sarī al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by ʿAbdal-Jalīl ʿAbduh Šalabī. 5 vols. Beirut, 1988.

Zamaḫšarī, ʾUnmūḏaj = ʾAbū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamaḫšarī, al-ʾUnmūḏajfī l-naḥw. Ed. by Djamel Eddine Kouloughli, Le résumé de la grammaire arabe parZamaḵšarī, Lyon, 2007.

b Secondary SourcesCantarino, Vicente. 1974–1975. Syntax of Modern Arabic prose. 3 vols. Bloomington and

London.Carter, Michael G. 2011. “The Andalusian grammarians, are they different?”. In the

shadow of Arabic: The centrality of language to Arabic culture. Studies presented toRamzi Baalbaki on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Bilal Orfali, 31–48.Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Cruz Hernández, Miguel. 1992. “Islamic thought in the Iberian Pensinsula”. The legacyof Muslim Spain, ed. by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 777–803. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Fleisch, Henri. 1961. Traité de philologie arabe. i. Préliminaires, phonétique, morphologienominale. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique.

Fleisch, Henri. 1979. Traité de philologie arabe. ii. Pronoms, morphologie verbale, partic-ules. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq.

Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht. Kleinere Schriften, gesammelt, durchgesehen und ver-mehrt. 3 vols. Leipzig 1885–1888. (Repr., Osnabrück 1968.)

Gibb H.A.R. etc. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 12 vols. and Index, Leiden:E.J. Brill, 1960–2009.

Larcher, Pierre. 2006. “Un texte d’al-Fārābī sur la langue arabe ‘réécrit’?”.Grammar as awindow onto Arabic humanism: A collection of articles in honour of Michael G. Carter,ed. by Lutz Edzard and JanetWatson, 108–129. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

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Roman, André. 1996. “Sur l’origine de la diptosie en langue arabe”. Studies in NearEastern languages and literatures: Memorial volume of Karel Petráček, ed. by PetrZemánek, 515–534. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Sezgin, Fuat M. 1982. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. viii. Lexikographie bisca. 430 h. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Sezgin, Fuat M. 1984. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. ix. Grammatik bis ca. 430h. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Wright, William. 1896–1898. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. rev. byW. Rob-ertson Smith and M.J. de Goeje. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(Reissued 1933; many reprints.) (Repr., Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1996.)

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_006

Blind Spots in Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Grammarof Numerals*

Jean N. Druel

1 Introduction

The grammar of numerals is a fascinating chapter to explore in Arabic gram-matical treatises because it is at the crossroad of many issues in these treatises.1This, because numerals should theoretically apply to any other substantive inthe language, and that the nominal group made up of the numeral and itscounted object should be able to be in any nominal syntactic slot in the sen-tence. The problem is that numerals have very different morphologies (adjec-tives, substantives, compounds, plural-like) and this is incompatible with thefreedom of behavior that is expected from them.

The blind spot in the eye is the point where the visual nerve connects tothe retina. This point itself is blind but it enables vision. Any theory has theirblind spots, i.e. assumptions that make the theory possible but that are notquestioned per se by the author. They are interesting to unveil because theyreveal what it is that holds the theory together.

Raḍī l-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 688/1289?) is a gram-marian of whom little is known except maybe that he was Shiʿi from Tabaris-tan (Tawfīq 1978:11; Mango 1979:721; Weipert 2009:118). He is the author of twomajor commentaries on treatises by the Egyptian grammarian of Kurdish ori-gin Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249; Fleisch 1979:781), Šarḥ al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, which isdevoted to syntax (ʾiʿrāb), and Šarḥ al-Šāfiya fī ʿilmay al-taṣrīf wa-l-ḫaṭṭ, whichis devoted to morphology and calligraphy (Larcher 1989:109f.).

* I am very grateful toManuel Sartori and to professors Pierre Larcher and Jonathan Owens fortheir valuable comments on this paper. To be sure, I am not a specialist of al-ʾAstarābāḏī. Theincentive for my research was to trace the developments of the grammar of numerals in latergrammarians. All mistakes in this paper are only imputable to my impertinence to dare todeal with such a difficult author as al-ʾAstarābāḏī.

1 For the treatment of the syntax of numerals in the standard reference grammars of Arabic seeHowell (2003: iv, 1423–1501);Wright (1967: i, 253–264; ii, 234–249); Fleisch (1990: i, 506–524).

blind spots in raḍī l-dīn al-ʾastarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals 97

In this article, I will explore Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar of numer-als in his commentary on al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, in order to reveal its logic andits blind spots. Although al-ʾAstarābāḏī is only the author of the commen-tary, I will mention only his name as source of the views he expresses. It ishowever more than obvious that in many cases the paternity of these viewsshould be attributed to Ibn al-Ḥājib, rather than to al-ʾAstarābāḏī. This is espe-cially true of the mere outline of the commentary. Moreover, in his commen-tary, al-ʾAstarābāḏī extensively quotes Ibn al-Ḥājib’s own commentary on hisKāfiya, as well as Ibn Ḥājib’s commentary on al-Zamaḫšarī’s Mufaṣṣal (Larcher1991:370).

There are to this day at least nine editions of this commentary:2

i. Two (different?) Iranian editions in Teheran dated 1271/1854–1855 and1275/1858–1859;3 Sarkīs (1928:i, 941) mentions two (different?) Persianeditions dated 1268/1851–1852 and 1271/1854–1855

ii. An Ottoman edition dated 1275/1858–1859 in Istanbul, reprinted in Istan-bul in 1305/1887–1888 and 1310/1893, and in Beirut in 1969(?); Sarkīs (1928:i, 941) mentions a (different?) edition dated 1292/1875–1876, which couldhave also been printed in Istanbul, according to Larcher (1989:110)

iii. An Indian edition dated 1282/1865–1866 in Delhi;4 and a (different?) edi-tion dated 1882 in Lucknow5

iv. An Egyptian edition published in Būlāq in 1299/1881–1882v. Two (different?) Russian editions published in Kazan in 1885 and 1896

mentioned only by Sarkīs (1928:i, 941)vi. A Libyan edition by Yūsuf Ḥasan ʿUmar dated 1392–1398/1973–1978, re-

published in Tehran in 1373 sh/1994–1995, and reprinted in 1392 sh/2013–2014

vii. A Saudi edition by Ḥasan Muḥammad ʾIbrāhīm al-Ḥifẓī and Yaḥyā BašīrMiṣrī in Riyadh dated 1414/1993

2 This list is based on Larcher (1989), to which I added the two Iranian re-editions of the Libyanedition (no. vi) and the three editions published after 1989 (nos. vii, viii, ix).

3 Tawfīq (1978:35f.) says that according to Van Dyke (1896:301) there are two Iranian editionsdated 1271 and 1275. These are mentioned in Brockelmann (1943–1949/1996, si, 532) but notin Van Dyke (1896).

4 Or dated 1280 in Lucknow, according to Van Dyke (1896:306).5 Brockelmann (1943–1949/1996, si, 532), Fleisch (1961–1979:ii, 41). Tawfīq (1978:36) says that

this second Indian edition is dated “around 1882” and Sarkīs (1928:i, 941) gives the date of1880.

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viii. A Lebanese edition by Émile Badīʿ Yaʿqūb in Beirut dated 1419/1998ix. An Egyptian edition by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl SālimMakram dated 2000 in Cairo.

According to Larcher (1989:112), the Libyan edition by Yūsuf Ḥasan ʿUmar isof very poor quality. He says that the editor has apparently ‘corrected’ theOttoman edition, based on his own intuition. As for the Egyptian edition, itis based on fivemanuscripts and on both the Ottoman and the Libyan editions(Gilliot 2004, no. 19, 209f.). In this article, I will quote Makram’s Egyptianedition.This edition, theOttomanedition, and the Iranian reprint of theLibyanedition, are the only three editions I had access to.

Fleisch is probably the first Orientalist to have praised the high level ofsophistication of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammatical thinking, “car souvent il ne secontente pas de citer les paroles mêmes de ses devanciers, mais repense, ré-sume les questions et donne des raccourcis vigoureux” (Fleisch 1961–1979:i,41). He is considered by Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1989:260) and Ver-steegh (1989:259) to be a summit in the Arab scholastic grammatical tradition,a synthesis of the linguistic reflection, subtle and sophisticated. I will presental-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory on numerals after having recalled three different gram-matical frames in which grammarians have interpreted numerals in Arabicbefore him.

2 Three Different Solutions, Three Different Kinds of Problems

In Cambridge in 2012, I presented the three following frames, in which Sīb-awayhi (d. 180/796?), al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) and Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928)analyze the grammar of numerals. For more details on these three frames, seeDruel (2012), and its summary in Druel (2015).

2.1 SībawayhiSībawayhi is visibly trying to find a unique frame that would account for allnumerals. He chooses the frame of the “adjectives that resemble the activeparticiples” (al-ṣifāt al-mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil, Kitāb i, 86.20–21), of which nu-merals can be considered to be a sub-case. Considered separately, numeralshave very different behaviors, but considered collectively, all numerals behavelike the adjectives that resemble the active participles. Compare for exampleḫamsatu ʾawlādin ‘five boys’ with jamīlu l-wajhi ‘beautiful of face’ (annexa-tional construction); al-ʾawlādu l-ḫamsatu ‘the five boys’ with al-wajhu l-jamīlu‘the beautiful face’ (appositional construction); al-ʾawlādu ḫamsatun ‘the boysare five’ with al-wajhu jamīlun ‘the face is beautiful’ (predicational construc-

blind spots in raḍī l-dīn al-ʾastarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals 99

tion); and ʿišrūna waladan ‘twenty boys’ with jamīlun wajhan ‘beautiful offace’ (specifying construction).

Not all numerals can be used in all four constructions, but when consid-ered collectively, they behave like jamīl ‘beautiful’, an adjective resembling theactive participle. More precisely, all numerals can be found in the predicativeand appositional constructions, but the annexational and specifying construc-tions are in complementary distribution, depending on whether numerals areannexable or not. Annexable numerals can be found in annexational con-structions (ṯalāṯatu ʾaṯwābin ‘three garments’; Kitāb i, 86.9), but the specifyingconstruction ḫamsatun waladan ‘five boys’ is problematic (Kitāb i, 87.8; 232.3;253.3 f.). For non-annexable numerals, the specifying construction (ʿišrūna dir-haman ‘twenty dirhams’; Kitāb i, 85.5) is compulsory.

This interpretation of Sībawayhi is highly speculative and it is not withoutdifficulties. The reason is that Sībawayhi believes that the specifying construc-tion has a verbal origin, whereas the three other constructions have a nom-inal origin. Numerals are ‘substantives’ (ʾasmāʾ) and some of them, the non-annexable ones, are found in a verbal-like construction. Themain problem canthus be formulated as follows:where does the residual verbal syntactic strengthin non-annexable numerals come from? Active participles derive their syn-tactic strength from the verb. This strength gives them freedom to put theircomplement in the dependent form, as in ḍāribun zaydan ‘hitting Zayd’ (Kitābi, 80.2). They are strong enough to be postponed after their dependent formcomplement, as in ʾanta zaydan ḍāribun ‘you are hitting Zayd’ (Kitāb i, 54.8),and they can bear the definite article, which is considered in this case a shorterform of the relative pronoun, as in hāḏā l-ḍāribu zaydan ‘this is the one hittingZayd’ (Kitāb i, 77.8).

In the case of the adjectives resembling the active participle, their syntac-tic strength also has a verbal origin, since they analogically correspond to theactive participles of the verbs of the same root, just like ḥasan ‘beautiful’ ana-logically corresponds to *ḥāsin, the non-existent active participle of the verbḥasuna/yaḥsunu ‘to be beautiful’. However, they have less strength than theactive participles, which is clear from the fact that they cannot be postponedin the specifying construction. It is possible to say ḥasanun wajhan6 ‘beauti-ful of face’ but not *wajhan ḥasanun. They can also bear the definite article,

6 The expression is not found literally in the Kitāb but it is the axis around which the demon-stration is built. Carter (1972:486) believes that Sībawayhi considered this expression to beincorrect in Arabic and analogically replaced by ʿišrūna dirhaman ‘twenty dirhams’ in thedemonstration. I believe this is an over-interpretation of the absence of the expression in theKitāb.

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as in al-ḥasanu wajhan ‘the beautiful of face’ (Kitāb i, 83.18), al-ḥasanu l-wajha‘the beautiful of face’ (Kitāb i, 84.4) and al-ḥasanu l-wajhi ‘the beautiful of face’(Kitāb i, 84.9).

In the case of non-annexable numerals, where does their verbal-like syntac-tic strength come from? Sībawayhi does notmention a verbal origin for numer-als and leaves us with a comparison between the numerals and the adjectivesresembling the active participle that would be only at a surface level. Numeralscannot be postponed, as in *dirhaman ʿišrūna, and it is not clear whether theycan bear the definite article, as in al-ʿišrūna dirhaman ‘the twenty dirhams’.

A second problem that Sībawayhi does not address is why it would be‘lighter’ to put the counted object in the singular above ‘ten’ and not between‘three’ and ‘ten’? It seems to be obvious for him that above ‘ten’, it would be‘heavy’ to have a plural counted object, but he does not comment on this anyfurther (Kitāb i, 85.5–7).

2.2 Al-MubarradThe way al-Mubarrad deals with numerals and their counted object is verydifferent from that of Sībawayhi. He distinguishes between ‘basic’ numerals(‘three’ to ‘ten’) and ‘subsidiary’ numerals (‘eleven’ to ‘one thousand’) (Muq-taḍab ii, 165.13 f.). Basic numerals do not need a specifier (tamyīz), they areneither “vague” (mubhama) nor “bearing tanwīn” (munawwana) (Muqtaḍabii, 164.4–5). On the contrary, subsidiary numerals (‘eleven’ to ‘one thousand’)need a tamyīz (Muqtaḍab ii, 144.7; 164.5 f.; 165.2; 13; 167.10–12; 169.5–10; iii,32.6 f.; 38.3–5).These subsidiarynumerals are themselves subdivided into seriesthat behave differently: ‘eleven’ to ‘nineteen’ and decades are mubhama andmunawwana, whereas hundreds and thousands are not munawwana (but areprobablymubhama). Here,munawwana practically means ‘non-annexable’.

The result of this Porphyrian subdivision is that numerals are divided intothree categories: basic numerals (which are all annexable), annexable sub-sidiary numerals and non-annexable subsidiary numerals. Each category has adifferent behavior and the only point theyhave in common is that theyhave thesame semantic relationship with their counted object, which can be expressedby the prepositionmin as in partitive ḫamsatunmin al-kilāb ‘five (of the genus)dogs’ (Muqtaḍab ii, 158.6–159.1) and ʿišrūna min al-darāhimi ‘twenty (of thegenus) dirhams’ (Muqtaḍab iii, 66.9 f.). It is clear that al-Mubarrad only dealshere with the most difficult issue, which is the complementary distribution ofthe annexable and specifying constructions.

Although it would have been enough to separate between annexable andnon-annexable numerals, the division that al-Mubarrad introduces betweenbasic and subsidiary numerals enables him to account for the difference be-

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tween plural counted objects (after basic numerals) and singular counted ob-jects (after subsidiary numerals). Only the singular counted object is called atamyīz, whether it surfaces in the dependent or in the oblique form. The cate-gory that relates to tamyīz is that ofmubham ‘vague’ substantives, a subcategoryof substantives that are semantically deficient and that need a specifier. Sub-sidiary numerals need a tamyīz, whereas basic numerals do not. Al-Mubarradis not explicit about whether hundreds and thousands are mubhama, but itwould be consistent with his own theory to consider them so since they needa tamyīz.

Al-Mubarrad’s theory does not need to address Sībawayhi’s difficulty about aresidual verbal syntactic strength in non-annexable numerals. The distinctionbetween basic and subsidiary numerals also makes it possible to distinguishbetween a plural counted object after the former and a singular counted objectafter the latter, although this is not a justification. For al-Mubarrad, it is enoughto say that different categories behave differently.7 In the end, this question alsoloses its urgency in his theory, if compared to that of Sībawayhi.

But al-Mubarrad’s theory also has its drawbacks. The first one, if comparedwith Sībawayhi, is that there is no syntactic consistency among numerals. Eachseries behaves differently, and therein lies the consistency: it is consistent fordifferent series to behave differently. This is so frequent in the grammar ofnumerals that it can be called a ‘differentiation principle’.

The second difficulty is that although tamyīz is primarily described as adependent form complement, it also surfaces in the oblique form after annex-able subsidiary numerals, i.e. hundreds and thousands. There is a shift in thedescription of tamyīz. In order tomaintain some consistency among subsidiarynumerals, al-Mubarrad also calls tamyīz the oblique case of the counted objectafter hundreds and thousands. The remaining characteristics of tamyīz is thusits singular and its meaning (partitivemin ‘of, from’).8

If Sībawayhi’s theory could be labelled a speculative one, al-Mubarrad’stheory could probably be labelled an atomistic one, due to the numerousexamples and counter-examples he gives, and his use of differentiation as anexplanatory tool (the fact that words belong to different categories seems to bea sufficient justification for their different behavior).

7 See for example the justification for the oblique form tamyīz after hundreds (Muqtaḍab ii,167.10), or the justification for the fact that, unlikemiʾa ‘hundred’, ʾalf ‘thousand’ behaves likeany other counted object (Muqtaḍab ii, 169.9).

8 In the end, the specifying construction and the annexational construction are both cases oftaḫṣīṣ. See Sartori’s contribution in this volume.

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2.3 Ibn al-SarrājIbn al-Sarrāj’s grammar is organized according to the parts of speech (verbs,nouns, particles) and the endings they can take (independent, dependent). Hedistinguishes between two types of nouns with a dependent ending (manṣū-bāt): verbal and non-verbal complements. Tamyīz is one type of dependentformcomplement, and it canbeof two types, verbal andnon-verbal, dependingon the word it specifies (ʾUṣūl i, 222–228). Numerical tamyīz belongs to thelatter type. Unlike al-Mubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj says that all numerals are in needof a specifier (ʾUṣūl i, 311.2). This tamyīz surfaces in the oblique form afterannexable numerals and in the dependent form after non-annexable numerals(ʾUṣūl i, 311.2–5). This is possible because annexation (ʾiḍāfa) has twomeanings,possession (ʾUṣūl i, 53.8), as in baytu zaydin ‘Zayd’s house’, and species ( jins;ʾUṣūl i, 53.17), as in raṭlu zaytin ‘a rotl of oil’. The ‘species’ meaning is equivalentto the particlemin (ʾUṣūl i, 315.11–13). Thismeaning of the relationship betweennumerals and their counted object is true for all numerals, which was alreadyal-Mubarrad’s teaching.

Just like al-Mubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj only deals with the complementary dis-tribution of the annexational and specifying constructions, and not the otherconstructions. The difference is that al-Mubarrad would not call tamyīz thecounted object if it is muḍāf ʾilayh after a numeral between ‘three’ to ‘ten’,but only if it is after hundreds and thousands. Al-Mubarrad had to distinguishbetween basic and subsidiary numerals in order to account for the differencebetween plural and singular counted objects, since his definition of tamyīzrequired the singular. Bydefining anadhoc category that applies only tonumer-als, Ibn al-Sarrāj avoids this issue. It is part of the definition of numerical tamyīzthat it surfaces in the plural after three to ten and in the singular above ten.

The definition that Ibn al-Sarrāj gives of tamyīz has clearly no verbal ori-gin and the dependent form is only there because some numerals cannot beannexed. The dependent form of this complement is only verbal at a surfacelevel, but there is no verbal-like strength in the numeral that governs it. He alsoexplicitly says (ʾUṣūl i, 324.7–9) that numerals cannot be compared to the activeparticiples.

The main problem of Ibn al-Sarrāj’s theory is the fact that numerical tamyīzis inserted in a chapter devoted to dependent form complements althoughthe oblique form is the base-form. It is only because some numerals are notannexable that their tamyīzhas to surface in the dependent form. In a grammarorganized according to the ending forms, there is no place for transversalcategories. This is the case of many issues on which Ibn al-Sarrāj keeps silent:the gender of numerals, the gender disagreement between numerals and theircounted objects, the gender disagreement between the two parts of compound

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cardinal between ‘thirteen’ and ‘nineteen’, the verbal value of ordinals. Al-Mubarrad faced the sameproblem, but itwas less obviousbecausehis grammaris not organized according to the ending forms. This leaves himmore freedomto deal with a greater number of issues in any part of his Muqtaḍab.

Another point thatwas implied in al-Mubarrad’s grammar and that becomesprominent in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s grammar is that there is no one-to-one correspon-dence between syntax and semantics. For example, annexation has twomean-ings, possession and species, as mentioned above. And in turn, species canbe expressed by two different constructions, annexational (ḫamsatu awlādin‘five boys’) and specifying (ʿišrūna waladan ‘twenty boys’). Numerical tamyīzexpresses the species, using either construction. In exactly the same manner,there is no one-to-one correspondence between morphology and syntax. Forexample, -ʿašara ‘–teen’ is compared to a compensatory nūn in some chaptersand to a tāʾ marbūṭa in others, depending on the needs of the demonstration.

Ibn al-Sarrāj simplifies al-Mubarrad’s subdivision by creating an ad hoccategory of numerical tamyīz that avoids two problems met by al-Mubarrad:the number of the counted object and the fact that some numerals are ‘vague’(mubham), while others are not. To be sure, these problems are not ‘solved’,they simply disappear, just like most of Sībawayhi’s problems disappear in al-Mubarrad’s and in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s theories.

3 Al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Solution

3.1 Numerals Have an Adjectival Origin, Semantically and SyntacticallyIn his commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s (d. 646/1249) Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, al-ʾAstarābā-ḏī presents an original synthesis of the grammar of numerals. Its most strikingcharacteristic is the fact that al-ʾAstarābāḏī considers that in their relationshipwith their counted objects, numerals originally have an adjectival meaning(maʿnā l-waṣf ), as in ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, whose ‘base’ (ʾaṣl)9 is rijālunṯalāṯatun, meaning rijālun maʿdūdatun bi-hāḏā l-ʿadad ‘men counted by thisnumeral’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.f.). Al-Mubarrad had already mentioned this

9 Literally ‘origin’, but probably referring here to an underlying structure, both semantic andsyntactic. Larcher (2002–2003:65) translates ʾaṣl by ‘base’, understood as logical rather thanhistorical. See Larcher (2014) on ʾaṣl in this interpretation. Commenting on Ibn Yaʿīš’ (d. 643/1245)Šarḥal-mulūkī fī l-taṣrīf, Bohas (1984:23–31) says that ʾaṣl can refer to twodifferent things:the root and the phonic representation of the verb. IbnYaʿīš thus calls q-w-l the ʾaṣlof *qawala,which in turn is the ʾaṣl of qāla. In all cases, ʾaṣl refers to an underlying form, not to the surfaceform.

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semantic equivalence (Muqtaḍab iii, 341.6), but for al-ʾAstarābāḏī it seemsto reveal an underlying syntactic and semantic structure (which he probablyrefers to when he speaks of ʾaṣl), which has effects at the surface level, inparticular in the gender agreement and disagreement between numerals andtheir countedobjects. This is probably themost complicatedpoint in his theoryof numerals. Here is the outline of the demonstration.

Understood as adjectives, numerals agree in gender and number with theircounted objects, thus complyingwith the general rule. However, since all pluralnouns are made feminine singular (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.11 f.), numerals agreein the feminine singular, as in rijālun ṯalāṯatun ‘three men’. This is proved bythe fact that it means rijālun maʿdūdatun bi-hāḏā l-ʿadad ‘men counted by thisnumeral’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.16 f.). However, masculine nouns in the plu-ral have been deprived of their tāʾ marbūṭa, as in rijāl ‘men’. Their femininemarker has been deleted (ḥuḏifat). In exactly the samemanner, the plural nounniswa ‘women’ is a feminine singular with a deleted feminine marker. How-ever, this deletion is not visible, since niswa actually carries a tāʾ marbūṭa. Thefact that, unlike in rijāl, the deletion of the feminine marker is not visible inniswa makes it masculine, or in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s words, “niswa has become likea masculine because of the hiding of its feminine marker” ( fa-ṣāra ‘niswa’ ka-ʾannahu muḏakkar li-ḫafāʾ taʾnīṯihi; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 243.9). However, what isactually hidden is the deletion of the feminine marker, not the marker itself.The paradoxical consequence is that niswa agrees in the masculine singular,as in niswatun ṯalāṯun ‘three women’. This behavior is further justified by thefact that “something is not affected by its equivalent the way it is affected byits opposite” (li-ʾanna l-šayʾ lā yanfaʿil ʿan miṯlihi infiʿālahu ʿan ḍiddihi; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 243.8 f.). This rule is very close to the ‘differentiation principle’ wefound in al-Mubarrad’s grammar. Because they are different, rijāl and niswashould behave differently. This gender ‘agreement’ rule is true for numeralsbetween ‘three’ and ‘ten’. Other numerals present no difficulty in this matter(Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 246.9–19): ‘one’ and ‘two’ regularly agree in gender and num-ber, as do ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’; ‘thirteen’ to ‘nineteen’ display mixed behavior,partly ‘analogous’ (qiyās) and partly not. Al-ʾAstarābāḏī does not explore thisquestion any further. As for decades, hundreds and thousands, there is no prob-lem since they have only one form in the masculine and in the feminine.

An immediate consequence of this behavior is that the ending tāʾ marbūṭain numerals in their ‘absolute form’ (muṭlaq al-ʿadad), as when enumerating‘one, two, three’ or when saying ‘six is the double of three’, is not ‘part of theirpattern’ (lāzima; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 243.1). It is an adjectival feminine marker.

This lengthy demonstration (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.6–243.11) is probably thekey to the grammar of numerals in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory. Indeed, once he

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has proven that all numerals behave like regular ‘derived adjectives’ (ṣifāt muš-taqqa) at an ‘underlying level’ (ʾaṣl), he can tackle the issue of the complemen-tary distribution of the specifying and annexational constructions. However, inorder to understand the next demonstration, one needs to refer to his generalsyntactic theory.

3.2 Numerals Usually Surface in Other Slots ThanTheir OwnAnother striking characteristic of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar lies in the clear dis-tinctionhedrawsbetween thepredicative elements (ʿumad, sg. ʿumda ‘support,main issue’) and the non-predicative ones ( faḍalāt, sg. faḍla ‘remnant, sur-plus’). They correspond to two ‘grammatical slots’ (maḥall): rafʿ ‘independentslot’, which is the base-form for ʿumad; and naṣb ‘dependent slot’, which is thebase-form for faḍalāt (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 49.7–19).10

As for the nouns in the oblique form (majrūrāt), they are of two types. Thefirst type is a faḍla that surfaces in the oblique form because it comes aftera preposition (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 49.20f.), as in marartu bi-zaydin ‘I passed byZayd’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 264.14). In this case, zayd is a “non-predicative elementintroduced by a preposition” ( faḍla bi-wāsiṭat ḥarf ), “in the dependent slot”(manṣūb al-maḥall). The second type is because a ʿumda or a faḍla has beenannexed to it (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 60.14–16), as in ḍarabanī ġulāmu zaydin ‘Zayd’sservant hit me’ and ḍarabtu ġulāma zaydin ‘I hit Zayd’s servant’. In the firstexample, ġulām ‘servant’ is a ʿumda (the subject) and it is annexed to zayd, andin the second example, ġulām is a faḍla (direct object) and it is also annexedto zayd. What is confusing is that Ibn al-Ḥājib calls muḍāf ʾilayh a noun in theoblique formafter a preposition (Šarḥal-Kāfiya ii, 264.6f.), following Sībawayhi(cf. Kitāb i, 177.10 f.), as al-ʾAstarābāḏī reminds us (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 264.8–11). Itis however clear for al-ʾAstarābāḏī that the two constructions are completelydifferent, since the oblique form after a preposition (al-majrūr bi-ḥarf ) is afaḍla, whereas the muḍaf ʾilayh (in the modern sense of the second term ofan annexation) has no slot in the sentence, it only completes either a ʿumda ora faḍla.

Between ‘three’ and ‘ten’, the base form is rijālun ṯalāṯatun ‘three men’, asmentioned above. The counted object is described (mawṣūf ) by an adjectiveand the numeral ‘agrees’ in number and gender (all plural nouns are femininesingular; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 242.9). For the sake of lightness (taḫfīf ; Šarḥ al-

10 See Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (2006:64–72) for more insight in the differencebetween government and predication, two competing models that account for formendings in Arabic grammatical theory.

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Kāfiya iv, 239.20), the numeral has been annexed to its counted object in theexpression ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, but nothing changes as far as agreementis concerned, the numeral still being in the feminine singular and the countedobject in the plural, even though it is now muḍāf ʾilayh. Its syntactic slot haschanged, it cannot be a faḍla any more, it only “completes what precedes it”(min tamām al-ʾawwal; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 257.2). By resorting to the lightnessargument, al-ʾAstarābāḏī simply avoids further discussion.

Between ‘eleven’ and ‘ninety-nine’, the base form (ʾaṣl) is always the same:darāhimu ʿišrūna ‘twenty dirhams’ (Šarḥal-Kāfiya iv, 241.11), the countedobjectis mawṣūf, but the numeral does not agree in number and gender becauseof its specific morphology (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 241.12–17). For these numerals,annexation is not possible because of their morphology, so when the numeralwas put first it could not be annexed to its counted object. Instead, the countedobject has now the status of a faḍla, it does not simply completewhat precedes,as was the case for the counted object after ‘three’ to ‘ten’, but it has a slot(maḥall) in the sentence, whosemeaning is specification (tamyīz). In this case,the plural is not necessary any more, it is understood (al-jamʿiyya mafhūma;Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 257.5). By taking the shape of a faḍla (ṣūrat al-faḍalāt), thecounted object keeps its mawṣūf base (yurāʿā ʾaṣluhu ḥīna kāna mawṣūfan;Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 257.7).

The point at stake here is not completely obvious. It seems that al-ʾAstarā-bāḏī draws a clear distinction between counted objects after numerals from‘three’ to ‘ten’, which lose their syntactic slot in the sentence by becomingmuḍāf ʾilayh, i.e. merely completing what precedes them, and counted objectsafter numerals from ‘eleven’ to ‘ninety-nine’, which acquire a new syntacticslot, namely that of a tamyīz. In other words, the base form is the same for allcounted objects and their numeral (the counted object is mawṣūf, it has a slotin the sentence, and the numeral is its ṣifa), but when they surface, they comein two different structures. In ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, the counted objectrijāl loses its grammatical slot, whereas in ʿišrūna dirhaman ‘twenty dirhams’,the counted object dirham keeps a grammatical slot in the sentence.

For hundreds and thousands, their specifier is in the oblique form and inthe singular. Al-ʾAstarābāḏī simply says that the oblique form is the base form(ʿalā l-ʾaṣl; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 257.17). As for the singular, he says that whenthe Arabs realized that the singular was sufficient to express a plural for thedependent form tamyīz in the numerals that precede hundreds and thousands,they kept it (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 257.19–258.1). He adds that it is not rare for asingular to refer to a plural meaning. He then at length comments the Qurʾānicexceptions of a plural tamyīz in the dependent form (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 258.5–259.17).

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In the end, the whole demonstration may not seem very convincing, exceptif we understand that the syntactic slots are efficient per se in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’stheory: the mere change in the position of a word in the sentence has efficientimplications for its declension and behavior. It is as if the slots in the sentencehadan inherent functionality. In the case of thenumeral and its countedobject,it seems that his method is first to ensure that numerals fit the general rules ofthe language (they can be considered as adjectives at an underlying level), andthen to explain the changes that happen at surface level due to any change intheir position in the sentence.

3.3 Numerals and the Theory of ʿamalIn order to have a better view of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammatical theory of numer-als, we have to consider his theory of ʿamal, which he presents in a chap-ter devoted to declension in general (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 39–87), because this iswhere the originality of his views resides. These views are presented in Tawfīq(1978:191–201). As we have mentioned above, al-ʾAstarābāḏī draws a clear dis-tinction between ʿumad and faḍalāt. In order to be speech (kalām), an utter-ance needs a minimum of two ʿumdas (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 17.2–8). Faḍalāt can beadded to these core elements, either with or without a preposition. Lastly, eachof these elements, ʿumad and faḍalāt, can be either annexed to one or moremuḍāf ʾilayh, which will surface in the oblique form, or described by a qual-ificative. This applies to the underlying level. Of course, at the surface level,these elements can appear in a different form, each element can be implicit, orit can be represented by a phrase or a full sentence. We will not enter into allthese possible cases.

We have already mentioned what happens to numerals and their countedobject when they are moved from one slot to another, for example, when thenumeral is annexed to its counted object instead of being its qualificative,or when the numeral cannot be annexed. The question that kept previousgrammarians occupied is that of the ʿamal of numerals, in the specifyingrelationship in particular. Al-ʾAstarābāḏī explains that ultimately the ʿāmil isthe speaker (al-mutakallim; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 43.15; see also Peled 1994:151–153).Words aremodified in their endings, the agent (ʿāmil) of thismodification is thespeaker and the tool (ʾāla) heuses is declension (ʾiʿrāb). Al-ʾAstarābāḏī adds thatthe tool and the agent are like the knife and the personwho cuts (Šarḥal-Kāfiyai, 43.14), which cannot be separated in their action. But “the grammarianshave equated the agent and the efficient cause, although it is only a sign, notthe cause, this is why they called it ‘agent’ ” (al-nuḥāt jaʿalū l-ʿāmil ka-l-ʿillal-muʾaṯṯira wa-ʾin kāna ʿalāma lā ʿilla wa-li-hāḏā sammawhu ʿāmilan; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 43.14–16). The result is that he distinguishes between the ‘grammatical

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agent’ (al-ʿāmil al-naḥwī) and the ‘real agent’ (al-ʿāmil fī l-ḥaqīqa; Šarḥ al-Kāfiyai, 54.12), the formerbeingonly a ‘sign’ (ʿalāma) of the latter,which is the speaker.See Peled (1994:155f.) for more insight in the difference between the functionalprinciple and the immediate grammatical ʿāmil. In the case of al-ʾAstarābāḏī,the functional principle is clearly the enunciation itself.

To summarize, the (grammatical) agent on the subject is the verb, becausethe verb transformed the subject in the second part of the speech (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 50.10f.); the mubtadaʾ and the ḫabar are their mutual (grammatical)agent (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 50.12 f.);11 the (grammatical) agent on the faḍalāt is theverb and the subject together (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 51.9); and, lastly, the agent onthemuḍāf ʾilayh is the “meaning of annexation” (maʿnā l-ʾiḍāfa) not themuḍāfitself (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 61.12–14). For al-ʾAstarābāḏī, the ʿāmil of the dependentform tamyīz, just like all other faḍalāt, is the completeness of the speech thatprecedes, not a particular word in the sentence. In al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s words:

Their completeness [of the noun or of the speech] is the reason for thedependent form of the tamyīz, by resemblance with the complement,which comes after the completeness of the speech that is achieved bythe subject (ʾanna tamāmahumā [tamām al-ism wa-l-kalām] sababun li-ntiṣāb al-tamyīz tašbīhan la-hu bi-l-mafʿūl allaḏī yajīʾu baʿda tamām al-kalām bi-l-fāʿil).

Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 99.1–3

As for the oblique form tamyīz, its ʿāmil is themeaning intended by annexationas mentioned above (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 61.12–14).

3.4 The Category of tamyīzAl-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw and its commentary are organized according to the partsof speech (the noun, parts i–iv; the verb, part v; the particle, part vi). Thepart dealing with nouns consists of two sections. The first one is devoted todeclension (declension, diptotes, independent form nouns, dependent formnouns, oblique formnouns, al-tawābiʿ and indeclinable nouns), and the second

11 Although this looks like the theory of tarāfuʿ (“mutual assignment of the independentcase”), which is traditionally linked to Kūfan grammarians, things are probably moresubtle for al-ʾAstarābāḏī, who explicitly says elsewhere that the theory of tarāfuʿ is ‘weak’(ḍaʿīf ; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya v, 166.19–20). In the passage we are quoting here, al-ʾAstarābāḏīdoes not mention tarāfuʿ. More research should be done on the difference between al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s view and that of the Kūfan grammarians. On tarāfuʿ, see Tawfīq (1978:199)and Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1990:68–72).

blind spots in raḍī l-dīn al-ʾastarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals 109

part is devoted to specific issues in syntax and morphology (definiteness andindefiniteness, numerals, masculine and feminine, dual, plural, al-maṣdar, ismal-fāʿil, ism al-mafʿūl, al-ṣifa al-mušabbaha bi-sm al-fāʿil, ism al-tafḍīl).

Tamyīz is mainly dealt with in two places in the commentary, in the sectiondevoted to dependent form complements (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 96–118) and in thesection devoted to numerals (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 252–266). Although tamyīz isprimarily introduced as a dependent form complement (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 96–98; 100.10), it can also surface in the same meaning, but in the oblique form, ifit is lighter (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 97.2–5). Its meaning is to lift the ambiguity of aword or a phrase that would otherwise be vague (mubham), i.e. “applicable toall categories” (ṣāliḥ li-kull nawʿ; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 97.12), just like all numerals,which are ‘intrinsically vague’ (mubham mustaqirr; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 97.11–13). As Peled (2003:62) puts it, the word tamyīz “cannot really be described astechnical term[s] in the modern scientific sense, given [its] close affinity tounderlying homonymous extralinguistic concepts”, namely the extralinguisticconcept tamyīz ‘discrimination, specification’.

As mentioned above, the two different shapes that numerical tamyīz cantake imply very different syntactic categories, faḍla (the dependent form) vsmuḍāf ʾilayh (the oblique form). Al-ʾAstarābāḏī draws the consequences ofthis marked difference in terms of ʿamal and in terms of surface form. Thisenables him to maintain consistency within his grammatical frame. He callstamyīz the numerical complement in both forms, because they have the samemeaning, but he does not avoid the syntactic differences between them andtheir implications.

3.5 Comparison with Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-SarrājThe most obvious difference between al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar of numeralsand that of his predecessors is that the autonomy of this chapter is pushed astep further in his commentary. Just like in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s treatise, numeralsappear first in the section devoted to dependent form complements, but onlyto present their dependent form tamyīz. All other issues linked to numeralsare dealt with in great detail outside the frame of any particular case ending,along with other transversal issues (such as definiteness and indefiniteness,masculine and feminine, dual, plural). Ibn al-Sarrāj also dealt with a few issuesrelated to numerals, but he inserted them in the same chapter devoted todependent form complements (ʾUṣūl i, 321–328). Separating the chapter onnumerals from all particular case endings enables al-ʾAstarābāḏī to deal withmany more issues than Ibn al-Sarrāj without giving the impression that heis bound by the mere outline of his commentary, which is also organizedaccording to case endings.

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Al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s commentary thus constitutes a compromise between al-Mubarrad’s thematic organization and Ibn al-Sarrāj’s declensional subdividedsystem. In the section devoted to nouns, al-ʾAstarābāḏī first presents the differ-ent endings, including the invariable nouns, and then adds lengthy sections ontransversal issues, which are thus not connected to any particular form, as wasthe case in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s treatise. The best example for this is the treatmentof definiteness. It is almost impossible to fathom from the Kitāb all the possi-ble behaviors of numerals in terms of definiteness. In the Muqtaḍab it is madeeasier by the multiplication of examples and in the ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw this issue ispartially dealt with in the ‘issues’ (masāʾil) related to definiteness, but it is farfrom being as systematic as in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Šarḥ, where one finds a specificchapter devoted to the behavior of numerals in terms of definiteness.

Another great difference between al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory and that of hispredecessors lies in his ʿamal theory. According to Baalbaki (2008:59), post-Sībawayhi grammarians have a more theoretical approach to grammar, whichmight give the impression that grammatical causes (ʿilal) tend to have anautonomous life, less and less connected with grammatical phenomena. Agreat deal of Sībawayhi’s grammar is devoted to the comparisonof the ‘strength’(quwwa) that words have in interaction with one another. In al-Mubarrad’sMuqtaḍab and even more in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾUṣūl the concept of quwwa losesits relevance in the grammatical analysis of declension at the profit of theconcept of ‘slot’ (maḥall) that words occupy. In al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s commentary,this trend is taken a step further: the ‘agent’ (ʿāmil) of declension is neither astrength that words would have, nor the slot as such that they occupy in thesentence, but the speaker who utters the sentence. The speaker puts words inparticular slots, but the agent of declension is ultimately the intendedmeaning.By doing this, al-ʾAstarābāḏī avoids all questions linking syntactic strength tomorphology in numerals. Numerals have very differentmorphological patterns(such as fāʿil, compounds, plural-like ending -ūna) and they occupy differentslots. Previous grammarians had trouble describing them in one single frame,but al-ʾAstarābāḏī avoids the issue as such by considering that the syntacticagent is neither linked to the actualwords (their inner strength, stemming fromtheir pattern or from their status as a part of speech), nor to their slot in thesentence but to the utterance as a whole and, ultimately, to the intention ofthe speaker. However, the comparison I am drawing here is clearly rooted incategories that are not used by al-ʾAstarābāḏī. Rather, his commentary pulls Ibnal-Ḥājib’s text towards an analysis of ‘performative utterances’ (ʾinšāʾ; Larcher2013:204–207), rather than towards the search of syntactic causes. It is in thissense that Larcher labels his commentary a rhetoric integrated into syntax, “abalāgha integrated into naḥw” (Larcher 2013:204).

blind spots in raḍī l-dīn al-ʾastarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals 111

A third difference between the four theories canbedetected in theway thesegrammarians compare numerals with adjectives. Sībawayhi links his grammarof numerals to al-ṣifāt al-mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil (because of the residual verbalstrength they have), but he is not followed by al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj,who bring in the category of tamyīz that numerals would need because of their‘vagueness’ (a concept not absent fromSībawayhi’sKitāb, but not exploited anyfurther). Ibn al-Sarrāj even explicitly says that numerals cannot be compared toṣifāt mušabbaha. His point is to definitively break with the issue of a syntacticstrength innumerals.The category of tamyīz is only governedbymorphologicaland semantic rules, not by a syntactic agent thatwould be in numerals. Thewayal-ʾAstarābāḏī reintroduces the issue of the agent enables him to cut it loosefrom themorphology of numerals, without losing its efficiency at the syntacticlevel.

As far as numerals are concerned, al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s commentary may be re-garded as a synthesis of Sībawayhi’s search for consistency at a wider level,al-Mubarrad’s endeavor to describe as many issues as possible, and Ibn al-Sarrāj’s systematic subdivisions.These three characteristics are indeed found inhis grammar of numerals, organized in the new frame of his pragmatic theoryof ʾinšāʾ.

4 Conclusion

In Sībawayhi’s grammar, the main assumption is clearly that language is thor-oughly consistent and that the grammarian can reveal this consistency. As wehavementioned, another assumption is thatwords have strength in themselvesand that this strength interacts between words. In al-Mubarrad’s grammar, themain assumption is that the grammarian can be exhaustive in describing thelanguage. Another assumption is that to merely describe grammatical phe-nomena is to explain them. And in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s grammar, the main assump-tion is that language is a completely logical phenomenon that can be entirelydescribed through Porphyrian subdivisions. In each theory, these assumptionsfunction as blind spots: they are not discussed by the grammarians, but theyhold each theory together as a whole.

In al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar we can probably infer, although more researchis obviously needed, that the main assumption, or the main undiscussed blindspot, is that syntactic slots are efficient per se and that the grammarian only hasto understandwhat these slots are, or, in other words, what the intention of thespeaker is. This is ultimately linked to the speaker’s ability to build meaningfulutterances, which can also be seen as amajor blind spot in his theory, because it

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poses again the question of the definition of who is a native speaker of Arabic,a question which has triggered much research, especially in the earlier stagesof Arabic grammar.12 More research should be done about how al-ʾAstarābāḏīand later grammarians would define a ‘native speaker’, if they do, or whetherthe speaker as the agent of declension and source of meaningful utterances isonly a useful fiction.13

Bibliographical References

a Primary SourcesʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥal-Kāfiya=Raḍī l-DīnMuḥammad ibnal-Ḥasanal-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 688/

1289), Šarḥ al-Raḍī ʿalā Kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥājib. Ed. by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl SālimMakram. 7 partsin 4 vols. Cairo: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 2000/Šarḥ al-Kāfiya. 2 vols. Istanbul: Maṭbaʿat al-Širka al-Ṣaḥafiyya al-ʿUṯmāniyya/Šarḥ al-Raḍī l-maʿrūf Šarḥ Kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥājib. Ed.by Yūsuf Ḥasan ʿUmar. 4 parts in 2 vols. Teheran: Muʾassasat al-Ṣādiq. (Repr., 1392sh/2013–2014.)

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Sarī l-Baġdādī Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928), al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassa-sat al-Risāla, 1996.

Mubarrad,Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbāsMuḥammad ibnYazīd al-Ṯumālī l-ʾAzdī al-Mubar-rad (d. 285/898), Kitāb al-muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍaymah. 4vols. Cairo: Wizārat al-ʾAwqāf, Lajnat ʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-ʾIslāmī, 1966–1979.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi (d. ca. 180/796), al-Kitāb. Ed.by Hartwig Derenbourg, Le livre de Sîbawaihi. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie nationale,1881–1889. (Repr., Hildesheim and New York: G. Olms, 1970.)

b Secondary SourcesBaalbaki, Ramzi. 2008. The legacy of the Kitāb. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Bohas, Georges. 1984. “Contribution à l’étude de la méthode des grammairiens arabes

enmorphologie et en phonologie d’après les grammairiens arabes ‘tardifs’ ”. GeorgesBohas and Jean-Patrick Guillaume, Étude des théories des grammairiens arabes. i.Morphologie et phonologie, xi–xviii, 1–133. Damascus: Institut français de Damas.

12 See for example Guillaume (1985), Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1989), Versteegh(1990, 2004).

13 See Versteegh (1996:591; 1997:41 f.) on the ‘fiction’ that resides in the fact that althoughgrammarians say they are describing and explaining the language of the Bedouin, theyactually describe and explain the language of the Qurʾān and poetry.

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Bohas, Georges, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel Eddine Kouloughli. 1989. “L’ana-lyse linguistique dans la tradition arabe”. Histoire des idées linguistiques, ed. bySylvain Auroux, i, 260–282. Liège and Brussels: Mardaga.

Bohas, Georges, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, andDjamel Eddine Kouloughli. 1990.TheAra-bic linguistic tradition. London and New York: Routledge. (Repr., Washington, d.c.:Georgetown University Press, 2006.)

Brockelmann, Carl. 1943–1949. Geschichte der arabischen Literatur. 2+3 vols. Leiden:E.J. Brill. (Repr., 1996.)

Carter, Michael G. 1972. “ ‘Twenty dirhams’ in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi”. Bulletin of theSchool of Oriental and African Studies 35.485–496.

Druel, Jean N. 2012. Numerals in Arabic grammatical theory: An impossible quest forconsistency? Ph.D. thesis, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.

Druel, JeanN. 2015. “What happened to the grammar of numerals after Sībawayhi?”.Thefoundations of Arabic linguistics, ii, ed. by Amal Marogy and Kees Versteegh, 81–99.Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Fleisch, Henri. 1961, 1979. Traité de philologie arabe, i, ii. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique.Fleisch, Henri. 1979. “Ibn al-Ḥādjib, Djamāl al-Dīn Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. ʿUmar b. Abī

Bakr al-Mālikī”. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., iii, 781. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Gilliot, Claude. 2004. “Textes arabes anciens édités en Égypte au cours des années 1999

à 2002”. Mélanges de l’ Institut dominicain d’études orientales 25–26.193–475.Guillaume, Jean-Patrick. 1983. “Fragments d’une grammaire oubliée”. Bulletin d’études

orientales 35.19–35.Howell, Mortimer S. 2003. A grammar of the Classical Arabic language. Anastatic repr.

7 vols. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. (First published 1883.)Larcher, Pierre. 1989. “Note sur trois éditions du Šarḥ al-Kāfiya de Rāḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarā-

bāḏī”. Arabica 36.109–113.Larcher, Pierre. 1991. “Al-ʾĪḍāḥ fī šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal de Ibn al-Ḥāǧib”. Arabica 38.369–374.Larcher, Pierre. 2002–2003. “’Ayy(u) šay’in, ’ayšin, ’ēš: Moyen arabe ou arabe moyen?”.

Quaderni di Studi Arabi 20–21.63–77.Larcher, Pierre. 2013. “Arabic linguistic tradition. ii. Pragmatics”.TheOxfordhandbookof

Arabic linguistics, ed. by Jonathan Owens, 185–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Larcher, Pierre. 2014. “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa et le faqīh de Kāwiya (Geyve, Anatolie)”. Romano-

Arabica 14.235–246.Mango, Andrew J. 1979. “Al-Astarābādhī, Raḍī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan”. Ency-

clopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., i, 721. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Peled, Yishai. 1994. “Aspects of case assignment in medieval Arabic grammatical the-

ory”.Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 84.133–158.Peled, Yishai. 2003. “Aspects of the use of grammatical terminology inMedieval Arabic

grammatical tradition”. Arabic grammar and linguistics, ed. by Yasir Suleiman, 50–85. London and New York: Routledge.

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Sarkīs, Yūsuf Alyān. 1928. Muʿjam al-maṭbūʿāt al-ʿarabiyya wa-l-muʿarraba. Cairo: Maṭ-baʿat Sarkīs.

Tawfīq, ʾAmīra ʿAlī. 1978. Al-Raḍī l-ʾAstarābāḏī: ʿĀlimal-naḥwwa-l-luġa. Riyadh: al-ʾIdāral-ʿĀmma li-Kulliyyāt al-Banāt.

Van Dyke, Edward. 1896. Kitāb iktifāʾ al-qanūʿ bi-mā huwa maṭbūʿ, ed. by MuḥammadʿAlī l-Biblāwī. Cairo: Maktabat al-Hilāl.

Versteegh,Kees. 1989. “Le langage, la religionet la raison”.Histoiredes idées linguistiques,ed. by Sylvain Auroux et al., i, 243–259. Liège and Brussels: Mardaga.

Versteegh, Kees. 1990. “Freedom of the speaker? The term ittisāʿ and related notionsin Arabic grammar”. Studies in the history of Arabic grammar. ii. Proceedings of the2nd Symposium on the History of Arabic Grammar, Nijmegen, 27 April–1May 1987, ed.by Michael G. Carter and Kees Versteegh, 281–293. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:J. Benjamins.

Versteegh, Kees. 1996. “The linguistic introduction to Rāzī’s Tafsīr”. Studies in NearEastern languages and literature: Memorial volume of Karel Petráček, ed. by PetrZemánek, 589–603. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Versteegh, Kees. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought. iii. The Arabic linguistic tradi-tion. London and New York: Routledge.

Versteegh, Kees. 2004. “Meanings of speech: The category of sentential mood in Ara-bic grammar”. Le voyage et la langue: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Anouar Louca etd’André Roman, ed. by Joseph Dichy and Hassan Hamzé, 269–287. Damascus: Insti-tut français du Proche-Orient.

Weipert, Reinhard. 2009. “Al-Astarābādhī, Raḍī al-Dīn”. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed.,iii, 118. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Wright, William. 1967. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_007

Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics in al-Sīrāfī andIbn Sīnā*

Manuela E.B. Giolfo andWilfrid Hodges

1 Comparing a Linguist and a Logician

The two authors of this paper are a linguist and a logician, collaborating in astudy of interrelations between linguistics and logic in 10th and 11th centuryArabic scholarship. The project is more precisely to examine the views of thelinguist ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979) and the logician ʾAbū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā(c. 370/980–428/1037) in areas of common interest to these scholars. This isnot a study of historical influences—no direct influence from al-Sīrāfī to IbnSīnā is known, and obviously there was no influence in the other direction.Rather, these are two scholars whose work has a substantial overlap in termsof questions and assumptions, and they were both working within the samegeneral culture. Our aim is to describe this common ground, in as much depthas the facts allow.

The reason for choosing these two scholars was that al-Sīrāfī is known tohave been aware of logical issues, and likewise Ibn Sīnā frequently commentson issues of language, particularly on the semantic side. Moreover we know(and will illustrate below) that al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā had similar criticisms ofthe Arabic-speaking tradition of Peripatetic logic.

There are other scholars that we might have chosen to study. If we wantedthe linguist and the logician to be closer in time, we could have compared al-Sīrāfī with the logician ʾAbūNaṣr al-Fārābī (257/870–339/950), or compared Ibn

* This chapter is an expanded version of a talk that we gave in 2014 to the Third Foundationsof Arabic Linguistics Conference in Paris. A number of people at that conference madehelpful comments. We are grateful for all those comments, including a few that are still onour list of Work To Do. We also thank the editors of the present volume for guidance andencouragement well beyond the course of duty. Although the ideas of this paper come froma joint research project of both authors, in the present article Manuela E.B. Giolfo is to beheld responsible for paragraphs 1, 2.1, 4, 5 and 8, and Wilfrid Hodges for paragraphs 2.2, 3, 6and 7.

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Sīnā with the linguist Ibn Jinnī (c. 320/932–392/1005). A fuller picture wouldcertainly include these comparisons. Butwe chose Ibn Sīnābecause in our viewhe is deeper than al-Fārābī across the board. With Ibn Jinnī there is of courseno lack of depth, but our present impression is that he is less concerned withissues that alsomatter to logicians. In any event wewill mention other scholarswhen their work is relevant to our discussion.

Taking al-Sīrāfī gives us Sībawayhi too, since we will work almost entirelyfrom al-Sīrāfī’s commentary on Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. Likewise we will use IbnSīnā’s Šifāʾ, which is strongly indebted to Aristotle and the Peripatetic logicaltradition. Almost certainly some of the things that we attribute to al-Sīrāfī orto Ibn Sīnā were derived from earlier scholars in these two traditions.

2 Linguistics and Logic

2.1 Al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā on Deficiencies of Peripatetic logicBesides thebroad similarities between al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā,we can sometimesfind detailed correlations. Some examples come to light if we look closely atwhat is attributed to al-Sīrāfī in a report by ʾAbūḤayyān al-Tawḥīdī (Muqābasāt68–87) of a confrontation between al-Sīrāfī and the Syriac logician ʾAbū BišrMattā at amajlis of the vizier Ibn al-Furāt in 320/932 (see Elamrani-Jamal 1983for a translation anddiscussion).Mattāhad translated logicalworks of Aristotleinto Arabic and done propaganda for them; al-Sīrāfī was invited to reply to thispropaganda.

The debate is sometimes represented as a conflict between linguistics andlogic. We can see that this view of it must be wrong if we observe how closeal-Sīrāfī’s criticisms of Peripatetic logic (i.e. the logic of Aristotle and his suc-cessors) are to ones that the logician Ibn Sīnā made a century or so later. Thereis no reason to suppose that Ibn Sīnā was relying on al-Sīrāfī, since the criti-cisms that both authors make are substantially true and are likely to occur toany outside observer.

First, al-Sīrāfī criticizes Mattā for exaggerating the pre-eminence of theclassical Greek logicians. This is a criticism which Ibn Sīnā addresses to theBaghdad logicians who were Mattā’s pupils and heirs. Thus:

Al-Sīrāfī:

It is as if you were saying next that there is no proof except by Greekintellects, and no demonstration except what they laid down, and notruth except what they promulgated?! (ʾa-ka-ʾinnaka taqūlu baʿda hāḏā:

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lā ḥujjata ʾillā ʿuqūlun yūnāniyyūn wa-lā burhāna ʾillā māwaḍaʿūhu, wa-lāḥaqīqata ʾillā mā ʾabrazūhu)

Muqābasāt 72.10f.

Ibn Sīnā:

[Aristotle’s] successors were unable to free themselves of the guardian-ship of what they inherited from him, and they spent their lives tryingto understand what he did best and in partisanship to some outcomes ofhis inadequacy […] ( fa-māqadaraminbaʿdihi ʿalā ʾan yufarriġa [yufriġa?]nafsahu ʿan ʿuhdati mā wariṯahu minhu wa-ḏahaba ʿumruhu fī tafahhumimā ʾaḥsana fīhi wa-l-taʿaṣṣubi li-baʿḍi mā faraṭa min taqṣīrihi […]).1

ibn sīnā, Mašriqiyyūn 3.1–3

Second and more specifically, al-Sīrāfī criticizes Mattā for presenting a loadof Greek philosophical baggage as if it was useful for logic, when it isn’t. Heillustrates the point with a list of Aristotelian categories:

Al-Sīrāfī:

You say: whetherness, whereness, whatness, howness, howmuchness,essenceness, accidentness, substanceness, elementness, formness, …Then you stretch it out and say: It brings usmagic in the formula […] (wa-taqūlūna: al-haliyyatu wa-l-ʾayniyyatu wa-l-māhiyyatu wa-l-kayfiyyatu wa-l-kamiyyatu wa-l-ḏātiyyatu wa-l-ʿaraḍiyyatu wa-l-jawhariyyatu wa-l-hayū-liyyatuwa-l-ṣūriyyatu… ṯumma tatamaṭṭaṭūnawa-taqūlūna: jiʾnā bi-l-siḥrifī qawlinā […])

Muqābasāt 82.5–8

Ibn Sīnā likewise often criticizes his predecessors for burdening logic withphilosophical material that is no help for it:

It is customary to prolong [the discussion on] the first principles of logicwith material that does not belong to logic but only to the philosophical

1 Gutas (2014:36f.), who had access to a better text, translates: “[Aristotle’s] successors wereunable to free themselves of the imperfections of what they inherited from him, and theyspent their lives in efforts to understand what he accomplished best and in Partisan Adher-ence to some defective theories he originated”.

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discipline (wa-qad jarat al-ʿādatu bi-ʾan tuṭawwala mabādiʾu l-manṭiqi bi-ʾašyāʾa laysat manṭiqiyyatan wa-ʾinnamā hiya li-l-ṣināʿati l-ḥikmiyyati).

Madḫal 10.5 f., transl. gutas 2014:43

Ibn Sīnā has the Aristotelian categories in his sights here, and dotted throughhis commentary on the Categories (Maqūlāt) there are remarks about how thematerial doesn’t belong to logic (see Gutas 2014:300–303 for a discussion ofthese remarks).

Third, al-Sīrāfī criticizes Mattā for ignoring the traditions and practices ofthe language in which he claims to work. Ibn Sīnā several times makes similarcriticisms of his Peripatetic predecessors, and of Aristotle in particular forsetting a bad example:

Ibn Sīnā:

It is a black mark against the First Teacher that he mentions among thesimple expressions the noun and the verb, but ignores the particles and[other] expressions that are noun-like or verb-like ( fa-min al-qabīḥi bi-l-muʿallimi l-ʾawwali ʾan yaḏkura min basāʾiṭi l-ʾalfāẓi l-isma wa-l-kalimatawa-yatruka l-ʾadāta wa-mā yušākiluhumā)

ʿIbāra 29.15 f.

Al-Sīrāfī:

I ask you about a single particle which is current in Arabic speech, andwhose meanings are distinguished by intelligent people, for you to workout its meanings from the viewpoint of the logic of Aristotle which youuse for your demonstrations, boasting of your respect for it. The particleis wāw. What are its rules, where is it used, and does it have one orseveral senses? (ʾasʾaluka ʿanḥarfinwāḥidinhuwadāʾirun fī kalāmi l-ʿArabi,wa-maʿānīhi mutamayyizatun ʿinda ʾahli l-ʿaqli, fa-staḫriǧ ʾanta maʿānīhimin nāḥiyati manṭiqi ʾarisṭāṭālīs [sic!] allaḏī tadullu bihi wa-tubāhī bi-tafḫīmihi?wa-huwa l-wāwwa-mā ʾaḥkāmuhuwa-kayfamawāqiʿuhuwa-halhuwa ʿalā wajhin wāḥidin ʾaw wujūhin)

Muqābasāt 74.8–11

This challenge to Mattā by al-Sīrāfī merits some further comments. WhenMattā fails the task, the Vizier invites al-Sīrāfī to answer his own challenge. Al-Sīrāfī does so (Tawḥīdī, Muqābasāt 77.11–78.4), and his answer consists of a listof usages of wāw as they might be listed in a dictionary.

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This move by al-Sīrāfī is strangely shallow. Obviously one cannot use alanguage without knowing what the words of the language mean. The pointthat al-Sīrāfī should havemade here is that the particles of a language generatelogical relationships between those sentences of the language which containthem, and one needs to have some understanding of the language in order tokeep track of these relationships.

However, if we turn from the dialogue with Mattā to al-Sīrāfī’s Commentaryon Sībawayhi, we do find him discussing precisely the logical relationshipsbetween sentences containing the particle wāw, and hence making the kindof point that he should have made against Mattā.

2.2 Linguistics and Logic on Negating SentencesOne tellingpassage is in al-Sīrāfī’s comments onSībawayhi’s Chapter 102. In thischapter Sībawayhi considers several statements of the general form ‘I passed xand y’, and says what would count as a denial (nafy) of them. Since Sībawayhipresumably has in mind a conversational situation where one person makes astatement and then another person contradicts it, we are vowelling the verbsso that the first speaker says ‘I’ and the second says ‘you’. Sībawayhi observesthat if a person says

(1) marartu bi-zaydin wa-ʿamrinI passed Zayd and ʿAmr

Kitāb i, 185

the sentence can be read either as implying that Zayd and ʿAmrwere passed onthe same occasion, or as allowing that Zayd and ʿAmr were passed on differentoccasions. Sībawayhi comments that if the latter ismeant, then it canbedeniedby saying

(2) māmararta bi-zaydin wa-mā-mararta bi-ʿamrinYou did not pass Zayd and you did not pass ʿAmr

Kitāb i, 186.1

If Mattā had heard this, he could well have objected that Sībawayhi hasmade alogical error. The contradictory negation (naqīḍ) of a statement s is a statementt that is true if and only if s is not true (Ibn Sīnā, Maqūlāt 258.15 f.). But it couldhappen that the first speaker passed Zayd and not ʿAmr; in this case both (1)(under the present reading) and its supposed denial (2) are false. (This hasnothing to do with any difference between nafy and naqīḍ; Sībawayhi himselfmakes these two notions equivalent at Kitāb i, 377.21.)

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Instead of Mattā, the jurist al-Muzanī (onwhomseeHeffening 2012) steppedforward and made the same charge. The denial of (1), he said, is not (2) but

(3) māmararta bi-zaydin wa-ʿamrinYou did not pass Zayd and ʿAmr

Sīrāfī, Šarḥ ii, 336.2

(Al-Muzanī’s intervention illustrates how Islamic legal debates helped to createfertile soil for logic.) And at this point al-Sīrāfī enters the discussion. No, hesays, (3) is not a correct denial of (1). To show this, it suffices to note that (3) iscompatible with the fuller statement

(4) You did not pass Zayd and ʿAmr on a single occasion.

But if (1) allows two occasions, then (4) does not contradict it (lā yakūnumukaḏḏiban, Sīrāfī, Šarḥ ii, 336.9). Al-Sīrāfī concludes that Sībawayhi’s denialis more correct (ʾaṣaḥḥu wa-ʾajwadu, Šarḥ ii, 336.5) than al-Muzanī’s.

Al-Sīrāfī’s comment on al-Muzanī is certainly correct in the sense that if thestatement (1) is taken as allowing two occasions, then its denial has to be takenlikewise, and it would be better to make that explicit rather than using theambiguous (3). Neverthelessmaking (2) the denial of (1) still looks like a logicalerror, for the reason given above. What does al-Sīrāfī have in mind?

One of the very few logical errors that Ibn Sīnā can safely be convicted ofis curiously similar to this example from Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī. Faḫr al-Dīnal-Rāzī (Mulaḫḫaṣ 150.2–4) pointed it out in the 4th/12th century, and it wasrecently analyzed by Chatti (2016:54). Ibn Sīnāwrites a sentence form and thensays what he takes to be its contradictory negation. Chatti translates Ibn Sīnā’sform and his claimed negation of it as follows:

(5) Some Js are sometimes b and sometimes not b.

(6) Either every j is always b or no j is ever b.

As Chatti points out, Ibn Sīnā gets the negation wrong. It should be:

(7) Every j is either always b or never b.

(It is not true that some numbers are sometimes even and sometimes noteven; but also it is not true that either every number is always even or nonumber is ever even. In this case both the statement (5) and IbnSīnā’s supposed

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negation of it (6) are false.)We note that both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā have statedsupposed contradictory negations that are stronger than they should be bylogic.

The fact that Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī are both coming at their examplefrom a linguistic point of view suggests a common explanation both of theirclaims and of Ibn Sīnā’s. The key point is that the denial of (1) takes place insome imagined conversation. If you want to challenge something that I havesaid in a conversation, you can do it by stating something stronger than thecontradictory negation of what I said—as long as you are prepared to standby your stronger statement, of course. Your reason for contradicting (1) maybe that you know that on the day in question I was incapacitated after a fight,so I could not have passed either Zayd or ʿAmr; then you can freely use (2) todenymy statement.With appropriate reservations, the same applies to the useof contradiction in logical proofs. This freedom to increase the strength of adenial becomes a practical convenience when the stronger denial is simplerto state or handle than the contradictory negation. In al-Sīrāfī’s case the strictnegation of (1), read as allowing two occasions, is

Either you did not pass Zayd, or you did not pass ʿAmr, or you did not passeither of them.

And this is clearly more of a mouthful than (2). Ibn Sīnā’s (6) is not noticeablyeasier to state than (7), but it does have the logical convenience that it canbe analyzed into two component propositions without having to remove theinitial quantifier.

In sum: the debate between al-Sīrāfī and Mattā brings to light a number ofissues relating logic to language where al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā are on the sameside. We examined one case (in al-Sīrāfī’s Commentary, not in the debate)where al-Sīrāfī’s discussion illustrates why an appreciation of language is inpractice highly valuable for a logician, even granting Mattā’s claim that thelaws of the science of logic are not concerned with linguistic issues. Al-Sīrāfī’sdiscussion of this case may even throw light on a prima facie unsatisfactoryfeature of Ibn Sīnā’s logic.

3 Communicative Discourse

Awell-known fact about Sībawayhi’s linguistic theory is the major importancethat he gives to situations in which people talk to each other. He frequentlyrefers to ‘the speaker’ (al-mutakallim), and much of his theory is expressed in

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terms of what a speaker should or can do. Carter (2004:57) lists several wordsthat Sībawayhi uses for the interlocutor, including al-muḫāṭab, al-muḥaddaṯ,al-masʾūl, al-sāʾil. The first two of these four expressions just mean ‘the personaddressed’; but the last twomean ‘the person asked’ and ‘the person who asks’,both of which imply that the addressee is not purely passive. All of this passesdown to al-Sīrāfī.

Sībawayhi’s two main sources of linguistic evidence are the Qurʾān andearly Arabic poetry. Neither of these sources gives any opportunity for thelistener to make an active response to the speaker. So Sībawayhi’s evidence forconversational usage depends mainly on what Carter (2004:48) describes as“made-up material”. This consists largely of sentences spoken by an imaginaryspeaker to give information to an imaginary listener. (A typical example: ‘Ipassed a she-camel at midday’.) Among these imagined utterances Sībawayhiincludes anumber of short conversations. (‘I passed twomen’. ‘What twomen?’.‘A Muslim and an unbeliever’.)

Turning to Ibn Sīnā, we note that he also discusses conversations. Thisis because he does his logic in the tradition of Aristotle, and this traditionincludes logical dialogues. These dialogues are always asymmetrical, thoughIbn Sīnā allows the two participants to exchange roles (Safsaṭa 74.12). One per-son, ‘the questioner’ (al-sāʾil), asks the question, and the other person attemptsto give logically satisfactory answers. The second person is often called al-muḫāṭab, but he is also ‘the answerer’ (al-mujīb). Ibn Sīnā’s dialogues are rule-bound events; for example, a speaker loses the debate by being shown to havecontradicted himself. Ibn Sīnā discusses separately the rules that apply to thequestioner and the answerer.

There is a common convention among logicians that the two participants ina debate are male and female; this allows use of ‘he’ and ‘she’. We will assumebelow that the speaker is male and the listener is female. In the Medievalcommunities of Arabic logicians and Arabic linguists the listener will nearlyalways have been male; no matter.

Logical dialogues give Ibn Sīnā somemotivation to discuss a feature of con-versationswhichwe haven’t noticed in Sībawayhi. This is the use of language todeceive the listener. There are subtler questions here than how to lie and keepa straight face. For example, the speaker can use linguistic devices to draw thelistener’s attention towards somepoints and away fromothers.Oneof theques-tions that Ibn Sīnā discusses is how, in a rational debate, to get the listener toagree to the premises of a logical argument without her realizing what followsfrom the things she has committed herself to. This involves taking the premisesin the wrong order. (For more on the ‘right order’ and the effects of following itor failing to follow it, see Hodges 2016.)

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Outside the context of dialogues Ibn Sīnā has some things to say aboutconversationmore generally, and in these looser discussions there is sometimesa ‘listener’ (sāmiʿ).

For Ibn Sīnā it is important that we use language for reasoning in general,even when we are on our own. In this sense we can use language to pass newinformation to ourselves, by putting together two ormore facts that we alreadyknew. Or at least we can bring to mind in this way some facts that had neveroccurred to us before, even if we knew them potentially. For Ibn Sīnā this factis one of the main justifications of logic:

This science indicates all the ways and means by which the mind movesfromwhat it [already] knows towhat it does not [yet] know (yakūnuhāḏāl-ʿilmu mušīran ʾilā jamīʿi l-ʾanḥāʾi wa-l-jihāti llatī tanaqqala al-ḏihnu minal-maʿlūmi ʾilā l-majhūli)

Mašriqiyyūn 5.21 f.

So as the logician reasons silently with his mind, the state of informationchanges. We know of nothing comparable in Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī.

Carter (2004:142) lists fāʾida/ʾifāda ‘information/conveying information’ (histranslations) as a notion that came into linguistics later than Sībawayhi. Headds that its appearance “symbolizes the shift from a concern with languageas behaviour to a preoccupation with its meaning, reflecting the influence ofGreek ideas as the Arabs became acquainted with logic”.

The comparison of al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā provides plenty of material toillustrate the ‘preoccupation with meaning’, but we are doubtful how far thisreflects any influence from Ancient Greece. The facts below suggest that themain influence was more likely from the Arabic linguists to the logicians, notthe other way round.

Ibn al-Sikkit, who died in around 244/858, wrote (Manṭiq 265.10): “Onesays ‘he provided wealth’, and ‘he provided knowledge’ ” (wa-yuqālu: qad ʾafādamālan wa-ʾafāda ʿilman). This records that already in the mid 3rd/9th centurythe root f-y-d had to do with providing useful things, and that money andknowledge were already at the top of the list of relevant useful things. Laterin that century the movement to translate the logical works of Aristotle intoArabic was well under way; in contrast with Ibn al-Sikkit, these translationsmake no use of the root f-y-d. At least we have not found it there. One ofthe earliest translations of Aristotle is the translation of his Rhetoric; Lyons’very full glossary (Aristotle, Rīṭūrīqā vol. ii) makes no mention of the root f-y-d. It is not in the translations of De Interpretatione or Prior Analytics i; wehave not seen it in the translation of Topics, though our search there has not

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been exhaustive. (These three translations are in Aristotle, Manṭiq.) It is not inthe Arabic translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Greek essay on Conversion(Alexander, Conversion). It is not in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s summary of logic, orin Bihriz’s logical wordbook (both from the 8th century and both in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Manṭiq).

In fact, within logic the root f-y-d (though generally not the forms fāʾidaand ʾifāda that Carter cited) appears rather suddenly in the works of al-Fārābīin the first half of the 4th/10th century. He uses the root in a range of ways. Forexample a logical training provides (yufīdu) various skills such as the ability toexercise critical judgment and the skill of identifying quickly what are the keypoints of disagreement ( Jadal 30.1, cf. Fārābī, ʾAlfāẓ 96.1). But his use of this verbis heavily concentrated on one particular usage, namely in dialogues where thequestioner aims to elicit metaphysical information from the answerer. Thesedialogues have a broadly Aristotelian cast, but their exact form seems to beal-Fārābī’s own invention, for the novel purpose of providing a kind of game-theoretic semantics for words that al-Fārābī reckoned were fundamental inphilosophy. The expressions yufādu ‘is provided’ and ʾafāda ‘provides’ are usedspecifically in connection with the information given by the answerer in thesedialogues; the provider of the information is taken to be either the answerer orthe dialogue process itself.

The answer to the question ‘Which thing is it?’ takes up all the propriaof the thing and provides (yufīdu) a way of distinguishing the thing fromeverything else, purely by its features and not by its substance […] ( fa-l-ḫawāṣṣu kulluhā tuʾḫaḏu fī jawābi ʾayyi šayʾin huwa fa-yufādu bihā tamyīzul-šayʾi ʿan ġayrihi fī ʾaḥwālihi faqaṭ lā fī jawharihi […])

fārābī, ʾAlfāẓ 76.17

These are the things that our study of the particle ‘What [is it?]’ givesus and provides for us (ʾafādanā) ( fa-hāḏihi hiya l-ʾašyāʾu llatī ʾaʿṭānā wa-ʾafādanā taʾammulunā ḥarfi mā huwa […])

fārābī, Ḥurūf 181.10

So although the root is common in al-Fārābī, in senses connected with impart-ing information, his usage is really quite idiosyncratic. (This might be why theroot is missing in the otherwise comprehensive book (Alon and Abed 2007) onal-Fārābī’s philosophical terminology.)

Versteegh (1977:34–37) suggested that f-y-d should be seen as translating theGreek root tel-, which has to do with aims and completions. He suggested thisnot on the basis of actual translations (he cites only one), but because of the

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similarity of the semantic ranges of the two roots. We make no comment onVersteegh’s claim that this translation might have come via a “voie diffuse, i.e.through contact with living Greek grammar” (Versteegh 1977:178). However, weshould like to say that his comparison between the roots gets no support at allfrom the logical side. We noted the absence of the root f-y-d in logical writingbefore al-Fārābī. Even in al-Fārābī there is no evidence of any connectionbetween the root and ‘use, aim, goal’, which Versteegh mentions (1977:37) asa sense of télos. Peripatetic commentaries tended to begin with a statement ofthe aim of the author and the uses of the contents. For ‘aim’ al-Fārābī writesġaraḍ (ʿIbāra 17.4; Jadal 28.2) or qaṣd (Qiyās 11.2) or ġāya ( Jadal 28.1); for ‘use’he writesmanfaʿa (ʿIbāra 19.20; Jadal 29.16).

Sheyhatovitch (2015), in her study of fāʾida in Sībawayhi’s successors, tracesthe use of the root f-y-d back to al-Mubarrad (d. ca. 285/899) and Ibn al-Sarrājal-Baġdādī (d. 316/928). So it had already entered linguistics before al-Fārābīhad reached maturity

What do these facts imply about influences between logic and linguistics?As to al-Fārābī, we can say straight away that his most characteristic use of f-y-d, in connection with metaphysical dialogues, doesn’t come from Aristoteliansources. He could have picked up the word from general trends of intellectualconversation, and that would include its use by linguists in Baghdad. However,putting together the link that he makes with dialogues, his interest in fiqh,and the fact that the experts in fiqh had been developing their own versionof jadal since the 2nd/8th century (Young 2017), fiqhwould be a sensible placeto look.

As to the linguists, it seems to us that there is no need to invoke any out-side influence; the development from Sībawayhi to Ibn al-Sarrāj and his stu-dent al-Sīrāfī could well be entirely home-grown. Sībawayhi uses the notion offāʾida but without having a name for it (witness the number of times that al-Sīrāfī uses the root in his explanations of Sībawayhi). But Sībawayhi’s lack ofsemantic vocabulary makes it treacherous for him to discuss different kindsof information that could be given by different information-bearing expres-sions. For example the information involved in knowing which individual ismeant by a description is different from the information involved in knowinga fact about an individual; we can distinguish them as information-what andinformation-that. Sībawayhi gets further than he deserves to without makingthis distinction.

We also need to distinguish between (i) an information-bearing expression,(ii) the information that an expression carries, and (iii) the fact of an expres-sion being informative. Thus ḫabar can serve for (i) but fāʾida is needed for(iii).

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Carter (2004:142) translates fāʾida/ʾifāda as ‘information/conveying infor-mation’. However, the original meaning of fāʾida is ‘usefulness’, and that ofmufīd is ‘useful’. In terms of ‘communication’, that is to say relative to the com-municative function of speech, ‘useful’ should mean ‘informative’, i.e. ‘provid-ing information’, and ‘usefulness’ wouldmean something like ‘informativeness’,i.e. ‘the quality or fact of being informative’.

Sheyhatovitch (2015) gives a number of examples that seem tous to illustratethese points. Her examples of fāʾida as ‘communicative value’ show its use for(iii). While (ii) is often rendered by ḫabar, she gives examples where fāʾidaserves for (ii) when the information that an expression carries is a ‘fullmessage’,that is to say that it is not information given to the listener about an individualalready known to the listener.

In short, the introduction of the term fāʾida is a natural improvement oftechnical vocabulary in a developing discipline. There is no need to look out-side linguistics to explain it.

4 Definiteness, Morphosyntactic and Pragmatic

Sībawayhi introduces the notion of definiteness, maʿrifa, already in the Risālaof his Kitāb, but without any definition. Evidently he considers it a well-knownnotion. In Chapter 104 of the Kitāb he defines the notion as a certain classof ‘things of nouns’ (ʾašyāʾ al-ʾasmāʾ). Some of the items in this class could betaken simply to be nouns or adjectives or pronouns. However, other parts of hisdefinition refer to the context of the noun, for example whether it carries thedefinite article or is annexed to (muḍāf ) a suitable noun. So the class is a classof occurrences of nouns (or adjectives or pronouns) in certain speech contexts.But for brevity we will say ‘nouns’ rather than ‘occurrences of nouns’.

The class of definite nouns consists of five subclasses:

i. Proper names.ii. Words that aremuḍāf to a definite noun.iii. Words carrying the definite article.iv. ‘Vague’ (mubham) words, i.e. demonstrative pronouns.v. Personal pronouns.

Sībawayhi says (Kitāb i, 218.7 f., Chapter 117) that the mubham nouns are six-teen demonstrative pronouns that he spells out, “and similar words”. Later lin-guists, for example al-Zamaḫšarī (Mufaṣṣal, section 48) tookmubham in (iv) toinclude pronouns such as allaḏī and ʾayyuhā.

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This list of definite nouns has passed almost unaltered into the modernlinguistic literature; relative pronouns are generally included. Badawi, Carterand Gully (2004:94f.) divide the list into two parts: the items in (ii) and (iii)are ‘formally definite’ and the remainder are ‘semantically definite’. We are notsure what is intended by the description ‘semantic’ here; apart from the needto tell whether a phrase is being used as a proper name, Sībawayhi’s criteria areentirelymorphosyntactic and could be checked by a text-processing computer.(Note by the way that the definition is recursive, by (ii).)

Al-Zamaḫšarī (Mufaṣṣal 106) gives a different definition. For him, a nounis definite if it “signifies a specific entity” (dalla ʿalā šayʾin bi-ʿaynihi); so thelist amounts to a claim that in Arabic the nouns that signify specific entitiesare precisely those in the list. This definition is not morphosyntactic. Nor is itsemantic in a strict sense, because it rests on features of the speech situationand the speaker’s knowledge, not just on the meanings of the words. We willsay that nouns fitting Sībawayhi’s definition are ‘morphosyntactically definite’,and nouns fitting al-Zamaḫšarī’s are ‘pragmatically definite’.

For brevity we write M-definite for morphosyntactically definite, and P-definite for pragmatically definite. Likewise wewriteM-indefinite and P-indef-inite for nouns that are notmorphosyntactically definite and not pragmaticallydefinite.

There is a slight variant of P-definiteness that al-Sīrāfī calls attention to: notthat the noun specifies a certain individual, but that the speaker uses the nounwith the intention that the listener will identify a certain individual:

… likeman and horse and similar things where the name applies to all theindividuals; if the speaker uses the name with the intention that the lis-tener will identify one specific of those individuals, then the name is def-inite (… ka-rajulin wa-farasin wa-naḥwahu mimmā huwa li-jamāʿati kulliwāḥidin minhum lahu ḏālika l-ismu, fa-ʾin ʾawradahu l-mutakallimu qāṣi-dan ʾilā wāḥidin bi-ʿaynihi ʿindahu ʾanna l-muḫāṭaba yaʿrifuhu, fa-huwamaʿrifatun).

Šarh ii, 318.19 f.

This is also a pragmatic notion of definiteness; much of what we say about P-definiteness applies to it equally well.

Sībawayhi assigns M-definiteness to the opening noun of a noun phrase,not to the whole phrase. But P-definiteness must refer to the noun phrase asa whole, since the phrase as a whole must be satisfied by any entity that isspecified by it. So we will take the liberty of sometimes referring to the wholenoun phrase as P-definite or M-definite.

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We will consider the following claim:

Equivalence Claim. The M-definite nouns are the same as the P-definitenouns.

Al-Zamaḫšarī evidently believes that the Equivalence Claim is substantiallytrue. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Sībawayhi believed it too, withsome precise exceptions that wewill come to below. But al-Sīrāfī devoted quitea few pages to considering counterexamples, more precisely morphosyntacti-cally definite noun occurrences that are not pragmatically definite. Some ofwhat he says runs parallel to observations of Ibn Sīnā. So we will review possi-ble counterexamples, keeping an eye on Sībawayhi’s five cases.

Al-Zamaḫšarī’s definition can be read inmore than oneway, because we candistinguish between a phrase that does signify a specific entity and a phrasethat the speaker used with the intention of signifying a specific entity. Thesecancomeapart, for example if thephrase is less specific than the speakermeantit to be. In an earlier paper (Giolfo andHodges 2013)we concluded that for bothal-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā the speaker’s intention is paramount. So it must be thespeaker’s responsibility to choose a phrase that does signify what the speakerintended (unless of course the speaker intends to mislead or trick the listener,Ibn Sīnā might add).

So if the conversation is to be fully communicative, the speaker’s intentionin using the phrase must pass to the mind of the listener. We suppose that thismust be what al-Sīrāfī has in mind when he says:

Know that definiteness attaches to the listener’s knowledge, regardlessof the speaker. It can well be that the speaker mentions that which heknows, but the listener doesn’t, so that is unknown (iʿlam ʾanna l-taʿrīfamuʿallaqun bi-maʿrifati l-muḫāṭabi dūna l-mutakallimi wa-qad yaḏkurul-mutakallimu mā yaʿrifuhu huwa wa-lā yaʿrifuhu huwa fa-yakūnu man-kūran [sic! i.e.: اروكنم ]).2

Šarḫ ii, 338.21 f.

2 Carter (2016:31, 189f., 267) translates mankūr by ‘indefinite’; however, we should like to notethat Carter’s (2016) interpretation of Sibawayhi’s notion of definiteness is in the first instancealways the pragmatic one, not the morphosyntactic one. Marogy (2010:100) renders wa-qadyaḏkuru l-mutakallimu mā yaʿrifuhu huwa wa-lā yaʿrifuhu l-muḫātabu fa-yakūnu mankūran[sic!] (Šarḫ (ʿAtif) i, 163b) by “The speaker might mention something known to him but notto the listener, in which case it is bound to be treated as indefinite”.

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For the phrase in question, communication is complete when the speakerintends by it some specific entity, and speaks the phrase, and the listener picksup what entity the speaker intended. If the listener does not or cannot pick itup, then pragmatically the definiteness of the phrase has failed.

Carter (2004:64) says: “Very early in the Kitāb [Sībawayhi] states the prin-ciple that it is the speaker’s duty to bring the listener to the same level ofknowledge as himself”. This is true in the sense that Sībawayhi is interestedin situations where the speaker does want to transfer some particular piece ofknowledge. Al-Sīrāfī shares this interest, and both authors discuss the linguisticdevices open to the speaker to help him. A typical example is

[Sībawayhi] means that if you start with an indefinite, so as to talk aboutit, this is not right, because the listener is not brought to the samepositionas you in respect of identifying it. Rather, the effect of effective commu-nication is that the listener is brought to the same level as the speakerin identifying what the speaker has given him information about (yaʿnīʾanna btidāʾaka bi-l-nakirati li-tuḥaddiṯa ʿanhā ġayru mustaqīmin li-ʾannal-muḫāṭaba laysa yunazzalumanzilataka fī maʿrifatihā wa-ḥukmu l-ḫiṭābil-mafhūmi ʾan yusāwiya l-muḫāṭabu l-mutakallima fī maʿrifati mā ḫab-barahu bihi)

Šarḫ i, 304.2–4

In short, if the speaker needs to identify something to the listener, anM-definitenoun phrase is generally the right linguistic expression to do this job.

Certainly Ibn Sīnā would be puzzled by the idea that the duty of ensuringthat the listener knows what things are being talked about rests with thespeaker. After all, the listener is in a better position to judge what she knowsor does not know, and what she wants to know.

So when [the argument] yields the conclusion that [the speaker] neededto reach, we push the discussion with him in the direct of checking.It was not clear what the speaker meant in the premises? Then it isup to the listener to press him with questions and say ‘What did youintend by the question [that we are debating], and what did you intendwhen you stated the topic as such-and-such?’ ( fa-ʾinnahu ʾiḏā ʾantaja mālahu nasūqu kalāmahu bi-l-taḥqīqi wa-lam yakun bayyinanmā yaʿnīhi fī l-muqaddimāti kāna li-l-mujībi ʾan yataʿannata ʿalayhi fa-yaqūlamā ʾaradtafī l-masʾalati wa-mā ʾaradta fī l-mawḍiʿi llaḏī ʾaḥfaẓtahu ka-ḏā?)

Safsaṭa 77.5–7

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The speaker may well know more than he says about some individual thathe refers to. There need not be anything unethical about this—he may onlyinclude what information he thinks is relevant to the matter in hand. Al-Sīrāfīgives an example:

… saying to the listener ‘In the man’s house is an orchard’, ‘In my house isa friend of mine’ and [the listener] does not know the particular man andorchard (… ka-qawli l-rajuli li-muḫāṭabihi fī dāri l-rajuli bustānun wa-ʿindīṣadīqun lī wa-huwa lā yaʿrifu l-rajula bi-ʿaynihi wa-l-bustāna)

Šarḫ ii, 338.21–23

One of the phrases under discussion, al-rajul, is in fact M-definite, being anounwith the definite article. Al-Sīrāfī would then be saying that anM-definiteexpression may in fact not convey who is referred to. In short, he is pointing toa failure of the Equivalence Claim.

5 Definiteness of Proper Names

Sībawayhi assumes that his readers know what a proper name is. However, al-Sīrāfī offers what may be meant as a definition of proper names:

The basis of a proper name is just that it defines, because it is the nameby which someone is named personally in order to distinguish by thatname between that individual and [all] other individuals (wa-ʾinnamāṣāra l-ismu l-ʿalamu ʾaṣluhu l-taʿrīfu li-ʾannahu l-ismu llaḏī yuqṣadu bihi l-musammā šaḫṣan li-tubayyinahu bi-ḏālika l-ismi min sāʾiri l-šuḫūṣi)

Šarḥ ii, 318.14; see also ii, 429.7

The definition is a little heavy, but we can see why. Al-Sīrāfī is feeling his waybetween two deathtraps.

The first deathtrap is that wemight be tempted to say, as Sībawayhi (Kitāb i,187.14 f.) says, that each proper name is the name of a unique individual whichit thereby distinguishes from all other individuals. The statement is temptingbut false. Any number of people can have the same name. Al-Sīrāfī illustratesthe point with a neat sentence:

marartu bi-ʿuṯmānin wa-ʿuṯmānin ʾāḫara‘I passed ʿUṯmān and another ʿUṯmān’

Šarḫ ii, 318.12

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(Wright 1967:i, 235has a charming variant:marartubi-sībawayhiwa-sībaway-hin ʾāḫara—as if there could be more than one!) Al-Sīrāfī’s formulation makesonly the weaker claim that the name can be used (bi-ḏālika l-ismi) for identi-fying an individual that it names; this leaves it open that any features of thecontext, including a pointing finger if necessary, might also help.

Al-Sīrāfī’s example also makes the point that any proper name can be con-verted into a commonnoun,which is true of all the things namedby the propername. Ibn Sīnā makes the same point: there are people called ʿAlī but also awhole tribe of ʿAlīs (Madḫal 47.10).

Al-Sīrāfī is arguably less successful in avoiding the second deathtrap. Thisis that unless the definition of proper name says something about what it isthat makes n a name of a and b but not of c or d, it risks making any personalor demonstrative pronoun a proper name. A pronoun ‘this’ can be used foridentifying any individual whatever, given suitable contexts.

Ibn Sīnā has a way of avoiding this deathtrap. Namely, for each proper namen and each individual a named by n, there is a meaning n(A) of n which isuniquely true of a. The first deathtrap tells us only that the same proper namecan have many distinct meanings, which we know happens with commonnouns. Ibn Sīnā believes that this meaning a has a canonical form dependingonly on a and not on n, and he calls it the ‘(individual) essence’ of a (Madḫal26.18–27.4). This notion leads quickly into metaphysics. But without followingit far down that path, we can see what al-Sīrāfī needs to supply to fit the bill.

Al-Sīrāfī rightly observes that a person calledMr Banana-Tree does not haveto be a banana tree (Šarḥ ii, 421.17; we note that some of his language in thissection is strongly Peripatetic, for example at ii, 429.2.) In this rather obvioussense he is right that the object named by a proper name does not have to fit adescription givenby theproper name.However, there is another sense inwhichthe proper name does have to contain a description of the object, say a. If youknow the name, then youmust be able, given the name and a suitable context,to find a; and conversely given a you should be able to supply the name. Sothere must be some kind of procedure or description—call it what you like—that links the name to a. Moreover knowledge of this procedure or descriptionmust be transferable between people, otherwise how can the speaker use thename to name a and expect the interlocutor to pick up the reference? If wedislike metaphysics we can regard Ibn Sīnā’s ‘individual essence’ as simply aname forwhatever this usable and transferable procedure is. Then Ibn Sīnā andal-Sīrāfī are both in a position to discuss this essence, and we can trace somethoughts that they both had about it.

Sībawayhi (Kitāb i, 227, Chapter 123) had suggested that one source of propernames is as fossilized descriptions. Anatural question iswhether the individual

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essence of a might be a description too, but one with the distinctive propertythat a is the unique thing fitting the description. Ibn Sīnā believes he can showthat this is never the case. For any consistent collections, not including a propername, there is always a possible further description that chops the possibilitiesinto two groups.

An example is ‘This is Socrates’; if you define it by saying ‘He is a philoso-pher’, this leaves more than one possibility open. If you say ‘The piousphilosopher’, that also leaves open possibilities. Then if you say ‘The piousphilosopher who was put to death unjustly’, this still allows more pos-sibilities. If you add ‘the son of so-and-so’, even that allows more thanone possibility, but in any case you need to identify ‘so-and-so’ just likeSocrates, and if you identify him through pointing and a proper namethen you are back where you were before without finding a descrip-tion of ‘Socrates’ (wa-miṯlu dālika hāḏā suqrāt ʾin ḥaddadtahu fa-qultaʾinnahu l-faylasūfu fa-fīhi šārikatun wa-ʾin qulta al-faylasūfu l-dayyinu fa-fīhi ʾayḍan šārikatun fa-ʾin qulta al-faylasūfu l-dayyinu l-maqtūlu ẓulmanfa-fīhi ʾayḍan šārikatun fa-ʾin qulta ʾibnu fulānin kāna fīhi iḥtimālu širkatin/šarikatin [sic! i.e. ةكرش ] ʾayḍanwa-kāna fulānunšaḫṣan taʿrīfuhuka-taʿrīfihiwa-ʾin ʿurifa dālika l-šaḫṣu bi-l-ʾišārati ʾaw bi-l-laqabi ʿāda l-ʾamru ʾilā l-ʾišārati wa-l-laqabi wa-baṭala ʾan yakūna bi-l-taḥdīdi)

Ilāhiyyāt v.8, 246.8–12

There is clear evidence that al-Sīrāfī takes at least the first steps down this road.Thus we find him considering a series of indefinite references to one and thesame individual:

marartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfinmarartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin ṣayrafiyyinmarartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin ṣayrafiyyin ʾaʿwara‘I passed a charming man.I passed a charming money-changer.I passed a charming one-eyed money-changer’.

Šarḫ ii, 313.3–25

Although the speaker has a single individual in mind, the class of individualssatisfying the description shrinks at each step. Al-Sīrāfī goes on to suggest waysin which the list could be extended: beautiful or ugly? Coming from whatcountry? Persian or Arabic? If al-Sīrāfī had thought the list reaches a naturalendpoint, he would surely have said so.

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We turn to a problem that both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā raise about propernames. The word šams ‘sun’ names a unique entity, so it should count as aproper name. Then why do we say al-šams, with the definite article al-, as ifšamswas a common noun for a class of things? Elsewhere (Giolfo and Hodges2013:95f.) we compared the answers given by al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā (and onal-Sīrāfī see also Marogy 2010:109f.). In brief, both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā claimthat there is a class of ‘suns’; but they point to quite different classes. Al-Sīrāfī points to usages like ‘The sun in Basra is hotter than the sun in Kufa’,whereas Ibn Sīnā ismore impressed by scientific statements such as ‘If a planetorbiting around a sun has a moon, then an eclipse will occur when the moonmoves between the planet and the sun’. (At Jadal 213.12 f. Ibn Sīnā also suggeststhat ‘sun’ could be defined as ‘the brightest heavenly body’, which is not aproper name. This answer is too strong since it could equally well be applied tomore or less any proper name, with a suitably elaborate definition.) The samequestion can be asked about ‘the sun’ in English.We know of no studies of thisquestion.

6 Themubtadaʾ

For the remainder of this paper we concentrate on the informational contentof a noun or noun phrase at the beginning of a sentence. These phrases play adistinctive role in Arabic, and this is imperfectly matched by a distinctive rolethat they play in Peripatetic logic.

There is a curious fact about definiteness. The Arabic name for it is maʿrifa,which literally means ‘knowledge’. But there is no mention of knowledge ineither Sībawayhi’s definition or al-Zamaḫšarī’s. The reason for the name lies ina theory that Sībawayhi and his successors developed, about a particular rolethatM-definite nouns or noun phrases play in Arabic, in connectionwith nom-inal sentences. Nominal sentences begin with nouns or noun phrases. Usuallythese sentences take one of two forms. In equational sentences the openingnoun phrase is followed by another noun phrase with an ‘is’ understood (orwritten as huwa) between the two phrases. In topicalized verbal sentences thenoun phrase is followed by a complete sentence that refers back to the nounphrase. In a nutshell, the theory says that the opening noun phrase, called ismor mubtadaʾ, serves the purpose of identifying a specific entity that satisfies it.The remaining part of the sentence, called ḫabar, serves the purpose of stat-ing some information about the specified entity. Sentences with these broadfeatures are known to linguists as ‘topic-comment’, where the mubtadaʾ is thetopic and the ḫabar is the comment.

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This theory requires that the mubtadaʾ should be P-definite. Sībawayhi evi-dently hoped that he could pin down the phrases appropriate to be amubtadaʾby reference to morphosyntactic features—hence the Equivalence Claim. Foral-Sīrāfī, counterexamples to the Equivalence Claim need investigating. Theycould be counterexamples to the whole idea of topic-comment sentences;alternatively there might be a way of rescuing the Equivalence Claim by somesuitable paraphrase or taqdīr.Wewill seewhat hedoeswith them in somecasesthat he considers.

We turn from the linguists to the logicians. In the late 3rd/9th centuryTheodorus, translator of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, briefly used ism and ḫabarto serve as the respective translations of two of Aristotle’s key logical notions:subject and predicate (Aristotle, Manṭiq 309.6). This was an unexplained aber-ration; everywhere else he gave the translations which became universallyaccepted, namelymawḍūʿ for subject andmaḥmūl for predicate. In the follow-ing century we find al-Fārābī occasionally using ḫabar for predicate (e.g., Fuṣūl70f.). Ibn Sīnā was the first logician to accept mubtadaʾ and ḫabar as alterna-tives tomawḍūʿ andmaḥmūl, as at Madḫal 15.8 and ʿIbāra 29.11.

This is not to say that Ibn Sīnā understood the word mubtadaʾ in exactlythe same way as the linguists. For example he uses mubtadaʾ for any linguisticexpression that serves as the beginning of a train of thought. This need not bea word or phrase; it can be an entire argument if the argument introduces anassumption that is new to the discussion (Najāt 102.1; Qiyās 518.12). Also themention of the notion of mubtadaʾ in Madḫal, a work which is entirely aboutmeanings in any language, indicates that Ibn Sīnā understands a mubtadaʾas a semantic or pragmatic notion, not as a morphosyntactic one. On closerinspection of the passage at Madḫal 15.8 we find that Ibn Sīnā is telling usthat the notion of a mubtadaʾ is relative, in the sense that a meaning can onlyproperly be described as a mubtadaʾ in relation to some compound meaningthat contains it. Thus a word w in a sentence s is a mubtadaʾ if and only if themeaning of w plays a certain role in the meaning of s as a whole.

The role presumably has something to dowith starting a train of thought; sothewordw for themubtadaʾ should come early in the sentence S. Ibn Sīnā oftenmakes the point that different languages do things in very different ways—hewas fluent in both Arabic and Persian—but in practice it is noticeable that inhis logical examples he virtually always puts logical subjects at the beginningsof sentences. (Contrast al-Fārābī, who insisted that the same purpose is servedby putting the logical subject at the end of the sentence, as at Qiyās 23.10–17.)The outcome is that we have a plentiful supply of example sentences where weknow what Ibn Sīnā took the mubtadaʾ to be, and in many cases his mubtadaʾfits the linguists’ morphosyntactic criteria for M-definiteness.

syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in al-sīrāfī and ibn sīnā 135

Ayoub (1981) notes that in Modern Standard Arabic, M-indefinite nounphrases are not allowed in verbal sentences in preverbal (i.e. topic) position.Can the same be said of Classical Arabic?

Al-Sīrāfī almost gives an example of such a sentence (Šarḥ ii, 219.13): rāk-ibun min banī fulān sāʾirun ‘A rider from the Tribe of Bani Such-and-Such istravelling’. He saves it from being a counterexample to Ayoub’s observation bymaking the verb a participle so that the sentence is nominal. He also observesthat the sentence would have been unacceptable if the mubtadaʾ was a singleword. Another near-miss at a counterexample is this from Ibn Sīnā, discussinga difference between kinds of things and properties of things:

‘Some human’ is never used to describe anything but humans, whereasa thing that carries the description ‘white’ is something other [than a‘white’] (wa-ʾinsānun mā lā yakūnu mawṣūfan bihi šayʾun ġayruhu minḥayṯu huwa ʾinsānun fa-yakūnu l-ʾabyaḍu lahu mawṣūfun huwa šayʾunʾāḫaru)

Jadal 220.6f.

In this example the initial noun phrase is ʾinsānunmā, which at first seems notto beM-definite by the criteria of Section 4. But in fact the noun phrase is usedas a name of itself, so it is in effect a proper name and M-definite.

But here are two full-blooded counterexamples from Ibn Sīnā; each of themhas anM-indefinite and prima facie P-indefinitemubtadaʾ followed by a verbalsentence. The first might be an example of how metaphysics chews up lan-guage: ʾabyaḍu yubayyaḍu min al-ibyiḍāḍi ‘A white thing acquires whitenessfrom the property of being white’ ( Iʿbāra 26.7 f.) (But it could be argued thatʾabyaḍu here is short for kullu ʾabyaḍa, which is P-definite.)

The second is quoting some other unnamed author, so that the sentencecould be aword-for-word translation of something fromSyriac or Greek: šayʾunmā yamšī ‘Something is walking’ ( Iʿbāra 19.11). Ibn Sīnā stresses that there is noproblem saying what would count asmaking this sentence true, so presumablyhe would count it as semantically acceptable. But he might not have countedit as good Arabic.

Ibn Sīnā’s further discussion of this last example contrasts it with the singleword yamšī used as a sentence. He argues that if the initial ya- is taken asequivalent to a personal pronoun, it would have to be ‘indeterminate’ (ġayrmuʿayyan) as a part of the word yamšī, even if the speaker has some specificentity in mind.

There is a passage of al-Sīrāfī’s Commentary which overlaps with this pas-sage of Ibn Sīnā by claiming that a personal pronoun sometimes has to be read

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as P-indefinite. Sībawayhi had said that poets can override the rule that amub-tadaʾ should be M-definite, and had quoted a line of poetry to make the point.Omitting irrelevant details, the line reads (Šarḥ i, 305.11 ff.): lā tubālī ʾa-ẓabyunkāna ʾummaka ʾam ḫimār ‘You don’t care whether a gazelle or a donkey is yourmother’. There is an embedded sentence withmubtadaʾ ‘a gazelle or a donkey’.Although al-Sīrāfī’s explanations are too brief for comfort, it seems that somescholars disputed Sībawayhi’s analysis, probably by claiming that the sentencehas a paraphrase along the lines ‘You don’t carewhether, when you see a gazelleor a donkey, it is your mother’. There are now two subclauses; ‘a gazelle or adonkey’ appears only in the first and is no longer mubtadaʾ in it, while themubtadaʾ of the second clause is ‘it’, which is a personal pronoun and hencedefinite.

But taking the indefinite as a pronoun doesn’t give the listener any moreinformation than the indefinite did. Don’t you see that if a person said ‘Ipassed a man and I talked to him’, the ‘him’ by referring back to ‘the man’doesn’t affirm any information about a specific individual of mankind(wa-ḍamīru l-nakirati lā yastafīdu minhu l-muḫāṭabu ʾakṯara min al-naki-rati ʾa-lā tarā ʾannaqāʾilan lawqāla ‘marartu bi-rajulinwa-kallamtuhu’ lamtakunal-hāʾu l-ʿāʾidatu ʾilā rajulinbi-mūjibatin li-taʿrīfi šaḫṣinbi-ʿaynihiminbayna l-rijāli)

Šarḫ i, 306.1–3

But in this passage al-Sīrāfī comes nowhere near giving a counterexample toAyoub’s observation.

7 Definiteness with Quantifiers

We remarked in Section 4 above that Sībawayhi himself identifies a group ofexceptions to the Equivalence Claim. The exceptions are the words miṯluka,šibhuka and naḥwaka; these all mean ‘like you’ and consist of a word in ʾiḍāfato the personal pronoun -ka. By the fifth and second criteria for definitenessin Section 4, all of them are M-definite. But Sībawayhi says (Kitāb i, 179.4–6,cf. i, 191.18) that these three words are nakira, i.e. indefinite. His point is clear;many things can be ‘like you’, so none of these three words is much use foridentifying an individual. Thus thesewords areM-definite but P-indefinite, andthis makes them exceptions to the Equivalence Claim. In the same contextSībawayhi mentions ġayruka ‘other than you’, which is another obvious excep-tion.

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If any of these words occurred as a mubtadaʾ, there would be a conflictwith the informational role of mubtadaʾ as we sketched it in Section 6 above.But in fact these words are extremely unlikely to be found as first word of asentence. Sībawayhi quotes at Kitāb i, 179.6–8 an observation of Yūnus, to theeffect that one of these words is more likely to be definite if it occurs earlier inthe sentence. But the earliest that Yūnus manages to put it is as second wordin hāḏā miṯluka muqbilan ‘This person who is like you is approaching’, wherethe opening phrase is P-definite, but the main credit for that should go to themubhamword hāḏā.

What Sībawayhi seems to have overlooked is that his small class of excep-tions is in fact part of a much larger class of exceptions, some of which dooccur in mubtadaʾ position. This raises significant problems about cases of P-indefinite mubtadaʾ. As we will see below, al-Mubarrad already realized thatSībawayhi’s class of exceptions should be extended, and later linguists includ-ing al-Sīrāfī followed him in this. But independent of these researches, thelogicians were deploying hundreds of examples of this larger class of excep-tions, taken inmubtadaʾ position.

We must indicate what is the larger class of exceptions that Sībawayhimissed.

Consider two nouns in ʾiḍāfa: A-of-B. Two cases can arise. The first is thateverything that fits the description A-of-B fits the description a, so that theeffect of b is a restriction (taqyīd) of a. In this case we call a the ‘head noun’of the ʾiḍāfa and b the ‘complement’. This is the commonest case, though it waslargely ignored by logicians until modern times. Ibn Sīnā does call attentionto two ʾiḍāfa structures of this type (ʿIbāra 12.14): rāʿī l-šāti wa-rāmī l-ḥiğārati‘herder of (the) sheep and thrower of (the) stones’. These phrases will bepragmatically definite if specific sheep or stones are intended.

The second case is that a is not a descriptive word, so that the questionwhether a thing fits the description a doesn’t arise. In this case we call bthe ‘head noun’ and a the ‘specifier’. Sībawayhi’s examples miṯluka, šibhuka,naḥwaka, ġayruka all fall under this second case, with head noun -ka. Al-Sīrāfīgives an example that is M-definite (Šarḥ ii, 315.17): niṣfu l-nahāri ‘halfwaythrough the day’.

We can distinguish these two cases as the ‘complement case’ and the ‘speci-fier case’.

The terminology of ‘head noun’, ‘specifier’ and ‘complement’ comes fromX-bar theory, for example Jackendoff (1977). In that theory, typical examplesof noun phrase specifiers are articles and demonstrative pronouns like ‘the’and ‘this’, and quantifying expressions like ‘every’, ‘a few’, ‘a gallon of’, ‘a dozen’,‘many’. Jackendoff also lists ‘no’,whichbesidesbeing aquantifier of sorts, comesclose to matching the Arabic ġayr in ʾiḍāfa.

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In the complement case it makes sense to treat P-definiteness as a feature ofthe first noun,which is essentiallywhat the EquivalenceClaimdoes. But for thespecifier case there is no reason to expect the morphosyntactic properties ofthe first noun to have any direct relationshipwith the satisfiability of thewholephrase. We have to look at the meaning of the specifier word to see whether ittogether with the head noun pins down a specific individual. So P-definitenessis likely to be the exception in the specifier case.

Now recall from Section 4 that Ibn Sīnā in his logic studied sentences con-sisting of a subject and a predicate. The main source of these was the class ofsentences used by Aristotle in his categorical logic, converted from Greek intoArabic. In his book ʿIbāra Ibn Sīnā introduces typical examples of the fourmainsentence forms of categorical logic:

(a) Every person is an animal.kullu ʾinsānin ḥayawānun

ʿIbāra 45.14

(e) No person is a stone.laysa wa-lā wāḥida min al-nāsi bi-hajarin

ʿIbāra 46.3 f.

(i) Some person is a writer.baʿḍu l-nāsi kātibun

ʿIbāra 47.16

(o) Not every person is a writer.laysa kullu l-nāsi bi-kātibin

ʿIbāra 47.16

He also gives some paraphrases of these forms, remarking that “for the truthabout these phrases you should consult the linguistic experts” (ʿalā ʾanna taḥ-qīqa l-qawli fī hāḏā ʾilā ʾaṣḥābi ṣināʿati l-luġati, ʿIbāra 46.9).

The labels (a), (e), (i) and (o) for these forms are a later Medieval Latinconvention, based on taking vowels from the Latin words AffIrmo and nEgO.Ibn Sīnā describes the forms (a) and (e) as ‘universal’ (kullī), or as having‘generality’ (ʿumūm) attached; while (i) and (o) are ‘existential’ ( juzʾī), andresult from attaching ‘existentiality’ ( juzʾiyyatu).

At ʿIbāra 54.11 Ibn Sīnā lists the expressions kullu, lā šayʾa, baʿḍu and lā kullu,corresponding to these four forms, under the name lafẓat al-taqdīr. Elsewherehe also calls these expressions ḥaṣr or sūr. (Or at least he applies these names

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to kullu and baʿḍu; we are not sure whether he includes the negation.) Leavingaside the negatives, both kullu and baʿḍu are expressions that sit as muḍāf onnouns or noun phrases. In Ibn Sīnā’s sample sentence forms above, baʿḍu ismuḍāf to the M-definite al-nās, so it is M-definite. Kullu is muḍāf to ʾinsanin,which is M-indefinite; but note that kullu ʾinsanin could be paraphrased askullu al-nās, and arguably the two occurrences of kullu should be semanticallyequivalent. In all these cases the opening noun phrase is a specifier case ofʾiḍāfa.

Besides the four main sentence forms above, categorical logic has two fur-ther kinds of form, known as ‘unquantified’ (muhmal) and ‘singular’ (maḫṣūṣ).Examples of ‘singular’ are

hāḏihi l-yadu hiya baʿḍu al-badani‘This hand is part of the body’

ʿIbāra 54.14–55.1

hāḏā šayʾun ḏātī‘This is something essential [i.e. belonging to an essence]’

ʿIbāra 130.30

zaydun huwa ʾabū ʿabdi llāhi‘Zayd is the servant of ʿAbdallāh’

Qiyās 109.13

Ibn Sīnā expresses some doubts about whether the category of ‘unquantified’really can be carried over from Greek to Arabic, but he gives some tentativeexamples, including al-ʾinsānu kātibun ‘[The?] man is a writer’ (ʿIbāra 50.11).

Between them his sentence forms have given us all of Sībawayhi’s five typesof definite except for personal pronouns. All these examples are nominal sen-tences, and Ibn Sīnā himself regards the first and second noun phrases asmub-tadaʾ and ḫabar respectively. In short, the sentences of Ibn Sīnā’s categoricallogic provide us with a good crop of mubtadaʾ/ḫabar sentences, in many caseswith an M-definitemubtadaʾ.

Which of these logical mubtadaʾ phrases can be counted as P-definite?Singular sentences can begin with a proper name; in fact it seems that singularsentences are the only one of Ibn Sīnā’s forms where the initial noun phrasehas any serious chance of specifying an individual.

140 giolfo and hodges

‘Definiteness’ in the Medieval Arabic context only captures half of whatlinguists commonly regard as definite. What it misses is plural noun phrasesbeginning with a definite article or a universal quantifier; see for example(Lyons 1999:15–33) for criteria of definiteness that lead to the inclusion ofthese plural phrases. On this broader account, the (a) sentences normally havea definite mubtadaʾ. The (e) and (o) sentences complicate matters by beingnegated.

Themain challenge for the EquivalenceClaim restswith the (i) sentences. Inmany cases these open with an M-definite noun phrase of specifier type thatcomes nowhere near specifying any individual. Given the informational roleof the mubtadaʾ, we should expect to find Arabic writers being uncomfortablewith these (i) sentences, or even avoiding them altogether.

For example, are there any examples of (i) sentences in the Qurʾān?We didfind just one example, at Sūratu l-ḥujurāt q. 49/12: ʾinna baʿḍa l-ẓanni ʾiṯmun‘Suspicion is in some cases a sin’.

We note that the translation, from a standardmodern edition of the Qurʾān,replaces the indefinite ‘some suspicion’ by the definite ‘suspicion’, moving theindefinite ‘some’ to later in the sentence. This kind of neutralization of theindefiniteness is typical of what we find in both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā. Our finalsection will illustrate this.

8 Neutralising the Indefiniteness in Specifier ʾiḍāfas

IbnSīnā andal-Sīrāfī bothhave adjustments that allowus to see specifier ʾiḍāfasas P-definite.

Ibn Sīnā does not explain his approach, but it is clear enough fromhis exam-ples. When he is being careful he sticks to the standard categorical sentenceforms, even when they yield what is surely barbaric Arabic:

baʿḍu l-nāsi ḥayawānunQiyās 120.6

baʿḍu l-ʾabyaḍi ṯaljunQiyās 501.8

But when he is in a less formalmood he lapses into paraphrases of these forms,for example

syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in al-sīrāfī and ibn sīnā 141

al-mutaḥarrikātu baʿḍuhā nāsun‘Some mobile things are people’

Qiyās 209.2

al-ʿilmumawjūdun fī kulli kayfiyyatin‘There is knowledge about every quality’

Qiyās 483.5

min al-ḥayawāni mā huwa sābiḥun‘Some animals swim’

Burhān 140.14

(He explicitly says that the second sentence is to be read as existentially quan-tified, i.e. as an (i) sentence.)What he is doing in these paraphrases is to recastthe sentence form so that the topic is what was the head noun in the ʾiḍāfa.The ḫabar is, or is a paraphrase of, the original ḫabar and the original specifierof the ʾiḍāfa (i.e. baʿḍ in these examples). The new topic is a noun with defi-nite article, which can be read as naming a class or genus; the remainder of thesentence then gives information about that class.

In short, Ibn Sīnā’s paraphrases turn the standard sentence forms into topic-comment sentences with a genuinely P-definite topic, but it is not the topicof the original sentence. It seems that this approach should work with greatgenerality. Hemakes no claim that the paraphrased form is anymore basic thanthe original standard form.

We turn to al-Sīrāfī. His commentary on Sībawayhi’s Chapter 101 cites theremark of ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad that

Ġayr does not becomedefinite evenwhen it is put in ʾiḍāfawith a definite,becausewhen you say ‘I passed someone other than you’, everything apartfrom the interlocutor is ‘other than him’, and then putting it in ʾiḍāfato a definite thing does not force it to change to something differentfrom what it is (ʾanna ġayra wa-ʾin ʾuḍīfa ʾilā maʿrifatin lā yataʿarrafuli-ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta marartu bi-ġayrika wa-kullu mā laysa bi-l-muḫātabifa-huwa ġayruhu, fa-ʾiḍāfatuhu ʾilā l-maʿrifati lam tūjib taġyīra šayʾin bi-ʿaynihi)

Šarḫ ii, 320.6 f.

142 giolfo and hodges

Al-Sīrāfī’s response is explicitly the same as what we found implicitly in IbnSīnā: namely that there is a way of paraphrasing ġayruka into a definite phrase.

‘Other than’ has an aspect in which it is definite. Namely, it is some-times used in the sense of ‘what is different’. For example one says […]‘The generous is other than the miser’, meaning that it is what is dif-ferent from it. Thus one can separate off the things that are like [themiser] from the other things that are different from it, […] and then thethings that are different from it are said to be [other than it] (ʾinna li-ġayrin wajhan yataʿarrafu fīhi wa-ḏālika ʾannahā qad tustaʿmalu fī maʿnāl-muḫālifi ka-qawlihim: […] al-jawādu ġayru al-baḫīli ʾay al-muḫālifu lahuwa-qad yuḥṣaru ʾašyāʾumutašābihatun, […]wa-yuqālu li-l-muḫālifati lahāʾinnahā ġayruhā)

Šarḫ ii, 320.10f.

Morepreciselyal-muḫalifu li-l-baḫīli is anM-definitephrase, and it canbe takenas P-definite, referring collectively to the things that are not miserly.

Al-Sīrāfī’s paraphraseworkswith ‘other than’, because the class of things thatare ‘other than’ miserly is determinate, at least if the class of miserly thingsis determinate. But this is clearly not true for all specifiers. For example ifa person said ‘I passed half the family of Zayd’, we cannot straightforwardlyparaphrase this by referring to ‘the half of the family of Zayd’, since therewill beseveral different halves. (Unstraightforwardly we can, by referring to the classof halves of the family of Zayd. Butwe knowof no linguistic applications of thisfact.)

But al-Sīrāfī does not leave the matter there. In answer to further remarks ofal-Mubarrad suggesting that ‘half of x’ behaves like ‘all of x’ and ‘some of x’, al-Sīrāfī points out that we can and do speak of ‘the half that …’; for example wecan talk of ‘the half of the goods consisting of long-necked bottles’. The sameapplies to ‘third’, ‘quarter’, etc. But there is no such usage with ‘all’ and ‘some’(laysa hāḏā fī kull wa-lā fī baʿḍ, Šarḫ ii, 344.7–9).

Probably Ibn Sīnā would accept al-Sīrāfī’s paraphrases. However, he wouldbe bound to point out, in connection with ‘half ’ and ‘some’, that at least logi-cians say ‘the some’. For example at Qiyās 118.7 he has an argument beginningwith the premise ‘Some b is an a’:

We argue by ecthesis, by specifying the some b which is an a to be [theclass]d (yatabayyanubi-l-iftirāḍi bi-ʾan yuʿayyana l-baʿḍu llaḏī huwab,wa-huwa a fa-li-yakun ḏālika d)

syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in al-sīrāfī and ibn sīnā 143

(Similarly Ibn Sīnā, Qiyās 40.5, 47.5, 48.6, 76.13 etc. etc.) But this seems to bea technical usage peculiar to logic.

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Aristotle, Manṭiq = Aristotle, al-Naṣṣ al-kāmil li-Manṭiq Arisṭū. Ed. by F. Jabre. 2 vols.Beirut: Dār al-Fikr al-Lubnānī, 1999.

Fārābī, ʾAlfāẓ = ʾAbū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-ʾalfāẓ al-mustaʿmala fī l-manṭiq. Ed. by Muhṣin Mahdī. Beirut: Dār al-Mašriq, 1968.

Fārābī, Fuṣūl = ʾAbūNaṣrMuḥammad ibnMuḥammad al-Fārābī, al-Fuṣūl al-ḫamsa. Ed.by R. al-ʿAjam, al-Manṭiq ʿinda l-Fārābī, i, 63–73. Beirut: Dār al-Mašriq, 1985.

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Fārābī, ʿIbāra = ʾAbū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, Commentary onAristotle’s De Interpretatione. Ed. byWilliamKutsch and StanleyMarrow. Beirut: Dāral-Mašriq, 1986.

Fārābī, Jadal = ʾAbū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-jadal. Ed. byR. al-ʿAjam, al-Manṭiq ʿinda l-Fārābī, iii, 13–107. Beirut: Dār al-Mašriq, 1986.

Fārābī, Qiyās = ʾAbū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-qiyās. Ed. byR. al-ʿAjam, al-Manṭiq ʿinda l-Fārābī, ii, 11–64. Beirut: Dār al-Mašriq, 1986.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Manṭiq = ʾAbū Muḥammad (ʾAbū ʿAmr) ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ,al-Manṭiq. Ed. by Muḥammad Taqī Dānešpažūh. Tehran: Iranian Institute of Phi-losophy, 1978.

Ibn al-Sikkit, Manṭiq = Ibn al-Sikkit, ʾIṣlāḥ al-manṭiq. Ed. by ʾAḥmad M. Šākir and ʿAbdal-SalāmMuḥammad Hārūn. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1956.

Ibn Sīnā, Najāt = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-najāt. Ed. byMuḥammad Taqī Dānešpažūh. Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1945.

Ibn Sīnā, Madḫal = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Madḫal. Ed.by Georges C. Anawati and IbrahimMadkour. Cairo, 1952.

Ibn Sīnā, Maqūlāt = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Maqūlāt. Ed.by Georges C. Anawati and IbrahimMadkour. Cairo, 1959.

Ibn Sīnā, ʿIbāra = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-ʿIbāra. Ed. byMohammed al-Khodeiri and IbrahimMadkour. Cairo, 1970.

144 giolfo and hodges

Ibn Sīnā, Qiyās = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Qiyās. Ed. byS. Zayed and IbrahimMadkour. Cairo, 1964.

Ibn Sīnā, Burhān = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Burhān. Ed. byA.E. Afifi and IbrahimMadkour. Cairo, 1955.

Ibn Sīnā, Jadal = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Jadal. Ed. byʾAḥmad Fuʾād al-ʾAhwānī. Cairo, 1965.

Ibn Sīnā, Safsaṭa = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Safsaṭa. Ed. byʾAḥmad Fuʾād al-ʾAhwānī et al. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʾAmīriyya, 1958.

Ibn Sīnā, ʾIlāhiyyāt = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-ʾIlāhiyyāt. Ed. by S.Dunya,G. Anawati and S. Zayed. Cairo:Wizārat al-Ṯaqāfawa-l-ʾIršād al-Qawmī, 1960.

Ibn Sīnā, Mašriqiyyūn = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, Manṭiq al-mašriqiy-yīn. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1910.

Rāzī, Mulaḫḫaṣ = Faḫr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Rāzī, Manṭiq al-mulaḫḫas. Ed.by A. Qarāmalekī and A. ʾAsġarīnežād. Tehran: Dānešgah ʾImām Ṣadīq, 2002.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. byHartwig Derenbourg, Le Livre de Sībawayhi. (Repr., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1970.)

Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. byʾAḥmad Ḥasan Mahdalī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2012.

Sīrāfī, Šarḥ (ʿAtif) = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi.Ms. Mustafa ʿAtif 2548.

Tawḥīdī, Muqābasāt = ʾAbū Ḥayyān ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Tawḥīdī, al-Muqābasāt. Ed.by Ḥasan al-Sandūbī. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Raḥmāniyya, 1929.

Zamaḫšarī, ʾUnmūḏaj = ʾAbū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamaḫšarī, al-ʾUnmūḏaj.Ed. and transl. byDjamel EddineKouloughli, Le résuméde lagrammairearabe. Paris:Ecole Normale Supérieure, 2007.

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Philosophy 26.45–71.Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali. 1983. Logique aristotélicienne et grammaire arabe: Etude et

documents. Paris: Vrin.

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Giolfo, Manuela E.B. and Wilfrid Hodges. 2013. “Syntax and meaning in Sirafi and IbnSīnā”. Romano-Arabica 8.81–97.

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_008

Early Pedagogical Grammars of Arabic

Almog Kasher

1 Introduction

In his review article, “Writing the history of Arabic grammar”, Carter (1994:390)criticizes comparisons “drawn between grammarians who are literally incom-parable, e.g. Sībawayhi and Luġda (a minor pedagogue who died in 913) […]”.The following is an attempt to elaborate on this point, and to demonstrate whytraits found in a corpus of early pedagogical grammars (including Luġda’s) can-not simply be incorporated in discussions of grammatical theories.1 I will showhowwecannevertheless benefit from these pedagogical grammars in our studyof the early history of Arabic grammatical tradition. To this end, I will con-centrate on two terms found in some of the extant works of this kind. A morecomprehensive study of the characteristics of early pedagogical grammars willbe conducted in the near future.

It should be stated from the outset that some grammarians explicitly statethat discrepancies exist between theoretical and pedagogical grammar. Forexample, in his Qurʾānic commentary al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822) speaks twice ofexplanations fit for “the novice [in instruction]” (al-mubtadiʾ [li-l-taʿlīm]).2 Ina similar vein, one of the explanations offered by al-Zajjājī (d. ca. 338/950)for the naṣb of the (originally second, but now the only) object of originallyditransitive verbs in the passive voice, e.g. ʾuʿṭiya zaydun dirhaman ‘Zayd wasgiven a dirham’, is that it is ḫabar mā lam yusamma fāʿiluhu.3 But this term,he says, is merely meant to “facilitate [it] for the learner/novice” (taqrīb ʿalā l-mutaʿallim/al-mubtadiʾ), and does not belong to the parlance of the Baṣrans.4The expression al-taqrīb ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ is also used by al-Zajjājī to charac-

1 On pedagogical grammar, see Carter (1990:123–126, 131); Baalbaki (2005). On the distinctionbetween theoretical and pedagogical grammars, see Ryding (2013:207).

2 See Kinberg (1996:53). See also Carter (1990:124).3 For discussion of this term, see Vidro and Kasher (2014:213, 223).4 Zajjājī, Jumal 78. One should not hasten to infer from this statement that this is a Kūfan term.

In fact, an anonymous Kūfan grammarian (on whom see below) seems to have used the termfiʿl mā lam yusamma fāʿiluhu in this sense (see the discussion in Vidro and Kasher 2014:213,223).

early pedagogical grammars of arabic 147

terize al-ʾAḫfaš’ (d. 215/830) and al-Mubarrad’s (d. 285/898) definitions of thepart of speech ism.5

The two technical terms Iwill discuss here are ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūf al-rafʿ.First, some remarks are in order regarding the use of the term ḥarf in earlygrammatical writings. There is an apparently never-ending debate over theterm ḥarf in the Kitāb Sībawayhi. In broad terms, the conundrum is whetherthe term ḥarf denotes ‘particle’ in the Kitāb, or refers to this part of speechonly occasionally, while its denotation is ‘word’ or something similar.6 My ownpreference is for the latter view, but even scholars adhering to the former admitthat the term ḥarf did indeed frequently denote ‘word’ or something similar inthe Kitāb,7 a fact which Medieval grammarians were also well aware of, as weshall see presently.8 It is probably Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928) who first refrainedfrom using ḥarf in the more general sense and restricted it to ‘particle’. Theterm ḥarf almost never conveys the general sense of ‘word’ in his writings,i.e. it almost never refers to nouns or verbs. However, it did not cease to beused in the general sense even after Ibn al-Sarrāj.9 The most celebrated caseof such usage is probably the title of the chapter on kāna and its ‘sisters’ in al-Zajjājī’s al-Jumal fī l-naḥw, where these verbs are referred to as ḥurūf.10 Thischapter drewmuch attention from later commentators, generating interestingdiscussions about particle-like features of these verbs.11 Another approachto defending al-Zajjājī was based upon the grammarians’—and particularlySībawayhi’s—use of ḥarf in the sense of ‘word’.12 It should be kept in mindthat this usage of the term ḥarf was by no means an isolated case in thatperiod.

The following two sections revolve around the terms ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūfal-rafʿ (and similar expressions) in a corpus of early pedagogical grammars:Kitāb al-naḥw by Luġda, Kitāb al-Muwaffaqī fī l-naḥw by Ibn Kaysān (d. 299/912

5 ʾĪḍāḥ 49, 51; also 44, 47 (Versteegh 1995:25, 44, 50, 51).6 For overviews of the different opinions, see Talmon (1984:49ff.); Versteegh (1995:68–70).

See also Levin (2000); Talmon (2003:213 ff.).7 See Fischer (1989:136–137, 138–139); Owens (1990:245–248); Levin (2000:25).8 See also Sīrāfī, Šarḥ i, 412. Cf. Weiß (1910:375).9 On the mention of nouns and verbs in the ḥurūf literature, see Baalbaki (2014:214).10 Zajjājī, Jumal 41 ff. That these are indeed verbs is stated ibid., 103.11 Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 121; Baṭalyūsī, Ḥulal 157–159; Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ, Basīṭ ii, 661 ff.; ʿAlawī,

Minhāj i, 307f. See Peled (2009:193ff., esp. 200–202).12 Baṭalyūsī, Ḥulal 159–160; Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ i, 415; Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ, Basīṭ ii, 661; ʿAlawī, Minhāj

i, 308.

148 kasher

or 320/932),13 al-Jumal fī l-naḥw by al-Zajjājī, Kitāb al-tuffāḥa fī l-naḥw by theEgyptian al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950) and Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ by the Andalusian al-Zubaydī (d. 379/989).14 Another itemwhich belongs to this corpus is an anony-mous treatise (survived in Hebrew characters) that is replete with Kūfan char-acteristics and whose author—as can be inferred—affiliates himself with theKūfans; this provides us with a terminus ante quem, namely the very beginningof the 5th/11th century, when the last known ‘Kūfan’ grammarian is likely tohave died.15 Palaeographic evidence suggests that the grammar was translit-erated into Hebrew characters at the end of the 5th/11th century.16 The useof these terms in the grammars under discussion here stands in contradis-tinction to what I shall refer to as the ‘mainstream’ of the Arabic grammat-ical tradition, by which are mainly intended the writings of Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) and Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002).17I will demonstrate that the use of these terms by the former group reflectsa pedagogical tradition, which has roots in earlier times. The next sectionwill discuss several undatable treatises in which these terms are also used;the question of their dating will be revisited in light of the findings of thisstudy.

2 The ḥurūf al-jarr

In light of the previous discussion of the term ḥarf, it is not surprising that theterm ḥurūf al-jarr (or ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ18 or similar expressions) was not always

13 This grammarian is said to have mixed the two schools. See Troupeau (1962:399); Sezgin(1984:158) “jedoch neigte er etwas mehr den Basrensern zu”; Carter (2000:265).

14 “Umayyad al-Andalus displays an aggressive intellectual emulation of the Arab East …”(Carter 2011:31). There is thus no need to assume that “the tradition of u-inf [sc. rafʿ]governors continued in isolated cases and areas; it is found in the Andalusian Zubaydi”(Owens 1990:200).

15 See Sezgin (1984:150). See also Carter (2000:265).16 On this treatise, see Vidro and Kasher (2014).17 Apart from the celebrated al-Lumaʿ fī l-naḥwwhich is used for the present study, another

pedagogical treatise, entitled ʿUqūd al-lumaʿ fī l-naḥw, is ascribed to Ibn Jinnī; the latterwill not be incorporated in the following discussion, as its different versions and even itsvery attribution to Ibn Jinnī need further study, which I intend to undertake in the nearfuture.

18 Although the term ḫafḍ is frequently said to be the Kūfan equivalent of the Baṣran termjarr, the former is ubiquitous inmainstream grammars. See the discussion and referencesin Vidro and Kasher (2014:218 f.).

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restricted to particles. In fact, some grammarians put forward quite heteroge-neous lists of operators of the jarr under the class ḥurūf al-jarr. This practice isin sharp contrast to the strict differentiation inmainstreamgrammars betweenword classes. To take one representative example from amainstream pedagog-ical grammar, Ibn al-Sarrāj’s al-Mūjaz fī l-naḥw. In this treatise, nouns in jarrare divided into those operated on by a preposition (ḥarf jarr, i.e. a particleassigning the jarr) vs. those taking jarr by dint of annexation of a noun tothem.19

In contrast, under the heading Bāb ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ in his al-Tuffāḥa fī l-naḥw,al-Naḥḥās lists both particles, e.g. min ‘from’ and ʾilā ‘towards’, and nouns ofseveral classes, e.g. ḫalfa ‘behind’, kull ‘all’, wayl ‘woe (to)’, siwā ‘other than’and subḥāna ‘glory (to)’. This chapter ends with a mention of annexations,e.g. ṯawbu ʾabīka ‘your father’s garment’. It is inferred that, unlike the nounsin the list above, these are nouns which are not obligatorily, or characteris-tically, annexed.20 Similar heterogeneous lists are found in Luġda’s grammarunder the title Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tajurru mā baʿdahā,21 and in the anonymousKūfan grammar under ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ.22 Moreover, one of the additional pas-sages found in one of the fragments of the latter text is a short list of this sort(maybeonly thebeginning of a longer one), copied fromadifferent anonymouswork, entitled al-Ḥurūf allatī taḫfiḍu mā baʿdahā.23

To what extent this practice was widespread can be inferred from the criti-cism leveled at it by Ibn al-Sarrāj. Right after he claims that what the Baṣranscall ẓarf is termed ṣifa by al-Kisāʾī andmaḥall by al-Farrāʾ, he says that “they”—note: in the plural, not the dual—mix nouns with particles in lists of ḥurūfal-ḫafḍ, and he illustrates his point with a long list of this sort.24 Although itis rather tempting to assume that he refers here exclusively to the Kūfans,25

19 Ibn al-Sarrāj, Mūjaz 55–61. See also Sībawayhi, Kitāb ch. 100, i, 177 f. Derenbourg/i, 419–421Hārūn; Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab iv, 136ff.; Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 408ff.; Fārisī, ʾĪḍāḥ 199ff.; IbnJinnī, Lumaʿ 29ff. Sometimes, ẓurūf, such as ḫalfa ‘behind’, are included in the category ofnouns, but sometimes, they constitute an independent class.

20 Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 17 f. (see Omar 1990:244).21 Luġda, Naḥw 225f. (see Owens 1989:228, n. 10). Annexation is discussed in the following

chapter (Luġda, Naḥw 226). We shall see below that in a previous chapter Luġda infact explains the reason for the use of the term ḥurūf for a group comprising nouns aswell.

22 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:190f., 211–213).23 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:177).24 Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 204f.25 Cf. Levin (1987:354); Owens (1989:228, n. 10).

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there is no textual evidence to support this.26 The term ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ, in fact, isalmost completely absent from extant Kūfan writings.27

So far we have seen two ways of handling the various operators of the jarr:strict differentiation between ḥurūf al-jarr, i.e. particles (prepositions), andnouns vs. presentation of heterogeneous lists of operators, all subsumed underḥurūf al-jarr (or similar expressions). Now, two pedagogical grammars, IbnKaysān’s and al-Zajjājī’s, use the term ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ for the entire class, whiledifferentiating between subclasses.28 Thus, in face of the discrepancy betweentheory, i.e. differentiation between parts of speech, and what appears to be apedagogical tradition of presenting lists under the title ḥurūf al-jarr, these twogrammarians hold the stick at both ends.

3 The ḥurūf al-rafʿ

As already shown by Peled, ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾwas a widespread term for a class ofparticles, including ʾinnamā ‘[approx.] only’ and lākin ‘but’, which do not assigncase/mood to any constituent in the sentences they introduce.29 However,Peled also notes the rare term ḥurūf al-rafʿ.30 This and similar expressions,whichwill be dealtwith below, are found in several pedagogical grammarswitha wider extension than that of ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ.31 With the terms ḥurūf al-naṣb,ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūf al-jazm in mind, one might have expected that ḥurūf

26 In fact, the opposite conclusion, namely, that he is referring to grammarians in general,receives corroboration from a statement, admittedly very laconic, made by al-Mubarrad(Muqtaḍab iv, 136) on this issue, where he speaks of al-naḥwiyyūna.

27 But see nonetheless Farrāʾ, Maʿānī ii, 292 (ḥarf ḫāfiḍ); Ṯaʿlab, Faṣīḥ 26f. Note that Kūfangrammarians use the term ṣifa for both prepositions and ẓurūf (for discussion and refer-ences, see Vidro and Kasher 2014:229f.).

28 Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī 110 f.; Zajjājī, Jumal 60–65. Regarding the latter, Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ(Basīṭ ii, 837) explains that the use of the term ḥurūf in the sense of kalim, as done here,was common among grammarians, as long as the context rendered it clear that it is thissense which is intended. Al-Zubaydī uses the term ʾadawāt for the entire class, albeit notaccording to all the manuscripts of his book (Wāḍiḥ 59–62); elsewhere in this book (ibid.,311 f.) nouns such as dūna ‘below’ are subsumed under ḥurūf.

29 See Peled (1992:159ff.). He emphasizes that this ibtidāʾ is not identical to the operatornamed ibtidāʾ, but rather it is equivalent towhat in later times is commonly termed istiʾnāf.

30 Peled (1992:164ff.). See also Owens (1990:184, 188, 193).31 The term ḥurūf al-rafʿ is also found at least once outside pedagogical grammars, in Fārisī,

Ḥujja iv, 365, but it is unclear to which words this term refers here.

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al-rafʿ would refer to operators of rafʿ,32 but surprisingly, this is not the case.A nice illustration is found in al-Naḥḥās’ grammar: the list under the title Bābḥurūf al-rafʿ contains elements from all three parts of speech (i.e., nouns, verbsand particles), such as ʾinnamā, lākin, lawlā ‘if it were not for’, hal [interrogativeparticle], ʿasā ‘maybe’, niʿma ‘how good’, biʾsa ‘howbad’, ʾayna ‘where’, hāḏā ‘this’and huwa ‘he’.33 However, he immediately explains that the term ḥurūf al-rafʿmerely means that these words are mostly followed by a marfūʿ. For instance,the rafʿ of zaydun in ʾinnamāzaydunqāʾimun ‘[approx.] Zayd is only standing’ isassigned by the ibtidāʾ.34 Now, there is a striking resemblance between this andthe equivalent chapter of the anonymous Kūfan grammar mentioned above,which opens with the words Bāb al-rafʿ, wa-ḥurūfuhu …, also followed by alist, albeit a shorter one, and the very same explanation of the term. The firstexample also begins with ʾinnamā, viz.ʾinnamā ʿabdullāhi muḥsinun ‘[approx.]Abdallah is only a good-doer’. Yet, as expected from a Kūfan grammar, the rafʿof ʿabdullāhi is ascribed to muḥsinun and vice versa.35 Hence, the term ḥurūfal-rafʿ is neutral with respect to grammatical theory. Since the demonstratives,lawlā, kam ‘how many’36 and, probably, ḥabbaḏā ‘how lovely’ are said in thischapter to assign the rafʿ, it may be inferred that the other members of the listare not operators of the rafʿ.37 To be sure, the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ is lacking fromthe other extant Kūfan writings, as far as I know.38

32 See Peled (1992:159ff.).33 Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 21.34 Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 21. Note that not all the items on this list are sentence-introducers, for

it includes also demonstratives and personal pronouns. Al-Naḥḥās does not present anyexamples of the latter, butwherever their use is illustrated in other grammars, they occupythe subject position. See the discussion below.

35 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:191 f., 213, 220–224). On this ‘Kūfan’ concept (often termedtarāfuʿ), see Vidro and Kasher (2014:220–224), and the references therein.

36 E.g. kam māluka ‘how many [dirhams etc.] is your property?’. On this construction see,e.g., Ibn al-Sarrāj (ʾUṣūl i, 327). Al-Naḥḥas (Tuffāḥa 21) restricts its inclusion in the list tocases where it is followed by a definite noun.

37 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:213, 220–224). It is stated that the second constituent afterʾayna and kayfa ‘how’ may take either the rafʿ or the naṣb, e.g. ʾayna ʾaḫūka jālisun ‘whereis your brother sitting?’ or ʾayna ʾaḫūka jālisan ‘where is your brother, sitting?’ (cf. Peled1992:166f.). This grammarian does not parse the latter construction, but elsewhere (seeVidro and Kasher 2014:191), the rafʿ in the construction ʿinda + jarr + rafʿ is explained asbi-l-ṣifa, which is in line with what is regarded as the ‘Kūfan’ view (see the discussion andreferences in Vidro and Kasher 2014:220–224).

38 No title in the list of chapters of al-Farrāʾ’s lost Kitāb al-ḥudūd (see Sezgin 1984:132)

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The term is also found at the end of one of the headings in al-Zajjājī’s Jumal:Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī yartafiʿu mā baʿdahā bi-l-ibtidāʾ wa-l-ḫabar wa-tusammāḥurūf al-rafʿ.39 This is not the only version of this heading; in some versions,the words wa-l-ḫabar are not found, but more importantly, some read tarfaʿu(also: yurfaʿu) instead of yartafiʿu.40 Obviously, it was the version tarfaʿuwhichdrew much attention, for it appears to contradict the explanation of the rafʿas due to the ibtidāʾ. Several explanations were offered, most commonly thatthe verb should not be analyzed as a 3rd person feminine singular, its subjectreferring to the ḥurūf in question, but as a 2nd person masculine singular, itssubject referring to the addressee.41 Since the list is not restricted to particlessuch as ʾinnamā and hal, but also includes, for instance, kayfa and ʾayna, theterm ḥurūf also drew some attention.42 Now expressions introduced by thewords al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu/turfaʿu … were in circulation in early grammars,where the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ itself is not found. Thus, one of the headings inLuġda’s grammar reads Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu/turfaʿu baʿdahā l-ʾasmāʾ bi-l-ibtidāʾ.43 The explanation of the rafʿ as due to the ibtidāʾ is repeated later inthe chapter;44 yet here too it is uncertain how one should read and interpretthe verb.45 Interestingly, Luġda immediately concedes that these are, in fact,ḥurūf, ʾasmāʾ and ẓurūf ; and the use of the term ḥurūf for all three classes isexplained as being easier for the learner (li-takūna ʾahwan ʿalā l-mutaʿallim).One may infer from his wording that Luġda is following a common prac-tice.

corresponds to the class of ḥurūf al-rafʿ, let alone incorporates this term. One occurrenceof ḥurūf al-istiʾnāf was detected in Farrāʾ, Maʿānī i, 476.

39 Zajjājī, Jumal 302. This issue is discussed in Peled (1992:164ff.).40 See Zajjājī, Jumal 302, n. 1; Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 600–602; Baṭalyūsī, Ḥulal 333; Ibn Ḫarūf,

Šarḥ 63; Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ ii, 565; ʿAlawī, Minhāj ii, 294; Ibn Hišām, Šarḥ 368. See Peled(1992:165).

41 See Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 600f.; Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ ii, 565; ʿAlawī, Minhāj ii, 295. See Peled(1992:165).

42 See Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 600; Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ 64; Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ ii, 565; ʿAlawī, Minhāj ii,295.

43 Luġda, Naḥw 225.44 Luġda, Naḥw 225. It is unclear whether this applies also to the demonstratives and per-

sonal pronouns, also included in this chapter.45 Note that the list includes also words whose following nouns are predicates, rather than

subjects, e.g. demonstratives. Luġda’s theory regarding the operator of the predicate isunclear (see Luġda, Naḥw 223f.).

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Ambiguity is also found in al-Zubaydī’s grammar: Bābal-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu46mābaʿdahāmin al-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār. He also stresses that the rafʿ is due to theoperation of ibtidāʾ.47 Included here are not only particles, but also words thatal-Zubaydī himself classifies as ẓurūf.48

However, the short list of words presented by Ibn Kaysān under al-ḥurūfallatī tarfaʿu (the subject of the verb here unequivocally refers to the ḥurūf )may be restricted to those which, for him, actually assign the rafʿ, although it isnot restricted to particles.49

Strong evidence that such expressions were common in that epoch is foundin al-Ḫwārizmī’s (d. after 387/997)50Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm (composed between 370/980 and 380/990),51 whose aim, according to its author’s statement, is to pres-ent the technical terms common in the literatures of the ʿulūm.52 Or, as Fischerputs it in his study of the chapter on grammar in this book: “What gives thischapter its specific importance, is the fact that its author is not a professionalgrammarian, thus hewants to outline what an educated amateur—thatmeansa secretary (kātib)—has to know about grammar, and gives a sketch of thisdomain of learning from outside.”53 Thus, the fact that such a book featuresthe category al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu/turfaʿu baʿdahā l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār,54 underwhich ʾayna, kayfa,matā ‘when’, hal and bal are listed, is an indicator that it wasdeemed basic in grammatical writings at that time. A similar conclusion can beinferred from Ibn Farīʿūn’s55 (probably died between 350/960 and 400/1010)56Jawāmiʿ al-ʿulūm, whose arrangement is said to be “particularly suitable fortextbooks”.57 In this compendium one finds the category ḥarf yarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾwa-l-nuʿūt wa-l-ʾaḫbār.58

46 In such cases, one cannot rule out the possibility that the original text read yurfaʿu (tarfaʿubeing a copyist’s error).

47 Zubaydī,Wāḍiḥ 79.48 Ibid., 79f.49 Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī 110.50 Versteegh (1993:17).51 Fischer (1985:94).52 Ḫwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 2ff. For an overview, see Bosworth (1963).53 Fischer (1985:94).54 Ḫwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 47.55 The name is uncertain; see Sezgin’s introduction to his edition of the book.56 According to Sezgin’s introduction to his edition of the book. See also Biesterfeldt (1990:

49).57 Biesterfeldt (1990:50).58 Ibn Farīʿūn, Jawāmiʿ 27 Sezgin/61 al-Janābī.

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We have so far emphasized two points of discrepancy between the termḥurūf al-rafʿ (and similar expressions) and mainstream grammatical theory,namely, the application of the term ḥarf to nouns and verbs, and the implica-tion that all the members of the set are operators of the rafʿ. We have also seenseveral ways by which grammarians attempted to incorporate these expres-sions into their theories. The element bi-l-ibtidāʾ at the end of some of theseexpressions may also have been a later addition aimed at this goal. But thediscrepancy is deeper, for these chapters are at odds with the entire taqsīmstructure of mainstreamgrammars.59 Someof thewords listed deserve, accord-ing to the mainstream taqsīm, the title ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ; others are ẓurūf ; stillothers are demonstratives and personal pronouns, and are thus simply sub-sumed under mubtadaʾ; some are verbs; etc. With ḥurūf al-jarr the discrep-ancy is less severe: in order to bring these chapters in line with mainstreamtaqsīm, one only needs to separate particles from nouns, as we have seenabove.60

Now we have evidence, outside the corpus of these pedagogical grammars,that both the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ and similar expressions were regarded as notreflecting grammatical theory. First, IbnWallād (d. 332/943) tells us that somegrammarians ( jamāʿa min ʾahl al-naḥw), among them al-ʾAḫfaš, write in theirbooks: Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār, although such words ashal and ʾayna do not assign the rafʿ.61 The context is Sībawayhi’s statement“and if you wish, you may put [the words] in rafʿ by means of [the opera-tor] by means of which you put [the words] in naṣb” (wa-ʾin šiʾta rafaʿta bimānaṣabta), applied to a construction in which the rafʿ is not, in fact, causedby the operator in question, since it is a case of a mubtadaʾ and its ḫabar.62

59 The subject of taqsīmwas studied recently by Viain (2014). I would like to thank Dr. Viainfor kindly having sent me a copy of her thesis.

60 However, some grammarians formulate syntactic rules pertaining to sentence types inthese chapters. The most striking case is the construction: preposition/ẓarf + jarr + rafʿ,e.g. fī ʾaḫīka ḫaṣlatun jamīlatun ‘there is a beautiful quality [inhering] in your brother’,discussed by al-Zajjājī ( Jumal 62) and the anonymous Kūfan grammarian (Vidro andKasher 2014:190f.). Both formulate the same rule: when the noun in jarr is followed byanother noun, the latter takes the rafʿ. As expected, al-Zajjājī explains this case as bi-l-ibtidāʾ, while the Kūfan grammarian accounts for it as bi-l-ṣifa (on the latter, see thediscussion and references in Vidro and Kasher 2014:220–224). Such discussions, which, asfar as I know do not appear in jarr-chapters in mainstream grammars, also do not squarewith the taqsīm-structure, as this is not the appropriate place to discuss sentence types.

61 IbnWallād, Intiṣār 73 (= Bernards 1997:27).62 Sībawayhi, Kitāb ch. 31, i, 51 Derenbourg/i, 124 Hārūn.

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Since Sībawayhi’s wording here is regarded by Ibn Wallād as tasammuḥ,63it may be inferred that the wording Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār would also be regarded by him as such. In addition, an unattributableparagraph found in the margins of the manuscript of al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī’s(d. 476/1083) commentary on this discussion, also compares Sībawayhi’s word-ing with the use of the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ and the expression al-ḥurūf allatītarfaʿu mā baʿdahā bi-l-ibtidāʾ wa-l-ḫabar.64 Finally, ʾAbū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d.early 5th/11th century) regards the grammarians’ practice of subsuming lawlāunder ḥurūf al-rafʿ as musāmaḥa, for the following noun takes the rafʿ due tothe ibtidāʾ.65

The mention of al-ʾAḫfaš in the last paragraph leads us to the next question:how early was the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ used, to judge by extant sources? Put dif-ferently, we have seen so far that this term, and similar expressions, appear ina corpus of early pedagogical grammars, yet the term does not appear in whatI referred to above as the ‘mainstream’ of Arabic grammatical tradition. There-fore, was this term a late innovation vis-à-vis this mainstream? The answerseems to be in the negative. Apart from IbnWallād’s attribution of the expres-sion Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār to al-ʾAḫfaš (which should,like any account of this sort, be treatedwith considerable caution),wehave twoearly testimonies for the use of the term in question, one by al-ʾAḫfaš himself,as we shall see presently. The other testimony, which is of great significance,is al-Jumaḥī’s (d. 221/845–846) version of the story of the invention of naḥw.66In this account, ʾAbū l-ʾAswad al-Duʾalī is said to have composed the followingʾabwāb: Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl wa-l-muḍāf wa-ḥurūf al-jarr wa-l-rafʿ wa-l-naṣbwa-l-jazm.67 In order to grasp the import of this version, it should be comparedwith a much more ‘orthodox’ one, according to which the first grammar sup-posedly beganwith the tripartite division of the parts of speech.68 It is plausiblethat just as the latter is modeled on what came to be the standard openings of

63 This termmeans “using a careless mode of expression, relying upon the understanding ofthe reader or hearer” (Lane 1863–1893: iv, 1423).

64 Al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī, Nukat i, 357.65 ʿAskarī, Taṣḥīḥ 425.66 On the literature about the invention of Arabic grammar, see Talmon (1985); Versteegh

(1995:147–151); Baalbaki (1995:124f.). On al-Jumaḥī’s testimony, see Talmon (2003:30ff.).67 Jumaḥī, Ṭabaqāt 5. This also may be the idea behind ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī’s version, in

which ʿAlī is said to have ordered ʾAbū l-ʾAswad: ijʿal li-l-nās ḥurūfan wa-ʾašāra lahu ʾilā l-rafʿ wa-l-naṣb wa-l-jarr (Marātib 20). As stated by Baalbaki (1995:125), “the arrangementaccording to regimen seems to be initiated only for didactic purposes”.

68 See, for instance, Zajjājī, ʾĪḍāḥ 89.

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grammars, following the Kitāb, the former ismodeled on (a) grammar(s) in cir-culation in al-Jumaḥī’s time (or perhaps in his source’s, or sources’, time). It isstriking that series of chapters basically organized around classes of ḥurūf fea-ture in some of the pedagogical grammars mentioned above. For instance, thefollowing series occurs in al-Naḥḥās’ grammar: Bāb ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ, Bāb al-ḥurūfallatī tanṣubu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-tarfaʿu l-ʾaḫbār, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-tanṣubu l-ʾaḫbār, Bābal-ḥurūf allatī tanṣubu l-ʾafʿāl al-mustaqbala, Bābal-jawābbi-l-fāʾ,69 Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tajzimu l-ʾafʿāl al-mustaqbala, Bāb ḥurūf al-raf.70From this correspondence, we may infer that not only did the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ have roots in early grammar, but also that it constituted part of a series ofchapters organized around classes of words followed by a certain case/mood.A statement found in al-ʾAḫfaš’ al-ʿArūḍ corroborates this conclusion: he saysthat those interested in ʿarūḍ must study some Arabic, including ḥurūf al-rafʿwa-l-naṣb wa-l-jarr wa-l-jazm.71

At this point the reader may well ask whether the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ everreflected a grammatical theory.72 To be sure, some of the items in the list wererecognized by grammarians as operators of rafʿ, e.g. niʿma and biʾsa, demon-stratives and personal pronouns (in subject position, although the view thatthe subject assigns the rafʿ to the predicate was not universally accepted).73The inclusion of lawlā is of interest, since it reflects the opinion ascribed to theKūfans, aswas indeed al-Farrāʾ’s view, against Sībawayhi’s and al-Mubarrad’s, ashas already been shownby Baalbaki.74 The former viewwas also adopted in theanonymous Kūfan grammar.75 Interesting is also the inclusion of interrogativeẓurūf, e.g. ʾayna. Illustrations of the use of such ẓurūf consist of the construc-tion ẓarf + subject + predicate, but also of predicative ẓarf + subject (+naṣb). Inthe latter case, the Kūfans, as well as several other early grammarians, held thatthe ẓarf assigns the rafʿ to the subject.76 The grammatical view on these wordsby the first grammarians to form such lists is a matter of conjecture. The moreinteresting question, however, revolves around sentence-introducing particles,such as ʾinnamā (i.e. the ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ—see above): were these particles ever

69 This is merely an offshoot of the previous chapter.70 Naḥḥāṣ, Tuffāḥa 17–21. See also Luġda, Naḥw 225f.; Vidro and Kasher (2014:187–192).71 ʾAḫfaš, ʿArūḍ 136 (quoted by Talmon 2003:125f., who, however, identifies these ḥurūf with

ḥurūf al-ʾiʿrāb).72 Cf. Owens (1990:200).73 See Levin (2003–2005).74 Baalbaki (1981:15 f.).75 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:192, 224).76 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:224).

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held to assign rafʿ? An alternative possibility is that the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ wascoined as a pedagogical term from the outset, independently of the grammat-ical theory of the grammarian(s) who coined it. There is a third possibility aswell, namely that it was coined prior to any comprehensive theory of syntacticeffect. The question of whether grammarians evermaintained that words suchas ʾinnamā assign the rafʿ thus has no conclusive answer. Talmon’s evidencefrom the Kitāb for such a theory adhered to by early grammarians is, to saythe least, tenuous.77 The evidence from the Kitāb al-ʿayn is more convincing.78However, it may as well be explained as nothing more than another instanceof tasammuḥ (cf. Sībawayhi’s wording mentioned above).79 Finally, as we haveseen, some grammarians refer to the subject as ism, which is the flip side of thecoin of the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ. It may hint at an early provenance,80 but it is pre-mature to infer far-reaching conclusions from this about any early grammaticaltheory.

Another remark about the organization of al-Jumaḥī’s first grammar is inorder here. Its first chapter is prima facie Bāb al-fāʿil, but it might just aswell be Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl; nothing in the text can either corroborate orrefute either reading. However, other accounts claim that ʾAbū l-ʾAswad al-Duʾalī composed only Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl,81 which increases the probabilityof the latter. Now, chapters entitled Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl bihi are found inthree of the grammars dealt with here.82 Moreover, in the anonymous Kūfangrammar Bāb al-mafʿūl bihi wa-l-fāʿil seems to occupy the first place, just likein al-Jumaḥī’s first grammar.83 Such series of ḥurūf chapters do not feature ingrammarsof the ‘mainstream’, as far as I know.As tobābal-fāʿilwa-l-mafʿūl, onlyone occurrence of this heading was found in a ‘mainstream’ grammar, namelyIbn al-ʾAnbārī’s Mīzān al-ʿarabiyya (an edition of this treatise is in preparationby Dr. Arik Sadan and the present author).

77 Talmon (2003:264f.). See also Owens (1990:184, n. 5).78 See Talmon (1997:199, 2003:264f.).79 See also Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī 175.80 Talmon (1990a:272ff., 1993:278, 2003:165ff.).81 E.g., Sīrāfī, ʾAḫbār 36, 41.82 Luġda, Naḥw 224; Zajjājī, Jumal 10–12; Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 17.83 See Vidro and Kasher (2014:179).

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4 Undatable Treatises

So far we have examined two corpora of writings, up to the early 11th century,those displaying the characteristics discussed here, and ‘mainstream’ writings.It is significant that the latter are the model followed by later grammars. Butwhen did the characteristics of the former corpus disappear? Since we have“only a fraction of the number of known titles”84 at our disposal, it is impossibleto answer this question with any certainty. What can be said for now, which, Ibelieve, is of significance, is that no extant sourcewhich is datable as later thanthe early 5th/11th century displays the traits dealt with here, as far as I know.However, there are several undatable treatises which do display these traits, orsome of them:

(i) Muqaddima fī l-naḥw, attributed to Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar (d. 180/796),85 whichcontains a series of chapters each dedicated to a class of ḥurūf,86 accord-ing to the following nouns’/verbs’ cases/moods;87 the heading of the firstchapter in this series is Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu kull ism baʿdahā,88 andof the third, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī taḫfiḍumā baʿdahāmin ismwa-ʾaḫbāruhāmarfūʿa.89

(ii) al-Muḥallā ‘wujūhal-naṣb’, attributed to Ibn Šuqayr (d. 315/927 or 317/929),a grammarianwho is said to havemixed the two schools.90 The very same

84 Carter (1994:389).85 A comprehensive study of this book and its attribution is Talmon (1990b). See also ʿIzz

al-Dīn al-Tanūḫī’s preface to his edition; Ibn ʿĀšūr (1963–1964); al-Tanūḫī (1964); Sezgin(1984:118, 126); Owens (1990:179ff.); Talmon (1993:285f., 1999:191–193); Carter (2000:264);Baalbaki (1995:127f., 2005:41). For those accepting the ascription of the book to Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, this is probably the oldest extant testimony of the issues dealt with here.

86 On the term ḥarf in the Muqaddima, see Talmon (1990b:143).87 Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 36–50 (the chapter on the operators assigning the naṣb to

verbs is found ibid., 71 f.).88 Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 36. The wording is ambiguous. Note, however, the unam-

biguous characterization of the part of speech ḥarf : wa-hāḏā l-ḥarf huwa l-ʾadā allatī bihātarfaʿuwa-tanṣubuwa-taḫfiḍu l-ismwa-tajzimu l-fiʿl (ibid., 35; theword bihāwas omitted inthe edition, although it appears in the manuscript, as noted in Ibn ʿĀšūr 1963–1964:586).Talmon (1990b:156f.) interprets this not as a case of operation, but rather of indicators;however, in the postscript he states that in light of the equivalent chapter in al-Muḥallā(see below), this concept belongs to a theory deviating from the mainstream (ibid., 162).

89 Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 43. See Talmon (1990b:144f.).90 Troupeau (1962:399); Sezgin (1984:162) “… galt trotz seiner Neigung für die Kufenser … als

Eklektiker …”; Baalbaki (2007:xxix). But cf. Carter (2000), passim.

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treatise was also published as Kitāb al-jumal fī l-naḥw, with an attributionto al-Ḫalīl.91 One of the titles in this treatise reads wa-l-rafʿ bi-hal wa-ʾaḫawātihā, and one of the manuscripts continues: min ḥurūf al-rafʿ.92Interestingly, the author uses the term ḫabar ʾayna wa-kayfa.93

(iii) Kitāb talqīn al-mutaʿallimmin al-naḥw, attributed to Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889).94 A series of ḥurūf chapters is also found here.95 The first, entitledMā yulaqqanu l-mutaʿallim min ḥurūf al-jarr,96 opens with a heteroge-neous list of operators of jarr,97 and the third is entitled Bāb ḥurūf al-rafʿwa-mā yusʾalu ʿanhā.98 It is explicitly stated twice at the beginning of thechapter, both before and after the list, that these ḥurūf assign the rafʿ tothe subject and thepredicate.Moreover, the rafʿ of zaydun in the sentencehal zaydun muntaliqun ‘Is Zayd departing?’ is explained as due to hal.However, another explanation, of a higher order, is offered, according towhich hal and its ‘sisters’ joinmubtadaʾ and ḫabar and bring about noth-ing.99 This author also uses terms such as ismmatā and ḫabar matā.100

91 For the different views regarding the authorship of the book see Fāris’ and Qabāwa’sprefaces to their respective editions; Sezgin (1984:162f.); Owens (1990:179ff.); Ryding (1992,1998); Talmon (1993:285f.); Carter (2000:264); Baalbaki (2005:41, 2007:xxviii–xxix). Othertitles are also mentioned for this book in these sources.

92 Ibn Šuqayr, Muḥallā 141 = Ḫalīl, Jumal 188.93 Ibn Šuqayr, Muḥallā 141 = Ḫalīl, Jumal 188.94 This treatisewas studied byCarter (1979), who surmises that it waswritten “no earlier than

the 10th/16th century” (ibid., 267). Talmon (1993:285f.), on the other hand, concludes thatit is of an early provenance, “on the basis of several elements of its linguistic teaching”.See also Lecomte (1965:176f.); Sezgin (1984:154, n. 1); Muḫaymar’s preface to his edition;Baalbaki (2005:41).

95 Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 61 ff. On the term ḥarf in the Talqīn see Carter (1979:269).96 Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 61–75. See Carter (1979:269).97 See also Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 108, 154, 165f., 171; ʿinda ‘at’, which features in the list, is also

discussed later (ibid., 65), where it is regarded as ḥarf, taking naṣb as maḥalluhu min al-ʾiʿrāb due to its being a ẓarf ; the latter term is illustrated here with other items on the list,e.g. fawqa ‘above’. Two other items, qabla ‘before’ and baʿda ‘after’, are categorized as ismlater in this chapter (ibid., 72). Elsewhere (ibid., 116) ẓurūf and ḥurūf al-jarr are presentedas two distinct classes.

98 Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 93–102. Elsewhere (ibid., 209f.) niʿma and biʾsa are also referred toboth as ḥarf s causing rafʿ and as verbs. Demonstratives and personal pronouns are alsoregarded as ḥurūf that assign rafʿ to their ḫabar (ibid., 157–159). On ḥattā as assigning rafʿ,see ibid., 279, 283. See also Carter (1979:269).

99 Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 93. See also ibid., 94, 96, 98, 99.100 Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 95, 100.

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(iv) Another book is included in Sadan’s critical edition of a very late gram-matical treatise; in one of the manuscripts of this grammar an other-wise unknown treatise is incorporated (Sadan 2012:4), which Sadan pub-lished as an appendix. A heterogeneous list under Bābḥurūf al-ḫafḍ is fol-lowed here by Bāb ḥurūf al-rafʿ.101 Another, heading-less chapter revolvesaroundcontent that is characteristic of theBābal-fāʿilwa-l-mafʿūl in otherbooks.102

The fact that traits which are not found in the extant datable sources later thanthe early 5th/11th century appear in these books, by no means constitutes aconclusive argument for their early provenance, but it certainly shouldbe takeninto consideration.

5 Conclusion

Beside what can safely be regarded as themainstreamArabic grammatical tra-dition, several pedagogical grammars from no later than the early 5th/11th cen-tury display non-canonical features. Some features go back to the early 3rd/9thcentury at the latest, but it is still unclear towhat extent they reflect early gram-matical theories. At least some authors of these pedagogical grammars werewell aware of the discrepancy between these traits and their own grammaticaltheories. The clumsywordings and apparent self-contradictions found in thesewritings are the result of the interplay between traditional practice and theory.These traits, however, finally gave way to mainstream grammar, as part of thegeneral canonization process which the 4th/10th century witnessed.103

101 Sadan (2012:133).102 Sadan (2012:129).103 See Bohas, Guillaume, Kouloughli (1990:4, 8 ff.); Carter (2000:270f.). It is possible that

this process is what underlies al-Qifṭī’s statement that al-Zajjājī’s Jumal was replacedby al-Fārisī’s ʾĪḍāḥ and Ibn Jinnī’s Lumaʿ (ʾInbāh ii, 161). See also Versteegh (1995:3 f.).Carter (2011:46) explains the popularity of the Jumal in the Maġrib as “a deliberate actof appropriation to mark group identity”.

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Bibliographical References

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al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī, Nukat = ʾAbū l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf ibn Sulaymān ibn ʿĪsā al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī, al-Nukat fī tafsīr Kitāb Sībawayhi wa-tabyīn al-ḫafiyy min lafẓihi wa-šarḥʾabyātihi wa-ġarībihi. Ed. by Rašīd Bilḥabīb. 3 vols. Morocco:Wizārat al-ʾAwqāf wa-l-Šuʾūn al-ʾIslāmiyya, 1999.

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[Fārisī], ʾĪḍāḥ = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ġaffār [al-Fārisī], Kitāb al-ʾīḍāḥ. Ed. by Kāẓim Baḥr al-Murjān. 2nd ed. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1996.

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Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima = Ḫalaf ibn Ḥayyān al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima fī l-naḥw.Ed. by ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Tanūḫī. Damascus: Wizārat al-Ṯaqāfa wa-l-ʾIršād al-Qawmī:Maṭbūʿāt Mudīriyyat ʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-Qadīm, 1961.

Ḫalīl, Jumal = al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-jumal fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Faḫr al-Dīn Qabāwa. 5th ed. [Beirut: n.p.], 1995.

Ḫwārizmī, Mafātīḥ = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Ḫwārizmī,Kitāb mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm. Ed. by Gerlof van Vloten. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1895.

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Ibnal-Sarrāj,Mūjaz= ʾAbūBakrMuḥammad ibnal-Sarī Ibn al-Sarrāj,al-Mūjaz fī l-naḥw.Ed. by Muṣṭafā al-Šuwaymī and Bin Sālim Dāmirjī. Beirut: Muʾassasat A. Badrān,[1965].

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Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris ibn Zakariyyā, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya wa-masāʾilihā wa-sunan al-ʿArab fī kalāmihā. Ed. by ʿUmar Fārūqal-Ṭabbāʿ. Beirut: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1993.

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Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan Muhammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Kaysān, Kitāb al-Muwaffaqī fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbdal-Ḥusaynal-Fatlī andHāšimṬāhāŠallāš. Al-Mawrid4:2 (1975) 103–124.

IbnQutayba,Talqīn= ʾAbūMuḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibnMuslimal-Dīnawarī IbnQutayba,Kitāb talqīn al-mutaʿallim min al-naḥw. Ed. by Jamāl ʿAbd al-ʿĀṭī Muḫaymar. [Cairo:n.p.], 1989.

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Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibnMuʾmin ibnMuḥammad ibn ʿAlī Ibn ʿUṣfūr, ŠarḥJumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by Fawwāz al-Šaʿʿār. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998.

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Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad, Kitāb al-muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍayma. 3rd ed. 4 vols. Cairo: LajnatʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-ʾIslāmī, 1994.

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Zajjājī, ʾĪḍāḥ= ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbdal-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī,al-ʾĪḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-naḥw.Ed. by Māzin al-Mubārak. 5th ed. Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1986.

Zubaydī, Wāḍiḥ = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī, Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ. Ed.by ʿAbd al-Karīm Ḫalīfa. 2nd ed. Amman: Dār Jalīs al-Zamān, 2011.

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Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1995. “Thebook in the grammatical tradition:Development in contentand method”. The book in the Islamic world: The written word and communication inthe Middle East, ed. by George N. Atiyeh, 123–139. Albany, n.y.: State University ofNew York Press.

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Biesterfeldt, Hans-Hinrich. 1990. “Ibn Farīġūn’s chapter on Arabic grammar in hisCompendiumof the sciences”. Studies in thehistory of Arabic grammar. ii. Proceedingsof the 2nd Symposium on the History of Arabic Grammar, Nijmegen, 27 April–1 May1987, ed. by Michael G. Carter and Kees Versteegh, 49–56. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.

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Carter, Michael G. 1979. “A 16th century grammatical experiment that failed”. Arabica26.267–273

Carter, Michael G. 1990. “Arabic grammar”. Religion, learning and science in the ʿAbbasidperiod, ed. by Michael J.L. Young, John Derek Latham, and Robert Bertram Serjeant,118–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Carter, Michael G. 1994. “Writing the history of Arabic grammar”. Historiographia Lin-guistica 3.385–414.

Carter, Michael G. 2000. “The development of Arabic linguistics after Sībawayhi: Baṣra,Kūfa and Baghdad”.History of the language sciences, ed. by Sylvain Auroux, E.F. Kon-rad Koerner, Hans-Joseph Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh, i, 263–272. Berlin: deGruyter.

Carter, Michael G. 2011. “The Andalusian grammarians, are they different?”. In theshadow of Arabic: The centrality of language to Arabic culture. Studies presented toRamzi Baalbaki on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Bilal Orfali, 31–48.Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Fischer, Wolfdietrich. 1985. “The chapter on grammar in the Kitāb mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm”.Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 15.94–103.

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Kinberg, Naphtali. 1996. A lexicon of al-Farrāʾ’s terminology in his Qurʾān commentarywith full definitions, English summaries and extensive citations. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

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Lecomte, Gérard. 1965. Ibn Qutayba: L’homme, son œuvre, ses idées. Damascus: Institutfrançais de Damas.

Levin, Aryeh. 1987. “The views of the Arab grammarians on the classification andsyntactic function of prepositions”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10.342–367.

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Levin, Aryeh. 2003–2005. “The ʿāmil of the ḫabar in Old Arabic grammar”. Cahiers deLinguistique de l’ inalco 5.131–144.

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Ryding, Karin C. 1998. “Aspects of the genitive: Taxonomy in al-Jumal fī al-naḥw”. EarlyMedieval Arabic: Studies on al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, ed. by Karin C. Ryding, 92–142.Washington, d.c.: Georgetown University Press.

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Sadan, Arik. 2012. A critical edition of the grammatical treatise Taḏkirat jawāmiʿ al-ʾadawāt byMuḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_009

What is Meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara?

Aryeh Levin

1 Introduction

The first occurrence of the termal-ḥāl is found in theKitāb—the earliest extantsource of Arabic grammar, composed by Sībawayhi (2nd/8th century). Thegrammarians divide thephenomenonof al-ḥāl into several sub-categories.Thispaper proposes to discuss the sense and the historical development of the termḥāl muqaddara, which denotes a sub-category of the hāl. Although this termoriginates in grammatical texts between the 3rd/9th and the 6th/12th centuries,it became a defining term only later, in works of the 8th/14th century, in whichit is briefly mentioned. Reckendorf and Wright accept the later grammarians’concept of the term.1

2 The Development of the Term ḥāl

2.1 The Basic Construction of a Sentence Containing a ḥālThe basic construction of a sentence containing a ḥāl is: a verbal predicate+ a fāʿil + a direct object + a ḥāl. In the grammarians’ view, the ḥāl denotesthe state of the fāʿil (= the agent) or of the mafʿūl (the object), at the time ofthe occurrence of the act expressed in the verbal predicate, as in the exam-ple ḍarabtu zaydan qāʾiman (Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 214.21), which can meaneither ‘I hit Zayd when I was standing’ or ‘I hit Zayd when he was stand-ing’.2

1 Wright (1951:ii, 197.5–11; 288.7–14).Wright gives the combination ḥālmuqaddar instead of ḥālmuqaddara. The termḥālmuqaddar ismentioned twice inWright, as anadditionof the editorW. Robertson Smith (seeWright 1951:ii, 19.28–20, 1; 113, Rem. a); see also Reckendorf (1921:99,§55, 5; 450, §219, 2). In the latter reference Reckendorf uses the combination ḥāl muqaddarinstead of ḥāl muqaddara.

2 See Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 214.20–22. In the terminology of the later grammarians the termsṣāḥib al-ḥāl and ḏū l-ḥāl ‘the owner of the ḥāl’ denote the noun to which the hāl refers (seeIbn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ 633.2; 632.15; Wright 1951:ii, 117.9 f.).

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The grammarians hold that the state expressed in the ḥāl and the actexpressed in the verbal predicate of the sentence containing it, take placesimultaneously.Hence somegrammarians say that this type of ḥāl has thequal-ity of being mustaṣḥaba ‘occurring simultaneously with [the act expressed inthe verbal predicate]’.3

2.2 TheMeaning of the Term ḥālI began by observing that the term ḥāl lit. ‘state’ is first encountered in theKitāb. In this text, the form ḥāl is frequently restricted by a relative clause orby another restrictive expression, as in the examples ḥāl waqaʿa fīhi l-fiʿl ‘a statein which an act [expressed in the verbal predicate of the sentence where theḥāl occurs] took place’ (Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 165.15 f.); ḥāl yaqaʿu fīhi l-siʿru ‘a statewhere [a certain] price [of a sheep] exists’ (Sībawayhi,Kitāb i, 167.11; 167, 12); ḥālmafʿūl fīhā ‘a state where a certain act is performed’ (Sībawayhi, Kitāb i 222.2).The technical term ḥāl is an abbreviation of the above and of some similarexpressions.4

3 See Sīrāfī’s Šarḥ, according to Jahn i/2 217, n. 12; ʾAbūḤayyān,Manhaj 206.9f. Ibn al-Sarrāj usesthe term al-ḥāl al-muṣāḥiba li-l-fiʿl ‘the ḥāl simultaneously occurring with [the act expressedin] the verb’ (Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 216.3 f.).

4 The above and similar examples refute Ibn al-Sarrāj’s explanation of the literal sense of theterm ḥāl (ʾUṣūl i, 213.16–18). This explanation is evidence that Ibn al-Sarrāj believes that theliteral sense of the syntactic term ḥāl originates in the grammatical term al-ḥāl, denoting‘the present tense’. He contends that the syntactic phenomenon called al-ḥāl is designatedby this term, because when the ḥāl is expressed by an active participle, this active participlealways denotes the present tense. For example, in jāʾa zaydun rakiban ‘Zayd came riding’, theḥāl rākiban is an active participle denoting the present tense. Hence, the syntactic functionof rākiban is also called al-ḥāl. This theory is incorrect because these two terms are notrelated: one of them denotes a syntactic term, while the other one refers to one of the tensesexpressed in Arabic verbs and participles. Apart from this, although the phenomenon of al-ḥāl is frequently expressed by an active participle, it is also frequently expressed by wordsbelonging to other parts of speech. The wording of Ibn al-Sarrāj’s definition of the ḥāl (seeʾUṣūl i, 213.19–29) also contradicts his explanation: in this definition, al-ḥāl is referred to byhim as hayʾat al-fāʿil ʾawi l-mafʿūl ʾawi l-waṣf ‘the state of the fāʿil, the mafʿūl or the waṣf ’,because al-ḥāl and al-ḥāla are synonyms of al-hayʾa (see Fayyūmī, Miṣbāḥ 888.8; Malouf1937, 158b, s.v. al-ḥāl; 971c, s.v. al-hayʾa wa-l-hīʾa). As mentioned above, combinations usedby Sībawayhi, such as ḥāl waqaʿa fīhi l-fiʿl, also refute Ibn al-Sarrāj’s above explanation.

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3 al-Ḥāl al-muqaddara

The early grammarians hold that in the literal construction of given sentencescontaining a ḥāl, the ḥāl is not a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba (see 2.1 above). Hence theybelieve that when uttering such sentences the ḥāl mustaṣḥaba is muqaddara,i.e., the ḥāl is intended in the speaker’s mind, or in other words, the ḥāl occursin the taqdīr construction of the sentence.

The standard example given by grammarians dealingwith the phenomenonof ḥāl muqaddara is marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘Ipassedby amanwhohad ahawkwithhim, intending to huntwith it tomorrow’.The first grammarian todealwith this example in the context of ḥālmuqaddarawas Ibn al-Sarrāj5 (d. 316/928) who says:

You say marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, intending[that when expressing the utterance ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, it is as if youwere saying] muqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan ‘intending to hunt with ittomorrow’. If this taqdīr construction were not implied in the sentence,6it would have been impossible [to express this sentence, since it wouldhave expressed ameaning which is an absurdity]7 (wa-taqūlumarartu bi-rajulinmaʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan turīdumuqaddiran al-ṣayda bihiġadan wa-lawlā hāḏā l-taqdīru mā jāza hāḏā l-kalāmu).8

ʾUṣūl ii 38.7 f.

5 The same example, but without the last word ġadan, occurs in Sībawayhi, Kitāb i,206.8 (ed.Būlāq i 241.12; ed. Hārūn ii 49.7). See also Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab iii 261.13. These texts do notdeal with ḥāl muqaddara, but with the topic of the ẓarf as an ʿāmil, and the possibility ofthe occurrence of ṣāʾidin as a waṣf, instead of ṣāʾidan as a ḥāl (Kitāb i,206–210, ch. 112; Levin2007:143–146, §5). It seems that ġadan is omitted from the above texts because it is relevantonly for the discussion of ḥālmuqaddara, but it is irrelevant for a text dealingwith the topic ofthe ẓarf as an ʿāmil and the occurrence of ṣāʾidin as awaṣf. However, ġadanoccurs in the sameexample in Sībawayhi, Kitāb i 207.17 f. (ed. Būlāq i, 243.4; ed. Hārūn ii, 52.6 f.). In Sībawayhi,Kitāb i 207.18, ʿāʾidanoccurs insteadof ṣāʾidan. It seems safe to assume that ʿāʾidan is a printingerror.

6 The taqdīr construction referred to here by Ibn al-Sarrāj ismuqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan.7 For examples of utterances expressing an absurdity (muḥāl) see Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 7, ch. 6.8 This translation is supported by Ibn al-Sarrāj’s discussion of the same sentence, ʾUṣūl ii,

268.17–19. In this example, the taqdīr of ṣāʾidan bihi, which is muqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi,belongs to a special kind of taqdīr, later also called taʾwīl lit. ‘interpretation, explanation’by Ibn al-Sarrāj and other grammarians (see ibid.). The grammarians hold that this kind oftaqdīr is applied when the speaker makes certain utterances and at the same time intendsthat it is as if he had pronounced a different utterance, corresponding in sense to the literal

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Ibn al-Sarrāj’s view that the literal structure of the sentence marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan expresses an absurdity (muḥāl)derives from the fact that in the literal construction the word ṣāʾidan expressesa future state, while the verbal predicatemarartudenotes an act that took placein the past. Hence ṣāʾidan is not a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba, since it does not occursimultaneously with the act expressed in the verbal predicate. By saying thatthe taqdīr of ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan is muqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan, the wordmuqaddiran ‘intending’ becomes a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba, which takes place simul-taneously with the occurrence of the act expressed in the predicate marartu.This ḥāl muqaddiran denotes the fact that at the time of the occurrence of theact expressed in marartu, the state of the noun rajulin is that he, the protago-nist, intends to perform in the future the act expressed in the active participleṣāʾidan. Hence, the state of rajulin is a state of a noun intending to performan act, rather than a state of a noun performing an act, as against the state ofzaydun in jāʾa zaydun rākiban ‘Zayd came riding’. The sense of the examplemarartu bi-rajulin etc. is to be understood according to its taqdīr constructionmarartu bi-rajulinmaʿahu ṣaqrunmuqaddiran-i l-ṣaydabihi ġadan, as follows: ‘Ipassedby amanwhohad ahawkwithhim, intending to huntwith it tomorrow’.This taqdīr construction solves both a grammatical and a semantic problem:(i) It solves the grammatical difficulty created by the fact that the literal con-struction of the above example does not contain a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba; and (ii) Itexplains the meaning of the literal construction in which the ḥāl muqaddarais implied. Moreover, the literal construction is preserved from expressing anabsurd meaning.

The sources allow the inference that in the grammarians’ view the relevantconstruction, as far as grammatical and semantic analysis is concerned, is thetaqdīr construction rather than the literal one (lafẓ), since it is the formerconstruction which exists in the speaker’s mind. This notion led the gram-marians to hold that a taqdīr construction that accorded with their theorieswould enable the occurrence of a literal construction that was incompatiblewith those theories.9 Hence, the taqdīr construction containing a ḥāl muqad-dara, which possesses the quality of being mustaṣḥaba, enables Ibn al-Sarrājto accept the literal construction of the utterance marartu bi-rajulin etc., irre-spective of the fact that it does not contain a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba.

utterance. This view is held when the literal construction does not accord with one of thegrammarians’ theories, or when it needs some theoretical elucidation (see Levin 1997:148–150, §3.5).

9 This notion is inferred from Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾInṣāf 34–36,masʾala 9.

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Al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) explicitly says that the ḥāl is always mustaṣḥaba.10 Incertain utterances, he says, the ḥāl is unexpressed in the literal construction,but it is intended in the speaker’s mind. In these utterances the real ḥāl occursin the taqdīr construction, while it is represented in the literal construction bya ḥāl denoting a future state.11 In this connection, al-Sīrāfī says:

The ḥāl in any case has the quality of being mustaṣḥaba,12 but [some-times] that part of the ḥāl occurring in the literal utterance13 expresses[a time] occurring later [than the time expressed in the verbal predi-cate]. [The ḥāl occurring in the literal utterance is pronounced] togetherwith the intention of the speaker that an utterance expressing a simulta-neous ḥāl occurs in the taqdīr construction, as in the Qurʾānic examplefa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīna lit. ‘Enter it [i.e., paradise] when you are eternal init’,14 although it is well known that their eternal being in paradise doesnot take place simultaneously with the act of their entering paradise.That which is intended by the speaker when saying fa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīnais [ fa-dḫulūhā] muqaddirīna l-ḫulūda or mustawjibīna l-ḫulūda ‘Enter it[i.e., paradise] intending eternal stay in it, or deserving eternal stay init’15 (al-ḥālu ʿalā kulli ḥālin mustaṣḥabatun wa-qad yakūnu l-malfūẓu bihimina l-ḥāli mutaʾaḫḫiran bi-taqdīri šāyʾin mustaṣḥabin ka-qawlihi taʿālāfa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīna wa-qad ʿulima ʾanna l-ḫulūda laysa fī ḥāli duḫūlihimwa-taqdīruhu muqaddirīna l-ḫulūda ʾawmustawjibīna l-ḫulūda).

jahn i/2, 271, n. 12

Al-Sīrāfī adds the following example:

And if somebody says to a certain person ‘Enter the house!’, and heanswers ‘What shall I do in it?’, it is possible to say [to him] ‘Enter it toeat and to drink in it!’. The intention of the speaker is: ‘Enter it intend-ing and deserving it! [i.e., ‘Enter the house intending and deserving toeat and drink in it!’]’ ( fa-law qīla li-l ʾinsāni udḫul-i l-dāra fa-qāla fa-mā

10 See Sīrāfī, Šarḥ vi, 178.15–179.13; Sīrāfī according to Jahn i/2, 271, n. 12.11 See Sīrāfī, Šarḥ vi, 178.15–179.13.12 I.e., the ḥāl always has the quality of expressing a state that occurs simultaneously with

the act expressed in the verbal predicate.13 The part of the ḥāl occurring in the literal construction of this example is ṣāʾidan.14 I.e., ‘Enter paradise to be eternally in it’.15 See also a very similar version of this text in Sīrāfī, Šarḥ vi, 179.6–9.

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ʾaṣnaʿu fīhā la-jāza ʾan yuqāla ʾudḫulhā ʾākilan fīhā šāriban ʿalā maʿnāmuqaddiran ḏālika wa-mustawjiban).

sīrafī, Šarḥ vi, 179.12 f.

Al-Fāriqī (d. 391/1001), the commentator of some of the first chapters of al-Mubarrad’s Kitāb al-muqtaḍab, holds a view similar to that of al-Sīrāfī concern-ing al-ḥāl al-muqaddara. In his discussion of the example marartu bi-rajulinetc. he says that the ḥāl muqaddiran, which is implied in the literal utterance,is represented in the literal construction by the word ṣāʾidan.16 Ibn al-Ḫaššāb(d. 567/1172) says:

The ḥāl [sometimes] occurs in the mind of the speaker [and not in theliteral utterance]. Among these examples is that [contained in the textof] the problem discussed in the Kitāb,marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrunṣāʾidan bihi ġadan (wa-tajīʾu l-ḥāl muqaddaratan wa-min ḏālika masʾalatal-Kitāb marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan).

ibn al-ḫaššāb, Murtajil 164.9 f.

3 The Later Grammarians’ View of ḥāl muqaddara

In the grammatical literature, the term ḥāl muqaddara occurs for the firsttime in the works of ʾAbū Ḥayyān, in the 8th/14th century. The explanationof the concept of ḥāl muqaddara by the later grammarians is extremely brief,although ʾAbū Ḥayyān’s discussion of this topic is more detailed than that ofthe others.

The later grammarians of the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries illustrate theirconcept of ḥālmuqaddara by the old grammarians’ examplemarartu bi-rajulinmaʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidanbihi ġadan.17 It is inferred from theirworks that their dis-cussions differ from those of the early grammarians in the following respects:

(i) The early grammarians do not use the term ḥāl muqaddara. They sayrather that the ḥāl in given utterances is muqaddara. By contrast, ʾAbūḤayyān uses the combinations ḥālmuqaddara18 and al-ḥāl al-muqaddara

16 See Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab iv, 122.4–7.17 See ʾAbūḤayyān,Manhaj 206.11–13; IbnHišām,Muġnī 605.15–606.2; Suyūṭī,Hamʿ iv, 41.6–

10; Suyūṭī, ʾAšbāh ii, 196.11 f.18 See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.12.

what is meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara? 173

as grammatical terms.19 Other later grammarians, such as Ibn Hišām andal-Suyūṭī, briefly state that the ḥālmay denote three categories of time, ofwhich that denoting the future is calledmuqaddara.20

(ii) The early grammarians hold that the ḥāl conceived of by them asmuqad-dara does not occur in the literal construction of the sentence, and thatit occurs only in the taqdīr construction. The later grammarians call ḥālmuqaddara the accusative ṣāʾidan, which occurs in the literal construc-tion.21

(iii) The early grammarians hold that the literal construction of sentencescontaining an implicit ḥālmuqaddaradoes not include a ḥālmustaṣḥaba.By contrast, the later grammarians, except ʾAbū Ḥayyān, do not refer tothis aspect.22

Although apparently the later grammarians’ concept of ḥāl muqaddara differsfrom that of the early grammarians, it is understood from ʾAbūḤayyān and IbnHišām that they actually accept the early grammarians’ view of this type of ḥāl.In referring to the examplemarartubi-rajulinmaʿahuṣaqrunṣāʾidanbihi ġadan,ʾAbū Ḥayyān says:

Among [the examples of ḥāl muqaddara is the example] marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, so ṣāʾidan is a ḥāl muqaddara,because at the time you passed by [the man], or at the time that thehawk was with him, you [sic!] were not hunting with it, but the taqdīris muqaddiran-i l-ʾāna ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘intending [to hunt] now, [butactually] huntingwith it tomorrow’ (wa-minhumarartu bi-rajulinmaʿahuṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, fa-ṣāʾidan ḥālun muqaddaratun li-ʾannakawaqta l-murūri ʾaw waqta kaynūnati l-ṣaqri maʿahu lam takun [sic.!] ṣāʾi-dan bihi wa-ʾinnamā l-maʿnā muqaddiran-i l-ʾāna ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan).

Manhaj 206.11–13

In referring to the example zaydun-i l-yawma fī yadihi ṣaqrun ṣāʾidanbihi ġadan‘Today, Zayd [is holding] in his hand a hawk, [intending to] hunt with it tomor-

19 See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.11.20 See Ibn Hišām, Muġnī 605.15–606.3; Suyūṭī, ʾAšbāh ii, 196.11–197.1. ʾAbū Ḥayyān holds the

same view in this respect (Manhaj 206.8–13).21 See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.10–13; Ibn Hišām, Muġnī 605.15–606.2; Suyūṭī, Hamʿ iv,

41.6–10. The term [ḥāl] muqārina used by the later grammarians in these sources, cor-responds to the early grammarians’ term ḥāl mustaṣḥaba. The term al-ḥāl al-mustaṣḥabaoccurs also in ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.9.

22 For ʾAbū Ḥayyān see his discussion of the concept of al-iqtirān below, p. 174.

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row’, ʾAbū Ḥayyān (Manhaj ii, 374.3 f.) says that in this sentence, the hāl, whichis ṣāʾidan, denotes the future, although the ʿāmil of the ḥāl, which is fī yadihidenotes the present. The difference between the time denoted by these twoparts of the sentence contradicts the concept of al-iqtirān,23 i.e, the conceptthat theḥāl and its verbal ʿāmilmust always denote the same time.24Thenotionwhich ʾAbū Ḥayyan calls here al-iqtirān is the same notion that elsewhere isexpressed by the early grammarians when they say that the ḥāl has the qualityof beingmustaṣḥaba. The significance of this term is that the state expressed inthe ḥāl and the act expressed in the verbal predicate occurring in the sentencecontaining it, take place simultaneously (see above 2.1).

Although here the iqtirān of the time expressed in the ḥāl and in the ʿāmilof the ḥāl does not occur in the literal construction (lafẓ), it occurs accordingto ʾAbū Ḥayyān in the taqdīr construction of the utterance ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan,which is muqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi ġadan (see above), or in ʾAbū Ḥayyān’swording, irrespective of the fact that ṣāʾidan here denotes the future, the wordṣāʾidan is “intended in the mind of the speaker as if it denotes the present”(muqaddarat l-ḥuḍūr), since the taqdīr of ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan is muqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi ġadan.25 Hence, the ḥāl muqaddiran and the predicate fī yadihidenote the same time, which is the present.

The above excerpts attest that ʾAbū Ḥayyān accepts the old grammarians’concept of this type of ḥāl, irrespective of the fact that he himself, in contrast tothe early grammarians, labeled ṣāʾidan as ḥālmuqaddara.26 A text of IbnHišāmconfirms that he too accepts the same concept of the early grammarians.27

It is evident that the later grammarians were aware of the fact that ṣāʾidanin the above examples cannot be a ḥāl muqaddara, because it explicitly occursin the literal form of the sentence (lafẓ). Hence, it is inferred that they calledsāʾidan a ḥāl muqaddara, because they believed that in the speaker’s mind,the taqdīr construction of ṣāʾidan, which ismuqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi, containsthe implicit form muqaddiran, which can be conceived of as a ḥāl muqad-dara.

23 Literally, iqtirān is the maṣdar of iqtarana bi- ‘to be joined, united to’ (see Hava 602a, s.v.iqtarana bi-).

24 See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ ii, 374.1–5. It should be noted that the predicate denoting thepresent in the above example is not a verb, but the expression fī yadihi, which is a ẓarf.For the ẓarf as an ʿāmil see Levin (2007).

25 See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ ii, 374.1–5.26 The text of ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.10f. also refers to this aspect.27 See Ibn Hišām, Muġnī 605.15–606.1.

what is meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara? 175

It seems safe to assume that for the sake of convenience, the later grammari-ans preferred to ignore the exact concept of the early grammarians of this typeof ḥāl. Hence, they applied the principle which Ibn Yaʿīš called taqrīb wa-taysīrʿalā l-mubtadiʾ28 ‘making [theunderstanding of a certain grammatical concept]easier and clearer to the beginner’, by using an inaccurate technical term, ratherthan amore accurate one, originating in a complex concept.29 Hence, the latergrammarians say that in the examplemarartu bi-rajulinmaʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidanbihi ġadan, the word sāʾidan is a ḥāl muqaddara, instead of giving the expla-nation that here ṣāʾidan is an expression whose taqdīr construction containsa ḥāl muqaddara, which is the implicit accusative muqaddiran. In referringto ṣāʾidan as a ḥāl muqaddara they deliberately denoted it by an inaccurateterm, just as the early grammarians called ḫabar kāna the accusative con-tained in sentences beginning with kāna al-nāqiṣa, such as qāʾiman in kānazaydun qāʾiman ‘Zayd was standing’. It is evident that they knew that the partof the sentence they called ḫabar kānawas the ḫabar of ism kāna, and not theḫabar of kāna.30 Similarly, the later grammarians of the 8th/14th century knewthat ṣāʾidan is not a ḥāl muqaddara, but a constituent of the sentence whosetaqdīr construction contains the implicit accusative muqaddiran, which hasthe grammatical qualities of a ḥāl muqaddara

Bibliographical References

a Primary SourcesʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj = ʾAbū ḤayyānMuḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Man-

haj al-sālik fī l-kalām ʿalā ʾAlfiyyat IbnMālik. Ed. by SidneyGlazer. NewHaven, Conn.:American Oriental Society, 1947.

ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Ḥayyān Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Šarḥal-tashīl li-bn Mālik. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sayyid and Muḥammad Badawī al-Maḫtūn. 2 vols.

28 Jahn’s reading taqrīb wa-taysīr ʿalā l-mubtadaʾ (see IbnYaʿīš, ed. Jahn ii, 999.6) is incorrect.For the correct reading see Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ vii, 91.18. See also Levin (1979:203, n. 107; 203f.,n. 108).

29 For this principle see Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ, ed. Jahn ii, 999.4–6; For al-Zajjājī’s expression al-taqrīb ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ see Levin (1979:203f., n. 108).

30 Ibn Yaʿīš explicitly says so. He also says that it is impossible to assign a predicate to a verb.For Ibn Yaʿīš’s view in this respect see Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ ii, 999.3–6. See also Levin (1979:203f.,§2.6).

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Fayyūmī, Miṣbāḥ = ʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Maqarrī al-Fayyūmī, al-Miṣbāḥal-munīr fī ġarīb al-šarḥ al-kabīr li-l-Rāfiʿī. Beirut: Dār al-Qalam, n.d.

Ibn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ=Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh Ibn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ Ibn ʿAqīl ʿalā ʾAlfiyyat IbnMālikwa-maʿahu Kitāb minḥat al-Jalīl. Ed. by Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. 14th edition. Cairo,1384a.h.

Ibn ʾAnbārī, ʾInṣāf = Kamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-ʾAnbārī,Kitābal-ʾinṣāf fīmasāʾil al-ḫilāf bayna l-naḥwiyyīna l-Baṣriyyīnwa-l-Kūfiyyīn.Ed. by GottholdWeil. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1913.

Ibn Hišām, Muġnī = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf Ibn Hišām,Muġnī l-labīb ʿan kutub al-ʾaʿārīb. Ed. by Māzin al-Mubārak and Muḥammad ʿAlīḤamd Allāh. 5th ed. Beirut, 1979.

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Sahl Ibn al-Sarrāj al-Naḥwī al-Baġdādī,Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3 vols. Beirut, 1987.

Ibn al-Ḫaššāb, Murtajil = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn ʾAḥmad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn al-Ḫaššāb, al-Murtajil. Ed. by ʿAlī Ḥaydar. Damascus, 1972.

Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ = Muwaffaq al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Baqāʾ Yaʿīš ibn ʿAlī Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal.2 vols. in 10 parts. [Cairo], n.d.

Jahn i/2 = Sībawaihi’s Buch über die Grammatik, übersetzt und erklärt von Gustav Jahn.Vol. i, second paging. Berlin, 1895.

Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad, Kitāb al-muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muhammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍayma. 4 vols. Cairo, 1385–1388a.h.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by HartwigDerenbourg, Le livre de Sîbawaihi: Traité de grammaire arabe. 2 vols. Paris, 1881–1889./Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo, 1966–1977./Ed. Būlāq. 2 vols. 1316–1317a.h.

Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. byRamaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb et al. 18 vols. Cairo, 1988–2006.

Suyūṭī, ʾAšbāh = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, al-ʾAšbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir fī l-naḥw. Vol. i. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh Nabhān. Vol. ii. Ed. by ĠāzīMuḫtār Ṣulayḥāt. Damascus, n.d.

Suyūṭī, Hamʿ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Hamʿ al-hawāmiʿ fī šarḥ Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ. Ed. by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim Mukarram. 4 vols. Kuwait,n.d.

Zajjājī, Jumal = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī, Kitāb al-jumal fīl-nahw. Ed. by ʿAlī Tawfīq al-Ḥamad. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla and Irbid: Dār al-ʾAmal, 1404/1984.

b Secondary SourcesLevin, Aryeh. 1979. “Sībawayhi’s view on the syntactical structure of kāna waʾaxawā-

tuhā”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1.185–211.

what is meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara? 177

Levin, Aryeh. 1997. “The theory of al-taqdīr and its terminology”. Jerusalem Studies inArabic and Islam 21.142–166.

Levin, Aryeh. 2007. “Sībawayhi’s view of the ẓarf as an ʿāmil”. Approaches to Arabiclinguistics, presented to Kees Versteegh on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. byEverhard Ditters and Harald Motzki, 135–148. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Malouf, Louis [Lūwīs Maʿlūf]. 1937. al-Munjid: Muʿjam madrasī li-l-luġa al-ʿarabiyya.Beirut: Catholic Press, 1937.

Reckendorf, Hermann. 1921. Arabische Syntax. Heidelberg: C. Winter.Wright, William. 1951. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_010

Demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Arik Sadan

1 Introduction

Manyphonetic,morphological and syntactic features in Sībawayhi’sKitābhaveattracted scholarly attention in the last two centuries. One issue that has notbeen investigated thoroughly is Sībawayhi’s use of and views on the role ofdemonstratives in the Arabic language he describes. Troupeau’s Lexique-Indexcannot be of assistance in this matter,1 but electronic editions of Sībawayhi’sKitāb now enable us to trace and analyze every instance of a demonstrativein this important treatise. Although an electronic edition can be less reliablethan a printed one, the former allows a quick search to be made of the occur-rences of the relevant contexts and these can then be more easily located inthe printed edition for a thorough inspection.2 Sībawayhi’s use of demonstra-tives in his Kitāb can be divided into three groups: (i) the demonstrative as amorphological or syntactic subject that is discussed and explained; (ii) demon-stratives in example sentences; and (iii) demonstratives used in other contexts,simply as words that are parts of sentences, like other nouns, verbs, etc. In thispaper, I shall examine the first two groups. In the second group I shall focus onexample sentences that highlight the roles and functions of demonstratives inthe language, according to Sībawayhi.

1 Troupeau does not provide the locations of words that appear more than 60 times in theKitāb, nor those of pronouns, including demonstratives; see Troupeau (1976:8) and (1976:25),respectively.

2 After a thorough search I was able to locate searchable versions of the entire text on thewebsites http://www.islamhouse.com/d/files/ar/ih_books/single/ar_sebawayh_book.zip andhttp://shamela.ws/browse.php/book-23018. The text is also searchable in Word files whichcan be downloaded from http://www.almeshkat.net/books/open.php?cat=16&book=484#.VCUqERbuSHw and elsewhere. The most reliable printed version is the Derenbourg edition(Sībawayhi, Kitāb Derenbourg).

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 179

table 1 Demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing that is near the speaker Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

hāḏā ( اذه ) masc. sg. 3631

hāḏāni ( ناذه ) masc. du. nominative 27

hāḏayni ( نيذه ) masc. du. oblique 26

hāḏihi ( هذه ) fem. sg. 9913

hātāni ( ناتاه ) fem. du. nominative 5

hātayni ( نيتاه ) fem. du. oblique 2

hāʾulāʾi ( ءالؤه ) pl. 85

2 Occurrences of Demonstratives in the Kitāb

Demonstratives occur very frequently in the Kitāb. My first step was to searchfor all occurrences in the electronic edition, then examine each in its contextand finally extract the most interesting cases that can be assigned to groups (i)and (ii) described in the Introduction above.Tables 1 above and 2belowpresentthe common demonstratives next to the number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’sKitāb.

For the sake of completeness I also searched for the less common morpho-logical patterns of demonstratives,4 presented in Tables 3 and 4 (only demon-stratives found in the Kitāb are indicated; for example, the rare fem. sg. demon-strative tī ( يت ), which does not occur at all in the book, does not appear in thetables).

Lastly, I looked for the diminutive forms of the demonstratives. Tables 5 and6belowpresent these demonstratives next to thenumber of occurrences (here,too, only demonstratives found in the Kitāb are indicated).

3 Including two occurrences of the secondary form يذه .4 For all sets of demonstratives, seeWright (1997:i, 264–269, §§338–345).

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table 2 Demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing that is distant from the speaker Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏālika ( كلذ ) masc. sg. 3424

ḏānika ( كناذ ) masc. du. nominative 3

ḏaynika ( كنيذ ) masc. du. oblique 1

tilka ( كلت ) fem. sg. 89

tānika ( كنات ) fem. du. nominative 2

taynika ( كنيت ) fem. du. oblique 0

ʾulāʾika ( كئلوأ ) pl. 10

table 3 Less common demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing that is near the speaker Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏā ( اذ ) masc. sg. 288(barring occurrences meaning

‘owner’, masc. sg. acc.)

ḏī ( يذ ) fem. sg. 3

ḏih/ḏihi ( هذ/هذ ) fem. sg. 11

ḏihī ( يهذ ) fem. sg. 1

tā ( ات ) fem. sg. 3

ḏāni ( ناذ ) masc. du. nominative 2

ḏayni ( نيذ ) masc. du. oblique 2

tāni ( نات ) fem. du. nominative 1

ʾulāʾi ( ءالأ ) pl. 4

ʾulāʾi ( ءالوأ ) pl. 8

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 181

table 4 Less common demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing that is distant from the speaker Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏāka ( كاذ ) masc. sg. 287

hāḏāka ( كاذه ) masc. sg. 1

ḏākum ( مكاذ ) masc. sg. 2

tīka ( كيت ) fem. sg. 1

table 5 Diminutive demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing that is near the speaker Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

hāḏayyā ( يذه ا ) masc. sg. 1

tayyā ( يت ا ) fem. sg. 1

ḏayyāni ( يذ نا ) masc. du. nominative 1

ʾulayyā ( يلأ ا ) pl. 1

table 6 Diminutive demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or Number of occurrences inthing which is distant from thespeaker

Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏayyāka ( يذ كا ) masc. sg. 2

ḏayyālika ( يذ كلا ) masc. sg. 1

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3 TheMorphology and Syntax of Demonstratives Discussed andExplained

In Sībawayhi’s Kitāb there is no separate chapter on demonstratives. However,there are several chapters in which Sībawayhi treats this category and revealshis views on demonstratives and their role in language. In what follows I quoteand translate the references to the demonstratives, sorting them into groupsaccording to context:

a. The demonstratives belong to the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama ‘dubi-ous, or vague, nouns’, that is, nouns that are not clear in the sense thatthey can have more than one denotation. In three chapters they are saidto pertain to this group, which contains not only the demonstratives, butalso the third person independent pronouns.5 Here are themain relevantquotes from the Kitāb:i. In chapter 104, bāb majrā naʿt al-maʿrifa ʿalayhā, Sībawayhi deals

with the different kinds of definite nouns, which he divides intofive categories: “nouns which are strictly proper names” (al-ʾasmāʾallatī hiya ʾaʿlāmun ḫāṣṣatan); “the first element of a construct statein which the second element is definite, when you do not intendthe meaning of the tanwīn” (al-muḍāf ʾilā l-maʿrifa ʾiḏā lam turidmaʿnā l-tanwīn); “[the nouns with] the definite article” (al-ʾalif wa-l-lām); “the dubious, or vague, nouns” (al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama); and“the pronouns” (al-ʾiḍmār).With respect to the category of al-ʾasmāʾal-mubhama Sībawayhi says: “As for the [category of] al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama, [it contains words] such as hāḏā ‘this [masc. sg.]’, hāḏihi‘this [fem. sg.]’, hāḏāni ‘these two [masc. nom.]’, hātāni ‘these two[fem. nom.]’, hāʾulāʾi ‘these’, ḏāka ‘that [masc. sg.]’, tilka ‘that [fem.sg.]’, ḏānika ‘those two [masc. nom.]’, tānika ‘those two [fem. nom.]’,ʾulāʾika ‘those’, and the like.They [i.e. these above-mentionednouns]became definite, because they became nouns pointing to a

5 As the following quotes in §a.i and§a.ii show, Sībawayhi once excludes the third person inde-pendent pronouns from the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama and once includes them in thisgroup. See also Levin (1979:194, n. 58). This ambiguity is also evident in other sources: Lanementions the demonstratives as pertaining to al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama, but quotes the lexicog-rapher al-ʾAzharī, according to whom “these are the particles which have no derivatives, andof which the roots are not known, as يذلا , ام , نم , نع and the like” (see Lane 1863–1893:i,

269b–c). See also Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān i, 378b. Wehr (1994:97b) translates مهبملٱمسٱلا as ‘thedemonstrative pronoun’.

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 183

thing to the exclusion of the rest of its group” (wa-ʾammā l-ʾasmāʾul-mubhamatu fa-naḥwu hāḏā wa-hāḏihi wa-hāḏāni wa-hātāni wa-hāʾulāʾi wa-ḏākawa-tilkawa-ḏānikawa-tānikawa-ʾulāʾikawa-mā ʾaš-baha ḏālika wa-ʾinnamā ṣārat maʿrifatan li-ʾannahā ṣārat ʾasmāʾaʾišāratin ʾilā l-šayʾi dūna sāʾiri ʾummatihi).6

ii. In chapter 117 Sībawayhi deals with sentences in which a memberof al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama forms the subject. In the lengthy title ofthis chapter Sībawayhi says: “As for the [category of] al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama, [it contains words] such as hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, hāḏāni‘these two [masc. nom.]’, hāḏihi ‘this [fem.]’, hātāni ‘these two [fem.nom.]’, hāʾulāʾi ‘these’, ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’, ḏānika ‘those two [masc.nom.]’, tilka ‘that [fem.]’, tānika ‘those two [fem. nom.]’, tīka ‘that[fem. sg.]’, ʾulāʾika ‘those’, huwa ‘he’, hiya ‘she’, humā ‘they two’, hum‘they [masc. pl.]’, hunna ‘they [fem. pl.]’, and what resembles thesenouns” (wa-l-ʾasmāʾu l-mubhamatu hāḏā wa-hāḏāni wa-hāḏihi wa-hātāniwa-hāʾulāʾi wa-ḏākawa-ḏānikawa-tilkawa-tānikawa-tīkawa-ʾulāʾika wa-huwa wa-hiya wa-humā wa-hum wa-hunna wa-mā ʾaš-baha hāḏihi l-ʾasmāʾa).7 It should be noted that among the categoryof al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama we find not only the demonstratives butalso the third person independent pronouns.

iii. In chapter 147 Sībawayhi deals with various structures of the voca-tive, among them one in which the vocative particle is followedby a member of what Sībawayhi calls al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama and anoun with the definite article, such as yā hāḏā l-rajulu ‘O, this man’.Here he explains the category of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama as follows:‘and they [i.e. al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama] are hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, hāʾulāʾi‘these’, ʾulāʾika ‘those’, and the like’ (wa-hiya hāḏā wa-hāʾulāʾi wa-ʾulāʾika wa-mā ʾašbahahā).8

b. The demonstratives serve in order to indicate, or point to, nearby or farobjects or persons. In several places Sībawayhi speaks of the functionand meaning of demonstratives. Here are the relevant quotes from theKitāb:i. In chapter 117, discussed in §a.ii above, Sībawayhi discusses the

similarity anddifferencebetweenhāḏā andḏāka (and similar pairs):

6 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 187.22–188.1.7 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 218.6–8. Levin (1979:194, §1.(1)). refers to the first part of the chapter’s

title, not quoted here, and translates it.8 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 265.4 (for the whole discussion see ibid. i, 265.3–9).

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both are demonstratives that draw the attention to a thing, but theformer is used for nearby things, whereas the latter is intended fordistant things: “Ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ is like hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, butwhen you say ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’, you draw his [i.e. the addressee’s]attention to an extended [i.e. distant]9 thing. Hāʾulāʾi ‘these’ is likehāḏā ‘this [masc.]’ [but in the plur. form], ʾulāʾika ‘those’ is likeḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ [but in the plur. form] and tilka ‘that [fem.]’ islike ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ [but in the fem. sing. form]” (wa-ḏāka bi-manzilati hāḏā ʾillā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ḏāka fa-ʾanta tunabbihuhu li-šayʾin mutarāḫin wa-hāʾulāʾi bi-manzilati hāḏā wa-ʾulāʾika bi-manzi-lati ḏāka wa-tilka bi-manzilati ḏāka).10

ii. Sībawayhi does not explicitly define the meaning of each demon-strative. A definition of two of them, ḏā and ḏī, can neverthelessbe inferred from chapter 508 of the Kitāb, in which various nounsand particles are briefly defined: “Among the nouns are [the demon-stratives] ḏā ‘this [masc.]’ and ḏī ‘this [fem.]’, whose meaning isthat you are in their presence [i.e. in the presence of the nouns towhich they refer].Theybelong to the groupof al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama[see §a above] and were clarified elsewhere” ( fa-mina l-ʾasmāʾi ḏāwa-ḏī wa-maʿnāhumā ʾannaka bi-ḥaḍratihimāwa-humā smānimub-hamāni wa-qad buyyinā fī ġayri hāḏā l-mawḍiʿi).11

iii. In the same chapter discussed above Sībawayhi relates to the end-ing -ka of some demonstratives. After dealing with the possessivesuffixes -ka and the like,12 he clarifies that as suffixes of demonstra-tives they are markers (ʿalāmāt),13 whose function is li-l-muḫāṭaba‘to address’:14 “[The suffix] -k [i.e. -ka, -ki, -kum etc.] can be otherthan a noun [i.e. ʿalāma ‘marker’], but appear to address [a person],for example [the demonstratives] ḏālika/ḏāka15 ‘that [masc.]’ [usedwhen addressing a masc. sg.], for the -k [suffix] in this [demonstra-tive] is like [the suffix] -at (ʿalāmat al-taʾnīṯ ‘the femininemarker’) in

9 See Lane (1863–1893:iii, 1061a; 1061c).10 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 218.16–18.11 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 236.4 f.12 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 331.10 f.13 On the concept of ʿalāma see Levin (1985:119, §2; 1989:43f., §2.2).14 On the idea of al-kāf fī ḏālika li-l-muḫāṭaba see also Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 62.22; 142.8. Cf.

Wright (1997: i, 266, beginning of §342).15 Ḏāka according to ms. a in the Derenbourg edition; for the reference see the following

note.

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 185

the example faʿalat fulānatu ‘so-and-so [fem. sg.] did’, and the like”(wa-qad takūnu l-kāfuġayra sminwa-lākinnahā tajīʾu li-l-muḫāṭabatiwa-ḏālika naḥwukāfi ḏālika fa-l-kāfu fī hāḏābi-manzilati l-tāʾi fī qaw-lika faʿalat fulānatu wa-naḥwi ḏālika).16

c. The demonstratives also have diminutive forms, to which Sībawayhi de-votes chapter 393, Bāb taḥqīr al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama.17i. In thebeginningof the chapter hementions threediminutive forms:

“As in the examples hāḏayyā ‘this little one [masc.]’ as [the diminu-tive form of] hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, ḏayyāka ‘that little one [masc.]’ as[the diminutive form of] ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ and ʾulayyā ‘these littleones’ as [the diminutive form of] ʾulā ‘these’ ” (wa-ḏālika qawluka fīhāḏā hāḏayyā wa-ḏāka ḏayyāka wa-fī ʾulā ʾulayyā).18

ii. Later in the chapter Sībawayhi mentions other diminutive forms ofthe demonstratives, refers to their morphology and compares themto diminutive forms of relative pronouns, for example tayyā ‘thislittle one [fem.]’, the diminutive of tā ‘this [fem.]’, ḏayyālika ‘thatlittle one [masc.]’ and ʾulayyāʾ ‘these little ones’.19

d. The demonstratives have dual forms, to which Sībawayhi devotes theshort chapter 355, Bāb taṯniyat al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama allatī ʾawāḫiruhāmuʿtalla.20i. In the beginning of the chapter Sībawayhi mentions the dual forms

of two demonstratives, ḏāni and tāni: “If you make ḏā ‘this [masc.]’dual you say ḏāni ‘these two [masc.]’ and if youmake tā ‘this [fem.]’dual you say tāni ‘these two [fem.]’ ” ( fa-ʾiḏā ṯannayta ḏā qulta ḏāniwa-ʾin ṯannayta tā qulta tāni).21

e. Demonstratives can be used as names of persons. Sībawayhi treats thisissue extensively in chapter 310, Bāb taġyīr al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama ʾiḏāṣārat ʿalāmāt ḫāṣṣa,22 and briefly in chapter 317, Bāb al-ḥikāya allatī lātaġayyaru fīhā l-ʾasmāʾ ʿan ḥālihā fī l-kalām.23

16 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 331.12–14.17 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 141.16–142.20.18 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 141.18 f.19 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 142.2–6; 142.6–8; and 142.12, respectively.20 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 102.14–19.21 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 102.15.22 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.16–40.21.23 For the whole chapter see Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.18–64.8.

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i. Sībawayhi starts chapter 310 with an enumeration of five demon-stratives: “These are ḏā ‘this [masc.]’, ḏī ‘this [fem.]’, tā ‘this [fem.]’,ʾulā ‘these’ and ʾulāʾi ‘these’, whose taqdīr24 is ʾulāʿi”25 (wa-ḏālika ḏāwa-ḏī wa-tā wa-ʾulā wa-ʾulāʾi wa-taqdīruhā ʾulāʿi).26

ii. In chapter 317 Sībawayhi refers to nouns which do not change whenused as proper nouns, two of which are hāḏā and hāʾulāʾi: “He said: ifyou call a man by the name hāḏā or hāʾulāʾi, you leave them as theyare [without any change]” (qāla wa-law sammayta rajulan hāḏā ʾawhāʾulāʾi taraktahu ʿalā ḥālihi).27

4 Demonstratives in Example Sentences Highlighting Their Rolesand Functions

Demonstratives are used in numerous example sentences in the Kitāb, asmodifiers of nouns or standing on their own. A scrutiny of all the examplesentences in the book shows that in addition to the regular, known meaningsof demonstratives such as ‘this’, ‘that’ and the like, Sībawayhi also tends to usethemwith ameaning similar to that of certain verbs, namely tanabbahorunẓurin the imperative, meaning ‘here is/are; there is/are; behold!’ (for themeaningsof tanabbah and unẓur, see §a.ii below). These sentences make it clear thatfor Sībawayhi demonstratives are good examples for non-verbal elements withthe syntactic and semantic characteristics of verbs, as in the cases mentionedin what follows:

a. Many of the examples in which the demonstratives reflect the meaning‘here is/are; there is/are; behold!’ occur as part of a discussion of the‘circumstantial phrase’ (ḥāl). Here are some quotes from the Kitāb:

24 According to Levin (1997:162, §7), the meaning of taqdīr in this context is a theoreticalform that Sībawayhi created, where the historical hamza is replaced by ʿayn, “in order toshow the place occupied by the hamza in the historical stage of certain words in certaindialects”.

25 According to both the Derenbourg and the Būlāq editions, the form is wa-ʾulāʿi with ashort u, whereas in Hārūn’s edition it is wa-ʾūlāʿi with a long ū. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii,38.17 Derenbourg/Kitāb ii, 42.7 Būlāq/Kitāb iii, 280.18 Hārūn, respectively. Since this formshould be parallel to the original demonstrative ʾulāʾi, which is with a short u, the versionin the Derenbourg and the Būlāq editions would seem to be the correct one.

26 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.16 f.27 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 62.23.

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 187

i. In chapter 88, Bāb mā yantaṣibu min al-maṣādir tawkīdan li-māqablahu, Sībawayhi deals with the circumstantial phrase for empha-sis, which later grammarians call al-ḥāl al-muʾakkida.28 The chapteris introduced by the following example sentences: “As in the exam-ples hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi ḥaqqan ‘here is ʿAbdallāh, truly!’ and hāḏāzayduni l-ḥaqqa lā l-bāṭila ‘here is Zayd, truly, not falsely!’ ” (wa-ḏālika qawluka hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi ḥaqqan wa-hāḏā zayduni l-ḥaqqa lāl-bāṭila).29

ii. In chapter 117, discussed in §3.a.ii above, Sībawayhi brings severalexamples inwhich the demonstratives function as the subject of thesentence and mean ‘here is/are; there is/are; behold!’. Here are theexamples that introduce the chapter: hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan‘here is ʿAbdallāh going!’; hāʾulāʾi qawmuka munṭaliqīna ‘here areyour people going!’; ḏāka ʿabdu llāhi ḏāhiban ‘there is ʿAbdallāhwalking!’; hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi maʿrūfan ‘here is ʿAbdallāh, as is wellknown!’.30 In order to explain the circumstantial phrase in theseexamples, Sībawayhi refers to themeaningof the first example,hāḏāʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan and reveals the role of the demonstrative inthis and similar sentences: “The meaning is that you want to drawhis attention to him [i.e. to ʿAbdallāh] walking, not to introduceʿAbdallāh to him because you think that he does not know him.[When you say hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan, it is]31 as if you weresaying unẓur ʾilayhi munṭaliqan ‘look at him going!’ ” (wa-l-maʿnāʾannaka turīdu ʾan tunabbihahu lahumunṭaliqan lā turīdu ʾan tuʿarri-fahu ʿabda llāhi li-ʾannaka ẓananta ʾannahu yajhaluhu fa-ka-ʾannakaqulta unẓur ʾilayhi munṭaliqan).32

28 On this term seeWright (1997:ii, 115, last line-116, 21, §44, Rem. d.).29 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 159.9 f.30 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 217.9 f. A similar example is discussed in chapter 114, also devoted to

the ḥāl: hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi qāʾiman ‘here is ʿAbdallāh standing!’; see Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 212.1.See also Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 237.3 f. (towards the end of chapter 129): hāḏā zaydun ḏāhiban‘here is Zayd walking!’.

31 According to Levin (1997:151 f., §4.1(2)), the technical phrase ka-ʾannaka qulta is in fact anelliptical form of the expression ʾiḏā qulta … fa-ka-ʾannaka qulta.

32 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 217.13 f. See al-Sīrāfī’s commentary, Šarḥ ii, 406.4–11. Cf. Zajjāj,Maʿānī iii, 63.2 from the end–64.4, where he says the demonstrative has the meaningintabih ‘behold!’. See further Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ i, 167.4–12, where the author explains thatthe demonstrative hāḏā in hāḏā zaydun wāqifan ‘here is Zayd standing!’ means ʾašartuʾilayhi ‘I pointed at him’ or nabbahtu ʿalayhi ‘I drew attention to him’.

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b. Some examples in which the subject is a demonstrative and the predi-cate is an active participle can reflect the above-mentioned meaning ofdemonstratives.i. Chapter 37, whose title begins with the words Hāḏā bābmin ism al-

fāʿil, is devoted to an active participle that syntactically functionslike an imperfect verb.33 The first example in this lengthy chap-ter is hāḏā ḍāribun zaydan ġadan ‘here is one that will hit Zaydtomorrow!’.34 The chapter contains similar examples, which I willnot quote here.35

ii. In various other chapters there are additional examples inwhich thedemonstrative has thismeaning, for instance: hāḏā l-rajulumunṭali-qan ‘here is the man going!’.36

5 Conclusion

Although Sībawayhi does not devote a separate chapter to the morphology,syntax and functions of demonstratives, a scrutiny of their occurrences inhis Kitāb reveals their functions and semantic characteristics. For Sībawayhidemonstratives form part of the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama ‘the dubious,or vague, nouns’; they serve to indicate, or point to, nearby or far objects orpersons, a separate set existing for nearby objects or persons and for far ones;they have diminutive and dual forms; and finally, they can be used as namesof persons. Among the demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s example sentences thereare quite a few that have the meaning of a verb in the imperative, ‘behold!’ or‘see!’, and this is explicitly explained in this way by Sībawayhi.

33 For the whole chapter see Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 70.10–74.19.34 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 70.11 f. One could also translate this sentence as ‘this is one that will

hit Zayd tomorrow’.35 See, for example, Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 73.10–12; 73.12–16; 74.6–10; 74.10f.; 74.11 f.36 See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 221.19 (ch. 120). For a thorough discussion and translation of this

example in its context, see Levin (1979:194, §1.(2)).

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb 189

Bibliographical References

a Primary SourcesIbn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-ḤasanṬāhir ibn ʾAḥmad al-Naḥwī al-Miṣrī Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ

al-muqaddima al-muḥsiba. Ed. by Ḥālid ʿAbd al-Karīm. 2 vols. Kuwait: al-Maṭbaʿa l-ʿAṣriyya, 1977.

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān = ʾAbū l-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mukarram ibn ʿAlī al-ʾAnṣārī al-ʾIfrīqī al-Miṣrī Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh ʿAlī al-Kabīr etal. 9 vols. [Cairo]: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1981–1986.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by HartwigDerenbourg, Le livre de Sībawaihi, Traité de grammaire arabe. 2 vols. Paris: Imprime-rie Nationale, 1881–1889/2 vols. Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Būlāq, 1316–1317/1898–1900/Ed. ʿAbdal-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1988/Electronic eds.,accessed on 26 September 2014. http://www.islamhouse.com/d/files/ar/ih_books/single/ar_sebawayh_book.zip; http://shamela.ws/browse.php/book-23018; http://www.almeshkat.net/books/open.php?cat=16&book=484#.VCUqERbuSHw.

Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Marzubān al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ KitābSībawayhi. Ed. by ʾAḥmadḤasanMahdalī and ʿAlī Sayyid ʿAlī. 5 vols. Beirut: al-Kutubal-ʿIlmiyya, 2008.

Zajjāj, Maʿānī = ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm ibn al-Sarī al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by ʿAbdal-Jalīl ʿAbduh Šalabī. 5 vols. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1408/1988.

b Secondary SourcesLane, Edward William. 1863–1893. An Arabic-English lexicon. 8 vols. London: Williams

and Norgate.Levin, Aryeh. 1979. “Sībawayhi’s view of the syntactic structure of kāna waʾaxawātuhā”.

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1.185–213. [Repr. Levin 1998, art. v.]Levin, Aryeh. 1985. “The distinction between nominal and verbal sentences according

to the Arab grammarians”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 25.118–127. [Repr. Levin1998, art. iii.]

Levin, Aryeh. 1989. “What is meant by ʾakalūnī l-barāġīṯu?”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabicand Islam 12.40–85. [Repr. Levin 1998, art. viii.]

Levin, Aryeh. 1997. “The theory of al-taqdīr and its terminology”. Jerusalem Studies inArabic and Islam 21.142–166.

Levin, Aryeh. 1998. Arabic linguistic thought and dialectology. Jerusalem: The HebrewUniversity.

Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-Index du “Kitāb de Sībawayhi”. Paris: Klincksieck.Wehr, Hans. 1994. A dictionary of modern written Arabic. 4th edition. Ed. J. Milton

Cowan. Ithaca, n.y.: Spoken Language Services.Wright,William. 1997. Agrammarof theArabic language. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_011

HowHave the Descriptions of taḥḏīr Changed?*

Haruko Sakaedani

1 Speech Acts and taḥḏīr

Austin (1962) divides utterances into two categories: ‘constative’ utterances,which express facts or situations, and ‘performative’ utterances, which them-selves come into effect as acts. Performative utterances are furthermoredividedinto two kinds: ‘explicit’ performatives and ‘primary’ performatives, in whichthe performative function is not explicit, such as ‘Fire!’, ‘Hello!’, and so on.

The speech acts themselves have three subdivisions (Austin 1962:91–93, 101–107): i. locutionary acts; ii. illocutionary acts; and iii. perlocutionary acts. Thelocutionary act is the act of uttering a certain language expression. The illocu-tionary act is an act in another dimension fulfilled based on the locutionary actin saying something. The perlocutionary act is the act of producing utteranceeffects through the illocutionary act by saying something. It is the illocutionaryact that usually becomes the subject of research on speech acts, so illocution-ary acts are commonly called ‘speech acts’. Being a mediated locutionary act,the illocutionary act brings ‘illocutionary force’, such as imperative, promise,request, question, reporting, and so on.

In the Arabic grammatical tradition there is no direct parallel with Austin’stheory, but several notions come close to the framework introduced by Austin.In this connection, the classification of speech into ḫabar and ʾinšāʾ shouldbe mentioned. Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1360) says that “it [kalām ‘speech’] is ḫabar,ṭalab, and ʾinšāʾ” (Šuḏūr 31). He explains that ḫabar encompasses sentencessuch as affirmative sentences and negative sentences, that is, sentences whichcan be determined to be true or false. Imperative, prohibitive, and interrogativesentences, whose meaning is not truth-conditional and is derived from theutterance with a delay, are ṭalab. In contrast, ʾinšāʾ encompasses sentences likeʾanta ḥurr ‘You are free’, said to a slave, or qabiltu hāḏā l-nikāḥ ‘I have accepted

* I should like to thank the audiences for their comments when I presented a small paper ontaḥḏīr at the 57th Meeting of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (Nippon OrientoGakkai) and at the fal iii meeting in Paris. However, any and all possible mistakes aremine.

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed? 191

this marriage’ to a person who proposed to you, whose meaning and utteranceco-exist (Šuḏūr 32).

Ibn Hišām says that some grammarians agree with a tripartite division ofspeech in this way, but in fact speech is divided into only two, that is, ḫabarand ʾinšāʾ, as the content of qum ‘stand up!’ happens at the time of its utteranceand is not affected by any delay. In this type of speech, which is called ʾinšāʾ, theutterancemeans that themeaning has been completed (Šuḏūr 32).Ḫabar maybe regarded as a constative utterance, and ʾinšāʾ as a performative utterancein terms of Austin’s (1962) definition. Larcher (2007:358) points out that ʾinšāʾconsists of two subdivisions, ṭalabī (jussive utterance) and ʾīqāʿī (performativeutterance) according to al-Kafawī’s al-Kulliyyāt. He also offers as a hypothesisthat ʾinšāʾ had its roots in fiqh, then it broadened its scope toward the jussiveutterances, which include orders (ʾamr) and prohibitions (nahy). Eventually,Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) expanded the category of ʾinšāʾ from the legal to thelinguistic sciences (2007:359).

The present paper aims to illustrate the changing descriptions of speech actsinArabic grammar, taking taḥḏīr ‘warning’ as an example.Actually, taḥḏīr is nota term used frequently in Arabic grammar. Sībawayhi, for example, used thisterm only twice in his Kitāb (i, 253 and 273).1 Nonetheless, the term taḥḏīr hascome down in the Arabic grammatical tradition, at least on a small scale. Ikeda(1970:41) points out that grammarians in the field of Arabic grammar began tofocus their attention on editing instructional textbooks in the 5th/11th century;therefore, there must have been some changes in the descriptions of Arabicgrammar at that time. This era must be investigated to see how the descriptionof taḥḏīr changed in the Arabic grammatical tradition.

The notion of taḥḏīr fits into Austin’s primary performatives.2 Concerningaccusatives of exclamation, Reckendorf (1921:108) says that an exclamationabout or to somebody is called nidāʾ ‘calling’ like taḥḏīr ‘warning’ and ʾiġrāʾ‘rebellious encouragement’. Jumla ʾinšāʾiyya means an exclamatory sentence,and on the other hand, a declarative sentence is called jumla ʾiḫbāriyya or

1 Al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822) uses the term taḥḏīr only once in his Maʿānī (iii, 268). He states thattaḥḏīr is accusative, quoting a Qurʾānic verse fa-qāla la-hum rasūlu llāhi nāqata llāhi ‘and themessenger of Allah said to them “Allah’s she-camel” ’ (q. 91/13), where nāqata ‘she-camel’ withan accusative ending has the meaning of taḥḏīr. However, he also adds examples of taḥḏīrwith a nominative ending, such as hāḏā l-ʿaduwwu hāḏā l-ʿaduwwu ‘this enemy, this enemy’and hāḏā l-laylu fa-rtaḥilū ‘This night and go away’ (iii, 268f.).

2 Firanescu (2009) deals with the relationship between modern speech act theory and tradi-tional Arabic grammar.

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jumla ḫabariyya. An exclamative accusative infinitive is calledmaṣḍarmanṣūbbi-fiʿl muḍmar (an accusative verbal noun with a concealed verb). The contrastto the ‘concealment’ of the verb is its ‘manifestation’, and the verb in the lattercase is fiʿl maḥḍ ‘pure verb’. For example, consider the imperative iḍribū ‘Hit!’in contrast to ḍarban. Accusatives like ʾuffatan ‘pooh!’ or wayḥa-ka ‘woe onyou!’ are called mā lā fiʿla la-hu ʾaṣlan ‘what does not have a verb in the firstplace’.

Reckendorf (1921:109) cites examples of interjections consisting of anaccusative noun with pronominal suffix, stating that it is often difficult todecide whether it is an interjection form or a true accusative. In such a case,the accusatives can be verbal nouns or other nouns, and the accusatives cangenerally draw attention to the subject, or they may contain the call to other,more specific actions. Some of the examples he cites are nafsa-ka ‘Save your-self!’ and ʾanta ʾiyyā-ka ʾiyyā-ka ‘You, take care, beware!’.

Wright (1988:ii, 72–78) describes the accusatives that depend on an impliedverb. These include the following cases:

(i) mafʿūl muṭlaq in phrases of command (positive and negative), wish,reproach (worded interrogatively), praise, salutation, and so on. Exam-ples:

ṣabran lā jazaʿan as in iṣbir ṣabran wa-lā tajzaʿ jazaʿan ‘Be patientand do not be grieved!’

saqyan laka, i.e. saqāka llāhu saqyan ‘May God give you rain!’ʾa-kufran baʿda raddi l-mawti ʿannī? as in ʾa-ʾakfuru kufran … ‘Shall I

be ungrateful after you have averted death fromme?’subḥāna llāh as in ʾusabbiḥu subḥāna llāh ‘I praise the absolute

glory of God!’ or sabbiḥ/ sabbiḥī subḥāna llāh ‘Praise theabsolute glory of God!’3

ḫayra muqdamin as in qadimta ḫayra muqdamin ‘Welcome!’ (lit.‘You have arrived the best of arrivals’)

(ii) when the verbmay be easily guessed from themanner in which the nounin the accusative is uttered and the circumstances of the speaker, the verbis omitted. This is found in several types of phrases:

3 Wright (1988:ii, 73) says that ʾusabbiḥu subḥāna llāh is “an ʾiḫbār or statement of fact” andsabbiḥ/sabbiḥī subḥāna llāh is “an ʾinšāʾ a command or wish”, but both of these must beinterpreted as ʾinšāʾ for pragmatic reasons.

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(a) phrases expressing wish, salutation, and the like. Example: marḥa-ban bika as ʾataytamakānan yarḥubu bi-ka ‘You have come to a com-fortable place’.

(b) in this section, Wright (1988:ii, 74–76) describes taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ indetail. He says taḥḏīrmeans “phrases inwhich an individual is calledupon to guard himself, or a part of his person, against someone orsomething” and ʾiġrāʾ means phrases “in which one or more indi-viduals are urged to do something or attack some object” (1988:ii,74). As for taḥḏīr, “the speaker may mention (a) either the personwho is to be on his guard; or (b) the person or thing he is to guardagainst, repeating the word or not, at pleasure; or lastly, (c) bothtogether, connecting them by the conjunction wa”. As for ʾiġrāʾ, “hementions only the object to be attacked, repeating the word or not,as he pleases” (1988:ii, 75). It should be noted that Wright includesattacking something in the category of ʾiġrāʾ. Wright quotes manyexamples from Classical Arabic, which will be examined in the fol-lowing sections. Most are examples of omitting imperative forms ofverbs, though some of themare examples of other forms of the verb,such as ʾiyyā-ka, as in ʾiyyā-ka ʾuḥaḏḏiru ‘I warn you’, or several exam-ples of ism fiʿl, such as ḥadīṯa-ka, as in hāti ḥadīṯa-ka ‘Give your storyhere!’.Wright givesmany such examples; however, he does notmakeclear which examples constitute taḥḏīr and which are ʾiġrāʾ. Wright(1988:ii, 76) furthermore states that it is only the second person pro-nounwhich is commonly used in this way, and that examples of thefirst and third person are rare, i.e., ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra, as in naḥḥi-nī ʿan al-šarri wa-naḥḥi l-šarri ‘keep me from evil!’; ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾanyaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kum al-ʾarnaba, as in naḥḥi-nī ʿan mušāhadati ḥaḏfil-ʾarnabi wa-naḥḥi ḥaḏfa-hā ʿan ḥaḍrat-ī wa-mušāhadat-ī ‘Preserveme from seeing any of you throw at [or: shoot at] a hare!’.

(c) various other phrases, such as al-kilāba ʿalā l-baqari as in ʾarsil al-kilāba ʿalā l-baqari ‘Let the dogs loose on the antelopes!’.

(d) iḫtiṣāṣ ‘specification’ or ‘particularization’ (of the pronoun), i.e., theaccusative is the noun which the pronoun represents and to whichthe statement refers. It can be explained by an ellipsis of ʾaʿnī ‘Imean’ or ʾaḫuṣṣu ‘I specify’. One example is naḥnu l-ʿaraba ʾasḫāmanbaḏala ‘we Arabs [i.e. ‘we, (I mean) the Arabs’] are the most liberalamong the generous’.

Contemporary grammarians, too, such as Ḥasan (1992:126–139), explain taḥḏīrin detail. Ḥasan states that taḥḏīr comprises the following three elements: i.

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muḥaḏḏir (a speaker who addresses thewarning to another person); ii.muḥaḏ-ḏar (a person towhom thewarning is addressed); and iii.maḥḏūr ormuḥaḏḏarmin-hu (the thing for which the warning is given). He distinguishes five kindsof taḥḏīr:

i. al-nāra lit. ‘the fire’ (the speaker refers only tomuḥaḏḏar min-hu.)ii. al-barda l-barda lit. ‘the coldness, the coldness’, and al-bardawa-l-maṭara

lit. ‘the coldness and the rain’ (muḥaḏḏar min-hu is repeated.)iii. yada-ka lit. ‘your hand’, yada-ka yada-ka lit. ‘your hand, your hand’, and

yada-ka wa-malābisa-ka lit. ‘your hand and your clothes’ (the speakerrefers tomuḥaḏḏar by -ka and so on.)

iv. raʾsa-ka wa-ḥarārata l-šamsi lit. ‘your head and the sun’s heat’, andmawā-ʿīda-kawa-l-ḫulfa lit. ‘your promises and the difference’ (the speaker referstomuḥaḏḏar by -ka and so on and addsmuḥaḏḏar min-huwith wa-.)

v. ʾiyyā-ka lit. ‘you [masc. sg.]’, etc. (muḥaḏḏar is shown by the accusativepronoun.)

2 Taḥḏīr in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition

This section will deal first with Sībawayhi, then with Ibn Yaʿīš, Ibn Mālik, andIbn ʿAqīl, and finally with Ibn Hišām in order to trace the transition in theirdescriptions of taḥḏīr.

2.1 Sībawayhi’s KitābSībawayhi (d. 177/793 or 179/796) explains taḥḏīr ‘warning’ in the chapter oncommand (ʾamr) and warning (taḥḏīr) of his Kitāb.4 He states that in orderto give a warning, speakers say ʾiyyā-ka ‘you [acc.]’, which has the intendedmeaning ʾiyyā-ka naḥḥi ‘Take yourself away!’, ʾiyyā-ka bāʿid ‘Keep yourself faraway!’, ʾiyyā-ka ttaqi ‘Keep yourself away!’, and other similar expressions. Onesuch expression is nafsa-ka yā fulānu lit. ‘yourself [acc.], so-and-so!’, whichmeans ittaqi nafsa-ka ‘Keep yourself away!’. In these cases, no verb is allowed,which means that speakers can warn only with ʾiyyā-ka and nafsa-ka.

Sībawayhi also gives two other examples: ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada lit. ‘yourself[acc.] and the lion [acc.]’, whichmeans ʾiyyā-ka fa-ttaqiyannawa-l-ʾasada ‘Keepyourself away, and away from the lion!’, and ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra which meansʾiyyā-ya li-ʾattaqiyanna wa-l-šarra ‘I’ll keep myself away, and away from evil!’,

4 Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 273–277.

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where ʾiyyā-ka ‘you’ and ʾiyyā-ya ‘me’ are the persons avoiding and (a)l-ʾasada‘the lion’ and (a)l-šarra ‘the evil’ are the things being avoided. He cites another,slightly different example: ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba ‘Letme keep away from that one of you who throws the rabbit!’.5 In this sentence,bāʿid ornaḥḥi is omitted. Sībawayhi claims that if someonewarns someone elsesaying ʾiyyā-ka, that person may answer ʾiyyā-ya, which means ʾiyyā-ya ʾaḥfaẓuwa-ʾaḥḏaru ‘I take care of myself, and I am aware of myself ’.

Speakers omit the verbs from ʾiyyā-ka because they use them often in theirspeech, just as they omit ḥīna-ʾiḏin ‘at that time’ when they talk about the pastand al-ʾāna ‘now’ when they talk about the present. Thus, they say ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada (with wa-) instead of iḥḏari l-ʾasada ‘Be careful of the lion!’.

There are several examples of taḥḏīr without ʾiyyā-:

raʾsa-hu wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa, which means ḫalli (or daʿ) raʾsa-hu wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa lit.‘Leave his head with the wall!’

šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajja, which means ʿalay-ka šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajja lit. ‘Againstyou your affair with the hajj!’

imraʾan wa nafsa-hu, which means daʿi mraʾan wa-nafsa-hu lit. ‘Leave aman with himself!’6

ʾahlaka wa-l-layla, which means bādir ʾahla-ka qabla l-layli lit. ‘Attendyour people before the night!’7

māzi8 raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa lit. ‘Māzi, leave your head with the sword!’. Thistaḥḏīr can be explained just like raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa (the examplequoted here was raʾsa-hu wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa, with a third person pronoun).

5 According to Lisān al-ʿArab (ii, 810), ḥaḏf means ramy ‘throwing’ or ḍarb ‘hitting’. It is saidon the authority of al-ʾAzharī ‘I saw the Arab shepherds yaḥḏifūna the rabbits with theirsticks when they [the rabbits] ran [with small slides] in front of them [the shepherds]; thenmaybe the stick injured their legs and they hunted them and slaughtered them’. The Arabshepherds thought that the rabbits were ill-omened, and encountering one was regarded asan evil omen.

6 Sībawayhi says here that this wa-, which means maʿa, is like the wa in mā ṣanaʿta wa ʾaḫā-ka‘You did not make, you with your brother’. Thus, it is also appropriate to say daʿi mraʾan wa-daʿ nafsa-hu ‘Leave aman and leave himself!’. Elsewhere (Kitāb i, 297), Sībawayhi gives similarexamples, such asmā ṣanaʿta wa-ʾabā-ka ‘You did not make, you with your father’.

7 In ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada, (a)l-ʾasada is “the thing against which you must guard yourself”(muḥtafaẓ min-hu). In the same way, here, (a)l-layla is “the thing against which you mustbe warned” (muḥaḏḏar min-hu).

8 Ibn Yaʿīš says in his Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal (ii, 26) that māzi is the apocopate form of māzin(u),with the last consonant omitted. The name of theman called Māzinuwas not Māzinun (with

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As shown above, speakers omit verbs that are used frequently, when some-thing else is put after them. Thus, the first object may become a substitute foruttering the verb, as in ʾiyyā-ka, in which the verb is omitted. Nafsa-ka meansiḥfaẓ nafsa-ka ‘Take care of yourself!’, and raʾsa-ka means ittaqi raʾsa-ka ‘Takecare of your head!’. Likewise, al-jidār means ittaqi l-jidār ‘Keep away from thewall!’.

If speakers add another element after the verb, it takes the position of ʾiyyā-ka. In other words, ʾiyyā-ka may be a substitute for uttering the verb, just asverbal nounsmaybe.Thus, one can sayal-ḥaḏara l-ḥaḏara, whichmeans ilzamil-ḥaḏara ‘Have caution!’. In a similar way, al-najāʾa l-najāʾa means ʿalay-ka l-najāʾa ‘Youhave to rescue’ andḍarbanḍarban, which probablymeans ‘Youhaveto hit’.9 The examples above omit the verbs making the repeated verbal nounssubstitutes for if ʿal ‘Do!’; therefore, it is unreasonable to add verbs such as ilzamor ʿalay-ka here.

One of the examples Sībawayhi gives of the use of verbal nouns is a line froma poem by ʿAmr bn Maʿdīkarib: ʾurīdu ḥibāʾa-hu wa-yurīdu qatlī / ʿaḏīra-ka minḫalīli-ka min murādi ‘I want to make him welcome, and he wants to kill me /[Give] your justification to your friend from tribe Murād’. Sībawayhi regardsʿaḏīr ‘justification’ here as a verbal noun, but some other grammarians do not.This issue will be treated in section 2.2.

2.2 Al-Zamaḫšarī’sMufaṣṣal and Ibn Yaʿīš’ CommentsAl-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1143) refers to taḥḏīr in his Mufaṣṣal (ii, 25–30), deal-ing with it as a kind of ʾamr ‘imperative’. He uses the same examples as Sīb-awayhi does: ʾiyyā-kawa-l-ʾasada, whosemeaning is explained as ittaqi nafsa-kaʾan tataʿarraḍa li-l-ʾasadi, wa-l-ʾasada ʾan yuhlika-ka ‘Keep yourself away fromencountering the lion, and keep the lion away from its killing you!’. He alsogives some examples confirming this: raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa and māzi10 raʾsa-kawa-l-sayfa.

In a similar way, al-Zamaḫšarī discusses ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra, which heexplains asnaḥḥi-nī ʿanal-šarri, wa-naḥḥi l-šarra ʿannī ‘Keepmeaway fromevil,

nunation), but he was from the Banū Māzin, or Māzinī. The speakers omitted the last yāʾof Māzinī and then also the n in Māzin. His real name was Kirām ʾAsar Buḫayr al-Qušayrī.A man named Qaʿnab al-Yarbūʿī came to kill him, but Māzi fought him off by a neck, andthis phrasemāzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfawas said to him.

9 The meaning of ḍarban ḍarban is not explained here, though it may mean ‘You have tohit’. Sībawayhi gives some examples of verbal nouns in the accusative repeated twice inanother chapter (Kitāb i, 335).

10 See above, n. 8.

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and keep evil away fromme!’. Then, he explains ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba11 as naḥḥi-nī mušāhadat-ī ḥaḏfi l-ʾarnabi wa-naḥḥi ḥaḏfa-hā ʿanḥaḍrat-ī wa-mušāhadat-ī ’ ‘Keep me away from my looking at the throwing ofthe rabbit, and keep its throwing from my presence and my looking!’, whosemeaning is a prohibition of throwing the rabbit (wa-l-maʿnā l-nahyu ʿan ḥaḏfil-ʾarnabi).

Al-Zamaḫšarī also gives the same exampleswithout ʾiyyā- as Sībawayhi does:šaʾna-kawa-l-ḥajja, imraʾanwanafsa-hu, and ʾahla-kawa-l-layla. In addition, hegives another example. Remember that Sībawayhi quotes a verse containingthe expression ʿaḏīra-ka ‘your justification’. Al-Zamaḫšarī interprets this asʾaḥḍir ʿuḏra-ka ʾaw ʿāḏira-ka ‘Bring your justification, i.e. your ʿāḏir’. Accordingto Ibn Yaʿīš, ʿaḏīr is a verbal noun like ʿuḏr ‘justification’, but others argue that,rather than being a verbal noun, it means ʿāḏir, i.e. an active participle.

We have seen above that Sībawayhi presents expressions in which a verbalnoun is repeated twice. On his part, al-Zamaḫšarī (Mufaṣṣal ii, 29) cites expres-sions in which a noun is repeated twice:

al-ʾasada l-ʾasada lit. ‘the lion, the lion’al-jidāra l-jidāra, i.e. al-jidāra ‘the wall on the verge of collapse’

l-mutadāʿiyaal-ṣabiyya l-ṣabiyya, i.e. ʾibṭāʾa l-ṣabiyyi ‘letting the young man down slowly’ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka, i.e. ilzam-hu ‘Stick to him [your brother]!’al-ṭarīqa l-ṭarīqa, i.e. ḫalli-hi ‘Vacate it [the way]!’

Ibn Yaʿīš (d. 643/1246) comments that it is not allowed to put twice-repeatednouns after a verb, as in *ittaqi l-ʾasada l-ʾasada lit. ‘Keep away from the lion, thelion!’. He recommends avoiding such expressions and using instead sentencessuch as the following: ḥāḏiri l-ʾasada ttaqi l-ʾasada ‘Beware of the lion, keepaway from the lion!’.

2.3 IbnMālik’s ʾAlfiyyaIn his ʾAlfiyya (540) Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274) gives the following example oftaḥḏīr: ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-šarra lit. ‘you and the evil’ (line 622). We have seen abovethat Sībawayhi and al-Zamaḫšarī quote the example ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra ‘Keepme away from evil’, but Ibn Mālik changes the first person pronoun to thesecond person, pointing out that ʾiyyā-ya ‘me’ is infrequent (šāḏḏ) and thatʾiyyā-hu ‘him’ is even more infrequent (ʾAlfiyya 541).

11 See above, n. 5.

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The commentator of the ʾAlfiyya, Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 769/1367), repeats that occur-rence of the first person, like ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba, isexceptional and that occurrence of the third person is even more exceptional(Šarḥ 541). According to him, ʾiyyā-ka ‘you [masc.]’ and its sisters, i.e. ʾiyyā-ki‘you [fem.]’, ʾiyyā-kumā ‘you [du.]’, ʾiyyā-kum ‘you [masc. pl.]’, and ʾiyyā-kunna‘you [fem. pl.]’ must be accusative, whether or not they are attached to anotherword with wa-, because they are supposed to be like ʾiyyā-ka ʾuḥaḏḏiru ‘I warnyou’. Here, Ibn ʿAqīl does not regard taḥḏīr as a kind of imperative anymore.

As an example of repeating a noun twice, Ibn Mālik gives al-ḍayġama l-ḍayġama. The word ḍayġama means ‘jawbone’, but in this case, it means thewide-jawboned lion. This example corresponds, therefore, to al-Zamaḫšarī’sexample, al-ʾasada l-ʾasada.

Ibn ʿAqīl mentions māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa, saying that it means yā māzinuqi raʾsa-ka wa-ḥḏari l-sayfa ‘Māzin, protect your head and be aware of thesword’.

Ibn Mālik explains that objects of encouragement (muġran bihi) are tobe treated as objects of cautioning (muḥaḏḏar) without ʾiyyā- (ʾAlfiyya 541,line 626). Subsequently, Ibn ʿAqīl distinguishes between taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ ‘incit-ing, encouraging’. He explains that ʾiġrāʾ being a command to stick to some-thing praiseworthy is like taḥḏīr: the coordinating wa- or the repeated nounwithout a verb causes their object to be accusative, while ʾiyyā-maynot be usedin either case.

Ibn ʿAqīl discusses the examples ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka and ʾaḫā-ka wa-l-ʾiḥsānaʾilay-hi ‘Be kind to your brother!’, which means ilzam-hu ‘Stick to him!’. Heclearly distinguishes ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka from other taḥḏīr expressions like al-ʾasada l-ʾasada.

2.4 Ibn Hišām’s Šuḏūr al-ḏahabUnlike the authors mentioned above, Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1359) does not men-tion taḥḏīr in his Šuḏūr al-ḏahab. Instead, he explains ʾiġrāʾ in more detail(Šuḏūr 222–225), defining it as “calling the addressee’s attention to somethingpraised in order to keep close to it” (tanbīh al-muḫāṭab ʿalā ʾamrin maḥmūdinli-yalzama-hu), for which he gives the example ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka.12 He says thatwhen a noun is repeated, or when it is attached to another noun, as in al-murūʾata wa-l-najdata ‘the manhood and the heroism’, its agent (i.e. whatmakes the noun accusative, that is, a verb like ilzam) must be omitted. Ibn

12 In his Muntahā l-ʾadab bi-taḥqīq bi-Šarḥ Šuḏūr al-Ḏahab, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd explains thesecond ʾaḫā-ka as emphasis or confirmation of the first one.

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed? 199

Hišām regards ʾiġrāʾ as an accusative whose regent is omitted, and he does notlay weight on whether it is a kind of imperative.

As an example of ʾiġrāʾ without repeating or attaching, Ibn Hišām presentsthe following verse: ʾaḫā-ka llaḏī ʾin tadʿu-hu li-mulimmati yujib-ka… ‘[Stick to]your brother! Even if you call him to disaster, he will answer you…’. In this case,ʾaḫā-ka is ʾiġrāʾ, even though it is not repeated or attached to another word.

3 Conclusion

In the field of Arabic grammar, scholars began to focus their attention onediting pedagogical textbooks in the 5th/11th century, that is, the era of al-Zamaḫšarī. The grammarians arranged the grammatical items and put themin order, focusingmost of their attention on clarification and concretization ofthe styles and terms. Furthermore, as in the case of Ibn Mālik’s ʾAlfiyya, theysometimes versified the grammatical treatises, so that these could be learnt byheart more easily (Ikeda 1970).

In studying the transition in the description of taḥḏīr, we see that al-Zamaḫ-šarī has borrowed some things from Sībawayhi, but that he also adds newfindings. Moreover, Ibn Mālik and Ibn Hišām apparently attempt to introducea frame that differs from the one used previously (see Table 1).

table 1 Comparison of the examples of taḥḏīr cited by Arabic grammarians

al-Kitāb Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal Šarḥ al-ʾAlfiyya Šuḏūr al-ḏahab

ʾiyyā-kanafsa-ka

ʾiyyā-kanafsa-ka

ʾiyyā-kaʾiyyā-kiʾiyyā-kumāʾiyyā-kumʾiyyā-kunna

ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada

ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-šarra

ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifaʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba

ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifaʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba

ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifaʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba(exceptional)

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table 1 Comparison of the examples of taḥḏīr cited by Arabic grammarians (cont.)

al-Kitāb Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal Šarḥ al-ʾAlfiyya Šuḏūr al-ḏahab

raʾsa-hu wa-l-ḥāʾiṭašaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajjaimraʾan wa nafsa-huʾahla-ka wa-l-layla

šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajjaimraʾan wa nafsa-huʾahla-ka wa-l-layla

māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfaraʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa

māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfaraʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa

māzi raʾsa-kawa-l-sayfa

nafsa-karaʾsa-kaal-jidār

al-ḥaḏara l-ḥaḏaraal-najāʾa l-najāʾaḍarban ḍarban

ʿaḏīraka ʿaḏīraka

al-ʾasada l-ʾasadaal-jidāra l-jidāraal-ṣabiyya l-ṣabiyyaʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-kaal-ṭarīqa l-ṭarīqa

al-ḍayġamal-ḍayġama

(ʾaḫāka ʾaḫāka) ʾaḫāka ʾaḫākaʾaḫāka wa-l-ʾiḥsānaʾilayhi

ʾaḫāka ʾaḫākaal-marūʾatawa-n-najdata

ʾaḫāka llaḏī ʾin tadʿuhuli-mulimmati yujibka

iġrāʾ

For example, ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba is quoted by bothSībawayhi and al-Zamaḫšarī, and Ibn ʿAqīl also uses this example but he statesthat such a ‘warning’ to a first person is exceptional. Māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed? 201

raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa is retained as an example for quite some time, but raʾsa-huwa-l-ḥāʾiṭa is only cited by Sībawayhi and not used by succeeding grammarians.As for ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka cited by al-Zamaḫšarī, Ibn ʿAqīl clearly distinguishesit from taḥḏīr as ʾiġrāʾ, and in this way it comes down to Ibn Hišām. Thismeans that the distinction between illocutionary forces that Austin proposedwas known at least to some grammarians. According to Larcher’s hypothesis,Ibn al-Ḥājib expanded the category of ʾinšāʾ to the linguistic sciences, andgrammarians after him distinguish between taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ. This may meanthat historical factors must be taken into consideration in arguing this point.

On the other hand, while taḥḏīr was treated as a kind of imperative andprohibitive, Ibn ʿAqīl and Ibn Hišām looked at it from the perspective of ʾiʿrāb,that is as a kind of accusative noun.

In future study, it will be necessary to explore other grammatical items, too,from the viewpoint of the shifts in the theoretical framework.

Bibliographical References

a Primary SourcesFarrāʾ, Maʿānī = ʾAbū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā ibn Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by

Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Najjār. 3 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1955.Ibn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ = Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh Ibn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ Ibn ʿAqīl ʿalā ʾAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik.

Tripoli (Lebanon): Dār Jurūs, 1990.IbnHišām, Šuḏūr = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbūMuḥammad ʾAḥmad ibnMuḥammad IbnHišām,

Šarḥ Šuḏūr al-ḏahab. Sayda and Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, n.d.Ibn Mālik, ʾAlfiyya = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Mālik

al-ʾAndalusī, al-ʾAlfiyya. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Muḥammad al-Ḫaṭīb. Kuwait: Mak-tabat Dār al-ʿUrūba li-l-Našr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 2006.

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl Mukarram ibn Mukarram Ibn Manẓūr,Lisān al-ʿArab. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, n.d.

Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ =Muwaffaq al-Dīn Yaʿīš Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal. 10 vols. Beirut: ʿĀlamal-Kutub, n.d.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbūBišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed.Muḥammad ʿAbdal-Salām Hārūn. 3rd ed. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1988.

b Secondary SourcesAustin, John. 1962. How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press.Firanescu, Daniela Rodica. 2009. “Speech acts”. Encyclopedia of Arabic language and

linguistics, ed. by Mushira Eid et al., iv, 328–334. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Ḥasan, ʿAbbās. 1992. al-Naḥw al-wāfī, iv. 9th ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif.

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Ikeda, Osamu. 1970. “The history of Arabic philology from the 10th century up to the19th century [in Japanese]”. Osaka Gaikokugo Daigaku Gakuho, Osaka University ofForeign Studies 22.35–49.

Larcher, Pierre. 2007. “ʾInšāʾ”. Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, ed. byMushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, KeesVersteegh,ManfredWoidich, andAndrzej Zaborski,ii, 358–361. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Reckendorf, Hermann. 1921. Arabische Syntax. Heidelberg: C. Winter.Wright, William. 1988. A grammar of the Arabic language, translated from the German

of Caspari and edited with numerous additions and corrections. 3rd ed. Repr., Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_012

Origin and Conceptual Evolution of the Term taḫṣīṣin Arabic Grammar*

Manuel Sartori

1 Introduction: Taḫṣīṣ, a Forgotten Term?

The third volume of The foundations of Arabic linguistics, subtitled The devel-opment of a tradition: Continuity and change, constitutes an appropriate frame-work for showing that not everything is said with the Kitāb of Sībawayhi(d. 180/796?). It is in this context that I undertake the archeology of the tech-nical term taḫṣīṣ, commonly rendered as ‘particularization’, whose history andevolution within the Arabic grammatical tradition I trace. Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) first drewmy attention to this category, of which I had never heard in myArabic studies.

Taḫṣīṣ remains a little-known term. First of all, it is not treated as a separatecategory in the Classical Arabic grammars,1 which do not reserve a specialchapter to it. Moreover, the term is almost completely absent from Orientalistgrammars, which simply ignore it as such (Silvestre de Sacy 1831; Forbes 1863;Palmer 1874; Socin 1885; Donat Vernier 1891; Howell 1911; Fleisch 1961, 1979;Blachère and Gaudefroy-Demombynes 1975). Finally, contrary to expectation,neither the Encyclopaediaof Islam, nor the Encyclopediaof Arabic languageandlinguistics devote an entry to taḫṣīṣ.

When the term or the concept denoted by it are mentioned, it is usuallyin passing. Thus, in the Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, Hoyt(2009:316b) mentions the phenomenon in the entry “Specificity”, but does notgive its name, while the entry “ʾIḍāfa” incidentally mentions the phenomenonby citing iḫtiṣāṣ (cf. Ryding and Versteegh 2007:295b). Likewise, in the secondeditionof the Encyclopaediaof Islam, taḫṣīṣ is quoted incidentally in the entries

* In quotes, I keep the author’s transliteration. I thank Michael Carter and Jean Druel for theirremarks, which helped me to improve this article.

1 Note also that the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ is only used four times in the Qurʾān, twice for yaḫuṣṣuhubihi (2/105; 3/74), once for ḫāṣṣatan (8/25) and once for ḫaṣāṣatun (59/9) (cf. ʿAbd al-Bāqī1997:297).

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“ʾiḍāfa” (Fleisch 1986:1008b), “naʿt” (Troupeau 1993:1034a) and “taʿrīf ” (Carter2000:241b). Finally, Brustad (2000:21) briefly mentions it in passing.

By placing this work in the context of continuity and change, I have threeobjectives: i. to conduct an archeological search of the term taḫṣīṣ in Arabicgrammar; ii. to trace the evolution of its conceptual content; iii. to identifyits origin. First, however, we need to define the notion of taḫṣīṣ, which, giventhe scattered nature of the information, can only be done by a combination ofsources.

2 Taḫṣīṣ: First Definition

2.1 Lexical Family andMeaning of ḫ-ṣ-ṣThe term taḫṣīṣ is a verbal noun (maṣdar) of what is called in the Oriental-ist tradition Form ii faʿʿala/yufaʿʿilu from the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ. Form i of this verb,ḫaṣṣa/yaḫuṣṣu means ‘to distinguish, to specify; to apply in particular to, tobe characteristic of ’. Of this basic verb, two derivations are frequently used,the active participle ḫāṣṣ and the passive participle maḫṣūṣ. As for the first,it should be understood either as ‘peculiar, specific’, opposed to ʿāmm ‘gen-eral’,2 or as ‘particularizing; someone who/something which particularizes’,opposed to maḫṣūṣ ‘someone/something particularized, specific, specified’.The latter in turn is well known in Arabic grammar, especially to designatethe specific object of praise or blame in structures involving ʾafʿāl al-madḥwa-l-ḏamm, the praised or blamed object being the maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ ʾaw bi-l-ḏamm.

From this verb base some augmented stems are derived: themonotransitiveForm ii ḫaṣṣaṣahu ‘to particularize, to specify’, which is the factitive of Form iand whosemaṣdar is taḫṣīṣ; a bi-transitive Form viii, direct and prepositional,iḫtaṣṣahu bihi ‘to dedicate s.th. to s.o., to confer distinction upon s.o. by s.th.’,of equivalent meaning with iḫtaṣṣahu lahu;3 a monoprepositional iḫtaṣṣa bihi‘to be peculiar to; to concern, regard s.th.; to be distinguished, marked by’; amonotransitive iḫtaṣṣahu ‘to take exclusive possession of’ with the meaningof ‘to characterize s.th.’; an intransitive iḫtaṣṣa ‘to distinguish one’s self, tospecialize’, with a passive form uḫtuṣṣa (bi-) ‘to be characterized, specified (by),to become specific (to)’. Finally, from Form ii a Form v is derived taḫaṣṣaṣa

2 A number of well-known works of ʾuṣūl al-fiqh contain a chapter entitled al-ʿāmm wa-l-ḫāṣṣ‘the general and the particular’.

3 Cf. Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 156.

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 205

(bihi) ‘to particularize one’s self (by), to be peculiar (to)’. In the present paperI will focus mainly on taḫṣīṣ, whose precise technical meaning remains to bedefined, as well as to derivatives of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ, relating thereto.4

2.2 The Grammatical TechnicalMeaning of taḫṣīṣ amongModernAuthors

Given the scattered nature of the information about taḫṣīṣ, its definition canonly be achieved by combining sources. Relying on secondary sources but alsoon primary (old as well as late), I shall give a first definition of taḫṣīṣ. This ideal-typical definition will then be used to identify the phenomenon in ClassicalArabic grammatical treatises and proceed to engage in an archeology of taḫṣīṣ.This archeology will then allow us to assess the evolution of the conceptualcontent of the notion.

Wright (1996:ii, 198d, 199a, 260–261d)5 assigns to taḫṣīṣ the semantic func-tion of limiting, more specifically that of ‘partial determination’.6 Terminolog-ically, taḫṣīṣ is very clearly stated to be connected with tankīr and taʿrīf.7 Con-textually, taḫṣīṣ appears in conjunction with the annexing construction and,more incidentally, with the qualification. Finally, syntactically and technically,taḫṣīṣ consists i) in the annexation of an indefinite genitive (ʿamalu birrin), orii) in the qualification of an indefinite noun by an adjective (rajulun karīmun)or by an expression equivalent to an adjective (ʾamrun bi-maʿrūfin).

Unlike Wright, Reckendorf (1921:57, 193, 200, 218) does not deal with taḫṣīṣin the chapter on annexation, but in those dealing with the adjective andwith indefiniteness (tankīr). Overall, the same informationmay be culled fromReckendorf as fromWright. Semantically, taḫṣīṣ is a ‘particularization’ (Beson-

4 Therefore, I will not pay attention to other technical terms, such as those of taḫṣīṣ al-ʿilla‘cause particularization’ (cf. al-Sayyid al-Šarīf, Taʿrīfāt 57 and for the technical term ʿilla, cf.Versteegh 2007, 2011), nor such as maḫṣūṣ used in the framework of the expression of praiseor blame (maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ/ḏamm).

5 The passages in which taḫṣīṣ occurs are in factWright’s additions in the form of footnotes tothe text of Caspari, the latter not quoting the term, neither in his Latin edition of 1844–1848,nor in the German one of 1859. Cf. Caspari (1848:221 f., 250; 1859:288f., 330).

6 Goguyer (1888:208) translates the term in verse 919 of the ʾAlfiyya of IbnMālik (d. 672/1274) as‘reserving’; in his translation of theQaṭr al-nadā of Ibn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī (d. 761/1360), he uses‘particularization’ (cf. notably Goguyer 1887:284, 286, or words from the same Latin root). Thelatter translation will be adopted here.

7 Note that Fleisch (1961:i, 339f.) remarks that the issue of determination and indeterminationin Arabic “est difficile et jusqu’ ici n’a pas reçu une élucidation suffisante”, which seems toimply the existence of taḫṣīṣ.

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derung, 57), a ‘quasi-determination’ (nähere Bestimmung, 200), and a ‘restric-tion’ (Einschränkung, 218); it is connected with tankīr and taʿrīf.

Badīʿ Yaʿqūb and ʿĀṣī (1987: i, 154, 367, ii, 1254) are in turn the only ones, tomy knowledge, to reserve an entry to taḫṣīṣ in a dictionary of Arabic grammarand/or of fiqh al-luġa.8 In addition to the entry (i, 367) where it is specificallylinked to annexation, they also deal incidentally with it in entries “ʾiḍāfa” (i,154), “ʿaṭf al-bayān” (ii, 868) and “naʿt” (ii, 1254). On the whole, they assign toit the same connection with tankīr and taʿrīf, in the same contexts, plus theexplanatory apposition (ʿaṭf al-bayān).

I will end this first part with two ‘late’ authors: al-Sayyid al-Šarīf, i.e. ʿAlīibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413) and Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-Širbīnī(d. 977/1570). Taḫṣīṣ is found five times in al-Sayyid al-Šarīf. In his Kitāb al-taʿrīfāt he defines this term when it has the technical sense we are interestedin, as follows: “particularization among grammarians is an expressionmeaningthe restriction of equivocity occuring in indefinite expressions like ‘a learnedman’ ” (al-taḫṣīṣ ʿinda al-nuḥāt ʿibāra ʿan taqlīl al-ištirāk al-ḥāṣil fī l-nakirātnaḥwa ‘rajulun ʿālimun’, Taʿrīfāt 57).

In al-Širbīnī’s commentary on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya of Ibn ʾĀjurrūm (d. 723/1323),9 taḫṣīṣ is used twice: “An undefined antecedentmay occurwhen justifiedby specialization, generalization, or inversion. Specialization may be effectedeither by annexation […] or by adjectival qualification” (wa-yaqaʿu nakira bi-musawwiġ wa-huwa ʾimmā al-taḫṣīṣ ʾaw al-taʿmīm ʾaw al-taʾḫīr fa-l-ʾawwal wa-huwa l-taḫṣīṣ sawāʾan ʾa-kāna bi-ʾiḍāfa […] ʾaw bi-waṣf, Carter 1981:376). Carter(1981:377) explains that

‘specialization’, taḵṣīṣ, is an intermediate level between absolute indefini-tion and pure definition [… and] that ‘specialized’ elements (i.e. qualifiedby adjectives, like fulukinmāḵirin […]) are sufficiently defined to functionas subjects on nominal sentences.

8 There is indeed no trace of it in al-Labdī (1985); Fawwāl Bābitī (1992); ʿAbbās Maʿan (2001);ʿAbbās Maʿan (2002); ʿUbāda (2011), nor in Marzā al-Ḫāmis (2012). Only Baraké (1985:154)mentions it with the meaning of ‘particularization’, shared with tamyīz, which is not odd (cf.infra).

9 The editor of the text, Carter (1981:v), indicates that “in the Arabic text Ibn Ājurrūm’s ownwords have, according to the practice of the day, been directly integrated into aš-Širbīnī’scommentary, and are therefore distinguished by overlining”. Occurrences of taḫṣīṣ not beinghighlighted, they are indeed additions made by the commentator, al-Širbīnī, to the primarytext (matn).

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 207

He notes (1981:461) that “ ‘Specialization’ is taḵṣīṣ, cognate (and almost syn-onymous with) iḵtiṣāṣ ‘particularization’ […], in both cases denoting an inter-mediate stage between absolute definition and indefinition”.

If we add to these data the information distilled from Gätje (1970:47, 235);Fleisch (1986:1008b); Troupeau (1993:1034a), as well as Carter’s (2000:241b)comment that taḫṣīṣ is a “weaker type” of definiteness, the following defini-tion of the phenomenon may be proposed: taḫṣīṣ is a technical term that isconnected with tankīr and taʿrīf. Occurring in the context of indefiniteness, itis related to several terms denoting definiteness, on which I will focus in otherstudies. Taḫṣīṣ is, besides, related to the grammatical categories of annexation,qualification, and explanatory apposition. Understood as ‘partial determina-tion’ or ‘quasi-determination’, it is not only a grammatical category but also, firstand foremost, a semantic category and, therefore, a pragmatic one, somethingwell understood by the grammarian, logician and pragmatician al-ʾAstarābāḏī(d. 688/1289).10 In the following lines I will address only the syntactic aspect oftaḫṣīṣ and its derivatives.

3 Terminological Evolution of taḫṣīṣ

The question to be answered now is: at what point did this term or its cognatesappear in Arabic grammar with the precisemeaning defined above? To do this,I have listed, in all grammatical treatises at my disposal, not only significantoccurrences of taḫṣīṣ, but more generally of those terms that are derived fromthe root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ.

Taḫṣīṣ is used once in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi, according to Troupeau’sLexique-index (1976:81), but only with a general meaning, not as a grammat-ical technical term (Kitāb i, 302). Suffice it to note that of all derivationsfrom the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ, only two occurrences are close to the technical mean-ing we are looking for. In both cases this concerns the quasi-technical use ofForm viii iḫtaṣṣa-hu in association with specification. We will see later that alink may justly be made between taḫṣīṣ and tamyīz.11 Sībawayhi says: “When

10 In fact, al-ʾAstarābāḏī appears to be the only grammarian to recognize clearly this prag-matic dimension of taḫṣīṣ and some of the terms derived from it, and that in some welldefined contexts. The scope of the present article does not allowme to dealwith this topic,whichwould justify a study on al-ʾAstarābāḏī. On the pragmatic aspects of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’sapproach, cf. Larcher (1990, 1992, 1994, 1998 and more generally, 2014).

11 Cf. infra.

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you say ‘I have twenty’, you have made the species imprecise, and when yousay ‘dirham’, you have characterized a species and thanks to this, it is knownof what species is this number” (ʾiḏā qulta ‘lī ʿišrūna’ fa-qad ʾabhamta l-ʾanwāʿfa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘dirhaman’ fa-qad iḫtaṣaṣta nawʿan wa-bihi yuʿrafu min ʾayy nawʿḏālika l-ʿadad, Kitāb ii, 174, and 192 for a similar example). Although in factSībawayhi’s use of the term is not technical, but general (like the other occur-rences of iḫtiṣāṣ in the Kitāb), and even if this use does not strictly fall withinthe framework defined by taḫṣīṣ (annexation, qualification, and explanatoryapposition), it may very well be the first occurrence of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ with thetechnical meaning we are looking for, or perhaps, a proto-manifestation ofit.

In contrast, according to Kinberg’s index (1996), no trace of taḫṣīṣ or anyother word of this root occurs in al-Farrāʾ’s (d. 207/822) Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, nordoes it occur in al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), neither in his Muqtaḍab, nor in hisKāmil. Nevertheless, at least one occurrence of muḫtaṣṣ, passive participle ofForm viii, in connection with annexation could count as a proto-technicalusage, when al-Mubarrad writes (Muqtaḍab iii, 198) about ḫamsatahum:“Then you annexed it to its plural and it became particularized by it” ( fa-ʾaḍaftahu [ḫamsa] ʾilā jamīʿihi fa-ṣāra muḫtaṣṣan bihi).

We find again a single occurrence of taḫṣīṣ in the ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw of Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928), in connection with the admirative formula (ʾUṣūl i, 102).However, while his use of taḫṣīṣ certainly refers to a technical grammatical cat-egory, Ibn al-Sarrāj has in mind that of maḫṣūṣ (bi-l-madḥ/bi-l-ḏamm).What ismore, some of the terms from the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ in Ibn al-Sarrāj actually describethe inverse of the phenomenon we are interested in (the first term of annex-ation particularizing the second, see ʾUṣūl i, 85, 153), since he uses maḫṣūṣ inthe sense of muḫaṣṣaṣ. Indeed, here is what he writes: “This does not includethe case of ḍarabanī ġulāmu ḫamsata ʿašara rajulan ‘the servant of fifteenmenhit me’, since ‘the servant’ is particularized, known and not ambiguous” (wa-lā yadḫulu fī hāḏā ‘ḍarabanī ġulāmu ḫamsata ʿašara rajulan’ li-ʾanna l-ġulāmmaḫṣūṣ maʿlūm ġayr mubham, ʾUṣūl i, 276). We find here maḫṣūṣ in the senseof muḫaṣṣaṣ in the technical meaning we are looking for, while we find taḫṣīṣin the sense of maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ/ḏamm.

Since the term does not occur neither in the ʾĪḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-naḥw nor in theJumal fī l-naḥw of al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949), one might say that al-Zajjājī ignoresthe notion as such. Indeed, he writes about the active participle:

Know that the active participle, when it has the meaning of the past andyou annex it to an indefinite expression, becomes indefinite, and that ifyou annex it to a definite expression, it becomes definite (wa-ʿlam ʾanna

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 209

ism al-fāʿil ʾiḏā kāna bi-maʿnā l-muḍiyy fa-ʾaḍaftahu ʾilā nakira tanakkarawa-ʾin ʾaḍaftahu ʾilā maʿrifa taʿarrafa).

Jumal ii, 90

Thus, he is aware of the phenomenonof particularization, (in this casewith theannexation of an indefinite to an indefinite), but does not link it to the termweknow. There is a single occurrence of taḫṣīṣ in al-Zajjājī’s short treatise Kitābal-lāmāt, but it lacks the relevant technical meaning (Lāmāt 32).

Presumably, the first occurrence of a derivative of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ with anobvious link with the defined technical meaning is in al-Sīrāfī’s (d. 368/979)Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. It occurs in the chapter on the adjective:

ʾAbū Saʿīd [al-Sīrāfī] said that themeaning of the adjective was to charac-terize the essence of the qualified element and to bring it out from vague-ness and general toward a more precise sense. Thus, the adjective bringsout the undefined qualified elements of a species toward a more precisekind. As for the [qualified] defined elements, the adjective brings themout from an individual whose name is shared and who is therefore sub-ject to ambiguity at a stagewhere ambiguity disappears from it. As for theindefinite expression, it is [like] when you saymarartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin ‘Ipassed by a friendly man’. If you limited yourself to ‘man’, it would havefallen under the set of all men, and the species to which it belongs wouldhave been general, while when you qualify it by ‘friendly’, it becomespart of the class of friendly men, which is more restricted than men ingeneral (qāla ʾAbū Saʿīd maʿnā l-naʿt ʾannahu iḫtiṣāṣ nafs al-manʿūt wa-ʾiḫrāj lahu min ʾibhām wa-ʿumūm ʾilā mā huwa ʾaḫaṣṣ minhu wa-l-nakirātal-manʿūta yuḫrijuhā al-naʿt min nawʿ ʾilā nawʿ ʾaḫaṣṣ minhu wa-ʾammā l-maʿārif fa-yuḫrijuhā l-naʿtmin šaḫṣmuštarakal-ism ʿindawuqūʿ al-labs fīhiʾilā ʾan yazūla al-labs ʿanhu ʾammā l-nakira fa-qawluka ‘marartu bi-rajulinẓarīfin’ law iqtaṣarta ʿalā ‘rajul’ waḥdahu la-kāna l-rajul waḥdahumin jum-lat al-rijāl kullihimwa-nawʿuhu llaḏī huwaminhumal-rijāl ʿalā l-ʿumūm fa-lammā naʿattahu bi-‘ẓarīf ’ ṣāra min jumlat al-rijāl al-ẓirāf wa-huwa ʾaqallmin al-rijāl bi-ʾiṭlāq).

Šarḥ ii, 312 f.

Thus, the result of the qualification of an indefinite noun is more precise thanthe indefinite noun alone, which al-Sīrāfī expresses in his own way by usingiḫtiṣāṣ and ʾaḫaṣṣ. Nevertheless, these are still only proto-technical terms thatdo not encompass the whole concept defined under taḫṣīṣ since they concernonly qualification; a fortiori, this is not yet a matter of taḫṣīṣ.

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ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) uses taḫṣīṣmore frequently than his predeces-sors. It is found twice in his Kitāb al-ʾīḍāḥ (208) and twice in al-Takmila (320,365), but in a basic, non-technical meaning. On the other hand, in one partic-ular instance, involving a vocative particle (nidāʾ)12 functioning as a commonfactor for two nouns, al-Fārisī writes:

The point of the resemblance of this type with the annexation is thatthe second [term] particularizes the first, just like the second term of theannexation particularizes the first termof the annexation (wa-wajh šabahhāḏā l-ḍarb bi-l-ʾiḍāfa ʾanna l-ṯānīmuḫaṣṣiṣ li-l-ʾawwal kamā ʾanna l-muḍāfʾilayhi muḫaṣṣiṣ li-l-muḍāf ).

ʾĪḍāḥ 190

This passage is quite remarkable, first because as far as I know, this is the firstappearance inArabic grammar of the termmuḫaṣṣiṣ, active participle of taḫṣīṣ,used here with its technical meaning in connection with annexation. Furtheron, again in connection with annexation, but this time with the Form viiiverb iḫtaṣṣa, al-Fārisī also refers to the proto-determined character mentionedabove:

And when you annex an indefinite [expression] to an indefinite one, it isparticularized by the annexation, even if it does not become definite, asin ‘a donkey’s rider’ (wa-ʾiḏā ʾaḍafta nakira ʾilā nakira iḫtaṣṣat bi-l-ʾiḍāfawa-ʾin lam tataʿarraf naḥwa ‘rākibu ḥimārin’).

ʾĪḍāḥ 210f.

Apparently, then, al-Fārisī does identify the phenomenon and clearly statesthat it is connectedwith tankīr and taʿrīf. At the same time, it should be stressedthat the terminology is still unstable, since he uses a Form viii verb rather thanForm ii (cf. also Fārisī, Takmila 268). Moreover, he only deals with it as partof the annexation and does not refer to the explanatory apposition, nor to thequalification.

Seven instances of taḫṣīṣ are found in Ibn al-Warrāq’s (d. 381/991) ʿIlal al-naḥw, where it occurs both in connection with annexation (ʿIlal 145, 228, 304)andwith qualification (ʿIlal 371, 380). As for the annexation, Ibn al-Warrāq says:

12 This case involves the use of yā ṯalāṯatu wa-l-ṯalāṯūna ‘o, thirty-three!’ when addressing agroup of people: wa-law nādayta jamāʿatan hāḏihi l-ʿidda ʿiddatuhā la-rafaʿta fa-qulta yāṯalāṯatu wa-l-ṯalāṯūna fī-man qāla zaydu wa-l-ḥāriṯu wa-man qāla wa-l-ḥāriṯa naṣaba al-ṯalāṯīna ʾaw qāla yā ṯalāṯata wa-[yā] ṯalāṯūna.

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 211

The characteristic feature of annexation is that the first term of annex-ation is particularized. […] Don’t you see that if you said hāḏā ġulāmun‘He is a servant’, it would be ambiguous, but when you say ġulāmu zaydin‘Zayd’s servant’, he is distinguished by the fact that he is Zayd’s possession(wa-l-faḍl bi-l-ʾiḍāfa taḫṣīṣ al-muḍāf […] ʾa-lā tarā ʾannaka law qulta ‘hāḏāġulāmun’ la-kāna mubhaman fa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘ġulāmu zaydin’ iḫtaṣṣa bi-milkzayd).

ʿIlal 145

As for the qualification, Ibn al-Warrāq writes: “Regarding the indefinite expres-sion […], the adjective only signifies in it a particularization” (ʾammā l-nakira[…] fa-l-ṣifa ʾinnamā tufīdu fīhā taḫṣīṣan, ʿIlal 371) and “as for the indefiniteexpression, the principle in it is to be qualified because the aim of the qual-ification is the particularization of the qualified element” (wa-ʾamma l-nakirafa-l-ʾaṣl fīhā ʾan tunʿata li-ʾanna l-ġaraḍmin al-naʿt taḫṣīṣ al-manʿūt, ʿIlal 380). Aswe see, taḫṣīṣ appears in connection with qualification and annexation and inthe frameworkof indefiniteness since the first termof annexation and thequal-ified element are both indefinite. Thus, it could correspond to the ideal-typicaldefinition given above, but for Ibn al-Warrāq annexation has the property ofdefining the first term since he writes that “the first term of annexation takeson definiteness from the second term” (wa-l-muḍāf yaktasibu taʿrīfan min al-muḍāf ʾilayhi, ʿIlal 383) and that “the first term of annexation is supposed to bean indefinite expression before annexation and then to be annexed, becausethe aim of annexation is its definition” (al-muḍāf yuqaddaru qabla l-ʾiḍāfanakira ṯummayuḍāfu li-ʾannaal-ġaraḍ fī l-ʾiḍāfa taʿrīfuhu, ʿIlal 416). Even cleareris the following statement:

The characteristic of annexation is the particularization of the first termand its definition.When the first term has the article, it becomes definedby it anddoesnot need another definitionbymeans of annexation (al-faṣlfī l-ʾiḍāfa taḫṣīṣ al-muḍāf wa-taʿrīfuhu fa-ʾiḏā kānat fī l-muḍāf al-ʾalif wa-l-lām taʿarrafa bihimā wa-lam yaḥtaj ʾilā taʿrīf ʾāḫar min jihat al-ʾiḍāfa).

ʿIlal 304

Thus, for Ibn al-Warrāq, annexation always involves definiteness and particu-larization, while qualification only involves particularizationwithin the frame-work of indefiniteness. In particular, Ibn al-Warrāq does not address the casewhere the second term of annexion is itself indefinite (as in bayt muʿallim),which shows that, unlike later grammarians, he does not take into account thisphenomenon.

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At least onepassage of the ŠarḥKitābSībawayhiof ʾAbū l-Ḥasan al-Rummānī(d. 384/994) suggests that he is aware of this phenomenon: “… since the gov-erned element particularizes, as does annexation and as does the adjective”(ʾiḏ al-maʿmūl yuḫaṣṣiṣu kamā tuḫaṣṣiṣu l-ʾiḍāfa wa-kamā tuḫaṣṣiṣu l-ṣifa, Šarḥi, 374). Here indeed we find for the first time the Form ii verb ḫaṣṣaṣa, both inconnection with annexation and with qualification.

Apart from the many occurrences of the expression taḫṣīṣ al-ʿilla in theḪaṣāʾiṣ of Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), taḫṣīṣ often has the technical meaning weare dealing with. He writes: “In fact, the adjective in the utterance is of twotypes: either it serves specification and particularization, or praise and eulogy”(wa-ḏālika ʾanna l-ṣifa fī l-kalām ʿalā ḍarbayn ʾimmā li-l-taḫlīṣ wa-l-taḫṣīṣ wa-ʾimmā li-l-madḥ wa-l-ṯanāʾ, Ḫaṣāʾiṣ ii, 146). In another passage, which has noconnection with qualification, but only with annexation, Ibn Jinnī writes: “Ithas been said that the purpose in annexation is only to define and to particu-larize” (qīla li-ʾanna al-ġaraḍ fī l-ʾiḍāfa ʾinnamā huwa l-taʿrīf wa-l-taḫṣīṣ, Ḫaṣāʾiṣii, 267). This is expressed in the same way in his Sirr ṣināʿat al-ʾiʿrāb where hestates that “annexation imparts definiteness and particularization” (al-ʾiḍāfatuksibu l-taʿrīf wa-l-taḫṣīṣ, Sirr ii, 37). With Ibn Jinnī we thus clearly pass fromForm viii iḫtaṣṣa to Form ii ḫaṣṣaṣa, and more specifically, to itsmaṣdar. Thismeans that with Ibn Jinnī the notion of taḫṣīṣ, for the first time in the historyof Arabic grammar, acquires the familiar technical meaning. This transition toForm ii is understandable, because it fits into a set of systematic notions fromthis form, such as tankīr and taʿrīf. Moreover, it allows the formation of pairsof terms, of which Arabic grammar is fond, such as muḍāf and muḍāf ʾilayhi,manʿūt and naʿt, mawṣūf and ṣifa, mubdal and mubdal minhu, mustaṯnā andmustaṯnā minhu, etc. From the factitive Form ii, pairs of terms distinguish-ing an agent from a patient may be derived, such as munakkir and munakkar,muʿarrif andmuʿarraf,muḫaṣṣiṣ andmuḫaṣṣaṣ. Nevertheless, Ibn Jinnī appearsto be less explicit than al-Fārisī about the connection of taḫṣīṣwith tankīr andtaʿrīf.

Nothing is found concerning our subject in Ibn Fāris’ (d. 395/1004) Maqāyīs,nor in his al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-luġa. Likewise, al-Ṯaʿālibī (d. 430/1038) in his Fiqhal-luġa wa-ʾasrār al-ʿarabiyya has only one instance of taḫṣīṣ in a basic sense(Fiqh al-luġa 391), while the technical meaning is absent from his work.

Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066) recognizes the phenomenon of taḫṣīṣ in hisMuḫaṣṣaṣin the context of qualification as he writes: “Its particularization by means ofannexation became like its particularization by means of qualification” ( fa-ṣāra taḫṣīṣuhu bi-l-ʾiḍāfa ka-taḫṣīṣihi bi-l-waṣf, Muḫaṣṣaṣ xvi, 66), providingas an example sayrun šadīdun ‘a difficult walk’, i.e., the qualification of anindefinite noun by an indefinite adjective.

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 213

ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078), a student of a nephew of al-Fārisī,13illustrates a new turning point in the terminological history of taḫṣīṣ by placingit in a precise system and by explicitly linking it to the framework of indefinite-ness:

Know then that, with respect to indefinite expressions, the adjective con-veys particularization and, with respect to definite expressions, clarifi-cation. The explanation for this is that when you say marartu bi-rajulinṭawīlin ‘I passed by a tall man’, you reduce the generality of the noun bymaking it apply to only part of [its] species, rather than to its entirety,insofar as you do not include in it any man who is not tall. This is themeaning covered by particularization and it only occurs with the indefi-nite expression (ṯumma iʿlam ʾanna l-ṣifa tufīdu fī l-nakira al-taḫṣīṣ wa-fī l-maʿrifa al-tawḍīḥ tafsīr hāḏā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ‘marartu bi-rajulin ṭawīlin’kunta qad naqaṣta min ʿumūm al-ism fa-jaʿaltahu yaqaʿu ʿalā baʿḍ al-jinsdūna kullihi min ḥayṯu lā tudḫilu man lā yakūnu ṭawīlan min al-rijāl fīhifa-hāḏā huwa l-murād bi-l-taḫṣīṣ wa-lā yakūnu ʾillā fī l-nakira).

Šarḥ 276; see also Muqtaṣid ii, 175

Thus, al-Jurjānī is the first to be as clear on the distinction between taḫṣīṣ andtawḍīḥ, which is therefore understood to be its complementary rather than itsequivalent.14 Yet, taḫṣīṣ is limited here to qualification, while nothing is saidabout taḫṣīṣ in annexation.

Finally, ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144) provides the first accuratedescription in the history of Arabic grammar of taḫṣīṣ, as we currently under-stand it:15

Annexation of a noun to a noun is of two types: semantic and formal. Thesemantic one signifies definiteness, as when you say dāru ʿamrin ‘ʿAmr’shouse’, or (ʾaw) particularization, as when you say ġulāmu rajulin ‘a man’sservant’ (ʾiḍāfat al-ism li-l-ism ʿalā ḍarbayn maʿnawiyya wa-lafẓiyya fa-l-

13 He was the student of ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Wāriṯ al-Fārisī al-Naḥwī (d. 421/1030), himself a nephew by hismotherof ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (cf. Jurjānī, Šarḥ 30). On al-Jurjānī see Larcher (1993).

14 This case is dealt with in a forthcoming study, “Definition and determination in MedievalArabic grammatical thought”, to appear in the proceedings of the 4th Conference on theFoundations of Arabic Linguistics.

15 Troupeau (1993:1034a) effectively notes the presence of this term in al-Zamaḫšarī.

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maʿnawiyya mā ʾafāda taʿrīfan ka-qawlika ‘dāru ʿamrin’ ʾaw taḫṣīṣan ka-qawli-ka ‘ġulāmu rajulin’).

Mufaṣṣal 119

As we see, al-Zamaḫšarī carefully distinguishes between taʿrīf and taḫṣīṣ. Hedoes so by using two contrastive examples: a definite second term of annex-ation for taʿrīf, and an indefinite one for taḫṣīṣ. He also does so by using anactually disjunctive coordination, ʾaw, where others before him had used wa-,so that the disjunctionhad to be imagined. In another passage, this time in con-nectionwith the treatment of the adjective, hewrites: “It is said that it serves forparticularization within the indefinite expressions and for clarification withinthe definite ones” (wa-yuqālu ʾinnahā li-l-taḫṣīṣ fī l-nakirāt wa-li-l-tawḍīḥ fī l-maʿārif, Mufaṣṣal 148).

While the work of al-Suhaylī (d. 581/1185) provides us with only a fewinstances of this term (Natāʾij 28 for annexation, and 158 for qualification), it isclear that taḫṣīṣ, in and after al-Zamaḫšarī, is the act of particularizing an indef-inite noun by the second termof an annexation, itself indefinite, or by a follow-ing indefinite adjective. In either case, taḫṣīṣ is linked to the state of tankīr. Itis something else than taʿrīf and has a complementary term within the stateof taʿrīf, that of tawḍīḥ. We find the same technical uses and the same system-atic relations in later grammarians.16Within the line of theMufaṣṣal, this is thecase of IbnYaʿīš (d. 643/1245) (cf. Šarḥ ii, 126, 233), Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) (cf.Kāfiya 122, 129, ʾImlāʾ 43a–b, 45b, 48a) and Raḍī al-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī, in whoseapproach this category takes a more pronounced pragmatic dimension, taḫṣīṣand its derivatives being connected to the notions of speaker (mutakallim) andinterlocutor (muḫāṭab) (cf. notably Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 202ff., in particular 206;17ii, 238f.; ii, 314).

Although al-Zajjājī does not mention taḫṣīṣ at all or even ignores the phe-nomenon, Ibn Ḫarūf (d. 609/1212), commentator of al-Zajjājī’s Jumal, shouldbe partly included within al-Zamaḫšarī’s legacy, since for him “the adjectiveserves to particularize the indefinite expression and to remove the supposedequivocity concerning the definite qualified element” (wa-fāʾidat al-naʿt taḫṣīṣal-nakira wa-rafʿ al-ištirāk al-mutawahham fī l-manʿūt al-maʿrifa, Šarḥ i, 300).

16 In the appendix two grammarians will be dealt with, whose use of taḫṣīṣ is sufficientlyagainst the current to warrant separate treatment, Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 577/1181) and ʾAbūMūsā al-Juzūlī (d. 607/1210 or 616/1219).

17 I refer here to Larcher (1983:253) about salāmwhich “is specified by its relation to the onethat greets”,muḫtaṣṣ bi-.

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 215

Nevertheless, he presents an example such as ṣāḥibu zaydin as a case of taḫṣīṣ,which it is not, and thus shows that the terminology, while certainly beingmore stable, is not identical for all grammarians. Ibn ʿUṣfūr (d. 669/1271) hasthe same terminology as al-Zamaḫšarī in the matter (cf. Šarḥ i, 141–143, 164; ii,171). By contrast, Ibn al-Faḫḫār (d. 754/1353) returns to the use of iḫtiṣāṣ for thequalification of an indefinite expression (Šarḥ i, 131), but he does keep taḫṣīṣ inthe case of annexation (Šarḥ i, 495).

IbnMālik (d. 672/1274) recognizes the phenomenon, both in his ʾAlfiyya andhis Kāfiya al-šāfiya. About the semantic (or pure) annexation he says:

All of that is what its annexation is semantic, real and pure as it affectsthe first term of annexation, defining it if the second [term] is a definiteexpression, and particularizing it if the second is an indefinite expres-sion ( fa-hāḏihi kulluhu mimmā ʾiḍāfatuhu maʿnawiyya wa-ḥaqīqiyya wa-maḥḍa li-ʾannahā muʾaṯṯira fī l-muḍāf taʿrīfan ʾin kāna l-ṯānī maʿrifa wa-taḫṣīṣan ʾin kāna l-ṯānī nakira).

Šarḥ i, 408

He does the same for qualification by an adjective. Yet, his examples concernqualification of nouns already definite, so that they do not fall within thestrict framework of the ideal-typical definition of taḫṣīṣ (cf. Šarḥ i, 520). IbnHišām al-ʾAnṣārī (d. 761/1360) also uses the term with its technical meaning(ʾAwḍaḥ iii, 71, 256; Sabīl al-hudā 347 [twice, ḥāl], 377 [twice], 378 [ʾiḍāfa], 416[twice, naʿt], 434f. [ʿaṭf ]) aswell as derived terms (IbnHišāmal-ʾAnṣārī Sabīl al-hudā: muḫaṣṣaṣa 347 [ḥāl]; muḫaṣṣiṣ 433 [twice], 434 [ʿaṭf ]). Finally Ibn ʿAqīl(d. 769/1367) uses taḫṣīṣ in the same way (Šarḥ i, 368f.).

Let us go back to IbnMālik in order to draw conclusions about the develop-ment of the conceptual content of taḫṣīṣ. First, IbnMālik, just like Ibn ʿAqīl lateron, subsume tawḍīḥ and taḫṣīṣunder one type of taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ1) (cf. IbnMālikŠarḥ i, 520 and Ibn ʿAqīl Šarḥ ii, 43). This is not what Ibn Hišām does, becausehe always distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns (ʾAwḍaḥ iii, 64,223, 256; Sabīl al-hudā 416, 433–435). But IbnMālik is also the onewho expandsthe category of taḫṣīṣ beyond the borders of qualification and annexation, andhe is followed in this by his commentators. He begins by extending it to theexplanatory apposition (ʿaṭf al-bayān), close to the adjective (cf. IbnMālik Šarḥi, 533). Following him, IbnHišām al-ʾAnṣārī does the same; hewrites in connec-tion with the explanatory apposition with taḫṣīṣ:

The explanatory apposition is the appositive that looks like an adjective,clarifying its subordinate if it is a definite expression and particularizing

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it if it is an indefinite one (ʿaṭf bayān wa-huwa l-tābiʿ al-mušbih li-l-ṣifa fītawḍīḥ matbūʿihi ʾin kāna maʿrifa wa-taḫṣīṣihi nakira).

ʾAwḍaḥ iii, 256; see also Sabīl al-hudā 434f.

Furthermore, he observes aboutmuḫaṣṣiṣ:

I have referredwith the two examples towhat is included in the definitionin terms of its being used to clarify the definite [expressions] and par-ticularize the indefinite ones (ʾašartu bi-l-miṯālayn ʾilā mā taḍammanahul-ḥadd min wuqūʿihi muwaḍḍiḥan li-l-maʿārif wa-muḫaṣṣiṣan li-l-nakirāt).

Sabīl al-hudā 434

Finally, Ibn Mālik (Šarḥ i, 331) incidentally couples taḫṣīṣ with tamyīz, whenhe quotes the Qurʾānic verse 41/10 fī ʾarbaʿati ʾayyāmin sawāʾan li-l-sāʾilīna‘in just four days. [This refers to] those who question’ (Blachère 1950:506), toillustrate the fact that taḫṣīṣ serves within an annexation in the frameworkof indefiniteness, here with ʾarbaʿat ʾayyām. The numerals in the segment [3–10], as well as for full hundreds and thousands, are therefore subject to taḫṣīṣ(annexation of an indefinite second term), while the complementary term inthe segment [11–99] is the tamyīz.18 Ibn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī (Sabīl al-hudā 347)and Ibn ʿAqīl (Šarḥ i, 321) proceed in the same way with this example.

Taḫṣīṣ as a technical term is connectedwith tankīr and taʿrīf ; its complemen-tary terms are in intension, tawḍīḥ (or others on which I will focus elsewhere)and in extension, tamyīz. Technically, taḫṣīṣ means the particularization of anindefinite noun by another indefinite element (the second term of an annex-ation or a qualification in the broad sense that includes the attributive quali-fication, the explanatory apposition, and the prepositional group). It is there-fore surprising that this technical term, with its long history, thus far has notattracted more interest, and even more that this term is far from unknown orignored in other fields than grammar.

18 This is echoedat a lateperiodbyal-Kafawī (d. 1094/1683)al-taḫṣīṣwa-huwa l-ḥukmbi-ṯubūtal-muḫaṣṣaṣ li-šayʾwa-nafyihi ʿammāsiwāhu [wa-kilāhumā ʿibarātān ʿanmaʿnāwāḥid]wa-yuqālu ʾayḍan tamyīz ʾafrād baʿḍ al-jumla bi-ḥukm iḫtaṣṣa bihi (Kulliyyāt 284, 422), andmore recently by Baraké (1985:154).

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 217

4 The Extra-Grammatical Origins of taḫṣīṣ: The ʾuṣūl al-fiqh

Relatively unknown or ignored in grammar, taḫṣīṣ is rather well represented asa category or technical term in the field of ʾuṣūl al-fiqh, translated by Larcher(1988:122, Larcher 1991:185) as ‘jurologie’. Sānū (2000:126) reserves for this terman entry in his Muʿjammuṣṭalaḥāt ʾuṣūḷ al-fiqh, and translates taḫṣīṣ in Englishby ‘specification’.19 Similarly, Hilāl (2003:71–78) devotes eight pages to the studyof taḫṣīṣ in jurology. He distinguishes taḫaṣṣuṣ from taḫṣīṣ and subdivides thelatter in several subentries. Finally, entire books are reserved to it. ʿUmar ibnʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Šaylaḫānī is the author of a book on the issue of taḫṣīṣ amonglegal scholars, entitledMabāḥiṯ al-taḫṣīṣ ʿinda l-ʾuṣūliyyīna (al-Šaylaḫānī 2000),and ʾIsmāʿīl Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān devotes to it a monograph enti-tled ʾAṯar al-taḫṣīṣ fī l-fiqh al-ʾislāmī (Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 2010).

In the Classical Arabic period, the list of specialists in ʾuṣūl al-fiqh whodeal with taḫṣīṣ would become too long. As a matter of fact, this category isdealt with extensively in one or more sections of its own, unlike its status ingrammar.20 Finally, taḫṣīṣ is not only well-known among Arab specialists inlegal theory, but also among Arabist specializing in this field,21 although, justlike in studies onArabic grammar, it has not been the subject of special studies.

As for al-Šaylaḫānī (2000:128, 212), he focuses on legal scholars, but does notforget to mention Ibn al-Ḥājib. The latter, in addition to being known in theOrientalist West as a grammarian, is indeed also known in the East as a legal

19 al-taḫṣīṣ: min ḫaṣṣaṣahu bi-l-šayʾ ʾiḏā qaṣarahu ʿalayhi. qaṣr al-ʿāmm ʿalā baʿḍ ʾafrādihibi-dalīl, muṭlaqa qaṣrin sawāʾ ʾa-kāna ḏālika al-dalīl mustaqillan, ʾam ġayr mustaqill, wa-sawāʾ ʾa-kāna muqtarinan bi-l-dalīl al-ʿāmm al-murād taḫṣīṣuhu, ʾam kāna ġayr muqtarinbi-hi. miṯāluhu qawluhu […]: “wa-ʾaḥalla llāhu l-bayʿa wa-ḥarrama l-ribā” [Q. 2/275], fa-kalimat al-bayʿ tašmulu al-ribā li-ʾanna al-bayʿ mubādalat māl bi-māl, wa-ka-ḏālika al-ribāfa-ʾinnahu mubādalat māl bi-māl maʿa al-ziyāda, wa-li-ḏālika ḫaṣṣaṣa qawlahu […]: “wa-ḥarrama al-ribā” al-ʿumūm allaḏī warada fī qawlihi: “wa-ʾaḥalla llāhu l-bayʿa” […]

20 Among legal scholars dedicating awhole section to taḫṣīṣ are: Rāzī,Maḥṣūl iii, 7 f.; ʾĀmidī,ʾIḥkām ii, 485f.; ʾĪjī, Šarḥ 208f.; Ibn al-Najjār, Šarḥ iii, 267f.; ʾAnṣārī, Fawātiḥ i, 300f.;Zarkašī, Tašnīf ii, 715 f.

21 One finds it mentioned in several authors, and notably so in the Encylopaedia of Islam:Layish (1991:41a); Paret (1997:256a–b, 258b); Chaumont (2009: §9). See also Weiss (1984),who elsewhere (2000:867a) specifies: “Many pages in the uṣūl al-fiḳh literature are devotedto the subject of ‘particularisation of the general expression’ (takhṣīṣ al-ʿāmm). An inter-preter was always obliged to look for a ‘particulariser’ (mukhaṣṣiṣ, dalīl al-takhṣīṣ) in thecontext before making a final conclusion concerning the scope of reference of a generalexpression”.

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scholar.22 As a legal scholar and a grammarian, he informs us about the statusand origin of taḫṣīṣ. Apparently, since he dedicates an entire section of hisMuḫtaṣar Muntahā to taḫṣīṣ,23 something he does not do in his grammaticalworks (neither in the Kāfiya, nor in the ʾImlāʾ ʿalā l-Kāfiya, nor in the ʾĪḍāḥ fīšarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal), for him taḫṣīṣ is first and foremost a legal category (as provenby the entries in ʾuṣūl al-fiqh) rather than a grammatical one (as proven by theabsence of systematic treatment of this category in grammar).

Here, I will confine myself to speculate that al-Fārisī, or his student IbnJinnī (or even al-Rummānī), the former being the first in the history of Arabicgrammar to use the term muḫaṣṣiṣ, the latter being the one who innovated byintroducing the maṣdar related to this active participle, i.e. taḫṣīṣ, may havebeen the ones responsible for the introduction of this concept from the ʾuṣūlal-fiqh.

What is certain is that al-Šāfiʿī (d. 204/819) almostnever employs the rootḫ-ṣ-ṣ,24 while al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1012) quotes taḫṣīṣ (cf. Bāqillānī, Taqrīb iii, 63).25The answer to the question which one of them (or one of his successors) couldhave invented the concept and introduced it into grammar must be lookedfor between these two extremes and in particular in the works on ṭabaqāt al-ʾuṣūliyyīna. After having consulted one of these books, the Fatḥ al-mubīn fīṭabaqāt al-ʾuṣūliyyīna of al-Murāġī, and assuming that the person I was lookingforwas a contemporaryof al-Fārisī, I foundno fewer than26 legal scholars, fromIbn Sarīj al-Šāfiʿī (d. 306/908) to ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Ṣaymarī al-Šāfiʿī (d. 386/996)(cf.Murāġī 1947:i, 204–249). I leave thiswork of archeology on taḫṣīṣ in the ʾuṣūlal-fiqh to specialists in Islamic law.

22 He is notably the author of Muntahā l-suʾalwa-l-ʾamal fī ʿilmayal-ʾuṣūlwa-l-jadal, a treatiseon the sources of law according to the Maliki school, and a treatise in which he sum-marizes the ʾIḥkām of Sayf al-Dīn al-ʾĀmidī (d. 631/1233). From the first he brings out asummary, the Muḫtaṣar Muntahā l-suʾal wa-l-ʾamal fī ʿilmay al-ʾuṣūl wa-l-jadal.

23 Cf. Ibn al-Ḥājib, Muḫtaṣar 786–858.24 Only three times yaḫuṣṣu is found in the Risāla, but neither iḫtiṣāṣ nor taḫṣīṣ nor any

verbal or nominal derivative.25 The first definition of taḫṣīṣ in ʾuṣūl al-fiqh appeared later in the work of ʾAbū al-Ḥusayn

al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044). At least, this is what ʾIsmāʿīl Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, pro-fessor of ʾuṣūḷ al-fiqh at the faculty of King Saʿūd in Riyadh says. According to him (2010:4),al-Baṣrī defined taḫṣīṣ as “extracting a part of what the speech deals with being linked toit” (ʾiḫrāj baʿḍ mā tanāwalahu l-ḫiṭāb maʿa kawnihi muqārinan lahu). This definition pre-sumably derives from another edition of the Muʿtamad (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,1982) than mine, where it is absent, although it may actually be recontructed like this (cf.Baṣrī, Muʿtamad i, in particular 201 f., 231).

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 219

5 Conclusion

The category of taḫṣīṣ in Arabic grammar relates, first, to annexation, then toqualification, and later to explanatory apposition. It forms a terminological pairwith tamyīz. It is connected with tankīr and taʿrīf, and is to be understoodas ‘particularization’26 (that is to say a kind of ‘determination’). It is comple-mentary to other terms, including tawḍīḥ ‘clarification’. In this context, it refersto the particularization of an indefinite noun by another indefinite element,which can also be a prepositional group, the noun of the group being definiteor not.

Probably, al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979)was the first to refer to a closely relatedmean-ing, although without using the term itself (since he uses iḫtiṣāṣ), but ʾAbū ʿAlīal-Fārisī (d. 377/987) should be considered the one who introduced this cate-gory in grammar. He did so through the active participle of Form ii muḫaṣṣiṣ,and was followed in this by al-Rummānī, who used the finite verb of Form ii(tuḫaṣṣiṣu and yuḫaṣṣiṣu). Ibn al-Warrāq (d. 381/991) uses taḫṣīṣ in a sense quiteclose to the later definition, but he does not explicitly distinguish between itand taʿrīf (with respect to annexation) and consequently, he does not presentit as something connected with tankīr and taʿrīf, as will be the case afterwards.Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), himself a student of al-Fārisī, develops this heritage,notably through the verbal noun taḫṣīṣ. This legacy is reinforced later by IbnSīda (d. 458/1066), but especially by ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078), a stu-dent of a nephew of al-Fārisī, and even more so by al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144),who gives a systematic presentation of taḫṣīṣ, but onlywithin the state of tankīror below the state of taʿrīf.

With respect to the origin of the term, Fleisch points out critically:

Sībawayhi, raised on the shield by al-Mubarrad, obtained immenseauthority: he became the master par excellence. In principle, everythinghad to be found in the Kitāb, which came to be called: Qurʾān an-naḥw‘grammar’s Quran’. His views, his opinions were to be the only accurateones. One came to draw conclusions, not only on the basis of his words,

26 It should be distinguished from ‘specificity’, as used by Lyons (1999:165–178), taḫṣīṣ being akind of determination specially not linkedwith referentiability.Moreover, taḫṣīṣ is not theonly termmeaning a kind of determination, as I will show inmy forthcoming publicationin the proceedings of the 4th Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, wherethe term will be dealt in connection with ‘specification’, ‘clarification’, ‘elucidation’, andeven ‘completion’, all of those terms being kinds of special determination. This alsoexplains why taḫṣīṣ is translated here by ‘particularization’.

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but also his silences (just aswas donewith the Prophet of theArabs): con-sequently, what was not found in the Kitāb, was dismissed beforehand, asdevoid of authority.27

It is clear that as a technical term, taḫṣīṣ—certainly not the most importantterm in Arabic grammar, although we have seen that its full scope encom-passes both annexation and qualification, as connected with between taʿrīfand tankīr—isnot present in Sībawayhi, nor in his immediate successors. How-ever, the term did have a place in the Arabic grammatical tradition and it hasmaintained this place till the present day, as we find it in a few well-informedmodern authors.Wemust therefore conclude, in accordancewith Fleisch’s crit-icism, that not everything is said in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb.

Appendix: Two Dissenting Grammarians

Inhis book ʾAsrāral-ʿarabiyya Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 577/1181) uses taḫṣīṣ in a quite surprisingway, compared to the other grammarians. First, with respect to annexation, he writesthat “impure annexation does not signify taʿrīf,28 unlike the pure one, as in ġulāmuzaydin ‘Zayd’s servant’ ” (al-ʾiḍāfa ġayr maḥḍa lam tufid al-taʿrīf bi-ḫilāf mā ʾiḏā kānatmaḥḍa naḥw ‘ġulāmu zaydin’, ʾAsrār 151). Apparently, he does not distinguish withinthe pure annexation between those cases where the second term is definite and thosewhere it is not. Even more surprising terminologically, is Ibn al-ʾAnbārī’s usage inconnection with qualification:

If someone asks ‘what is the purpose of qualification?’, he is told that it isparticularization and distinction. Thus, if it is a definite expression, the purposeof qualification is particularization, because of the inherent equivocity. Don’tyou see that there are many people called Zayd or something similar, so thatwhen we say jāʾanī zaydun ‘Zayd came to me’, it is not known which one of

27 “Sībawayhi, élevé sur le pavois par al-Mubarrad, obtint une autorité immense: il devint leMaître sans plus. En principe, tout devait se trouver dans le Kitāb, que l’on vint à appeler:Qurʾān an-naḥw ‘le Coran de la grammaire’; sa manière de voir, ses opinions devaient êtreles seules exactes. On en vint aussi à conclure non seulement de ses dires, mais de sessilences (comme pour le Prophète des Arabes): ainsi, ce que l’on ne trouvait pas dans leKitāb était d’avance écarté comme dénué d’autorité” (Fleisch 1961:i, 34).

28 I have chosen not to translate taʿrīf here, because it clearly does not refer to definiteness,but rather to what the other grammarians call taḫṣīṣ, i.e. ‘determination’, which cannotserve to translate taʿrīf as such.

origin and evolution of taḫṣīṣ in arabic grammar 221

them we mean? Thus, when we say zaydun al-ʿāqilu ‘Zayd the intelligent’ or al-ʿālimu ‘the learned’ or al-ʾadību ‘the educated’, or something similar, we singlehim out from among the others. Now, if the noun is an indefinite expression, thepurpose of qualification is distinction. Don’t you see that when you say jāʾanīrajulun ‘a man came to me’, it is not known which man is meant, and that whenyou say rajulun ʿāqilun ‘an intelligent man’, you distinguish him from those whodo not possess this qualification, and that it is not a matter of particularizinghim, because by distinguishing we mean a specific entity, which was not aimedhere? (ʾin qāla qāʾil ‘mā al-ġaraḍ fī l-waṣf ’ qīla al-taḫṣīṣ wa-l-tafḍīl fa-ʾin kānamaʿrifa kāna l-ġaraḍ min al-waṣf al-taḫṣīṣ li-ʾanna l-ištirāk yaqaʿu fīhā ʾa-lā tarāʾanna l-musammābi-‘zayd’ wa-naḥwihi kaṯīr fa-ʾiḏā qāla ‘jāʾānī zaydun’ lamyuʿlamʾayyahum yurīdu fa-ʾiḏā qāla ‘zaydun al-ʿāqilu’ ʾaw ‘al-ʿālimu’ ʾaw ‘al-ʾadību’ wa-māʾašbaha ḏālika fa-qad ḫaṣṣahu min ġayri-hi wa-ʾin kāna l-ism nakira kāna l-ġaraḍmin al-waṣf al-tafḍīl ʾa-lā tarā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ‘jāʾanī rajulun’ lam yuʿlam ʾayyrajul huwa fa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘rajulun ʿāqilun’ fa-qad faḍḍaltahu ʿalā man laysa lahuhāḏā l-waṣf wa-lam taḫuṣṣahu li-ʾannā naʿnī bi-l-tafḍīl šayʾan bi-ʿaynihi wa-lamnuridhu hāhunā).

ʾAsrār 155

What is particularly interesting here is that, while distinguishing within the qualifi-cation of a noun between its definiteness or indefiniteness, and while reserving twodifferent technical terms for each of these qualifications, Ibn al-ʾAnbārī does not com-plywith the terminology. Indeed, for him, taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ2) corresponds in fact with thecomplementary term to taḫṣīṣ of the other grammarians, while tafḍīl, a term encoun-tered anywhere elsewith that sense, is, on its own, the equivalent of taḫṣīṣ among othergrammarians.

The second a-typical grammarian is ʾAbū Mūsā al-Juzūlī (d. 607/1210 or 616/1219)who, perhaps because he was Andalusian, used a different terminoly or, at least inthis case, one that was less stabilized. First of all, for him taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ3) clearly isthe union of taʿrīf and taḫṣīṣ according to the sense given by the other grammarians(cf. Muqaddima 8f., 57, 84). Nevertheless, this does not prevent him, while address-ing annexation, from distinguishing between ʾiḍāfamaḥḍa and ʾiḍāfa ġayrmaḥḍa, andfrom specifying then that “pure [annexation] is what signifies definiteness or partic-ularization” (al-maḥḍa mā ʾafāda taʿrīfan ʾaw taḫṣīṣan, Muqaddima 131). Doing so, hereturns to the use of ‘Oriental’ terminology. At last, he renders at least once taḫṣīṣwithits technical sense by iḫtiṣāṣ (cf. Muqaddima 94). As a consequence of this, iḫtiṣāṣ,which one can find in the works of other grammarians with the general meaning ofparticularization, particularly correlated with the particle li-, is then rendered by ʾAbūMūsā by taḫṣīṣ (cf. Muqaddima 128).

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Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad ibn Zakariyāʾ al-Qazwīnī al-Rāzī Ibn Fāris,Muʿjam maqāyīs al-luġa. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 6 vols. Repr.,Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1991.

Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad ibn Zakariyāʾ al-Qazwīnī al-Rāzī Ibn Fāris, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya wa-masāʾilihā wa-sunan al-ʿArab fī kalāmihim. Ed.by ʾAḥmad Ḥasan Basj. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997.

Ibn al-Ḥājib, Kāfiya = ʾAbū ʿAmr Jamāl al-Dīn ʿUṯmān ibn ʿUmar ibn ʾAbī Bakr ibnYūnusIbn al-Ḥājib al-Miṣrī al-Dimašqī al-Mālikī, al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Ṭāriq NajmʿAbdallāh. Jeddah: Maktabat Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1986.

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Ibn al-Ḥājib, Muḫtaṣar = ʾAbū ʿAmr Jamāl al-Dīn ʿUṯmān ibn ʿUmar ibn ʾAbī Bakr ibnYūnus Ibn al-Ḥājib al-Miṣrī al-Dimašqī al-Mālikī, Muḫtaṣar Muntahā al-suʾal wa-l-ʾamal fī ʿilmay al-ʾuṣūl wa-l-jadal. 2 vols. Ed. by Naḏīr Ḥamādū. Beirut: Dār IbnḤazm,2006.

Ibn al-Ḥājib, ʾImlāʾ = ʾAbū ʿAmr Jamāl al-Dīn ʿUṯmān ibn ʿUmar ibn ʾAbī Bakr ibn YūnusIbn al-Ḥājib al-Miṣrī al-Dimašqī al-Mālikī, al-ʾImlāʾ ʿalā l-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw. Ed. bySartori (2012).

Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Ḫarūf al-ʾIšbīlī, ŠarḥJumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by Salwā Muḥammad ʿUmar ʿArab. Mecca: Jāmiʿat ʾUmm al-Qurā, 1998.

Ibn Hišām, Sabīl al-hudā = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf ibnʾAḥmad Ibn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī, Sabīl al-hudā ʿalā šarḥ Qaṭr al-nadā wa-ball al-ṣadāwa-maʿahu Risāla fī madḥ al-naḥw. Ed. by Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-ʿAṭā al-Bakrī. Damascus: Maktabat Dār al-Fajr, 2001.

Ibn Hišām, ʾAwḍaḥ = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūsuf ibn ʾAḥmadIbn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī, ʾAwḍaḥ al-masālik ʾilā ʾAlfiyyat IbnMālik. Ed. by H. al-Fāḫūrī. 4vols. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1989.

Ibn Jinnī, Ḫaṣāʾiṣ = ʾAbū l-Fatḥ ʿUṯmān Ibn Jinnī al-Mawṣilī, al-Ḫaṣāʾiṣ. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Hindāwī. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2008.

Ibn Jinnī, Sirr = ʾAbū l-Fatḥ ʿUṯmān Ibn Jinnī al-Mawṣilī, Sirr ṣināʿat al-ʾiʿrāb. Ed. byMuḥammadḤasanMuḥammadḤasan ʾIsmāʿīl and ʾAḥmad Rušdī Šaḥāta ʿĀmir. 2nded. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2007.

Ibn Mālik, Šarḥ = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbdallāhal-Ṭāʾī al-Jayyānī al-ʾAndalusī IbnMālik, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya al-Šāfiya. Ed. by ʿAlī Muḥam-mad Muʿawwaḍ and ʿĀdil ʾAḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2010.

Ibn al-Najjār, Šarḥ = Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAlī al-Fatawī al-Ḥanbalī al-maʿrūf bi-Ibn al-Najjār, Šarḥ al-Kawkab al-munīr. Ed. by Muḥammad al-Zaḥīlī and Nazīh Ḥamād. 4 vols. Riyadh: Maktabat al-ʿAbīkān, 1993.

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbūBakrMuḥammad ibn al-Sarī ibn Sahl Ibn al-Sarrāj al-Baġdādī,al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3rd ed. 4 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996.

Ibn Sīda, Muḫaṣṣaṣ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʾIsmāʿīl al-Mursī al-Luġawī al-Ḍarīr, al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ. Cairo: Bulāq. (Repr., 17 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, s. d.)

Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Muʾmin ibnMuḥammad al-Ḥaḍramī al-ʾIšbīlīIbn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ Jumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by Fawwāz al-Šaʿʿār and ʾĪmīl Badīʿ Yaʿqūb. 3 vols.Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998.

Ibn al-Warrāq, ʿIlal = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-ʿAbbās Ibn al-Warrāq, ʿIlal al-naḥw. Ed. by Maḥmūd Jāsim Muḥammad al-Darwīš. Riyadh: Mak-tabat al-Rušd, 1999.

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Jurjānī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Bakr ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibnMuḥammad al-Jurjānī,Šarḥ al-Jumal fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Ḫalīl ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿĪsā. 1oth ed. Beirut and Amman:Dār Ibn Ḥazm and al-Dār al-ʿUṯmāniyya, 2011.

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_013

The Classification of the Verb in the ArabGrammatical TraditionFrom Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī

Zeinab A. Taha

1 Introduction

There has never been a lack of interest in providing semantic justification forcertain structures in Arabic grammar. Medieval grammarians had a varyinginterest in semantics, and often presented semantic arguments to explain thesyntactic behavior of the different syntactic categories.

The present study examines the history of grammatical ideas about verbclassification in Arabic. It briefly reviews the contributions of Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad, and Ibn al-Sarrāj, which have been dealt with elsewhere (Taha 1994,1995, 2011; Owens 1990). It goes on to examine in more detail later works, byal-Zajjājī, al-Sīrāfī, and al-Jurjānī. The discussion focuses on the status of theverb in treatises written by these grammarians with particular emphasis onverb classes, status of the direct object, and the use of selected terminologyfor transitivity.

2 Sībawayhi (d. 180/796)

Depending on their morphological pattern, verbs are introduced in the Kitābwith respect to transitivity as forming two major categories: those with a tran-sitive pattern and those with an intransitive pattern. Fig. 1 illustrates these twocategories.

The Kitāb does not provide any other criterion for (in)transitivity than themorphological pattern of the verb in question. However, one can infer how Sīb-awayhi looked at the act of transitivity from the way he presents his argumentwith respect to the direct object and the other noun complements of the verb(Taha 1994, 1995, 2011).

There is a brief discussion in the Kitāb as to the necessity of including adirect object in a proposition including a transitive verb. Sībawayhi uses theterm ṣinf to differentiate between the maṣdar used with an intransitive verb,as in ḏahabtu ḏahāban ‘I definitely went away’ and the direct object bakranin ḍaraba zaydun bakran ‘Zayd hit Bakr’. In several passages of the Kitāb it is

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figure 1 Classification of verbs in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

clear that he considers transitive verbs as indicating a direct object in termsof their meaning, or the completion of kalām. He uses the term istaġnā ‘todo without’ continuously to refer to the object of the transitive verb as beingan essential part of the sentence (e.g. Kitāb i, 149). These repeated referencesindicate, albeit indirectly, how the verb’s object is indicated once the verb isused.

If you say ʿajibtu min ḍarbin ‘I did not like a hitting’, you have not men-tioned the agentbecause themasdar is not the agent, although it indicatesit. Therefore, you need in it [i.e., this masdar construction] an agent and apatient (wa-ʾiḏā qulta: ʿajibtu min ḍarbin fa-ʾinnaka lam taḏkur al-fāʿil fa-l-maṣdar laysa bi-l-fāʿil wa-ʾin kāna fīhi dalīlun ʿalā l-fāʿil fa-li-ḏālika ḥtajtafīhi ʾilā fāʿil wa mafʿūl).

Kitāb i, 189

The discussion, however, follows from an immediate constituent point of view,in which structural units exist one after the other to fill certain syntactic slots.

The term mutaʿaddī is used to refer to transitivity, i.e. to the property ofhaving adirect object, and also to the ability of the verb tohaveother accusativenoun complements in its sphere, irrespective of whether or not it is transitive.

The termswaṣala and ʾawṣala are usedunsystematically to refer to the actionof reaching the accusative object. The difference between the constructionwith kāna and the regular transitive construction is pointed at by Sībawayhi

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 231

(Kitāb i, 31), when he explains that there is no action ‘reaching’ the accusativepredicate in the kāna construction.

kāna is not a verb that reaches from one thing to another […]. You say:‘Abdallahwas your brother’, so youwanted to inform [i.e. predicate] aboutbeing brothers and therefore you used kāna in order to make it in thepast tense (kāna laysa bi-fiʿl yaṣilu min šayʾin ʾilā ʾāḫar […] taqūlu kānaʿabdullāh ʾaḫāka fa-ʾinnamā ʾaradta ʾan tuḫbira ʿanal-ʾuḫuwwawa-ʾadḫaltakāna li-tajʿala ḏālika fīmāmaḍā)

The term yanfuḏ is employed to refer to the action going from the verb to itsdirect object, but is then used sporadically to refer to other intransitive verbswith other accusative complements (Kitāb i, 37), which makes it difficult toclaim that the term is connected with the notion of transitivity or specificallywith the relationship between the verb and its direct object.

2 Al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898)

Al-Mubarrad’s classification is represented in Fig. 2, in which we find for thefirst time the category of non-real verbs. Verbs are clearly described as thoselexical items that are capable of providing certain syntactic and morpholog-ical functions. Thus, kāna ‘to be’ and its sisters, the verbs of admiration (al-taʿajjub), and those particles that only resemble verbs in their meaning, suchas mā when it has the meaning of laysa, are all considered by al-Mubarrad tobe non-real verbs. Real verbs, on the other hand, are categorized as either tran-sitive or intransitive (Muqtaḍab iii, 188–190). Intransitive verbs are of threekinds: the morphological pattern of faʿula and infaʿala, in addition to the so-called ‘metaphorical’ verbs, such asmāta ‘to die’ and saqaṭa ‘to fall’. For this lastkind in particular, it is obvious that the role of agency is central to verb clas-sification. Thus, with the verb saqaṭa, as in saqaṭa l-ḥāʾiṭ ‘the wall fell down’,the agent does not perform any action, hence, it is considered by al-Mubarradto be a metaphorical verb (Muqtaḍab iii, 188). The category of transitive verbsincludes two types. One type is ‘reaching and having an effect’, such as qatala‘to kill’ and ḍaraba ‘to hit’, and the other one is ‘not-reaching’, such as šatama‘to scold’ and ḏakara ‘to mention’. Both types are transitive and syntacticallybehave in the samemanner, yet, their categorization depends on reasons otherthan syntactic ones.

Regarding the status of the direct object, al-Mubarrad states that it is impliedby the transitive verb. Yet, he also states clearly that the verb and the agent

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figure 2 Classification of verbs in al-Mubarrad’sMuqtaḍab

together form a complete sentence (for which the term jumla appears for thefirst time in al-Muqtaḍab), and that the object is introduced after the sentencehas been completed (Muqtaḍab i, 146):

The agent [i.e., the subject of the verb] is in the nominative case becausetogetherwith the verb it forms a sentence afterwhich one could appropri-ately stop, and whose meaning is fulfilled (wa-ʾinnamā kāna l-fāʿil rafʿanli-ʾannahu huwa wa-l-fiʿl jumla yaḥsunu ʿalayhā l-sukūt wa-tajibu bihā l-fāʾida)

Although he uses the term faḍla to refer to any item that is included in thesentence beyond its verb and agent, he indirectly implies that the direct objectis in fact different. Al-Mubarrad uses the term faḍla to refer to all accusativecomplements of the verb, making clear that they are additional items in thejumla, while at the same time emphasizing the fact that transitive verbs implythe existence of amafʿūl bihi (Muqtaḍab i, 146; iii, 116; iv, 335).

Al-Mubarrad uses the term wāṣil to refer to a group of transitive verbs. Itrefers consistently to a binding effect that the verb’s denotation has in reachingand affecting its patient. The termmuʾaṯṯir is only used once in the Muqtaḍab,but wāṣala is used throughout the discussion of transitivity, though not alwaysconsistently, to refer to a domain other than syntax. The term mutaʿaddī, how-ever, continues to be the term for syntactic transitivity and continues to beused to refer to the ability of the verb to govern accusative nouns in its domain.

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 233

The confusion is clear when verbs such as ḏakara and šatama are called ġayrwāṣila. We shall see below that al-Zajjājī considers them to be wāṣila, but notmuʾaṯṯira.

In the discussion of verb classification in the Muqtaḍab, verb denotationbegins to play an important role. In an earlier period, Sībawayhi had classifiedboth ḍaraba and ḏakara as transitive verbs, andhehadnot initiated any furthersubdivision of these two transitive verbs. The reference to one aswāṣila and theother as not wāṣila was an innovation of al-Mubarrad. For him, the physicaleffect and the representation of the act were of importance. Therefore, he notonly established a category of wāṣila verbs, but also included the concept of‘effect’ under the same category. He did not establish a category of wāṣila andġayr muʾaṯṯira verbs.

From his classification of verbs, it can be seen that al-Mubarrad representsboth continuity, and innovation. His innovation consists in introducing newterms that could easily fit in a semantic analysis of verbal structures where theverb controls different nouns in its valency (Owens 1990).

3 Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928)

In Ibn al-Sarrāj’s classification of verbs, the two categories of real vs. non-realverbs becomemore restrictive. A real verb denotes a certain meaning wherebyits agent carries out the action denoted by it causatively, i.e., it causes theaction/event to take place. Such arguments are not clearly formulated in al-Mubarrad’s explanations. According to Ibn al-Sarrāj, if the agent is not actuallycausing the action of the verb to take place, the verb is regarded as non-real(ʾUṣūl i, 74):

The first kind includes terminal/metaphoric verbs, which are used forconciseness, and in them is an indication that their agents are in fact theacted upon [i.e., their objects], such as ‘Zayd died’, ‘thewall fell down’, and‘Bakr got sick’ (al-ḍarb al-ʾawwal: ʾafʿālmustaʿāra li-l-ʾiḫtiṣārwa-fīhā bayānʾanna fāʿilīhā fī l-ḥaqīqamafʿūlūna naḥwamāta zayd wa-saqaṭa l-ḥāʾiṭ wa-mariḍa bakr).

Verbs are first divided into the two large categories of whether or not theyactually come in contact with any other entity than the agent (see Fig. 3). Theterm mulāqiya is widely used by Ibn al-Sarrāj to refer to the type of actioninvolved in the meaning of the verb. Verbs are then categorized according towhether or not they are transitive, butmore importantly, how their denotations

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figure 3 The main categories of verbs/events in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾUṣūl

figure 4 The classification of verbs in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾUṣūl

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 235

shape their transitivity (see Fig. 4). The termswāṣil andmuʾaṯṯir come to be veryimportant in this classification.

Regarding the status of the direct object, Ibn al-Sarrāj considers the mafʿūlbihi to be an intrinsic part of the transitive verb’s semantic entity, since “thereis always an implication of it within [the verb]” (hunāka dalīlun ʿalayhi, ʾUṣūli, 412). The term faḍla is used, but it is restricted to the linear structure of thesentence, i.e., it refers to accusative complements that may appear after theverb.

Ibn al-Sarrāj continues to use the term wāṣil to refer to the direct object ina strict sense, while using the term mutaʿaddī to refer to the syntactic featuresof the verb and its ability to operate on noun complements. His classification,although very similar to al-Mubarrad’s, includes new subdivisions that furtheremphasize the semantic features of actions and events denoted by verbs.

Interestingly, Ibn al-Sarrāj does talk about transitivity by using several levelsof analysis, employing both old and new terminology. His Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl fea-tures a consistent approach of the use of couplets of terms such as wāṣil andmutaʿaddī. This is apparent in how he subcategorizes themutaʿaddiya verbs aseither wāṣila or wāṣila wa-muʾaṯṯira. As far as syntax is concerned, all of theserepresent transitive verbswith direct objects. The sub-categorization here doesnot yield any additional syntactic information, but rather adds to the semanticdescription of verbs and highlights the verbs’ effect on their noun comple-ments.

4 Al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949)

With respect to the classification of verbs, there is a clearer change in directionmanifest in the manner in which al-Zajjājī formed his syntactic arguments(see Fig. 5). The change is illustrated by the larger share given by al-Zajjājī tothe meaning conveyed by the verbs and how he distinguishes this meaningfrom the verb’s syntactic behavior. In his Kitāb al-Jumal, al-Zajjājī was clearlyinterested in explaining how the different syntactic categories behave in termsof the ʾiʿrāb. The bulk of the book is dedicated to the different syntactic rulesand case endings. On the other hand, the swift description of the verb in hisKitāb al-ʾīḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-nahw and the intensity of the logical argumentswherebythe linguistic representation of the syntactic structure becomes involved withthe verbal structure, marks clearly the convoluted picture painted by al-Zajjājī(in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299).

The termmutaʿaddī is used in the Jumal to refer to the act of ‘going beyondthe agent to a patient’. In an innovatory development, al-Zajjājī states that if the

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figure 5 The classification of verbs in al-Zajjājī’s ʾĪḍāḥ

verb goes beyond the agent to an item other than the direct object, it would notbe called mutaʿaddī. The syntactic test for transitivity is according to al-Zajjājīthe possibility to derive the ismmafʿūl. Thus, if from jalasa ‘to sit down’, we arenot in fact able to derivemajlūs to refer to an item in the sentence, then the verbis intransitive. On the other hand, in ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’, itis possible to say that the maḍrūb is ʿAmr, which demonstrates that ḍaraba istransitive (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299):

Thus, the one that is intransitive is the one that no passive participle isderived from […], such as the verbs ‘to sit’ and ‘to stand’ […] and theopposite of this is the transitive verb from which a passive participlemay be derived and about which you may inquire whom the actionbefell, as in ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’. Don’t you see thatit is possible to derive from it passive participle, so that it is possibleto say maḍrūb ‘[one who has been] hit’, and it is possible to inquirewhom the action of hitting befell? ( fa-llaḏī lā yataʿaddā huwa llaḏī lāyubnā minhu ism mafʿūl […] naḥwa jalasa wa-qāma […] wa-l-mutaʿaddīʿaksuhuwa-huwa llaḏī yubnāminhu ismmafʿūl wa-yuṣbiḥu l-suʾāl ʿanhu bi-ʾayy šayʾ waqaʿa naḥwa ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran; ʾa-lā tarā ʾannahu yaṣiḥhuʾan tabniya minhu ism al-mafʿūl fa-yuqālu maḍrūb wa-yuqālu bi -ʾayy šayʾwaqaʿa ḍarb zayd?)

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 237

According to al-Zajjājī (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299), the transitive verb may bedivided into three types. The first type is the one that is transitive directly to theobject as in the two verbsḍaraba and ḏakara. He does, however,make a distinc-tion between these two verbs, in that the sentence ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zaydhit ʿAmr’ refers to an action that befalls ʿAmr, whereas in the sentence ḏakarazaydun ʿamran ‘Zaydmentioned ʿAmr’, one cannot see anything befalling ʿAmr.Al-Zajjājī explains that in fact there is an understood muḍāf : ʾamr ‘the matterof ’, so that the sentence should read ḏakara zaydun ʾamra ʿamrin ‘Zayd men-tioned the matter of ʿAmr’, in which the verb ḏakara befalls the ʾamr ʿamrin.The verb in this category ‘demands’ a direct object. The second type is whenthe verb is transitive by means of a preposition. The justification here is thatthe verb actually does not settle or befall the object, as in marartu bi-zaydin ‘Ipassed by Zayd’ or ḥaḍartu ʾilā ʿamrin ‘I came to ʿAmr’. Neither verb manifestsan action happening to the two objects. The third category is the transitive verbthat is optionally usedwith a preposition. There are also two passageswhere hespeaks directly of the verb transitivity when he introduces some morphologi-cal patterns for the verb in terms of linking them to transitivity (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr,Šarḥ i, 161), an approach that was very elaborate in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, and wasnever entirely deserted by subsequent grammarians.

From the above, it is obvious that theway al-Zajjājī classifies verbs accordingto their (in)transitivity takes a quite different approach from that of Ibn al-Sarrāj. Although he set syntactic criteria for the three categories of transitiveverbs, he included in his presentation some explanation of why the verbsḏakara and ḍaraba are in the same category, although they feature a differenteffect on their direct objects. In the second and third type of transitive verbs,al-Zajjājī explains that there is no action befalling the object. This part comesas an obvious contradiction to Ibn al-Sarrāj, who included causation or effectas a criterion for transitivity.

Following a radically different argument, al-Zajjājī addresses actions andtheir doers in the ʾĪḍāḥ in a few places. For him (ʾĪḍāḥ 53), verbs are the rep-resentation of the movements of their agents (ʿibāra ʿan ḥarakāt al-faʿilīn), butthey are not in reality their actions (ʾafʿāl). Rather, they are an expression (=representation) of their agents’ actions and a representation of the actions ofthose expressing these verbs (al-muʿabbirīn ʿan tilka l-ʾafʿāl). He adds that theexistence of the doer precedes the existence of the action, because it is he whodid the action. Thus, al-Zajjājī makes a difference between the sentences as‘representations of events’ and their semantic denotations and he emphasizesthat these two should not be confused. What is on the surface syntactic struc-ture has nothing to dowith agency or patience as represented physically in reallife.

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With respect to the status of the direct object, although al-Zajjajī states thatthe verb contains an indication of the mafʿūl, i.e., the direct object (ʿIḍāḥ 135),he refers to it by the term faḍla and explains that it receives the accusative caseending after the completion of the kalām (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 161). In a way,al-Zajjājī’s treatment of transitivity has returned to the non-specificity of termi-nology as it first appeared in Sībawayhi’s Kitab. This non-specificity had beenchallenged andmore specific terminology started to appear with al-Mubarrad.This terminology was elaborated and applied extensively to semantic relationsin Ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾUṣūl. Al-Zajjājī, although being a student of Ibn al-Sarrāj,appears to be using different terminology in different contexts and to be hold-ing two distinctive views of verb classification. In his Jumal, he mostly usessyntactic arguments to explain the linear word order and the ʾiʿrāb, while inthe ʾĪḍāḥ, he goes beyond the linear level to explain ‘causes’, which are inmanyways far from being syntactic ones.

The categorization of verbs into real and unreal as introduced by both al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj, was not part of al-Zajjājī’s classification. However,the absenceof the termsḥaqīqiyya andġayrḥaqīqiyya shouldnotbe takenas anindication of his ignoring verb denotations. It might very well be an extensionof how he philosophically looked at the denotation of verbs as representationsof their agents’ actions, hence, the immaterial character of the ḥaqīqī vs. notḥaqīqī binary division. These categories, however, later reappeared in al-Sirāfī’sand al-Jurjāni’s treatises. Other significant terminology did re-appear in al-Zajjaji’s works. In discussing transitive verbs, he used the term yaṣilu fromthe verb waṣala to refer to the binding of the action to the object. He alsocontinued using the one categorization of Ibn al-Sarrāj of ‘verbs of the senses’.Al-Zajjājī mentions that samiʿa ‘to hear’ is one of the sense verbs and thus istransitive (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 303). However, he did not include this as a clearcategory when transitive vs. intransitive verbs were introduced. In later partsof the book, al-Zajjājī starts using the term yataʿaddā ʾilā to refer to all verbs,whether transitive or intransitive, having accusative noun complements otherthan the direct object (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 324). A statement that stands indirect contradiction to an earlier statement confining the term mutaʿaddī totransitive verbs only (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 229).

5 Al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078)

Just like al-Zajjājī does sporadically in his works, both al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) andal-Jurjānī choose to distinguish verbs from the other parts of speech on thebasis of their grammatical qualities and their functions. There emerges a clear

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 239

distinction between the purpose for which verbs are introduced into the sen-tence and the syntactic functions these verbs perform. The involvement of themeaning conveyed by the verbs becomesmore andmore peripheral comparedto their syntactic role, as the explanation of their functionproceeds in theMuq-taṣid. Several items from the terminology used by al-Jurjānī’s predecessors havesurvived, but not alwayswith the sameweight given to the semantic side, as hasbecome apparent in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s discussion in particular.

Both al-Sīrāfī and al-Jurjānī agree that the verb is what predicates, but doesnot itself receive a predicate (mākānamusnadanwa-lā-yusnadu ʾilayhi šayʾun),as in ḫaraja ʿabdullāh ‘ʿAbdallah went out’ and yanṭaliqu bakrun ‘Bakr left’(Jurjānī, Muqtaṣid i, 77). Al-Jurjānī claims that grammarians had described theverb’s agent as the item on which the verb ‘leans’ (yusnadu ʾilayhi), assuminga distinctive role of the agent in causing the action to happen. Agency with al-Jurjānī starts to be explained along somewhat different lines.He says (Muqtaṣidi, 327):

It is not necessary for the agent actually to do something. Don’t you seethat you say ṭāba l-ḫabar ‘the message was good’, when the ḫabar doesnot have an action as there is one for Zayd in qāma zaydun ‘Zayd gotup’. Likewise, you say lam yaqum zaydun ‘Zayd didn’t get up’, marking itas nominative, even though you have negated its action … If it were acondition for being an agent to carry out an action, it would not have beenallowed to put zayd in the nominative in the sentence lam yaqum zaydun(wa-laysa l-šarīṭa ʾan yakūna ʾaḥdaṯa šayʾan, ʾa-lā tarā ʾannaka taqūlu ṭābal-ḫabar wa-laysa li-l-ḫabar fiʿlun kamā yakūnu li-zaydin fī qawlika qāmazaydun wa-kaḏā taqūlu lam yaqum zaydun fa-tarfaʿuhu wa-qad nafaytaʿanhu l-fiʿla … fa-law kāna li-l-fāʿil min šarṭihi ʾan yakūna ʾaḥdaṯa šayʾan la-mā jāza rafʿ zaydin fī qawlika lam yaqum zaydun).

Thus, receiving the nominative case takes priority in al-Jurjānī’s argument overthe role of the agent in fulfilling the action denoted by its verb. The agent isseen as an intrinsic element of the verb whereas the causation element doesnot carry any syntactic implications.

Al-Jurjānī also argues that there is a distinction between the lexicalmeaningand the abstract meaning and explains that the agent is contained in theverb, as in zayd ḍaraba ‘Zayd hit’, meaning that the verb itself indicates andencompasses the agent, while the mafʿūl is not contained in it. The argumentis purely syntactic and refers to the ʾalif at the end of the dual verb ḍarabā ‘thetwo of them [masc.] hit’, and the wāw in the plural verb ḍarabū ‘they [masc.]hit’, both referring to the agent, as an intrinsic part of the verb. On the other

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hand, the object is attached at the end of the verb, as a suffix: when you sayḍarabaka ‘he hit you’, -ka is only connected to the verb at the lexical level, notat the abstract or maʿnawī level. This syntactic argument aims at illustratingthe difference between the fāʿil as the recipient of the nominative case, whilethemafʿūl gets the accusative case. Al-Jurjānī uses the term ḥadd al-kalima, lit.‘the border of the word’, to refer to the status of the fāʿil as part of the originalḥadd of the verb, while the mafʿūl is attached to the word or is referred to bya pronoun that comes beyond the ḥadd or the border of the verb (Muqtaṣid i,328f.).

Another clear distinction in the criteria used for verb classification is appar-ent when al-Jurjānī places verbs in the same category that were treated by Ibnal-Sarrāj as belonging to different categories. He draws an analogy betweenthe admirative verb ( fiʿl al-taʿajjub), which has the pattern ʾafʿala and the verbʾaḏhaba (Form iv ‘to make someone go’). In his argument, the taʿajjub verb isfiʿl manqūl, i.e., derived by the addition of a hamza, which changes the Form iverb to Form iv. Thus, the fiʿl al-taʿajjub is treated with respect to transitivity inthe samemanner asmorphologically causative just like any other Form iv verbderived from Form i. The specificity of the fiʿl al-taʿajjub, as introduced by Ibnal- Sarrāj, is lost completely in al-Jurjānī’s classification of verbs. To illustratehis point, al-Jurjānī cites the analogy between the admirative and the causativeverb (Muqtaṣid i, 384):

The expressionmā ʾaḥsanazaydan ‘Howgood isZayd!’ has the same statusas ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan ‘ʿAmr made Zayd go away’, in that you deriveit from the verb ḥasuna with the meaning of šayʾun jaʿalahu ḥasanan‘something causedhim tobe good’, just like ʿamrun ʾaḏhabazaydanmeansjaʿalahu ḏāhiban ‘he caused him to be going away’ ( fa-qawluka mā ʾaḥ-sana zaydan bi-manzilat ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan fī ʾannaka naqaltahuminḥasuna bi-maʿnā šayʾun jaʿalahu ḥasanan kamā ʾanna ʿamrun ʾaḏhabazaydan bi maʿnā jaʿalahu ḏāhiban).

Here, it is clear that verbs are discussed as structural units, irrespective ofwhether or not they denote actions or experience.

Another parallel is made between two verbs that also formed two differenttypes in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s classification: the verb raʾā ‘to see’ and the verb ḍaraba‘to hit’ in their ability to be transitive to one mafʿūl, while ʾarā and ʾaḍraba aredoubly transitive. Once again, al-Jurjānī resorts to a morphological argumentto explain multiple transitivity (Muqtaṣid i, 349).

Like al-Sīrāfī, al-Jurjānī recognizes two large categories of transitive verbs(see Fig. 6). They are classified on the basis of whether they involve practical

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 241

figure 6 The classification of verbsin al-Jurjānī’sMuqtaṣid

manipulation/dealing (ʿilāj), i.e. action verbs, or not (ġayr ʿilāj), i.e. non-actionverbs. The ʿilāj category includes verbs like ḍaraba ‘to hit’, qatala ‘to kill’, ʾaḫaḏa‘to take’, kasara ‘to break’, andnaqala ‘tomoveaway’,while theġayr ʿilāj categoryincludes verbs like ʿalima ‘to know’, ẓanna ‘to assume’, fahima ‘to understand’,ḏakara ‘to mention’, and hawiya ‘to love’, which are all experiential verbs (Muq-taṣid i, 596).

Al-Jurjānī explains that the term ʿilāj implies that the verbs are those ofthe limbs ( jawāriḥ), including eyes, hand, legs, and tongue. Every act donewith the hand or the leg, such as hitting, killing, walking, standing, and sitting,is assumed to be an ʿilāj. In this manner, both al-Sirāfī and al-Jurjānī agreewith their predecessors that all verbs of the limbs are transitive. What doesnot involve ʿilāj are the verbs of cognition and whatever behaves in the samemanner, such as hawītuhu ‘I fell in love with him’ and fahimtuhu ‘I understoodhim’, because of the lack of physical evidence these actions effect. Such verbsare rather ‘indicated by circumstances’, i.e., state verbs as in ‘to love’ and ‘tounderstand’. It is worth mentioning that the dichotomy of ʿilāj vs. non-ʿilājdoes not only refer to verbs that are transitive to only one mafʿūl, becausekasā ‘to cover [s.th. with s.th.]’ is considered to involve ʿilājwhile being doublytransitive.

Although al-Jurjānī states that the mafʿūl bihi comes after the thought iscompleted, he believes that the transitive verb meets the requirement byincluding a direct object. Once this requirement has been met, the transitiveverb acts like an intransitive one in that it starts to be ‘transitive’ (mutaʿaddī) tothe other accusatives, such as, time, place,maṣdar, ḥāl, etc. (Muqtaṣid i, 628f.).

Al-Jurjānī explains, however, that the direct object as in ʾaʿṭaytu zaydan al-dirhama ‘I gave Zayd the dirham’ is different from the cognate accusative, as in

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the sentence ḍarabtu zaydan al-ḍarba ‘I hit Zayd a beating’ (Muqtaṣid i, 352).In the latter sentence, both zayd and al-darb are object of the verb, just likezayd and dirham are object of the verb in the former sentence. Yet, there is adifference between the two sets of objects:

Don’t you see that the giving includes the dirham, while the hitting inḍarabtu zaydan al-ḍarba ‘I hit Zayd a beating’ is not like that, becauseit does not resemble zayd in having the verb ḍaraba encompassing it(ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna l-ʾiʿṭāʾ yaštamilu ʿalā l-dirhamwa-l-ḍarb laysa ka-ḏālika li-ʾannahu lā yušākilu zaydan fī štimāl al-fiʿl allaḏī huwa l-ḍarb ʿalayhi).

Here, al Jurjānī hints at the fact that the direct object has a status that isdifferent from that of other noun complements, such as the cognate accusativein this case. If we compare the two structures in (1a, b)

(1) a. ḍarab-tuhit.past-1s

zayd-anZayd-acc

al-ḍarb-aart-hitting-acc

‘I hit Zayd a beating’

b. ʾaʿṭay-tugive.past-1s

zayd-anZayd-acc

al-dirham-aart-dirham-acc

‘I gave Zayd a dirham’

we see that in (1a) the verb ḍaraba is involved only with zayd, while in (1b), theverb is involved with both zayd and dirham, as shown in Fig. 7.

This type of ‘involvement’ refers to verb valency, where the verb is seen tohave an effect and to encompass a different number of noun complementsdepending on its denotation (Muqtaṣid i, 352).

Expressions such as ʾawṣalta al-fiʿl ʾilā l-ism, nāfiḏ ʾilā l-mafʿūl (Sībawayhi’sterminology, aswell as al- Sīrāfī’s) areused frequently to refer to the relationshipbetween the verb and the noun complements. The two expressions are used torefer to the use of Form iv verbs as opposed to Form i and thus causing thederived verb to ‘reach’ an object as in ḏahaba vs. ʾaḏhaba. The argument hereincludes other consonants than the hamza. For example, the bāʾ in ḏahabtu bi-zaydin as well as the doubling of the second consonant of the root in Form iifarraḥa ‘tomake happy’ as opposed to the intransitive Form i verb fariḥa ‘to beglad’ Thus, al-Jurjānī argues that the doubling of the ḥ transfers the verb to atransitive verb as in farraḥtu zaydan ‘I made Zayd happy’. The three examplesare discussed in the same section dealing with the consonants that make theverb ‘reach, go into’ an object (Muqtaṣid i, 347).

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition 243

figure 7 Valency relations in sentences (1a, b)

In general, the term waṣṣala appears in al-Muqtaṣid only a few times. Al-Jurjānī says that with phrasal verbs, the preposition is sometimes omitted andthe verb reaches or goes into the accusative complements directly (Muqtaṣid i,643). It it not entirely clear anymore what the terms ʾawṣala and naffaḏameanin this context, and whether or not they still represent the semantic role ofthe verb as they did for his predecessors. What is obvious, though, is that theterm wāṣil has completely disappeared as implying a semantic quality of sometransitive verbs.

6 Conclusion

From Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī, there have been signs of continuity and signsof convergence. Each grammarian had his own approach in representing theinter-sentential relationships between the different constituents in verbal con-structions. Although they basically agreed on the different features and rolesof the different syntactic categories, their treatment of verb transitivity, andconsequently on the effect of the verb on the different noun complements didvary from one grammarian to the other.We have seen above that greater inter-est in the semantic denotation of the verb gradually appeared from the timeof Sībawayhi onward, reaching its peak in the 4th/10th century with the wayIbn al-Sarrāj classified verbs. Although the view of the verb as the source ofeffect on its surrounding continued into the writings of subsequent grammar-ians, we find that a different tradition had emerged with al -Zajjājī’s effort toseparate semantic arguments from syntactic ones. The fact that he composedtwo distinct treatises, the ʾĪḍāḥ and the Jumal, is indeed a clear sign of this.

Although both al-Sirāfī and al-Jurjānī continued to sporadically use signifi-cant arguments with respect to verb valency, it has become clear that therewasan increasing effort to keep the arguments within the domain of syntax. Withal- Jurjānī’s contribution, the view of what syntax was, got somewhat alteredfor he emphasized the role of meaning in what he called ‘syntactic functions’(maʿānī l-naḥw), which encompassed the intended meaning, and he showedhow syntactic relations provided the means to convey them. On that level, thesignificance of the whole utterance, rather than the verbal element, becamethe heart of the linguistic analysis.

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Bibliographical References

a Primary SourcesIbn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʿAbū BakrMuḥammad ibn Sahl Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed.

by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. Beirut: Dār al-Risāla, 1988.Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muʾmin Ibn ʿUṣfūr al-ʾIšbīlī, Šarḥ al-Jumal fī

l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAlī Tawfīq al-Ḥamad. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla and Irbid: Dār al-ʾAmal, 1984.

Jurjānī, Muqtaṣid = ʾAbū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī, al-Muqtaṣid fī šarḥ al-ʾĪḍāḥ. Ed. by Kāẓim al-Marjān. Baghdad: Wizārat al-Ṯaqāfa wa-l-ʾIʿlām, 1982.

Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-ʾAzdī al-Mubarrad, al-Muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿUḍayma. 3 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Taḥrīr, 1965–1968.

Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbu Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān ibn Qanbar al-Baṣrī, al-Kitāb. Ed. by ʿAbdal-Salām Muḥammad Harūn. 5 vols. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb,1966–1977.

Zajjājī, ʿIlal = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī, al-ʾĪḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-naḥw.3rd ed. Ed. by Māzin al-Mubārak. Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1979.

Zajjājī, Jumal see Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ

b Secondary SourcesOwens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standard-

ization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.Taha, Zeinab. 1993. “The term ṣila in early Arab grammatical theory: The case of Ibn

al-Sarrāj”. Proceedings of theColloquiumonArabic LexicologyandLexicography, 232–244.

Taha, Zeinab. 1995. Issues of syntax and semantics: A comparative study of Sibawayhi,al-Mubarrad and ibn al-Sarrāj. Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University.

Taha, Zeinab. 1996. “Semantic valence in tenth-century Arabic grammar: The case ofibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾuṣūl fil-naḥw”. Multiple Perspectives on the Historical Dimensions ofLanguage, ed. by Kurt Jankowsky, 281–289. Munster: Nodus Publikationen.

Taha, Zeinab. 2008. “Mafʿūl”. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. byMushira Eid a.o., iii, 100–106. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Taha, Zeinab. 2009. “Taʿaddī”. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. byMushira Eid a.o., iv, 410–416. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Taha, Zeinab Ahmed. 2011. Development of Arab grammatical thought from the 2nd tothe 4th century of Hijra (In Arabic). Cairo: Maktabat al-ʾĀdāb.

Versteegh, Kees. 1995. The explanation of linguistic causes: Al-Zajjāji’s theory of gram-mar. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_014

Learning Arabic in the IslamicWorld

Kees Versteegh

1 Learning Arabic: The Curriculum

In his autobiography al-ʾAyyām, Taha Hussein (1889–1973) recounts his earlyeducation in the Azhar, including the grammatical treatises he had to learnby heart, among them the ʾĀjurrūmiyya by Ibn ʾĀjurrūm (d. 723/1323) andthe ʾAlfiyya by Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274).1 Children like the young Taha Husseingrow up speaking an Arabic dialect as their mother tongue, which no doubthelps them to some extent to make sense of the texts they are memorizing.The present paper will be about learning Arabic outside the Arabic-speakingworld. It is difficult to imagine how children who do not speak Arabic canlearn the language by memorizing texts that are well-nigh incomprehensibleto them.

The difference between teaching Arabic to first and second language learn-ers is formidable, yet it turns out that in many respects the curriculum usedall over the Islamic world is remarkably similar, regardless of the students’mother tongues. This similaritymay be explained by the status of Arabic, espe-cially in the East. Zadeh (2012) has shown how the use of Persian translations,even of the Qurʾān, was much more widespread than has commonly beenassumed. In the eastern part of the empire Ḥanafī scholars and Sufi travellersalike propagated the new creed in the indigenous languages from the begin-ning of the daʿwa. Interlinear translation of the Qurʾān and Persian exegesisof the Qurʾān were widespread in schools and universities all over the east-ern provinces (Zadeh 2012:282); sometimes, Persianwas even used for liturgicalpurposes.

This does not mean that Arabic was no longer learnt in these parts. Islamicscholars, from al-Šāfiʿī (d. 204/820) to Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), had made itvery clear that learningArabicwasoneof theobligations anyMuslimhad to ful-fill (Zadeh 2012:80, 124, 128). Yet, especially in the eastern Islamicworld, thoughArabic was the “favouredmode of written communication” in scholarship, Per-sian was the current language of oral instruction (Zadeh 2012:41). Arabic was

1 See vanGelder (1995:103). On the teaching of grammar in the educational systemat theAzharsee also Gesink (2009:30).

246 versteegh

learnt primarily as a dead language.2 Precisely because of this, knowledge ofArabic became one of the principal hallmarks of scholarship (Zadeh 2012:408)in the East and the level of knowledge of Arabic grammar was reputedly muchhigher here than in the West, at least according to the testimony of the Arabtraveller al-Maqdisī, who visited Persia in 374/984 (Zadeh 2012:373).

Unfortunately, we do not have at our disposalmuch information concerningthe methods with which students learnt Arabic. For the older period, suchinformation is completely lacking as far as the elementary stages of educationare concerned. Biographies of scholars do not normally enlighten us abouttheir early training. Evenwhenweknow that children received special training,as in the case of the young Mamluks in Egypt (Haarmann 1988), we do notknowexactly how they becameproficient inArabic. During theMamlukperiodin Egypt and Syria, Arabic remained the language of religion and culture and,while the Mamluks did not think highly of the Arabs in military and politicalmatters, they still strove after a classical education for their children in whichArabic held an important place.3 Some of the higher Mamluk functionarieseven became grammarians, and we may assume that grammatical treatisesformed part of their curriculum, but we have no information about the textswith which they learned Arabic.

From the 19th century onwards more information is available. The cur-riculum described by Taha Hussein resembles that of schools throughout theIslamic world outside the Arabic-speaking countries, as illustrated by the uni-versal popularity of the twomain treatisesmentioned by him, the ʾĀjurrūmiyyaand the ʾAlfiyya, and their commentaries.4 It seems that madāris all over theIslamicworldused these treatises.The limitation in our informationpertains to

2 This does not seem to have changed in the modern period; Iranian students of Arabicin Tehran apparently do not learn Arabic as a living language, at least that is what theobservations by von Maltzahn (2013, ch. 6) suggest.

3 On the grammatical training of the Mamluks see Mahamid (2011); Mauder (2012). See alsoFlemming (1977) about the writing exercises some of the youngMamluks had to write duringtheir training.

4 For a detailed analysis of the pedagogical set-up of the ʾAlfiyya see Viain (2014:228–253); sheregards the ʾAlfiyya as “une version parallèle de classements antérieurs dans une optiqueplus pratique” (2014:228); the same judgment applies to the ʾĀjurrūmiyya (Viain 2014:254–259). In her analysis of the organization of these two introductory treatises, compared tothe preceding tradition, Viain characterizes them as the product of “une tradition andalouseprivilégiant, dans l’organisation des données, l’ efficacité pédagogique, parfois au détrimentde la logique théorique”. As such, they do not follow the innovatory classifications of al-Zamaḫšarī’s (d. 538/1144) Mufaṣṣal, but return to texts by earlier grammarians, notably Ibnal-Sarrāj’s (d. 316/928) Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl and al-Zajjājī’s (d. 337/949) Kitāb al-jumal fī l-naḥw.

learning arabic in the islamic world 247

table 1 Arabic grammatical texts used in Indonesian pesantrens in the 19th century (aftervan den Berg 1886)

Author Arabic title

Ibn ʾĀjurrūm (d. 723/1323) al-ʾĀjurrūmiyyaal-Ruʿayni al-Ḫaṭṭāb (d. 954/1547) al-Mutammima (supplement to

al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya)al-ʾImrīṭī/ʿAmrīṭī (fl. 989/1581)5 al-Durra al-Bahiyya (versification of

al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya)Ḥasan al-Kafrāwī (d. 1202/1787) commentary on al-ʾĀjurrūmiyyaʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) al-ʿAwāmil al-miʾaanonymous commentary on ʿAwāmil (starting with

the words ʾinna ʾawlā)Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1272) al-ʾAlfiyyaIbn ʿAqīl (d. 769/1367) Šarḥ al-ʾAlfiyyaal-ʾAzharī (d. 905/1499) Tamrīn al-ṭullāb (commentary on

al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya)Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥwIbn Hišām (d. 761/1360) Qaṭr al-nadā

the fact that, although we have extensive lists of books used in teaching gram-mar, theology, law, and even Sufism, these titles do not tell us how childrenlearned Arabic and, in particular, how proficient they became in Arabic.

Roughly at the same time that TahaHussein received his schooling, studentsin Indonesian pesantrens and East African vyuo (plural of chuo) studied thesame texts in roughly the same order. According to a report from the 1880s,commissioned by the Dutch government in the Dutch East Indies (van denBerg 1886), education in Indonesian pesantrens took place on the basis of asmall number of fundamental textbooks (see Table 1).

Specifically with respect to grammar, Drewes (1971) distinguishes betweenwhat he calls the ‘native type’ of instruction and the ‘Meccan style’. In the for-mer, no grammar is taught at all, so that the students’ understanding of thetext is strictly limited to the memorized translation of the Arabic text. In theMeccan type, grammar is learnt by memorizing Arabic grammatical treatises,chief among them the ʾAlfiyya and the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, as well as their commen-

5 See Brockelmann (1943:ii, 320).

248 versteegh

taries. In the case of the ʾAlfiyya the main commentaries studied in Indone-sia are those by Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1360), al-ʾAzharī (d. 905/1499), Ibn ʿAqīl(d. 769/1367), and al-ʾUšmūnī (d. 872/1468),6 while the most important com-mentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya are those by al-ʾAzharī, al-Kafrāwī (d. 1207/1787),and ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān (see below). A few commentaries or glosseswere written locally, among them the commentaries by the Banten scholarMuḥammad Nawawī (d. 1897, van Bruinessen 1990:236, n. 20) and the glosson Daḥlān’s commentary by Muḥammad Maʿṣūm ibn Sālim from Semarang(Drewes 1971:69).

The basic texts of the old-fashioned pesantrens have remained popular inpresent-day Indonesia, where they continue to be reprinted in the so-called‘yellow books’ (kitab kuning, van Bruinessen 1990, 1994). Concerning grammat-ical teaching, van Bruinessen (1990:241–243) states that the normal order inwhich grammar is studied starts with an elementary treatise on ṣarf, such asal-Bināʾ wa-l-ʾasās by Mullā ʿAbdallāh al-Danqarī (date of death unknown) orʿIzz al-Dīn al-Zanjānī’s (d. 654/1257) al-Taṣrīf al-ʿIzzī, and then progresses withan elementary treatise on naḥw, such as al-ʿAwāmil al-miʾa by ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) or the ʾĀjurrūmiyya. Van Bruinessen (1990:241) stresses thefact that these treatises are the first introduction toArabic grammar all over theeastern Islamic world, from Kurdistan to Sumatra and Java. After the introduc-tory texts students continue either with commentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya ordirectly with the ʾAlfiyya and the commentary on it by Ibn ʿAqīl. Another pop-ular work that has remained in use in contemporary pesantrens is Ibn Hišām’sQaṭr al-nadā. The classical canon is not absolute and immutable, however. VanBruinessen (1990:263) presents data on forty-six pesantrens; among them fivehave shifted to the Qawāʿid al-luġa, which were introduced in the Egyptianschool reform at the end of the 19th century (see below), and four to al-Naḥwal-wāḍiḥ (see below).

For East Africa, Loimeier (2009:169–170) describes the educational systemin Zanzibar, which was organized around basic introductory texts, studied byall students, and specialized texts in various disciplines. The student learnedthe basic texts, the so-called ʾummahāt by heart, while the teacher explainedthe text with the help of commentaries. In the field of grammar, the studentsbegan with the Ājurrūmiyya as the introductory text on grammar (2006:177),with the commentary by ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī ibn ʾAḥmad Daḥlān (d. 1303/1886).The specialized texts for grammar included (2006:189–191):

6 See Drewes (1971:69) on the identification of this author.

learning arabic in the islamic world 249

– Mullā ʿAbdallāh al-Danqarī, Matn al-bināʾ wa-l-ʾasās (with the commentaryby ʿAlī ibn ʿUṯmān)

– al-Kafrāwī, ʾIʿrāb al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya– al-Ruʿaynī al-Ḫaṭṭāb, Tatimmat [or: Mutammimat] al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya, with the

commentary by Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-ʾAhdal al-Yamanī (d. 1269/1835),entitled al-Kawākib al-durriyya

– ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, ʿAwāmm al-Jurjānī– IbnMālik, Lāmiyyat al-ʾafʿāl (with the commentary by Jamāl al-DīnMuḥam-

mad ibn ʿUmar Baḥraq, d. 1033/1624, entitled Tuḥfat al-ʾalbāb = al-Baḥraqa)– Hifni Bek Nāṣif al-Miṣrī and Muḥammad Effendi Diyāb al-Miṣrī (end 19th

century), Qawāʿid al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya (see below)– Ibn Mālik, al-ʾAlfiyya (with the commentary by Ibn ʿAqīl)– Ibn Hišām, Qaṭr al-nadā wa-ball al-ṣadā (with the commentary by ʾAbū

ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Fāsī, d. 1115/1704)– Ibn Hišām, Šuḏūr al-ḏahab fī maʿrifat kalām al-ʿArab (with the commentary

by Zayn al-Dīn Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-ʾAnṣārī al-Miṣrī, d. 926/1520)

In the second half of the 19th century, during the reign of Sayyid Barghash inZanzibar (1870–1888), Arabic literacy became increasingly important in thisregion because of the growth of the bureaucracy, which required a large num-ber of employees being able to read and write Arabic. This necessitated amore intensive way of teaching Arabic (Bang 2014:112–116). Bang connects thisdevelopment with the expansion of the Sufi brotherhoods in the late 1800s.The main introductory book was the ʾĀjurrūmiyya with the Šarḥ by ʾAḥmadibn Zaynī Daḥlān; an older commentary, whose copies may be found in theEast-African libraries, is that by al-ʾAzharī.7 The second most important bookwas the ʾAlfiyya, together with the commentary by Ibn ʿAqīl (Bang 2014:113).Bang mentions a gloss on this commentary by Muḥammad al-Ḫiḍr al-Dimyāṭī(d. 1287/1870), and a second gloss by ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn ʿAwaḍ al-Jirjāwī (d.ca. 1190/1776), entitled Šarḥ šawāhid al-ʾAlfiyya.

All of the above mentioned works originated in the Middle East, but gram-matical treatises were also written in East Africa itself, e.g. the Šarḥ tarbiyatal-ʾaṭfāl bi-taṣrīf al-ʾafʿāl byMuḥyī l-Dīn al-Qaḥṭānī (d. 1227/1869; Bang 2014:116),which is a commentary on his ownpoemTarbiyat al-ʾaṭfāl. A second example isa summary of Ibn Hišām’s al-ʾIʿrāb ʿan qawāʿid al-ʾiʿrāb by Muṣabbiḥ ibn SālimibnMuṣabbiḥ al-Barwānī fromBrava (date of death unknown), entitledMirqāt

7 Al-ʾAzharī also wrote a commentary on Ibn Hišām’s commentary on the ʾAlfiyya, entitled al-Taṣrīḥ ʿalā l-Tawḍīḥ.

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al-ʾiʿrāb (Muḫtaṣar fī ṣarf wa-naḥw). Its main interest lies in the fact that afterpresenting the material of the grammar, this summary contains a set of ques-tions and answers clearly intended for young students.

In the extremeWest of theMaghreb, the Sous region was part of the Arabic-speaking world, yet, the local scholars spoke Berber as well as Arabic. Van denBoogert (1997) describes the elementary education in this region on the basisof three accounts in Berber, dating from the middle of the 20th century, byMuḥammad al-Muḫtār al-Sūsī and Sī ʾIbrāhīm al-Kunkī. The most interestingpart of these accounts is the description of the more advanced stage, after thememorization of theQurʾān. At this stage, the students continuewith the studyof Arabic grammar, the first of the Arabic sciences they have to master (vanden Boogert 1997:11–19). The first grammatical text learnt is the ʾĀjurrūmiyya(Ljṛṛumit)—hardly surprising since Ibn ʾĀjurrūm himself was of Berber origin.When the students have memorized this text, they are ready for the study ofother grammatical treatises, of which al-Kunkī mentions Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī al-Zawāwī’s (d. 628/1231) al-Durra al-ʾAlfiyya, and two treatises by IbnMālik, al-ʾAlfiyya and Lāmiyyat al-ʾafʿāl.

InWest Africa, fromMauritania to Mali and Niger, the curriculum for learn-ing Arabic was highly homogeneous, and the textbooks usedwere largely iden-tical.8 In the numerous madrasas of Timbuktu, one of the largest centres ofIslamic learning in this area, grammatical instruction took up an importantpart of a scholar’s education, and proficiency in Arabic was highly regarded(Saad 1983:74f.). Grammar was studied together with the text of the Qurʾānand even before tafsīr. Several commentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya were writ-ten by local scholars, for instance the one by al-Sayyid ʾAḥmad ibn ʾAnd-ʾAġ-Muḥammad (d. 1054/1635), al-Futūḥ al-Qayūmiyya fī šarḥ al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya,copies of which have been found in Egypt and Morocco. Locally, it remainedin use up till the end of the 19th century. In addition to the ʾĀjurrūmiyyaand its commentaries, the second basic text taught and commented in Tim-buktu was Ibn Mālik’s ʾAlfiyya with its auto-commentary Tashīl al-fawāʾid al-naḥwiyya.

Even though the list of fundamental texts is roughly the same all overthe Islamic world, there seems to have been a certain amount of regionaldistribution. In his exhaustive inventory of commentaries on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s

8 See Fortier (1993:238, n. 10). Autobiographical accounts by scholars, such as the ʾĪdāʿ al-nusūḫman ʾaḫaḏtu ʿanhu min al-šuyūḫ by Abdallahi dan Fodio (d. 1829), contain valuable informa-tion on the books these scholars studied. For the books used in grammatical instruction seeHall and Stewart (2011:120–123).

learning arabic in the islamic world 251

(d. 646/1249) al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, Sartori (2013:68) notes that these commen-taries are concentrated in the Turco-Iranian and Central-Asian region, whichsuggests that this treatise was more popular in the Islamic East than in theMaghreb and in West Africa.9 In their study of the core curriculum in WestAfrica, Hall and Stewart (2011:123) remark on the absence of the Kāfiya in theautobiographical accounts of West African scholars: in spite of copies of thetreatise and its commentaries in the libraries, the text does not seem to havebeen part of the curriculum in this region.

Conversely, the most popular treatise in the West, the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, doesnot seem to have been very popular in South Asia, at least it does not figurein the list of grammar books mentioned by Rahman (2008:509) for the Dars-iNizami, the traditional Islamic curriculum, whose establishment is attributedto Nizamuddin Sehalvi (d. 1161/1748)

in ṣarf

– ʿAlī ʾAkbar ʾAllāhābādī (d. 1091/1680), Fuṣūl-i ʾAkbarī– ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Masʿūd (8th/14th century?), Marāḥ al-ʾarwāḥ– Mīzān al-ṣarf (10th/16th century?), with the second part, Munšaʿib by Ḥam-

za Badayūnī– al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), Ṣarf-i Mīr10– Ibn al-Ḥājib, al-Šāfiya fī l-ṣarf

in naḥw

– Sirāj al-Dīn al-ʾAwaḏī (d. 757/1356), Hidāyat al-naḥw– Ibn al-Ḥājib, al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw (with the commentary by ʾAbū Barkat Nūr

al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, d. 898/1492, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya = Mullā Jāmī)

9 On Sunniforum, about which see below, one member (Faqeeh An-Nafs) posts the orderof grammatical treatises in India as he remembers it from the dars Nizamy, which heclaims derives from Mulla Nizam ud-Deen: Nahwa meer (= al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī, Naḥw-iMīr), sharah miah aamil (= al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī, Šarḥ al-ʿawāmil al- miʾa), hidayatun nahw(= Sirāj al-Dīn al-ʾAwaḏī, Hidāyat al-naḥw), kafiyya (= Ibn al-Ḥājib, al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw),Shrah Jamee (= Mullā Jāmī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya) http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-10789.html. In the Indian subcontinent, the Kāfiya and condensed versionsof it, like theHidāyat al-naḥw, are indeedmuchmore popular than elsewhere http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2710.html: “It seems that the Kafiyah is notnormally studied in the Arab world and it is mainly studied in the Indian Subcontient”.

10 Mīr was the title of some aristocratic leaders in India; it is also used as a honorific title fora few scholars, among them al-Šarīf al-Jurjāni, somewhat like the Arabic sayyid.

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– ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, al-ʿAwāmil al-miʾa (with the commentary by al-Šarīfal-Jurjānī)

– al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī, Naḥw-i Mīr

Through themigration of Indian/Pakistani scholars toAfrica andEurope, someof the specifically Indian Arabic grammatical texts also became popular out-side South Asia, e.g. the commentary on the Kāfiya by Mullā Jāmī.

3 Learning Arabic: TheMethod

Themost obvious feature of Islamic learning in general is its emphasis onmem-orization of the learnt materials, linguistic education being no exception.11Eickelman (1978:489) analyzes this method, especially in the IslamicWest, andremarks on its role in fixing knowledge: “The cultural idea of religious knowl-edge has remained remarkably constant over time throughout the regions ofIslamic influence”. He goes on to state that this aspect of the transmission ofreligious knowledge in no way “prevents the emergence of an intellectual elitethat was able to deal with all aspects of modern life” (1978:491).

The study of Arabic in order to read Classical Arabic texts was not intendedto foster an ideal of individual searching for the truth, but was meant as aguarantee that the student wouldmore easilymemorize the texts they studied.Students were expected to understand to some extent the contents of thesetexts, or rather, their grammatical structure. Yet, understanding the texts wasnot the primary goal of the traditional educational system, and it was notregarded as a necessary condition for memorization (see alsoWagner 1993:47).In the discussions in the first half of the 20th century about the role of Arabicin the educational system of colonial Zanzibar, for instance, the opinion wasexpressed that students do not need to understand the meaning of the textsas long as they learn them by heart (Loimeier 2009:289–338). Even todayon the internet, a popular wiki advises boys striving to become a ḥāfiẓ toconcentrate on memorizing the text: it helps to know the meaning of thetext, but this is not regarded as essential.12 Indeed, the advice states, it is partof the miraculous nature of the Qurʾān that one can recite the text withoutunderstanding it.

11 On the use of mnemotechnical strategies in learning grammar see Fortier (1993:243f.).12 http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Hafiz; downloaded 10.02.18.

learning arabic in the islamic world 253

Eickelman explains the permanent character of the canon in the religioussciences by the fact that “knowledge was considered to be fixed and memoriz-able” (1978:511). Teacherswere, therefore, not free to change the formor contentof their instruction and had to stick to the established canon. In theMoroccaneducational system, independent study of texts was not generally regarded assomething praiseworthy. In the Indian madrasas, too, students were activelydiscouraged fromreadingArabic books thatwerenot in the curriculum(Sikand2008:55).

As a result of the general reluctance to introducenew texts in the curriculumand the fact that most language teaching was text-based, it became hard tochange anything at all, either in the subjects taught, or in the didactics oflanguage teaching. In assessing the value of the old-fashioned ḥalqa system ofteaching in Malaysia, Ab. Rahim Bin hj. Ismail (1993:7) states:

The success rate of Halqah system in producing students with a goodcommand of Arabic is extremely limited. The system is only of benefitfor a small number of students who have a considerable degree of intel-ligence and have great devotion to learning Arabic … In most cases thesestudents can read only those texts that they have already read and learnedfrom the teacher.

In such educational systems, the shift toWestern-style schools, inwhich knowl-edge canbe acquired throughbooks, is likely to be regardedwithmistrust, sincefixing knowledge in books is not in accordance with its sacred character. Bang(2014:143–162) discusses at length the case of the writing down of the Rātib al-Ḥaddād, a Sufi text, which according to some scholars lost its power when itbecame available to everyone through written publications. The emergence ofnew forms of education did indeed lead to the disappearance of an establishedclass of learned scholars who had played a pivotal role in the transmission of(religious) knowledge.

4 Educational Reforms

In such a system of education, reform does not alwaysmean an innovatory andrevolutionary change. According to Berkey (1992:21), the revival of scholarshipin the Maghreb during the 13th century did not arise “through the receptionof unknown or forgotten texts, but through the personal efforts of individualscholars who traveled to the Middle East, studied there with prominent pro-fessors and their pupils, and returned to the Maghrib to pass on the traditions

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to their own students”. Yet, throughout the centuries, there have been attemptsto create new ways of learning Arabic when people were no longer satisfiedwith the conventional transmission of knowledge because it had become fos-silized. Around the turn of the 20th century, Egypt went through a series ofreforms,13 in which the old grammatical treatises were replaced with a newbook, Qawāʿid al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya by Ḥifnī Bek Nāṣif al-Miṣrī and MuḥammadEffendi Diyāb al-Miṣrī.14 The changes concerned not so much the grammati-cal contents themselves, but theway theywere presented. Linguistic examples,for instance, were taken from contemporary Standard Arabic, rather than fromClassical Arabic texts.

The total impact of these changes was not impressive: as before, Arabicgrammar remained one of the most unpopular and feared topics in the cur-riculum. After the rediscovery of Ibn Maḍāʾ’s (d. 592/1196) Kitāb al-radd ʿalāl-nuḥāt, Šawqī Ḍayf, who edited the text, expressed his belief that Ibn Maḍāʾ’sideas about the uselessness of grammatical theory (Versteegh 2013) were theanswer to what he perceived as the main cause of the dismal situation in theeducational system, the complexity of the Classical Arabic grammatical sys-tem. His drive for a ‘simplification of grammar’ (tabsīṭ al-naḥw) does not seemto have had much success. In fact, reforms of the educational system regularlyfloundered on the establishment’s conviction that the old books were the best.ŠawqīḌayf’s ideas on simplification of grammar (or the language) certainly didnot reach all schools at all levels of education. Many of the institutes for theArabic language that have sprung all over the Arab world, still base their edu-cation on the old-fashioned ways. The Rumman Academy in Amman, Jordan,for instance, advertizes its commitment to excellence in language teaching inthe following way:15

As a measure for the highest skill in the Arabic Language Sciences, weextensively test applying teachers for mastery of the Alfiyya of IbnMalik,a 1,000 line poem that codifies Arabic Grammar and is considered thepinnacle of Arabic Grammar mastery

Not surprisingly, even some of the modernized textbooks still look like trans-lations of the old texts, with exactly the same terminology and definitions and

13 According to Eickelman (1978), the term ‘reform’ was avoided; reformers preferred tospeak of a reorganization (niẓām), instead.

14 About this book and its adoption in South Africa see Versteegh (2011).15 http://rummanacademy.com/our-team; downloaded in 2016; website seems to have dis-

appeared since.

learning arabic in the islamic world 255

with exactly the same set of grammatical issues that grammarians dealt withcenturies ago.

Outside the Arabic-speaking world, the risk of fossilization of the educa-tional system was even greater. In some regions, there simply was not enoughdirect communication with the Arab world to enable people to procure newtexts. As a result, students were educated by memorizing a small set of texts,usually together with their translation in an indigenous language. In theseregions, reforms had to wait until the contacts between local Muslim commu-nity and the Islamic heartlands intensified through the increase in the numberof pilgrims toMecca. Pilgrimage brought people in contact withMuslim schol-ars in the Arabian peninsula and enabled some of the richer families to sendtheir sons to Mecca or Jedda to study with these scholars. Two examples ofthe impact of these contacts may be mentioned here, one from 19th centuryIndonesia, and one from contemporary Mali.

At the end of the 19th century, when Indonesia was still part of the Dutchcolonial empire, the introduction of printed books represented a revolutionarychange. Books became available because they could be ordered from abroadthrough booksellers’ catalogues. This meant that it became worthwhile toachieve proficiency in Arabic because with it one could read any text beyondthe limited canon. Scholars whowent on pilgrimage used their new knowledgeto meet reformists in the Arab countries and to procure books, in a movementwhich Laffan (2008) has called the ‘Meccan turn’.

In Mali, just as in other West-African countries, new types of madrasa,sometimeswithWahhabi financing, emerged in thepost-colonial period.Thesenew madrasas aimed at proficiency in the living language. Yet, the detaileddescription by Bouwman (2005:67–97) of the teaching of Arabic in madrasasin Mali shows that, even though the curriculum of these schools has beenmodernized, it is still based on the Arabic grammatical tradition. Children firstlearn Arabic through a modern method published in Morocco for use inWest-African schools, al-Tilāwaal-ʾifrīqiyya li-l-madāris al-ʿarabiyya. The didactic set-up of this series of books differs considerably from the traditional way, sincethey contain exercises, questions and answers, and illustrations. The topicsare contemporary and the focus is on Modern Standard Arabic. Grammar inthese books is taught by deduction, rather than by introducing rules, as is thecase in traditional grammar. From the 3rd class onward, however, grammar istaught again as a separate subject, rather thanan integral part of the acquisitionprocess. The textbooks used at this stage are al-Durūs al-naḥwiyya, written bya Malian scholar, Saada Toure, and al-Risāla al-naḥwiyya by another Malianscholar, Aboubakar Tiam (Bouwman 2005:76–77). These books, too, follow thedeductive method, but they use traditional terminology, classification, and

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theory. The traditional treatises themselves are not studied until the 6th or7th class and are only intended for the most advanced students (Bouwman2005:77f.); they include:

– ʿAlī al-Jārim and Muṣṭafā ʾAmīn, al-Naḥw al-wāḍiḥ (dating from the 1930s)– Ibn ʾĀjurrūm, al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya, with the commentary by al-Kafrāwī– al-ʾAzharī, Šarḥ al-taṣrīḥ ʿalā l-Tawḍīḥ, a commentary on Ibn Hišām’s Tawḍīḥ

al-masālik ʾilā ʾAlfiyyat IbnMālik, itself a commentary on the ʾAlfiyya

Yet, even in these modernized schools, some young students feel dissatisfiedwith the limited canon of texts that is transmitted in the school system. Theywish to learnClassical Arabic at a levelwhere they can read the original sourcesfor themselves. Bouwman cites the example of televized discussions aboutcontemporary issues, in which the representatives of traditional scholarshipare unable to go beyond the fixed set of responses from the few texts theyknow by heart, whereas the new arabisants can quote from new books theyhave read for themselves. In this new approach to learningArabic, the standardlanguage remains the target. Students from these new madrasas, when theyvisit Arab countries or go there in order to study, often express their disdainfor the Arabs, who use dialect in their everyday language (and even introducedialect courses at university, intended for foreign Western students!). For theMalinese students this is an affront: as a Muslim one ought to stick to the rulesof Standard Arabic and never use dialect in one’s everyday conversation, letalone in discussions about religious topics.16

5 Learning Arabic: Muslims on the Internet

There is no way to know how young Muslims in the 19th century felt, sit-ting in a pesantren in Indonesia or a chuo in East Africa and listening to ateacher explaining a line from the ʾĀjurrūmiyya with the help of the com-mentary by al-Kafrāwī. But there is one modern source with abundant mate-rial about the feelings of young Muslims earnestly striving to learn Arabicin order to be able to read religious literature. Forums on the internet like

16 This is not to say that there are no examples of school types that manage to introduce asatisfactory language teaching programme. One type of modern pesantren in Indonesiais the Gontor branch (van Bruinessen 2008:223), where students are even obliged tocommunicate in Arabic (and in English) in order to improve their proficiency in thelanguage.

learning arabic in the islamic world 257

www.shariahprogramme.com or www.sunniforum.org create internet com-munities in which proficiency in Arabic brings status and prestige. Those whoare able to read and translate Arabic texts gain a position of authority. Some-times they are even addressed formally as teacher (ʾustāḏ). This is true forSalafi circles, where the study of the original sources is propagated rather thaninstruction by an imam (de Koning 2008:256, 294, 304). Yet, for non-Salafis,too, being able to read Arabic is a much coveted goal. The members of www.sunniforum.org, who are mainly from South Asia or the uk, are chatting witheach other about the ways and means to master the huge task of learning Ara-bic. Their goal is to read the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīṯ and other religious tracts inArabic.

For the members of this forum the need to learn Arabic is self-evidentbecause it is the only way to read the text of the Qurʾān and the Sunna in theoriginal version. But how does one go about learning a language that is per-ceivedby all to be verydifficult, if only becauseof the script?Theparticipants inthe forumdiscussions try to help each otherwith advice about the bestmethodto studyArabic.Questions that are typically and frequently asked include:whatis a good book for beginners, howmany hours per day are necessary to read theʾAlfiyya, is it o.k. to step right up to the ʾAlfiyya after having studied the ʾĀjur-rūmiyya, or is it better to first read theQaṭr al-nadā, what is the best dictionaryto use for Qurʾānic Arabic, is it useful to attend a course in an Arabic-speakingcountry, etc. There is some kind of consensus about the texts to be studied andthe order in which they should be studied. The recommended pattern seemsto be to start with the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, followed by the Qaṭr al-nadā. The ʾAlfiyya,read in combination with the commentary by Ibn ʿAqīl, is the most advancedtext.17 The following list is posted by a member of the forum as suggestion fora curriculum:18

A Arab scholar of the arabic language once told me that the syllabus fornahw is:

17 For local differences and for the popularity of al-Kāfiya in South Asia see above, n. 8; forthe organization of the Kāfiya see Viain (2014:214–218).

18 www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-22710.html. Note that all quotationsfrom the forum discussions are given in the original spelling and transliteration as down-loaded on 20.09.14; my explanatory remarks are added between square brackets. Afterfinishing the text of the present article, I found out that the highly popular Sunniforumwas no longer accessible. It seems that because of ideological differences, the adminis-trators decided to continue the discussion in a forum with limited access, although itis not quite clear what has happened; see http://www.muftisays.com/forums/14-peoples-say/9873-sunniforum-is-it-closed-for-good.html, downloaded 10.02.18.

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1. Tuhfatusiniyya sharh on theAjarumiyyah [i.e.al-Tuḥfaal-saniyyabi-šarḥ al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya by Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, a20th century scholar]

2. Sharh Fawakihi on theMutammimat Ajarumiyah [i.e., Šarḥ al-fawā-kih al-janiyya by Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʾAḥmad al-Fākihī, d. 972/1565]

3. Kawakib ad Duriyya sharh on the Mutamimat Ajarumiyyah [i.e.,al-Kawākib al-durriyya byMuḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-ʾAhdal, a com-mentary on al-Ruʿaynī’s Mutammimat al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya]

4. Qatr An Nada wa Bal as Sada [i.e., Ibn Hišām’s Qaṭr al-nadā wa-ballal-ṣadā]

5. Shudhur Adh Dhahab [i.e., Ibn Hišām’s Šuḏūr al-ḏahab]6. Sharh ibn Aqeel on the Alfiyyah ibnMalik [i.e., Ibn ʿAqīl’s commen-

tary on the ʾAlfiyyat IbnMālik]7. and 8. Two more commentaries on the Alfiyyah which I don’t re-

member the name of9. Mughni Labib [i.e. Ibn Hišām’s Muġnī l-labīb]

The texts recommended by ‘A Arab scholar of the arabic language’ in this post,all center around the ʾĀjurrūmiyya and the ʾAlfiyya, which apparently are just aspopular among the internet learners as they are inmadrasas all over the Islamicworld. Western-style textbooks, on the other hand, do not seem to be verypopular among the members of this forum. The reason cannot be that thesewere written by non-Muslims: Hans Wehr’s dictionary is regarded by manymembers of the forum as the best dictionary for Arabic, and Michael Carter’stranslation of al-Širbīnī’s (d. 978/1570) commentary Nūr al-sajiyya fī ḥall ʾalfāẓal-ʾAjurrūmiyya (1981) is hailed as an example of somethingMuslims should bedoing themselves.19 Nor can it be that these textbooks are written in English,since some of the members advocate starting Arabic courses in English. The

19 An interesting judgment ismade on Sunniforum about this translation: “Michael Carter isamong themore sympathetic western scholars towards the Arabic grammatical tradition,and tries to present Arabic grammatical theory within that perspective rather thanwithinaWestern (Greek/Latin) perspective. He is also doing a great service in giving the legacy ofSibawayh its rightful place in history (see his website on the Sibawayhi Project and won-derful little biography by him on Sibawayhi in the Makers of Islamic Civilization series).However, despite these efforts, his works still fall within the European Orientalist/MiddleEastern scholarship, which, obviously, is by no means an Islamic traditional scholarshipas we know it. Hence, that element (an affiliation and loyalty to an Islamic tradition) isabsent from thework” (http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?45723-How-long-does-it-usually-take-to-study-Sharh-ul-Ajurumiyyah-in-complete/page2&).

learning arabic in the islamic world 259

price may be an issue: Western textbooks tend to be more expensive than theArabic ones. As a matter of fact, one of the most frequently asked questionsconcerns the availability of downloads on the internet. Some students worry,though, that it might be ḥarām to learn Arabic from an illegal download! Thereis one other factor that may play a role. The Sunniforum is rather orthodox andeven prohibits avatars with a picture in them. It is therefore not surprising thatsome of the members express their unease with textbooks containing picturesof unveiled women in tight clothing.20

Themain reason for the popularity of the Classical treatises, however, seemsto be that the participants in the forum discussions have a clear idea aboutthe proper way to study Arabic. Some members note that the choice of booksdepends on one’s precise aim: if one wishes to learn how to speak Arabic, onemight benefit from newer textbooks such as the Madinah series, which wasdesigned by the University of Medina for non-Arabic speakers. For most of thelearners on the forum, however, such communicative aims are less importantthan their wish to be able to read the Qurʾān and other Classical Arabic texts.For this purpose the Classical Arabic grammatical texts are better suited. Onemember characterizes them as texts that have to be decoded and are thereforeeminently suited to prepare one for the reading of Classical texts, which alsohave to be decoded in order to understand their meaning:

Something else about the Hidayah al-Nahw, which is very important isthat it prepares the studentmuch better to decode, negotiate and analysetexts because it is itself a text that needs to be decoded, negotiated andanalysed. al-Nahw al-Wadih is quite straight forward, and the text is notcryptic such that it develops the student’s analytical and critical readingabilities. The Hidayah al-Nahw, then, prepares you better for readingsubsequent texts (fiqh, tafsir, ’aqidah, etc.) as youwork through it as a text.al-Nahw al-Wadih offers no such challenges to the reader that will makeof the student a good analytical reader unless the student gets exposed tosuch cryptic texts as exercise.21

The old-fashioned method is better because it has been in use for a longtime and it has proven its succesfulness. The advantage is, moreover, that theClassical treatises contain the entire structure of Arabic grammar and preparethe learner for the Classical texts rather than throwing them into the deep, as

20 http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-19194.html.21 http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6043.html; for al-Naḥw al-wā-

ḍiḥ see above, p. 256.

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the modern textbooks do.22 These present the material piecemeal, so that onenever knows beforehand what awaits one, and one never arrives at a syntheticview of the entire structure. In the words of one of the members:

I think that there could be some benefit in studying a text like the Ajarru-miyya, even as a beginner (although with a teacher of course!) because itwill give you a clear idea of how Arabic is structured […]. Obviously, thelanguage only really comes to life through texts, but knowing somethingabout the structure beforehand is like having the picture on the box of ajigsaw puzzle in front of you before attempting the puzzle.23

Critical voices, although in the minority, are not entirely absent. One criticalremark concerns the terminology in these Classical treatises, which is per-ceived as being very difficult. However, as someone is quick to explain, thereis a difference between the terminology of the linguists who use genitive,accusative etc., and the real Arabic grammar, with its jarr, naṣb, etc. The latteris axiomatically taken to be superior to other methods for learning Arabic. It islearnt as a model to do ‘tarkeebs’, somewhat analogous to parsing in Westernsystems of education. According to one thread in the forum, tarkeeb is differentfrom grammar, but it is a good way to revise your grammar: first you translatethe text, then you analyze its meaning, and then you practice your tarkeeb onit.24 Explanation often takes the formof a rough translation of theArabic gram-matical treatise, leaving as many terms as possible untranslated.25

22 In the same post thismember says: “Modern texts, I feel, are oftenmade too easy such thatthe student is never made to swim without a life-jacket”.

23 http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2710.html.24 http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-24866.html. An example of

what is meant by doing a tarkeeb is contained in the following post, which is a reply to arequest for help with a difficult sentence in Arabic (http://forums.shariahprogram.ca/first-year-students-semester-1/3242-tarkeeb-qasas-2-passage-5-a.html)

Wa jaauu abaahum ’ishaan yabkuun: Jaa- is the verbuu- the waw infront of jaa is the doer of the verb.abaahum- is the object of the verbhum—the “hum” attached to abaahum, is mudaf ilayhi, it means “their father” the

“their” refers to the doers of the verb, which is waw infront of jaa.’ishaan—mafool fiihiyabkoon- is a verb and the doer of the verb is waw in it. And at the same time it is the

haal (the state in which the action was done) of the doers of the first verb(jaa).So the translation is: And they came to their father at night crying (meaning thosewho

came were crying while coming).25 An example of such a passage is posted by godilali (http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/

learning arabic in the islamic world 261

Because of the universal nature of the grammar of Arabic, the terminologyof the tarkeeb should also be applicable to English sentences. On one occasion,a student asks about the function of theword quickly in the sentence zayd camequickly, whether it is ‘haal’ or ‘mafool mutlaq’. The answer is given as follows:26

Walaikumassalaam,The word “quickly” is describing the coming (verb) and not the state of

‘Zaid’, therefore if this sentence is written in Arabic then ‘quickly’ wouldbecome maf’ool mutlaq not ‘haal’.

Itwould soundodd if itwasmade thehaal…Zaid came in a statewherehe was quick (at what?)

Wassalaam,Saad

It is quite understandable why one topic is almost entirely absent from theforums on which learning Arabic is discussed: pronunciation. It is importantto know how to write Arabic, otherwise you could not read the texts. But it isnot important to know how it is pronounced. These learners approach the lan-guage in exactly the same way as students inWest-European grammar schoolsused to approach Greek and Latin. Phonology is relevant insofar as it helps tounderstand the morphology; therefore, you need to know the rules about thechanges in the ‘letters’, as in the following explanation of the imperative of theverb ʾakrama.27

the baab for akrama is different. the beginning hamza is not an enablinghamza (hamzatulwasl). the rule you are thinking about is different. what

archive/index.php/t-21210.html), as part of his translation project of the Hidāyat al-naḥw;the text is hardly comprehensible without intimate knowledge of the grammarians’ ter-minology and theories:

Know that the ma’Toof (taabi’) follows the ruling of the ma’Toof ‘alaih (matboo’),meaningwhen the first is a Sifah for something, a khabr, a Silah, or aHaal, then the secondis also like that. The rule is that whenever it is permissible for the ma’Toof to stand in theplace of thema’Toof ‘alaih, ‘aTf is permissible, andwhenever it is not (permissible… standin place of … .), then it (‘aTf) is not (permissible). ‘aTf upon thema’mools of two different‘aamils is permissible if thema’Toof ‘alaih is majroor muqaddam (meaning themajroor ismuqaddam over marfoo’ and manSoob), and the ma’Toof is likewise.

26 http://forums.shariahprogram.ca/first-year-students-semester-2/3171-quickly-haal-mafool-mutlaq.html.

27 http://forums.shariahprogram.ca/first-year-students-semester-2/3038-baab-question.html.

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you are thinking of is if the fa position is sukun and nothing is before it.in akrama the hamza in the beginning is mazeed fee and is apart of thebaab. when you construct the amr for it, you drop the mudhari sign andthe hamza comes back. it only left to accomodate the mudhari sign, sowhen it leaves, the hamza can come back. the ending changes to thewordare treated the same. hope that helps

This attitude toward the phonetics of Classical Arabic is also visible in thecomplete lack of interest in correct transcription.28

In the discussions on Sunniforum, knowledge of language seems to beequated with grammatical knowledge. Vocabulary has to be learnt separatelyand is covered more or less by the memorization of the Qurʾān, which famil-iarizes one with the Qurʾānic lexicon. Within the study of grammar differentbranches are distinguished, usually referred to as different sciences, such asnaḥw, ṣarf and balāġa. One post defines these as follows:

The Arabic language is composed of different sciences. When someonelearns Arabic he/she must understand that he is in fact learning threesciences. Realizing this separation between the various sciences assistthe student of Arabic in grasping the language. With this he will knowwhere the languagebegins andwhere it ends. It is indeedunfortunate thatmost modern books of Arabic language instruction fail to even mentionthis.29

All in all, the discussions on the internet give us a clear idea of what it islike to learn Arabic in this way. Most participants warn that it is impossibleto learn Arabic on your own, you need a sheikh, i.e. someone who knowshow to teach the language in the old-fashioned way, by making you repeat

28 Note that this is not necessarily the case in all institutions where Arabic is taught. Hasan(2008:265) mentions the case of Indonesian students learning Arabic in Salafi madrasasin Indonesia, who make an effort to get rid of their Javanese accent in recitation andactively train the correct pronunciation, for instance, by listening to cassettes. It appearsthat these madrasas actually changed the traditional curriculum and introduced newtextbooks. Hasan (2008:273, n. 30) mentions the following grammar texts that are usedin these madrasas, often with the financial support of the Saudi embassy: al-Naḥw al-wāḍiḥ, mentioned above, p. 256; al-ʾAmṯila al-taṣrīfiyya, mentioned by van Bruinessen(1994:242) as a book written by a Javanese author, Muḥammad Maʿṣūm ibn ʿAlī fromJombang; Qawāʿid al-ṣarf ; al-Balāġa al-wāḍiḥa.

29 http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1568.html.

learning arabic in the islamic world 263

the lesson until you know it (have memorized it), something you achieveby repeating the lesson ten or fifteen times. The teacher explains difficultterms, usually by giving definitions. Even in the modernized versions of lan-guage teaching, for instance in the schools that use the Madinah series, expla-nation usually takes the form of a definition of the term that is to be ex-plained.30

6 Learning Arabic: The Results

It may seem strange that a didactic poem written in doggerel verse, such asthe ʾAlfiyya, which we associate with the early stages of learning, is actuallyintended for advanced students. The ʾAlfiyya is not meant as a reflection ongrammatical theory, but as a handy tool for summarizing all the rules of Arabicgrammar, always accompanied by a commentary, as Viain (2014:254) observes.As such, it marks the last stage of the curriculum for grammar as an ancil-lary science. Only those few students who specialize in grammar, go beyondthis level and study texts like Sībawayhi’s Kitāb or al-Mubarrad’s Muqtaḍab, orIbn al-Sarrāj’s Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl, which are hardly ever mentioned in the discus-sions on the internet, or, for that matter, in any of the reports about grammat-ical instruction in the Islamic world. Ordinary students who reach the levelof the ʾAlfiyya already know Arabic, or at least they know its structure. Theaim of memorizing the ʾAlfiyya is twofold: it is a summary of everything theyhave learnt; and it gives all the details that were skipped at earlier stages. Inthe discussions, the ʾAlfiyya is always praised for its completeness.31 As vanGelder (1995:108) aptly observes, “[i]t is obvious that many an urjūza is notso much an introduction to be presented to beginners as an aide-mémoire, ahandy compendium for those who have already mastered all or most of thesubject”.

‘Mastering the subject’ is a goal not all learners reach. The discussions onthe internet forums also make clear that there are many false starts and thateven though all of the members of the forum love Arabic dearly and are highlymotivated to learn the language, only few of them actually succeed in this aim.As soon as someone appears to know something about Arabic, they are treated

30 See the instruction films on Youtube, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tSyG_wnPLQ.

31 Apparently, the text has other appealing features as well, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkLCTjb1p4w.

264 versteegh

as teachers by the others, but most of the students do not reach this level. Thealternative of going to the Arab world is not feasible for most of them and,even if they do, there is no guarantee that their trip will be a success. Note thatsuccess ismeasured in terms of being able to read the texts. Thosewho actuallywish to speak Arabic are in a minority.

It is difficult to assess the success of this type of curriculum, whether for thestudents on the internet, or for students in Islamic countries outside the Arabworldwho visit amadrasa. On the one hand, one has the impression thatmuchof the knowledge gained is theoretical and does not lead directly to deeperinsight in the texts studied or memorized. On the other hand, it is true that atleast some scholars continue the tradition of commenting ondifficult texts andpublishing glosses, such as the commentaries in Bambara on Classical Arabicpoetry and maqāmāt that were published by Tamari (2005, 2013). One provisoshould be made here. Sometimes, one gets the impression that much of whatis contained in the commentary is simply a repetition of the existing literature,differently arranged and with a few notes added.

In some respects, learning Arabic is quite similar to the instruction in Latinthat used to be the hallmark of Western grammar schools: students learnedvarious strategies to tackle Latin texts and were not expected to be able tospeak Latin—although they were expected sometimes to compose texts inLatin (Waquet 1998), just like Islamic schoolboys still write essays in Classi-cal Arabic.32 The main question underlying the present article was: is it pos-sible to learn a foreign language like Arabic for purposes of communicationby memorizing a grammatical treatise like the ʾAlfiyya, which presupposesa large amount of grammatical knowledge. The discussions on the internetforums provide uswith an answer: it is indeed practically impossible to achievecommunicative proficiency in this way, yet, this is not the goal of the learn-ers of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Their aim is to be able toread the Islamic texts in the Arabic original. The discussions also show thatif one persists in studying and memorizing the grammatical treatises, withthe help of a teacher, one can indeed reach this goal. This is as true nowa-days in the Muslim internet communities, as it was in the past in the Islamicworld.

32 For an exception in themadrasa system see above, n. 14, about the Gontor-typemadrasaswhere students are trained in using Arabic actively and n. 28.

learning arabic in the islamic world 265

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Index

Ab. Rahim bin hj. Ismail 253ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, MuḥammadMuḥyī l-Dīn

198, 258ʿAbd al-Tawwāb, Ramaḍān 2Abdallahi dan Fodio 250Abed, Shukri 124ʾabhama 208ʾablaġ 86f.ʾabniya see bināʾʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ 16, 51 f., 77ʾAbū Ḥayyān 81 f., 91, 172–174ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq al-Ḥarbī 65ʾAbū l-ʿAmayṯal 62ʾAbū l-ʾAswad al-Duʾalī 155ʾAbū l-ʿAtāhiya 66ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī 217ʾAbū l-Najm al-ʿIjlī 66ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī 51, 63, 155ʾAbū Nuwās 66ʾAbū Tammām 66ʾAbū ʿUbayd 51 f., 62, 65, 67ʾAbū ʿUbayda 51, 64, 67ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid see al-Zāhidaccusative 6, 12 f., 192accusative, cognate 241 f.accusative of exclamation 191 f.action of the verb 233, 237–240actual reference 22ʾadā 118, 150ʿadad 104ʾaḍāfa 208f.ʿadam tamakkun 33ʿadam taṣarruf 39ʾadawāt see ʾadāʾaḍdād see ḍiddadjective 103f., 107, 111, 126, 205, 209, 211 f.,

214 f.ʿadl 19, 41 f.admirative 208adverbial of time/place 3ʾafāda 11, 22, 124, 213 f., 221ʾafʿal 23ʾafʿāl see fiʿlʾafʿala 60, 63, 240agency 231, 237, 239agent 167, 230, 232f., 235–237, 239

agent of declension 108f., 112ʾaḫaff 17 f., 20ʾaḫaṣṣ 209ʾaḫawāt kāna 146ʾaḫbār see ḫabarʾAhdal, Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-Yamanī al-

249, 257ʾaḥdaṯa 239ʾAḫfaš al-ʾAwsaṭ, al- 64, 77, 146, 154–156ʾAḫfaš al-Kabīr, al- 51ʾahl al-ʿaql 118ʾahl al-naḥw 154ʾAḥmad ibn ʾAnd-Aġ-Muḥammad, al-Sayyid

250ʾaʿjamī 36ʿAjjāj, al- 66ʾaksaba 212ʾāla 107ʿalam 182ʿalāma 17 f., 27, 33, 107f., 184ʿalāmat al-mutamakkin 33ʿalāmat al-taʾnīṯ 184Alexander of Aphrodisias 124ʿAlī ʾAkbar ʾAllāhābādī 251ʾalif al-waṣl 37ʾalif lām 23, 36, 182, 211allaḏī 126Alon, Ilon 124ʿamal 11, 28, 107–110ambiguity 109, 209, 220ambiguous 211ʾĀmidī, al- 217ʿāmil 12, 66, 107, 110, 169ʿāmil fī l-ḥaqīqa 108ʿāmil naḥwī 108ʿāmil of the ḥāl 174ʿamila fī 29ʾAmīn, Muṣṭafā 256ʾamina l-tanwīn 16ʾamkan 18ʿāmm 204ʾamr 191, 194ʿAmr ibn Maʿdīkarib 196ʿAmrīṭī, al- see ʾImrīṭī, al-ʾamṣār seemiṣrʾamṯila seemiṯāl

270 index

ʾan 12, 46analogy 31 f., 36, 45f., 57, 66, 99Anghelescu, Nadia 8annexation see annexionannexion 16, 30, 98f., 102f., 105f., 149, 205,

207f., 210–216, 219, 221annexion of indefinite to indefinite 209f.ʾAnṣārī, ʾAbu Zayd Saʿīd ibn ʾAws al- 51 f., 56,

67, 77ʾAnṣārī, Zayn al-Din Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-

Miṣrī al- 249antonyms 84aplasticity 39apposition 98f.apposition, explanatory 206–208, 210,

215 f.ʾAʿrāb 52–54Arabic, ʾAsad 53Arabic, ʾAzdī 54Arabic, Bakr ibnWāʾil 53Arabic, characteristics of 56f.Arabic, conversation in 256Arabic, Fazāra 53Arabic, Ġaniyy 53Arabic, Ḫaṯʿam 53Arabic, Ḥijāzī 53Arabic, Huḏayl 53Arabic, Kaʿb 53Arabic, learning of 245–267Arabic, native speaker of 112Arabic, Qays 53Arabic, Qurayš 81Arabic, Šaʾāmī 54Arabic, Saʿd 53Arabic, Sulaym 53Arabic, Tamīmī 53Arabic, Ṭayyiʾ 53Arabic, Yamānī 54arabicized 36, 58arabisants 256ʾArdabīlī, al- 86Aristotle 82, 116 f., 122 f., 125, 134, 138article see definite articleʿarūḍ 50, 156ʿasā 151ʾAʿšā, al- 66ʾašāra 187ʿašarāt 62f.ʿĀṣī, al- 206

ʿAskarī, ʾAbū Hilāl al- 155ʾaṣl 19 f., 41, 44, 66, 103–106, 192, 211ʾasmāʾ Allāh 64ʾasmāʾ see ismʾAṣmaʿī, al- 2, 51, 55, 62, 64, 67assertive 6, 12ʾAstarābāḏī, al- 5 f., 34, 45, 96–114, 207, 214ʾašyāʾ al-ʾasmāʾ 126ʾašyāʾ see šayʾ-at 23, 35, 184ʾaṯar 65ʿaṭf 215ʿaṭf al-bayān 206, 215 f.ʾaṯqal 18, 34ʿAṭṭār, Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿUṯmān al-

63attributes of God 64Austin, John 5, 190f., 200ʾaw 214ʾAwaḏī, Sirāj al-Dīn 251ʾawqaʿa 13ʾAws ibn Ḥajar 66ʾawṣala 230, 242f.ʾawwal 17–22, 34f., 40–43ʾaymu 37ʾayna 151–153, 156Ayoub, Georgine 6, 11–49, 135f.ʾayyuhā 126ʾAzharī, al- 14, 29, 54, 58, 182, 247–249, 256

Baalbaki, Ramzi 7, 17 f., 33, 39, 50, 75, 110,155 f.

baʿḍ 138f., 141 f.baʿda 159Badawi, Elsaid 127Badayūnī, Ḥamza 251bādiya 52Baḥraq, Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar

249bal 153balāġa 50, 60, 110, 262balāġiyyūn 60, 68Bally, Charles 22Bambara 264Bandanījī, al- 65, 67Bang, Anne 249Bāqillānī, al- 217Baraké, Bassam 206Barghash, Sayyid 249

index 271

Barwānī, Muṣabbiḥ ibn Sālim ibn Muṣabbiḥal- 249

Basrans 37, 45, 57, 66f., 77 f., 146, 148Baṭalyawsī, al- 6, 76–95Bedouin 52f., 55Bedouin, language of 112Berber 250Berkey, Jonathan 253Bihriz 124biliterals 58bināʾ 20, 59bināʾ al-kalām 57biʾsa 151, 156, 159blending 60Bohas, Georges 2f., 98, 205Boogert, Nico van den 250book printing 255Bouwman, Dinie 255f.Bruinessen, Martin van 248, 256, 262Buḥturī, al- 66

Carter, Michael 2, 6, 17, 24f., 27, 29, 33, 40,76–95, 99, 122–124, 126–129, 146, 148–160, 206f., 257

case 6, 11–49case endings 109categories, Aristotelian 117 f.categories, grammatical 43causation as criterion for transitivity 237causation see causativitycausative 240causativity 233, 237, 239cause 238Chairet, Mohamed 39Chatti, Saloua 120Chomsky, Noam 11chuo 247, 256circumstantial 167–177, 187clarification 219cognate accusative 241 f.cognition 37, 39Colman, Fran 24command 192comment 134communication 128f.communication, effective 129communicative value 126complement 101 f., 109, 137 f.complement, accusative 235, 238, 243

complement, dependent form 109complement, numerical 109complement of the verb 13completion 219compound 41compound name 19f., 42constative 190continuity 6conversation 123coordination, disjunctive 214correct usage 68Culioli, Antoine 39curriculum of grammar 246, 251

daḫīl 57Daḥlān, ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī 248f.dahr, ẓarf al- 35dalīl 230, 235dalla 127ḍamīr 136Danecki, Janusz 33Danqarī, Mullā ʿAbdallāh 248f.Ḍarīr, Muḥammad ibn Sādān al- 78Dars-i- Nizami 251ḏawāq 56Ḍayf, Šawqī 254deceiving 122declension 6, 11 f., 42, 110declension of the verb 45f.declinability 17, 33–35, 40f.declinability, full 30f., 35, 44definite 21, 23, 32, 36f., 41definite article 16, 23, 31, 36, 38, 45, 99f., 126,

182definite article in proper names 86definite expression 213definite noun 126f., 215definite, formally 127definite, morphosyntactically 127, 129f., 133,

135–137, 139f., 142definite, pragmatically 34, 127, 138–140definite, semantically 127definiteness 8, 21 f., 24, 32, 43–45, 109f., 126,

128f., 133, 140, 207, 211 f.definiteness, definition of 133definiteness of proper names 130demonstrative 6, 27, 126, 131, 137, 151 f., 154,

156, 159, 178–189demonstrative as proper name 185

272 index

demonstrative, diminutive of 179, 185demonstrative, dual of 185denial 119–121Derenbourg, Hartwig 89f.description 131 f., 137determination 5, 205, 207, 219diachrony 3dialectal usage 53dialogue, logical 122dialogue, metaphysical 125dialogue, philosophical 124ḍidd 58, 61 f., 88, 104diminutive 34, 36, 38, 60, 185diminutive of demonstratives 179, 185Dimyāṭī, Muḥammad al-Ḫiḍr 249diptote 108discourse 43distribution, syntactic 42Diyāb al-Miṣrī, Muḥammad Effendi 249, 254Drewes, Gerard 247Druel, Jean 5, 96–114Ḏu l-Rumma 66, 83dual 60dual of demonstrative 185dūna 150

East Africa 248f.East Indies, Dutch 247education, reform of 253–256Egypt, education in 254Eickelman, Dale 252–254elative 18, 30ellipsis 88elucidation 219Equivalence Claim 128, 130, 134, 136, 138, 140equivocity 220error, logical 120essence, individual 131event, representation of 237exclamation 88, 90, 191 f.existential 138explanatory apposition 219

fāʾ 11, 156faʿala 60, 63factual 12faḍla 105–109, 232, 235, 238faḫr 85fāʾida 123–126, 214, 232

fāʿil 108, 155, 157, 160, 167f., 209, 230, 232, 237,239f.

Fākihī, Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʾAḥmad al-257

faʿlāʾ 23farʿ 41, 44Fārābī, al- 78, 80–82, 90, 115 f., 124f., 134Fāriqī, al- 172Fārisī, al- 77, 148, 150, 160, 210, 212 f., 217, 219Fārisī, ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan

al- 213Farrāʾ, al- 52, 64, 67, 78, 91, 146, 149f., 152, 156,

191, 208faṣāḥa 66Fāsī, ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-

249faṣīḥ 53Fatlī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn 2faʿula 231fawāʿil 31 f.feminine 18f., 23, 35 f., 41 f., 59, 104feminine marker 104fiʿl 12, 43fiʿl al-madḥ wa-l-ḏamm 204fiʿl al-taʿajjub 240fiʿl ġayr ḥaqīqī see ġayr ḥaqīqīfiʿl ḥaqīqī see ḥaqīqīfiʿl maḥḍ 192fiʿl manqūl seemanqūlfiʿl muʾaṯṯir seemuʾaṯṯirfiʿl muḍmar 192fiʿl mulāqī seemulāqīfiʿl mustaʿār seemustaʿārfiʿl mutaʿaddī seemutaʿaddīfiʿl wāṣil see wāṣilfiqh 52, 125, 191fiqh al-luġa 51, 206Firanescu, Daniela 191Fischer, Wolfdietrich 153Fleisch, Henri 90, 98, 205, 219f.Flemming, Barbara 246flexibility 33, 37–40, 42f.foreign names 41function, syntactic 243fuṣaḥāʾ see faṣīḥfuture 45, 174

ġaraḍ 125ġarīb 51, 53–55, 61–64

index 273

ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ 55, 65ġarīb al-Qurʾān 55, 64Gätje, Helmut 8ġāya 125ġayr 35f., 38, 137, 141 f.ġayr ḥaqīqī 238ġayr ʿilāj 241ġayr muʾaṯṯir 233ġayr muʿayyan 135ġayr mubham 208ġayr munqaṭiʿ 42ġayr munṣarif 34, 37, 42ġayr mustaqīm 42ġayr mutamakkin 16, 34f.ġayr wājib 11 f., 46ġayr wāqiʿ 12ġayr wāṣil 233Gelder, Geert-Jan van 263gender 43gender agreement 104, 106gender of numerals 102generalization 206Generative Grammar 28genitive 16genus 141Giolfo, Manuela 7f., 115–145God’s names 64Goguyer, Antonin 205Gontor pesantren 256, 264Government, Theory of 43, 105grammar books 255grammar, Greek 125grammar, invention of 155grammar, pedagogical 7 f., 146–166grammar, study of 248–250grammar, teaching of 254grammar, theoretical 146Greek 135, 138f.Greek grammar 125Greek philosophy 7Greenberg, Joseph 41Guillaume, Jean-Patrick 2f., 98, 105Ġulām Ṯaʿlab see Zāhid, al-Gully, Adrian 127Gutas, Dimitri 117

hāʾ ʿāʾida 136ḫabar 15, 108, 125f., 133 f., 139, 141, 152–154,

156, 158, 190f.

ḫabar ʾayna 159ḫabar kāna 15ḫabar kayfa 159ḫabar mā lam yusamma fāʿiluhu 146ḫabar matā 159ḫabarī 192ḥabbaḏā 151ḫabbara 129hāḏā 151ḥadaṯ 12ḥadd al-kalima 240Ḥadīṯ 7, 52Ḥadīṯ, use as linguistic evidence 65f.ḫafaḍa 149, 158ḫafḍ 16, 148–150, 156, 160ḥāfiẓ 252hal 151–154, 159hal wa-ʾaḫawātuhā 159ḥāl 5, 167, 186, 215, 241ḥāl muʾakkida 187ḥāl muqaddar(a) 5, 167–170ḥāl muqārina 173ḥāl muṣāḥiba li-l-fiʿl 168ḥāl mustaṣḥaba 169–171, 173 f.ḥāl, definition of 168ḥāl, ḏū l- 167ḥāl, ṣāḥib al- 167ḥāl, tense of 173f.Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar 158Ḫalīl, al- 15 f., 25, 27–29, 31 f., 52 f., 56–58, 67,

77, 81, 159Hall, Bruce 251ḥalqa-system 253Hamaḏānī, al- 62hamza 186, 241 f.Ḥanafī 245ḥaqīqī 238ḥarf 44, 105, 118, 146, 152, 155ḥarf al-ḫafḍ 149f., 160ḥarf al-ibtidāʾ 150, 154, 156ḥarf al-ʾiʿrāb 156ḥarf al-istiʾnāf 152ḥarf al-jarr 7, 146, 148–160ḥarf al-jazm 150ḥarf al-naṣb 150ḥarf al-rafʿ 7, 146, 148–160ḥarf, definition of 158Ḥasan, ʿAbbās 193f.Hasan, Noorhaidi 262

274 index

ḥaṣr 138ḫāṣṣ 204ḫaṣṣaṣa 212ḥattā 11, 159hayʾa 168head noun 137f., 141heaviness 17Hebrew 148hierarchy 6, 18, 22f., 41, 43, 45hierarchy in language 40hierarchy of categories 17ḫiffa 18, 37, 42, 44Ḥigāzī, Maḥmūd Fahmī 2ḥikāya 28ḥikāya as proper name 19Hilāl, Hayṯam 217ḥilya 26f.Hišām ibn Muʿāwiya 78Hodges, Wilfrid 7, 115–145homonym 61, 109Howell, Mortimer 39ḥuḍūr 174ḥujja 55ḥukm 216ḥukm al-ḫiṭāb 129ḥurūf see ḥarfḥūšī 63huwa 151Ḫwārizmī, al- 153hyperbole 84

ʿibāra 216, 237ʾibhām 209Ibn ʾAbī ʾIsḥāq 16Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ 82, 150Ibn ʾĀjurrūm 156, 206, 245, 247f., 250f., 257,

260Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾAbu Bakr 59Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾAbū l-Barakāt 57, 59, 157, 214,

220Ibn ʿAqīl 24, 194, 198, 200, 215 f., 247–249, 257Ibn al-ʾAʿrābī 52Ibn ʿĀšūr, Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir 158Ibn al-ʾAṯīr 65Ibn Bābašāḏ 78, 187Ibn al-Dahhān 63Ibn al-Ḍāʾiʿ 80Ibn Durayd 34, 53f., 56, 58, 62, 64f., 67Ibn al-Faḫḫār 215

Ibn Fāris 51, 55, 58f., 212Ibn Farīʿūn 153Ibn al-Furāt 116Ibn al-Ḥājib 96f., 103, 105, 110, 191, 200, 203,

214, 217 f., 247, 250f.Ibn Ḫālawayhi 55Ibn Ḫaldūn 51Ibn Harma 66Ibn Ḫarūf 214Ibn al-Ḫaššāb 172Ibn Hišām 55, 173f., 190f., 194, 198–200, 205,

215 f., 247f., 256f.Ibn Jinnī 5, 59, 78, 116, 148, 160, 212, 217, 219Ibn Kaysān 67, 147, 150, 153Ibn Maḍāʾ 57, 254Ibn Mālik 7, 76, 194, 197–199, 205, 215 f., 245–

250, 254, 256f., 259, 263Ibn Manẓūr 52, 65–67, 182Ibn Manẓūr see Lisān al-ʿArabIbn al-Marzubān al-Bāḥiṯ 62Ibn Masʿūd, ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAlī 251Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ 124Ibn al-Naḥḥās 82Ibn Qutayba 62, 64f., 76, 79, 159Ibn al-Rūmī 66, 83Ibn al-Sarrāj 2, 5 f., 63, 65, 77, 98, 102f., 109–

111, 125, 146, 148f., 167–170, 208, 229, 233,235, 237f., 240, 243, 246, 263

Ibn al-Sīd see Baṭalyawsī, al-Ibn Sīda 51, 58, 67, 212Ibn al-Sikkīt 6, 67, 123Ibn Sīnā 7, 115–145Ibn Šuqayr 158Ibn Ṭaymiyya 245Ibn ʿUṣfūr 215IbnWallād 154f.Ibn al-Warrāq 210f., 219Ibn Yaʿīš 34, 46, 63, 103, 175, 194f., 214ibtidāʾ 150–152, 154f.ibtidāʾ, bi-l- 154ʾiḍāfa 36, 102, 108, 136f., 140f., 203f., 206,

210–212, 215ʾiḍāfa ġayr maḥḍa 220f.ʾiḍāfa ḥaqīqiyya 215ʾiḍāfa lafẓiyya 213ʾiḍāfa maḥḍa 215, 220f.ʾiḍāfa maʿnawiyya 213–215ʾiḍāfat al-ism li-l-ism 213ʾiḏan 11

index 275

ʾiḍmār 182ʾifāda 123 f., 126iftiʿāl al-ʿarabiyya 54iftiḫār 85, 91ʾiġrāʾ 193, 198–200ʾiḫbār 192ʾiḫbārī 191iḫtaṣṣa 208, 210–212, 216iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn 61iḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn 61iḫtiṣāṣ 193, 207, 209, 215, 221ʾijrāʾ 15ijtihād 78Ikeda, Osamu 191iktasaba 211ʿilāj 241ʿilal see ʿillaʿilla 57, 66, 110, 205ʿilla muʾaṯṯira 107illocutionary 190, 200ʿilm al-balāġa 7ʿilm al-lisān 51ʿilm al-luġa 51ʿilm al-naḥw 50ʿilm al-waḍʿ 7, 68imperative 192ʾImrīṭī, al- 247Imruʾ al-Qays 66, 83ʿinda 151, 159indeclinable 34indeclinable noun 108indefinite 14, 20–23, 32, 35–38, 41, 129, 208f.,

211indefinite expression 213, 221indefinite, morphosyntactically 139indefinite noun 205, 209, 215 f., 219indefinite, pragmatically 135–137indefiniteness 8, 13, 21, 109, 140, 205, 207, 211,

213indefiniteness, marker of 21indeterminate 135indetermination 205India, Arabic in 251 ff.India, education in 251–253indicator 158Indo-European 43Indonesia 247f., 255Indonesia, education in 262infaʿala 104, 231

infiʿāl 104inflection 13inflection, partial 13, 30f.information 125f., 130information, conveying of 123, 126information, metaphysical 124informational content 133ʾinnamā 80, 150–152, 156f.innovation 6ʾinšāʾ 110 f., 190f., 200ʾinšāʾ ʾīqāʿī 191ʾinšāʾ ṭalabī 191ʾinšāʾī 191inṣarafa 11–49inṣirāf 14 f., 21intention of the speaker 169, 174interjection 192interlocutor 122, 214internet, discussions about Arabic on 256–

263interrogative 38intransitive 231intransitive, double 241inversion 206ʾīqāʿī 191iqtaṣara 209iqtirān 173 f.ʾiʿrāb 8, 60f., 107, 159, 235, 238ʾiʿrāb al-fiʿl 46ʾiʿrāb al-ism 46irregularity 42irtafaʿa 152ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar 51 f., 77ʾišāra 132, 183ism 23, 43, 82, 99, 118, 127, 130f., 133 f., 152–158ism ʿalam 130, 182ism al-fāʿil 109ism al-mafʿūl 109, 236ism al-tafḍīl 109ism ʾišāra 183ism fiʿl 193ism kāna 175ismmatā 159ismmubham 6, 182f., 188ism wāḥid 23ismiyya 34istafāda 136istaġnā 230ištiġāl 12

276 index

istiʾnāf 150ištiqāq 64ištirāk 214, 221ittifāq al-lafẓayn 61iyyā- 192–198, 200

Jackendoff, Ray 137jadal 125Jāḥiẓ, al- 60f.Jakobson, Roman 42jamʿ 60jamʿ al-luġa 51jamāʿa 127jamīʿ 40Jāmī, ʾAbu Barkat Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān

251jamʿiyya 106jarā 15Jārim, ʿAlī al- 256Jarmī, al- 77jarr 146, 148–160jawāb bi-l-fāʾ 156Jawālīqī al- 63jawhar 124jazama 156, 158jazm 12, 155Jedda 255Jirjāwī, ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn ʿAwaḍ al- 249Jumaḥī, al- 155–157jumla 216, 232jumla ḫabariyya 192jumla ʾiḫbāriyya 191jumla ʾinšāʾiyya 191Jurjānī, al- 5–7, 50, 60, 213, 219, 229, 238–243,

247–249, 252Jurjānī, al-Sayyid al-Šarīf 206, 251 f.jussive 191juzʾī 138juzʾiyya 138Juzūlī, al- 22, 214

kāf in demonstratives 184f.Kafawī, ʾAbū l-Baqāʾ al-Ḥusaynī al- 191, 216Kafrāwī, Ḥasan al- 247–249, 256kalām 12, 35 f., 53, 190, 212, 230kalām al-ʿArab 57, 118kalām, completion of 230, 238kalām, tadāḫul al- 63kalim 150

kalima 15, 118kam 84f., 88, 151kāna 231kāna al-nāqiṣa 175kāna, ʾaḫawāt 146Kasher, Almog 7, 146–166kātib 153kay 12kayfa 151–153Kinberg, Naphtali 208Kisāʾī, al- 52, 67, 68, 149Koerner, Konrad 2Kouloughli, Djamel Eddine 3, 89, 98, 105Kufans 45f., 57, 66f., 77 f., 91, 108, 148–151, 156kull 138f., 142kullī 138Kumayt, al- 66Kunkī, Sī ʾIbrāhīm al- 250Kurāʿ al-Naml 6, 64

lā 46, 89labs 209labs, wuqūʿ al- 209Laffan, Michael 255lafẓ 58, 170, 174lafẓat al-taqdīr 138lākin 15, 150Langendonck, Willy van 24, 26f.language, notion of 4laqab 132Larcher, Pierre 81, 97f., 103, 110, 191, 200, 207,

214, 217lāta 35, 38Latin 264Latin in Medieval Europe 138lawlā 151, 155 f.laysa 35, 38, 231Layṯ ibn al-Muẓaffar, al- 81lāzim 104Levin, Aryeh 3, 5, 167–177, 182, 186–188lexica 51 f.lexica, arranged according to pattern 63lexica, arranged according to root 53lexica, arranged alphabetically 58, 63lexica, arrangement of 67lexica,mubawwab seemubawwablexica,mujannas seemujannaslexica, onomasiological 58lexica, Qurʾānic 64

index 277

lexica, semasiological 58lexical meaning 51lexicography 7, 50–75lexicography, Kufan 66li- 221lightness 17, 37–39, 105f.linguistic data 51linguistic sciences 55linguistic sciences, classification of 50f.Lisān al-ʿArab 14 f., 34, 52, 65, 67, 182, 195Lisān al-ʿArab see Ibn Manẓūrlistener 129f.local domain 28locutionary 190logic 115–145logic and grammar 7logic, Arabic 122logic, categorical 138f.logic, Greek 116logic, justification of 123logic, Peripatetic 115 f., 118, 131, 133logic, translation of 123f.Loimeier, Roman 248luġa 16, 50–53, 55f., 58, 61luġawiyyūn 51–53, 55, 59Luġda 7, 146, 149, 152Lyons, John 22, 24, 123, 140, 219

mā 231mā lā yanṣarif 15–18, 24, 33, 39–41, 44f.mā yanṣarif 15, 17 f., 24, 39f., 41, 44maʿa 195maʿānī l-naḥw 50, 243maʿānī seemaʿnāMaʿarrī, al- 66, 76madḥ 212Madinah series of textbooks 259, 263madrasa 246, 250, 253, 255f., 262, 264maʿdūl 20mafāʿil 22f.mafhūm 106, 129mafʿūl 13, 108, 155, 157, 160, 167, 230, 233,

238–241mafʿūl bihi 157, 232, 235mafʿūl muṭlaq 192Maghreb, education in 253maḥall 105f., 110, 149, 159maḥḍ 192, 220f.maḥḏūr 194

maḥmūl 134maḫṣūṣ 139, 204f., 208maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ wa-l-ḏamm 205, 208majāz 85majhūl 123majrā 15, 34, 182majrūr 105majrūr bi-l-ḥarf 105makān 34makāna 334Makram, ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim 98Malaysia, education in 253malfūẓ 171Mali 250, 255Mali, education in 255f.malleability of language 39, 42Maltzahn, Nadia von 246maʿlūm 123, 208mamdūd 59f.Mamluks 246mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf 44maʿnā 26, 46, 58, 61, 84, 142maʿnā l-ʾiḍāfa 108maʿnā l-tanwīn 182maʿnā l-waṣf 103manfaʿa 125mankūr 128manqūl 240manṣūb 102manṭiqiyyūn 118manʿūt 209, 211 f., 214manzila 23, 32, 84, 140, 184f.Maqdisī, al- 246maqṣūr 59f.marfūʿ 151maʿrifa 4, 17, 20, 23–25, 31 f., 35, 126f., 129, 133,

141, 182f., 209, 213–216marked 41 f.markedness theory 6, 41 f., 44marker, declensional 43marker, feminine 59, 104marker of indefiniteness 21marker of plural 36marker, person 38Marogy, Amal 1, 128Marzūqī, al- 8masculine 18f., 35, 41 f., 59, 104maṣdar 109, 229f., 241maṣdar manṣūb bi-fiʿl muḍmar 192

278 index

masʾūl 122Maʿṣūm ibn ʿAlī, Muḥammad 248, 262matā 153matbūʿ 216Mattā ibn Yūnus 116–121Mauritania 250mawḍiʿ 37f., 91, 129, 184mawḍūʿ 134mawqiʿ 118mawṣūf 105f., 135, 212Māzinī, al- 50, 77M-definite see definite, morphosyntacticallymeaning, lexical 51Mecca 255Meccan type of instruction 247Medina, university of 259memorization 55, 247, 252f., 263memorization of the Qurʾān 250, 262message 126metaphor 84metonymy 13Milner, Jean-Claude 22min 100f.M-indefinite see indefinite, morphosyntacti-

callyminimal domain 28minimal sentence 28miṣr 53miṯāl 25, 36miṯl 136f.mobility 39Morocco, education in 253Muʿāḏ al-Ḥarrāʾ 78, 82muʾakkid 187muʾannaṯ 18, 59muʿarrab 58muʿarraf 212muʿarrif 212muʾaṯṯir 107, 215, 232f., 235mubāhāh 85, 91Mubarrad, al- 2, 5 f., 22, 59, 61, 63, 77, 90,

98, 100–103, 109–111, 125, 137, 141, 146,148, 150, 156, 169, 172, 208, 231–233, 235,263

mubawwab 51, 58–61, 64f., 67mubdal 212mubdal minhu 212mubham 6, 26, 45, 100, 103, 109, 126, 182f.,

188, 211

mubhammustaqirr 109mubtadaʾ 6, 12, 108, 133–137, 139f., 146, 154,

159mubtadiʾ 146muḍāf 126, 139, 155, 182, 210–212, 215, 237muḍāf ʾilayhi 102, 105–109, 210–212mudāḫal 62muḏakkar 18, 59muḍāraʿa 36, 43muḍāriʿ 12, 45f.muḍiyy 209muḍmar 192Mufaḍḍal ibn Salama 59mufīd 126muḥaḏḏar 194, 198muḥaḏḏar minhu 194muḥaddaṯ 122muḥaḏḏir 194muḥāl 169f.muḫālif 142Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʾIsmāʿīl

217 f.Muḥammad ibn Sādān al-Ḍarīr 78muḫaṣṣaṣ 208, 212, 215 f.muḫaṣṣiṣ 210, 212, 215–217, 219muḫāṭab 23, 26, 122, 127–130, 136, 141, 198,

214muḫāṭaba 184f.muḥdaṯūn 83muhmal 139muḫtaṣṣ 208, 214mujannas 51, 58, 65–67mujīb 122, 136mukaḏḏib 120mulāqī 233munakkar 212munakkir 212munawwan 100munqaṭiʿ 42munṣarif 6, 14 f., 17, 34, 37, 42muqaddar 167–176muqaddima 129muqārin 173muʿrab 34murād 213Murāġī, ʿAbdallāh Muṣṭafā al- 217muṣāḥib 168mušajjar 62musalsal 62

index 279

musāmaḥa 155musammā 21, 82, 130musnad 50, 239musnad ʾilayhi 50mustaʿār 233mustaʿmal 63mustaqbal 156mustaqīm 42, 129mustaqirr,mubham 109muštarak 45, 61 f.mustaṣḥab 168–171, 173 f.mustaṯnā 212mustaṯnā minhu 212mutaʿaddī 230, 232, 235f., 238, 241mutakallim 107, 121, 127 f., 214muʿtall 31 f.mutamakkin 16, 18–21, 33–38, 40, 44Mutanabbī, al- 66, 76, 83mutarādif 61 f.mutarāḫī 184muṭlaq 80, 192muṭlaq al-ʿadad 104muwaḍḍiḥ 216muwallad 66muwalladāt 57Mūzanī, al- 120

naʿata 209nabbaha 184, 187Nābiġa al-Ḏubyānī, al- 66Nābiġa al-Jaʿdī, al- 66nādir 53f., 56Naḍr ibn Šumayl, al- 52nafaḏa 231naffaḏa 243nāfiḏ 242nafs 192, 196nafy 119naḥārīr 57Naḥḥās, al- 7, 78, 80, 148f., 151, 156naḥt 60naḥw 50–53, 55, 58–61, 110, 262naḥw, tabsīṭ al- 254naḥwa 136naḥwiyyūn 50–53, 55–57, 59, 61, 150nahy 191, 197nakira 14–18, 20, 23f., 32, 35 f., 40, 129, 136,

206, 209–211, 213–216, 221naqala 240

naqīḍ 119naṣaba 156, 158naṣb 12, 105, 151, 154f., 158f.Nāṣif al-Miṣrī, Ḥifnī Bek 249, 254naʿt 153, 182, 204, 206, 209, 212, 214 f.native speaker 112Nawawī, Muḥammad 248naẓīr 31, 86naẓm 50negation 7, 119–121, 139f.negation, contradictory 119, 121neologism 54, 57nidāʾ 191, 210Niger 250niʿma 15, 151, 156nomination 19, 24f., 27, 40non-assertive 6, 12non-definite 20f., 23noun 126, 149noun phrase, plural 140noun, definite 126f., 215noun, definition of 127f.noun, indeclinable 10noun, indefinite 205, 209, 215 f., 219noun, properties of 138noun, referential properties of 36–38numerals 5, 96–114, 210, 216numerals, basic 100–102numerals, gender of 102numerals in a vocative 210numerals, subsidiary 100–102nūn, compensatory 103nuʿūt see naʿt

oath 37object 167, 196, 229–244object, counted 100–104, 106f.object, direct 13, 229f., 236, 238, 241 f.object of praise and blame 204operator 150, 156operator of the predicate 152operator of the rafʿ 154order 191order, right 122Owens, Jonathan 2f., 33 f., 41, 233, 148

Pakistan, Arabic in 251, 252paraphrase 140–142partial declension 30

280 index

partial declinability 35, 44partial inflection 16, 30f.participle, active 45, 98f., 102, 168, 188, 208particle 21, 119, 146, 149, 153, 156particle, sentence-introducing 156particle, vocative 183, 210particularization 5, 193, 203–228partitive 100f.parts of speech 102, 146, 155patient 235P-definite see definite, pragmaticallypedagogical grammar 7f., 146–166Peled, Yishai 108, 150performative 24, 110, 190performative, primary 5, 191perlocutionary 190permutation of roots 58Persian 132, 134, 245person marker 38personal pronoun 126, 131, 135 f., 139, 152, 154,

156, 159personal pronoun, third person 182pesantren 247f., 256philologists 51, 61phonetics 262pilgrimage, transmission of knowledge during

255P-indefinite see indefinite, pragmaticallyplasticity 39, 43plural 60plural marker 36poetry 53, 55f., 60, 66f.poetry narrators 61poetry, language of 112, 122poetry, pre-Islamic 66, 83poetry used in šawāhid 55polysemy 45, 61possession 102f.pragmatics 14, 111, 126, 207, 214praise 192precursorism 4predicate 134, 138, 152, 156predicate, verbal 167f., 170predication 98f., 105preposition 105, 149f., 154, 216principle of locality 28prohibition 191pronoun 126pronoun, personal see personal pronoun

pronoun, demonstrative see demonstrativepronoun, relative see relative pronounproper name 6, 13 f., 19, 22 f., 24–32, 34f., 41,

45, 126, 130–133, 135, 139proper name, definition of 130proper name, etymology of 64proper name, foreign 41proper name, demonstrative as 185proper name, relative as 19property, distinctive 132proverbs 53

qabl 41, 44, 159qablu 20qaddara 211Qaḥṭānī, Muḥyī l-Dīn al- 249Qālī, al- 58, 67, 79, 85qallamā 90qarāba 26Qazzāz al-Qayrawānī, al- 62Qifṭī, al- 63, 160qirāʾāt 5, 78qiyās 57, 66, 104quadriliterals 54qualification 207f., 211 f., 214, 219, 221qualification, adjectival 206, 215qualification, attributive 216qualification of an indefinite noun 209, 215qualifier 30quantified, existentially 141quantifier 137quasi-determination 206f.Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar 62quinqueliterals 54, 57Qurʾān 64Qurʾān, exegesis of 245Qurʾān, language of 112, 122Qurʾān, memorization of 252, 262Qurʾān, translation of 245Quṭrub 62quwwa 90, 110

rafʿ 11, 105, 146, 148–160, 232rafʿ al-ištirāk 214rafaʿa 152–155, 158Raḥmān, Ṭāriq 251rajaz 55f.rare words 54Rāzī, Faḫr al-Dīn al- 120

index 281

reasoning, language used for 123Reckendorf, Hermann 167, 191 f., 205reference 6, 11–49reference, deictic 27reference, indefinite 132referentiability 219regularity 31relative pronoun 127relative pronoun as proper name 19reproach 192restriction 137, 206rhetoric 123root 67Ruʿaynī al-Ḫaṭṭāb, al- 247, 249Ruʾba 66rubba 6, 76–95rubbamā 87–90Rumman academy 254Rummānī, al- 77, 212, 217, 219

Sadan, Arik 6, 157, 160, 178–189šāḏḏ 54, 197Šāfiʿī, al- 217, 245Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād, al- 58šāhid 52, 55f., 58, 60, 62, 66f., 83sāʾil 122Sakaedani, Haruko 5, 190–202Sakkākī, al- 50Salafis 257, 262salutation 192f.Samāra, Rāʾif 53sāmiʿ 123sammā 36Šammāḫ, al- 66Šantamarī al-ʿAlam al- 15, 91Sānū, Quṭb Muṣṭafā 217ṣarafa 15ṣarf 6, 14–17, 20, 43f., 50f., 248, 262ṣarf,mamnūʿ min al- 44ṣarf, tark al- 20, 32, 43Sartori, Manuel 5, 7, 101, 203–228satisfiability 138Saussure, Ferdinand de 4šawāhid see šāhidšayʾ 126f., 135Šaybānī, al- 52 f., 63, 67Šaylaḫānī, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al- 217school seemadrasaschool see pesantren

school, modernization of 256school, Western-style 253Sehalvi, Nizamuddin 251semantic 127semantic relationship 61sentence, affirmative 190sentence, categorical 140sentence, equational 133sentence, imperative 190sentence, interrogative 190sentence,mubtadaʾ/ḫabar 139sentence, negative 190sentence, nominal 133sentence, prohibitive 190sentence, topicalized verbal 133sentence, topic-comment 134, 141sentence, verbal 135Sezgin, Fuat 81, 148, 158Sheyhatovitch, Beata 125f.Sībawayhi 1, 3, 5 f., 11–50, 52, 54, 56–61, 63–

65, 77, 84, 92, 98f., 103, 109, 111, 119–123,125–131, 133, 137, 139, 141, 148, 154–157,167–189, 191, 194–197, 199f., 203, 207f.,219 f., 229, 231, 233, 238, 242f., 263

šibh 136f.ṣifa 17, 19, 26, 30, 64, 86, 88, 106, 150f., 154,

212 f., 216ṣifa, bi-l- 154ṣifa mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil 98f., 109, 111ṣifa muštaqqa 105Sijistānī, al- 54, 59f., 62, 65, 67ṣināʿat al-luġa 138ṣinf 229singular 139šiʿr 55f., 60f.Sīrāfī, al- 7, 60, 63, 78, 115–145, 171, 209, 219,

229, 238–243Širbīnī, al- 17, 206, 257Sous 250speaker 111 f., 129f., 135speaker, native 112speaker’s intention 128specialization 206f.species 102f., 208f.specification 5, 99, 103, 105, 107, 109, 193,

203–228specificity 203, 219specifier 100, 102, 106, 137f., 140–142Speech Act Theory 5, 191

282 index

speech acts 190f.speech, tripartite division of 191Stewart,Charles 251strength 102strength, syntactic 100f., 110 f.structuralism 42subject 134, 138, 156f.subject, logical 134Sufis 245, 249, 253Sufism 247Suhaylī, al- 214Sunniforum 251, 257–263suppletive insertion 66sūr 138Sūsī, Muḥammad al-Muḫtār al- 250Suyūṭī, al- 54, 63, 82, 91, 173synchrony 3synonyms 61syntactic categories, theory of 38syntactic strength 100f., 110 f.Syriac 135

tāʾ marbūṭa 103f.taʿaddā 13, 236, 238taʿajjub 231Ṯaʿālibī, al- 212taʿarrafa 141 f., 209f.tābiʿ 108, 216tabsīṭ al-naḥw 254tadāḫul al-kalām 63taḏkīr 20tafḍīl 221tafsīr 52, 250taġyīr 27, 141Taha Hussein 245–247Taha, Zeinab 6, 229–244taḫaṣṣuṣ 217taḥdīd 132taḥḏīr 5, 190–202taḫfīf 15taʾḫīr 206taḫliṣ 212taḥqīr 185taḫṣīṣ 5, 101, 203–228taḫṣīṣ al-ʿilla 205, 212taḫṣīṣ, definition of 205–207takṯīr 76–78, 80–82, 84f., 87 f., 91 f.ṭalab 190ṭalabī 191

taʿlīl 82Talmon, Rafael 33, 156–159tamakkana 33–35tamakkun 3, 17–20, 36–40, 43tamām 106tamām al-kalām 108Tamari, Tal 264taʿmīm 206tamyīz 5, 100–103, 106, 108f., 111, 206f., 216,

219tamyīz, numerical 102tanbīh 198tankīr 5, 205–207, 210, 212, 216, 219tanwīn 6, 13–18, 21, 24, 32f., 35, 40, 43–45,

100, 182tanwīn al-ṣarf 17tanwīn al-tamakkun 34tanwīn al-tamkīn 17tanwīn, compensatory 32taqdīr 57, 66, 134, 138, 169–176, 186taqlīb 58taqlīl 76–78, 80–86, 88, 91 f.taqrīb ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ 146, 175taqsīm 154taqyīd 80, 137Ṭarafa 66tarāfuʿ 108, 151taraka ʿalā ḥālihi 186taʿrīf 128, 132, 136, 204–207, 210–212, 215 f.,

219–221tark al-ṣarf 20, 32, 43tarkeeb method 260f.tasammuḥ 155, 157taṣarruf 14, 39taṣġīr 60taṣrīf 14taṯniya 60, 185tawābiʿ see tābiʿtawḍīḥ 5, 213–216, 219Tawfīq, ʾAmīra ʿAlī 97, 107Tawḥīdī, ʾAbu Ḥayyān al- 116taʾwīl 169tawkīd 89f.tawlīd al-ʾalfāẓ 54Tawwazī, al- 62taysīr ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ 175télos 125tense of the ḥāl 173 f.terminology 3

index 283

terminology, grammatical 260test, proper names as 25, 27textbooks, Madinah series of 259, 263textbooks, Western 259f.Theodorus 134Tiam, Aboubakar 255Timbuktu 250ṯiqal 18Ṭirimmāḥ, al- 66topic 134f., 141topic-comment 133Toure, Saada 255transitive, doubly 240f.transitivity 229–244transitivity, morphological patterns of 237transitivity, syntactic test for 236translation 247, 255transmission of religious knowledge 253f.transposition 27–30, 32triliterals 58Troupeau, Gérard 14f., 178, 214

ʿUmar, Yūsuf Ḥasan 98ʿUmāra ibn ʿAqīl 55ʿumda 105, 107ʾUmm al-Hayṯam 54ʾummahāt 248Umru l-Qays see Imruʾ al-Qaysʿumūm 138, 209ʿumūm al-ism 213underlying form 103–105, 107universal 138unmarked 41 f.unquantified 139ʾurjūza 263ʾUšmūnī, al- 248ʾustāḏ 257ʾuṣūl al-fiqh 5, 8, 204, 217ʾuṣūl al-naḥw 67ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj 53, 66utterance 190utterance, constative 191utterance, meaningful 111utterance, performative 91

vagueness 111valency 6, 233, 242f.verb 43, 229–244verb, admirative 28, 231, 240

verb, assimilated 45f.verb, causative 240verb, classification of 6, 229–244verb, declension of 46verb, experiential 241verb, intransitive 229–244verb, metaphorical 231verb, non-real 231, 233, 238verb of cognition 241verb of sense 238verb of the limbs 241verb, phrasal 143verb, real 231, 233, 238verb, state 241verb, transitive 229–244verbal noun 192, 196verbal patterns 60verbatim quotation 28Versteegh, Kees 8, 17, 32 f., 37–39, 82, 112,

124f., 245–267Viain, Marie 7, 154, 246, 263Vidro, Nadia 148, 151, 154virtual 12virtual reference 22vocative 24, 28, 183vocative particle 210voie diffuse 125vyuo see chuo

wa- 118 f., 193, 198wa-meaningmaʿa 195waḍʿ 84Wahhabi 255wāḥid 40wajh 11 f., 46waqaʿa 11 f., 23, 42, 168, 213, 236wāqiʿ 11 f.Waquet, Françoise 264warning 191, 193f.waṣala 230, 238wāṣala 232waṣf 103, 169, 206, 212, 221wāṣil 232f., 235, 243waṣṣala 243wazn 25Wehr, Hans 257Weiss, Bernard 217West Africa, Arabic in 251Western linguistics 4

284 index

Western textbooks 259f.Wilmet, Marc 25wish 192f.word class 27, 28words, non-Arabic 56Wright, William 167, 192f., 205wujūh see wajhwuqūʿ 216wuqūʿ al-labs 209

x-bar Theory 137

Yazīdī, ʿAbdallāh ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-64

Yazīdī, Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al- 52Yaʿqūb, ʾImīl Badīʿ 206Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb 16, 31 f., 51 f., 77, 137

Zadeh, Travis 245f.Zāhid, ʾAbū ʿUmar Ġulām Ṯaʿlab al- 62f., 65

Zajjāj, al- 77, 91, 187Zajjājī, al- 6 f., 17, 36–38, 51, 64, 77–80, 146,

148, 150, 152, 154, 160, 208, 214, 229, 233,235, 237f., 243

Zamaḫšarī, al- 46, 65f., 90, 97, 126–128, 133,196–200, 213–215, 219, 246

Zanjānī, ʿIzz al-Dīn al- 248Zanzibar 249Zanzibar, Arabic in 252Zanzibar, education in 252ẓarf 16, 19, 34f., 149, 152–154, 159, 169ẓarf al-dahr 35, 38ẓarf as ʿāmil 174ẓarf, interrogative 156ẓarf, predicative 156Zawāwī, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī al- 250ziyāda 23Zubaydī, al- 51, 60, 148, 150, 153Zuhayr 66ẓurūf see ẓarf