The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics III: The Development of a Tradition: Continuity and Change 9004363467, 9789004363465

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The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics iii

Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial Board Aaron D. Rubin and Ahmad Al-Jallad

volume 94

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl

The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics iii The Development of a Tradition: Continuity and Change

Edited by

Georgine Ayoub Kees Versteegh

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Miniature illustrating the 17th maqāma of Ḥarīrī (11th century). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms Ar. 5847, fol. 51. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2012007523

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0081-8461 isbn 978-90-04-36346-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36521-6 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Contributors

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Introduction 1 Georgine Ayoub and Kees Versteegh Case and Reference The Theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb Georgine Ayoub The Grammatical and Lexicographical Traditions Mutual Foundations, Divergent Paths of Development Ramzi Baalbaki A Twelfth Century League Table of Arab Grammarians Michael G. Carter

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Blind Spots in Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Grammar of Numerals Jean N. Druel Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics in al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā Manuela E.B. Giolfo and Wilfrid Hodges Early Pedagogical Grammars of Arabic Almog Kasher

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What is Meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara? 167 Aryeh Levin Demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb Arik Sadan

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How Have the Descriptions of taḥḏīr Changed? Haruko Sakaedani

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Origin and Conceptual Evolution of the Term taḫṣīṣ in Arabic Grammar 203 Manuel Sartori The Classification of the Verb in the Arab Grammatical Tradition From Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī 229 Zeinab A. Taha Learning Arabic in the Islamic World Kees Versteegh Index

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List of Contributors Georgine Ayoub is professor of Arabic linguistics at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (inalco), Paris, France, and a researcher at Cermom in the same university. Her fields of research include theoretical linguistics, the history of the Arabic language, Arabic linguistic thought, and ancient Arabic poetry. Her books include Prédicat, figures, catégories: La question de la phrase nominale en arabe littéraire (Lille, 1996). She has published widely on Sībawayhi’s Kitāb and on syntax and semantics in Arabic linguistic theory. Ramzi Baalbaki is the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Chair of Arabic at the American University of Beirut and the Head of the Academic Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language. He has published extensively on Arabic grammatical theory and Arabic lexicography. His books include The legacy of the Kitāb: Sībawayhi’s analytical methods within the context of the Arabic grammatical theory (Leiden, 2008) and The Arabic lexicographical tradition from the 2nd/8th to the 12th/18th century (Leiden, 2014). He has also produced critical editions of numerous Classical Arabic texts and co-authored with his late father Mounir Baalbaki the famous English-Arabic dictionary al-Mawrid and its comprehensive counterpart, al-Mawrid al-ʾakbar (Beirut, 2005). Michael G. Carter after a D.Phil. (Oxon) taught at Sydney University (1968–1985), then Duke (1985–1986), New York University (1986–1996) and Oslo University (1996–2004) until retirement. His research interests are Sībawayhi and early Arabic grammatical theory, and the relationship between grammar, law and philosophy in Medieval Islam. Jean N. Druel is a researcher in the history of Arabic grammar; since October 2014, he has been the director of ideo (Institut dominicain des études orientales) in Cairo. After a Master’s degree in theology and Coptic patristics (Institut catholique de Paris, 2002), he obtained a Master’s degree in teaching Arabic as a foreign language (American University in Cairo, 2006), and in 2012 he obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nijmegen with a thesis on the Arabic grammarians’ theories about the syntax of numerals.

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Manuela E.B. Giolfo was lecturer in Arabic at the University of Exeter (2008–2013). In 2013 she moved to the University of Genoa, where she is researcher in Arabic language and literature and lecturer in Arabic language and philology. From 2014 she is also chercheuse associée at the Institut de recherches et d’ études sur le monde arabe et musulman (iremam)—cnrs—Aix-Marseille Université. She holds an m.a. in philosophy from the University of Milan, and a Ph.D. in Arabic linguistics 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 and dialectology of Arabic in honor of Pierre Larcher (Leiden, 2016). Wilfrid Hodges taught at London University (Bedford College and then Queen Mary) from 1968 to 2006, researching in mathematical logic, and writing five textbooks of logic at different levels (one joint-authored). Since his retirement in 2006 he has worked mainly in history of logic, concentrating on the logic and semantics of Ibn Sīnā in comparison with other Arabic writers. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (Philosophy section). Almog Kasher has a Ph.D. degree (2007) in Arabic; he is lecturer in Bar-Ilan University. His main field of study is the Medieval Arabic grammatical tradition, with the emphasis on its early history, Sībawayhi’s commentaries, and pedagogical grammars. Aryeh Levin was born in Israel in 1937. He is professor emeritus of Arabic at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on The ʾimāla in the Arabic dialects (The Hebrew University of jerusalem, 1971). His main fields of research are: Arabic Medieval grammatical thought and terminology, history of the Arabic language, and modern Arabic dialects. He was the Head of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, 1987–1992, and the Head of the Institute of Asian and African Studies of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992–1998. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious “Israel Prize in General Linguistics” for his achievements in the field of Arabic linguistics. Arik Sadan holds a b.a. in linguistics and Arabic language and literature (2001) and an m.a. (2004) and Ph.D. (2010) in Arabic language and literature, all from The

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Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research fields are Arabic grammatical thought, Arab grammarians, Classical, Modern and Colloquial Arabic linguistics, manuscripts in Arabic grammar and other fields. He teaches various courses in various academic institutions in these fields. After the publication of several articles, he published two books: A critical edition of the grammatical treatise Taḏkirat jawāmiʿ al-ʾadawāt by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd (Wiesbaden, 2012) and The subjunctive mood in Arabic grammatical thought (Leiden, 2012), the latter being a revised English version of his Ph.D. thesis. Haruko Sakaedani is part-time lecturer in Arabic at Keio University, the University of Tokyo, Tokai University and Waseda University. She holds an m.a. in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Arabic linguistics from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Manuel Sartori became, after graduating in Comparative Politics at the Institut d’ études politiques (Aix-en-Provence, 1999) and in Arabic studies at Aix-Marseille University (2004), senior teacher (professeur agrégé) in Arabic (2009). He completed his 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 mainly in Damascus. He is now lecturer and head of Arabic teaching at the Institut d’ études politiques (iep/ScPo) in Aix-en-Provence and researcher at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (iremam). His research interests include Arabic grammar and linguistics (diachronic and synchronic, Medieval and contemporary) and the history of the Arabic language. Zeinab A. Taha is associate professor of Arabic language and linguistics at the tafl Masters program at the American University in Cairo. She received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1995. Her research interests are Medieval grammatical theory and language variation and change. Her recent publications are Development of Arabic grammatical thought (Cairo, 2011; in Arabic) and “Syntactic variation in Modern Written Arabic” in the Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st century, ii (2017). Kees Versteegh is emeritus professor of Arabic and Islam at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). He specializes in historical linguistics and the history of linguistics, focusing on processes of language change, language contact, and pidgin

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

Introduction Georgine Ayoub and Kees Versteegh

The present volume brings together a number of papers that were presented at the Third Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, hosted by Georgine Ayoub in Paris at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, on October 23 and 24, 2014. The conference constituted a sequel to the first two conferences on the same topic that had been organized by Amal Marogy at the University of Cambridge in 2010 and 2012 (for the proceedings of the first two conferences see Marogy 2012a and Marogy and Versteegh 2015).1 The original aim of this series of conferences was to focus on the first major grammarian in the Arabic grammatical tradition, ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi (d. 177/793?). The analysis of the Arabic language in his Kitāb remains the most frequently cited source within this tradition, and his linguistic legacy in the Arabic grammatical tradition is unparalleled. The topic of the conferences also included the reception of the Kitāb in modern scholarship, because, as Marogy (2012:x) formulates it, “the study of the Kitāb in the West over the last one hundred and twenty years (from de Sacy’s Anthologie grammaticale arabe of 1829) has been a continuous application of prevailing Western linguistic theories as they successively emerge, with no end in sight”. The original aim of concentrating on Sībawayhi was indeed realized in the sense that out of a total of thirty-four papers published in the proceedings of the three conferences, twenty-seven dealt with the early period of Arabic grammar, in particular with the theories contained in the Kitāb Sībawayhi, whereas the remaining seven were concerned with its impact in the later tradition. 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 in the previous volumes. The transcription of Arabic follows the system of the Encyclopedia of Arabic 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 is merely phonetic (thus: wa-ktub ‘and write!’, but wa-ʾaktib ‘and make write!’). Declensional and inflectional endings are represented fully in Qurʾānic and poetic quotations and in grammatical examples; in other quotations and book titles we have opted mostly for a simplified system, in which pausal rather than contextual forms are used. Yet, in some papers, we have allowed authors to use full representation throughout.

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

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historical period, when to some extent all grammarians followed his footsteps and considered themselves to be his successors, at least since the times of alMubarrad (d. 285/898), but also among modern scholars working in the field of the history of linguistics. This is not to say that the study of the Arabic grammatical tradition has remained the same. As a matter of fact, one of the fascinating developments is precisely that there are so many new discoveries in the field, ranging from the discovery of new texts to the study of ‘forgotten’ grammarians. What is more, this field continues to attract young scholars who are putting their mark by bringing in entirely new insights. Looking at this development from the point of view of a historian of linguistics, one cannot help but notice that the field went through a revival at the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s, with the publication of such works as Michael Carter’s Arab linguistics (1981), Georges Bohas and Jean-Patrick Guillaume’s Etudes des théories des grammairiens arabes (1984) and Jonathan Owens’ (1988) study of the theoretical foundations of Arabic grammatical theory. The 1980s also saw the establishment of the field in the form of workshops that were organized, among other places, in Nijmegen, Haifa, Budapest, Bucharest, and Paris. This revival was also manifest in the role Arabic grammar began to play in the general field of the history of linguistics, for instance in the new journal Historiographia linguistica (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins), and in the international conferences on the history of linguistics, organized by Konrad Koerner (the first one of which took place in Ottawa in 1978). Large scholarly enterprises, such as the Histoire des idées linguistiques, edited by Sylvain Auroux et al. (Liège: Mardaga, 1989–1992) and the Handbuch für die Geschichte der Sprachund 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 the history of linguistics. These projects also marked a new development in the cooperation between scholars working at Western universities and those working 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 the Arabic grammatical tradition, this cooperation was imperative, if only for the immense work done by scholars working at Arab universities in editing and publishing new manuscripts. At the beginning of the 1980s, many works that were either unknown or existed only in manuscript form were edited, such as Ibn al-Sarrāj’s (d. 316/928) Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī in 1985, and the edition of al-Sīrāfī’s (d. 368/978) commentary on the Kitāb by Ramaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb and Maḥmūd Fahmī Ḥigāzī, which started in 1986, to mention only two of them.

introduction

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At the end of the 20th century, the focus of research in the Arabic grammatical tradition shifted to longer periods. The historical development was outlined in studies like The Arabic linguistic tradition (1990) by Georges Bohas, JeanPatrick Guillaume, and Djamel-Eddine Kouloughli and, for the first period, Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standardization (1990) by Jonathan Owens. Multiple answers have been given concerning the underlying trends of the grammatical tradition through the centuries of its development. The renewed interest in Sībawayhi’s work in the 2010s, as demonstrated by the first three volumes of Foundations of Arabic linguistics appears to be an eternal return to the first source of this tradition. To what deeper trend does this correspond? One might say that by scrutinizing the founding principles of Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, researchers themselves contribute to shaping its history from a different perspective. The tension between continuity and innovation in the history of the Arabic grammatical tradition is a complicated issue, because, to some extent, all later grammarians acknowledge their indebtedness to early grammatical theory, sometimes even to the point of preserving its terminology, while assigning to the inherited terms a different meaning. In other words, the tradition itself tends to emphasize continuities in its development. Centuries of grammatical theories seem, at first sight, to be centuries of continuity and stability. Yet, beneath this stability, there are hidden changes, constant readjustments, imperceptible movements, which the researcher has to learn to discern. The only way to become aware of these imperceptible movements and to grasp the innovations, is by a meticulous study of the concepts and the theories, starting with the first and most authoritative one, the Kitāb. The number of distinguished scholars in the Arabic tradition, who for centuries have scrutinized the work of Sībawayhi in all its aspects, is so large that modern researchers cannot avoid seeing Sībawayhi’s Kitāb through the eyes of his successors. And, if we let ourselves be led uncritically along this path, any chance of perceiving change and transformation in the linguistic theories is doomed to fail. The analysis of Sībawayhi’s Kitāb by meticulous attention to the text is a huge task in itself. The Kitāb employs a mass of concepts that have to be classified and placed in relation to one another in order to form a systematic network. These concepts and systems resonate with those of later grammarians’ theories, with which they must be compared. Only then does one have a chance of seeing significant changes emerge. When linked to their context, these changes allow us to better understand the shifts in language views and to appreciate the impact of the cultural and historical context on Arabic grammar. Continuities and changes through long periods cannot be apprehended without this painstaking labor. Understanding diachrony requires a study of synchrony, as

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already emphasized by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1916 and by Roman Jakobson in 1928 in his address to the Premier Congrès International de Linguistes.2 To this work researchers bring tools that are partly inherited and partly of their own making. Some of these necessarily derive from modern linguistic theories. One cannot take the measure of a theory taking as its object a particular language without reflecting on languages and on the notion of language. More generally, one cannot take the measure of a theory without having other measures to grasp the scope of the theory studied. This necessity explains the continued use of prevailing Western linguistic notions in the study of the major texts of the Arabic tradition. Failing to do so would mean reducing the analysis to a naive literalism, by which a concept is ignored as concept and understood and translated from its current lexical meaning alone. This leads to another possible pitfall, that of rephrasing the theory without understanding its true explanatory power as to the phenomena studied. The principles of Arabic grammatical theories have indisputably gained in intelligibility by being interpreted within a framework of general linguistic principles. Yet, this approach itself brings new dangers, in the first place the teleological trap of precursorism, which regards ancient theories as a prefiguration of modern ones. Old texts are then interpreted exclusively within the framework of modern theories. All that exceeds these theories, is passed over in silence or even condemned as unscientific. A second danger is to identify single notions within the old theory fully with single notions in contemporary linguistics. If the traditional notion corresponds to a universal property of language, it ought to have parallels in more than one modern theory, in different forms and with different names. What is more, the traditional notion could be larger than the modern one. It could have multiple facets, each of which could be compared pertinently with more than one modern theoretical notion. Even such a cautious approach is not always sufficient in the historical analysis, since old grammatical theories may well go beyond the domain of linguistics and form part of the cultural context and the common episteme of the time. To miss such links is tantamount to missing the specificity of the old theory. In short, researchers are forced to forge their own epistemological tools in order to establish networks of notions, to determine cultural influences, to establish continuities or discontinuities, and to study the internal coherence of old theories.

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

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The papers in the present volume are a representative sample of old and new perspectives on the study of the Arabic grammatical tradition. Their central issue is precisely the tension between continuity and innovation in the history of the tradition. Three papers focus on the terminology used by the grammarians, taking as their point of departure a term that is infrequent (or even nonexisting) in early grammar, but more common in later grammar. Aryeh Levin studies the ḥāl al-muqaddara, which as a technical term, does not occur until the 8th/14th century. Yet, the concept of a ḥāl that must be interpreted by the grammarian occurs much earlier, and so does the standard example of this kind of construction, marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘I passed by a man who had a hawk with him, intending to hunt with it tomorrow’, in which the accusative of ṣāʾidan is explained by an underlying meaning muqaddiran al-ṣayda ‘intending to hunt’. This example goes back to Sībawayhi, who uses it, however, in a different context. This example shows how material borrowed from older grammarians may be put to a different use in later grammar. In Haruko 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 in the analysis of expressions of the type ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada ‘Keep away from the lion!’. In Austin’s framework of speech act theory, such an expression would be called a ‘primary performative’. Sakaedani shows that later grammarians borrowed a great deal of their material from Sībawayhi, but added numerous new examples, sometimes shifting their focus to the syntactic features of these expressions. Manuel Sartori investigates the development of the term taḫṣīṣ, usually translated as ‘particularization’ and equated with partial determination. The term is infrequently mentioned in the secondary literature on the Arabic linguistic tradition, and ofen ignored completely. In the first three centuries of the Arabic tradition, taḫṣīṣ is hardly used at all, and it is not until the 4th/10th century that it starts to be used in the work of authors such as Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002) and especially al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078). Sartori traces the evolution of the term and its numerous related or complementary notions, such as tankīr, taʿrīf, tamyīz, tawḍīḥ, making clear that specification and determination are primarily semantic and pragmatic notions, which became much more popular in the literature on ʾuṣūl al-fiqh. Three other papers in the present volume take as their point of departure a grammatical category or topic and investigate how this category is analyzed in the Kitāb and in later grammar. Jean Druel looks into the treatment of the grammar of numerals by three grammarians, Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad, and Ibn al-Sarrāj and compares their approach to later developments of the theory in the work of al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. ca. 700/1300) by exploring the blind spots in each theory. He concludes that whereas the blind spots in earlier grammar

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concerned the presumed consistency and logical coherence in the structure of numeral constructions, al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s blind spot had to do with the axiomatic belief in the native speaker’s competence. Arik Sadan deals with the many variants of deictic elements in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, which, as he demonstrates, belonged to the category of ʾasmāʾ mubhama lit. ‘vague, ambiguous nouns’. One of the interesting aspects of some of the demonstratives is that as non-verbal elements they still exihibit verblike properties, because of their relationship with imperatives meaning ‘see!’ or ‘behold!’. Georgine Ayoub’s paper addresses the thorny question of full (mā yanṣarif ) and partial (mā lā yanṣarif ) inflection as part of a discussion about the relationship between case and reference. This relationship has been studied earlier on from the point of view of the verb’s valency (the assignment of accusative to objects on account of the verb’s semantics), and that of the mubtadaʾ 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 proper names to study the variation in declension when the reference of the noun varies, either referring to a specific individual identified by the listener, or referring to a specific individual not identified by the listener. It turns out that it is not reference that determines ṣarf, i.e. the presence of tanwīn, but the internal criteria of the system of the language within a scale of hierarchies that reminds us of markedness theory.3 The interplay between continuity and innovation is the central issue of two other contributions. Michael Carter takes as his point of departure a list drawn by al-Baṭalyawsī (d. 521/1127) of grammarians’ views on the meaning of the word rubba. The debate about rubba concerned the question of whether it meant ‘how many!’ or ‘how few!’, or perhaps both. Carter’s most interesting conclusion is that al-Baṭalyawsī is almost exclusively interested in the semantic aspect of the matter: apparently, he found the syntactic construction of rubba much less fascinating (or perhaps less problematic). Zeinab Taha looks at the classificatory schemes for verbs in early grammatical theory, specifically in the work of Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj, and compares these schemes with 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 distinguish between the syntactic and the semantic aspects of the relationship between the 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 that is well-known after the classic article by Carter (1983; see also Marogy 2012b).

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Jurjānī, who took into account the meaning of the whole utterance, rather than concentrating exclusively on the verbal element. The relationship between grammar and other disciplines is studied in two papers in the present volume. Ramzi Baalbaki, who recently published an authoritative handbook of Arabic lexicography (Baalbaki 2014), focuses on the differences between the two disciplines of grammar and lexicography. Alhough the two were closely connected and often combined in one person, there are some basic differences. Baalbaki mentions, for instance, the use of Ḥadīṯ material in lexicographical works, which contrasts with the reluctance in grammar to use this material (see also Sadan 2015). Perhaps, the most telling difference was that lexicography was not theory-driven in the way grammar was. As a result, no semantic theories were developed in this discipline, a task left to later theoreticians in ʿilm al-balāġa and ʿilm al-waḍʿ. Manuela Giolfo and Wilfrid Hodges engage in a search for the relationship between logic and grammar. In their contribution they compare the approach of the grammarian al-Sīrāfī and the logician Ibn Sīnā (d. 427/1037) to such topics as negation and definiteness. It should be understood that they do not assume any direct contact or influence between the logician and the grammarian: their aim is to explain the underlying grounds for their views, which include a shared criticism of Peripatetic logic. A major conclusion is that if there was Greek philosophical influence, it may have come to Arabic logic through the linguists rather than the other way round. At any rate, both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā use a linguistic assessment of the data in their analysis of such notions as definiteness and the scope of negation. Finally, two studies are concerned with the pedagogical side of Arabic grammar addressing the question of how students used the grammatical texts in order to learn Arabic. Recent dissertations by Sartori (2013) and Viain (2014) have shown how important the study of the propagation and dispersion of elementary treatises is for understanding the context in which Arabic was studied, showing, among other things, that there was a certain extent of regional diversification in the popularity of the treatises. Viain makes the important observation 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 actually a kind of graduation test, the last treatise to be memorized by those who do not specialize in grammar, but proceed to other disciplines. In the present volume, Almog Kasher deals with pedagogical grammars from an original point of view. He wishes to find out when grammatical doctrine was developed with a special pedagogical purpose, and he does so on the basis of 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

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Jumal, and a few others. He concludes that we may discern a difference between the treatment of these terms in pedagogical and mainstream grammars, up till the 4th/10th century. After this period, grammar went through a phase of canonization, in which the special approach of pedagogical grammar gave way to the mainstream treatment. This means that later pedagogical grammars still differ from the mainstream, but mainly in their structure, rather than their content. Of a more general nature is the study by Kees Versteegh on learning Arabic grammar outside the Arabic-speaking world, in which the later pedagogical treatises play a central role. His paper provides information on the canon of textbooks of Arabic grammar available in different parts of the Islamic world and shows that the curriculum for second language learners of Arabic was remarkably similar to that for native speakers in the Arabicspeaking world. In both cases, memorization served to familiarize students with 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 all over the world still continue to use these methods to learn Arabic. Within the present collection of studies on continuity and innovation in the Arabic linguistic tradition, there is one notion that springs to mind, which binds together the scholarly interests of the contributors, that of (in)definiteness, which is central to at least five of the papers in this volume. The same notion was also discussed in a number of contributions to the first two conferences on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, and it was the central issue of several contributions to the Fourth Foundations of Arabic Linguistics Conference, organized by Manuela Giolfo at the University of Genova in September 2016. The interest in the notions of definiteness and determination is a striking innovation, compared to the scant interest in them in earlier literature. Two early exceptions are Helmut Gätje’s article (1970) on determination and indetermination, and Nadia Anghelescu’s article (1983) on the notions of general and 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 picked up this interest. It is gratifying to see that the present series of conferences has rekindled this topic, contributing in this way to both continuity and innovation in our field. The editors wish to express their thanks to André Miquel for his invaluable help in organizing the Third Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics 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

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Bibliographical References Anghelescu, Nadia. 1983. “Observations sur la genèse de la signification générale et particulière dans une épître de al-Marzuqi”. The history of linguistics in the Near East, ed. by Konrad Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh, 1–12. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Ayoub, Georgine. 2015. “Some aspects of the relation between enunciation and utterance in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb: A modal category, wājib/ġayr wājib”. Marogy and Versteegh (2015:6–35). Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2014. The Arabic lexicographical tradition from the 2nd/8th to the 12th/18th century. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Bohas, Georges and Jean-Patrick Guillaume. 1984. Etude des théories des grammairiens arabes. i. Morphologie et phonologie. Damascus: Institut français de Damas. Bohas, Georges, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel Eddine Kouloughli. 1990. The Arabic linguistic tradition. London and New York: Routledge. Carter, Michael G. 1981. Arab linguistics: An introductory classical text with translation and notes. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Carter, Michael G. 1983. “The use of proper names as a testing device in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb”. The history of linguistics in the Near East, ed. by Konrad Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh, 109–120. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Gätje, Helmut. 1970. “Zum Begriff der Determination und Indetermination im Arabischen”. 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 pratique de la phonologie d’une langue quelconque?”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de 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 and early Arabic grammatical theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Marogy, Amal Elesha. 2012b. “Zayd, ʿAmr and ʿAbdullāhi: Theory of proper names and reference in early Arabic grammatical tradition”. Marogy (2012a:119–134). Marogy, Amal Elesha, and Kees Versteegh, eds. 2015. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission. Leiden: E. Brill. Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The foundations of grammar: An introduction to Medieval Arabic grammatical thought. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Owens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standardization. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Sadan, Arik. 2015. “Sībawayhi’s and later grammarians’ usage of ḥadīṯs as a grammatical tool”. Marogy and Versteegh (2015:171–183). Sartori, Manuel. 2013. Le Šarḥ al-Kāfiyat de Ibn al-Ḥāǧib: Edition critique d’un manuscrit grammatical arabe du viie/xiiie siècle. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Provence.

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Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale, ed. by Charles Bailly and Albert 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 et visée pratique: Enjeux théoriques, polémiques et pédagogiques des modélisations formelles et sémantiques du marquage casuel. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris-3.

Case and Reference The Theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb Georgine Ayoub

In Greco-Latin grammar and in our present general linguistic paradigm, the status of nominal and verbal syntactic declensions is not the same. The nominal declension refers to case, the verbal one to mood. Mood is an enunciative category linking the utterance with the attitude of the speaker and the listener, that is to say with the extralinguistic situation. Case describes the internal relations between the elements of the utterance.1 As we know, in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, and after him, in the Arabic linguistic tradition, the same set of notions, those of the theory of ʿamal, is used to describe formally the way syntactic declension is assigned, regardless of whether it is a mood or a case. Nevertheless, we can argue plausibly that the verb’s syntactic declensions are analyzed in the Kitāb as having a tight link with reference, more precisely with the reference of the verb and of the utterance, through notions like 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 the event expressed by the verb following the fāʾ has effectively taken place, i.e. if this event is factual (qad waqaʿa), there is only one declension possible for the verb: the -u declension (rafʿ). Conversely, if the event is virtual (ġayr wāqiʿ), the declension has to be the -a declension (naṣb): You say ḥasibtu-hu šatama-nī fa-ʾaṯiba ʿalayhi ‘I thought he had insulted me, so that I wanted to leap on him’, if the leap did not take place. This means: ‘If he had insulted me I would have leapt on him’. But if the leap has taken place, there is no other possibility than the rafʿ (wa-taqūlu ḥasibtu-hu šatama-nī fa-ʾaṯiba ʿalay-hi ʾiḏā lam yakun-i l-wuṯūbu wāqiʿan wa-maʿnā-hu ʾan law šatama-nī la-waṯabtu ʿalayhi wa-ʾin kāna l-wuṯūbu qad waqaʿa fa-laysa ʾillā l-rafʿu) Kitāb i, 376.7f.

1 See Chomsky (1981) for a theory of abstract Case and its relation to morphological cases in language; 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).

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

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We have argued elsewhere that waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ, which is always applied to events or actions (ḥadaṯ, fiʿl), can be reasonably translated by the factual/virtual pair of modal studies. The meaning of wājib/ġayr wājib is very close to waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ when it qualifies fiʿl ( fiʿl wājib/ġayr wājib). But when it qualifies kalām (kalām wājib/ġayr wājib), it can be reasonably translated by assertive/non assertive. These categories are general. They apply not only to verbal 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 Kitāb as 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 link between verbal declension and reference in Sībawayhi’s view. That is the case for the action expressed by the verb after ʾan and kay: For the verb which follows them [refers to an action which] does not take place and does not refer to a well-established action in the speech situation (li-ʾanna l-fiʿla baʿdahumā ġayru wāqiʿin wa-laysa fī ḥāli ḥadīṯika fîʿlun ṯābitun). Kitāb i, 366.20–23

If we are correct to assume that the verbal declension is linked with reference,3 the question is: does Sībawayhi link case with reference and if so, how? Several answers could be found in the Kitāb. Some of them have already been explored. A first answer concerns the case of the nouns that are in the first position of the utterance. 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 a mubtadaʾ; or it could be the accusative (an -a declension; naṣb), if the noun is the object of an elided verb, which assigned it its case, if ištiġāl is involved. The crucial point is that, in ambiguous contexts, the choice between the two cases depends on the assertive or non-assertive status of the utterance, in other words it depends on the referential value of the utterance. In interrogation, injunction, order, prohibition, and other forms which are kalām ġayr wājib, the accusative has to be 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 formal ʿāmil, 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 fronted noun in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb depends on the modality of the speech.

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Another important answer concerns the complements of the verb. We know that, in the Kitāb, the verb governs a direct object because of its semantic properties, assigning to it the accusative case.6 This is also the reason why it assigns the accusative to the adverbials of time and place.7 The task of the present study is to investigate a third answer, still unexplored, linking case with reference in the Kitāb, the one provided by the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif, i.e. of fully and partially inflected nouns. As is well known, nouns with three case endings are fully inflected. Nouns which take only two syntactic declensional endings and lack, when non-definite, a distinct genitive form, as well as the ‘syntactically, non-definite’ suffix -n (tanwīn) are partially inflected. For the sake of clarity, I will call ‘non-definite’ a noun bearing the suffix -n, when this noun is out of discourse, as it can be indefinite and inherently definite as well, as will be shown below. I will reserve the term ‘indefinite’ for those contexts in which the noun has indeed an indefinite reference. We shall see below that the question of tanwīn is at the center of the chapter of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb. We have dealt with the question of tanwīn elsewhere, from two distinct points of view, that of modern linguistics (Ayoub 1991, 1996), and that of the Arabic grammatical tradition (Ayoub 2009). However, these analyses have left aside the question of the proper name. The present study, which focuses only on the grammatical tradition, aims to account for the analysis of the Kitāb, and will be carried out on the basis of the relation between case and reference in Sībawayhi’s book. It will largely integrate the question of proper names, which has remained marginal 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 mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif. Although it exhibits a proliferation of morpholog6 The object is literally a ‘thing done’ (mafʿūl). It “is assigned the accusative by the verb because it is a thing done [an object] affected by the act of an agent [a subject]” (intaṣaba zaydun liʾannahu 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 hiya ʾaʿmālun taʿaddāka ʾilā ġayrika wa-tūqiʿuhā bihi; Kitāb ii, 224.14). Nevertheless, the term mafʿūl and the justification of the accusative, which literally refers to the transfer of the action from a certain subject to a certain object, seem in most cases a metonymy where a denomination characterizing some cases, is applied to all the cases. See Levin (1979), who shows that in most cases 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 by metonymy for a lot of cases, its proper use as a semantic term is the main argument presented by Sībawayhi to justify the accusative. The term ʾawqaʿa in particular, which refers to the inscription of an action in the world is, in this respect, very significant. 7 Cf. Ayoub (2010:4f.).

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ical and lexical data, and is often considered to be ‘complex’ in its reasoning, Sībawayhi’s approach through all these chapters can nevertheless be summed up in one question: What kind of declensional and/or morphological variation would 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? For instance, what happens to the words ʾabyaḍ ‘white’, or ʾarbaʿ ‘four’, if they are used as indefinite in an utterance, and what happens if a man is called ʾAbyaḍ or ʾArbaʿ, in which case these words become inherently definite? The general task of these chapters pertains to the interface between morphology on the one hand, and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, on the other hand. In order to define accurately the general principles which give the theory developed by Sībawayhi its conceptual homogeneity, I will seek to answer three questions in what follows: i. ii. iii.

1

According to which criteria is the linguistic unit x selected? Why is the indefinite/inherently definite pair taken as the variation parameter through all the chapters? What is the general structure of these thirty-two chapters?

The Notions of ṣarf and tanwīn

I will start with the third question, after clarifying the terminology. As usual in Sībawayhi’s terminology, mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif functions as an oppositional pair with the same notion having two values, positive and negative. The notion inṣarafa and its derivates inṣirāf and munṣarif are used exclusively for one single syntactic category, that of nouns, and they are introduced as early as the second chapter of the Risāla without any definition, as is often the case in the Kitāb. As for its general lexical meaning in the common language of the 2nd/7th century, inṣarafa is used as the medio-passive of ṣarafa and includes the idea of 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 among its 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 yaṣrifuhu fa-nṣarafa wa-l-ṣarf raddu l-šayʾ ʿan wajhi-hi. The same idea is attested in Kitāb al-ʿayn (vii, 109): ṣayrafiyyāt al-ʾumūr: mutaṣarrifātuhā ʾay tataqallabu bi-l-nās; taṣrīf al-riyāḥ; taṣarrufuhā min wajhin ʾilā wajhin wa-min ḥālin ʾilā ḥālin. The editor of the Kitāb al-ʿayn (vii, 110) adds from al-ʾAzharī’s Tahḏīb: al-ṣarf ʾan taṣrifa ʾinsānān ʿalā wajhin yurīduhu ʾilā maṣrifin ġayri ḏālika.

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ṣarafa and inṣarafa9 are used as early as the Risāla. The verb ṣarafa/yaṣrif has the speaker—hum—as its subject: “Then, they [the speakers] did not fully 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-ʾaklub yanṣarifāni fī l-nakira; Kitāb i, 5.19) In the terminology of the Kitāb, mā yanṣarif seems, at first glance, to designate the property of being fully inflected for a noun, i.e. of having the three cases and the tanwīn. This technical meaning is in accordance with the lexical meaning of the term. Actually, if we consider this lexical meaning, we would expect lā yanṣarif to designate the nouns which are not inflected at all. But this is not the case. In fact, lā yanṣarif refers to partially inflected nouns. This is surprising, since these nouns, which receive two cases only without tanwīn, still change 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 to the Kitāb and which is said to have been conceived by al-Ḫalīl (d. 175/791), the teacher 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 alkalima as ʾijrāʾuhā bi-l-tanwīn, which means “to make the word fully declinable by assigning it the suffix -n after the case marker” (ʿAyn vii, 109).10 Interestingly, the term ʾijrāʾ used in this definition is the causative form of the term used by Sībawayhi in the Kitāb to describe the syntactic variation of the end of the word.11 This common terminology suggests a connection between the Kitāb and the Kitāb al-ʿayn. But it is not only this term that makes this definition significant. Several arguments lead to the conclusion that in the Kitāb, just as this is the case in the definition of the Kitāb al-ʿayn, the denomination yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif only refers to the presence or absence of the tanwīn as a criterion of full or partial declinability, respectively:

9

10 11

According to Troupeau (1976:123f.), ṣarafa, in this morphological meaning, has 192 occurrences in the Kitāb; inṣarafa has 122 occurrences. If we include inṣirāf and munṣarif with inṣarafa, we count 150 occurrences. The Lisān s.v. ṣ-r-f gives exactly the same definition. See for instance Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 1.9f.: hāḏā bābu majārī ʾawāḫiri l-kalimi min al-ʿarabiyyati wa-hiya tajrī ʿalā ṯamāniyati majārin. In the chapters studied in the present article we find ʾinna hāḏā l-miṯāla [i.e. ʾafʿal] mā kāna ʿalayhi min al-waṣfi lam yajri fa-ʾin kāna sman wa-laysa bi-waṣfin jarā (ii, 5.7f.), and in the causative form ʾujriya lafẓuhu (i, 5.12).

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ii.

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in several passages of the Kitāb, tanwīn and ṣarf [yuṣrafū] seem interchangeable, as in the following quotation: “As for [the word] miʿzan (‘goat’), it has only one form [in all dialects]. It takes the tanwīn (tunawwan) 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-laysa fīhā ʾillā luġatun wāḥidatun tunawwanu fī l-nakirati wa-kaḏālika l-ʾarṭā kulluhum yuṣrafu; Kitāb ii, 8.14f.). Conversely, the avoidance of the tanwīn is seen, explicitly and repeatedly in the Kitāb, as the only criterion of mā lā yanṣarif. Several passages state there is no problem, for a partially inflected noun, to be assigned the -i declension of the genitive when the definite article is prefixed to it (alʾabyaḍi), or when it is annexed to a term (ʾabyaḍi l-yadi), because the speakers avoid the tanwīn: “You should know that each partially declinable (lā yanṣarif ) noun is marked [notwithstanding] for the genitive case when it is the first noun of an annexion, or when it is prefixed by the definite article al-. The essential thing for them [the speakers] is to avoid the tanwīn” (wa-ʿlam ʾanna kulla smin lā yanṣarifu fa-ʾinna l-jarra yadḫuluhu ʾiḏā ʾaḍaftahu ʾaw ʾadḫalta ʿalayhi l-ʾalifa wa-l-lāma wa-ḏālika ʾannahum ʾaminū l-tanwīn; Kitāb ii, 13.12f.)

This thesis (ʾaminū l-tanwīn) is asserted in the Risāla as well as in the thirtytwo chapters devoted to declinability. In sum, yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif already has a technical meaning in the Kitāb: only the tanwīn is referred to in this denomination as a criterion of full or restricted syntactic declension. This terminology goes back at least to al-Ḫalīl, and may even be earlier than alḪalīl since Sībawayhi also mentions in these chapters, apart from al-Ḫalīl and Yūnus (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 is criterial, we understand why it is said of the partially inflected noun that it lā yanṣarif, even though it still changes its vowel endings: after all, such a noun never displays tanwīn at its end. On the other hand, the i-declension of the genitive is not selected as a criterion because the partially inflected noun is assigned this declension in some contexts, as we have just seen. As for the nouns that do not change their vowel endings, such as ʾayna, which are called in later grammar mabnī, they are called in the Kitāb (i, 2.18) ʾasmāʾ ġayr mutamakkina. Sībawayhi’s approach, which considers only the criterial feature for the denomination of lā yanṣarif, is slightly different from al-Mubarrad’s definition (Muqtaḍab iii, 309) of lā yanṣarif, which is more descriptive and refers to both characteristics of the partially inflected noun: lā yanṣarif, for him, describes a noun that is not assigned either the -i inflection or the tanwīn (lā yanṣarif ʾay lā yadḫuluhu ḫafḍ wa-lā tanwīn).

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Yet, some of Sībawayhi’s approach seems to have been retained in the later tradition. Versteegh (1995:173) in his commentary on al-Zajjājī’s (d. 340/950) ʾĪḍāḥ observes that “ṣarf and tanwīn are sometimes very close in meaning”. An even later grammarian than al-Zajjājī, al-Širbīnī (11th/17th century), in his commentary on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, speaks of “the noun […] munṣarif ” which “is called munṣarif because it bears the tanwīn al-ṣarf, also known as tanwīn altamkīn” (Carter 1981b:72f.). In sum, if we are correct, yanṣarif, for a noun x, means ‘to bear the tanwīn’ as a criterion of being fully declinable; conversely, lā yanṣarif means ‘not to bear the tanwīn’ as a criterion of being partially declinable.12 The definition of the Kitāb is the same as the one in the Kitāb al-ʿayn. But what is the value of the tanwīn 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 hierarchical organization of grammatical categories, according to which one value of a binary grammatical category is considered to be ‘first’ (ʾawwal) compared to the other. This applies to the noun compared to the verb, indefinite (nakira) to definite (maʿrifa), masculine to feminine, and singular to plural. Consequently, these ‘first’ categories are ‘lighter’ (ʾaḫaff ) and ‘more firmly established’ (ʾašaddu tamakkunan),13 with the tanwīn serving as the sign (ʿalāma) of this tamakkun, 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. Verbs are heavier than nouns because nouns are first and they are more firmly established (ʾašaddu tamakkunan) […] The noun is before the qualifier (ṣifa) and it is before the verb […], the indefinite is lighter for them [the speakers] than the definite and it is more firmly established because the indefinite is first, […] the singular is more firmly established than the plural because the singular is first, […] the masculine is lighter than 12

13

Our conclusion is similar to that of Baalbaki (1979:16), who believes yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif to refer to a restricted aspect of declinability, namely tanwīn, as a criterion of full or partial declinability. We borrow this translation from Carter (2004). We will come back below to the notion of tamakkun, its different translations in the literature and its theoretical meaning, i.e. to what kind of characteristics the notion refers exactly.

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the feminine because the masculine is first and it is more firmly established (wa-ʿlam ʾanna baʿḍa l-kalāmi ʾaṯqalu min baʿḍin fa-l-ʾafʿālu ʾaṯqalu mina l-ʾasmāʾi li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiya l-ʾawwalu wa-hiya ʾašaddu tamakkunan […] al-isma qabla l-ṣifati kamā ʾannahu qabla l-fiʿli […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna lnakirata ʾaḫaffu ʿalayhim min al-maʿrifati wa-hiya ʾašaddu tamakkunan liʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-wāḥida ʾašaddu tamakkunan mina l-jamīʿi li-ʾanna l-wāḥida l-ʾawwalu […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-muḏakkara ʾaḫaffu ʿalayhim mina l-muʾannaṯi li-ʾanna l-muḏakkara ʾawwalu wa-huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan) Kitāb i, 5.8

Linked with these hierarchies, the tanwīn suffix is considered to be the mark of what is the ‘most firmly established’ or the most powerful (al-ʾamkan) and the lightest for them (al-tanwīn ʿalāmatun li-l-ʾamkani ʿindahum wa-l-ʾaḫaffi ʿalayhim; Kitāb i, 6.1). The same statement is repeated several times in the Kitāb: “The tanwīn is the mark of what is firmly established” (al-tanwīn ʿalāmatu l-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 be synonymous in these assertions. These hierarchies were noted first by Baalbaki (1979), and have been discussed extensively in recent literature.14 As we have noted elsewhere (Ayoub 2009:442), there is a hierarchical order between the three notions themselves, tamakkun, ḫiffa/ṯiqal and ʾawwal. Actually, tamakkun and ḫiffa/ṯiqal are, in the passage cited above, a consequence of being ʾawwal.15 For each category, the li-ʾanna statement invokes this status of being ʾawwal: li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiya l-ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna l-muḏakkara ʾawwalu; li-ʾanna lwāḥida l-ʾawwalu. This statement is later made explicitly: “The first is more firmly established for them” ( fa-l-ʾawwal huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahum; Kitāb i, 22.6f.). This means that the status of being ʾawwal will be the fundamental notion to understand. But before we go into this, we need to look at the question of how exactly these hierarchies are linked to the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif.

14 15

See, among other studies, Owens (1988:204–206, 218–220); Carter (2004:65–69); Baalbaki (2008:113ff.), Ayoub (2009), and recently Marogy (2015). We shall not examine the categories ḫiffa/ṯiqal in this study. These notions, closely linked to 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 been deemed “complex and often obscure”16 in their argumentation, and do seem, at first glance, to be difficult to classify and confusingly rich in content, they acquire an immediate intelligibility in the light of these hierarchies. For their first part, the thirty-two chapters are structured in the same order as the hierarchies announced in the Risāla, showing the coherence of the Kitāb. They complete these hierarchies in a second part, adding new categories. The following list presents a rough skeleton of the structure: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi. xii. xiii.

noun/verb/ṣifa masculine/feminine singular/plural actual proper names (foreign names, proper names masc./fem, toponyms, names of tribes, suras) particles as proper names indeclinable locatives (ẓurūf ) as proper names ʿadl (pattern modified from another pattern with the same meaning) demonstratives, relatives and temporal locatives as proper names surnames compound names proper names with final /y/ and /w/ proper names composed of a syllable or a phoneme verbatim quotation (ḥikāya) as a proper name

ch. 285–290 ch. 291–296 ch. 297–299 ch. 300–306 ch. 307 ch. 308 ch. 309 ch. 310–312 ch. 313 ch. 314 ch. 315 ch. 316 ch. 317

Chapters i. to iv. are devoted to three of the grammatical categories mentioned in the hierarchies of the Risāla (syntactic categories, number and gender). Chapters v. to xiii. deal with other linguistic elements, largely in connection with nomination. Following Lyons, we use this term to refer to the act of assigning a name hitherto not assumed (cf. below). These last chapters introduce new priorities expressed in terms of ʾawwal or ʾaṣl. The latter term seems to be synonymous to ʾawwal since ʾaṣl, just like ʾawwal, leads to tamakkun: a morphologically 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; a morphologically regular pattern is ʾaṣl compared to a modified one (maʿdūl).18 Finally, it should be noted that the definite/indefinite category is absent as a particular chapter in the list. The reason for this is simple: this grammatical category structures each chapter, as we shall explain in the next paragraph. The grammatical categories of the Risāla are not the only key to the structure. But the thesis developed in the Risāla regarding hierarchy and tamakkun is repeated at the end of several chapters with the same set of concepts as in the Risāla: mutamakkin/ʾaḫaff /ʾawwal, where ʾawwal, ʾaṣl and qablu are interchangeable: The masculine is first and better established, in the same way that the indefinite is more firmly established than the definite […]. Therefore, the masculine is first and more firmly established. So, for them [i.e. the speakers], the first is more firmly established ( fa-l-taḏkīru ʾawwalu wa-huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan kamā ʾanna l-nakirata ʾašaddu tamakkunan min almaʿrifati […] fa-l-taḏkīru qablu wa-huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahum fa-l-ʾawwalu huwa ʾašaddu tamakkunan ʿindahum). Kitāb ii, 22.6–10

In addition, explicit cross-reference to the Risāla is made, as in the following quotation: “I have explained this question in more detail, at the beginning of the 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 those developed after Sībawayhi.

4

The Notions of Non-definite and Indefinite

As noted above, there is an important point in these thirty-two chapters which deserves attention: the presence of the pair indefinite/inherently definite (nakira/maʿrifa) throughout these chapters, constituting an always relevant pa17

18

Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 46.19–21: laysa šayʾun yajtamiʿu min šayʾayn fa-yujʿalu sman summiya bihi wāḥidun ʾillā lam yuṣraf … li-ʾannahu laysa ʾaṣla bināʾi l-ʾasmāʾ … lam yakun hāḏā l-bināʾu ʾaṣlan wa-lā mutamakkinan. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii 14.9f.: wa-ʾammā ʿumaru wa-zufaru … humā maḥdūdāni ʿani l-bināʾi llaḏī huwa ʾawlā bi-himā wa-huwa bināʾuhumā fī l-ʾaṣli fa-lammā ḫālafā bināʾahumā fī lʾaṣli tarakū ṣarfahumā.

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rameter to test the inṣirāf of the linguistic unit x examined, even though whole sections are devoted, in addition, to actual proper names, i.e. to inherently definite nouns. What exactly does this mean? A first immediate ‘meaning’ is negative: if we have to examine each noun to determine if it is assigned tanwīn, in its definite and indefinite values, this means that for Sībawayhi, tanwīn is not the marker of indefiniteness. Otherwise, the question would engender no debate.19 Indeed, we would say, with modern terminology, that tanwīn is neutral as to definiteness and indefiniteness. This is the reason why the noun suffixed by tanwīn must be considered to be outside of discourse, not indefinite, but non-definite (in fact syntactically non-definite), in the sense that for Sībawayhi, a noun suffixed by -n has in this case both values. For a positive answer to the question, it should be noted that an interesting way 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 these units is studied systematically in the course of one or more chapters, in the light of the definiteness parameter, or, more exactly, its morphological variation is studied systematically in this light. The general question addressed throughout these chapters may be subdivided into two parts. Firstly, if x belongs to the category of nouns, morphosyntactic variation has to do with full or partial declinability resumed by the presence or absence of the tanwīn. What is ʾawwal and consequently mutamakkin bears 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’, such as law), or if the term x is a mere morphological or phonological unit, such as a syllable or a phoneme, it has to go to a wider morphological variation. The rules under debate then are the rules of transposition from one category to another. Actually, the definiteness parameter, as it is linked with nouns, applies in two different orders through the chapters, as a corollary to the kind of reference that the linguistic unit studied has. In chapters examining nouns, the indefinite value of the noun is studied before its definite form, as the indefinite is prior to the definite. But verbs and particles do not refer like nouns do. Phonemes do not refer at all. So all these elements have to be transposed to nouns by nomination. They will be examined, at first, as proper names inherently definite, and 19

As we know, this question is hotly disputed in modern linguistics, a common analysis being that this suffix is the marker of indefiniteness. The same idea is found in some studies analysing tanwīn in the grammarians’ theories, to the extent that it impossible to know whether 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 individuals bearing this name. However, in both cases, the definiteness parameter is the variation parameter adopted. Why is this so? Note that chapters i. to iii. and the definiteness parameter not only link these chapters with the hierarchies indicated in the Risāla, but these grammatical categories are essential, in modern linguistic terms, in building up the reference of a term. The syntactic categories of chapter i. (noun/verb/qualifier), build up a 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 a term 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 ‘virtual reference’.20 When we say ‘table’, we cannot refer to a specific table in the world. It lacks determination. This virtual reference, given in Arabic by the lexical meaning of the root and the pattern of the word, becomes an ‘actual’ or real reference, referring to a real object in the world, when it is actualized totally or partially by the value of different grammatical categories in the discourse: mood, tense for verbs, definiteness, gender, number and case for nouns. This is the difference between ‘table’ and ‘[I see] the table in the hall’. Only ‘the table in 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 nouns are precisely the headings of chapters ii. and iii. (gender and number), but the principal category of this actualization is the parameter determining the examination of the linguistic elements throughout all chapters. It is definiteness. For example, the inherently definite noun, the proper name, is equivalent to a deictic category in the Kitāb. It is fully actualized and has a deictic value. For Sībawayhi, saying zayd is equivalent to saying hāḏā l-rajulu, when the speaker means a specific individual identified by the listener, as we will see below in section 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, namely the 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 two types: on the one hand, there are patterns marked by their structure for the nonʾawwal value of the grammatical category selected: mafāʿil inherently marked

20

The notion of virtual reference, inspired by the work of Bally (1932), was introduced by Milner (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 same status for Sībawayhi as “a morpheme joined to another morpheme, so that they become as if they are one single morpheme” (ismun ḍumma ʾilā smin fa-juʿilā sman wāḥidan; Kitāb ii, 12.19). On the other hand, there are word classes or patterns not marked for any value of the grammatical category examined, such as the first pattern discussed, ʾafʿal, which is not inherently marked for any syntactic category: ʾafʿal can be a verb ʾaḏhab; a substantive ʾarbaʿ; a qualifier ʾaḥmar. The same can be said for some names of tribes, as well as toponyms (e.g. dābiq, minan, hajar) or names of suras, which can be regarded as masculine or feminine. All of these ambiguous items are treated in detail by Sībawayhi. Moreover, the value of each grammatical category of the Risāla hierarchy is first investigated in these chapters in the morphological pattern or the word class, as inherently shown by it. But if patterns in Arabic can be inherently marked for number, gender, and sometimes plural (ʾafʿal for instance is inherently masculine, singular, mafāʿil is inherently plural), definiteness is not inherently marked in the pattern. Only the discourse can distinguish between the definite and indefinite value of a term. This means that, outside of discourse, they are both present. Outside of discourse, kilābun is (syntactically) nondefinite. It can refer to a set of individuals of an undetermined number (a set of dogs) or to a specific individual uniquely identified (a tribe called Kilāb). This is the reason why this parameter is always present in every chapter. Its presence is founded on two implicit postulates: i. outside discourse, every word can have an indefinite or an inherently definite reference; and ii. proper names are inherently definite. The latter postulate is formulated explicitly zayd does not have the same status as [the article] al-. One of the things showing that it does not have the same status as al- is its being inherently definite. It is not rendered definite by some [morpheme] affixed to it or by what it follows it ( fa-laysa zaydun bi-manzilati l-ʾalifi wa-l-lāmi wamimmā yadulluka ʿalā ʾannahu laysa bi-manzilati l-ʾalifi wa-l-lāmi ʾanna-hu maʿrifatun 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 the addressee”. Contrariwise, when a noun is nakira, it refers to “someone among those denoted by this noun, and you do not intend [then] a specific man known to the addressee” (wāḥidun mimmā yaqaʿu ʿalayhi l-ismu lā turīdu rajulan biʿaynihi yaʿrifuhu l-muḫāṭabu; Kitāb i, 187.20–21).

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We may therefore conclude, with respect to our purpose in this study, that by adopting definiteness in these chapters as the main parameter to examine the morpho-phonological variation of a term, but also by considering its syntactic categories and the grammatical categories of number and gender, the Kitāb postulates that tanwīn—and declinability—have something to do, in some way, with reference. But in what way precisely? And can the reference explain all 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, “someone among those denoted by this noun”. But if definiteness is a parameter linked with nouns, the following question may be asked: are elements inherently maʿrifa (i.e., proper names) always nouns? Sībawayhi’s methodology leads him in these chapters to further questions pertaining to what Lyons (1977), and modern linguists studying proper names after him, called ‘nomination’, more precisely performative nomination. With respect to the functions of proper names, Lyons distinguishes between vocative, (performative and didactic) nomination, and reference. For the first two functions, the differences are summarized by Colman (2014:70): With vocatives, prior nomination is assumed: they identify the person addressed by their name; whereas nominations assign identity. Lyon’s performative nomination assigns a name hitherto not assumed while didactic 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 would happen to hundreds of words if they become proper names, being aware that they 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 performative nomination, as nomination produces inherently definite nouns. The following implicit questions are answered: What is the stock of nomination, i.e. the stock from which 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 to attract 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 kind of declensional and morphological changes does it go through? The answer to the first question is simply that the entire language serves as the stock. All syntactic categories can be proper names, even the most implausible 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 as min, etc., as well as utterances like lam yaḍrib. The procedure is not limited to meaningful linguistic units, but even miṯāls, prototypical words invented by the grammarian and not used in speech (later to be called wazn), such as fuʿal, or fuʿūl, ʾafʿal are examined as proper names, as well as any syllable taken from a word (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 this enormous mass of data of highly fictitious names in the Kitāb and assigned them an epistemological function: they are a testing device. They “test noun behaviour”22 for morphological rules. Carter also points out that “nearly all the examples are either attributed to him [al-Ḫalīl] or elicited from him”.23 It should be stressed that nowhere else—in syntax or semantics at least—, does Sibawayhi, by this speculative methodology, approximate the doctrine of his teacher al-Ḫalīl in the Kitāb al-ʿayn as closely as here: just like al-Ḫalīl seeks to cover not only the attested words of the language, but also all virtual words derived by any possible combination of consonants, Sībawayhi’s systematic approach to nomination does not restrict itself to attested proper names, but he seeks to cover all virtual names as well, by studying the possibility of using any linguistic unit of the language as a name. Before examining the grammatical processes that nomination implies, its semantic and referential aspects should be highlighted. This approach implicitly asserts important properties of language. To transform every sound into a name by nomination, is tantamount to asserting that any sound or combination of sounds, even the ones that have no meaning, can be linked to the world immediately. Sounds can become instantly referential when used as the name of a specific, uniquely identified individual.24 This approach by itself offers a masterful way to link language and reference, as well as linking syntactic declensions to reference and pragmatics. So, what is the reference of proper names, according to the Kitāb? 22 23 24

Carter (1981a:115). Carter (1981a:116). A similar thesis exists in modern linguistics, cf. Wilmet (1995:5): “La dénomination propre attache un signifié à un référent”.

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Proper Names Have Actual Reference. Do They Have Lexical Meaning?

As Langendonck (2007:20) notes, the referential and the semantic status of proper names has been for the last century “a question of hot debate”: in what way do proper names refer? Do proper names have lexical meaning or only pragmatic meaning or both?25 Sībawayhi’s Kitāb seems to have addressed this fundamental problem. Its approach, assuming that any sound of the language could be a proper name, may suggest that proper names have no lexical meaning. This does not seem to be the case. What the Kitāb explicitly asserts is that a proper name has no predicative meaning which would permit it to be an attribute (lā yakūnu ṣifatan): a proper name cannot be a ṣifa since it is not a quality (ḥilya), like al-tawīl, a relational noun denoting relationship (qarāba), like ʾaḫūka, or a deictic demonstrative (mubham), like hāḏā.26 It is uniquely identified by the speaker and the listener by a general ‘meaning’ added to pragmatic criteria: When you say hāḏā zaydun ‘This is Zayd’, zaydun is the denomination of what you are referring to when you say hāḏā l-rajulu ‘this man’, if you intend an individual (šayʾ) itself, whom the interlocutor knows by his qualities or by something heard about him, which singles him out from among all the persons the interlocutor knows (ʾiḏā qulta hāḏā zaydun fazaydun ismun li-maʿnā qawli-ka hāḏā l-rajulu ʾiḏā ʾaradta šayʾan bi-ʿaynihi qad ʿarafahu l-muḫāṭabu bi-ḥilyatihi ʾaw bi-ʾamrin qad balaġahu ʿanhu qad iḫtaṣṣa bihi dūna man yaʿrifu) Kitāb i, 224f.

25

26

Cf. Langendonck (2007:23): “Mill accorded denotation (referential status) to proper names, but no lexical meaning, and Frege also assigned a Sinn, which seems to comprehend both lexical and associative (pragmatic) meaning. Husserl argued for a one-toone correspondence between extension (reference) and intension (meaning). For Russell, Wittgenstein and Searle, proper names could not be understood or retrieved without some description(s). Then come Kripke and Donnellan with their radical view that proper names function without any contribution of meaning or descriptions, in whatever way these are to be understood”. See also Wilmet (1995). 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 be referential 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 demonstrative: saying zayd is equivalent to saying ‘this man’. But with this deictic reference, there is some ‘description’ involved, description resulting from pragmatic 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 the element x, we are introduced, as Carter (1981a) points out, to the entire set of morphological rules: triliteralism, nominal and verbal patterns, the status of nominal and verbal affixes, and so on. According to Carter (1981a), the function of this approach, as noted above, is to use proper names as a testing device to check the validity of the rules. But to use proper names as a testing device presupposes knowing exactly what a proper name means: 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 proper names.28 Moreover, to use proper names as a testing device to check the validity of the rules works indeed for real names. The grammarian can verify if his rules generate the right form of the proper name in actual use. But this is less valid for fictitious names. For these names, usage cannot serve as a test of the validity of the rules. Accordingly, a different function of Sībawayhi’s approach seems to use the morphological and phonological rules to determine the rules of transposition from one category or word class to another, that of proper names, which is what the heading of ch. 310 literally says: “This is the chapter of the modifications the demonstratives go through if they become proper names” (hāḏā bābu taġyīri l-ʾasmāʾi l-mubhamati ʾiḏā ṣārat ʿalāmāt ḫāṣṣa).29 Numerous other chapters are devoted to rules of transposition, from a 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 28

29

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. This statement is similar to that by Carter (1981a:110): “Both he [Sībawayhi] and al-Ḫalīl make such a self-conscious and technically fruitful use of proper names that we cannot doubt that they fully understood the peculiar status of proper names.” Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.

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have hardly discussed the status of proper names, or, more generally, the socalled transposition of word classes”. In the light of these chapters, we can say that by and large in the 2nd/8th century, these questions were discussed in the Kitāb. 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 like a noun. This may seem to be evident to us, after more than 1,200 years of grammatical tradition. But it is not, as there is at least one alternative choice possible: a proper name could retain its original status, remain a sentence, a syllable, or a phoneme, and behave in accordance with this status, without any sound change, since it is possible for proper names not to have a lexical meaning. Indeed, all proper names are transposed as nouns, according to the 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 produces some 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 is surprising because yā l-rajulu is not possible in Arabic. This vocative proves that 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 to determine when the proper name has to be a verbatim quotation,30 and when it has to be declined. Al-Ḫalīl determined the case of verbatim quotations in terms of the theory of ‘government’ or ‘operation’ (ʿamal) with a very general rule that ultimately pertained to the principle of locality in the application of rules.31 In general linguistics, this principle asserts that the application of rules involving two elements in the same minimal domain (a ‘local’ domain, such as a minimal sentence) takes precedence over rules that imply distant elements. Sībawayhi, following al-Ḫalīl, asserts that no sequence of words linked by relations of ʿamal, which are by definition relations between elements in a minimal domain, changes its form when used as a proper name. In modern linguistic terms, one might say that relations of locality inside the name have precedence on any other relations of ʿamal involving the sentence where this name is mentioned:

30 31

Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.18: al-ḥikāyatu llatī lā tuġayyaru fīhā l-ʾasmāʾu ʿan ḥālihā fī l-kalām. The principle of locality is an important notion in Generative Grammar. In this framework, the ‘local’ or minimal domain that constrains the application of rules for a category x is generally constituted by the minimal sentence containing x and the governor of x. See Chomsky (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 they say ‘This is Baraqa naḥruhu [‘His chest gleaned’],32 and ‘I saw Baraqa naḥruhu’. [All] this does not change the form it had before becoming a name […] and so it is for everything in which one term is already operating syntactically on the other (wa-ḏālika qawlu l-ʿArabi fī rajulin yusammā taʾabbaṭa šarran hāḏā taʾabbaṭa šarran wa-qālū hāḏā baraqa naḥruhu waraʾaytu baraqa naḥruhu fa-hāḏā lā yataġayyaru ʿan ḥālihi llatī kāna ʿalayhā qabla ʾan yakūna sman […] wa-kullu šayʾin ʿamila baʿḍuhu fī baʿḍin fahuwa ʿalā hāḏihi l-ḥāl) Kitāb ii, 59.18

The exercise of trying to know what happens in others cases, which seems to be an academic or pedagogical exercise, is in fact of great heuristic value: it is really an investigation of rules of transposition to names, which determine what happens to a sound, an expression, an utterance, a word, a verb, when it becomes a noun. What happens next, when it becomes a name, in other words a noun whose reference is uniquely identified? Let us take an example to illustrate what is involved in the debate. If you wish to call a man by the consonant ḍ of ḍaraba, the ḍ of ḍirābi, or the ḍ of ḍuḥan, what do you have to do? Sībawayhi gives us the answer of al-Ḫalīl: your man will be called ḍāʾun, ḍuwwun, ḍiyyun, respectively.33 But, first, Sībawayhi gives us the rules involved.34 Since names are nouns, you start by transforming the phoneme into a nominal stem. There are no nouns of less than three consonants,35 therefore the resulting noun has its second and third consonant elided. These second and third consonants must be a /y/ or /w/, as those are the consonants that can be elided.36 Taking into account the vowel /a/ after the /ḍ/ in ḍaraba, you twice add 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 prior to feminine and more powerful, it receives declension. Eventually, your man

32 33

34 35 36 37

The translation of the two proper names is borrowed from Carter (1981a:115). Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.14–16 wa-ʾin sammayta rajulan bi-l-ḍādi min ḍaraba qulta ḍāʾun wa-ʾin sammaytahu bihā min ḍirābi qulta ḍiyyun wa-ʾin sammaytahu bihā min ḍuḥan qulta ḍuwwun wa-kaḏālika hāḏā l-bābu kulluhu. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57f. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57.15 laysa fī l-dunyā smun ʾaqallu ʿadadan min smin ʿalā ṯalāṯati ʾaḥrufin. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 57.17–19. 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 ḍiyyun for similar reasons. And if you wish to call him with the ḍ of ḍuḥan, you say ḍuwwun, again for similar reasons.38 The investigation addresses questions in a systematic fashion. When I call someone rajulāni, do I say hāḏā rajulānu or hāḏā rajulāni? And when I call him ṯamma or lā or law, do I say hāḏā ṯamma or hāḏā ṯammun, hāḏā law or hāḏā lawwun? The investigation of the rules of transposition does not limit itself to only one 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 from x to a proper name, and then to a common name (s3), as in the case of yazīd (as a verb: s1) to Yazīd as a proper name (s2), referring to a person uniquely identified, and then to Yazīd, as referring to a class of persons whose name 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 partially declined, as its form resembles that of a verb (ʾaḥmar is like ʾaḏhab) and it is a qualifier (ṣifa), qualifiers being less powerful and less well-established than nouns. In s2, ʾAḥmar, which becomes a proper name, retains partial declension since definite is less powerful than indefinite. And in s3, ʾaḥmar also retains its partial declension: jāʾa ʾaḥmaru wa-ʾaḥmaru ʾāḫaru ‘ʾAḥmar came, and then another [person called] ʾAḥmar’. Contrariwise, ʾafʿal minka is fully inflected in s3 and behaves differently from ʾaḥmar, if minka is omitted from the name. One has to say jāʾa ʾAkbaru wa-ʾAkbarun ʾāḫaru ‘ʾAkbar came, and then another [person called] ʾAkbar’, since declension depends on the history of the category. According to Sībawayhi, it is not ʾakbar which is a ṣifa but ʾakbar 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 and when it is indefinite, referring to a class of proper names, it remains partially declined, since it returns to its first state s1.40 We suppose that this difference between 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. In this case, it is accompanied by an—explicit or implicit—minka. It needs min to express the comparison of the quality. Otherwise it is used as the first term of a qualificative annexion, or with the article. In these two cases, it is fully

38 39 40

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

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

8

Regularities and Analogies in Grammar

The analyses mentioned in the preceding section, which are founded on rules obtained by analogy, raise heuristic questions. Inevitably, they raise the question of what is regularity in grammar and how to deduce analogies. Let us return to the proper names constructed with ḍ (ḍāʾun; ḍiyyun; ḍuwwun). Actually, the rules that give these names follow al-Ḫalīl’s theory (wa-hāḏā qiyāsu qawli l-Ḫalīl; Kitāb ii, 59.16). But other grammarians make another first hypothesis, restituting the consonant, and not only the vowel after ḍ (wa-man ḫālafahu radda l-ḥarfa llaḏī yalīhi; Kitāb ii, 59.16f.). This results in totally different proper names, presumably ḍarun; ḍirun; ḍuḥun. Divergent analogies are also the heart of a debate between Yūnus and alḪalīl in ch. 315, in which Sībawayhi reports Yūnus’ views to al-Ḫalīl. The question 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 it consisted of three sound radical consonants. The analogy for him is inside the category of the (inherently) definite and it goes from the definite sound form to the definite weak form, from fawāʿil with sound consonants to fawāʿil with a weak final consonant.42 One says fawāʿila in the accusative and the genitive, 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 say marartu bi-jawāriya, when a woman is called jawārin. In other words, Yūnus’ view restores the diptotic pattern in jawārin as a proper name, disregarding the fact that jawārin as a common noun, although it has the pattern jawāriyu, has a genitive jawāriyin > jawārin. These relations may be represented as follows:

41 42

Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 4f. fa-ʾin sammaytahu ʾafḍala minka lam taṣrifhu ʿalā ḥālin. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 53.13 ʾammā Yūnus fa-kāna yanẓuru ʾilā kulli šayʾin min hāḏā ʾiḏā kāna maʿrifatan kayfa ḥālu naẓīrihi min ġayri l-muʿtalli maʿrifatan.

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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 status with its final /y/, setting up the analogy inside the category of the weak nouns, and going from the indefinite to the definite. Since the common noun is jawārin (marartu bi- jawārin), when a woman is called jawārin, one should also say marartu 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 semantic and referential (definiteness). For al-Ḫalīl, the prior category is morphophonological (noun with a final glide), as the rule discussed is a morphosyntactic one. This debate proves that there are no grammatical (morphosyntactic) properties that could be said to be unique to proper names, at least according to the Kitāb. 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 not imply, by their referential status, a unique and exclusive grammatical behavior or case behavior. Some proper names have a particular behavior they share with 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 this particular grammatical behavior? In sum, if the reference of nouns, through the parameter of definiteness, is the key to understand the debate of these thirty-two chapters, and to understand why some grammatical categories (such as syntactic categories, number, gender, and definiteness, proper names being included in this last category), but not others, are selected to be examined, reference, whether virtual or actual, does not directly provide the key to the morphosyntactic behavior 43

Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 52.18f. huwa fī ḥāli l-jarri wa-l-rafʿi bi-manzilatihi qabla ʾan yakūna sman wa-law kāna min šaʾnihim ʾan yadaʿū ṣarfahu fī l-maʿrifati la-tarakū ṣarfahu qabla ʾan yakūna maʿrifatan. Actually, as Kees Versteegh pointed out to me, the ending -n in this class of words is not an ordinary tanwīn but a compensatory tanwīn. This is the analysis of 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 to override the special rules for words in -iyun.

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of nouns known as mā lā yanṣarif. Actually, mā lā yanṣarif includes at least two opposite types of nouns in terms of reference: nouns referring to the best known and identified individual for the speaker and the listener, the proper name, on the one hand, and nouns referring to the most unidentified specific individual, “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 of tanwīn, 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; Kitāb ii, 157).

9

Tamakkun

Tamakkun is a rather well-known category in the literature. Though well studied, this notion has been interpreted differently by researchers.44 For the purpose of the present article, namely the relation between case and reference, we will focus on certain distinctive properties of the notion in the Kitāb, that makes its acceptation different from the one developed in the later tradition. The word, as we know, refers to both power and space: tamakkana min X means ‘to become possessed of mastery’,45 or ‘power, strength, proficiency, over a thing’; tamakkana bi- X means also ‘to become settled, established in a place’. Is the first acceptation a figurative meaning, obtained by metaphor from the second one? In the Classical Arabic dictionaries, only the first acceptation

44

45

Baalbaki (1979:16, 2008:113) translates tamakkun in the Kitāb as ‘declinability’, ʿadam tamakkun as ‘indeclinability’, and ʾašadd tamakkun as ‘more declinable’ (2008:118). Owens (1988:134ff.) studied this notion together with other notions that have been connected with it throughout the tradition. Although he deals with the general model rather than with 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, and Carter (2004:115) translate tamakkun with ‘flexibility’. We will come back to this translation below. We have studied this notion in its relation with tanwīn briefly in Ayoub (1996) and in 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 also Chairet (2000) and finally, see Talmon (2003:287f.) who surveys in a note all the different translations of this notion in the Arabist literature. 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 seme of 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 mutamakkin, but unlike munṣarif/ġayr munṣarif, mutamakkin admits degrees and comparison, as noted by Owens (1988:134). This comparison would be positive: x is more mutamakkin (ʾašaddu tamakkunan) than y. For instance, nouns are more mutamakkin than verbs, as we hve seen above;47 temporal adverbials are more mutamakkin than spatial ones.48 The comparison could be negative as well (Kitāb i, 28.7): “mā ʾaḥsana ʿabdallāhi ‘how good ʿAbdallāh is!’ functions as a verb although it is not as mutamakkin as the verb” (mā ʾaḥsana ʿabdallāhi yajrī majrā l-fiʿli wa-lam yatamakkan tamakkunahu). As already noted,49 there is a difference between the acceptation of tamakkun in Sībawayhi and in late grammatical treatises. In late grammarians’ work, tamakkun means declinability, ġayr mutamakkin being at that point equivalent to mabnī, that is to say uninflected or invariable in case form. So it is for alʾAstarābāḏī (d. 686/1287), who claims (Šarḥ i, 13) that tamakkun designates the mere fact that the noun is declinable (kawnu l-ismi muʿraban). But it is difficult to assume that tamakkun in the Kitāb means declinability, for both indeclinable nouns (ʾayna, matā, etc.) and partially declinable nouns (dajājatu as the proper name of a man) are described as lā yatamakkan: “ʾayna, matā, kayfa, ḥayṯu, and similar words do not have a diminutive form […]. These nouns are not firmly established” (wa-lā yuḥaqqaru ʾayna wa-matā wa-lā kayfa wa-lā ḥayṯu wa-naḥwuhunna […] wa-laysat ʾasmāʾa tamakkanu; Kitāb ii, 137.18–20).

46

47 48 49

The word is absent from the Kitāb al- ʿayn. Ibn Durayd ( Jamhara 983) gives only tamakkana minhu. Lisān presents incidentally tamakkana bi-l-makān but underlines tamakkana minhu. As for the later grammarians, Ibn Yaʿīš (Šarḥ ix, 30), for instance, associates tanwīn al-tamakkun once with makāna ‘high rank or standing, an honorable place in the estimation of a king’ (makāna min al-ṣultān), and then with makān: al-dāllu ʿalā-lmakānati ʾay ʾanna-hu bāqin ʿalā makāni-hi mina l-ismiyyati. Recent studies by Arabists have argued for a reinterpretation of the relation between makān and tamakkana (see Larcher 1999:108). Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 5.8 fa-l-ʾafʿālu ʾaṯqalu mina l-ʾasmāʾi li-ʾanna l-ʾasmāʾa hiya l-ʾawwalu wahiya ʾašaddu tamakkunan. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7: wa-ʿlam ʾanna ẓurūfa l-dahri ʾašaddu tamakkunan fī l-ʾasmāʾi min al-ʾamākini. Cf. Chairet (2000:218), Danecki (2009:431f.), Ayoub (2009:442 f.).

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Likewise, Sībawayhi says: “Any noun not firmly established cannot bear the tanwīn when it is definite; it bears it when it is indefinite” (kullu smin laysa yatamakkanu 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 take a few examples, in all the following contexts, tamakkun cannot be translated at all by declinability: ġayr, which is fully declinable, is nevertheless ġayr mutamakkin.51 Temporal adverbials (ẓurūf al-dahr) are more mutamakkin than spatial ones, as we have seen above,52 but some of them are fully declinable and some indeclinable. Lāta resembles laysa, but does not have the same tamakkun, while both of them are indeclinable.53 Thus, the notion of tamakkun is wider than declinability in the Kitāb. In syntax and semantics, it affects all the basic word classes and grammatical categories. Besides this usage, tamakkun is a notion used in morphology and phonology as well. It applies to all the basic units of grammar. The following list is far from being exhaustive: – the triliteral consonantal root is mutamakkin in the language, as if this root were ‘the first’ (kaʾannahu huwa l-ʾawwalu; Kitāb ii, 336 f.). In this context, mutamakkin seems to mean ‘the most frequent in the language’ (ʾakṯar alkalām).54 – similarly, the semi-consonants /w/, /y/ and the long vowel /ā/ (represented by the ʾalif ) are mutamakkin fī l-kalām (Kitāb ii, 384.4). The criteria here are the frequency and the multiplicity of their phonological and morphosyn50

51 52 53 54

At first sight, Sībawayhi’s reasoning seems very strange in this last quotation; it presents a generalization that seems to be the opposite of what we know from the later tradition about the partially declinable nouns. We know that these nouns are partially declinable if 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 Sībawayhi, when he says definite, always means ‘inherently definite’. A simple illustration of his generalization is presented by the nouns to which -at is suffixed. As this suffix is a marker of feminine gender, and, as feminine is not powerful like masculine, every noun which has this -at, like dajāj-at or qarqar-at, will be fully declinable when indefinite (dajājatun, qarqaratun) and will be partially declinable if a man is called like that (dajājatu, qarqaratu). Cf. Kitāb ii, 12f. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 138.4: ġayr ʾayḍan laysa bi-smin mutamakkinin. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 22.3–5. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 336f. wa-ʾammā mā jāʾa ʿalā ṯalāṯati ʾaḥrufin fa-huwa ʾakṯaru lkalāmi fī kulli šayʾin min al-ʾasmāʾi wa-l-ʾafʿāli wa-ġayrihimā […] wa-ḏālika kaʾannahu huwa l-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 a marker of the feminine, /y/ is an augment in diminutives and ʾiḍāfa, etc. – the amṯila ‘patterns’ of morphology themselves could be mutamakkin for some category, for instance fiʿāli, which is mutamakkin in words whose root does 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. In the following quotation, the Arabicized words, lijām ‘bridle’ and dībāj ‘silk brocade’ are said to be firmly established in the discourse (tamakkana fī lkalāmi) because they perform one of the referential properties of nouns, to be definite and indefinite: Any foreign noun which is Arabicized and which becomes firmly established in the discourse, bearing the definite article al- and being indefinite, will have the tanwīn if it becomes a proper name for a man […], such as al-lijām and al-dībāj (ʾinna kulla smin ʾaʿjamiyyin ʾuʿriba wa-tamakkana fī l-kalāmi fa-daḫalathu l-ʾalifu wa-l-lāmu wa-ṣāra nakiratan, fa-ʾinnaka ʾiḏā sammayta bihi rajulan ṣaraftahu […] naḥwu l-lijāmi wa-l-dībāji). Kitāb ii, 18f.

Along the same lines, the noun ġayr, mentioned above, is not mutamakkin since it is always indefinite in its interpretation. It cannot be pluralized and does not accept the definite article prefix al-.56 The words ʾayna, matā, kayfa, ḥayṯu are not mutamakkin, either, since they cannot be definite, do not receive the 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 wider and more precise referential applicability than for nouns that can only be definite or indefinite. For Sībawayhi, this is a sign of tamakkun. It is interesting to compare this argument with the one presented by al-Zajjājī, two centuries

55 56 57

Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 191.2: fiʿāl […] mutamakkinatun fī ġayri l-muʿtalli. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb, ii, 138.4. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb, ii, 137.18.

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later, and attributed by him to the Basran school. This argument was meant to justify flexibility within the category of nouns itself. Indefinite nouns, says al-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 an individual from among the other individuals who share the same name” (Versteegh 1995:177). The argument seems to relate to the process of cognition—the effort to identify the referent. More generally, the definite nouns, as noted by Versteegh (1995:179), are seen to be heavier than the indefinite, because they are “more restricted in their referential applicability and, hence, in their flexibility”. Although the arguments of the Kitāb and of the ‘Basrans’ seem very similar, Sībawayhi’s argument is different in scope: it is the ability of the noun to be definite and indefinite, i.e. to adapt to the different needs of communication, that makes it mutamakkin. But tamakkun is not limited to reference only, and it is not only a morphosyntactic notion like munṣarif/ġayr munṣarif, either. When applied to parts of speech, its comprehension is complex and involves the syntactic, semantic, morphological and phonological properties of the syntactic category examined. In more than one context, ḫiffa and tamakkun seem synonymous as they indicate this same grammatical property of an element, its ability to perform all the properties expected of the syntactic category. These properties are presented as mawāḍiʿ, i.e. functions or grammatical contexts. For instance, the ʾalif al-waṣl in the nouns ʾaym and ʾaymun, which enter in the oath formula ʾaymu llāh and ʾaymun llāh, is prefixed to a noun less mutamakkin than ibn or ism because it is used in only one context, i.e. the context of oath (wa-ʾinnamā hiya fī smin lā yustaʿmalu ʾillā fī mawḍiʿin wāḥidin; Kitāb ii, 296.16–19).58 The same relation is found between tamakkun and the restriction of mawāḍiʿ in the analysis of the interrogative pronouns matā, ʾayna, etc.: “They are not nouns that are firmly 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 established in discourse. They have limited grammatical functions in discourse” (ḥurūfun lam tatamakkan fī l-kalām ʾinnamā lahā mawāḍiʿu talzamuhā fī l-kalāmi; Kitāb i, 250.15).

58

Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 296.16–19: al-ʾalifu llatī fī ‘aym’ wa-‘aymun’ lammā kānat fī smin lā yatamakkan 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 syntax and semantics, nouns are more mutamakkin than verbs but they are also lighter as they have a wider syntactic distribution and wider referential properties: to make an utterance, a verb needs a noun, but a noun does not need a verb.59 If temporal adverbials (ẓurūf al-dahr) are more mutamakkin than spatial ones, this is because of their ability to have different grammatical functions: in addition to their circumstantial function, they may be subject and object, and so on.60 Thus, their wider syntactic distribution, linked to their referential properties, is the criterion of their tamakkun. If lāta is less mutamakkin than laysa, this is because laysa has a personal inflection marking the speaker and the addressee, and you can use laysa to inform about someone who is absent from the situation of enunciation. So you can ‘build’ it on a mubtadaʾ as in ʿabdullāhi laysa ḏāhiban ‘ʿAbdallāh is not going’. It is not the same for lāta which is 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 syntactic functions. Its referential and semantic functions can also be restricted and it does not necessarily admit all the morphological derivations of the noun. This is the case of the noun ġayr, the interrogative pronouns ʾayna, matā and kayfa already mentioned. The noun ġayr is always indefinite in its interpretation; 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 do not accept the morphology of diminutives; they cannot be qualified, and they do not accept the definite article prefix al-(Kitāb ii, 137.18). These examples and many others link tamakkun with an underlying theory of syntactic categories. These syntactic categories are not a monolithic block: they are constituted by a conjunction of referential, semantic, syntactic, morphological, and phonetic properties. It is this conception which makes it possible to set up an analogy, one category resembling another by one property and not resembling it by another property. It is this conception, too, which is at the origin of the tamakkun. The more an element x performs these properties or these mawāḍiʿ, the more it is mutamakkin. Conversely, less a term performs these properties and is restricted in its properties, less it is mutamakkin. The notion of tamakkun refers to mobility in syntactic position, semantic mobility, morphological flexibility, and wide referential capability. These prop-

59 60

As noted by Versteegh (1995:137), the same argument is used by al-Zajjājī in the discussion about the lightness of the nouns as compared to the heaviness of the verbs. Cf. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 177.7.

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erties constitute, in fact, flexibility, but the kind of flexibility that ultimately allows what modern linguists interested in language activity and cognition consider to be one of the most important properties of language, its malleability or its plasticity, which permits communication, adjustment, and correction, both integral parts of language activity.61 The more flexible a word is, i.e. the more taṣarruf it has, the lighter it is, and the more it allows communication and adjustment. Some modern linguistic theories study this plasticity mostly in the lexicon, but it is not implausible to consider that what Sībawayhi points out as the tamakkun of linguistic terms falls 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 in Howell’s Grammar of the Classical Arabic language to translate the term taṣarruf and ʿadam taṣarruf in morphology, phonology, and syntax.62 It was taken up by Baalbaki (1979:16, 18) following Howell, for taṣarruf. Baalbaki points out that taṣarruf and tamakkun are sometimes synonymous in the Kitāb. The two terms taṣarruf and tamakkun come, indeed, very close to each other semantically, and they refer to the same properties. Sometimes the two terms seems to be interchangeable in the Kitāb, as in the following quotation, the second part of which we have cited above: ḥayṯu wa-ʾayna lā yataṣarrafāni taṣarrufa taḥtaka wa-ḫalfaka […] ġayra ʾannahumā ḥurūfun lam tatamakkan fī l-kalām (Kitāb i, 250.15). So, taṣarruf is a general concept in grammar, and has to be distinguished carefully from yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif, which is only a morpho-syntactic notion, limited in its applicability to nouns. It is also the notion of flexibility which was chosen by Versteegh (1995:179) to translate tamakkun.63 The theoretical notions of plasticity and flexibility were taken up by Chairet (2000:217f.) to 61

62 63

See for instance Antoine Culioli’s theoretical frame who developed a theory of malleability of human language founded on the lexicon and the usage. This theory is different from what we are discussing here, but emphasizes the same properties, as we can see in the following quotation: “Stability should not be confused with rigidity or immutability. Linguistic phenomena form dynamic systems which are regular but which have a margin of variation due to a great variety of factors: they are phenomena which are both stable and malleable […] Deformation is a transformation that modifies a configuration so that some properties remain invariant throughout while others vary. In order for there to be deformability, there has to be a schematic form (such that there may be both modification and invariance), and deforming factors as well as a margin of flexibility” (translated from Culioli 1990:129f., in French-English glossary of linguistic terms). See Howell (1883, Part i, xxxviii, lii) and the index of Howell (1911, iv, Part 2, xxxviii), for the occurrences of plasticity/aplasticity in the grammar. And accessory ‘mobility’ (Versteegh 1995:174).

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translate tamakkun. Carter (2004:115) adopts for tamakkun the notion of flexibility, 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 and yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb. Tamakkun, just like taṣarruf, designates a general property of the language, its flexibility and ultimately its plasticity, as realized by some of its elements. Yanṣarif/lā yanṣarif is a morphosyntactic property referring to declinability, summarized by the presence or the absence of the tanwīn. But tanwīn is the sign of tamakkun, in other words of the general property as it applies to nouns. It is not only a morphosyntactic property of nouns. 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 the plasticity of nouns, when this property is fully achieved by the noun. As we have observed above, the reason why a linguistic element x is mutamakkin is the fact that it is ʾawwal. The li-ʾanna statement of tamakkun invokes this status of ʾawwal for more than one category, as this quotation, translated above, reminds us (Kitāb ii, 22.6–10): wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-nakirata […]ʾašaddu tamakkunan li-ʾanna l-nakirata ʾawwalu […] wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-wāḥida ʾašaddu tamakkunan mina l-jamīʿi li-ʾanna l-wāḥida l-ʾawwalu […]. Thus, the plasticity of nouns is due to the fact that nouns are ʾawwal. But what about ʾawwal? What exactly does this notion mean?

11

The Notion of ʾawwal

So far we have studied grammatical categories, their relations to the theory of declinability and nomination, their role in the construction of reference, while attempting to see the link between case and reference. But ʾawwal seems to pertain to a hierarchy inside the language rather than to its relation to the world. What is the property of language behind it? It would be very delicate to assimilate completely such a general notion as ʾawwal to only one contemporary theoretical notion. This would be difficult for several reasons: first, if this notion really corresponds to a universal property of language, it will be noted by more than one modern theory. We know, indeed, that the notion of hierarchy as a universal property of language is present under different forms in many contemporary syntactic and lexical models and linguistic theories. The second reason is that general notions have multiple facets, and may be compared to more than one model; besides, some of its aspects may be compared to a specific notion of one model, and other aspects to another notion 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 out by Owens (1988:199–226) and helps to understand it. When we take a look at the list of categories that Owens (1988:209) established on the basis of Sībawayhi’s Risāla and completed from the works of later grammarians, we find that in each oppositional pair, regarded as ʾaṣl and farʿ in the work of later grammarians, only the first term is called ʾawwal by Sībawayhi:

ʾaṣl

farʿ

noun noun indefinite masculine singular Arabic names simple regular

verb ṣifa definite feminine plural foreign names compound [morphologically] modified pattern without change of meaning (ʿadl)

The first striking observation is that the selected categories of this table, if they seem more complete than the categories involved in the hierarchies of the Kitāb’s Risāla, match the headings of the chapters of the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif in the Kitāb as seen above. Not only are the grammatical categories selected with their oppositional pairs the same, but the correlation between the non-ʾawwal/non-ʾaṣl status of a category and restrictions of distribution are also the same. This means that the later grammarians identified their categories on the basis of an in-depth study of the structure of the chapters of the Kitāb, especially those dealing with mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif. What reinforces this hypothesis is that, first, the terminology of Sībawayhi (ʾawwal, qabl) sometimes reappears in the writings of the later grammarians,64 and, secondly, the most important domain dealt with by this theory, is the question of declinability of nouns and verbs, i.e. the issue for which these categories with their hierarchies are developed in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. Owens (1988) correlates the ʾaṣl/farʿ distinction and the hierarchies of the Kitāb’s Risāla with the categories unmarked/marked in modern linguistics, as described by Greenberg (1966). The theory of markedness, developed in the

64

Cf. Owens (1988:204f.).

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realm of phonology and morphology by structuralism, considers that between two members of an oppositional pair, one of them is more basic, or unmarked, on the basis of different types of characteristics, morphological, phonological or syntactic. These characteristics can be summarized by a wider syntactic distribution, a wider development of morphological forms, a higher degree of irregularity. Without going into the details of the analysis, it is easy to see that these characteristics correspond to what Sībawayhi describes in terms of tamakkun and ḫiffa, which we correlate with the capacity of a category to be altered and to adapt to different contexts, i.e. with a general property of the language, its malleability or flexibility. The comparison with markedness theory remains interesting, because it allows us to compare Arabic linguistic thought with modern linguistic theory, with attested correlations between marked elements and restrictions of distribution. The notion of malleability is more general, but it too grants a better comprehension and provides a unifying thread to what otherwise appear to be erratic facts in the Arabic theory itself. More precisely, it helps us to interpret the categories considered as ʾawwal without inconsistency by bringing together two sets of facts under the same notion of markedness. On the one hand, there are semantic and pragmatic categories and facts like the ones discussed earlier on. On the other, there are purely morphological categories and facts like the ones discussed in sections vii. and x. of the list above (p. 19), in particular marked patterns, called ʿadl, compound names, like ḥaḍramawt, and morphophonological and even phonetic facts and categories, which seem at first glance 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 denominations in the Kitāb: in markedness theory, each pair has one element asserting a positive property a, which is the marked element. The other element asserts nothing about a, but is mainly used to indicate the absence of a. This is exactly the logic of the denomination of pairs like mā maḍā wa-mā lam yamḍi; waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ; munqaṭiʿ/ġayr munqaṭiʿ; mustaqīm/ġayr mustaqīm; munṣarif/ġayr munṣarif, and so on. The negative element here is more general than the positive one. It encompasses all those cases that are not covered by the positive property. But, contrary to the theory of markedness, it does not encompass the positive property itself, in the way masculine includes both masculine and feminine. Yet, there are also significant divergences between the Medieval and the modern theory. Sībawayhi, and Arabic grammarians after him, linked their hierarchies, 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 grammatical categories listed by Sībawayhi, only the first pair enumerates discourse elements, i.e. the two parts of speech, verbs and nouns. Thus, the ultimate model of all hierarchical categories, with respect to their syntactic behavior, is that of the 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 firmly established as the noun ( fa-jamīʿu mā yutraku ṣarfu-hu muḍāraʿun bihi lfiʿlu li-ʾanna-hu laysa lahu tamakkunu ġayrihi kamā ʾanna l-fiʿla laysa lahu tamakkunu l-ismi). Kitāb i, 6.5f.

The inflectional restrictions on the noun are ultimately intelligible by the fact that the noun has (taken over some of) the behavior of the verb. The link between case and reference in this domain is partial and indirect. Some of the marked values of grammatical categories—some referential, others not— make the noun lose some of its declensional properties and retain only the same declensional markers as the verb. As we have seen above, this statement of the Kitāb, which is followed by the entire Arabic grammatical tradition, encounters a universal property of languages. Actually, the link between case and grammatical categories is known to exist in many languages. In some languages, definiteness and case are interdependent. An interdependence between gender and case can be noted in Indo-European languages.66 In sum, in Arabic, according to Sībawayhi, if a noun is unmarked for all categories (is ʾawwal), it has more flexibility and more plasticity (tamakkun) than nouns marked for some category and it will be suffixed with the tanwīn after the case marker. Just as the theory of government, which is a formal theory, includes case and mood without inconsistency and without excluding subtle semantic analysis of the verb, the theory of elements ʾawwal includes semantic 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 66

Lit. “the verb is likened to it” (muḍāraʿun bihi l-fiʿl); but the following sentence of the quotation gives the verb as the model. Cf. Lyons (1970:226f.).

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Conclusion

What about the changes after Sībawayhi concerning the theory of mā yanṣarif wa-mā lā yanṣarif, and the notions correlated to it? At first glance, there appears to be only a redistribution of the terminology, with the change being a matter of notational variation rather than of conceptual difference, since we find the same hierarchies and the same theory of markedness formulated in other terms (ʾaṣl/farʿ). This continuity, together with other continuities, provides content to the notion of tradition. Actually, in the later grammatical tradition there is a shift to normative grammar. In this regard, the denomination mamnūʿ mina l-ṣarf is significant, where the term mamnūʿ ‘prohibited’ resonates with the norm of the grammarian, as opposed to the purely descriptive term mā lā yanṣarif. Moreover, the approach of later grammarians tends to be more taxonomical, classifying the reasons for partial declinability into two types, those partially inflected for one reason, and those for two reasons. Thus, this approach loses the heuristic value of Sībawayhi’s approach, with the definiteness parameter adopted as a variation parameter and the implications of this approach for the analysis of language in 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, ʾaṣl in Sībawayhi, to an elaborated terminology of ʾaṣl/farʿ. The notion of farʿ is almost non-existent in the Kitāb. According to Troupeau (1976:159), the term farʿ occurs only twice in the Kitāb, in phonology and phonetics. The second occurrence of farʿ comes in opposition to ʾaṣl: there are twenty-nine consonants (ḥurūf ) in Arabic, but this number could be increased to thirty-five, if we add those consonants that are furūʿ wa-ʾaṣluhā min al-tisʿati wa-ʿišrīn,67 i.e. allophones of the twenty-nine. In Sībawayhi’s terminology, the properties of the ʾawwal categories are tamakkun, as we have seen above, and ḫiffa. These properties are summarized by a marker, the tanwīn. What is striking in later theory is the dissociation between tamakkun and ʾaṣl/farʿ, as tamakkun is only understood as full or partial declinability, i.e is reduced to ṣarf. Understanding mutamakkin as declinability amounts to asserting that tanwīn is the sign of full declinability and not of what we call the plasticity of nouns. A real difference exists between the two assertions, the first one being more formalistic, and the second one being founded on the properties of syntactic categories, referring ultimately, if we are right, to a universal property of

67

Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 452.8f.

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languages. In the former case, the link between tanwīn and the properties of syntactic categories is blurred. In sum, in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, the theory of mā lā yanṣarif is at the heart of the grammar and its principles are at the crossroads of important subtheories and postulates of the Kitāb, i.e. hierarchy, definiteness, the theory of grammatical categories, the theory of syntactic categories, the theory of case or, more exactly, of syntactic declension, and the analysis of proper names. Not just one parameter, definite/indefinite, is included, but a subtle scale of parameters relates the theory of mā lā yanṣarif to reference. This theory gives us the key to the value of the tanwīn for Sībawayhi. No wonder then that Sībawayhi placed such an amazing emphasis and energy on finding out which declension the most implausible and fictitious proper names in Arabic would have!

Appendix Actually, the analysis linking verbal declension with reference in the Kitāb is both semantic and enunciative, and answers the following implicit question: According to the Kitāb, what is the reference of the ‘assimilated verb’ (muḍāriʿ), when it bears its declension? As a matter of fact, the answer coincides with two other analyses that have been present in the tradition ever since Sībawayhi, providing an answer to two other questions: Why does the assimilated verb bear declension? And when does it bear each of its declensional endings? The answers to these two last questions differ between the Kūfan and Baṣran tradition, and even within the Baṣran tradition. The debate seems to have taken place at the end of the 2nd/8th century. We have tried to resume it in Ayoub (2007), basing ourselves on al-ʾAstarābāḏī (Kāfiya ii, 223–232). In the Baṣran tradition, the answer to the 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 Baṣran grammarians. The arguments given by Sībawayhi and by the later tradition in order to justify this analogy are not the same, yet, in both cases, the analogy is essentially referential, rather than formal. The first argument is well-known, the similarity of the assimilated 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 later tradition: without context, the assimilated verb is indeterminate (mubham) as it is polysemic (muštarak), referring to both present and future, like the noun which is outside context indeterminate. Thus, in the same way that the noun needs the article al- to have a univocal reference to a specific individual, the verb needs particles (sa-, sawfa) to have a univocal reference to the future.

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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 prohibitive or negative—, verbal declension serves to disambiguate the particle. So, this declension has different maʿānī. As for the second question—when does the muḍāriʿ bear each of its declensional endings—the Baṣran answer seems at first view purely structural, based on the position of 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 entire tradition, the semantic and enunciative analysis is transferred to these particles in their relation with the verb, rather than to the declension of the verb, because the particles are 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 maʿānī like the nominal ones (see Ermers 1999:74f.). Presenting the different declensions of the verb, (wujūh ʾiʿrāb al-fiʿl), he asserts: wa-laysat hāḏihi l-wujūhu bi-ʾaʿlāmin ʿalā maʿānin ka-wujūhi ʾiʿrābi l-ismi (Mufaṣṣal 244f.). He justifies this absence of maʿānī, and after him, his commentator, Ibn Yaʿīš does the same, by arguing that the verb has its declension only by analogy with the noun (Šarḥ vii, 10). Al-Zamaḫšarī’s assertion is very significant. It allows us to measure the distance between his analysis—and that of his commentator, Ibn Yaʿīš—, and Sībawayhi’s analysis. It is beyond the present paper to examine here all consequences of this discrepancy. Two observations are important at this point. In the first place, the notion of wājib/ġayr wājib was little used after Sībawayhi. Secondly, the linguistic situation itself could explain the discrepancy. Speakers of Arabic spoke a language from which syntactic declension had disappeared. As a result, they were increasingly distant from the variety of Arabic described by the Arabic grammarians, hence, the value of verbal endings was no longer felt by them.

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Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Kees Versteegh, Manfred Woidich, and Andrzej Zaborski, iv, 442–445. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Ayoub, Georgine. 2010. “al-fiʿl wa-l-hadaṯ: La description sémantique du verbe dans le Kitāb de Sībawayhi”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 37.1–51. Ayoub, Georgine. 2015. “Some aspects of the relations between enunciation and utterance in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb: A modal category: wājib, ġayr wājib”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission, ed. by Amal Marogy and Kees Versteegh, 6–35. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Ayoub, Georgine. 2016. “L’emprunt dans le dictionnaire arabe des premiers siècles de l’Hégire”. Approaches to the history and dialectology of Arabic in honor of Pierre Larcher, ed. by Manuel Sartori, Manuela Giolfo and Pierre Cassuto, 289–326. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1979. “Some aspects of harmony and hierarchy in Sībawayhi’s grammatical analysis”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 2.7–22. Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2008. The legacy of the Kitāb: Sībawayhi’s analytical methods within the context 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 du Monde Arabe 1.213–226. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. (= Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, 13.) Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Chuquet, Jean, Eric Gilbert, Hélène Chuquet. French-English glossary of 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 représentations, 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 Andrzej Zaborski, 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 ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-ʾAndalusī’s Kitāb al-ʾidrāk li-lisān al-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”. Studia orientalia 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., Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.) Marogy, Amal. 2015. “The notion of tanwīn in the Kitāb: Cognitive evaluation of function and meaning”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission, ed. by Amal Marogy and Kees Versteegh, 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 standardization. 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 grammar. Introduction, translation, commentary. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Versteegh, Kees. 2015. “What’s it like to be a Persian: Sībawayhi’s treatment of loanwords”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission, 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 grammaticale 65.3–11.

The Grammatical and Lexicographical Traditions Mutual 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 sources into 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 the main norms set by scholars of these types for more than four centuries. Apart from ʿarūḍ—which naturally has a much narrower scope than the other three types—ṣarf and naḥw were closely linked ever since Sībawayhi (d. 180/796) authored his Kitāb. Although there are early works exclusively devoted to ṣarf—most notably al-Māzinīʾs (d. 249/863) al-Taṣrīf—both fields were jointly studied in most works throughout the tradition, and the terms naḥw and naḥwiyyūn could refer to both fields. As for balāġa, some of its most fundamental 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, but also to the agent in a verbal sentence), and the rules that govern the omission of the verb. In fact, al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) asserts that the semantic and syntactic interrelationships among the constituents of the utterance, or what he calls naẓm (lit. organization of the elements of the utterance), is nothing other than the proper adherence to the discipline of grammar (laysa l-naẓm ʾillā ʾan taḍaʿa kalāmaka al-waḍʿ allaḏī yaqtaḍīhi ʿilm al-naḥw).1 Furthermore, he identifies the study of naẓm with the seeking of what he calls syntactic meanings (al-naẓm huwa tawaḫḫī maʿānī l-naḥw).2 Accordingly, this syntactic dimension of balāġa may well be considered an offshoot of what is usually referred to as the Arabic grammatical tradition, whose two main components are ṣarf and naḥw.

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.).

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The sources use the term luġa to refer to the field that studies word meanings in the attested material amassed in the process of collecting linguistic data ( jamʿ al-luġa) as well as the dialectal variations particularly in the realm of ‘strange usage’ (ġarīb). The term luġawiyyūn may be translated as ‘philologists’ or preferably ‘lexicographers’ in order to account for authors of both mubawwab and mujannas lexica (see section 3 below). As of the 4th/10th century, authors refer to the study of luġa as fiqh al-luġa, ʿilm al-lisān, or ʿilm alluġa.3 Accordingly, the Arabic grammatical tradition is paralleled by the Arabic lexicographical tradition. Boundaries between naḥw (which includes ṣarf ) and luġa are obviously difficult to draw for the early stages of linguistic enquiry as of the 2nd/8th century. In this respect, one would question the accuracy of some of the biographical sources (the earliest monographs of which were authored in the 4th/10th century) in their sharp distinction between naḥwiyyūn and luġawiyyūn. The most obvious example is al-Zubaydī’s (d. 379/989) Ṭabaqāt alnaḥwiyyīn wa-l-luġawiyyīn, which is structured on the basis of this distinction. Indeed in certain cases al-Zubaydī himself seems undetermined in classifying his 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 scholar in one group seems to contradict evidence from primary sources. For example, 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 Kitāb has to do with luġa, not naḥw.5 That the boundaries between naḥw and luġa were often blurred in the early stages of linguistic enquiry is also corroborated by the fact that some of the most influential scholars of the period were students 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 Maʿmar ibn al-Muṯannā (d. 209/824) and al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831) as the three masters of 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 prominent naḥwiyyūn of the time, namely, ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766) and Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb (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 Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/1066) al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ i, 14; and the third in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) Muqaddima 1055. 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.

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Foundations Common to Both Disciplines

The lack of a clear distinction between the naḥwiyyūn and the luġawiyyūn in the early stages is far from surprising. Both naḥw and luġa are closely related to other linguistically oriented sciences, such as qirāʾāt (Qurʾānic readings), Ḥadīṯ (Prophetic tradition), fiqh (jurisprudence), and tafsīr (exegesis), but their similitude to each other obviously sets them apart from the other domains. Not only is this dictated by the proximity of their subject matter, but it is promoted by several factors which emerged at a very early stage of their development and which may be regarded as foundations common to both fields. 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 collection (referred to above), which took place mainly in the second half of the 2nd/8th century and the first few decades of the 3rd/9th. Most of the major linguists of that period took part in this activity and are reported either to have transmitted and commented on dialectal usage or made the journey to the 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), alKisāʾī (d. 189/805), Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 202/818), al-Naḍr ibn Šumayl (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-Qāsim ibn Sallām (d. 224/838), and Ibn al-ʾAʿrābī (d. 231/845).7 The list may be further expanded, but it is sufficient to demonstrate that scholars who are more closely identified with either of the two domains were active participants in the collection of linguistic data. As a result, grammatical works and lexica contain a sizable amount of common šawāhid8 or attested material cited as evidence, whether in specific lexical items, lines of poetry, Qurʾānic verses or proverbs. A particularly telling example is Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān alʿArab, particularly because its author incorporated into it five earlier lexica. A cursory look at the indices that list the sources in which the grammatical šawāhid are cited9 readily reveals that the Lisān is frequently mentioned among 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).

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ing almost to the entire scope of the subject matter of grammar books, as is evident 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 the collected data, are referred to as fuṣaḥāʾ (pl. of faṣīḥ ‘eloquent’), and their language is consistently characterized by purity, clarity, precision and freedom from error.10 Given the reliance on fuṣaḥāʾ, the two domains share several of their fundamental principles. For example, in both domains these fuṣaḥāʾ were considered arbiters in linguistic controversies due to the perceived purity of their form of Arabic.11 Moreover, scholars of both disciplines were in agreement concerning the duration of ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj, or epochs of reliable usage (but see section 3 below), which in prose were open roughly up to the 2nd/8th century in 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 the luġawiyyūn, in addition to recording and commenting on widespread usage, were greatly interested in strange (ġarīb) and rare, uncommon (nādir) material—an interest that is primarily the result of their focus on dialectal usage and poetry. It is evident that much of the ġarīb (which hereafter refers to both ġarīb and nādir) occurs in dialectal variants recorded during the period of data collection. Dialects cited in the Kitāb, for example, include in addition to the two 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 It is also a well established fact that the grammarians, throughout the tradition, were largely preoccupied with rare and irregular dialectal usage derived mainly from poetry, and also from prose (kalām) and proverbs, and they painstakingly tried to interpret it in accordance with their analytical methods. In lexicography, early monographs on plants, animals, human body, natural phenomena, abodes, saddle and bridle, etc. are replete with lexical items that occur in specific dialects and require explanation by the authors of these monographs. Similarly, early lexica that are arranged according to form (i.e. root) rather than 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 11 12 13

See Baalbaki (2014:7–16) for a detailed study of the characteristics of Bedouin speech as portrayed by the luġawiyyūn. Cf. Blau (1963:42–51). Baalbaki (2008:40f.; 2011:102). Cf. Baalbaki (2008:38–40).

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

18 19 20 21

Ibn Durayd, Jamhara, index, iii, 1742. Cited twenty-four and fourteen times respectively; index, iii, 1741. ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb v, 334, 338. 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, without comment, words of Yamānī origin reported by Ibn Durayd, as in Tahḏīb (ġ-d-n; viii, 74) and (ġ-d-f ; viii, 76). Ibn Durayd, Jamhara iii, 1230. Suyūṭī, Muzhir i, 254. Al-Suyūṭī supports his description of the word as rare and anomalous by noting that the pattern fuʿālāʾ does not occur in the Kitāb. 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. 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.

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The second source of ġarīb material in both naḥw and luġa is poetry, whose centrality to linguistic sciences in general is indisputable. In commenting on the 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 comprehended (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 In spite of certain differences between the naḥwiyyūn and the luġawiyyūn in dealing with poetry material (see section 3 below), both groups of scholars viewed poetry 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 number of šawāhid drawn from all other types put together. Furthermore, the term šawāhid is often used by later grammarians to refer to poetic šawāhid exclusively.23 In luġa, the link between poetry and ġarīb is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Ibn Ḫālawayhi’s (d. 370/980) Laysa fī kalām al-ʿArab, which deals mainly with morphological patterns and phenomena which are so rare that the lexical items representing them can be classified within a closed set. The book abounds with expressions that limit the occurrence of a certain word, pattern, etc. to a single line of poetry—e.g. the dual of waḥdahu appears only in a line of poetry by ʿUmāra (i.e. ibn ʿAqīl; d. 239/835).24 Among the sixteen meters, rajaz is the one most closely identified with ġarīb, probably because of its strong association with subjects related to desert life and hence with the uncommon words and structures that are often used in connection with these subjects.25 Asked about the vast amount of rajaz he memorized, al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831) firmly declared that rajaz “was what we were most after and we most cared for” (ʾinnahu kāna hammanā wa-sadamanā).26 Statements of this type attest to the fact that rajaz was for the early scholars the embodiment of the Bedouinsʾ linguistic ‘purity’. It is therefore not unexpected that the number of rajaz lines in the Kitāb is 294, whereas that of all

22 23

24 25 26

Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī 275. 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 šawāhid al-Muġnī. See Baalbaki (2008:44). Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa 231; cf. also 294, 375, 380. See also Baalbaki (2014:43 f., 93f.). For a similar phenomenon in the Kitāb, see Baalbaki (2011:114, n. 47). See Kaššāš (1995:172–195) and ʿUbaydī (1970:134–143) for the various characteristics of rajaz, both in form and content. ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib, Marātib 95.

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other meters put together is 937.27 In grammatical controversies, rajaz features strongly in the šawāhid that illustrate dialectal usage in conflict with the norm.28 Similarly in luġa, there is a disproportionately high ratio of rajaz compared to šiʿr, for example, in Ibn Durayd’s (d. 321/933) Jamharat al-luġa, which is famous for the inclusion of unfamiliar usage in spite of its author’s claim to the contrary.29 The total number of poetry šawāhid in the Jamhara is 5,605, out of which 2,603 alone are in the rajaz meter.30 Another example in luġa is ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī’s (d. 215/830) al-Nawādir fī l-luġa, whose title indicates that it is devoted to rare and unfamiliar usage. It consists of fifteen chapters, two of which are on šiʿr, seven on rajaz, and six on nawādir, which in turn contain a large amount of rajaz. The rajaz šawāhid in al-Nawādir amount to two thirds of those in all other meters.31 iii. During the earliest stages of linguistic activity in the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries, many scholars straddled both disciplines. Among these, al-Ḫalīl (d. 175/791) is undoubtedly the most influential. The numerous technical terms, axioms and tools of analysis which Sībawayhi borrowed from al-Ḫalīl in grammar need no proof. In luġa, as has been argued elsewhere by the author, Kitāb al-ʿAyn is most probably the result of al-Ḫalīl’s probing intellect—particularly in 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, in the lively discussions which took place between him and his disciples concerning the sampling (ḏawāq) of letters based on his Sprachgefühl.32 Al-Ḫalīl’s profound influence on the founding principles of both disciplines obviously contributed to their common grounds. Although it is not within the present scope to dwell on these, we can mention for the sake of illustration the mutual interest of Sībawayhi and al-Ḫalīl in determining the characteristics of Arabic in order to detect forgery and recognize words of non-Arabic origin. Sībawayhi regularly accuses the group he calls naḥwiyyūn, whom he mentions twenty-

27 28

29 30 31 32

See Hārūn’s index to the Kitāb v, 44–102. 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 is contrary to standard usage. See my introduction to Jamhara i, 25–27. Jamhara’s indices, iii, 1381–1508. ʾAbū Zayd, Nawādir’s indices, 648–738. Baalbaki (2014:54–58, 282f.). For further discussion of the authorship of al-ʿAyn, see Schoeler (2006).

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one times,33 of using analogy (qiyās) in a purely speculative manner in order to invent forms and utterances that do resemble actual usage, but do not occur in the speech of the Arabs. The same principle of examining data to determine its conformity with the characteristics of Arabic is evident in al-ʿAyn’s introduction. Other than the aim of discovering the criteria for differentiating between Arabic and borrowed words (li-yuʿraf ṣaḥīḥ bināʾ kalām al-ʿArab min aldaḫīl),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 of creating neologisms (muwalladāt) which, despite their resemblance to other words and patterns (ʾašbaha lafẓahum wa-taʾlīfahum) are impermissible in the speech of the Arabs.35 Just as the rules of syntax and analogy described by Sībawayhi reveal the violations of the naḥwiyyūn—e.g. the analogy they establish between wayḥ and tabb (both: ‘woe unto’)36—the rules of word composition and phonotactics described by al-Ḫalīl reveal those of the naḥārīr—e.g. quinqueliterals such as kašaʿṯaj, which they invent in violation of the rules stipulating that no Arabic quadriliteral or quinqueliteral could be devoid of liquids or labials, with the exception of some ten anomalous words.37 The profound influence of Sībawayhi and al-Ḫalīl on the grammatical tradition, and the latter on the lexicographical tradition (through the method he devised in al-ʿAyn’s introduction for exhausting Arabic roots, be they used or not) is one of the prime reasons for continuity in both traditions. Sībawayhi was often challenged by later grammarians concerning specific views or interpretations, and some Kufan grammarians did have views that differed from those of Sībawayhi and other Basran grammarians.38 Yet throughout the grammatical tradition, the basic notions, axioms, syntactic function and tools of analysis utilized in the Kitāb have not been seriously challenged, with the possible exception of Ibn Maḍāʾ’s (d. 592/1196) attempt at discrediting the grammarians’ views on cause (ʿilla) and suppletive insertion (taqdīr) in his al-Radd ʿalā l-nuḥāt, which attempt made little impact on subsequent authors. A similar picture vis-à-vis continuity and change emerges in lexicography. The Kitāb al-

33 34 35 36 37 38

Carter (1972:76, n. 1); cf. Talmon (1982:14f.; 2003:12)—where twenty-eight loci of controversy with the naḥwiyyūn are identified in the Kitāb—and Baalbaki (2008:18–20). Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 54. Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 52f.; cf. ii, 286. Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 334. Ḫalīl, ʿAyn i, 52f. 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 Kufans can 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 prominent lexicographers: al-Ḫalīl’s method of phonetic arrangement and root permutations (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 who gave up al-Ḫalīl’s phonetic arrangement in favor of the alphabetical system still preserved his method of permutations—e.g. Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933) in alJamhara—or of dividing the material into chapters based on the number of radicals—e.g. Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) in al-Maqāyīs and al-Mujmal. In fact, all subsequent authors of mujannas lexica (see section 3 below) are indebted to al-Ḫalīl for his scheme that achieves exhaustiveness based on three basic principles: (a) that the letters of the alphabet form a closed set; (b) that the number of radicals in words ranges from two to five; and (c) that root permutations of biliteral and triliteral roots is two and six respectively. True, modifications were introduced to mujannas lexica authored after al-ʿAyn—e.g. in matters related to arrangement of roots, divisions of chapters, extent of šawāhid, verification of data, etc.—but no alternative scheme needed to be invented from scratch.

3

Divergence of the Two Disciplines

The two independent, but related disciplines of naḥw and luġa emerged in the earliest period of linguistic writing—witness Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, Kitāb alʿayn (for mujannas lexica), and monographs restricted to a specific theme (for mubawwab lexica). By mujannas—a term borrowed from Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/ 1066) introduction to al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ39—is meant the semasiological type, that is, lexica in which sign leads to meaning since material is arranged according to principles related to form (lafẓ) and not meaning (maʿnā). Such lexica normally aim at listing all lexical items of the language and thus are not specialized dictionaries. On the other hand, the onomasiological type—which Ibn Sīda calls mubawwab—refers to lexica or thesauri in which meaning leads to sign since they deal with one or several topic areas, although some works in certain genres—such as Arabized words (muʿarrab) and words with two contradictory meanings (ʾaḍdād)—may be arranged based on form, e.g. alphabetically. It is in mubawwab lexica in particular that one finds a considerable amount of material which they share with books on naḥw. This common material is largely

39

Ibn Sīda, Muḫaṣṣaṣ i, 10, 12.

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attributable to the mutual foundations discussed in section 2 above, and the following three examples demonstrate the close affinity between naḥw and some genres of the mubawwab type: i. Masculine and feminine (al-muḏakkar wa-l-muʾannaṯ): There are more than thirty independent monographs on the subject, most of which are lost.40 The extant ones were authored by scholars who were either better known as naḥwiyyūn or as luġawiyyūn, including al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822), ʾAbū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī (d. 255/869), al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Salama (d. 290/903 or 300/913), 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 the topics discussed by authors of the 3rd/9th century with those in contemporary grammar works, the congruity between the two fields is readily recognizable. Among the common topics are: feminine markers; the suffix -h in masculine nouns (e.g. ʿallāma ‘a very learned person’); patterns that are used with both masculine and feminine (e.g. faʿīl, as in qatīl ‘murdered’); words that can be treated either as masculine or feminine (e.g. ʿunuq ‘neck’); adjectives that are only 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 fifty or so works referred to in the sources,42 about a dozen survived. As in the genre of masculine and feminine, monographs were authored throughout the tradition, and the earliest go back to the 3rd/9th century. The genre covers most of the material available in grammatical works, beginning with the earliest works, but the authors’ focus shifted visibly to the patterns of the maqṣūr and mamdūd words and to the distinction between the two types in form, meaning and writing conventions. iii. Patterns (al-ʾabniya): Most independent monographs that deal with morphological patterns share their notions and much of their subject matter with works on naḥw. The bulk of issues which Sībawayhi discusses in that part of the Kitāb which deals with morphology also features in these monographs. As far as morphological patterns are concerned, they amount in the Kitāb to 342, out

40 41 42

See ʿAbd al-Tawwāb’s introduction to Mufaḍḍal, Muḫtaṣar 23–31 and ʾIqbāl (2011:271). For further detail, see Baalbaki (2014:239ff.). 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) notes that the grammarians believe that, except for three patterns overlooked by Sībawayhi, his list exhausts all Arabic patterns.44 This notwithstanding, al-Zubaydī found the number of patterns ignored by Sībawayhi to be about eighty.45 There are also monographs that deal with specific patterns or morphological notions and share much of their material with grammar works. These include works on the verbal patterns faʿala and ʾafʿala, the earliest extant one of which is ʾAbū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī’s (d. 255/869) Faʿaltu wa-ʾafʿaltu, and works that deal with diminutives (taṣġīr), dual (taṯniya), plural ( jamʿ), and blending (naḥt).46 Yet in spite of the closeness of the mubawwab lexica in certain genres to grammar works, in several other genres the two disciplines followed divergent paths 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 in the focus of authors of mubawwab lexica in their study of maqṣūr and mamdūd, and in 3iii that they expanded the scope of morphological patterns by adding those patterns which seem to have been ignored by the grammarians. One is strongly reminded in this respect of the complementarity between naḥw and balāġa, as the balāġiyyūn—most notably in the pioneering works of alJurjānī (d. 471/1078)—discuss several topics that belong to naḥw and often use the same šawāhid cited by the grammarians, but they concentrate on the meaning of the utterance in contrast to the predominant concern of most grammarians with formal considerations such as case-endings or uttered and elided 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 from the perspective of ʾiʿrāb, that is, the justification of case inflection (wa-lam ʾara ġāyat al-naḥwiyyīn ʾillā kull šiʿr fīhi ʾiʿrāb).48 Although this statement is

43 44 45 46 47

48

See a detailed list of the types of these patterns in ʿUmar (1995:12f., 69–75); cf. Ibn al-Qaṭṭāʿ, ʾAbniya 89. Zubaydī, Istidrāk i. 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. For a discussion of these types, see Baalbaki (2014:237 f., 254–258). The difference in approach between the naḥwiyyūn and the balāġiyyūn is discussed in Baalbaki (1983, 1991). See also Baalbaki (2008:231ff.) for a study of how Sībawayhi’s vivid analysis of speech and the delicate balance he establishes between form and meaning gradually gave way to an increasing interest by the grammarians in formal considerations at the expense of meaning. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān iv, 24.

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evidently exaggerated and oversimplified, it ingeniously captures the essence of the approach of the naḥwiyyūn. Turning to poetry narrators—who surely include those whom we refer to as philologists or lexicographers—al-Jāḥiẓ’s judgment is similarly overgeneralized, but equally true in essence. He asserts that they are interested merely in strange use and difficult meanings (wa-lam ʾara ġāyat ruwāt al-ʾašʿār ʾillā kull šiʿr fīhi ġarīb ʾaw maʿnā ṣaʿb). As argued above, ġarīb is one of the most fundamental notions in both naḥw and luġa, but the discussion to follow will try to demonstrate—among other things—how the authors of mubawwab lexica developed new perspectives in their study of ġarīb. The distinctive characteristics of naḥw and luġa which will be established later with regards to ġarīb may be considered part of a wider divergence between the two disciplines in the field of semantics. We propose to address the core issues of this intricate subject in the following three points: i. In the Risāla of the Kitāb, i.e. its introductory part, Sībawayhi briefly mentions three types of semantic relationships, namely, divergence of form and meaning (iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn li-ḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn), divergence of form and coincidence of meaning (iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn wa-l-maʿnā wāḥid), and coincidence of form and divergence of meaning (ittifāq al-lafẓayn wa-ḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn).49 Given that these three types are not further developed by Sībawayhi to become part of his grammatical analysis, their mention in the Risāla is most probably intended to demarcate the boundaries between them and the syntactical and morphological issues which he analyzes. The impact of this position on both the grammatical and lexicographical traditions was far-reaching: grammarians followed in the footsteps of Sībawayhi,50 whereas lexicographers introduced genres specifically 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 meanings (ʾaḍdād), is related to muštarak since it examines a specific branch of homonymous polysemic words. From a chronological perspective, muštarak, ʾaḍdād and mutarādif became independent genres at a very early stage, and extant 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) in muštarak, al-ʾAjnās min kalām al-ʿArab wa-mā štabaha fī l-lafẓ wa-ḫtalafa

49 50

Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 24. 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 lʿAmayṯal (d. 240/854); al-Munajjad fī l-luġa by Kurāʿ al-Naml (d. 310/922); and al-Malāḥin by Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933); (b) in al-ʾaḍdād, books by the title alʾAḍdād by Quṭrub (d. 206/821), al-ʾAṣmaʿī (d. 216/831), ʾAbū ʿUbayd, al-Tawwazī (d. 233/847), Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244/858), and ʾAbū Ḥātim 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); and Jawāhir al-ʾalfāẓ by Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar (d. 337/948). Moreover, multithematic works of the 3rd/9th century, such as al-Ġarīb al-muṣannaf by ʾAbū ʿUbayd and ʾAdab al-kātib by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), include some material on these genres.51 Data on ġarīb feature prominently in several genres of lexicographical writing developed by the luġawiyyūn. In the realm of muštarak, for example, Kurāʿ’s al-Munajjad contains a large number of words which have one or more meanings that obviously belong to ġarīb. These account for the strikingly high number of supporting šawāhid which this relatively short work embraces—a total of 709, many of which consist of more than one line.52 Furthermore, there are a number of works that form a subgenre within the study of muštarak and by virtue of their subject matter are largely devoted to ġarīb. These are known as ʿašarāt since they are divided into chapters that normally contain a group of ten, mostly unfamiliar words that share a common feature (e.g. pattern or rhyme) or one word that has numerous meanings. The first extant book of this genre is by ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid (i.e. Ġulām Ṯaʿlab; d. 345/957) al-ʿAšarāt fī ġarīb al-luġa, whose very title highlights the link between ʿašarāt and ġarīb. In his alʿAšarāt fī l-luġa, al-Qazzāz al-Qayrawānī (d. 412/1021) considerably expands one of al-Zāhid’s chapters and divides the rest of the book into 167 alphabetically arranged words, to each of which he ascribes ten different meanings. Another subgenre related to ġarīb is the one known as mušajjar (branched), or mudāḫal (intertwined), or musalsal (serialized). Primarily aiming at demonstrating the extensive vocabulary of Arabic, particularly in the domain of ġarīb, chapters in monographs of this subgenre consist of chains that typically begin with a word which is explained by another, itself explained by a third, and so on. Ġarīb words in the beginning of each chapter are usually explained by familiar ones,

51 52

See, for example, ʾAbū ʿUbayd, Ġarīb ii, 616–618; iii, 971 (naʿāma), 999 (lawā); Ibn Qutayba, ʾAdab 177–181. Kurāʿ, Munajjad, index 389–404.

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which in turn have ġarīb meanings that maintain the chain further. The earliest extant monograph of this subgenre is, as in the ʿašarāt, al-Zāhid’s al-Mudāḫal fī l-luġa, but much more extensive is ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī’s (d. 351/962) Šajar al-durr fī tadāḫul al-kalām bi-l-maʿānī l-muḫtalifa. ii. Sībawayhi does not normally provide any explanation of the meanings of the words that he cites, even if they occur extremely rarely and clearly belong to ġarīb. Examples include qahbalis ‘huge woman’, jaḥmariš ‘old woman’, ṣahṣaliq ‘vehement voice’, bulaʿbīs ‘wonder, marvel’, duraḫmīl ‘calamity’, qarṭabūs ‘calamity’, hammariš ‘old woman’ and hammaqiʿ ‘fruit of a thorny tree’.53 Sībawayhi’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) in al-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 their study of patterns more regularly.55 The ġarīb words cited but not explained by Sībawayhi were assembled by Ibn al-Dahhān (d. 569/1164) in the form of an alphabetically arranged lexicon, Kitāb šarḥ ʾabniyat Sībawayhi. We are also in possession of a similar work by al-Jawālīqī (d. 540/1145) titled Šarḥ ʾamṯilat Sībawayhi—an abridgement of a book by Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿUṯmān al-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 morphological patterns (e.g. faʿala and ʾafʿala) normally explain cited words, particularly ġarīb—yet another instance of the complementarity of the grammatical and lexicographical traditions. In this respect, it is highly significant that as early as 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 lexicon that essentially belongs to the genre of ġarīb.58 ʾAbū ʿAmr arranges words in alphabetical order, based on their first radicals, and consistently explains

53 54 55 56 57

58

Sībawayhi, Kitāb iv, 302–303, 330. Cf. Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab i, 66–68; ii, 107–109; Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl iii, 184–210. Cf. Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ vi, 136–143; Suyūṭī, Hamʿ ii, 158–160. Suyūṭī, Buġya i, 206. 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), and might well have been older than Sībawayhi, who died (in 180/796 according to most sources) when he was about forty (Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 57). Note al-Qifṭī’s comment (ʾInbāh i, 261) that ʾAbū ʿAmr’s aim in the Jīm was to collect unfamiliar words and not those that are commonly used ( jamaʿa fīhi l-ḥūšī wa-lam yaqṣid al-mustaʿmal).

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them. Accordingly, one of the main distinctive features between the grammatical and lexicographical traditions is evident from the earliest available sources: the semantic component of ġarīb, which was almost totally ignored by Sībawayhi, 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 deals with the etymology of proper nouns. Mubawwab lexica of this genre belong to 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 and meanings of 133 names. Kurāʿ al-Naml’s (d. 310/922) lengthy chapter on ištiqāq in al-Muntaḫab min ġarīb kalām al-ʿArab is mostly devoted to proper nouns and place 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 other tribes.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 grammatical tradition. Sībawayhi quotes 447 Qurʾānic verses in the Kitāb62 and mainly comments on their syntactic characteristics. There are also a number of early, linguistically oriented exegetical works that belong to the grammatical tradition, 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 lQurʾān. The meanings of Qurʾānic words, however, are largely outside the scope of such works. In contrast, the genre ġarīb al-Qurʾān embraces a number of mubawwab lexica whose primary purpose is to explain Qurʾānic words which are judged to be ġarīb or which acquire a specific meaning in a Qurʾānic context.63 The genre spans the whole duration of the lexicographical tradition, and among its earliest extant monographs are Ġarīb al-Qurʾān wa-tafsīruhu by ʿAbdallāh ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 237/851), Tafsīr Ġarīb al-Qurʾān by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), Ġarīb al-Qurʾān or Nuzhat al-qulūb by Muḥammad

59 60 61 62 63

Kurāʿ, Muntaḫab ii, 661–678; see also ii, 740–762. ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb i, 31. Note also that several hundred entries in the Jamhara (see index, iii, 1699–1722) contain proper nouns derived from the roots under discussion. See Hārūn’s index to the Kitāb v, 44–102. For example, Ibn Qutayba includes in Tafsīr 47 the word ṣabr ‘patience’, obviously because he believes that, in the verse wa-staʿīnū bi-l-ṣabri wa-l-ṣalāti ‘Seek [God’s] help with patience 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 alQurʾān by ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid (d. 345/957), and Kitāb al-Ġarībayn fī l-Qurʾān wa-l-Ḥadīṯ by ʾAbū ʿUbayd al-Harawī (d. 401/1011). Unlike the Qurʾān, early grammarians quote Ḥadīṯ very sparingly. For example, the Kitāb contains only seven or eight ḥadīṯs,64 and Ibn al-Sarrāj’s al-ʾUṣūl no more than three.65 As part of the mubawwab lexicographical tradition, the genre of Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ is primarily concerned with explaining ġarīb words in Prophetic ḥadīṯ. Among the earliest works are ʾAbū ʿUbayd’s (d. 224/838) Ġarīb al-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 in these works is much more extensive, and the most comprehensive book in the genre is Ibn al-ʾAṯīr’s (d. 606/1210) al-Nihāya fī ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ wa-l-ʾAṯar, one of the five lexica that make up Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿArab. The degree of the use of Ḥadīṯ is one of the most prominent issues on which the grammatical and lexicographical traditions deeply differ, particularly in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries since most later grammarians seem to have given up their predecessors’ reservations about citing Ḥadīṯ.66 The discrepancy between the two traditions is not restricted to mubawwab lexica, since authors of mujannas lexica obviously had no qualms about using Ḥadīṯ as linguistic testimony. 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 Companions or 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 ʾAsās al-balāġa.68 Unlike the early grammarians, who did not find it appropriate to cite Ḥadīṯ as linguistic testimony on syntactical matters given that it was not always transmitted verbatim and some of its transmitters were not even native speakers of Arabic,69 the lexicographers did not hesitate to cite and explain words in Ḥadīṯ most probably on the assumption that for this specific purpose it made little difference whether the Ḥadīṯ was transmitted verbatim or paraphrased. In other words, they might have assumed that if Ḥadīṯ was

64 65 66 67 68 69

Note that one ḥadīṯ is quoted in two different versions in the Kitāb, hence the two different possible enumerations; see Hārūn’s index, v, 32. Cf. Ṭanāḥī (1986:35). Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 9–15; cf. Ḥadīṯī (1981:13–29); Fajjāl (1997:99–136). See ʾĀl ʿUṣfūr’s index of K. al-ʿayn 23–46. Cf. the indices of Taqfiya 725–730 and Jamhara iii, 1359–1374. For the number in ʾAsās albalāġa, see Jubūrī (2004:100). Suyūṭī, Iqtirāḥ 53f.; Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 11f.

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not transmitted in its original form, this would primarily affect its structure, whereas the transmitter is more likely to preserve the lexical items, particularly those which constitute the šawāhid. The lexicographers also differ with the grammarians concerning the citing of 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) is said to be the last poet in those epochs,70 and grammar works hardly ever cite 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 the lexicographical tradition, as in grammar works, the vast majority of šawāhid are by pre- or early Islamic poets such as al-ʾAʿšā, Umruʾ al-Qays, ʾAws ibn Ḥajar, 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.71 Yet, the lexicographers were somewhat more tolerant than the grammarians in citing later poets and thus disregarding the generally accepted temporal limitations imposed on poetry after ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj. Among authors of mujannas lexica, for example, Ibn Manẓūr attributes three šawāhid to ʾAbū Nuwās, eight to ʾAbū Tammām, one to al-Buḥturī, eleven to al-Mutanabbī, and three to alMaʿarrī.72 It is also noteworthy that al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144), who in ʾAsās al-balāġa cites šawāhid in support of metaphorical and extended meanings, does not link faṣāḥa exclusively to the early epochs, but often cites verses by ʾAbū Nuwās, ʾAbū Tammām, al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī.73 Another difference between the grammatical and lexicographical traditions is that the latter is largely free from the partisan divide between the Basrans and Kufans, which by the 4th/10th century was evident in the former. Obviously, the theoretical differences pertaining to syntactical analysis—in particular concerning not just the validity of, but the extent to which notions such as analogy (qiyās), cause (ʿilla), operant (ʿāmil), suppletive insertion (taqdīr), and origin (ʾaṣl) may be utilized—were hardly applicable to the question of the inclusion or otherwise of certain lexical items within the corpus. Although early Kufan lexicographers were primarily interested in including in the corpus lexical items derived from dialectal material and poetry of the various tribes, 70 71 72 73

See Baġdādī, Ḫizāna i, 425: wa-Ibn Harma ʾāḫir al-šuʿarāʾ allaḏīna yuḥtajj bi-šiʿrihim. 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). ʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ and ʿAmāyira (1987: iii, 721ff.); cf. Ḥamza (2011:60–62). 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 data and adducing supporting poetry šawāhid. In the case of mujannas lexica, the fact that most authors aimed at exhausting the roots and derivatives of the language may have made it necessary for them to include lexical items from all available sources of riwāya. For example, al-Qālī (d. 356/967) in al-Bāriʿ derives the bulk of his material from both Basran and Kufan scholars. His main sources (in order of frequency) are al-Ḫalīl, ʾAbū Zayd al-ʾAnṣārī, Ibn al-Sikkīt, al-ʾAṣmaʿī, ʾAbū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī, ʾAbū ʿUbayda, Ibn Durayd, ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Šaybānī, ʾAbū ʿUbayd, al-Farrāʾ, al-Kisāʾī, and Ibn Kaysān.74 In later extensive 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 previously available data meant that there was hardly any room for partisan inclination. On a broader scale, the existence of an Arabic grammatical theory—which has its own technical terms, notions, methods of analysis, etc. cannot be denied. Works which examine the fundamental principles of grammar (ʾuṣūl alnaḥw) and the methodological and epistemological issues it embraces also strongly point in that direction. The same statement, however, cannot be made of the lexicographical tradition. The very question of the existence of a discernible theory may be irrelevant in the case of the mubawwab lexica since they comprise a wide variety of themes, ranging from words that pertain to a particular topic (e.g. plants, animals, human body) to Arabized words, solecisms and morphological patterns. As far as the mujannas lexica are concerned, lexicographers had to deal with a number of theoretical issues, including questions of authenticity and correctness of lexical items, the principles that govern the internal arrangement of the data, and the extent of the inclusion of proper nouns, new notions, technical terms, and even vernacular usage not recorded in earlier lexica. There was little agreement on those issues, more importantly a remarkable absence of the elements that are vital for a clear and precise definition of cited words, and of a template that determines the order in which patterns and derivatives are to be included in each lemma and assigns the role which semantic relationships should have in the structuring of the lemmata. In spite of certain basic principles that were commonly applied—for instance, the adoption 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 that would resolve the semantic issues posed by the nature of their field. This is particularly unfortunate because, apart from the interest of some grammarians in demonstrating the interrelatedness between form and meaning in the constructions under analysis, the grammatical tradition itself did not develop a semantic theory in any meaningful way. Accordingly, semantic issues were more profoundly discussed by the balāġiyyūn and, at a later stage, by the branch of study known as ʿilm al-waḍʿ.

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Titles include works that are cited both in the text and notes.

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ʾAbū Zayd, Nawādir = ʾAbū Zayd Saʿīd ibn ʾAws al-ʾAnṣārī, al-Nawādir fī l-luġa. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʾAḥmad. Beirut: Dār al-Šurūq, 1981. ʾAḫfaš, Maʿānī = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan Saʿīd ibn Masʿada al-ʾAḫfaš al-ʾAwsaṭ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by Fāʾiz Fāris al-Ḥamad. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Kuwait, 1981. Anonymous, ʾAjnās = al-ʾAjnās min kalām al-ʿArab wa-mā štabaha fī l-lafẓ wa-ḫtalafa fī l-maʿnā. Ed. by Imtiyāz ʿAlī ʿAršī al-Rāmafūrī. Repr. from the Bombay edition, Beirut: Dār al-Rāʾid al-ʿArabī, 1983. ʾAṣmaʿī, ʾAḍdād = ʾAbū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Qurayb al-ʾAṣmaʿī, al-ʾAḍdād. Ed. by August Haffner, Ṯalāṯat kutub fī l-ʾaḍdād, 5–70. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāṯūlīkiyya, 1913. ʾAṣmaʿī, Ištiqāq = ʾAbū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Qurayb al-ʾAṣmaʿī, Ištiqāq al-ʾasmāʾ. Ed. by Ramaḍān ʿAbd al-Tawwāb and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Hādī. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1980. ʾAṣmaʿī, Mā ḫtalafat =ʾ Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Qurayb al-ʾAṣmaʿī, Mā ḫtalafat ʾalfāẓuhu wa-ttafaqat maʿānīhi. Ed. by Mājid Ḥasan al-Ḏahabī. Damascus: Dār alFikr, 1986. ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya = Raḍī al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al-ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ Kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥājib fī l-naḥw. 2 vols. Istanbul, 1310a.h. ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb = ʾAbū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-ʾAzharī, Tahḏīb al-luġa. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn et. al. 15 vols. Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-lTaʾlīf wa-l-ʾAnbāʾ wa-l-Našr and al-Dār al-Miṣriyya li-l-Taʾlīf wa-l-Tarjama, 1964–1967. Baġdādī, Ḫizāna = ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿUmar al-Baġdādī, Ḫizānat al-ʾadab wa-lubb lubāb lisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 13 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-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. Farrāʾ, 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, 1955–1972. Fīrūzābādī, Qāmūs = Majd al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Ṭāhir Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Fīrūzābādī, al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ. 4 vols. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1952. Ḫalīl, ʿAyn = ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-ʿayn. Ed. by Mahdī 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 alkitābiyya. Ed. by Louis Cheikho. 9th ed. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāṯūlīkiyya, 1913. Harawī, Ġarībayn = ʾAbū ʿUbayd ʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Harawī, Kitāb al-Ġarībayn fī l-Qurʾān wa-l-Ḥadīṯ. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Farīdī al-Mazyadī. 6 vols. Mecca: Maktaba Nizār Muṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1999. Ḥarbī, Ġarīb = ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Ḥarbī, Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ. Ed. by Sulaymān ibn 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, alʾInṣāf fī masāʾil al-ḫilāf bayna l-naḥwiyyīn al-Baṣriyyīn wa-l-Kūfiyyīn. Ed. by Muḥammad 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: Maktabat al-ʾAndalus, 1970. Ibn al-ʾAṯīr, Nihāya = Majd al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Saʿādāt al-Mubārak ibn Muḥammad Ibn alʾAṯīr, al-Nihāya fī ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ wa-l-ʾAṯar. Ed. by Ṭāhir ʾAḥmad al-Zāwī and Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī. 2nd ed. 5 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979. Ibn al-Dahhān, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Muḥammad Saʿīd ibn al-Mubārak Ibn al-Dahhān, Šarḥ ʾabniyat Sībawayhi. Ed. by Ḥasan Šāḏilī Farhūd. Riyadh: Dār al-ʿUlūm, 1987. Ibn Durayd, Ištiqāq = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Durayd, al-Ištiqāq. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. Cairo: Muʾassasat al-Ḫānjī, 1958. Ibn Durayd, Jamhara = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Durayd, Jamharat alluġa. Ed. by Ramzī Munīr Baʿalbakī. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1987–1988. Ibn Durayd, Malāḥin = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Durayd, 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. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 6 vols. Cairo: Dār ʾIḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1946–1952. Ibn Fāris, Mujmal = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris, Mujmal al-luġa. Ed. by Zuhayr ʿAbd al-Muḥsin Sulṭān. 4 vols. in 2 [beginning of vol. 4 not indicated]. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1984. Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-luġa wa-sunan al-ʿArab fī kalāmihā. Ed. by Muṣṭafā l-Šuwaymī. Beirut: Muʾassasat Badrān, 1963. Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥusayn ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Ḫālawayhi, Laysa fī kalām al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʾAḥmad ʿAbd al-Ġafūr ʿAṭṭār. 2nd ed. Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-lMalāyīn, 1979. Ibn Ḫaldūn, Muqaddima = Waliyy al-Dīn ʾAbū Zayd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad Ibn 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: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1986. Ibn Jinnī, Munṣif = ʾAbū l-Fatḥ ʿUṯmān Ibn Jinnī, al-Munṣif, šarḥ Kitāb al-taṣrīf li-lMāzinī. Ed. by ʾIbrāhīm Muṣṭafā and ʿAbdallāh ʾAmīn. 3 vols. Cairo: Muṣṭafā l-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1954–1960. Ibn Maḍāʾ, Radd = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Maḍāʾ al-Laḫmī, alRadd 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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A Twelfth Century League Table of Arab Grammarians Michael G. Carter

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

1

Al-Baṭalyawsī

ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī (sometimes referred to as Ibn al-Sīd), was born in Bajadoz (hence his nisba) in 444/1052, 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 composing an indiscreet poem about the three sons of the city governor. Being a grammarian, al-Baṭalyawsī could not resist making erotic puns on the names of these young men, ʿAzzūn, Raḥmūn and Ḥassūn,1 which he echoes as verbs in pleading 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 something to sip’ to cure my thirst for Ḥassūn.2 About forty titles are credited to al-Baṭalyawsī from various sources, covering a wide range of topics: he wrote a commentary on the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik ibn ʾAnas, at least three works of theology and philosophy, commentaries on the poetry of al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī, and, the work he is perhaps best known for in the West, al-Iqtiḍāb fī šarḥ ʾAdab al-kuttāb, a three-part commentary on the ʾAdab al-kātib of Ibn Qutayba.

1 The origin of this -ūn suffix is disputed: Roman (1996:527) sees it as probably Andalusian, but cf. 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 be ḥissū-nī; the preceding ʾin ẓamiʾat nafsī ʾilā rīqi Ḥassūnin confirms that the intended verb is ḥassā ‘give someone some broth or soup (ḥasāʾ) to sip’. The editor of Ḥulal (7 f.) refuses to believe the story.

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

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Of his linguistic works the most relevant to us are as follows (i) Masāʾil waʾajwiba fī l-naḥw, a selection of questions and answers on grammatical themes, of which the fiftieth Masʾala (henceforth Mas. 50) is a detailed discussion of rubba occupying pages 137–156 of the printed text; (ii) a two-volume commentary on the famous Jumal of al-Zajjājī, the first, ʾIṣlāḥ al-ḫalal al-wāqiʿ fī l-Jumal (with variations in the title, henceforth ʾIṣlāḥ) dealing with what alBaṭalyawsī calls the deficiency (ḫalal) of the Jumal, the second, al-Ḥulal fī šarḥ ʾabyāt 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 lmuslimīn fī ʾārāʾihim, which includes (105–108) a short treatment of rubba; (iv) Risāla fī l-ism wa-l-musammā, which deals with grammatical matters in a highly philosophical manner.

2

The League Table of Grammarians

There has always been disagreement about whether rubba denotes takṯīr (‘how many …!’) or taqlīl (‘how few …!’), and indeed the issue was polarized into one of 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 into three groups by their status and their position on rubba. In the text the order is Groups 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)3 1. 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” (naḥwuhumā min 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 takṯīr al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) The names are listed in approximate chronological order and all are easily identifiable, though among the “Major Baṣrans” in Group a the name ʿUmar is misspelt as ʿAmr in (i) 3, and what is printed as Ibn Ḥunayyī in (i) 15 is probably a mistake, as no such grammarian could be found. The obvious correction is Ibn Jinnī, especially since he is quoted in other works of al-Baṭalyawsī. The chronological and geographical constraints of the list are striking: it contains no grammarians after the end of the 4th/10th century (Ibn Jinnī being the last),4 and not a single Maġribī grammarian is mentioned, either from North Africa or Andalus. The chronological limitation may reflect a prevailing Maġribī view of grammar as a Mašriqī creation, including the traditional division into Baṣrans and Kūfans, and ending in the 4th/10th century rather in the way that in law and ḥadīṯ the gate of ijtihād was closed at about the same time to mark the perfection 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 from al-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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Many prominent early Mašriqī scholars are missing from the list. But bearing in mind that al-Baṭalyawsī has told us (Mas. 50, 138) that he searched through “all the grammarians” ( jumlat al-naḥwiyyīn), it is most likely that he has named here only the ones who expressed an opinion on rubba. The geographical limitation, the failure to name a single Maġribī grammarian, tends to confirm that Maġribī grammar was still working towards a sense of regional autonomy. References to fellow Andalusians are also rare in alBaṭalyawsī’s other works. Only one is mentioned, and frequently, in his Iqtiḍāb, namely ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Qālī (d. 356/967), but that is almost certainly due to the fact that the adoptive Andalusian al-Qālī (still called al-Baġdādī, as if to remind everyone of his Mašriqī origins) was the principal transmitter of Ibn Qutayba’s ʾAdab al-kātib in the Maġrib.5 Turning to the “Minor Grammarians” in Group b, we find the name of one of the best known of all the Eastern grammarians, ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Zajjājī. This is all the more surprising because his pedagogical grammar al-Jumal was so popular in the Maġrib that it is said to have generated some 120 commentaries by Maġribī authors alone, and while this figure is undoubtedly exaggerated, it is nevertheless true that of the fifty or so commentaries listed in Sezgin, no fewer than thirty-nine are by Maġribīs.6 Among those many commentators al-Baṭalyawsī may be unique in the intense animosity he shows towards al-Zajjājī, which he makes no effort to conceal in his two-part treatise on the Jumal. He begins the first volume (ʾIṣlāḥ al-ḫalal) by admitting that al-Zajjājī was generally competent, but the excessive brevity of his work left it open to criticism (taʿaqqub al-mutaʿaqqibīn), with the author often being unaware of his mistakes (ʾIṣlāḥ 57 f.). When not actually wrong (ġayr ṣaḥīḥ, ʾIṣlāḥ 129; ḫaṭaʾ, ʾIṣlāḥ 1737) his definitions are frequently not 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 restricted or straightened up” yaḥtāj ʾilā taqyīd wa-taṯqīf, ʾIṣlāḥ 182), with the result that al-Zajjājī is often misleading (“creates a false impression” yūhim, ʾIṣlāḥ 204) or contradictory ( fīhi tanāquḍ, ʾIṣlāḥ 58). On one occasion al-Baṭalyawsī accuses him of “combining a lie with an error” ( jamaʿ al-kiḏb wa-l-ḫaṭaʾ, ʾIṣlāḥ 223), for both misreporting Sībawayhi and misinterpreting him.

5 Al-Qālī also supplies a poetic riwāya for al-Baṭalyawsī (Ḥulal 101). 6 See Carter (2011:45f. 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 his best to limit this topic, more than he has before, but is still open to question for not limiting it enough” (ʾIṣlāḥ 250),8 and one of his statements is dismissed as “thoughtless” (min ġayr taʾammul, ʾIṣlāḥ 300), while several times we read that al-Zajjājī has fallen short “as usual” (ʿalā ʿādatihi, ʾIṣlāḥ 338). And in case we fail to notice just how little al-Baṭalyawsī thinks of al-Zajjājī, he invents for us the following example to illustrate the use of ʾinnamā to indicate contempt (taḥqīr), namely (ʾIṣlāḥ 349) “when you hear a man boasting about how much he has donated to charity you say to him, ʾinnamā ʾaʿṭayta dirhaman ‘all you have donated is a dirham’, and when you hear him boasting about being a grammarian you say to him, ʾinnamā qaraʾta Kitāb al-jumal ‘all you have ever studied is the Jumal’”. Clearly al-Baṭalyawsī was not impressed by this work, and although he may be rather isolated in his hostility to al-Zajjājī (a later grammarian, Ibn alḌāʾiʿ, d. 680/1281, evidently sprang to al-Zajjājī’s defence with a refutation of al-Baṭalyawsī’s objections),9 we can at least accept that his classification of al-Zajjājī as a “minor grammarian” has been argued at length and with great conviction. For [Ibn] al-Naḥḥās (more commonly simply al-Naḥḥās) it is difficult to find such an explicit and detailed condemnation. Al-Baṭalyawsī quotes him frequently enough for us to be sure that he was familiar with his works, and he does disagree with him as often as not (e.g. ʾIṣlāḥ 126), but there is no overt polemic, nor even a hint that he assigned him a lower rank than the many other grammarians in whose company he is named, so we must conclude that this is a personal view of al-Baṭalyawsī. For what it is worth, al-Naḥḥās does have quite a lot to say about Sūra 15/2 (ʾIʿrāb al-Qurʾān ii, 375f.) but makes no mention at all of the taqlīl/takṯīr issue. As for the unnamed “similar minor grammarians” (naḥwuhumā min ṣiġār al-naḥwiyyīn) in Group b, we can only guess: they are presumably the same anonymous group that he refers to in Mas. 50, 138 as “some of the grammarians of our own time and the time near to that of [al-Fārābī]” (qawm min naḥwiyyī zamāninā hāḏā wa-min qurb zamānih): these, he says, wrongly believe that rubba denotes takṯīr, and furthermore they assert that the “older grammarians” (al-naḥwiyyūn al-mutaqaddimūn) erred in thinking that it denoted taqlīl.10 8

9 10

‘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 definitions which cannot be applied absolutely ʿalā l-ʾiṭlāq. Reported in Sezgin (1984:92 inf.). 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 among those whose names appear elsewhere in al-Baṭalyawsī’s works, on the grounds that at least he was directly or indirectly acquainted with their ideas, but this does not rule out those not named by him, whom he could judge by their reputation 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 correct understanding of rubba as denoting taqlīl. The answer is fairly simple: alBaṭalyawsī must be one of those who did not regard al-Ḫalīl as the author of the Kitāb al-ʿayn.11 In fact authorship has been ascribed to his close friend alLayṯ ibn al-Muẓaffar (d. 190/805), and opinion is still divided on how much they each contributed to the work: as Sezgin points out (1982:159), some Medieval writers avoided the issue by saying qāla Ṣāḥib Kitāb al-ʿayn, as al-Baṭalyawsī does here. In Group c the solitary authority named by al-Baṭalyawsī is a visitor from a different universe, the philosopher al-Fārābī, who was of the opinion that rubba could 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 by al-Baṭalyawsī, al-Fārābī’s Kitāb al-ḥurūf. The work itself is well known and published, but nowhere does it mention rubba. The problem is compounded firstly by the fact that the work also bore an alternative title, Kitāb al-ʾalfāẓ wa-l-ḥurūf, and secondly that it appears to have circulated in different versions. This has been studied by Larcher, with regard to discrepancies in the wording of a passage dealing with the relative purity of the Arabic spoken by the tribes during the period of the Islamic revelation. Larcher argues that the differences arose when al-Fārābī modified the text for doctrinal reasons, to give more prominence to Qurayš as speakers of the best Arabic.12 We can perhaps surmise that his view on rubba was known to al-Baṭalyawsī from some version of the Ḥurūf which has not come to light.

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ʾIṣlāḥ 259 he notes a disagreement over ḥattā between al-naḥwiyyūn al-mutaqaddimūn qabl al-Ḫalīl wa-Sībawayhi, from which we must conclude that even this early group was not united on every issue. Although al-Baṭalyawsī tells us that the author “states clearly” (ṣarraḥa) that rubba exclusively denotes takṯīr, this does not appear in the lemma for rubba in the printed edition of Kitāb al-ʿayn, viii, 258. Larcher (2006). Another version of this same text, from a manuscript said to be in alFārābī’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, ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnāṭī (d. 754/1344), in his Irtišāf al-ḍarab.13 But it may be that al-Baṭalyawsī has oversimplified the situation, if we can judge by al-Suyūṭī’s paraphrase of another work of ʾAbū Ḥayyān,14 which tells us that al-Fārābī and his school (ṭāʾifa) believed that rubba was predominantly for taqlīl but rarely (nādiran) for takṯīr, an opinion favoured by al-Suyūṭī over the other seven possibilities. 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.15 We also know that al-Baṭalyawsī was an admirer of al-Fārābī, whom he quotes with approval in his commentary on the Jumal (ʾIṣlāḥ 65 on nouns, 73 on verbs, 77 on particles). But oddly he does not mention him in his Risāla fī l-ism wa-lmusammā, which treats the ism and musammā from a markedly philosophical perspective—perhaps al-Fārābī never dealt with it.

3

The Meaning of rubba

So much for the League Table, now it is time to look at al-Baṭalyawsī’s treatment of rubba, beginning with some general observations:

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Larcher (2006:118f.), citing Irtišāf 456. ʾAbū Ḥayyān does not mention al-Fārābī among the grammarians named in Taḏkira 5–9 during a discussion of rubba, although he is mentioned once elsewhere in that work (see previous note). His commentary on the Tashīl of Ibn Mālik. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Kees Versteegh for providing me with a copy of the relevant passage in the Irtišāf, not only for its reference to al-Fārābī, but also because it contains (455) a list of grammarians which is almost identical with that of al-Baṭalyawsī (Mas. 50, 138), lacking only the classification into Major and Minor, and the names of the Baṣran Ibn al-Naḥḥās (!) and the Kūfan Muʿāḏ al-Ḥarrāʾ. Furthermore al-Suyūṭī in Hamʿ ii, 25 has exactly the same list as the Irtišāf, with both sources ascribing it to a work entitled al-Basīṭ, which has not yet been identified. The obvious candidate is the Basīṭ of Ibn ʾAbī Rabīʿ al-ʾIšbīlī (d. 688/1289, see Sezgin 1984:93), a commentary on the Jumal, where we might expect the author to raise the matter under the 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 Irtišāf is not entirely reliable: p. 455 informs us that rubba denotes taʿlīl, instead of taqlīl, and implausibly attributes a Kitāb al-ḥurūf to al-Fārisī. Cruz Hernández (1992:784).

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Mas’ala 50 is a virtual monograph, citing no fewer than 55 verses of poetry, some of them more than once. Such a treatment of rubba is possibly the longest in 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 this may be unique. In passing we have to forget altogether that etymologically rubba 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 in the form rubbamā in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (15), verse 2, rubbamā yawaddu llaḏīna kafarū law kānū muslimīna, to which we shall return. As is clear from al-Baṭalyawsī’s analysis, he is far more interested in the rhetorical features of rubbamā than the eschatology of the verse. In his handling of evidentiary verses (šawāhid) al-Baṭalyawsī is unusual in two ways. Firstly he draws on his own repertoire of memorized dīwāns rather than the inherited corpus of isolated verses found in grammatical works, and perhaps to assert his independence he even neglects to mention, with one exception, any of the nine verses involving rubba topics in the Kitāb, which he 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 Tammām, al-Mutanabbī, Ḏū l-Rumma and Ibn al-Rūmī, seldom quoted by the grammarians, who regarded pre-Islamic poetry as the only authoritative data. For both these reasons most of the lines quoted by al-Baṭalyawsī are absent from the standard reference works of šawāhid. Here follows a summary of the contents of Mas. 50, with minimal citation of 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 where it can only denote takṯīr. He illustrates this by some prose examples and two pre-Islamic verses, one by Imruʾ l-Qays: ٍ ‫الا رب يـوٍم صا‬ 17‫ل‬ ِ ‫لح لـك مـنـهما ٭ ولا سـيـما يـوٍم بـدارة جـلـجـ‬ َّ ُ

16

17

[1]

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, 426 Derenbourg/i, 477 Būlāq. Neither of these is a direct šāhid for rubba, however. 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 actually does denote takṯīr, an error compounded by their misinterpretation of Sībawayhi’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 of al-Fārābī, and concludes his introductory remarks by showing how Sībawayhi’s words have been misinterpreted. However, even though the evidence suggests that rubba was used for both taqlīl and takṯīr, he will not accept al-Fārābī’s position that they are equivalent ( yataʿādal al-ʾamrāni): instead al-Baṭalyawsī proposes to explain how takṯīr is a special extension of the original meaning of taqlīl. 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, although kam and rubba are antonyms, they can exchange meanings under certain circumstances, 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 various kinds of oxymoron, among them the following line of poetry: 19‫ك‬ ِ ‫[ فـلا تحسبوا دمعي لوجد وجدتـه ٭ فقد تدمع العينان من شدة الضح‬2] Chapter 2 (142–150). On this basis al-Baṭalyawsī now demonstrates at length the use of rubba in its authentic primary imposition of taqlīl, in quotations from prose and verse, all chosen because they unambiguously imply taqlīl, for example:

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19

Several published translations are available. Here we offer a plain and literal version: “Has there not been many a day which was good for you because of those two [fine ladies], especially one particular day at Dāra Juljul!?”. What Sībawayhi actually says is maʿnāhā maʿnā rubba (Kitāb i, 250 Derenbourg/i, 291 Būlāq, also i, 252 Derenbourg/i, 293 Būlāq) “the meaning [of kam] is the same as the meaning 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 same manzila, i. e. syntactic status, because both denote an amount or quantity (ʿidda). It does not follow from this that they are synonyms: the maʿnā they have in common is to denote an unspecified amount or quantity, i.e. a grammatical, not lexical meaning. Mas. 50, 141. The line may be translated as: “Do not suppose my weeping is for some grief I feel, for the eyes may well shed tears from intense laughter”.

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20‫ف‬ ُ ‫كـلـ‬ ْ ‫كـلـف ما لا يـستـطاع فأ‬ ْ ‫[ إنـي لأعـطـي سائلـي ولر بـما ٭ أ‬3] It is no accident that this section contains so many poetic quotations, some 35 verses, because, as al-Baṭalyawsī was doubtless aware, in practice the use of rubba for takṯīr is far more common than taqlīl, so he is here bombarding us with heavy artillery in order to distract us from that fact.21 Chapter 3 (150–156) deals with cases where rubba has the meaning of takṯīr figuratively (ʿalā ṭarīq al-majāz). This happens mostly with boasting, pride and vaingloriouness (iftiḫār, faḫr, mubāhāh), as it is natural to boast of an abundance 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 in poetry, and it reflects the principle laid down already about the exchange of meaning between opposites as described in Chapter 1. Indeed the alternation is so free that either kam or rubba can be used for takṯīr, and it is a compelling piece of evidence that al-Baṭalyawsī is able to quote two consecutive lines in which kam and rubba both denote takṯīr: ‫ب‬ ِ ‫[ فيا رب يـوم قد شـر بت بمشرب ٭ شفـيت به غيم الصدى بارٍد عذ‬4] 22‫ب‬ ِ ‫وكـم لـيلـة قد بـتـها غـير آثـم ٭ بساجية الحجلين مفـعمة القـلـ‬ 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? AlBaṭalyawsī’s answer reprises the argument he has already made above (Chapter 1), that in some situations people say the opposite of what they mean. His examples include laʿanahu llāhu mā ʾafṣaḥahu ‘God curse him, how eloquent he is!’ (in praise); yā ʿāqilu ‘O, intelligent one!’ (to a stupid person); kam baṭalin qatala zaydun ‘how many heroes Zayd has killed!’ (actually very few). 20 21 22

Mas. 143. “I give [generously] to anyone who asks me. Sometimes I am charged with more than I can bear, and yet I undertake the task”. Fleisch (1979:110, n. 3) cites this as the view of al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. between 684–688/1285– 1289), Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 308. 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 line in order to make sense of it, but obviously we must prefer al-Baṭalyawsī’s wa-kam laylatin over al-Qālī’s wa-min laylatin. The lines may be rendered: “O, how many days there have been 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] anklets quiet and still, her heart filled to overflowing”.

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This time there is a more subtle development of the idea: by choosing rubba, a term which properly denotes taqlīl, the speaker is following the same principle as already defined above in using pejorative terms to praise someone, because it is more eloquent (ʾablaġ) to use taqlīl to imply that the good qualities are rare in everybody, than simply to say that those qualities are abundant in a single person.23 The poetic example 24‫ل‬ ُ ‫كـ‬ َ َ ‫ل قد سـر يت بها ٭ اذا تـضجـع عنها العاجز الو‬ ٍ ‫[ يا رب لـيلة هو‬5] illustrates this usage: when the poet boasts about how many (rubba) nights of terror 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), where he invokes other dualities (he calls them nisbatān muḫtalifatān) which occur elsewhere in the language. He compares the double sense of rubba with such analogous phenomena (naẓīr) as the variation of the definite article in personal names, where we sometimes (rubbamā!) find al-Ḥasan, treated as a ṣifa, therefore 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’ with indirect questions, qad ʿalimtu ʾa-zaydun ʿindaka ʾam ʿamrun ‘I knew whether Zayd or ʿAmr was with you’, evidently seeking information already known! In a poetic example of this phenomenon: 25ُ ‫[ فـإن تـمـس مهجور الفـناء فـر بما ٭ أقام بـه بـعـد الـوفـود وفـود‬6] he returns to the topic of rubba, here to show that rubbamā, which should denote infrequency, here denotes frequency, scil. ‘And if [now you are dead]

23

24 25

The commentary of al-ʾArdabīlī (active in the 7th/13th century?) on the ʾUnmūḏaj of al-Zamaḫšarī offers a fine specimen of casuistry in accounting for this: rubba rajulin karīmin laqītuhu is paraphrased ‘The generous men that I have met, even though they are numerous, are few by comparison with the [generous] ones I have not met’ (ʾinna lrijāla l-kirāma llaḏīna laqītuhum wa-ʾin kānū kaṯīrīna wa-lākinnahum bi-l-qiyāsi ʾilā llaḏīna mā laqītuhum qalīlūn, Unmūḏaj, Arabic text 101; French translation 243). Mas. 50, 154. “O how many a night of terror there has been, where I have journeyed on while the sluggardly weakling slept through it”. Mas. 151 and 155. The translation offered is purely ad hoc. Others quote this verse for a different reason, to illustrate the use of conditional ʾin with a temporal sense ‘when, now that’, as the translation reproduces.

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your camping ground becomes deserted [of future guests], well, delegations upon delegations of [past] guests have sometimes (i.e. often) resided there’.26 He concludes his examination of rubba in its secondary function of takṯīr with an analysis of the psychological advantage of asserting paradoxically that something is more than it should be by using a word (rubba) which signifies that it is less than it should be. Thus (155) a man might boast of meeting many scholars but, out of modesty, will say rubba ʿālimin qad laqītu ‘there are a few scholars [whom] I have met’, which is more eloquent (ʾablaġ again), because a person who humbles himself in this way will increase his merit, in the same way that a person who elevates himself above his station will lose merit when tested and found wanting. This, says al-Baṭalyawsī, is the general principle behind all the previous instances of rubba being used to denote takṯīr. This argument reaches its climax when it is applied (155) to the Qurʾānic rubbamā yawaddu llaḏīna kafarū law kānū muslimīna (Sūra 15/2). The rhetorical status of the verse is compared to one in which a person disobeys a command and is warned lā tuʿādinī fa-rubbamā nadimta ‘do not oppose me, for you may well regret it’. Here the expected sense of rubba would be takṯīr, implying much regret for the disobedience, but the intention is to say that ‘even if the regret for this [disobedience] would have only been small, it would still be necessary to refrain from what might lead to [that regret], so how much more [should it be avoided] when that regret would be very great?’ (ʾanna l-nadāmata ʿalā hāḏā law kānat qalīlatan la-wajaba ʾan yataḫallafa mā yuʾaddī ʾilayhā fa-kayfa wa-hiya kaṯīratun?).27 In this way rubbamā still has its formal meaning of taqlīl but the rhetorical impact is stronger than it would be if an explicit expression of takṯīr were 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-Baṭalyawsī, but Western translators of the Qurʾān have had difficulties with it. Some render 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

27

Al-Baṭalyawsī is not quite so sure, as the interpretation has been disputed. He compromises by offering an alternative reading, that the abundance of arriving guests was crammed into a short lifetime, that is, rubbamā here genuinely means ‘for not very long’. Al-Baṭalyawsī has almost identical wording in his ʾInṣāf 106 (with var. yatajannaba for yataḫallafa). The main problem for the commentators is the imperfect verb yawaddu, as the perfect tense is normally required after rubbamā, hence the poem in no. [6] above is often 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 to imply ‘very often indeed’, as argued by al-Baṭalyawsī.28 With that al-Baṭalyawsī’s answer to the Masʾala is complete, and he rounds it 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 who interpret rubba here as intrinsically denoting takṯīr just because it does so superficially have missed the point. In conclusion some general aspects of the syntax of rubba and rubbamā will be briefly discussed. They are not directly related to al-Baṭalyawsī’s animadversions, but other grammarians found them interesting, and they are still relevant to rubba today. (1) It is significant that al-Baṭalyawsī nowhere considers that rubba might belong 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 certain conditions, it is understood as denoting takṯīr. In this, rubba resembles the English word ‘few’: normally this means ‘not very many’, as in ‘I have written a few books’, i.e. not a lot, but when you say, ‘I’ve had a few drinks’, it will be taken to mean exactly the opposite. (2) The status of the qualifying element after the rubba phrase, e.g. rubba rajulin karīm (the inflection of karīm is left open for the time being) and rubba rajulin laqītu/laqītuhu, is disputed by the Medieval grammarians. In fact they would reject the obvious parsings ‘many a man is noble’ and ‘many a man have I met’, on the grounds that the qualifying elements karīm and laqītu[hu] cannot be predicates of rajul, unlike the exclamatory kam in kam ġulāmin laka qad ḏahaba ‘how many a slave boy of yours has run away!’, kam rajulin ʾafḍalu minka ‘how many a man is more virtuous than you!’.29 The instinct of the Medieval grammarians is perfectly sound, since rubba is an old exclamatory form,30 with the qualifying elements functioning as attributive adjectives or asyndetic relative qualifiers (ṣifa) in what are originally elliptical structures. The literal translation of rubba rajulin karīmin should therefore be ‘O how many a noble man [there is]!’ with karīmin agreeing with 28 29 30

The issue of Qurʾān translation is not central to this paper, so individual translators will not be identified. These are from Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 252 Derenbourg/i, 293 Būlāq. Some time ago (see Fleischer 1885–1888:i, 419, for early references) it was noted that rubba is originally a vocative ‘O, how many a … there is!’.

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rajulin, and of rubba rajulin laqītu/laqītuhu ‘O how many a man whom I have met [there is]!’ with laqītu/laqītuhu as an attributive clause.31 In this regard it is revealing that Kouloughli translates one such sentence rubba mraʾatin faʿalat kaḏā with such an attributive clause “il y a bien eu quelque(s) femme(s) qui a/ont fait telle chose”,32 rather than a postposed verbal predicate ‘many a woman/women has/have done such a thing’.33 (3) It is well known that rubba (unlike rubbamā) has disappeared altogether from vernacular Arabic, but in contemporary written Arabic it may be that it has been re-analyzed so that the second element is now indeed regarded as a predicate, and accordingly we find rubba rajulin karīmun not karīmin. This is difficult to demonstrate with the unvowelled corpus we usually have to deal with in modern Arabic, but it happens that three editions of the Kitāb present three different explicit vocalizations of this construction which indicate very clearly that the system is now in chaos: (i)

Derenbourg i, 256: rubba tawkīdin lāzimin ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahu min al-kalima (ii) Būlāq i, 298: rubba tawkīdun lāzimun ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahu min al-kalima (iii) Hārūn ii, 171: rubba tawkīdin lāzimun ḥattā yaṣīra ka-ʾannahu min al-kalima The editors faced two problems here, whether rubba was in the metalanguage or not, and what would be the corresponding inflection for each of these possibilities. For Derenbourg this is not a statement about rubba, and he has accordingly vocalized the sentence in the correct Medieval form for the exclamatory sense, lit. ‘O how many a permanently attached emphatic element there is, so much so that it becomes like part of the word!’. The Būlāq editor has read the sentence as a non-exclamatory statement about rubba, “rubba is a permanently attached emphatic element, so much so 31 32 33

The syntactic uncertainty is manifest in the variation laqītu/laqītuhu, but that is a separate issue which cannot be pursued here. Kouloughli, Unmūḏaj 161 n. 4. 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 relative clause “there is no man [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 a predicate. Prima facie this is not likely to be what Sībawayhi intended. Hārūn reads it as a general statement, like Derenbourg, but vocalizes it according to the modern convention as a subject (rubba tawkīdin) and a predicate (lāzimun), with no exclamatory connotation: we can translate it directly as “Many an emphatic element is permanently attached, so much so that it becomes like part of the word”. (4) Rubbamā has undergone a semantic shift in modern Arabic, written and spoken, where it now has the dominant meaning of ‘perhaps, maybe’, which it 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 that sense from al-Mubarrad, rubbamā tataqaddamu mraʾatun fī ṣināʿatin wa-qallamā yakūnu ḏālika ‘sometimes a woman excels in an art, but that will be seldom’,36 which admittedly could be rendered ‘might well excel’ in a transitional sense approaching ‘perhaps’, but a more typical usage is seen in an example from al-Fārābī (not from Mas. 50, though al-Baṭalyawsī would probably have been aware of it), rubbamā ʾaḥraqat wa-rubbamā lam tuḥriq, speaking of the potential effect (quwwa) of fire on straw, ‘sometimes it would burn [the straw] and sometimes it would not’.37 As an academic exercise this Masʾala exhibits a fully mature Islamic scholasticism. It is a highly structured and coherent treatise which may be entirely original 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 threatened in Sūra 15/2, rubbamā yawaddu llaḏīna kafarū law kānū muslimīna. There

34

35

36 37

It is not easy to see how the passage referred to by Fleisch (1979:ii, 110, n. 3), demonstrates that the meaning ‘perhaps’ was already noted by al-Zamaḫšarī, not least because the passage in question is by al-ʾArdabīlī (see above, n. 23). The final example is translated as an optative, iii, 226, rubbamā mannā llāhu ʿalayya ‘May God bestow his favors upon me’, but rubbamā probably has the new meaning of ‘perhaps’ here too. Mas. 50, 143. Here qallamā reinforces the taqlīl sense of rubbamā. 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 commentary on this verse by al-Farrāʾ (Maʿānī ii, 82), who compares it with the situation of a disobedient person who is told ʾa-mā wa-llāhi la-rubba nadāmatin laka taḏkuru qawlī fīhā ‘By God, won’t there surely be some little regret for you [when] you recall what I said about it!?’, because the speaker knows that there certainly will be regret.38 A second precedent is in the commentary of alZajjāj on this same verse (Maʿānī iii, 172f.), where he explains that it follows the thinking of the ‘Arabs’ (i.e. Bedouin) when they utter threats (tahaddud): in the equivalent paraphrase rubbamā nadima l-ʾinsān etc. the person making the threat knows well that people generally have regrets for what they do, and that there will be regret in each individual case, especially for serious misdeeds. This fact is in itself a reason to refrain from the action, says al-Zajjāj, thus rubbamā 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 fortiori argument to justify his interpretation of rubbamā. A second issue of originality is the observation that rubba can be used for takṯīr in circumstances of boasting or pride (see above in al-Baṭalyawsī’s chapter 3). This notion is linked to his name by ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnāṭī, as quoted in Hamʿ ii, 25, where al-Suyūṭī tells us that the seventh opinion on rubba is that “it denotes takṯīr in the situation of vaingloriousness and boasting ( fī mawḍiʿ al-mubāhāh wa-l-iftiḫār), but taqlīl everywhere else, which is the view of al-ʾAʿlam and Ibn al-Sīd”, i.e. al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī (d. 476/1083) and our al-Baṭalyawsī, who died forty-four years later. If we knew what al-Šantamarī’s position on rubba was, we might be able to determine whether al-Baṭalyawsī was influenced by it, and if so, how, but a quick check of the available sources yielded no information, and the question must remain unanswered for the time being.

4

Postscript

In all the above we have to keep in mind that etymologically rubba must originally have denoted takṯīr, and that al-Baṭalyawsī’s argument is back to front. In the words of one Western source, “it is curious to note that ‫ب‬ ّ َ ُ ‫ ر‬has

38

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

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passed, like the German manch, the Fr. maint, and Eng. many a …, from its original 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 the sense of rubba. From their perspective the word had always been used in both meanings, and although we might challenge their interpretation of particular lines of verse, we must accept the Sprachgefühl of the majority who knew enough examples of rubba to conclude that it primarily denoted taqlīl, even though it also occurred in the meaning of takṯīr. But a simple appeal to authority, based on the professional standing of scholars, could not be intellectually satisfying, and still less could it eliminate the divergent opinions tabulated in al-Baṭalyawsī’s League Table, which is the starting point of his Masʾala. What al-Baṭalyawsī did was to bring to bear the techniques of scholastic argument to account logically for what he (and the majority) believed the historical process to have been. He was not required to demonstrate what happened—this is a matter of record—but to explain how and why it came about. Given his ideological background it is not be expected that he would, as Western scholars have done, simply note that this change of meaning is universal (albeit in the other direction), though he does point out that such complementary phenomena are not limited to rubba within the Arabic language itself. Where he engages with our Western perceptions is in his assumption that language is an activity of rational speakers, and follows rational principles, and therefore that the change of meaning in rubba correlates directly with certain human motives. There is no need to look for modern equivalents to this approach (terms such as pragmatics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis could easily be mapped retrospectively on to his argumentation), as the principles of Islamic law provided a framework which had already been applied in Arabic grammar from the very beginning, in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi, where the rationality of both the speaker and listener underpins the criteria of correct speech. As developed explicitly by later grammarians, speech is only valid when it issues from a speaker capable of forming an intention, thus excluding 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 juridical approach to language, let us not forget that al-Baṭalyawsī is styled al-faqīh (either by himself or the transmitter of the work) in the opening lines of parts 2 and 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 a

Primary Sources

ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Irtišāf = ʾAbū Ḥayyān Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Irtišāf al-ḍarab fī lisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by Muṣṭafā ʾAḥmad al-Nammās. 2 vols. Cairo, 1984– 1987. ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Taḏkira = ʾAbū Ḥayyān Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Taḏkirat 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. = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī, 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-Baṭalyawsī, Risāla fī l-ism wal-l-musammā. Ed. by Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal, “La question du 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-Baṭalyawsī, ʾIṣlāḥ al-ḫalal al-wāqiʿ fī l-Jumal (or Kitāb al-ḥulal fī ʾiṣlāḥ al-ḫalal min Kitāb al-jumal). Ed. by Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Karīm Saʿūdī. Baghdad, 1400/1980. (https://uqu.edu .sa/page/ar/93205238) Baṭalyawsī, Ḥulal = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī, al-Ḥulal fī šarḥ ʾabyāt al-Jumal. Ed. by Yaḥyā Murād, Beirut 2002. Baṭalyawsī, Iqtiḍāb = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī, 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. by Muḥsin Mahdī, Alfarabi’s Book of Letters. Beirut, 1969. [Cited from an anonymous pdf accessed at www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_2664.pdf] Farrāʾ, Maʿānī = ʾAbū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā ibn Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by ʾAḥmad 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. by Mahdī 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. by ʿIyyād 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, 1324 a.h. Qifṭī, ʾInbāh = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī, ʾInbāh al-ruwāh ʿalā ʾanbāh 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 Hartwig Derenbourg, 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, Hamʿ al-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 alBaġdādī, 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 ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʿAbduh Šalabī. 5 vols. Beirut, 1988. Zamaḫšarī, ʾUnmūḏaj = ʾAbū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamaḫšarī, al-ʾUnmūḏaj fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Djamel Eddine Kouloughli, Le résumé de la grammaire arabe par Zamaḵšarī, Lyon, 2007.

b

Secondary Sources

Cantarino, 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 to Ramzi 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 legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 777–803. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Fleisch, Henri. 1961. Traité de philologie arabe. i. Préliminaires, phonétique, morphologie nominale. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique. Fleisch, Henri. 1979. Traité de philologie arabe. ii. Pronoms, morphologie verbale, particules. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq. Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht. Kleinere Schriften, gesammelt, durchgesehen und vermehrt. 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 a window onto Arabic humanism: A collection of articles in honour of Michael G. Carter, ed. by Lutz Edzard and Janet Watson, 108–129. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

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Roman, André. 1996. “Sur l’origine de la diptosie en langue arabe”. Studies in Near Eastern languages and literatures: Memorial volume of Karel Petráček, ed. by Petr Zemánek, 515–534. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Sezgin, Fuat M. 1982. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. viii. Lexikographie bis ca. 430 h. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Sezgin, Fuat M. 1984. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. ix. Grammatik bis ca. 430 h. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Wright, William. 1896–1898. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. rev. by W. Robertson Smith and M.J. de Goeje. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Reissued 1933; many reprints.) (Repr., Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1996.)

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

1

Introduction

The grammar of numerals is a fascinating chapter to explore in Arabic grammatical treatises because it is at the crossroad of many issues in these treatises.1 This, because numerals should theoretically apply to any other substantive in the language, and that the nominal group made up of the numeral and its counted object should be able to be in any nominal syntactic slot in the sentence. The problem is that numerals have very different morphologies (adjectives, substantives, compounds, plural-like) and this is incompatible with the freedom of behavior that is expected from them. The blind spot in the eye is the point where the visual nerve connects to the retina. This point itself is blind but it enables vision. Any theory has their blind spots, i.e. assumptions that make the theory possible but that are not questioned per se by the author. They are interesting to unveil because they reveal what it is that holds the theory together. Raḍī l-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 688/1289?) is a grammarian of whom little is known except maybe that he was Shiʿi from Tabaristan (Tawfīq 1978:11; Mango 1979:721; Weipert 2009:118). He is the author of two major commentaries on treatises by the Egyptian grammarian of Kurdish origin Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249; Fleisch 1979:781), Šarḥ al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, which is devoted to syntax (ʾiʿrāb), and Šarḥ al-Šāfiya fī ʿilmay al-taṣrīf wa-l-ḫaṭṭ, which is devoted to morphology and calligraphy (Larcher 1989:109 f.).

* I am very grateful to Manuel Sartori and to professors Pierre Larcher and Jonathan Owens for their valuable comments on this paper. To be sure, I am not a specialist of al-ʾAstarābāḏī. The incentive for my research was to trace the developments of the grammar of numerals in later grammarians. All mistakes in this paper are only imputable to my impertinence to dare to deal with such a difficult author as al-ʾAstarābāḏī. 1 For the treatment of the syntax of numerals in the standard reference grammars of Arabic see Howell (2003: iv, 1423–1501); Wright (1967: i, 253–264; ii, 234–249); Fleisch (1990: i, 506–524).

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

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In this article, I will explore Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals in his commentary on al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, in order to reveal its logic and its blind spots. Although al-ʾAstarābāḏī is only the author of the commentary, I will mention only his name as source of the views he expresses. It is however more than obvious that in many cases the paternity of these views should be attributed to Ibn al-Ḥājib, rather than to al-ʾAstarābāḏī. This is especially true of the mere outline of the commentary. Moreover, in his commentary, al-ʾAstarābāḏī extensively quotes Ibn al-Ḥājib’s own commentary on his Kāfiya, as well as Ibn Ḥājib’s commentary on al-Zamaḫšarī’s Mufaṣṣal (Larcher 1991:370). There are to this day at least nine editions of this commentary:2 i.

Two (different?) Iranian editions in Teheran dated 1271/1854–1855 and 1275/1858–1859;3 Sarkīs (1928:i, 941) mentions two (different?) Persian editions dated 1268/1851–1852 and 1271/1854–1855 ii. An Ottoman edition dated 1275/1858–1859 in Istanbul, reprinted in Istanbul 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 could have also been printed in Istanbul, according to Larcher (1989:110) iii. An Indian edition dated 1282/1865–1866 in Delhi;4 and a (different?) edition dated 1882 in Lucknow5 iv. An Egyptian edition published in Būlāq in 1299/1881–1882 v. 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, republished 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 Bašīr Miṣrī in Riyadh dated 1414/1993

2 This list is based on Larcher (1989), to which I added the two Iranian re-editions of the Libyan edition (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 editions dated 1271 and 1275. These are mentioned in Brockelmann (1943–1949/1996, si, 532) but not in 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 of 1880.

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viii. A Lebanese edition by Émile Badīʿ Yaʿqūb in Beirut dated 1419/1998 ix. An Egyptian edition by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim Makram dated 2000 in Cairo. According to Larcher (1989:112), the Libyan edition by Yūsuf Ḥasan ʿUmar is of very poor quality. He says that the editor has apparently ‘corrected’ the Ottoman edition, based on his own intuition. As for the Egyptian edition, it is based on five manuscripts and on both the Ottoman and the Libyan editions (Gilliot 2004, no. 19, 209f.). In this article, I will quote Makram’s Egyptian edition. This edition, the Ottoman edition, and the Iranian reprint of the Libyan edition, are the only three editions I had access to. Fleisch is probably the first Orientalist to have praised the high level of sophistication of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammatical thinking, “car souvent il ne se contente pas de citer les paroles mêmes de ses devanciers, mais repense, résume les questions et donne des raccourcis vigoureux” (Fleisch 1961–1979:i, 41). He is considered by Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1989:260) and Versteegh (1989:259) to be a summit in the Arab scholastic grammatical tradition, a synthesis of the linguistic reflection, subtle and sophisticated. I will present al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory on numerals after having recalled three different grammatical frames in which grammarians have interpreted numerals in Arabic before him.

2

Three Different Solutions, Three Different Kinds of Problems

In Cambridge in 2012, I presented the three following frames, in which Sībawayhi (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, see Druel (2012), and its summary in Druel (2015). 2.1 Sībawayhi Sībawayhi is visibly trying to find a unique frame that would account for all numerals. He chooses the frame of the “adjectives that resemble the active participles” (al-ṣifāt al-mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil, Kitāb i, 86.20–21), of which numerals can be considered to be a sub-case. Considered separately, numerals have very different behaviors, but considered collectively, all numerals behave like the adjectives that resemble the active participles. Compare for example ḫamsatu ʾawlādin ‘five boys’ with jamīlu l-wajhi ‘beautiful of face’ (annexational construction); al-ʾawlādu l-ḫamsatu ‘the five boys’ with al-wajhu l-jamīlu ‘the beautiful face’ (appositional construction); al-ʾawlādu ḫamsatun ‘the boys are five’ with al-wajhu jamīlun ‘the face is beautiful’ (predicational construc-

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tion); and ʿišrūna waladan ‘twenty boys’ with jamīlun wajhan ‘beautiful of face’ (specifying construction). Not all numerals can be used in all four constructions, but when considered collectively, they behave like jamīl ‘beautiful’, an adjective resembling the active participle. More precisely, all numerals can be found in the predicative and appositional constructions, but the annexational and specifying constructions are in complementary distribution, depending on whether numerals are annexable or not. Annexable numerals can be found in annexational constructions (ṯalāṯatu ʾaṯwābin ‘three garments’; Kitāb i, 86.9), but the specifying construction ḫamsatun waladan ‘five boys’ is problematic (Kitāb i, 87.8; 232.3; 253.3f.). For non-annexable numerals, the specifying construction (ʿišrūna dirhaman ‘twenty dirhams’; Kitāb i, 85.5) is compulsory. This interpretation of Sībawayhi is highly speculative and it is not without difficulties. The reason is that Sībawayhi believes that the specifying construction has a verbal origin, whereas the three other constructions have a nominal origin. Numerals are ‘substantives’ (ʾasmāʾ) and some of them, the nonannexable ones, are found in a verbal-like construction. The main problem can thus be formulated as follows: where does the residual verbal syntactic strength in non-annexable numerals come from? Active participles derive their syntactic strength from the verb. This strength gives them freedom to put their complement in the dependent form, as in ḍāribun zaydan ‘hitting Zayd’ (Kitāb i, 80.2). They are strong enough to be postponed after their dependent form complement, 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 shorter form of the relative pronoun, as in hāḏā l-ḍāribu zaydan ‘this is the one hitting Zayd’ (Kitāb i, 77.8). In the case of the adjectives resembling the active participle, their syntactic strength also has a verbal origin, since they analogically correspond to the active participles of the verbs of the same root, just like ḥasan ‘beautiful’ analogically corresponds to *ḥāsin, the non-existent active participle of the verb ḥasuna/yaḥsunu ‘to be beautiful’. However, they have less strength than the active participles, which is clear from the fact that they cannot be postponed in the specifying construction. It is possible to say ḥasanun wajhan6 ‘beautiful 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 demonstration is built. Carter (1972:486) believes that Sībawayhi considered this expression to be incorrect in Arabic and analogically replaced by ʿišrūna dirhaman ‘twenty dirhams’ in the demonstration. I believe this is an over-interpretation of the absence of the expression in the Kitāb.

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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 syntactic strength come from? Sībawayhi does not mention a verbal origin for numerals and leaves us with a comparison between the numerals and the adjectives resembling the active participle that would be only at a surface level. Numerals cannot be postponed, as in *dirhaman ʿišrūna, and it is not clear whether they can 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 any further (Kitāb i, 85.5–7). 2.2 Al-Mubarrad The way al-Mubarrad deals with numerals and their counted object is very different from that of Sībawayhi. He distinguishes between ‘basic’ numerals (‘three’ to ‘ten’) and ‘subsidiary’ numerals (‘eleven’ to ‘one thousand’) (Muqtaḍab ii, 165.13f.). Basic numerals do not need a specifier (tamyīz), they are neither “vague” (mubhama) nor “bearing tanwīn” (munawwana) (Muqtaḍab ii, 164.4–5). On the contrary, subsidiary numerals (‘eleven’ to ‘one thousand’) need a tamyīz (Muqtaḍab ii, 144.7; 164.5f.; 165.2; 13; 167.10–12; 169.5–10; iii, 32.6f.; 38.3–5). These subsidiary numerals are themselves subdivided into series that behave differently: ‘eleven’ to ‘nineteen’ and decades are mubhama and munawwana, whereas hundreds and thousands are not munawwana (but are probably mubhama). Here, munawwana practically means ‘non-annexable’. The result of this Porphyrian subdivision is that numerals are divided into three categories: basic numerals (which are all annexable), annexable subsidiary numerals and non-annexable subsidiary numerals. Each category has a different behavior and the only point they have in common is that they have the same semantic relationship with their counted object, which can be expressed by the preposition min as in partitive ḫamsatun min al-kilāb ‘five (of the genus) dogs’ (Muqtaḍab ii, 158.6–159.1) and ʿišrūna min al-darāhimi ‘twenty (of the genus) dirhams’ (Muqtaḍab iii, 66.9f.). It is clear that al-Mubarrad only deals here with the most difficult issue, which is the complementary distribution of the annexable and specifying constructions. Although it would have been enough to separate between annexable and non-annexable numerals, the division that al-Mubarrad introduces between basic 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 objects (after subsidiary numerals). Only the singular counted object is called a tamyīz, whether it surfaces in the dependent or in the oblique form. The category that relates to tamyīz is that of mubham ‘vague’ substantives, a subcategory of substantives that are semantically deficient and that need a specifier. Subsidiary numerals need a tamyīz, whereas basic numerals do not. Al-Mubarrad is not explicit about whether hundreds and thousands are mubhama, but it would be consistent with his own theory to consider them so since they need a tamyīz. Al-Mubarrad’s theory does not need to address Sībawayhi’s difficulty about a residual verbal syntactic strength in non-annexable numerals. The distinction between basic and subsidiary numerals also makes it possible to distinguish between a plural counted object after the former and a singular counted object after the latter, although this is not a justification. For al-Mubarrad, it is enough to say that different categories behave differently.7 In the end, this question also loses its urgency in his theory, if compared to that of Sībawayhi. But al-Mubarrad’s theory also has its drawbacks. The first one, if compared with Sībawayhi, is that there is no syntactic consistency among numerals. Each series behaves differently, and therein lies the consistency: it is consistent for different series to behave differently. This is so frequent in the grammar of numerals that it can be called a ‘differentiation principle’. The second difficulty is that although tamyīz is primarily described as a dependent form complement, it also surfaces in the oblique form after annexable subsidiary numerals, i.e. hundreds and thousands. There is a shift in the description of tamyīz. In order to maintain some consistency among subsidiary numerals, al-Mubarrad also calls tamyīz the oblique case of the counted object after hundreds and thousands. The remaining characteristics of tamyīz is thus its singular and its meaning (partitive min ‘of, from’).8 If Sībawayhi’s theory could be labelled a speculative one, al-Mubarrad’s theory could probably be labelled an atomistic one, due to the numerous examples and counter-examples he gives, and his use of differentiation as an explanatory tool (the fact that words belong to different categories seems to be a 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, unlike miʾa ‘hundred’, ʾalf ‘thousand’ behaves like any other counted object (Muqtaḍab ii, 169.9). 8 In the end, the specifying construction and the annexational construction are both cases of taḫṣīṣ. See Sartori’s contribution in this volume.

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2.3 Ibn al-Sarrāj Ibn al-Sarrāj’s grammar is organized according to the parts of speech (verbs, nouns, particles) and the endings they can take (independent, dependent). He distinguishes between two types of nouns with a dependent ending (manṣūbāt): verbal and non-verbal complements. Tamyīz is one type of dependent form complement, and it can be of two types, verbal and non-verbal, depending on the word it specifies (ʾUṣūl i, 222–228). Numerical tamyīz belongs to the latter type. Unlike al-Mubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj says that all numerals are in need of a specifier (ʾUṣūl i, 311.2). This tamyīz surfaces in the oblique form after annexable numerals and in the dependent form after non-annexable numerals (ʾUṣūl i, 311.2–5). This is possible because annexation (ʾiḍāfa) has two meanings, 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 equivalent to the particle min (ʾUṣūl i, 315.11–13). This meaning of the relationship between numerals and their counted object is true for all numerals, which was already al-Mubarrad’s teaching. Just like al-Mubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj only deals with the complementary distribution of the annexational and specifying constructions, and not the other constructions. The difference is that al-Mubarrad would not call tamyīz the counted 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 distinguish between basic and subsidiary numerals in order to account for the difference between plural and singular counted objects, since his definition of tamyīz required the singular. By defining an ad hoc category that applies only to numerals, Ibn al-Sarrāj avoids this issue. It is part of the definition of numerical tamyīz that 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 origin and the dependent form is only there because some numerals cannot be annexed. The dependent form of this complement is only verbal at a surface level, but there is no verbal-like strength in the numeral that governs it. He also explicitly says (ʾUṣūl i, 324.7–9) that numerals cannot be compared to the active participles. The main problem of Ibn al-Sarrāj’s theory is the fact that numerical tamyīz is inserted in a chapter devoted to dependent form complements although the oblique form is the base-form. It is only because some numerals are not annexable that their tamyīz has to surface in the dependent form. In a grammar organized according to the ending forms, there is no place for transversal categories. This is the case of many issues on which Ibn al-Sarrāj keeps silent: the gender of numerals, the gender disagreement between numerals and their counted objects, the gender disagreement between the two parts of compound

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cardinal between ‘thirteen’ and ‘nineteen’, the verbal value of ordinals. AlMubarrad faced the same problem, but it was less obvious because his grammar is not organized according to the ending forms. This leaves him more freedom to deal with a greater number of issues in any part of his Muqtaḍab. Another point that was implied in al-Mubarrad’s grammar and that becomes prominent in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s grammar is that there is no one-to-one correspondence between syntax and semantics. For example, annexation has two meanings, possession and species, as mentioned above. And in turn, species can be expressed by two different constructions, annexational (ḫamsatu awlādin ‘five boys’) and specifying (ʿišrūna waladan ‘twenty boys’). Numerical tamyīz expresses the species, using either construction. In exactly the same manner, there is no one-to-one correspondence between morphology and syntax. For example, -ʿašara ‘–teen’ is compared to a compensatory nūn in some chapters and 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 hoc category 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 alMubarrad’s and in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s theories.

3

Al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Solution

3.1 Numerals Have an Adjectival Origin, Semantically and Syntactically In his commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s (d. 646/1249) Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, al-ʾAstarābāḏī presents an original synthesis of the grammar of numerals. Its most striking characteristic is the fact that al-ʾAstarābāḏī considers that in their relationship with their counted objects, numerals originally have an adjectival meaning (maʿnā l-waṣf ), as in ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, whose ‘base’ (ʾaṣl)9 is rijālun ṯalāṯatun, meaning rijālun maʿdūdatun bi-hāḏā l-ʿadad ‘men counted by this numeral’ (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 and syntactic. Larcher (2002–2003:65) translates ʾaṣl by ‘base’, understood as logical rather than historical. See Larcher (2014) on ʾaṣl in this interpretation. Commenting on Ibn Yaʿīš’ (d. 643/ 1245) Šarḥ al-mulūkī fī l-taṣrīf, Bohas (1984:23–31) says that ʾaṣl can refer to two different things: the root and the phonic representation of the verb. Ibn Yaʿīš thus calls q-w-l the ʾaṣl of *qawala, which in turn is the ʾaṣl of qāla. In all cases, ʾaṣl refers to an underlying form, not to the surface form.

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semantic equivalence (Muqtaḍab iii, 341.6), but for al-ʾAstarābāḏī it seems to reveal an underlying syntactic and semantic structure (which he probably refers to when he speaks of ʾaṣl), which has effects at the surface level, in particular in the gender agreement and disagreement between numerals and their counted objects. This is probably the most complicated point in his theory of numerals. Here is the outline of the demonstration. Understood as adjectives, numerals agree in gender and number with their counted objects, thus complying with the general rule. However, since all plural nouns are made feminine singular (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.11f.), numerals agree in the feminine singular, as in rijālun ṯalāṯatun ‘three men’. This is proved by the fact that it means rijālun maʿdūdatun bi-hāḏā l-ʿadad ‘men counted by this numeral’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 239.16f.). However, masculine nouns in the plural have been deprived of their tāʾ marbūṭa, as in rijāl ‘men’. Their feminine marker has been deleted (ḥuḏifat). In exactly the same manner, the plural noun niswa ‘women’ is a feminine singular with a deleted feminine marker. However, this deletion is not visible, since niswa actually carries a tāʾ marbūṭa. The fact that, unlike in rijāl, the deletion of the feminine marker is not visible in niswa makes it masculine, or in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s words, “niswa has become like a masculine because of the hiding of its feminine marker” ( fa-ṣāra ‘niswa’ kaʾannahu muḏakkar li-ḫafāʾ taʾnīṯihi; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 243.9). However, what is actually 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 the fact that “something is not affected by its equivalent the way it is affected by its opposite” (li-ʾanna l-šayʾ lā yanfaʿil ʿan miṯlihi infiʿālahu ʿan ḍiddihi; Šarḥ alKāfiya iv, 243.8f.). This rule is very close to the ‘differentiation principle’ we found in al-Mubarrad’s grammar. Because they are different, rijāl and niswa should behave differently. This gender ‘agreement’ rule is true for numerals between ‘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 number, as do ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’; ‘thirteen’ to ‘nineteen’ display mixed behavior, partly ‘analogous’ (qiyās) and partly not. Al-ʾAstarābāḏī does not explore this question any further. As for decades, hundreds and thousands, there is no problem since they have only one form in the masculine and in the feminine. An immediate consequence of this behavior is that the ending tāʾ marbūṭa in 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 their pattern’ (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 the key 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 muštaqqa) at an ‘underlying level’ (ʾaṣl), he can tackle the issue of the complementary distribution of the specifying and annexational constructions. However, in order to understand the next demonstration, one needs to refer to his general syntactic theory. 3.2 Numerals Usually Surface in Other Slots Than Their Own Another striking characteristic of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar lies in the clear distinction he draws between the predicative elements (ʿumad, sg. ʿumda ‘support, main issue’) and the non-predicative ones ( faḍalāt, sg. faḍla ‘remnant, surplus’). They correspond to two ‘grammatical slots’ (maḥall): rafʿ ‘independent slot’, which is the base-form for ʿumad; and naṣb ‘dependent slot’, which is the base-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. The first type is a faḍla that surfaces in the oblique form because it comes after a preposition (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 49.20f.), as in marartu bi-zaydin ‘I passed by Zayd’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 264.14). In this case, zayd is a “non-predicative element introduced 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 been annexed to it (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 60.14–16), as in ḍarabanī ġulāmu zaydin ‘Zayd’s servant hit me’ and ḍarabtu ġulāma zaydin ‘I hit Zayd’s servant’. In the first example, ġulām ‘servant’ is a ʿumda (the subject) and it is annexed to zayd, and in the second example, ġulām is a faḍla (direct object) and it is also annexed to zayd. What is confusing is that Ibn al-Ḥājib calls muḍāf ʾilayh a noun in the oblique form after a preposition (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 264.6f.), following Sībawayhi (cf. Kitāb i, 177.10f.), as al-ʾAstarābāḏī reminds us (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 264.8–11). It is however clear for al-ʾAstarābāḏī that the two constructions are completely different, since the oblique form after a preposition (al-majrūr bi-ḥarf ) is a faḍla, whereas the muḍaf ʾilayh (in the modern sense of the second term of an annexation) has no slot in the sentence, it only completes either a ʿumda or a faḍla. Between ‘three’ and ‘ten’, the base form is rijālun ṯalāṯatun ‘three men’, as mentioned above. The counted object is described (mawṣūf ) by an adjective and the numeral ‘agrees’ in number and gender (all plural nouns are feminine singular; 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 difference between government and predication, two competing models that account for form endings in Arabic grammatical theory.

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Kāfiya iv, 239.20), the numeral has been annexed to its counted object in the expression ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, but nothing changes as far as agreement is concerned, the numeral still being in the feminine singular and the counted object in the plural, even though it is now muḍāf ʾilayh. Its syntactic slot has changed, 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 lightness argument, al-ʾAstarābāḏī simply avoids further discussion. Between ‘eleven’ and ‘ninety-nine’, the base form (ʾaṣl) is always the same: darāhimu ʿišrūna ‘twenty dirhams’ (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 241.11), the counted object is mawṣūf, but the numeral does not agree in number and gender because of its specific morphology (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 241.12–17). For these numerals, annexation is not possible because of their morphology, so when the numeral was put first it could not be annexed to its counted object. Instead, the counted object has now the status of a faḍla, it does not simply complete what precedes, as was the case for the counted object after ‘three’ to ‘ten’, but it has a slot (maḥall) in the sentence, whose meaning 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), the counted 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-ʾAstarābāḏī draws a clear distinction between counted objects after numerals from ‘three’ to ‘ten’, which lose their syntactic slot in the sentence by becoming muḍāf ʾilayh, i.e. merely completing what precedes them, and counted objects after numerals from ‘eleven’ to ‘ninety-nine’, which acquire a new syntactic slot, namely that of a tamyīz. In other words, the base form is the same for all counted objects and their numeral (the counted object is mawṣūf, it has a slot in the sentence, and the numeral is its ṣifa), but when they surface, they come in two different structures. In ṯalāṯatu rijālin ‘three men’, the counted object rijāl 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 in the 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 when the Arabs realized that the singular was sufficient to express a plural for the dependent 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 a singular to refer to a plural meaning. He then at length comments the Qurʾānic exceptions 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, except if we understand that the syntactic slots are efficient per se in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory: the mere change in the position of a word in the sentence has efficient implications for its declension and behavior. It is as if the slots in the sentence had an inherent functionality. In the case of the numeral and its counted object, it seems that his method is first to ensure that numerals fit the general rules of the language (they can be considered as adjectives at an underlying level), and then to explain the changes that happen at surface level due to any change in their position in the sentence. 3.3 Numerals and the Theory of ʿamal In order to have a better view of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammatical theory of numerals, we have to consider his theory of ʿamal, which he presents in a chapter devoted to declension in general (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 39–87), because this is where 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 distinction between ʿumad and faḍalāt. In order to be speech (kalām), an utterance needs a minimum of two ʿumdas (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 17.2–8). Faḍalāt can be added to these core elements, either with or without a preposition. Lastly, each of these elements, ʿumad and faḍalāt, can be either annexed to one or more muḍāf ʾilayh, which will surface in the oblique form, or described by a qualificative. 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, or it can be represented by a phrase or a full sentence. We will not enter into all these possible cases. We have already mentioned what happens to numerals and their counted object when they are moved from one slot to another, for example, when the numeral is annexed to its counted object instead of being its qualificative, or when the numeral cannot be annexed. The question that kept previous grammarians occupied is that of the ʿamal of numerals, in the specifying relationship in particular. Al-ʾAstarābāḏī explains that ultimately the ʿāmil is the speaker (al-mutakallim; Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 43.15; see also Peled 1994:151–153). Words are modified in their endings, the agent (ʿāmil) of this modification is the speaker and the tool (ʾāla) he uses is declension (ʾiʿrāb). Al-ʾAstarābāḏī adds that the tool and the agent are like the knife and the person who cuts (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 43.14), which cannot be separated in their action. But “the grammarians have equated the agent and the efficient cause, although it is only a sign, not the cause, this is why they called it ‘agent’” (al-nuḥāt jaʿalū l-ʿāmil ka-l-ʿilla l-muʾaṯṯira wa-ʾin kāna ʿalāma lā ʿilla wa-li-hāḏā sammawhu ʿāmilan; Šarḥ alKāfiya 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-Kāfiya i, 54.12), the former being only a ‘sign’ (ʿalāma) of the latter, which is the speaker. See Peled (1994:155f.) for more insight in the difference between the functional principle 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, because the verb transformed the subject in the second part of the speech (Šarḥ alKāfiya i, 50.10f.); the mubtadaʾ and the ḫabar are their mutual (grammatical) agent (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 50.12f.);11 the (grammatical) agent on the faḍalāt is the verb and the subject together (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 51.9); and, lastly, the agent on the muḍāf ʾilayh is the “meaning of annexation” (maʿnā l-ʾiḍāfa) not the muḍāf itself (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 61.12–14). For al-ʾAstarābāḏī, the ʿāmil of the dependent form tamyīz, just like all other faḍalāt, is the completeness of the speech that precedes, 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 the dependent form of the tamyīz, by resemblance with the complement, which comes after the completeness of the speech that is achieved by the subject (ʾanna tamāmahumā [tamām al-ism wa-l-kalām] sababun lintiṣāb al-tamyīz tašbīhan la-hu bi-l-mafʿūl allaḏī yajīʾu baʿda tamām alkalām bi-l-fāʿil). Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 99.1–3

As for the oblique form tamyīz, its ʿāmil is the meaning intended by annexation as mentioned above (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 61.12–14). 3.4 The Category of tamyīz Al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw and its commentary are organized according to the parts of speech (the noun, parts i–iv; the verb, part v; the particle, part vi). The part dealing with nouns consists of two sections. The first one is devoted to declension (declension, diptotes, independent form nouns, dependent form nouns, oblique form nouns, al-tawābiʿ and indeclinable nouns), and the second 11

Although this looks like the theory of tarāfuʿ (“mutual assignment of the independent case”), which is traditionally linked to Kūfan grammarians, things are probably more subtle 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-ʾAstarābāḏī does not mention tarāfuʿ. More research should be done on the difference between alʾAstarābāḏī’s view and that of the Kūfan grammarians. On tarāfuʿ, see Tawfīq (1978:199) and Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1990:68–72).

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part is devoted to specific issues in syntax and morphology (definiteness and indefiniteness, numerals, masculine and feminine, dual, plural, al-maṣdar, ism al-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 section devoted to dependent form complements (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 96–118) and in the section devoted to numerals (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya iv, 252–266). Although tamyīz is primarily 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, if it is lighter (Šarḥ al-Kāfiya ii, 97.2–5). Its meaning is to lift the ambiguity of a word or a phrase that would otherwise be vague (mubham), i.e. “applicable to all 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 as technical term[s] in the modern scientific sense, given [its] close affinity to underlying homonymous extralinguistic concepts”, namely the extralinguistic concept tamyīz ‘discrimination, specification’. As mentioned above, the two different shapes that numerical tamyīz can take imply very different syntactic categories, faḍla (the dependent form) vs muḍāf ʾilayh (the oblique form). Al-ʾAstarābāḏī draws the consequences of this marked difference in terms of ʿamal and in terms of surface form. This enables him to maintain consistency within his grammatical frame. He calls tamyīz the numerical complement in both forms, because they have the same meaning, but he does not avoid the syntactic differences between them and their implications. 3.5 Comparison with Sībawayhi, al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj The most obvious difference between al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar of numerals and that of his predecessors is that the autonomy of this chapter is pushed a step further in his commentary. Just like in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s treatise, numerals appear first in the section devoted to dependent form complements, but only to present their dependent form tamyīz. All other issues linked to numerals are 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 issues related to numerals, but he inserted them in the same chapter devoted to dependent form complements (ʾUṣūl i, 321–328). Separating the chapter on numerals from all particular case endings enables al-ʾAstarābāḏī to deal with many more issues than Ibn al-Sarrāj without giving the impression that he is bound by the mere outline of his commentary, which is also organized according to case endings.

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Al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s commentary thus constitutes a compromise between alMubarrad’s thematic organization and Ibn al-Sarrāj’s declensional subdivided system. In the section devoted to nouns, al-ʾAstarābāḏī first presents the different endings, including the invariable nouns, and then adds lengthy sections on transversal issues, which are thus not connected to any particular form, as was the case in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s treatise. The best example for this is the treatment of definiteness. It is almost impossible to fathom from the Kitāb all the possible behaviors of numerals in terms of definiteness. In the Muqtaḍab it is made easier by the multiplication of examples and in the ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw this issue is partially dealt with in the ‘issues’ (masāʾil) related to definiteness, but it is far from being as systematic as in al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s Šarḥ, where one finds a specific chapter devoted to the behavior of numerals in terms of definiteness. Another great difference between al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s theory and that of his predecessors lies in his ʿamal theory. According to Baalbaki (2008:59), postSībawayhi grammarians have a more theoretical approach to grammar, which might give the impression that grammatical causes (ʿilal) tend to have an autonomous life, less and less connected with grammatical phenomena. A great deal of Sībawayhi’s grammar is devoted to the comparison of the ‘strength’ (quwwa) that words have in interaction with one another. In al-Mubarrad’s Muqtaḍab and even more in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾUṣūl the concept of quwwa loses its relevance in the grammatical analysis of declension at the profit of the concept 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 a strength that words would have, nor the slot as such that they occupy in the sentence, but the speaker who utters the sentence. The speaker puts words in particular slots, but the agent of declension is ultimately the intended meaning. By doing this, al-ʾAstarābāḏī avoids all questions linking syntactic strength to morphology in numerals. Numerals have very different morphological patterns (such as fāʿil, compounds, plural-like ending -ūna) and they occupy different slots. Previous grammarians had trouble describing them in one single frame, but al-ʾAstarābāḏī avoids the issue as such by considering that the syntactic agent is neither linked to the actual words (their inner strength, stemming from their pattern or from their status as a part of speech), nor to their slot in the sentence but to the utterance as a whole and, ultimately, to the intention of the speaker. However, the comparison I am drawing here is clearly rooted in categories that are not used by al-ʾAstarābāḏī. Rather, his commentary pulls Ibn al-Ḥājib’s text towards an analysis of ‘performative utterances’ (ʾinšāʾ; Larcher 2013:204–207), rather than towards the search of syntactic causes. It is in this sense that Larcher labels his commentary a rhetoric integrated into syntax, “a balāgha integrated into naḥw” (Larcher 2013:204).

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A third difference between the four theories can be detected in the way these grammarians compare numerals with adjectives. Sībawayhi links his grammar of numerals to al-ṣifāt al-mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil (because of the residual verbal strength 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 from Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, but not exploited any further). Ibn al-Sarrāj even explicitly says that numerals cannot be compared to ṣifāt mušabbaha. His point is to definitively break with the issue of a syntactic strength in numerals. The category of tamyīz is only governed by morphological and semantic rules, not by a syntactic agent that would be in numerals. The way al-ʾAstarābāḏī reintroduces the issue of the agent enables him to cut it loose from the morphology of numerals, without losing its efficiency at the syntactic level. As far as numerals are concerned, al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s commentary may be regarded 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 alSarrāj’s systematic subdivisions. These three characteristics are indeed found in his grammar of numerals, organized in the new frame of his pragmatic theory of ʾinšāʾ.

4

Conclusion

In Sībawayhi’s grammar, the main assumption is clearly that language is thoroughly consistent and that the grammarian can reveal this consistency. As we have mentioned, another assumption is that words have strength in themselves and that this strength interacts between words. In al-Mubarrad’s grammar, the main assumption is that the grammarian can be exhaustive in describing the language. Another assumption is that to merely describe grammatical phenomena is to explain them. And in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s grammar, the main assumption is that language is a completely logical phenomenon that can be entirely described through Porphyrian subdivisions. In each theory, these assumptions function as blind spots: they are not discussed by the grammarians, but they hold each theory together as a whole. In al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s grammar we can probably infer, although more research is obviously needed, that the main assumption, or the main undiscussed blind spot, is that syntactic slots are efficient per se and that the grammarian only has to understand what these slots are, or, in other words, what the intention of the speaker is. This is ultimately linked to the speaker’s ability to build meaningful utterances, which can also be seen as a major 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 stages of Arabic grammar.12 More research should be done about how al-ʾAstarābāḏī and later grammarians would define a ‘native speaker’, if they do, or whether the speaker as the agent of declension and source of meaningful utterances is only a useful fiction.13

Bibliographical References a

Primary Sources

ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya = Raḍī l-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 688/ 1289), Šarḥ al-Raḍī ʿalā Kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥājib. Ed. by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim Makram. 7 parts in 4 vols. Cairo: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 2000/Šarḥ al-Kāfiya. 2 vols. Istanbul: Maṭbaʿat alŠirka 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., 1392 sh/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: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996. Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Ṯumālī l-ʾAzdī al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), Kitāb al-muqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍaymah. 4 vols. 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 Sources

Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2008. The legacy of the Kitāb. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Bohas, Georges. 1984. “Contribution à l’étude de la méthode des grammairiens arabes en morphologie et en phonologie d’après les grammairiens arabes ‘tardifs’”. Georges Bohas and Jean-Patrick Guillaume, Étude des théories des grammairiens arabes. i. Morphologie et phonologie, xi–xviii, 1–133. Damascus: Institut français de Damas.

12 13

See for example Guillaume (1985), Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli (1989), Versteegh (1990, 2004). See Versteegh (1996:591; 1997:41f.) on the ‘fiction’ that resides in the fact that although grammarians say they are describing and explaining the language of the Bedouin, they actually 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’analyse linguistique dans la tradition arabe”. Histoire des idées linguistiques, ed. by Sylvain Auroux, i, 260–282. Liège and Brussels: Mardaga. Bohas, Georges, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel Eddine Kouloughli. 1990. The Arabic 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 the School of Oriental and African Studies 35.485–496. Druel, Jean N. 2012. Numerals in Arabic grammatical theory: An impossible quest for consistency? Ph.D. thesis, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen. Druel, Jean N. 2015. “What happened to the grammar of numerals after Sībawayhi?”. The foundations 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-Ḥād̲ ji̲ b, D̲ j̲amāl al-Dīn Abū ʿAmr ʿUt̲h̲mān 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-ʾAstarābāḏī”. 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”. The Oxford handbook of Arabic linguistics, ed. by Jonathan Owens, 185–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Larcher, Pierre. 2014. “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa et le faqīh de Kāwiya (Geyve, Anatolie)”. RomanoArabica 14.235–246. Mango, Andrew J. 1979. “Al-Astarābād̲ h̲ī, Raḍī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan”. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., i, 721. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Peled, Yishai. 1994. “Aspects of case assignment in medieval Arabic grammatical theory”. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 84.133–158. Peled, Yishai. 2003. “Aspects of the use of grammatical terminology in Medieval 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: Maṭbaʿat Sarkīs. Tawfīq, ʾAmīra ʿAlī. 1978. Al-Raḍī l-ʾAstarābāḏī: ʿĀlim al-naḥw wa-l-luġa. Riyadh: al-ʾIdāra l-ʿĀmma li-Kulliyyāt al-Banāt. Van Dyke, Edward. 1896. Kitāb iktifāʾ al-qanūʿ bi-mā huwa maṭbūʿ, ed. by Muḥammad ʿAlī l-Biblāwī. Cairo: Maktabat al-Hilāl. Versteegh, Kees. 1989. “Le langage, la religion et la raison”. Histoire des 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 notions in Arabic grammar”. Studies in the history of Arabic grammar. ii. Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on the History of Arabic Grammar, Nijmegen, 27 April–1 May 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 Near Eastern languages and literature: Memorial volume of Karel Petráček, ed. by Petr Zemánek, 589–603. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Versteegh, Kees. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought. iii. The Arabic linguistic tradition. London and New York: Routledge. Versteegh, Kees. 2004. “Meanings of speech: The category of sentential mood in Arabic grammar”. Le voyage et la langue: Mélanges en l’ honneur d’Anouar Louca et d’André Roman, ed. by Joseph Dichy and Hassan Hamzé, 269–287. Damascus: Institut français du Proche-Orient. Weipert, Reinhard. 2009. “Al-Astarābād̲ h̲ī, 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.

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

1

Comparing a Linguist and a Logician

The two authors of this paper are a linguist and a logician, collaborating in a study of interrelations between linguistics and logic in 10th and 11th century Arabic scholarship. The project is more precisely to examine the views of the linguist 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 is not a study of historical influences—no direct influence from al-Sīrāfī to Ibn Sīnā is known, and obviously there was no influence in the other direction. Rather, these are two scholars whose work has a substantial overlap in terms of questions and assumptions, and they were both working within the same general culture. Our aim is to describe this common ground, in as much depth as the facts allow. The reason for choosing these two scholars was that al-Sīrāfī is known to have been aware of logical issues, and likewise Ibn Sīnā frequently comments on issues of language, particularly on the semantic side. Moreover we know (and will illustrate below) that al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā had similar criticisms of the Arabic-speaking tradition of Peripatetic logic. There are other scholars that we might have chosen to study. If we wanted the linguist and the logician to be closer in time, we could have compared alSīrāfī with the logician ʾAbū Naṣr 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 Foundations of Arabic Linguistics Conference in Paris. A number of people at that conference made helpful comments. We are grateful for all those comments, including a few that are still on our list of Work To Do. We also thank the editors of the present volume for guidance and encouragement well beyond the course of duty. Although the ideas of this paper come from a joint research project of both authors, in the present article Manuela E.B. Giolfo is to be held responsible for paragraphs 1, 2.1, 4, 5 and 8, and Wilfrid Hodges for paragraphs 2.2, 3, 6 and 7.

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

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Sīnā with the linguist Ibn Jinnī (c. 320/932–392/1005). A fuller picture would certainly include these comparisons. But we chose Ibn Sīnā because in our view he is deeper than al-Fārābī across the board. With Ibn Jinnī there is of course no lack of depth, but our present impression is that he is less concerned with issues that also matter to logicians. In any event we will mention other scholars when their work is relevant to our discussion. Taking al-Sīrāfī gives us Sībawayhi too, since we will work almost entirely from al-Sīrāfī’s commentary on Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. Likewise we will use Ibn Sīnā’s Šifāʾ, which is strongly indebted to Aristotle and the Peripatetic logical tradition. Almost certainly some of the things that we attribute to al-Sīrāfī or to Ibn Sīnā were derived from earlier scholars in these two traditions.

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Linguistics and Logic

2.1 Al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā on Deficiencies of Peripatetic logic Besides the broad similarities between al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā, we can sometimes find detailed correlations. Some examples come to light if we look closely at what is attributed to al-Sīrāfī in a report by ʾAbū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (Muqābasāt 68–87) of a confrontation between al-Sīrāfī and the Syriac logician ʾAbū Bišr Mattā at a majlis of the vizier Ibn al-Furāt in 320/932 (see Elamrani-Jamal 1983 for a translation and discussion). Mattā had translated logical works of Aristotle into Arabic and done propaganda for them; al-Sīrāfī was invited to reply to this propaganda. The debate is sometimes represented as a conflict between linguistics and logic. We can see that this view of it must be wrong if we observe how close al-Sīrāfī’s criticisms of Peripatetic logic (i.e. the logic of Aristotle and his successors) are to ones that the logician Ibn Sīnā made a century or so later. There is no reason to suppose that Ibn Sīnā was relying on al-Sīrāfī, since the criticisms that both authors make are substantially true and are likely to occur to any outside observer. First, al-Sīrāfī criticizes Mattā for exaggerating the pre-eminence of the classical Greek logicians. This is a criticism which Ibn Sīnā addresses to the Baghdad 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 Greek intellects, and no demonstration except what they laid down, and no truth except what they promulgated?! (ʾa-ka-ʾinnaka taqūlu baʿda hāḏā:

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lā ḥujjata ʾillā ʿuqūlun yūnāniyyūn wa-lā burhāna ʾillā mā waḍaʿūhu, wa-lā ḥaqīqata ʾillā mā ʾabrazūhu) Muqābasāt 72.10f.

Ibn Sīnā: [Aristotle’s] successors were unable to free themselves of the guardianship of what they inherited from him, and they spent their lives trying to understand what he did best and in partisanship to some outcomes of his inadequacy […] ( fa-mā qadara min baʿdihi ʿalā ʾan yufarriġa [yufriġa?] nafsahu ʿan ʿuhdati mā wariṯahu minhu wa-ḏahaba ʿumruhu fī tafahhumi mā 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 load of Greek philosophical baggage as if it was useful for logic, when it isn’t. He illustrates 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 us magic in the formula […] (wataqūlūna: al-haliyyatu wa-l-ʾayniyyatu wa-l-māhiyyatu wa-l-kayfiyyatu wal-kamiyyatu wa-l-ḏātiyyatu wa-l-ʿaraḍiyyatu wa-l-jawhariyyatu wa-l-hayūliyyatu wa-l-ṣūriyyatu … ṯumma tatamaṭṭaṭūna wa-taqūlūna: jiʾnā bi-l-siḥri fī qawlinā […]) Muqābasāt 82.5–8

Ibn Sīnā likewise often criticizes his predecessors for burdening logic with philosophical material that is no help for it: It is customary to prolong [the discussion on] the first principles of logic with 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 were unable to free themselves of the imperfections of what they inherited from him, and they spent their lives in efforts to understand what he accomplished best and in Partisan Adherence to some defective theories he originated”.

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discipline (wa-qad jarat al-ʿādatu bi-ʾan tuṭawwala mabādiʾu l-manṭiqi biʾašyāʾa laysat manṭiqiyyatan wa-ʾinnamā hiya li-l-ṣināʿati l-ḥikmiyyati). Madḫal 10.5f., transl. gutas 2014:43

Ibn Sīnā has the Aristotelian categories in his sights here, and dotted through his commentary on the Categories (Maqūlāt) there are remarks about how the material doesn’t belong to logic (see Gutas 2014:300–303 for a discussion of these remarks). Third, al-Sīrāfī criticizes Mattā for ignoring the traditions and practices of the language in which he claims to work. Ibn Sīnā several times makes similar criticisms of his Peripatetic predecessors, and of Aristotle in particular for setting a bad example: Ibn Sīnā: It is a black mark against the First Teacher that he mentions among the simple expressions the noun and the verb, but ignores the particles and [other] expressions that are noun-like or verb-like ( fa-min al-qabīḥi bil-muʿallimi l-ʾawwali ʾan yaḏkura min basāʾiṭi l-ʾalfāẓi l-isma wa-l-kalimata wa-yatruka l-ʾadāta wa-mā yušākiluhumā) ʿIbāra 29.15f.

Al-Sīrāfī: I ask you about a single particle which is current in Arabic speech, and whose meanings are distinguished by intelligent people, for you to work out its meanings from the viewpoint of the logic of Aristotle which you use for your demonstrations, boasting of your respect for it. The particle is wāw. What are its rules, where is it used, and does it have one or several senses? (ʾasʾaluka ʿan ḥarfin wāḥidin huwa dāʾirun fī kalāmi l-ʿArabi, wa-maʿānīhi mutamayyizatun ʿinda ʾahli l-ʿaqli, fa-staḫriǧ ʾanta maʿānīhi min nāḥiyati manṭiqi ʾarisṭāṭālīs [sic!] allaḏī tadullu bihi wa-tubāhī bitafḫīmihi? wa-huwa l-wāw wa-mā ʾaḥkāmuhu wa-kayfa mawāqiʿuhu wa-hal huwa ʿalā wajhin wāḥidin ʾaw wujūhin) Muqābasāt 74.8–11

This challenge to Mattā by al-Sīrāfī merits some further comments. When Mattā fails the task, the Vizier invites al-Sīrāfī to answer his own challenge. AlSīrāfī does so (Tawḥīdī, Muqābasāt 77.11–78.4), and his answer consists of a list of 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 a language without knowing what the words of the language mean. The point that al-Sīrāfī should have made here is that the particles of a language generate logical relationships between those sentences of the language which contain them, and one needs to have some understanding of the language in order to keep track of these relationships. However, if we turn from the dialogue with Mattā to al-Sīrāfī’s Commentary on Sībawayhi, we do find him discussing precisely the logical relationships between sentences containing the particle wāw, and hence making the kind of point that he should have made against Mattā. 2.2 Linguistics and Logic on Negating Sentences One telling passage is in al-Sīrāfī’s comments on Sībawayhi’s Chapter 102. In this chapter Sībawayhi considers several statements of the general form ‘I passed x and y’, and says what would count as a denial (nafy) of them. Since Sībawayhi presumably has in mind a conversational situation where one person makes a statement and then another person contradicts it, we are vowelling the verbs so that the first speaker says ‘I’ and the second says ‘you’. Sībawayhi observes that if a person says (1) marartu bi-zaydin wa-ʿamrin I passed Zayd and ʿAmr Kitāb i, 185

the sentence can be read either as implying that Zayd and ʿAmr were passed on the same occasion, or as allowing that Zayd and ʿAmr were passed on different occasions. Sībawayhi comments that if the latter is meant, then it can be denied by saying (2) mā mararta bi-zaydin wa-mā-mararta bi-ʿamrin You 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 has made a logical error. The contradictory negation (naqīḍ) of a statement s is a statement t that is true if and only if s is not true (Ibn Sīnā, Maqūlāt 258.15 f.). But it could happen 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 has nothing to do with any difference between nafy and naqīḍ; Sībawayhi himself makes these two notions equivalent at Kitāb i, 377.21.)

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Instead of Mattā, the jurist al-Muzanī (on whom see Heffening 2012) stepped forward and made the same charge. The denial of (1), he said, is not (2) but (3) mā mararta bi-zaydin wa-ʿamrin You did not pass Zayd and ʿAmr Sīrāfī, Šarḥ ii, 336.2

(Al-Muzanī’s intervention illustrates how Islamic legal debates helped to create fertile soil for logic.) And at this point al-Sīrāfī enters the discussion. No, he says, (3) is not a correct denial of (1). To show this, it suffices to note that (3) is compatible 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 yakūnu mukaḏḏiban, Sīrāfī, Šarḥ ii, 336.9). Al-Sīrāfī concludes that Sībawayhi’s denial is 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 the statement (1) is taken as allowing two occasions, then its denial has to be taken likewise, and it would be better to make that explicit rather than using the ambiguous (3). Nevertheless making (2) the denial of (1) still looks like a logical error, 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 of is curiously similar to this example from Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī. Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (Mulaḫḫaṣ 150.2–4) pointed it out in the 4th/12th century, and it was recently analyzed by Chatti (2016:54). Ibn Sīnā writes a sentence form and then says what he takes to be its contradictory negation. Chatti translates Ibn Sīnā’s form 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 not even; but also it is not true that either every number is always even or no number is ever even. In this case both the statement (5) and Ibn Sīnā’s supposed

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negation of it (6) are false.) We note that both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā have stated supposed contradictory negations that are stronger than they should be by logic. The fact that Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī are both coming at their example from a linguistic point of view suggests a common explanation both of their claims and of Ibn Sīnā’s. The key point is that the denial of (1) takes place in some imagined conversation. If you want to challenge something that I have said in a conversation, you can do it by stating something stronger than the contradictory negation of what I said—as long as you are prepared to stand by your stronger statement, of course. Your reason for contradicting (1) may be 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) to deny my statement. With appropriate reservations, the same applies to the use of contradiction in logical proofs. This freedom to increase the strength of a denial becomes a practical convenience when the stronger denial is simpler to state or handle than the contradictory negation. In al-Sīrāfī’s case the strict negation of (1), read as allowing two occasions, is Either you did not pass Zayd, or you did not pass ʿAmr, or you did not pass either of them. And this is clearly more of a mouthful than (2). Ibn Sīnā’s (6) is not noticeably easier to state than (7), but it does have the logical convenience that it can be analyzed into two component propositions without having to remove the initial quantifier. In sum: the debate between al-Sīrāfī and Mattā brings to light a number of issues relating logic to language where al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā are on the same side. 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 in practice highly valuable for a logician, even granting Mattā’s claim that the laws of the science of logic are not concerned with linguistic issues. Al-Sīrāfī’s discussion of this case may even throw light on a prima facie unsatisfactory feature of Ibn Sīnā’s logic.

3

Communicative Discourse

A well-known fact about Sībawayhi’s linguistic theory is the major importance that he gives to situations in which people talk to each other. He frequently refers 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 words that Sībawayhi uses for the interlocutor, including al-muḫāṭab, al-muḥaddaṯ, al-masʾūl, al-sāʾil. The first two of these four expressions just mean ‘the person addressed’; but the last two mean ‘the person asked’ and ‘the person who asks’, both of which imply that the addressee is not purely passive. All of this passes down to al-Sīrāfī. Sībawayhi’s two main sources of linguistic evidence are the Qurʾān and early Arabic poetry. Neither of these sources gives any opportunity for the listener to make an active response to the speaker. So Sībawayhi’s evidence for conversational usage depends mainly on what Carter (2004:48) describes as “made-up material”. This consists largely of sentences spoken by an imaginary speaker to give information to an imaginary listener. (A typical example: ‘I passed a she-camel at midday’.) Among these imagined utterances Sībawayhi includes a number of short conversations. (‘I passed two men’. ‘What two men?’. ‘A Muslim and an unbeliever’.) Turning to Ibn Sīnā, we note that he also discusses conversations. This is because he does his logic in the tradition of Aristotle, and this tradition includes logical dialogues. These dialogues are always asymmetrical, though Ibn Sīnā allows the two participants to exchange roles (Safsaṭa 74.12). One person, ‘the questioner’ (al-sāʾil), asks the question, and the other person attempts to give logically satisfactory answers. The second person is often called almuḫāṭab, but he is also ‘the answerer’ (al-mujīb). Ibn Sīnā’s dialogues are rulebound events; for example, a speaker loses the debate by being shown to have contradicted himself. Ibn Sīnā discusses separately the rules that apply to the questioner and the answerer. There is a common convention among logicians that the two participants in a debate are male and female; this allows use of ‘he’ and ‘she’. We will assume below that the speaker is male and the listener is female. In the Medieval communities of Arabic logicians and Arabic linguists the listener will nearly always have been male; no matter. Logical dialogues give Ibn Sīnā some motivation to discuss a feature of conversations which we haven’t noticed in Sībawayhi. This is the use of language to deceive the listener. There are subtler questions here than how to lie and keep a straight face. For example, the speaker can use linguistic devices to draw the listener’s attention towards some points and away from others. One of the questions that Ibn Sīnā discusses is how, in a rational debate, to get the listener to agree to the premises of a logical argument without her realizing what follows from the things she has committed herself to. This involves taking the premises in the wrong order. (For more on the ‘right order’ and the effects of following it or failing to follow it, see Hodges 2016.)

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Outside the context of dialogues Ibn Sīnā has some things to say about conversation more generally, and in these looser discussions there is sometimes a ‘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 new information to ourselves, by putting together two or more facts that we already knew. Or at least we can bring to mind in this way some facts that had never occurred to us before, even if we knew them potentially. For Ibn Sīnā this fact is one of the main justifications of logic: This science indicates all the ways and means by which the mind moves from what it [already] knows to what it does not [yet] know ( yakūnu hāḏā l-ʿilmu mušīran ʾilā jamīʿi l-ʾanḥāʾi wa-l-jihāti llatī tanaqqala al-ḏihnu min al-maʿlūmi ʾilā l-majhūli) Mašriqiyyūn 5.21f.

So as the logician reasons silently with his mind, the state of information changes. We know of nothing comparable in Sībawayhi and al-Sīrāfī. Carter (2004:142) lists fāʾida/ʾifāda ‘information/conveying information’ (his translations) as a notion that came into linguistics later than Sībawayhi. He adds that its appearance “symbolizes the shift from a concern with language as behaviour to a preoccupation with its meaning, reflecting the influence of Greek ideas as the Arabs became acquainted with logic”. The comparison of al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā provides plenty of material to illustrate the ‘preoccupation with meaning’, but we are doubtful how far this reflects any influence from Ancient Greece. The facts below suggest that the main influence was more likely from the Arabic linguists to the logicians, not the other way round. Ibn al-Sikkit, who died in around 244/858, wrote (Manṭiq 265.10): “One says ‘he provided wealth’, and ‘he provided knowledge’” (wa-yuqālu: qad ʾafāda mālan wa-ʾafāda ʿilman). This records that already in the mid 3rd/9th century the root f-y-d had to do with providing useful things, and that money and knowledge were already at the top of the list of relevant useful things. Later in that century the movement to translate the logical works of Aristotle into Arabic was well under way; in contrast with Ibn al-Sikkit, these translations make no use of the root f-y-d. At least we have not found it there. One of the earliest translations of Aristotle is the translation of his Rhetoric; Lyons’ very full glossary (Aristotle, Rīṭūrīqā vol. ii) makes no mention of the root fy-d. It is not in the translations of De Interpretatione or Prior Analytics i; we have 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 in the Arabic translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Greek essay on Conversion (Alexander, Conversion). It is not in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s summary of logic, or in Bihriz’s logical wordbook (both from the 8th century and both in Ibn alMuqaffaʿ, Manṭiq). In fact, within logic the root f-y-d (though generally not the forms fāʾida and ʾifāda that Carter cited) appears rather suddenly in the works of al-Fārābī in the first half of the 4th/10th century. He uses the root in a range of ways. For example a logical training provides ( yufīdu) various skills such as the ability to exercise critical judgment and the skill of identifying quickly what are the key points of disagreement ( Jadal 30.1, cf. Fārābī, ʾAlfāẓ 96.1). But his use of this verb is heavily concentrated on one particular usage, namely in dialogues where the questioner aims to elicit metaphysical information from the answerer. These dialogues have a broadly Aristotelian cast, but their exact form seems to be al-Fārābī’s own invention, for the novel purpose of providing a kind of gametheoretic semantics for words that al-Fārābī reckoned were fundamental in philosophy. The expressions yufādu ‘is provided’ and ʾafāda ‘provides’ are used specifically in connection with the information given by the answerer in these dialogues; the provider of the information is taken to be either the answerer or the dialogue process itself. The answer to the question ‘Which thing is it?’ takes up all the propria of the thing and provides ( yufīdu) a way of distinguishing the thing from everything else, purely by its features and not by its substance […] ( fa-lḫawāṣṣu kulluhā tuʾḫaḏu fī jawābi ʾayyi šayʾin huwa fa-yufādu bihā tamyīzu l-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?]’ gives us and provides for us (ʾafādanā) ( fa-hāḏihi hiya l-ʾašyāʾu llatī ʾaʿṭānā waʾafādanā taʾammulunā ḥarfi mā huwa […]) fārābī, Ḥurūf 181.10

So although the root is common in al-Fārābī, in senses connected with imparting information, his usage is really quite idiosyncratic. (This might be why the root is missing in the otherwise comprehensive book (Alon and Abed 2007) on al-Fārābī’s philosophical terminology.) Versteegh (1977:34–37) suggested that f-y-d should be seen as translating the Greek root tel-, which has to do with aims and completions. He suggested this not 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 on Versteegh’s claim that this translation might have come via a “voie diffuse, i.e. through contact with living Greek grammar” (Versteegh 1977:178). However, we should like to say that his comparison between the roots gets no support at all from the logical side. We noted the absence of the root f-y-d in logical writing before al-Fārābī. Even in al-Fārābī there is no evidence of any connection between the root and ‘use, aim, goal’, which Versteegh mentions (1977:37) as a sense of télos. Peripatetic commentaries tended to begin with a statement of the aim of the author and the uses of the contents. For ‘aim’ al-Fārābī writes ġaraḍ (ʿIbāra 17.4; Jadal 28.2) or qaṣd (Qiyās 11.2) or ġāya ( Jadal 28.1); for ‘use’ he writes manfaʿa (ʿIbāra 19.20; Jadal 29.16). Sheyhatovitch (2015), in her study of fāʾida in Sībawayhi’s successors, traces the use of the root f-y-d back to al-Mubarrad (d. ca. 285/899) and Ibn al-Sarrāj al-Baġdādī (d. 316/928). So it had already entered linguistics before al-Fārābī had 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-yd, in connection with metaphysical dialogues, doesn’t come from Aristotelian sources. He could have picked up the word from general trends of intellectual conversation, 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 version of jadal since the 2nd/8th century (Young 2017), fiqh would be a sensible place to look. As to the linguists, it seems to us that there is no need to invoke any outside influence; the development from Sībawayhi to Ibn al-Sarrāj and his student al-Sīrāfī could well be entirely home-grown. Sībawayhi uses the notion of fāʾida but without having a name for it (witness the number of times that alSīrāfī uses the root in his explanations of Sībawayhi). But Sībawayhi’s lack of semantic vocabulary makes it treacherous for him to discuss different kinds of information that could be given by different information-bearing expressions. For example the information involved in knowing which individual is meant by a description is different from the information involved in knowing a fact about an individual; we can distinguish them as information-what and information-that. Sībawayhi gets further than he deserves to without making this 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 expression 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 information’. However, the original meaning of fāʾida is ‘usefulness’, and that of mufīd is ‘useful’. In terms of ‘communication’, that is to say relative to the communicative function of speech, ‘useful’ should mean ‘informative’, i.e. ‘providing information’, and ‘usefulness’ would mean something like ‘informativeness’, i.e. ‘the quality or fact of being informative’. Sheyhatovitch (2015) gives a number of examples that seem to us to illustrate these points. Her examples of fāʾida as ‘communicative value’ show its use for (iii). While (ii) is often rendered by ḫabar, she gives examples where fāʾida serves for (ii) when the information that an expression carries is a ‘full message’, that is to say that it is not information given to the listener about an individual already known to the listener. In short, the introduction of the term fāʾida is a natural improvement of technical vocabulary in a developing discipline. There is no need to look outside linguistics to explain it.

4

Definiteness, Morphosyntactic and Pragmatic

Sībawayhi introduces the notion of definiteness, maʿrifa, already in the Risāla of his Kitāb, but without any definition. Evidently he considers it a well-known notion. In Chapter 104 of the Kitāb he defines the notion as a certain class of ‘things of nouns’ (ʾašyāʾ al-ʾasmāʾ). Some of the items in this class could be taken simply to be nouns or adjectives or pronouns. However, other parts of his definition refer to the context of the noun, for example whether it carries the definite article or is annexed to (muḍāf ) a suitable noun. So the class is a class of 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. ii. iii. iv. v.

Proper names. Words that are muḍāf to a definite noun. Words carrying the definite article. ‘Vague’ (mubham) words, i.e. demonstrative pronouns. Personal pronouns.

Sībawayhi says (Kitāb i, 218.7f., Chapter 117) that the mubham nouns are sixteen demonstrative pronouns that he spells out, “and similar words”. Later linguists, for example al-Zamaḫšarī (Mufaṣṣal, section 48) took mubham in (iv) to include pronouns such as allaḏī and ʾayyuhā.

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This list of definite nouns has passed almost unaltered into the modern linguistic literature; relative pronouns are generally included. Badawi, Carter and 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 not sure what is intended by the description ‘semantic’ here; apart from the need to tell whether a phrase is being used as a proper name, Sībawayhi’s criteria are entirely morphosyntactic 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 noun is definite if it “signifies a specific entity” (dalla ʿalā šayʾin bi-ʿaynihi); so the list amounts to a claim that in Arabic the nouns that signify specific entities are precisely those in the list. This definition is not morphosyntactic. Nor is it semantic in a strict sense, because it rests on features of the speech situation and the speaker’s knowledge, not just on the meanings of the words. We will say 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 Pdefinite for pragmatically definite. Likewise we write M-indefinite and P-indefinite for nouns that are not morphosyntactically definite and not pragmatically definite. There is a slight variant of P-definiteness that al-Sīrāfī calls attention to: not that the noun specifies a certain individual, but that the speaker uses the noun with the intention that the listener will identify a certain individual: … like man and horse and similar things where the name applies to all the individuals; if the speaker uses the name with the intention that the listener will identify one specific of those individuals, then the name is definite (… ka-rajulin wa-farasin wa-naḥwahu mimmā huwa li-jamāʿati kulli wāḥidin minhum lahu ḏālika l-ismu, fa-ʾin ʾawradahu l-mutakallimu qāṣidan ʾilā wāḥidin bi-ʿaynihi ʿindahu ʾanna l-muḫāṭaba yaʿrifuhu, fa-huwa maʿrifatun). Šarh ii, 318.19f.

This is also a pragmatic notion of definiteness; much of what we say about Pdefiniteness 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 as a whole, since the phrase as a whole must be satisfied by any entity that is specified by it. So we will take the liberty of sometimes referring to the whole noun 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-definite nouns. Al-Zamaḫšarī evidently believes that the Equivalence Claim is substantially true. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Sībawayhi believed it too, with some precise exceptions that we will come to below. But al-Sīrāfī devoted quite a few pages to considering counterexamples, more precisely morphosyntactically definite noun occurrences that are not pragmatically definite. Some of what he says runs parallel to observations of Ibn Sīnā. So we will review possible counterexamples, keeping an eye on Sībawayhi’s five cases. Al-Zamaḫšarī’s definition can be read in more than one way, because we can distinguish between a phrase that does signify a specific entity and a phrase that the speaker used with the intention of signifying a specific entity. These can come apart, for example if the phrase is less specific than the speaker meant it to be. In an earlier paper (Giolfo and Hodges 2013) we concluded that for both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā the speaker’s intention is paramount. So it must be the speaker’s responsibility to choose a phrase that does signify what the speaker intended (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 intention in using the phrase must pass to the mind of the listener. We suppose that this must be what al-Sīrāfī has in mind when he says: Know that definiteness attaches to the listener’s knowledge, regardless of the speaker. It can well be that the speaker mentions that which he knows, but the listener doesn’t, so that is unknown (iʿlam ʾanna l-taʿrīfa muʿallaqun bi-maʿrifati l-muḫāṭabi dūna l-mutakallimi wa-qad yaḏkuru l-mutakallimu mā yaʿrifuhu huwa wa-lā yaʿrifuhu huwa fa-yakūnu mankūran [sic! i.e.: ‫)]منكور ًا‬.2 Šarḫ ii, 338.21f.

2 Carter (2016:31, 189f., 267) translates mankūr by ‘indefinite’; however, we should like to note that Carter’s (2016) interpretation of Sibawayhi’s notion of definiteness is in the first instance always the pragmatic one, not the morphosyntactic one. Marogy (2010:100) renders wa-qad yaḏkuru 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 not to 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 speaker intends by it some specific entity, and speaks the phrase, and the listener picks up what entity the speaker intended. If the listener does not or cannot pick it up, then pragmatically the definiteness of the phrase has failed. Carter (2004:64) says: “Very early in the Kitāb [Sībawayhi] states the principle that it is the speaker’s duty to bring the listener to the same level of knowledge as himself”. This is true in the sense that Sībawayhi is interested in situations where the speaker does want to transfer some particular piece of knowledge. Al-Sīrāfī shares this interest, and both authors discuss the linguistic devices open to the speaker to help him. A typical example is [Sībawayhi] means that if you start with an indefinite, so as to talk about it, this is not right, because the listener is not brought to the same position as you in respect of identifying it. Rather, the effect of effective communication is that the listener is brought to the same level as the speaker in identifying what the speaker has given him information about ( yaʿnī ʾanna btidāʾaka bi-l-nakirati li-tuḥaddiṯa ʿanhā ġayru mustaqīmin li-ʾanna l-muḫāṭaba laysa yunazzalu manzilataka fī maʿrifatihā wa-ḥukmu l-ḫiṭābi l-mafhūmi ʾan yusāwiya l-muḫāṭabu l-mutakallima fī maʿrifati mā ḫabbarahu bihi) Šarḫ i, 304.2–4

In short, if the speaker needs to identify something to the listener, an M-definite noun phrase is generally the right linguistic expression to do this job. Certainly Ibn Sīnā would be puzzled by the idea that the duty of ensuring that the listener knows what things are being talked about rests with the speaker. After all, the listener is in a better position to judge what she knows or does not know, and what she wants to know. So when [the argument] yields the conclusion that [the speaker] needed to 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 is up to the listener to press him with questions and say ‘What did you intend by the question [that we are debating], and what did you intend when you stated the topic as such-and-such?’ ( fa-ʾinnahu ʾiḏā ʾantaja mā lahu nasūqu kalāmahu bi-l-taḥqīqi wa-lam yakun bayyinan mā yaʿnīhi fī lmuqaddimāti kāna li-l-mujībi ʾan yataʿannata ʿalayhi fa-yaqūla mā ʾaradta fī 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 that he refers to. There need not be anything unethical about this—he may only include what information he thinks is relevant to the matter in hand. Al-Sīrāfī gives an example: … saying to the listener ‘In the man’s house is an orchard’, ‘In my house is a friend of mine’ and [the listener] does not know the particular man and orchard (… ka-qawli l-rajuli li-muḫāṭabihi fī dāri l-rajuli bustānun wa-ʿindī ṣadīqun 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 a noun with the definite article. Al-Sīrāfī would then be saying that an M-definite expression may in fact not convey who is referred to. In short, he is pointing to a failure of the Equivalence Claim.

5

Definiteness of Proper Names

Sībawayhi assumes that his readers know what a proper name is. However, alSīrāfī 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 name by which someone is named personally in order to distinguish by that name between that individual and [all] other individuals (wa-ʾinnamā ṣāra l-ismu l-ʿalamu ʾaṣluhu l-taʿrīfu li-ʾannahu l-ismu llaḏī yuqṣadu bihi lmusammā 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 way between two deathtraps. The first deathtrap is that we might be tempted to say, as Sībawayhi (Kitāb i, 187.14f.) says, that each proper name is the name of a unique individual which it thereby distinguishes from all other individuals. The statement is tempting but false. Any number of people can have the same name. Al-Sīrāfī illustrates the 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, 235 has a charming variant: marartu bi-sībawayhi wa-sībawayhin ʾāḫara—as if there could be more than one!) Al-Sīrāfī’s formulation makes only the weaker claim that the name can be used (bi-ḏālika l-ismi) for identifying an individual that it names; this leaves it open that any features of the context, including a pointing finger if necessary, might also help. Al-Sīrāfī’s example also makes the point that any proper name can be converted into a common noun, which is true of all the things named by the proper name. Ibn Sīnā makes the same point: there are people called ʿAlī but also a whole tribe of ʿAlīs (Madḫal 47.10). Al-Sīrāfī is arguably less successful in avoiding the second deathtrap. This is that unless the definition of proper name says something about what it is that makes n a name of a and b but not of c or d, it risks making any personal or demonstrative pronoun a proper name. A pronoun ‘this’ can be used for identifying any individual whatever, given suitable contexts. Ibn Sīnā has a way of avoiding this deathtrap. Namely, for each proper name n and each individual a named by n, there is a meaning n(A) of n which is uniquely true of a. The first deathtrap tells us only that the same proper name can have many distinct meanings, which we know happens with common nouns. Ibn Sīnā believes that this meaning a has a canonical form depending only on a and not on n, and he calls it the ‘(individual) essence’ of a (Madḫal 26.18–27.4). This notion leads quickly into metaphysics. But without following it far down that path, we can see what al-Sīrāfī needs to supply to fit the bill. Al-Sīrāfī rightly observes that a person called Mr Banana-Tree does not have to be a banana tree (Šarḥ ii, 421.17; we note that some of his language in this section is strongly Peripatetic, for example at ii, 429.2.) In this rather obvious sense he is right that the object named by a proper name does not have to fit a description given by the proper name. However, there is another sense in which the proper name does have to contain a description of the object, say a. If you know the name, then you must be able, given the name and a suitable context, to find a; and conversely given a you should be able to supply the name. So there 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 description must be transferable between people, otherwise how can the speaker use the name to name a and expect the interlocutor to pick up the reference? If we dislike metaphysics we can regard Ibn Sīnā’s ‘individual essence’ as simply a name for whatever this usable and transferable procedure is. Then Ibn Sīnā and al-Sīrāfī are both in a position to discuss this essence, and we can trace some thoughts that they both had about it. Sībawayhi (Kitāb i, 227, Chapter 123) had suggested that one source of proper names is as fossilized descriptions. A natural question is whether the individual

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essence of a might be a description too, but one with the distinctive property that a is the unique thing fitting the description. Ibn Sīnā believes he can show that this is never the case. For any consistent collections, not including a proper name, there is always a possible further description that chops the possibilities into two groups. An example is ‘This is Socrates’; if you define it by saying ‘He is a philosopher’, this leaves more than one possibility open. If you say ‘The pious philosopher’, that also leaves open possibilities. Then if you say ‘The pious philosopher who was put to death unjustly’, this still allows more possibilities. If you add ‘the son of so-and-so’, even that allows more than one possibility, but in any case you need to identify ‘so-and-so’ just like Socrates, and if you identify him through pointing and a proper name then you are back where you were before without finding a description of ‘Socrates’ (wa-miṯlu dālika hāḏā suqrāt ʾin ḥaddadtahu fa-qulta ʾinnahu l-faylasūfu fa-fīhi šārikatun wa-ʾin qulta al-faylasūfu l-dayyinu fafīhi ʾayḍan šārikatun fa-ʾin qulta al-faylasūfu l-dayyinu l-maqtūlu ẓulman fa-fīhi ʾayḍan šārikatun fa-ʾin qulta ʾibnu fulānin kāna fīhi iḥtimālu širkatin/ šarikatin [sic! i.e. ‫ ]شركة‬ʾayḍan wa-kāna fulānun šaḫṣan taʿrīfuhu ka-taʿrīfihi wa-ʾin ʿurifa dālika l-šaḫṣu bi-l-ʾišārati ʾaw bi-l-laqabi ʿāda l-ʾamru ʾilā lʾišārati 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 the same individual: marartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin marartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin ṣayrafiyyin marartu 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 individuals satisfying the description shrinks at each step. Al-Sīrāfī goes on to suggest ways in which the list could be extended: beautiful or ugly? Coming from what country? Persian or Arabic? If al-Sīrāfī had thought the list reaches a natural endpoint, he would surely have said so.

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We turn to a problem that both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā raise about proper names. The word šams ‘sun’ names a unique entity, so it should count as a proper name. Then why do we say al-šams, with the definite article al-, as if šams was a common noun for a class of things? Elsewhere (Giolfo and Hodges 2013:95f.) we compared the answers given by al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā (and on al-Sīrāfī see also Marogy 2010:109f.). In brief, both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā claim that there is a class of ‘suns’; but they point to quite different classes. AlSīrāfī points to usages like ‘The sun in Basra is hotter than the sun in Kufa’, whereas Ibn Sīnā is more impressed by scientific statements such as ‘If a planet orbiting around a sun has a moon, then an eclipse will occur when the moon moves between the planet and the sun’. (At Jadal 213.12 f. Ibn Sīnā also suggests that ‘sun’ could be defined as ‘the brightest heavenly body’, which is not a proper name. This answer is too strong since it could equally well be applied to more or less any proper name, with a suitably elaborate definition.) The same question can be asked about ‘the sun’ in English. We know of no studies of this question.

6

The mubtadaʾ

For the remainder of this paper we concentrate on the informational content of a noun or noun phrase at the beginning of a sentence. These phrases play a distinctive role in Arabic, and this is imperfectly matched by a distinctive role that 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 in either Sībawayhi’s definition or al-Zamaḫšarī’s. The reason for the name lies in a theory that Sībawayhi and his successors developed, about a particular role that M-definite nouns or noun phrases play in Arabic, in connection with nominal sentences. Nominal sentences begin with nouns or noun phrases. Usually these sentences take one of two forms. In equational sentences the opening noun phrase is followed by another noun phrase with an ‘is’ understood (or written as huwa) between the two phrases. In topicalized verbal sentences the noun phrase is followed by a complete sentence that refers back to the noun phrase. In a nutshell, the theory says that the opening noun phrase, called ism or mubtadaʾ, serves the purpose of identifying a specific entity that satisfies it. The remaining part of the sentence, called ḫabar, serves the purpose of stating some information about the specified entity. Sentences with these broad features are known to linguists as ‘topic-comment’, where the mubtadaʾ is the topic and the ḫabar is the comment.

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This theory requires that the mubtadaʾ should be P-definite. Sībawayhi evidently hoped that he could pin down the phrases appropriate to be a mubtadaʾ by reference to morphosyntactic features—hence the Equivalence Claim. For al-Sīrāfī, counterexamples to the Equivalence Claim need investigating. They could be counterexamples to the whole idea of topic-comment sentences; alternatively there might be a way of rescuing the Equivalence Claim by some suitable paraphrase or taqdīr. We will see what he does with them in some cases that he considers. We turn from the linguists to the logicians. In the late 3rd/9th century Theodorus, translator of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, briefly used ism and ḫabar to serve as the respective translations of two of Aristotle’s key logical notions: subject and predicate (Aristotle, Manṭiq 309.6). This was an unexplained aberration; everywhere else he gave the translations which became universally accepted, namely mawḍūʿ for subject and maḥmūl for predicate. In the following century we find al-Fārābī occasionally using ḫabar for predicate (e.g., Fuṣūl 70f.). Ibn Sīnā was the first logician to accept mubtadaʾ and ḫabar as alternatives to mawḍūʿ and maḥmūl, as at Madḫal 15.8 and ʿIbāra 29.11. This is not to say that Ibn Sīnā understood the word mubtadaʾ in exactly the same way as the linguists. For example he uses mubtadaʾ for any linguistic expression that serves as the beginning of a train of thought. This need not be a word or phrase; it can be an entire argument if the argument introduces an assumption that is new to the discussion (Najāt 102.1; Qiyās 518.12). Also the mention of the notion of mubtadaʾ in Madḫal, a work which is entirely about meanings in any language, indicates that Ibn Sīnā understands a mubtadaʾ as a semantic or pragmatic notion, not as a morphosyntactic one. On closer inspection of the passage at Madḫal 15.8 we find that Ibn Sīnā is telling us that the notion of a mubtadaʾ is relative, in the sense that a meaning can only properly be described as a mubtadaʾ in relation to some compound meaning that contains it. Thus a word w in a sentence s is a mubtadaʾ if and only if the meaning of w plays a certain role in the meaning of s as a whole. The role presumably has something to do with starting a train of thought; so the word w for the mubtadaʾ should come early in the sentence S. Ibn Sīnā often makes the point that different languages do things in very different ways—he was fluent in both Arabic and Persian—but in practice it is noticeable that in his logical examples he virtually always puts logical subjects at the beginnings of sentences. (Contrast al-Fārābī, who insisted that the same purpose is served by 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 we know what Ibn Sīnā took the mubtadaʾ to be, and in many cases his mubtadaʾ fits the linguists’ morphosyntactic criteria for M-definiteness.

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Ayoub (1981) notes that in Modern Standard Arabic, M-indefinite noun phrases 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): rākibun min banī fulān sāʾirun ‘A rider from the Tribe of Bani Such-and-Such is travelling’. He saves it from being a counterexample to Ayoub’s observation by making the verb a participle so that the sentence is nominal. He also observes that the sentence would have been unacceptable if the mubtadaʾ was a single word. Another near-miss at a counterexample is this from Ibn Sīnā, discussing a difference between kinds of things and properties of things: ‘Some human’ is never used to describe anything but humans, whereas a thing that carries the description ‘white’ is something other [than a ‘white’] (wa-ʾinsānun mā lā yakūnu mawṣūfan bihi šayʾun ġayruhu min ḥayṯu huwa ʾinsānun fa-yakūnu l-ʾabyaḍu lahu mawṣūfun huwa šayʾun ʾāḫaru) Jadal 220.6f.

In this example the initial noun phrase is ʾinsānun mā, which at first seems not to be M-definite by the criteria of Section 4. But in fact the noun phrase is used as 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 them has an M-indefinite and prima facie P-indefinite mubtadaʾ followed by a verbal sentence. The first might be an example of how metaphysics chews up language: ʾabyaḍu yubayyaḍu min al-ibyiḍāḍi ‘A white thing acquires whiteness from the property of being white’ (ʿIbāra 26.7f.) (But it could be argued that ʾabyaḍu here is short for kullu ʾabyaḍa, which is P-definite.) The second is quoting some other unnamed author, so that the sentence could be a word-for-word translation of something from Syriac or Greek: šayʾun mā yamšī ‘Something is walking’ (ʿIbāra 19.11). Ibn Sīnā stresses that there is no problem saying what would count as making this sentence true, so presumably he would count it as semantically acceptable. But he might not have counted it as good Arabic. Ibn Sīnā’s further discussion of this last example contrasts it with the single word yamšī used as a sentence. He argues that if the initial ya- is taken as equivalent to a personal pronoun, it would have to be ‘indeterminate’ (ġayr muʿayyan) as a part of the word yamšī, even if the speaker has some specific entity in mind. There is a passage of al-Sīrāfī’s Commentary which overlaps with this passage 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 a mubtadaʾ 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-ẓabyun kāna ʾummaka ʾam ḫimār ‘You don’t care whether a gazelle or a donkey is your mother’. There is an embedded sentence with mubtadaʾ ‘a gazelle or a donkey’. Although al-Sīrāfī’s explanations are too brief for comfort, it seems that some scholars disputed Sībawayhi’s analysis, probably by claiming that the sentence has a paraphrase along the lines ‘You don’t care whether, when you see a gazelle or a donkey, it is your mother’. There are now two subclauses; ‘a gazelle or a donkey’ appears only in the first and is no longer mubtadaʾ in it, while the mubtadaʾ of the second clause is ‘it’, which is a personal pronoun and hence definite. But taking the indefinite as a pronoun doesn’t give the listener any more information than the indefinite did. Don’t you see that if a person said ‘I passed 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-nakirati ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna qāʾilan law qāla ‘marartu bi-rajulin wa-kallamtuhu’ lam takun al-hāʾu l-ʿāʾidatu ʾilā rajulin bi-mūjibatin li-taʿrīfi šaḫṣin bi-ʿaynihi min bayna l-rijāli) Šarḫ i, 306.1–3

But in this passage al-Sīrāfī comes nowhere near giving a counterexample to Ayoub’s observation.

7

Definiteness with Quantifiers

We remarked in Section 4 above that Sībawayhi himself identifies a group of exceptions to the Equivalence Claim. The exceptions are the words miṯluka, šibhuka and naḥwaka; these all mean ‘like you’ and consist of a word in ʾiḍāfa to the personal pronoun -ka. By the fifth and second criteria for definiteness in 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 for identifying an individual. Thus these words are M-definite but P-indefinite, and this makes them exceptions to the Equivalence Claim. In the same context Sībawayhi mentions ġayruka ‘other than you’, which is another obvious exception.

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If any of these words occurred as a mubtadaʾ, there would be a conflict with 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 a sentence. Sībawayhi quotes at Kitāb i, 179.6–8 an observation of Yūnus, to the effect that one of these words is more likely to be definite if it occurs earlier in the sentence. But the earliest that Yūnus manages to put it is as second word in hāḏā miṯluka muqbilan ‘This person who is like you is approaching’, where the opening phrase is P-definite, but the main credit for that should go to the mubham word hāḏā. What Sībawayhi seems to have overlooked is that his small class of exceptions is in fact part of a much larger class of exceptions, some of which do occur in mubtadaʾ position. This raises significant problems about cases of Pindefinite mubtadaʾ. As we will see below, al-Mubarrad already realized that Sībawayhi’s class of exceptions should be extended, and later linguists including al-Sīrāfī followed him in this. But independent of these researches, the logicians were deploying hundreds of examples of this larger class of exceptions, taken in mubtadaʾ position. We must indicate what is the larger class of exceptions that Sībawayhi missed. Consider two nouns in ʾiḍāfa: A-of-B. Two cases can arise. The first is that everything that fits the description A-of-B fits the description a, so that the effect 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 was largely ignored by logicians until modern times. Ibn Sīnā does call attention to 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 be pragmatically definite if specific sheep or stones are intended. The second case is that a is not a descriptive word, so that the question whether a thing fits the description a doesn’t arise. In this case we call b the ‘head noun’ and a the ‘specifier’. Sībawayhi’s examples miṯluka, šibhuka, naḥwaka, ġayruka all fall under this second case, with head noun -ka. Al-Sīrāfī gives an example that is M-definite (Šarḥ ii, 315.17): niṣfu l-nahāri ‘halfway through the day’. We can distinguish these two cases as the ‘complement case’ and the ‘specifier case’. The terminology of ‘head noun’, ‘specifier’ and ‘complement’ comes from X-bar theory, for example Jackendoff (1977). In that theory, typical examples of 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’, which besides being a quantifier of sorts, comes close 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 of the first noun, which is essentially what the Equivalence Claim does. But for the specifier case there is no reason to expect the morphosyntactic properties of the first noun to have any direct relationship with the satisfiability of the whole phrase. We have to look at the meaning of the specifier word to see whether it together with the head noun pins down a specific individual. So P-definiteness is likely to be the exception in the specifier case. Now recall from Section 4 that Ibn Sīnā in his logic studied sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate. The main source of these was the class of sentences used by Aristotle in his categorical logic, converted from Greek into Arabic. In his book ʿIbāra Ibn Sīnā introduces typical examples of the four main sentence 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 46.3f.

(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 truth about these phrases you should consult the linguistic experts” (ʿalā ʾanna taḥqīqa 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 Latin convention, 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), and result 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. Elsewhere he 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.) Leaving aside the negatives, both kullu and baʿḍu are expressions that sit as muḍāf on nouns or noun phrases. In Ibn Sīnā’s sample sentence forms above, baʿḍu is muḍāf 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 as kullu al-nās, and arguably the two occurrences of kullu should be semantically equivalent. In all these cases the opening noun phrase is a specifier case of ʾiḍāfa. Besides the four main sentence forms above, categorical logic has two further 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 tentative examples, 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 types of definite except for personal pronouns. All these examples are nominal sentences, and Ibn Sīnā himself regards the first and second noun phrases as mubtadaʾ and ḫabar respectively. In short, the sentences of Ibn Sīnā’s categorical logic provide us with a good crop of mubtadaʾ/ḫabar sentences, in many cases with an M-definite mubtadaʾ. 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 singular sentences are the only one of Ibn Sīnā’s forms where the initial noun phrase has any serious chance of specifying an individual.

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‘Definiteness’ in the Medieval Arabic context only captures half of what linguists commonly regard as definite. What it misses is plural noun phrases beginning with a definite article or a universal quantifier; see for example (Lyons 1999:15–33) for criteria of definiteness that lead to the inclusion of these plural phrases. On this broader account, the (a) sentences normally have a definite mubtadaʾ. The (e) and (o) sentences complicate matters by being negated. The main challenge for the Equivalence Claim rests with the (i) sentences. In many cases these open with an M-definite noun phrase of specifier type that comes nowhere near specifying any individual. Given the informational role of the mubtadaʾ, we should expect to find Arabic writers being uncomfortable with these (i) sentences, or even avoiding them altogether. For example, are there any examples of (i) sentences in the Qurʾān? We did find 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 standard modern edition of the Qurʾān, replaces the indefinite ‘some suspicion’ by the definite ‘suspicion’, moving the indefinite ‘some’ to later in the sentence. This kind of neutralization of the indefiniteness is typical of what we find in both al-Sīrāfī and Ibn Sīnā. Our final section will illustrate this.

8

Neutralising the Indefiniteness in Specifier ʾiḍāfas

Ibn Sīnā and al-Sīrāfī both have adjustments that allow us to see specifier ʾiḍāfas as P-definite. Ibn Sīnā does not explain his approach, but it is clear enough from his examples. When he is being careful he sticks to the standard categorical sentence forms, even when they yield what is surely barbaric Arabic: baʿḍu l-nāsi ḥayawānun Qiyās 120.6

baʿḍu l-ʾabyaḍi ṯaljun Qiyās 501.8

But when he is in a less formal mood he lapses into paraphrases of these forms, for example

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al-mutaḥarrikātu baʿḍuhā nāsun ‘Some mobile things are people’ Qiyās 209.2

al-ʿilmu mawjūdun 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 quantified, i.e. as an (i) sentence.) What he is doing in these paraphrases is to recast the 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 specifier of the ʾiḍāfa (i.e. baʿḍ in these examples). The new topic is a noun with definite article, which can be read as naming a class or genus; the remainder of the sentence then gives information about that class. In short, Ibn Sīnā’s paraphrases turn the standard sentence forms into topiccomment sentences with a genuinely P-definite topic, but it is not the topic of the original sentence. It seems that this approach should work with great generality. He makes no claim that the paraphrased form is any more basic than the original standard form. We turn to al-Sīrāfī. His commentary on Sībawayhi’s Chapter 101 cites the remark of ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad that Ġayr does not become definite even when it is put in ʾiḍāfa with a definite, because when you say ‘I passed someone other than you’, everything apart from the interlocutor is ‘other than him’, and then putting it in ʾiḍāfa to a definite thing does not force it to change to something different from what it is (ʾanna ġayra wa-ʾin ʾuḍīfa ʾilā maʿrifatin lā yataʿarrafu li-ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta marartu bi-ġayrika wa-kullu mā laysa bi-l-muḫātabi fa-huwa ġayruhu, fa-ʾiḍāfatuhu ʾilā l-maʿrifati lam tūjib taġyīra šayʾin biʿaynihi) Šarḫ ii, 320.6f.

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Al-Sīrāfī’s response is explicitly the same as what we found implicitly in Ibn Sīnā: 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 sometimes 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 different from it. Thus one can separate off the things that are like [the miser] from the other things that are different from it, […] and then the things that are different from it are said to be [other than it] (ʾinna liġayrin wajhan yataʿarrafu fīhi wa-ḏālika ʾannahā qad tustaʿmalu fī maʿnā l-muḫālifi ka-qawlihim: […] al-jawādu ġayru al-baḫīli ʾay al-muḫālifu lahu wa-qad yuḥṣaru ʾašyāʾu mutašābihatun, […] wa-yuqālu li-l-muḫālifati lahā ʾinnahā ġayruhā) Šarḫ ii, 320.10f.

More precisely al-muḫalifu li-l-baḫīli is an M-definite phrase, and it can be taken as P-definite, referring collectively to the things that are not miserly. Al-Sīrāfī’s paraphrase works with ‘other than’, because the class of things that are ‘other than’ miserly is determinate, at least if the class of miserly things is determinate. But this is clearly not true for all specifiers. For example if a person said ‘I passed half the family of Zayd’, we cannot straightforwardly paraphrase this by referring to ‘the half of the family of Zayd’, since there will be several different halves. (Unstraightforwardly we can, by referring to the class of halves of the family of Zayd. But we know of no linguistic applications of this fact.) But al-Sīrāfī does not leave the matter there. In answer to further remarks of al-Mubarrad suggesting that ‘half of x’ behaves like ‘all of x’ and ‘some of x’, alSīrāfī points out that we can and do speak of ‘the half that …’; for example we can talk of ‘the half of the goods consisting of long-necked bottles’. The same applies 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 would be bound to point out, in connection with ‘half’ and ‘some’, that at least logicians say ‘the some’. For example at Qiyās 118.7 he has an argument beginning with the premise ‘Some b is an a’: We argue by ecthesis, by specifying the some b which is an a to be [the class] d ( yatabayyanu bi-l-iftirāḍi bi-ʾan yuʿayyana l-baʿḍu llaḏī huwa b, wahuwa a fa-li-yakun ḏālika d)

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(Similarly Ibn Sīnā, Qiyās 40.5, 47.5, 48.6, 76.13 etc. etc.) But this seems to be a technical usage peculiar to logic.

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Ibn Sīnā, Qiyās = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Qiyās. Ed. by S. Zayed and Ibrahim Madkour. Cairo, 1964. Ibn Sīnā, Burhān = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Burhān. Ed. by A.E. Afifi and Ibrahim Madkour. Cairo, 1955. Ibn Sīnā, Jadal = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Jadal. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Fuʾād al-ʾAhwānī. Cairo, 1965. Ibn Sīnā, Safsaṭa = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifāʾ: al-Safsaṭa. Ed. by ʾAḥmad 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-Ṯaqāfa wa-l-ʾIršād al-Qawmī, 1960. Ibn Sīnā, Mašriqiyyūn = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā, Manṭiq al-mašriqiyyīn. 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. by Hartwig Derenbourg, Le Livre de Sībawayhi. (Repr., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1970.) Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. by ʾAḥmad 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. by Djamel Eddine Kouloughli, Le résumé de la grammaire arabe. Paris: Ecole Normale Supérieure, 2007.

b

Secondary Sources

Alon, Ilon and Shukri Abed. 2007. Al-Fārābī’s philosophical lexicon = Qāmūs al-Fārābī al-falsafī. Cambridge: The E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust. Ayoub, Georgine. 1981. Structure de la phrase en arabe standard. Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris vii. Badawi, Elsaid, Michael G. Carter, and Adrian Gully. 2004. Modern Written Arabic: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. Carter, Michael G. 2004. Sībawayhi. London: Tauris. Carter, Michael G. 2016. Sībawayhi’s principles: Arabic grammar and law in early Islamic thought. Atlanta, ga: Lockwood Press. Chatti, Saloua. 2016. “Existential import in Avicenna’s modal logic”. Arabic Sciences and 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 Ibn Sīnā”. Romano-Arabica 8.81–97. Gutas, Dimitri. 2014. Avicenna and the Aristotelian tradition: Introduction to reading Avicenna’s philosophical works. 2nd ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Heffening, Willi. 2012. “Al-Muzanī”. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. Brill, online. Hodges, Wilfrid, 2016. “Proofs as cognitive or computational: Ibn Sīnā’s innovations”. Philosophy and Technology (2016) https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0242-2. Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. x̄ Syntax: A study of phrase structure. Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marogy, Amal E. 2010. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Syntax and pragmatics. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Sheyhatovitch, Beata. 2015. “The notion of fāʾida in the Medieval Arabic grammatical tradition: Fāʾida as a criterion for utterance acceptability”. The foundations of Arabic linguistics. ii. Kitāb Sībawayhi: Interpretation and transmission, ed. by Amal Elesha Marogy and Kees Versteegh, 184–201. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Versteegh, Kees. 1977. Greek elements in Arabic linguistic thinking. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Wright, William. 1967. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, Walter E. 2017. The dialectical forge: Juridical disputation and the evolution of Islamic law: Logic, argumentation and reasoning. Cham: Springer.

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 incomparable, 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 why traits found in a corpus of early pedagogical grammars (including Luġda’s) cannot simply be incorporated in discussions of grammatical theories.1 I will show how we can nevertheless benefit from these pedagogical grammars in our study of the early history of Arabic grammatical tradition. To this end, I will concentrate on two terms found in some of the extant works of this kind. A more comprehensive study of the characteristics of early pedagogical grammars will be conducted in the near future. It should be stated from the outset that some grammarians explicitly state that discrepancies exist between theoretical and pedagogical grammar. For example, in his Qurʾānic commentary al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822) speaks twice of explanations fit for “the novice [in instruction]” (al-mubtadiʾ [li-l-taʿlīm]).2 In a 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 originally ditransitive verbs in the passive voice, e.g. ʾuʿṭiya zaydun dirhaman ‘Zayd was given 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 lmutaʿallim/al-mubtadiʾ), and does not belong to the parlance of the Baṣrans.4 The 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 distinction between 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 term fiʿl mā lam yusamma fāʿiluhu in this sense (see the discussion in Vidro and Kasher 2014:213, 223).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_008

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terize al-ʾAḫfaš’ (d. 215/830) and al-Mubarrad’s (d. 285/898) definitions of the part of speech ism.5 The two technical terms I will discuss here are ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūf al-rafʿ. First, some remarks are in order regarding the use of the term ḥarf in early grammatical writings. There is an apparently never-ending debate over the term ḥarf in the Kitāb Sībawayhi. In broad terms, the conundrum is whether the term ḥarf denotes ‘particle’ in the Kitāb, or refers to this part of speech only occasionally, while its denotation is ‘word’ or something similar.6 My own preference is for the latter view, but even scholars adhering to the former admit that the term ḥarf did indeed frequently denote ‘word’ or something similar in the Kitāb,7 a fact which Medieval grammarians were also well aware of, as we shall see presently.8 It is probably Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928) who first refrained from using ḥarf in the more general sense and restricted it to ‘particle’. The term 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 be used in the general sense even after Ibn al-Sarrāj.9 The most celebrated case of such usage is probably the title of the chapter on kāna and its ‘sisters’ in alZajjājī’s al-Jumal fī l-naḥw, where these verbs are referred to as ḥurūf.10 This chapter drew much attention from later commentators, generating interesting discussions about particle-like features of these verbs.11 Another approach to defending al-Zajjājī was based upon the grammarians’—and particularly Sībawayhi’s—use of ḥarf in the sense of ‘word’.12 It should be kept in mind that this usage of the term ḥarf was by no means an isolated case in that period. The following two sections revolve around the terms ḥurūf al-jarr and ḥurūf al-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 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

ʾĪḍāḥ 49, 51; also 44, 47 (Versteegh 1995:25, 44, 50, 51). For overviews of the different opinions, see Talmon (1984:49ff.); Versteegh (1995:68–70). See also Levin (2000); Talmon (2003:213ff.). See Fischer (1989:136–137, 138–139); Owens (1990:245–248); Levin (2000:25). See also Sīrāfī, Šarḥ i, 412. Cf. Weiß (1910:375). On the mention of nouns and verbs in the ḥurūf literature, see Baalbaki (2014:214). Zajjājī, Jumal 41ff. That these are indeed verbs is stated ibid., 103. 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). Baṭalyūsī, Ḥulal 159–160; Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ i, 415; Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ, Basīṭ ii, 661; ʿAlawī, Minhāj i, 308.

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or 320/932),13 al-Jumal fī l-naḥw by al-Zajjājī, Kitāb al-tuffāḥa fī l-naḥw by the Egyptian al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950) and Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ by the Andalusian alZubaydī (d. 379/989).14 Another item which belongs to this corpus is an anonymous treatise (survived in Hebrew characters) that is replete with Kūfan characteristics and whose author—as can be inferred—affiliates himself with the Kūfans; this provides us with a terminus ante quem, namely the very beginning of the 5th/11th century, when the last known ‘Kūfan’ grammarian is likely to have died.15 Palaeographic evidence suggests that the grammar was transliterated into Hebrew characters at the end of the 5th/11th century.16 The use of these terms in the grammars under discussion here stands in contradistinction to what I shall refer to as the ‘mainstream’ of the Arabic grammatical tradition, by which are mainly intended the writings of Sībawayhi, alMubarrad, Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) and Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002).17 I will demonstrate that the use of these terms by the former group reflects a pedagogical tradition, which has roots in earlier times. The next section will 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 this study.

2

The ḥurūf al-jarr

In light of the previous discussion of the term ḥarf, it is not surprising that the term ḥurūf al-jarr (or ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ18 or similar expressions) was not always 13 14

15 16 17

18

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). “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). See Sezgin (1984:150). See also Carter (2000:265). On this treatise, see Vidro and Kasher (2014). Apart from the celebrated al-Lumaʿ fī l-naḥw which is used for the present study, another pedagogical treatise, entitled ʿUqūd al-lumaʿ fī l-naḥw, is ascribed to Ibn Jinnī; the latter will not be incorporated in the following discussion, as its different versions and even its very attribution to Ibn Jinnī need further study, which I intend to undertake in the near future. Although the term ḫafḍ is frequently said to be the Kūfan equivalent of the Baṣran term jarr, the former is ubiquitous in mainstream grammars. See the discussion and references in Vidro and Kasher (2014:218f.).

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restricted to particles. In fact, some grammarians put forward quite heterogeneous lists of operators of the jarr under the class ḥurūf al-jarr. This practice is in sharp contrast to the strict differentiation in mainstream grammars between word classes. To take one representative example from a mainstream pedagogical grammar, Ibn al-Sarrāj’s al-Mūjaz fī l-naḥw. In this treatise, nouns in jarr are divided into those operated on by a preposition (ḥarf jarr, i.e. a particle assigning the jarr) vs. those taking jarr by dint of annexation of a noun to them.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 of several 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 nouns in the list above, these are nouns which are not obligatorily, or characteristically, annexed.20 Similar heterogeneous lists are found in Luġda’s grammar under the title Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tajurru mā baʿdahā,21 and in the anonymous Kūfan grammar under ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ.22 Moreover, one of the additional passages found in one of the fragments of the latter text is a short list of this sort (maybe only the beginning of a longer one), copied from a different anonymous work, entitled al-Ḥurūf allatī taḫfiḍu mā baʿdahā.23 To what extent this practice was widespread can be inferred from the criticism leveled at it by Ibn al-Sarrāj. Right after he claims that what the Baṣrans call ẓarf is termed ṣifa by al-Kisāʾī and maḥall by al-Farrāʾ, he says that “they”— note: in the plural, not the dual—mix nouns with particles in lists of ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ, and he illustrates his point with a long list of this sort.24 Although it is rather tempting to assume that he refers here exclusively to the Kūfans,25

19

20 21

22 23 24 25

Ibn al-Sarrāj, Mūjaz 55–61. See also Sībawayhi, Kitāb ch. 100, i, 177 f. Derenbourg/i, 419–421 Hārūn; Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab iv, 136ff.; Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 408 ff.; Fārisī, ʾĪḍāḥ 199 ff.; Ibn Jinnī, Lumaʿ 29ff. Sometimes, ẓurūf, such as ḫalfa ‘behind’, are included in the category of nouns, but sometimes, they constitute an independent class. Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 17f. (see Omar 1990:244). 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 in fact explains the reason for the use of the term ḥurūf for a group comprising nouns as well. See Vidro and Kasher (2014:190f., 211–213). See Vidro and Kasher (2014:177). Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 204f. 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, is almost 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), and nouns vs. presentation of heterogeneous lists of operators, all subsumed under ḥurūf al-jarr (or similar expressions). Now, two pedagogical grammars, Ibn Kaysān’s and al-Zajjājī’s, use the term ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ for the entire class, while differentiating between subclasses.28 Thus, in face of the discrepancy between theory, i.e. differentiation between parts of speech, and what appears to be a pedagogical tradition of presenting lists under the title ḥurūf al-jarr, these two grammarians hold the stick at both ends.

3

The ḥurūf al-rafʿ

As already shown by Peled, ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ was a widespread term for a class of particles, including ʾinnamā ‘[approx.] only’ and lākin ‘but’, which do not assign case/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, which will be dealt with below, are found in several pedagogical grammars with a 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

27

28

29 30 31

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. But see nonetheless Farrāʾ, Maʿānī ii, 292 (ḥarf ḫāfiḍ); Ṯaʿlab, Faṣīḥ 26 f. Note that Kūfan grammarians use the term ṣifa for both prepositions and ẓurūf (for discussion and references, see Vidro and Kasher 2014:229f.). Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī 110f.; 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 this sense which is intended. Al-Zubaydī uses the term ʾadawāt for the entire class, albeit not according to all the manuscripts of his book (Wāḍiḥ 59–62); elsewhere in this book (ibid., 311f.) nouns such as dūna ‘below’ are subsumed under ḥurūf. See Peled (1992:159ff.). He emphasizes that this ibtidāʾ is not identical to the operator named ibtidāʾ, but rather it is equivalent to what in later times is commonly termed istiʾnāf. Peled (1992:164ff.). See also Owens (1990:184, 188, 193). 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 Bāb ḥurūf al-rafʿ contains elements from all three parts of speech (i.e., nouns, verbs and particles), such as ʾinnamā, lākin, lawlā ‘if it were not for’, hal [interrogative particle], ʿasā ‘maybe’, niʿma ‘how good’, biʾsa ‘how bad’, ʾayna ‘where’, hāḏā ‘this’ and huwa ‘he’.33 However, he immediately explains that the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ merely means that these words are mostly followed by a marfūʿ. For instance, the rafʿ of zaydun in ʾinnamā zaydun qāʾimun ‘[approx.] Zayd is only standing’ is assigned by the ibtidāʾ.34 Now, there is a striking resemblance between this and the equivalent chapter of the anonymous Kūfan grammar mentioned above, which opens with the words Bāb al-rafʿ, wa-ḥurūfuhu …, also followed by a list, albeit a shorter one, and the very same explanation of the term. The first example also begins with ʾinnamā, viz.ʾinnamā ʿabdullāhi muḥsinun ‘[approx.] Abdallah is only a good-doer’. Yet, as expected from a Kūfan grammar, the rafʿ of ʿabdullāhi is ascribed to muḥsinun and vice versa.35 Hence, the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ is neutral with respect to grammatical theory. Since the demonstratives, lawlā, kam ‘how many’36 and, probably, ḥabbaḏā ‘how lovely’ are said in this chapter to assign the rafʿ, it may be inferred that the other members of the list are not operators of the rafʿ.37 To be sure, the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ is lacking from the other extant Kūfan writings, as far as I know.38

32 33 34

35 36

37

38

See Peled (1992:159ff.). Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 21. 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 any examples of the latter, but wherever their use is illustrated in other grammars, they occupy the subject position. See the discussion below. See Vidro and Kasher (2014:191f., 213, 220–224). On this ‘Kūfan’ concept (often termed tarāfuʿ), see Vidro and Kasher (2014:220–224), and the references therein. 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 to cases where it is followed by a definite noun. See Vidro and Kasher (2014:213, 220–224). It is stated that the second constituent after ʾayna and kayfa ‘how’ may take either the rafʿ or the naṣb, e.g. ʾayna ʾaḫūka jālisun ‘where is your brother sitting?’ or ʾayna ʾaḫūka jālisan ‘where is your brother, sitting?’ (cf. Peled 1992:166f.). This grammarian does not parse the latter construction, but elsewhere (see Vidro and Kasher 2014:191), the rafʿ in the construction ʿinda + jarr + rafʿ is explained as bi-l-ṣifa, which is in line with what is regarded as the ‘Kūfan’ view (see the discussion and references in Vidro and Kasher 2014:220–224). 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-tusammā ḥurūf 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 tarfaʿu which drew much attention, for it appears to contradict the explanation of the rafʿ as due to the ibtidāʾ. Several explanations were offered, most commonly that the verb should not be analyzed as a 3rd person feminine singular, its subject referring to the ḥurūf in question, but as a 2nd person masculine singular, its subject referring to the addressee.41 Since the list is not restricted to particles such as ʾinnamā and hal, but also includes, for instance, kayfa and ʾayna, the term ḥurūf also drew some attention.42 Now expressions introduced by the words 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 in Luġda’s grammar reads Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu/turfaʿu baʿdahā l-ʾasmāʾ bi-libtidāʾ.43 The explanation of the rafʿ as due to the ibtidāʾ is repeated later in the chapter;44 yet here too it is uncertain how one should read and interpret the 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 is explained as being easier for the learner (li-takūna ʾahwan ʿalā l-mutaʿallim). One may infer from his wording that Luġda is following a common practice.

39 40

41 42 43 44 45

corresponds to the class of ḥurūf al-rafʿ, let alone incorporates this term. One occurrence of ḥurūf al-istiʾnāf was detected in Farrāʾ, Maʿānī i, 476. Zajjājī, Jumal 302. This issue is discussed in Peled (1992:164 ff.). 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). See Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 600f.; Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ ii, 565; ʿAlawī, Minhāj ii, 295. See Peled (1992:165). See Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ 600; Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ 64; Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ ii, 565; ʿAlawī, Minhāj ii, 295. Luġda, Naḥw 225. Luġda, Naḥw 225. It is unclear whether this applies also to the demonstratives and personal pronouns, also included in this chapter. 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 is unclear (see Luġda, Naḥw 223f.).

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Ambiguity is also found in al-Zubaydī’s grammar: Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu46 mā baʿdahā min al-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār. He also stresses that the rafʿ is due to the operation of ibtidāʾ.47 Included here are not only particles, but also words that al-Zubaydī himself classifies as ẓurūf.48 However, the short list of words presented by Ibn Kaysān under al-ḥurūf allatī 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 is not restricted to particles.49 Strong evidence that such expressions were common in that epoch is found in al-Ḫwārizmī’s (d. after 387/997)50 Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm (composed between 370/ 980 and 380/990),51 whose aim, according to its author’s statement, is to present the technical terms common in the literatures of the ʿulūm.52 Or, as Fischer puts it in his study of the chapter on grammar in this book: “What gives this chapter its specific importance, is the fact that its author is not a professional grammarian, thus he wants to outline what an educated amateur—that means a secretary (kātib)—has to know about grammar, and gives a sketch of this domain of learning from outside.”53 Thus, the fact that such a book features the category al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu/turfaʿu baʿdahā l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār,54 under which ʾayna, kayfa, matā ‘when’, hal and bal are listed, is an indicator that it was deemed basic in grammatical writings at that time. A similar conclusion can be inferred from Ibn Farīʿūn’s55 (probably died between 350/960 and 400/1010)56 Jawāmiʿ al-ʿulūm, whose arrangement is said to be “particularly suitable for textbooks”.57 In this compendium one finds the category ḥarf yarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-nuʿūt wa-l-ʾaḫbār.58

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

In such cases, one cannot rule out the possibility that the original text read yurfaʿu (tarfaʿu being a copyist’s error). Zubaydī, Wāḍiḥ 79. Ibid., 79f. Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī 110. Versteegh (1993:17). Fischer (1985:94). Ḫwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 2ff. For an overview, see Bosworth (1963). Fischer (1985:94). Ḫwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 47. The name is uncertain; see Sezgin’s introduction to his edition of the book. According to Sezgin’s introduction to his edition of the book. See also Biesterfeldt (1990: 49). Biesterfeldt (1990:50). Ibn Farīʿūn, Jawāmiʿ 27 Sezgin/61 al-Janābī.

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We have so far emphasized two points of discrepancy between the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ (and similar expressions) and mainstream grammatical theory, namely, the application of the term ḥarf to nouns and verbs, and the implication that all the members of the set are operators of the rafʿ. We have also seen several ways by which grammarians attempted to incorporate these expressions into their theories. The element bi-l-ibtidāʾ at the end of some of these expressions may also have been a later addition aimed at this goal. But the discrepancy is deeper, for these chapters are at odds with the entire taqsīm structure of mainstream grammars.59 Some of the words listed deserve, according to the mainstream taqsīm, the title ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ; others are ẓurūf ; still others are demonstratives and personal pronouns, and are thus simply subsumed under mubtadaʾ; some are verbs; etc. With ḥurūf al-jarr the discrepancy is less severe: in order to bring these chapters in line with mainstream taqsīm, one only needs to separate particles from nouns, as we have seen above.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 not reflecting grammatical theory. First, Ibn Wallād (d. 332/943) tells us that some grammarians ( jamāʿa min ʾahl al-naḥw), among them al-ʾAḫfaš, write in their books: Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār, although such words as hal 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 operator] by means of which you put [the words] in naṣb” (wa-ʾin šiʾta rafaʿta bimā naṣabta), applied to a construction in which the rafʿ is not, in fact, caused by the operator in question, since it is a case of a mubtadaʾ and its ḫabar.62

59 60

61 62

The subject of taqsīm was studied recently by Viain (2014). I would like to thank Dr. Viain for kindly having sent me a copy of her thesis. However, some grammarians formulate syntactic rules pertaining to sentence types in these 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 and Kasher 2014:190f.). Both formulate the same rule: when the noun in jarr is followed by another noun, the latter takes the rafʿ. As expected, al-Zajjājī explains this case as bil-ibtidāʾ, while the Kūfan grammarian accounts for it as bi-l-ṣifa (on the latter, see the discussion and references in Vidro and Kasher 2014:220–224). Such discussions, which, as far as I know do not appear in jarr-chapters in mainstream grammars, also do not square with the taqsīm-structure, as this is not the appropriate place to discuss sentence types. Ibn Wallād, Intiṣār 73 (= Bernards 1997:27). 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,63 it may be inferred that the wording Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-lʾaḫbār would also be regarded by him as such. In addition, an unattributable paragraph found in the margins of the manuscript of al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī’s (d. 476/1083) commentary on this discussion, also compares Sībawayhi’s wording with the use of the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ and the expression al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu 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 lawlā under ḥurūf al-rafʿ as musāmaḥa, for the following noun takes the rafʿ due to the 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 differently, we have seen so far that this term, and similar expressions, appear in a corpus of early pedagogical grammars, yet the term does not appear in what I referred to above as the ‘mainstream’ of Arabic grammatical tradition. Therefore, was this term a late innovation vis-à-vis this mainstream? The answer seems to be in the negative. Apart from Ibn Wallād’s attribution of the expression Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-l-ʾaḫbār to al-ʾAḫfaš (which should, like any account of this sort, be treated with considerable caution), we have two early 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.66 In this account, ʾAbū l-ʾAswad al-Duʾalī is said to have composed the following ʾabwāb: Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl wa-l-muḍāf wa-ḥurūf al-jarr wa-l-rafʿ wa-l-naṣb wa-l-jazm.67 In order to grasp the import of this version, it should be compared with a much more ‘orthodox’ one, according to which the first grammar supposedly began with the tripartite division of the parts of speech.68 It is plausible that just as the latter is modeled on what came to be the standard openings of

63 64 65 66 67

68

This term means “using a careless mode of expression, relying upon the understanding of the reader or hearer” (Lane 1863–1893: iv, 1423). Al-ʾAʿlam al-Šantamarī, Nukat i, 357. ʿAskarī, Taṣḥīḥ 425. 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 (2003:30 ff.). 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 lrafʿ wa-l-naṣb wa-l-jarr (Marātib 20). As stated by Baalbaki (1995:125), “the arrangement according to regimen seems to be initiated only for didactic purposes”. See, for instance, Zajjājī, ʾĪḍāḥ 89.

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grammars, following the Kitāb, the former is modeled on (a) grammar(s) in circulation in al-Jumaḥī’s time (or perhaps in his source’s, or sources’, time). It is striking that series of chapters basically organized around classes of ḥurūf feature in some of the pedagogical grammars mentioned above. For instance, the following series occurs in al-Naḥḥās’ grammar: Bāb ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tanṣubu l-ʾasmāʾ wa-tarfaʿu l-ʾaḫbār, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu l-ʾasmāʾ watanṣubu l-ʾaḫbār, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tanṣubu l-ʾafʿāl al-mustaqbala, Bāb al-jawāb bi-l-fāʾ,69 Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tajzimu l-ʾafʿāl al-mustaqbala, Bāb ḥurūf al-raf.70 From this correspondence, we may infer that not only did the term ḥurūf alrafʿ have roots in early grammar, but also that it constituted part of a series of chapters organized around classes of words followed by a certain case/mood. A statement found in al-ʾAḫfaš’ al-ʿArūḍ corroborates this conclusion: he says that those interested in ʿarūḍ must study some Arabic, including ḥurūf al-rafʿ wa-l-naṣb wa-l-jarr wa-l-jazm.71 At this point the reader may well ask whether the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ ever reflected a grammatical theory.72 To be sure, some of the items in the list were recognized by grammarians as operators of rafʿ, e.g. niʿma and biʾsa, demonstratives and personal pronouns (in subject position, although the view that the subject assigns the rafʿ to the predicate was not universally accepted).73 The inclusion of lawlā is of interest, since it reflects the opinion ascribed to the Kūfans, as was indeed al-Farrāʾ’s view, against Sībawayhi’s and al-Mubarrad’s, as has already been shown by Baalbaki.74 The former view was also adopted in the anonymous Kūfan grammar.75 Interesting is also the inclusion of interrogative ẓurūf, e.g. ʾayna. Illustrations of the use of such ẓurūf consist of the construction ẓarf + subject + predicate, but also of predicative ẓarf + subject (+ naṣb). In the latter case, the Kūfans, as well as several other early grammarians, held that the ẓarf assigns the rafʿ to the subject.76 The grammatical view on these words by the first grammarians to form such lists is a matter of conjecture. The more interesting question, however, revolves around sentence-introducing particles, such as ʾinnamā (i.e. the ḥurūf al-ibtidāʾ—see above): were these particles ever

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

This is merely an offshoot of the previous chapter. Naḥḥāṣ, Tuffāḥa 17–21. See also Luġda, Naḥw 225f.; Vidro and Kasher (2014:187–192). ʾAḫfaš, ʿArūḍ 136 (quoted by Talmon 2003:125f., who, however, identifies these ḥurūf with ḥurūf al-ʾiʿrāb). Cf. Owens (1990:200). See Levin (2003–2005). Baalbaki (1981:15f.). See Vidro and Kasher (2014:192, 224). See Vidro and Kasher (2014:224).

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held to assign rafʿ? An alternative possibility is that the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ was coined as a pedagogical term from the outset, independently of the grammatical theory of the grammarian(s) who coined it. There is a third possibility as well, namely that it was coined prior to any comprehensive theory of syntactic effect. The question of whether grammarians ever maintained that words such as ʾinnamā assign the rafʿ thus has no conclusive answer. Talmon’s evidence from the Kitāb for such a theory adhered to by early grammarians is, to say the least, tenuous.77 The evidence from the Kitāb al-ʿayn is more convincing.78 However, it may as well be explained as nothing more than another instance of tasammuḥ (cf. Sībawayhi’s wording mentioned above).79 Finally, as we have seen, some grammarians refer to the subject as ism, which is the flip side of the coin of the term ḥurūf al-rafʿ. It may hint at an early provenance,80 but it is premature to infer far-reaching conclusions from this about any early grammatical theory. Another remark about the organization of al-Jumaḥī’s first grammar is in order here. Its first chapter is prima facie Bāb al-fāʿil, but it might just as well be Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl; nothing in the text can either corroborate or refute either reading. However, other accounts claim that ʾAbū l-ʾAswad alDuʾalī composed only Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl,81 which increases the probability of the latter. Now, chapters entitled Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl bihi are found in three of the grammars dealt with here.82 Moreover, in the anonymous Kūfan grammar Bāb al-mafʿūl bihi wa-l-fāʿil seems to occupy the first place, just like in al-Jumaḥī’s first grammar.83 Such series of ḥurūf chapters do not feature in grammars of the ‘mainstream’, as far as I know. As to bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl, only one occurrence of this heading was found in a ‘mainstream’ grammar, namely Ibn al-ʾAnbārī’s Mīzān al-ʿarabiyya (an edition of this treatise is in preparation by Dr. Arik Sadan and the present author).

77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Talmon (2003:264f.). See also Owens (1990:184, n. 5). See Talmon (1997:199, 2003:264f.). See also Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī 175. Talmon (1990a:272ff., 1993:278, 2003:165ff.). E.g., Sīrāfī, ʾAḫbār 36, 41. Luġda, Naḥw 224; Zajjājī, Jumal 10–12; Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa 17. See Vidro and Kasher (2014:179).

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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. But when 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 impossible to answer this question with any certainty. What can be said for now, which, I believe, is of significance, is that no extant source which is datable as later than the 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, or some of them: (i)

Muqaddima fī l-naḥw, attributed to Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar (d. 180/796),85 which contains a series of chapters each dedicated to a class of ḥurūf,86 according to the following nouns’/verbs’ cases/moods;87 the heading of the first chapter in this series is Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī tarfaʿu kull ism baʿdahā,88 and of the third, Bāb al-ḥurūf allatī taḫfiḍu mā baʿdahā min ism wa-ʾaḫbāruhā marfūʿa.89 (ii) al-Muḥallā ‘wujūh al-naṣb’, attributed to Ibn Šuqayr (d. 315/927 or 317/929), a grammarian who is said to have mixed the two schools.90 The very same

84 85

86 87 88

89 90

Carter (1994:389). 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 (1993:285 f., 1999:191–193); Carter (2000:264); Baalbaki (1995:127f., 2005:41). For those accepting the ascription of the book to Ḫalaf alʾAḥmar, this is probably the oldest extant testimony of the issues dealt with here. On the term ḥarf in the Muqaddima, see Talmon (1990b:143). Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 36–50 (the chapter on the operators assigning the naṣb to verbs is found ibid., 71f.). Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 36. The wording is ambiguous. Note, however, the unambiguous characterization of the part of speech ḥarf : wa-hāḏā l-ḥarf huwa l-ʾadā allatī bihā tarfaʿu wa-tanṣubu wa-taḫfiḍu l-ism wa-tajzimu l-fiʿl (ibid., 35; the word bihā was omitted in the 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). Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar, Muqaddima 43. See Talmon (1990b:144 f.). 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 attribution to al-Ḫalīl.91 One of the titles in this treatise reads wa-l-rafʿ bi-hal waʾaḫawātihā, and one of the manuscripts continues: min ḥurūf al-rafʿ.92 Interestingly, the author uses the term ḫabar ʾayna wa-kayfa.93 (iii) Kitāb talqīn al-mutaʿallim min al-naḥw, attributed to Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/ 889).94 A series of ḥurūf chapters is also found here.95 The first, entitled Mā yulaqqanu l-mutaʿallim min ḥurūf al-jarr,96 opens with a heterogeneous list of operators of jarr,97 and the third is entitled Bāb ḥurūf al-rafʿ wa-mā yusʾalu ʿanhā.98 It is explicitly stated twice at the beginning of the chapter, both before and after the list, that these ḥurūf assign the rafʿ to the subject and the predicate. Moreover, the rafʿ of zaydun in the sentence hal zaydun muntaliqun ‘Is Zayd departing?’ is explained as due to hal. However, another explanation, of a higher order, is offered, according to which hal and its ‘sisters’ join mubtadaʾ and ḫabar and bring about nothing.99 This author also uses terms such as ism matā and ḫabar matā.100

91

92 93 94

95 96 97

98

99 100

For the different views regarding the authorship of the book see Fāris’ and Qabāwa’s prefaces 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). Other titles are also mentioned for this book in these sources. Ibn Šuqayr, Muḥallā 141 = Ḫalīl, Jumal 188. Ibn Šuqayr, Muḥallā 141 = Ḫalīl, Jumal 188. This treatise was studied by Carter (1979), who surmises that it was written “no earlier than the 10th/16th century” (ibid., 267). Talmon (1993:285f.), on the other hand, concludes that it 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). Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 61ff. On the term ḥarf in the Talqīn see Carter (1979:269). Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 61–75. See Carter (1979:269). 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 alʾiʿrāb 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 ism later in this chapter (ibid., 72). Elsewhere (ibid., 116) ẓurūf and ḥurūf al-jarr are presented as two distinct classes. Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 93–102. Elsewhere (ibid., 209f.) niʿma and biʾsa are also referred to both as ḥarf s causing rafʿ and as verbs. Demonstratives and personal pronouns are also regarded 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). Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 93. See also ibid., 94, 96, 98, 99. Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn 95, 100.

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(iv) Another book is included in Sadan’s critical edition of a very late grammatical treatise; in one of the manuscripts of this grammar an otherwise unknown treatise is incorporated (Sadan 2012:4), which Sadan published as an appendix. A heterogeneous list under Bāb ḥurūf al-ḫafḍ is followed here by Bāb ḥurūf al-rafʿ.101 Another, heading-less chapter revolves around content that is characteristic of the Bāb al-fāʿil wa-l-mafʿūl in other books.102 The fact that traits which are not found in the extant datable sources later than the early 5th/11th century appear in these books, by no means constitutes a conclusive argument for their early provenance, but it certainly should be taken into consideration.

5

Conclusion

Beside what can safely be regarded as the mainstream Arabic grammatical tradition, several pedagogical grammars from no later than the early 5th/11th century display non-canonical features. Some features go back to the early 3rd/9th century at the latest, but it is still unclear to what extent they reflect early grammatical theories. At least some authors of these pedagogical grammars were well aware of the discrepancy between these traits and their own grammatical theories. The clumsy wordings and apparent self-contradictions found in these writings are the result of the interplay between traditional practice and theory. These traits, however, finally gave way to mainstream grammar, as part of the general canonization process which the 4th/10th century witnessed.103

101 102 103

Sadan (2012:133). Sadan (2012:129). See Bohas, Guillaume, Kouloughli (1990:4, 8ff.); Carter (2000:270f.). It is possible that this process is what underlies al-Qifṭī’s statement that al-Zajjājī’s Jumal was replaced by al-Fārisī’s ʾĪḍāḥ and Ibn Jinnī’s Lumaʿ (ʾInbāh ii, 161). See also Versteegh (1995:3f.). Carter (2011:46) explains the popularity of the Jumal in the Maġrib as “a deliberate act of appropriation to mark group identity”.

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Bibliographical References a

Primary Sources

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Ibn al-Sarrāj, Mūjaz = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Sarī Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-Mūjaz fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Muṣṭafā al-Šuwaymī and Bin Sālim Dāmirjī. Beirut: Muʾassasat A. Badrān, [1965]. Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Sarī Ibn al-Sarrāj, al-ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996. Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ = Ṭāhir ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ Kitāb jumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by Ḥusayn ʿAlī Laftah al-Saʿdī. Ph.D. diss., University of Baghdad, 2003. Ibn Fāris, Ṣāḥibī = ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn ʾAḥmad Ibn Fāris ibn Zakariyyā, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh alluġa al-ʿarabiyya wa-masāʾilihā wa-sunan al-ʿArab fī kalāmihā. Ed. by ʿUmar Fārūq al-Ṭabbāʿ. Beirut: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1993. Ibn Farīʿūn, Jawāmiʿ = Mutaġabbī Ibn Farīʿūn, Jawāmiʿ al-ʿulūm. Ed. by Fuat Sezgin. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1985/Ed. by Qays Kāẓim al-Janābī. Cairo: Maktabat alṮaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 2007. Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Ḫarūf, Šarḥ Jumal alZajjājī (min al-ʾawwal ḥattā nihāyat bāb al-muḫāṭaba). Ed. by Salwā Muḥammad ʿUmar ʿArab. 2 vols. Mecca: Maʿhad al-Buḥūṯ al-ʿIlmiyya wa-ʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-ʾIslāmī, 1419 ah.; Šarḥ Jumal al-Zajjājī (min bāb al-hijāʾ ḥattā bāb al-ḥikāya). Ed. by Salwā Muḥammad ʿUmar ʿArab. Jeddah: Markaz al-Našr al-ʿIlmī, Jāmiʿat al-Malik ʿAbd alʿAzīz, 1427 ah. Ibn Hišām, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Jamāl al-Dīn ibn Yūsuf ibn ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Hišām, Šarḥ Jumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by ʿAlī Muḥsin ʿĪsā Māl Allāh. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1985. Ibn Jinnī, Lumaʿ = ʾAbū l-Fatḥ ʿUṯmān Ibn Jinnī, Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Hadi M. Kechrida. Uppsala: n.p., 1976. Ibn Kaysān, Muwaffaqī = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan Muhammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Kaysān, Kitāb alMuwaffaqī fī l-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Fatlī and Hāšim Ṭāhā Šallāš. Al-Mawrid 4:2 (1975) 103–124. Ibn Qutayba, Talqīn = ʾAbū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muslim al-Dīnawarī Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb talqīn al-mutaʿallim min al-naḥw. Ed. by Jamāl ʿAbd al-ʿĀṭī Muḫaymar. [Cairo: n.p.], 1989. Ibn Šuqayr, Muḥallā = ʾAbū Bakr ʾAḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Šuqayr, al-Muḥallā ‘wujūh al-naṣb’. Ed. by Fāʾiz Fāris. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1987. Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muʾmin ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ Jumal al-Zajjājī. Ed. by Fawwāz al-Šaʿʿār. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998. Ibn Wallād, Intiṣār = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās ʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Wallād, al-Intiṣār liSībawayhi ʿalā l-Mubarrad. Ed. by Zuhayr ʿAbd al-Muḥsin Sulṭān. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996. Jumaḥī, Ṭabaqāt = ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī, Ṭabaqāt al-šuʿarāʾ. Ed. by Joseph Hell. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1916.

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Luġda, Naḥw = ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh Luġda, Kitāb al-naḥw. Ed. by ʿAbd alḤusayn al-Fatlī. Al-Mawrid 3:3 (1974) 221–246. Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad, Kitāb almuqtaḍab. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq ʿUḍayma. 3rd ed. 4 vols. Cairo: Lajnat ʾIḥyāʾ al-Turāṯ al-ʾIslāmī, 1994. Naḥḥās, Tuffāḥa = ʾAbū Jaʿfar al-Naḥḥās, Kitāb al-tuffāḥa fī l-naḥw. Ed. by Kūrkīs ʿAwwād. Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿĀnī, 1965. Qifṭī, ʾInbāh = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī, ʾInbāh al-ruwāt ʿalā ʾanbāh al-nuḥāt. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʾIbrāhīm. 4 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1986. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by Hartwig Derenbourg, Le livre de Sībawaihi. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881–1889. (Repr., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1970.)/Ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 3rd ed. 5 vols. [Beirut]: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1983. Sīrāfī, ʾAḫbār = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Marzubān al-Sīrāfī, ʾAḫbār alnaḥwiyyīna l-baṣriyyīna wa-marātibuhum wa-ʾaḫḏ baʿḍihim ʿan baʿḍ. Ed. by Muḥammad ʾIbrāhīm al-Bannā. [Cairo]: Dār al-Iʿtiṣām, 1985. Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Marzubān al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Ḥasan Mahdalī and ʿAlī Sayyid ʿAlī. 5 vols. Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2008. Ṯaʿlab, Faṣīḥ = Kitāb al-faṣīḥ wa-šarḥuhu al-musammā al-Talwīḥ fī šarḥ al-Faṣīḥ li-ʾAbī Sahl Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Harawī. In Faṣīḥ Ṯaʿlab wa-l-šurūḥ llatī ʿalayhi, ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim Ḫafājī. [Cairo]: Maktabat al-Tawḥīd, 1949. Zajjājī, Jumal = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾIsḥāq al-Zajjājī, Kitāb al-jumal fī lnaḥw. Ed. by ʿAlī Tawfīq al-Ḥamad. 5th ed. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996. Zajjājī, ʾĪḍāḥ = ʾAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-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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Muqaddima fī l-naḥw al-mansūb ʾilā l-ʾimām Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar”. Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī 38.576–590; 39.152–162. Kinberg, Naphtali. 1996. A lexicon of al-Farrāʾ’s terminology in his Qurʾān commentary with full definitions, English summaries and extensive citations. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Lane, Edward William. 1863–1893. An Arabic-English lexicon. London: Williams and Norgate. Lecomte, Gérard. 1965. Ibn Qutayba: L’homme, son œuvre, ses idées. Damascus: Institut français de Damas. Levin, Aryeh. 1987. “The views of the Arab grammarians on the classification and syntactic function of prepositions”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10.342– 367. Levin, Aryeh. 2000. “The meaning of ḥarf ǧāʾa li-maʿnan in Sībawayhi’s al-Kitāb”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 24.22–48. Levin, Aryeh. 2003–2005. “The ʿāmil of the ḫabar in Old Arabic grammar”. Cahiers de Linguistique de l’ inalco 5.131–144. Omar, Ahmed Mokhtar. 1990. “Grammatical studies in early Muslim Egypt”. Studies in the history of Arabic grammar. ii. Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on the History of Arabic Grammar, Nijmegen, 27 April–1 May 1987, ed. by Michael G. Carter and Kees Versteegh, 239–251. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Owens, Jonathan. 1989. “The syntactic basis of Arabic word classification”. Arabica 36.211–234. Owens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standardization. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Peled, Yishai. 1992. “ʿAmal and ʾibtidāʾ in Medieval Arabic grammatical tradition”. AbrNahrain 30.146–171. Peled, Yishai. 2009. Sentence types and word-order patterns in written Arabic: Medieval and modern perspectives. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Ryding, Karin C. 1992. “Morphosyntactic analysis in al-Jumal fii l-naḥw: Discourse structure and metalanguage”. Perspectives on Arabic linguistics. iv. Papers from the Fourth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, ed. by Ellen Broselow, Mushira Eid, and John McCarthy, 263–277. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Ryding, Karin C. 1998. “Aspects of the genitive: Taxonomy in al-Jumal fī al-naḥw”. Early Medieval Arabic: Studies on al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, ed. by Karin C. Ryding, 92–142. Washington, d.c.: Georgetown University Press. Ryding, Karin C. 2013. Teaching and learning Arabic as a foreign language: A guide for teachers. Washington, d.c.: Georgetown University Press. Sadan, Arik. 2012. A critical edition of the grammatical treatise Taḏkirat jawāmiʿ alʾadawāt by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Sezgin, Fuat. 1982. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. viii. Lexikographie. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

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

1

Introduction

The first occurrence of the term al-ḥāl is found in the Kitāb—the earliest extant source of Arabic grammar, composed by Sībawayhi (2nd/8th century). The grammarians divide the phenomenon of al-ḥāl into several sub-categories. This paper proposes to discuss the sense and the historical development of the term ḥāl muqaddara, which denotes a sub-category of the hāl. Although this term originates 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 which it 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 ḥāl The 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 denotes the state of the fāʿil (= the agent) or of the mafʿūl (the object), at the time of the occurrence of the act expressed in the verbal predicate, as in the example ḍarabtu zaydan qāʾiman (Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 214.21), which can mean either ‘I hit Zayd when I was standing’ or ‘I hit Zayd when he was standing’.2

1 Wright (1951:ii, 197.5–11; 288.7–14). Wright gives the combination ḥāl muqaddar instead of ḥāl muqaddara. The term ḥāl muqaddar is mentioned twice in Wright, as an addition of the editor W. Robertson Smith (see Wright 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 muqaddar instead of ḥāl muqaddara. 2 See Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 214.20–22. In the terminology of the later grammarians the terms ṣāḥib al-ḥāl and ḏū l-ḥāl ‘the owner of the ḥāl’ denote the noun to which the hāl refers (see Ibn ʿAqīl, Šarḥ 633.2; 632.15; Wright 1951:ii, 117.9f.).

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The grammarians hold that the state expressed in the ḥāl and the act expressed in the verbal predicate of the sentence containing it, take place simultaneously. Hence some grammarians say that this type of ḥāl has the quality of being mustaṣḥaba ‘occurring simultaneously with [the act expressed in the verbal predicate]’.3 2.2 The Meaning of the Term ḥāl I began by observing that the term ḥāl lit. ‘state’ is first encountered in the Kitāb. In this text, the form ḥāl is frequently restricted by a relative clause or by another restrictive expression, as in the examples ḥāl waqaʿa fīhi l-fiʿl ‘a state in which an act [expressed in the verbal predicate of the sentence where the ḥāl occurs] took place’ (Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 165.15 f.); ḥāl yaqaʿu fīhi l-siʿru ‘a state where [a certain] price [of a sheep] exists’ (Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 167.11; 167, 12); ḥāl mafʿūl 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 similar expressions.4

3 See Sīrāfī’s Šarḥ, according to Jahn i/2 217, n. 12; ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.9 f. Ibn al-Sarrāj uses the term al-ḥāl al-muṣāḥiba li-l-fiʿl ‘the ḥāl simultaneously occurring with [the act expressed in] the verb’ (Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl i, 216.3f.). 4 The above and similar examples refute Ibn al-Sarrāj’s explanation of the literal sense of the term ḥāl (ʾUṣūl i, 213.16–18). This explanation is evidence that Ibn al-Sarrāj believes that the literal 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 designated by this term, because when the ḥāl is expressed by an active participle, this active participle always denotes the present tense. For example, in jāʾa zaydun rakiban ‘Zayd came riding’, the ḥāl rākiban is an active participle denoting the present tense. Hence, the syntactic function of rākiban is also called al-ḥāl. This theory is incorrect because these two terms are not related: one of them denotes a syntactic term, while the other one refers to one of the tenses expressed in Arabic verbs and participles. Apart from this, although the phenomenon of alḥāl is frequently expressed by an active participle, it is also frequently expressed by words belonging to other parts of speech. The wording of Ibn al-Sarrāj’s definition of the ḥāl (see ʾUṣūl i, 213.19–29) also contradicts his explanation: in this definition, al-ḥāl is referred to by him 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; Malouf 1937, 158b, s.v. al-ḥāl; 971c, s.v. al-hayʾa wa-l-hīʾa). As mentioned above, combinations used by Sībawayhi, such as ḥāl waqaʿa fīhi l-fiʿl, also refute Ibn al-Sarrāj’s above explanation.

what is meant by al-ḥāl al-muqaddara?

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al-Ḥāl al-muqaddara

The early grammarians hold that in the literal construction of given sentences containing a ḥāl, the ḥāl is not a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba (see 2.1 above). Hence they believe 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 occurs in the taqdīr construction of the sentence. The standard example given by grammarians dealing with the phenomenon of ḥāl muqaddara is marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘I passed by a man who had a hawk with him, intending to hunt with it tomorrow’. The first grammarian to deal with this example in the context of ḥāl muqaddara was 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 you were saying] muqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan ‘intending to hunt with it tomorrow’. If this taqdīr construction were not implied in the sentence,6 it would have been impossible [to express this sentence, since it would have expressed a meaning which is an absurdity]7 (wa-taqūlu marartu birajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan turīdu muqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan wa-lawlā hāḏā l-taqdīru mā jāza hāḏā l-kalāmu).8 ʾUṣūl ii 38.7f.

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 not deal with ḥāl muqaddara, but with the topic of the ẓarf as an ʿāmil, and the possibility of the occurrence of ṣāʾidin as a waṣf, instead of ṣāʾidan as a ḥāl (Kitāb i,206–210, ch. 112; Levin 2007:143–146, §5). It seems that ġadan is omitted from the above texts because it is relevant only for the discussion of ḥāl muqaddara, but it is irrelevant for a text dealing with the topic of the ẓarf as an ʿāmil and the occurrence of ṣāʾidin as a waṣf. However, ġadan occurs in the same example in Sībawayhi, Kitāb i 207.17f. (ed. Būlāq i, 243.4; ed. Hārūn ii, 52.6 f.). In Sībawayhi, Kitāb i 207.18, ʿāʾidan occurs instead of ṣāʾidan. It seems safe to assume that ʿāʾidan is a printing error. 6 The taqdīr construction referred to here by Ibn al-Sarrāj is muqaddiran 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 of taqdīr is applied when the speaker makes certain utterances and at the same time intends that 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 birajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan expresses an absurdity (muḥāl) derives from the fact that in the literal construction the word ṣāʾidan expresses a future state, while the verbal predicate marartu denotes an act that took place in the past. Hence ṣāʾidan is not a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba, since it does not occur simultaneously with the act expressed in the verbal predicate. By saying that the taqdīr of ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan is muqaddiran al-ṣayda bihi ġadan, the word muqaddiran ‘intending’ becomes a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba, which takes place simultaneously 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 the act expressed in marartu, the state of the noun rajulin is that he, the protagonist, intends to perform in the future the act expressed in the active participle ṣāʾidan. Hence, the state of rajulin is a state of a noun intending to perform an act, rather than a state of a noun performing an act, as against the state of zaydun in jāʾa zaydun rākiban ‘Zayd came riding’. The sense of the example marartu bi-rajulin etc. is to be understood according to its taqdīr construction marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun muqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi ġadan, as follows: ‘I passed by a man who had a hawk with him, intending to hunt with 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 construction of the above example does not contain a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba; and (ii) It explains the meaning of the literal construction in which the ḥāl muqaddara is implied. Moreover, the literal construction is preserved from expressing an absurd meaning. The sources allow the inference that in the grammarians’ view the relevant construction, as far as grammatical and semantic analysis is concerned, is the taqdīr construction rather than the literal one (lafẓ), since it is the former construction which exists in the speaker’s mind. This notion led the grammarians to hold that a taqdīr construction that accorded with their theories would enable the occurrence of a literal construction that was incompatible with those theories.9 Hence, the taqdīr construction containing a ḥāl muqaddara, which possesses the quality of being mustaṣḥaba, enables Ibn al-Sarrāj to accept the literal construction of the utterance marartu bi-rajulin etc., irrespective 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 the grammarians’ 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 In certain 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 occurs in the taqdīr construction, while it is represented in the literal construction by a 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 [sometimes] that part of the ḥāl occurring in the literal utterance13 expresses [a time] occurring later [than the time expressed in the verbal predicate]. [The ḥāl occurring in the literal utterance is pronounced] together with the intention of the speaker that an utterance expressing a simultaneous ḥāl occurs in the taqdīr construction, as in the Qurʾānic example fa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīna lit. ‘Enter it [i.e., paradise] when you are eternal in it’,14 although it is well known that their eternal being in paradise does not take place simultaneously with the act of their entering paradise. That which is intended by the speaker when saying fa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīna is [ fa-dḫulūhā] muqaddirīna l-ḫulūda or mustawjibīna l-ḫulūda ‘Enter it [i.e., paradise] intending eternal stay in it, or deserving eternal stay in it’15 (al-ḥālu ʿalā kulli ḥālin mustaṣḥabatun wa-qad yakūnu l-malfūẓu bihi mina l-ḥāli mutaʾaḫḫiran bi-taqdīri šāyʾin mustaṣḥabin ka-qawlihi taʿālā fa-dḫulūhā ḫālidīna wa-qad ʿulima ʾanna l-ḫulūda laysa fī ḥāli duḫūlihim wa-taqdīruhu muqaddirīna l-ḫulūda ʾaw mustawjibīna 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 he answers ‘What shall I do in it?’, it is possible to say [to him] ‘Enter it to eat and to drink in it!’. The intention of the speaker is: ‘Enter it intending and deserving it! [i.e., ‘Enter the house intending and deserving to eat and drink in it!’]’ ( fa-law qīla li-l ʾinsāni udḫul-i l-dāra fa-qāla fa-mā

10 11 12 13 14 15

See Sīrāfī, Šarḥ vi, 178.15–179.13; Sīrāfī according to Jahn i/2, 271, n. 12. See Sīrāfī, Šarḥ vi, 178.15–179.13. I.e., the ḥāl always has the quality of expressing a state that occurs simultaneously with the act expressed in the verbal predicate. The part of the ḥāl occurring in the literal construction of this example is ṣāʾidan. I.e., ‘Enter paradise to be eternally in it’. 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 maʿnā muqaddiran ḏālika wa-mustawjiban). sīrafī, Šarḥ vi, 179.12f.

Al-Fāriqī (d. 391/1001), the commentator of some of the first chapters of alMubarrad’s Kitāb al-muqtaḍab, holds a view similar to that of al-Sīrāfī concerning al-ḥāl al-muqaddara. In his discussion of the example marartu bi-rajulin etc. 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 the literal utterance]. Among these examples is that [contained in the text of] the problem discussed in the Kitāb, marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan (wa-tajīʾu l-ḥāl muqaddaratan wa-min ḏālika masʾalat al-Kitāb marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan). ibn al-ḫaššāb, Murtajil 164.9f.

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The Later Grammarians’ View of ḥāl muqaddara

In the grammatical literature, the term ḥāl muqaddara occurs for the first time in the works of ʾAbū Ḥayyān, in the 8th/14th century. The explanation of 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 of the others. The later grammarians of the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries illustrate their concept of ḥāl muqaddara by the old grammarians’ example marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan.17 It is inferred from their works that their discussions differ from those of the early grammarians in the following respects: (i)

The early grammarians do not use the term ḥāl muqaddara. They say rather that the ḥāl in given utterances is muqaddara. By contrast, ʾAbū Ḥayyān uses the combinations ḥāl muqaddara18 and al-ḥāl al-muqaddara

16 17

See Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab iv, 122.4–7. See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.11–13; Ibn Hišām, Muġnī 605.15–606.2; Suyūṭī, Hamʿ iv, 41.6– 10; Suyūṭī, ʾAšbāh ii, 196.11f. See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.12.

18

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as grammatical terms.19 Other later grammarians, such as Ibn Hišām and al-Suyūṭī, briefly state that the ḥāl may denote three categories of time, of which that denoting the future is called muqaddara.20 (ii) The early grammarians hold that the ḥāl conceived of by them as muqaddara does not occur in the literal construction of the sentence, and that it occurs only in the taqdīr construction. The later grammarians call ḥāl muqaddara the accusative ṣāʾidan, which occurs in the literal construction.21 (iii) The early grammarians hold that the literal construction of sentences containing an implicit ḥāl muqaddara does not include a ḥāl mustaṣḥaba. By contrast, the later grammarians, except ʾAbū Ḥayyān, do not refer to this aspect.22 Although apparently the later grammarians’ concept of ḥāl muqaddara differs from that of the early grammarians, it is understood from ʾAbū Ḥayyān and Ibn Hišām that they actually accept the early grammarians’ view of this type of ḥāl. In referring to the example marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, ʾAbū Ḥayyān says: Among [the examples of ḥāl muqaddara is the example] marartu birajulin 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 the hawk was with him, you [sic!] were not hunting with it, but the taqdīr is muqaddiran-i l-ʾāna ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘intending [to hunt] now, [but actually] hunting with it tomorrow’ (wa-minhu marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, fa-ṣāʾidan ḥālun muqaddaratun li-ʾannaka waqta l-murūri ʾaw waqta kaynūnati l-ṣaqri maʿahu lam takun [sic.!] ṣāʾidan 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 ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan ‘Today, Zayd [is holding] in his hand a hawk, [intending to] hunt with it tomor19 20 21

22

See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.11. 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). 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, corresponds to the early grammarians’ term ḥāl mustaṣḥaba. The term al-ḥāl al-mustaṣḥaba occurs also in ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.9. For ʾAbū Ḥayyān see his discussion of the concept of al-iqtirān below, p. 174.

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row’, ʾAbū Ḥayyān (Manhaj ii, 374.3f.) says that in this sentence, the hāl, which is ṣāʾidan, denotes the future, although the ʿāmil of the ḥāl, which is fī yadihi denotes the present. The difference between the time denoted by these two parts of the sentence contradicts the concept of al-iqtirān,23 i.e, the concept that the ḥāl and its verbal ʿāmil must always denote the same time.24 The notion which ʾAbū Ḥayyan calls here al-iqtirān is the same notion that elsewhere is expressed by the early grammarians when they say that the ḥāl has the quality of being mustaṣḥaba. The significance of this term is that the state expressed in the ḥāl and the act expressed in the verbal predicate occurring in the sentence containing it, take place simultaneously (see above 2.1). Although here the iqtirān of the time expressed in the ḥāl and in the ʿāmil of the ḥāl does not occur in the literal construction (lafẓ), it occurs according to 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’s wording, irrespective of the fact that ṣāʾidan here denotes the future, the word ṣāʾidan 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 muqaddirani l-ṣayda bihi ġadan.25 Hence, the ḥāl muqaddiran and the predicate fī yadihi denote 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 to the early grammarians, labeled ṣāʾidan as ḥāl muqaddara.26 A text of Ibn Hišām confirms 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 ṣāʾidan in the above examples cannot be a ḥāl muqaddara, because it explicitly occurs in the literal form of the sentence (lafẓ). Hence, it is inferred that they called sāʾidan a ḥāl muqaddara, because they believed that in the speaker’s mind, the taqdīr construction of ṣāʾidan, which is muqaddiran-i l-ṣayda bihi, contains the implicit form muqaddiran, which can be conceived of as a ḥāl muqaddara.

23 24

25 26 27

Literally, iqtirān is the maṣdar of iqtarana bi- ‘to be joined, united to’ (see Hava 602a, s.v. iqtarana bi-). See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ ii, 374.1–5. It should be noted that the predicate denoting the present 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). See ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ ii, 374.1–5. The text of ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 206.10f. also refers to this aspect. See Ibn Hišām, Muġnī 605.15–606.1.

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It seems safe to assume that for the sake of convenience, the later grammarians preferred to ignore the exact concept of the early grammarians of this type of ḥāl. Hence, they applied the principle which Ibn Yaʿīš called taqrīb wa-taysīr ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ28 ‘making [the understanding of a certain grammatical concept] easier and clearer to the beginner’, by using an inaccurate technical term, rather than a more accurate one, originating in a complex concept.29 Hence, the later grammarians say that in the example marartu bi-rajulin maʿahu ṣaqrun ṣāʾidan bihi ġadan, the word sāʾidan is a ḥāl muqaddara, instead of giving the explanation that here ṣāʾidan is an expression whose taqdīr construction contains a ḥāl muqaddara, which is the implicit accusative muqaddiran. In referring to ṣāʾidan as a ḥāl muqaddara they deliberately denoted it by an inaccurate term, just as the early grammarians called ḫabar kāna the accusative contained in sentences beginning with kāna al-nāqiṣa, such as qāʾiman in kāna zaydun qāʾiman ‘Zayd was standing’. It is evident that they knew that the part of the sentence they called ḫabar kāna was the ḫabar of ism kāna, and not the ḫabar of kāna.30 Similarly, the later grammarians of the 8th/14th century knew that ṣāʾidan is not a ḥāl muqaddara, but a constituent of the sentence whose taqdīr construction contains the implicit accusative muqaddiran, which has the grammatical qualities of a ḥāl muqaddara

Bibliographical References a

Primary Sources

ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj = ʾAbū Ḥayyān Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Manhaj al-sālik fī l-kalām ʿalā ʾAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Ed. by Sidney Glazer. New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1947. ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Ḥayyān Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Ġarnāṭī al-Naḥwī, Šarḥ al-tashīl li-bn Mālik. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sayyid and Muḥammad Badawī alMaḫtūn. 2 vols.

28

29 30

Jahn’s reading taqrīb wa-taysīr ʿalā l-mubtadaʾ (see Ibn Yaʿīš, 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). For this principle see Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ, ed. Jahn ii, 999.4–6; For al-Zajjājī’s expression altaqrīb ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ see Levin (1979:203f., n. 108). 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-Miṣbāḥ al-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 Ibn Mālik wamaʿahu Kitāb minḥat al-Jalīl. Ed. by Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. 14th edition. Cairo, 1384 a.h. Ibn ʾAnbārī, ʾInṣāf = Kamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad alʾAnbārī, Kitāb al-ʾinṣāf fī masāʾil al-ḫilāf bayna l-naḥwiyyīna l-Baṣriyyīn wa-l-Kūfiyyīn. Ed. by Gotthold Weil. 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 ʿAlī Ḥamd 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 alḪaššāb, 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 almuqtaḍab. 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 Hartwig Derenbourg, 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– 1317 a.h. Sīrāfī, Šarḥ = ʾAbū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Sīrāfī, Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. by Ramaḍān 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, alʾAšbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir fī l-naḥw. Vol. i. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh Nabhān. Vol. ii. Ed. by Ġāzī Muḫtār Ṣulayḥāt. Damascus, n.d. Suyūṭī, Hamʿ = Jalāl al-Dīn ʾAbū l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʾAbī Bakr al-Suyūṭī, Hamʿ alhawāmiʿ 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 fī l-nahw. Ed. by ʿAlī Tawfīq al-Ḥamad. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla and Irbid: Dār alʾAmal, 1404/1984.

b

Secondary Sources

Levin, Aryeh. 1979. “Sībawayhi’s view on the syntactical structure of kāna waʾaxawātuhā”. 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 in Arabic and Islam 21.142–166. Levin, Aryeh. 2007. “Sībawayhi’s view of the ẓarf as an ʿāmil”. Approaches to Arabic linguistics, presented to Kees Versteegh on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Everhard 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.

Demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb Arik Sadan

1

Introduction

Many phonetic, morphological and syntactic features in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb have attracted scholarly attention in the last two centuries. One issue that has not been investigated thoroughly is Sībawayhi’s use of and views on the role of demonstratives in the Arabic language he describes. Troupeau’s Lexique-Index cannot be of assistance in this matter,1 but electronic editions of Sībawayhi’s Kitāb now enable us to trace and analyze every instance of a demonstrative in this important treatise. Although an electronic edition can be less reliable than a printed one, the former allows a quick search to be made of the occurrences of the relevant contexts and these can then be more easily located in the printed edition for a thorough inspection.2 Sībawayhi’s use of demonstratives in his Kitāb can be divided into three groups: (i) the demonstrative as a morphological or syntactic subject that is discussed and explained; (ii) demonstratives in example sentences; and (iii) demonstratives used in other contexts, simply as words that are parts of sentences, like other nouns, verbs, etc. In this paper, I shall examine the first two groups. In the second group I shall focus on example sentences that highlight the roles and functions of demonstratives in the language, according to Sībawayhi.

1 Troupeau does not provide the locations of words that appear more than 60 times in the Kitāb, 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 the websites http://www.islamhouse.com/d/files/ar/ih_books/single/ar_sebawayh_book.zip and http://shamela.ws/browse.php/book-23018. The text is also searchable in Word files which can 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).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_010

179

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb table 1

Demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing that is near the speaker

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

hāḏā (‫ )ه ٰذ َا‬masc. sg.

3631

hāḏāni (‫ن‬ ِ ‫ )ه ٰذ َا‬masc. du. nominative

27

hāḏayni (‫ )ه ٰذ َي ِْن‬masc. du. oblique

26

hāḏihi (ِ ‫ )ه ٰذِه‬fem. sg.

9913

hātāni (‫ن‬ ِ َ‫ )هاَ تا‬fem. du. nominative

5

hātayni (ِ‫ )هاَ ت َي ْن‬fem. du. oblique hāʾulāʾi (ِ ‫ )ه ٰؤلُ َاء‬pl.

2

2

85

Occurrences of Demonstratives in the Kitāb

Demonstratives occur very frequently in the Kitāb. My first step was to search for all occurrences in the electronic edition, then examine each in its context and finally extract the most interesting cases that can be assigned to groups (i) and (ii) described in the Introduction above. Tables 1 above and 2 below present the common demonstratives next to the number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. For the sake of completeness I also searched for the less common morphological patterns of demonstratives,4 presented in Tables 3 and 4 (only demonstratives found in the Kitāb are indicated; for example, the rare fem. sg. demonstrative tī (‫)ت ِي‬, which does not occur at all in the book, does not appear in the tables). Lastly, I looked for the diminutive forms of the demonstratives. Tables 5 and 6 below present these demonstratives next to the number of occurrences (here, too, only demonstratives found in the Kitāb are indicated).

3 Including two occurrences of the secondary form ‫ه ٰذِي‬. 4 For all sets of demonstratives, see Wright (1997:i, 264–269, §§ 338–345).

180 table 2

sadan Demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing that is distant from the speaker ḏālika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ٰذل‬masc. sg.

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb 3424

ḏānika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ذ َان‬masc. du. nominative

3

ḏaynika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ذ َي ْن‬masc. du. oblique

1

tilka (‫ك‬ َ ْ ‫ )ت ِل‬fem. sg.

89

tānika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )تاَ ن‬fem. du. nominative

2

taynika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ت َي ْن‬fem. du. oblique

0

ʾulāʾika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ُأول ٰئ‬pl.

table 3

10

Less common demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing that is near the speaker

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏā (‫ )ذ َا‬masc. sg.

288 (barring occurrences meaning ‘owner’, masc. sg. acc.)

ḏī (‫ )ذِي‬fem. sg.

3

ḏih/ḏihi (ِ ‫ذِه‬/ْ‫ )ذِه‬fem. sg.

11

ḏihī (‫ )ذِهِي‬fem. sg.

1

tā ( َ‫ )تا‬fem. sg.

3

ḏāni (‫ن‬ ِ ‫ )ذ َا‬masc. du. nominative

2

ḏayni (‫ )ذ َي ِْن‬masc. du. oblique

2

tāni (‫ن‬ ِ َ‫ )تا‬fem. du. nominative

1

ʾulāʾi (ِ ‫ )ُأل َاء‬pl.

4

ʾulāʾi (ِ ‫ )ُأول َاء‬pl.

8

181

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb table 4

Less common demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing that is distant from the speaker ḏāka (َ ‫ )ذ َاك‬masc. sg.

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb 287

hāḏāka (َ ‫ )ه ٰذ َاك‬masc. sg.

1

ḏākum (‫ )ذ َاك ُْم‬masc. sg.

2

tīka (‫ك‬ َ ِ‫ )تي‬fem. sg.

1

table 5

Diminutive demonstratives for near deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing that is near the speaker

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

hāḏayyā (‫ )ه ٰذ َ َي ّا‬masc. sg.

1

tayyā (‫ )ت َي ّا‬fem. sg.

1

ḏayyāni (‫ن‬ ِ ‫ )ذ َ َي ّا‬masc. du. nominative

1

ʾulayyā (‫ )ُأل َي ّا‬pl.

1

table 6

Diminutive demonstratives for far deixis in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

Demonstratives indicating a person or thing which is distant from the speaker

Number of occurrences in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb

ḏayyāka (َ ‫ )ذ َ َي ّاك‬masc. sg.

2

ḏayyālika (‫ك‬ َ ِ ‫ )ذ َ َي ّال‬masc. sg.

1

182 3

sadan

The Morphology and Syntax of Demonstratives Discussed and Explained

In Sībawayhi’s Kitāb there is no separate chapter on demonstratives. However, there are several chapters in which Sībawayhi treats this category and reveals his views on demonstratives and their role in language. In what follows I quote and translate the references to the demonstratives, sorting them into groups according to context: a.

The demonstratives belong to the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama ‘dubious, or vague, nouns’, that is, nouns that are not clear in the sense that they can have more than one denotation. In three chapters they are said to pertain to this group, which contains not only the demonstratives, but also the third person independent pronouns.5 Here are the main relevant quotes 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 into five categories: “nouns which are strictly proper names” (al-ʾasmāʾ allatī hiya ʾaʿlāmun ḫāṣṣatan); “the first element of a construct state in which the second element is definite, when you do not intend the meaning of the tanwīn” (al-muḍāf ʾilā l-maʿrifa ʾiḏā lam turid maʿnā l-tanwīn); “[the nouns with] the definite article” (al-ʾalif wal-lām); “the dubious, or vague, nouns” (al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama); and “the pronouns” (al-ʾiḍmār). With respect to the category of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama Sībawayhi says: “As for the [category of] al-ʾasmāʾ almubhama, [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-mentioned nouns] 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 independent pronouns from the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama and once includes them in this group. See also Levin (1979:194, n. 58). This ambiguity is also evident in other sources: Lane mentions the demonstratives as pertaining to al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama, but quotes the lexicographer al-ʾAzharī, according to whom “these are the particles which have no derivatives, and of which the roots are not known, as ‫ال َ ّذ ِي‬, ‫م َا‬, ‫ن‬ ْ َ ‫م‬, ‫ ع َْن‬and the like” (see Lane 1863–1893:i, 269b–c). See also Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān i, 378b. Wehr (1994:97b) translates ‫ الَ ٱِ س ْم ٱل ْمبُ ْه َم‬as ‘the demonstrative pronoun’.

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb

b.

183

thing to the exclusion of the rest of its group” (wa-ʾammā l-ʾasmāʾu l-mubhamatu fa-naḥwu hāḏā wa-hāḏihi wa-hāḏāni wa-hātāni wahāʾulāʾi wa-ḏāka wa-tilka wa-ḏānika wa-tānika wa-ʾulāʾika wa-mā ʾašbaha ḏālika wa-ʾinnamā ṣārat maʿrifatan li-ʾannahā ṣārat ʾasmāʾa ʾišāratin ʾilā l-šayʾi dūna sāʾiri ʾummatihi).6 ii. In chapter 117 Sībawayhi deals with sentences in which a member of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama forms the subject. In the lengthy title of this chapter Sībawayhi says: “As for the [category of] al-ʾasmāʾ almubhama, [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 these nouns” (wa-l-ʾasmāʾu l-mubhamatu hāḏā wa-hāḏāni wa-hāḏihi wahātāni wa-hāʾulāʾi wa-ḏāka wa-ḏānika wa-tilka wa-tānika wa-tīka waʾulāʾika wa-huwa wa-hiya wa-humā wa-hum wa-hunna wa-mā ʾašbaha hāḏihi l-ʾasmāʾa).7 It should be noted that among the category of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama we find not only the demonstratives but also the third person independent pronouns. iii. In chapter 147 Sībawayhi deals with various structures of the vocative, among them one in which the vocative particle is followed by a member of what Sībawayhi calls al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama and a noun 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 waʾulāʾika wa-mā ʾašbahahā).8 The demonstratives serve in order to indicate, or point to, nearby or far objects or persons. In several places Sībawayhi speaks of the function and meaning of demonstratives. Here are the relevant quotes from the Kitāb: i. In chapter 117, discussed in §a.ii above, Sībawayhi discusses the similarity and difference between hāḏā and ḏāka (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).

184

sadan

ii.

iii.

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

both are demonstratives that draw the attention to a thing, but the former is used for nearby things, whereas the latter is intended for distant things: “Ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ is like hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, but when 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 like hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’ [but in the plur. form], ʾulāʾika ‘those’ is like ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ [but in the plur. form] and tilka ‘that [fem.]’ is like ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ [but in the fem. sing. form]” (wa-ḏāka bimanzilati hāḏā ʾillā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ḏāka fa-ʾanta tunabbihuhu lišayʾin mutarāḫin wa-hāʾulāʾi bi-manzilati hāḏā wa-ʾulāʾika bi-manzilati ḏāka wa-tilka bi-manzilati ḏāka).10 Sībawayhi does not explicitly define the meaning of each demonstrative. A definition of two of them, ḏā and ḏī, can nevertheless be inferred from chapter 508 of the Kitāb, in which various nouns and particles are briefly defined: “Among the nouns are [the demonstratives] ḏā ‘this [masc.]’ and ḏī ‘this [fem.]’, whose meaning is that you are in their presence [i.e. in the presence of the nouns to which they refer]. They belong to the group of al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama [see §a above] and were clarified elsewhere” ( fa-mina l-ʾasmāʾi ḏā wa-ḏī wa-maʿnāhumā ʾannaka bi-ḥaḍratihimā wa-humā smāni mubhamāni wa-qad buyyinā fī ġayri hāḏā l-mawḍiʿi).11 In the same chapter discussed above Sībawayhi relates to the ending -ka of some demonstratives. After dealing with the possessive suffixes -ka and the like,12 he clarifies that as suffixes of demonstratives 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 other than a noun [i.e. ʿalāma ‘marker’], but appear to address [a person], for example [the demonstratives] ḏālika/ḏāka15 ‘that [masc.]’ [used when addressing a masc. sg.], for the -k [suffix] in this [demonstrative] is like [the suffix] -at (ʿalāmat al-taʾnīṯ ‘the feminine marker’) in

See Lane (1863–1893:iii, 1061a; 1061c). See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 218.16–18. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 236.4f. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 331.10f. On the concept of ʿalāma see Levin (1985:119, §2; 1989:43 f., § 2.2). 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). Ḏāka according to ms. a in the Derenbourg edition; for the reference see the following note.

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb

c.

d.

e.

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

185

the example faʿalat fulānatu ‘so-and-so [fem. sg.] did’, and the like” (wa-qad takūnu l-kāfu ġayra smin wa-lākinnahā tajīʾu li-l-muḫāṭabati wa-ḏālika naḥwu kāfi ḏālika fa-l-kāfu fī hāḏā bi-manzilati l-tāʾi fī qawlika faʿalat fulānatu wa-naḥwi ḏālika).16 The demonstratives also have diminutive forms, to which Sībawayhi devotes chapter 393, Bāb taḥqīr al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama.17 i. In the beginning of the chapter he mentions three diminutive forms: “As in the examples hāḏayyā ‘this little one [masc.]’ as [the diminutive form of] hāḏā ‘this [masc.]’, ḏayyāka ‘that little one [masc.]’ as [the diminutive form of] ḏāka ‘that [masc.]’ and ʾulayyā ‘these little ones’ as [the diminutive form of] ʾulā ‘these’ ” (wa-ḏālika qawluka fī hāḏā hāḏayyā wa-ḏāka ḏayyāka wa-fī ʾulā ʾulayyā).18 ii. Later in the chapter Sībawayhi mentions other diminutive forms of the demonstratives, refers to their morphology and compares them to diminutive forms of relative pronouns, for example tayyā ‘this little one [fem.]’, the diminutive of tā ‘this [fem.]’, ḏayyālika ‘that little one [masc.]’ and ʾulayyāʾ ‘these little ones’.19 The demonstratives have dual forms, to which Sībawayhi devotes the short chapter 355, Bāb taṯniyat al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama allatī ʾawāḫiruhā muʿtalla.20 i. 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 you make tā ‘this [fem.]’ dual you say tāni ‘these two [fem.]’” ( fa-ʾiḏā ṯannayta ḏā qulta ḏāni wa-ʾin ṯannayta tā qulta tāni).21 Demonstratives can be used as names of persons. Sībawayhi treats this issue extensively in chapter 310, Bāb taġyīr al-ʾasmāʾ al-mubhama ʾiḏā ṣārat ʿalāmāt ḫāṣṣa,22 and briefly in chapter 317, Bāb al-ḥikāya allatī lā taġayyaru fīhā l-ʾasmāʾ ʿan ḥālihā fī l-kalām.23

See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 331.12–14. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 141.16–142.20. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 141.18f. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 142.2–6; 142.6–8; and 142.12, respectively. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 102.14–19. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 102.15. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.16–40.21. For the whole chapter see Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 59.18–64.8.

186

sadan

i.

ii.

4

Sībawayhi starts chapter 310 with an enumeration of five demonstratives: “These are ḏā ‘this [masc.]’, ḏī ‘this [fem.]’, tā ‘this [fem.]’, ʾulā ‘these’ and ʾulāʾi ‘these’, whose taqdīr24 is ʾulāʿi”25 (wa-ḏālika ḏā wa-ḏī wa-tā wa-ʾulā wa-ʾulāʾi wa-taqdīruhā ʾulāʿi).26 In chapter 317 Sībawayhi refers to nouns which do not change when used as proper nouns, two of which are hāḏā and hāʾulāʾi: “He said: if you call a man by the name hāḏā or hāʾulāʾi, you leave them as they are [without any change]” (qāla wa-law sammayta rajulan hāḏā ʾaw hāʾulāʾi taraktahu ʿalā ḥālihi).27

Demonstratives in Example Sentences Highlighting Their Roles and Functions

Demonstratives are used in numerous example sentences in the Kitāb, as modifiers of nouns or standing on their own. A scrutiny of all the example sentences in the book shows that in addition to the regular, known meanings of demonstratives such as ‘this’, ‘that’ and the like, Sībawayhi also tends to use them with a meaning similar to that of certain verbs, namely tanabbah or unẓur in the imperative, meaning ‘here is/are; there is/are; behold!’ (for the meanings of tanabbah and unẓur, see §a.ii below). These sentences make it clear that for Sībawayhi demonstratives are good examples for non-verbal elements with the syntactic and semantic characteristics of verbs, as in the cases mentioned in 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 theoretical form that Sībawayhi created, where the historical hamza is replaced by ʿayn, “in order to show the place occupied by the hamza in the historical stage of certain words in certain dialects”. According to both the Derenbourg and the Būlāq editions, the form is wa-ʾulāʿi with a short 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 form should be parallel to the original demonstrative ʾulāʾi, which is with a short u, the version in the Derenbourg and the Būlāq editions would seem to be the correct one. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 38.16f. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb ii, 62.23.

25

26 27

demonstratives in sībawayhi’s kitāb

i.

ii.

28 29 30

31 32

187

In chapter 88, Bāb mā yantaṣibu min al-maṣādir tawkīdan li-mā qablahu, Sībawayhi deals with the circumstantial phrase for emphasis, which later grammarians call al-ḥāl al-muʾakkida.28 The chapter is introduced by the following example sentences: “As in the examples hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi ḥaqqan ‘here is ʿAbdallāh, truly!’ and hāḏā zayduni l-ḥaqqa lā l-bāṭila ‘here is Zayd, truly, not falsely!’ ” (waḏālika qawluka hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi ḥaqqan wa-hāḏā zayduni l-ḥaqqa lā l-bāṭila).29 In chapter 117, discussed in §3.a.ii above, Sībawayhi brings several examples in which the demonstratives function as the subject of the sentence and mean ‘here is/are; there is/are; behold!’. Here are the examples that introduce the chapter: hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan ‘here is ʿAbdallāh going!’; hāʾulāʾi qawmuka munṭaliqīna ‘here are your people going!’; ḏāka ʿabdu llāhi ḏāhiban ‘there is ʿAbdallāh walking!’; hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi maʿrūfan ‘here is ʿAbdallāh, as is well known!’.30 In order to explain the circumstantial phrase in these examples, Sībawayhi refers to the meaning of the first example, hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan and reveals the role of the demonstrative in this and similar sentences: “The meaning is that you want to draw his attention to him [i.e. to ʿAbdallāh] walking, not to introduce ʿAbdallāh to him because you think that he does not know him. [When you say hāḏā ʿabdu llāhi munṭaliqan, it is]31 as if you were saying unẓur ʾilayhi munṭaliqan ‘look at him going!’” (wa-l-maʿnā ʾannaka turīdu ʾan tunabbihahu lahu munṭaliqan lā turīdu ʾan tuʿarrifahu ʿabda llāhi li-ʾannaka ẓananta ʾannahu yajhaluhu fa-ka-ʾannaka qulta unẓur ʾilayhi munṭaliqan).32

On this term see Wright (1997:ii, 115, last line-116, 21, § 44, Rem. d.). See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 159.9f. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 217.9f. 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, 237.3f. (towards the end of chapter 129): hāḏā zaydun ḏāhiban ‘here is Zayd walking!’. According to Levin (1997:151f., §4.1(2)), the technical phrase ka-ʾannaka qulta is in fact an elliptical form of the expression ʾiḏā qulta … fa-ka-ʾannaka qulta. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 217.13f. 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 meaning intabih ‘behold!’. See further Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ i, 167.4–12, where the author explains that the demonstrative hāḏā in hāḏā zaydun wāqifan ‘here is Zayd standing!’ means ʾašartu ʾilayhi ‘I pointed at him’ or nabbahtu ʿalayhi ‘I drew attention to him’.

188 b.

5

sadan

Some examples in which the subject is a demonstrative and the predicate is an active participle can reflect the above-mentioned meaning of demonstratives. i. Chapter 37, whose title begins with the words Hāḏā bāb min ism alfāʿil, is devoted to an active participle that syntactically functions like an imperfect verb.33 The first example in this lengthy chapter is hāḏā ḍāribun zaydan ġadan ‘here is one that will hit Zayd tomorrow!’.34 The chapter contains similar examples, which I will not quote here.35 ii. In various other chapters there are additional examples in which the demonstrative has this meaning, for instance: hāḏā l-rajulu munṭaliqan ‘here is the man going!’.36

Conclusion

Although Sībawayhi does not devote a separate chapter to the morphology, syntax and functions of demonstratives, a scrutiny of their occurrences in his Kitāb reveals their functions and semantic characteristics. For Sībawayhi demonstratives 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 or persons, 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 names of persons. Among the demonstratives in Sībawayhi’s example sentences there are 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 34 35 36

For the whole chapter see Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 70.10–74.19. See Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 70.11f. One could also translate this sentence as ‘this is one that will hit Zayd tomorrow’. See, for example, Sībawayhi, Kitāb i, 73.10–12; 73.12–16; 74.6–10; 74.10 f.; 74.11 f. 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)).

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Bibliographical References a

Primary Sources

Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ = ʾAbū l-Ḥasan Ṭāhir ibn ʾAḥmad al-Naḥwī al-Miṣrī Ibn Bābašāḏ, Šarḥ al-muqaddima al-muḥsiba. Ed. by Ḥālid ʿAbd al-Karīm. 2 vols. Kuwait: al-Maṭbaʿa lʿAṣriyya, 1977. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān = ʾAbū l-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mukarram ibn ʿAlī alʾAnṣārī al-ʾIfrīqī al-Miṣrī Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab. Ed. by ʿAbdallāh ʿAlī al-Kabīr et al. 9 vols. [Cairo]: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1981–1986. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. by Hartwig Derenbourg, Le livre de Sībawaihi, Traité de grammaire arabe. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881–1889/2 vols. Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Būlāq, 1316–1317/1898–1900/Ed. ʿAbd al-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 Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ed. by ʾAḥmad Ḥasan Mahdalī and ʿAlī Sayyid ʿAlī. 5 vols. Beirut: al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2008. Zajjāj, Maʿānī = ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIbrāhīm ibn al-Sarī al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān. Ed. by ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʿAbduh Šalabī. 5 vols. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1408/1988.

b

Secondary Sources

Lane, 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. Levin 1998, art. iii.] Levin, Aryeh. 1989. “What is meant by ʾakalūnī l-barāġīṯu?”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 12.40–85. [Repr. Levin 1998, art. viii.] Levin, Aryeh. 1997. “The theory of al-taqdīr and its terminology”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 21.142–166. Levin, Aryeh. 1998. Arabic linguistic thought and dialectology. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University. 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. A grammar of the Arabic language. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How Have 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 themselves come into effect as acts. Performative utterances are furthermore divided into two kinds: ‘explicit’ performatives and ‘primary’ performatives, in which the 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. The locutionary act is the act of uttering a certain language expression. The illocutionary act is an act in another dimension fulfilled based on the locutionary act in saying something. The perlocutionary act is the act of producing utterance effects through the illocutionary act by saying something. It is the illocutionary act that usually becomes the subject of research on speech acts, so illocutionary 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’s theory, but several notions come close to the framework introduced by Austin. In this connection, the classification of speech into ḫabar and ʾinšāʾ should be mentioned. Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1360) says that “it [kalām ‘speech’] is ḫabar, ṭalab, and ʾinšāʾ” (Šuḏūr 31). He explains that ḫabar encompasses sentences such as affirmative sentences and negative sentences, that is, sentences which can be determined to be true or false. Imperative, prohibitive, and interrogative sentences, whose meaning is not truth-conditional and is derived from the utterance with a delay, are ṭalab. In contrast, ʾinšāʾ encompasses sentences like ʾanta 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 on taḥḏīr at the 57th Meeting of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (Nippon Oriento Gakkai) and at the fal iii meeting in Paris. However, any and all possible mistakes are mine.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_011

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed?

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this marriage’ to a person who proposed to you, whose meaning and utterance co-exist (Šuḏūr 32). Ibn Hišām says that some grammarians agree with a tripartite division of speech in this way, but in fact speech is divided into only two, that is, ḫabar and ʾinšāʾ, as the content of qum ‘stand up!’ happens at the time of its utterance and is not affected by any delay. In this type of speech, which is called ʾinšāʾ, the utterance means that the meaning has been completed (Šuḏūr 32). Ḫabar may be regarded as a constative utterance, and ʾinšāʾ as a performative utterance in terms of Austin’s (1962) definition. Larcher (2007:358) points out that ʾinšāʾ consists of two subdivisions, ṭalabī (jussive utterance) and ʾīqāʿī (performative utterance) according to al-Kafawī’s al-Kulliyyāt. He also offers as a hypothesis that ʾinšāʾ had its roots in fiqh, then it broadened its scope toward the jussive utterances, which include orders (ʾamr) and prohibitions (nahy). Eventually, Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) expanded the category of ʾinšāʾ from the legal to the linguistic sciences (2007:359). The present paper aims to illustrate the changing descriptions of speech acts in Arabic grammar, taking taḥḏīr ‘warning’ as an example. Actually, taḥḏīr is not a term used frequently in Arabic grammar. Sībawayhi, for example, used this term only twice in his Kitāb (i, 253 and 273).1 Nonetheless, the term taḥḏīr has come 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 to focus their attention on editing instructional textbooks in the 5th/11th century; therefore, there must have been some changes in the descriptions of Arabic grammar at that time. This era must be investigated to see how the description of taḥḏīr changed in the Arabic grammatical tradition. The notion of taḥḏīr fits into Austin’s primary performatives.2 Concerning accusatives of exclamation, Reckendorf (1921:108) says that an exclamation about 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 that taḥḏīr is accusative, quoting a Qurʾānic verse fa-qāla la-hum rasūlu llāhi nāqata llāhi ‘and the messenger of Allah said to them “Allah’s she-camel”’ (q. 91/13), where nāqata ‘she-camel’ with an accusative ending has the meaning of taḥḏīr. However, he also adds examples of taḥḏīr with 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, 268 f.). 2 Firanescu (2009) deals with the relationship between modern speech act theory and traditional Arabic grammar.

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jumla ḫabariyya. An exclamative accusative infinitive is called maṣḍar manṣūb bi-fiʿl muḍmar (an accusative verbal noun with a concealed verb). The contrast to the ‘concealment’ of the verb is its ‘manifestation’, and the verb in the latter case is fiʿl maḥḍ ‘pure verb’. For example, consider the imperative iḍribū ‘Hit!’ in contrast to ḍarban. Accusatives like ʾuffatan ‘pooh!’ or wayḥa-ka ‘woe on you!’ are called mā lā fiʿla la-hu ʾaṣlan ‘what does not have a verb in the first place’. Reckendorf (1921:109) cites examples of interjections consisting of an accusative noun with pronominal suffix, stating that it is often difficult to decide 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 can generally 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 yourself!’ and ʾanta ʾiyyā-ka ʾiyyā-ka ‘You, take care, beware!’. Wright (1988:ii, 72–78) describes the accusatives that depend on an implied verb. These include the following cases: (i)

mafʿūl muṭlaq in phrases of command (positive and negative), wish, reproach (worded interrogatively), praise, salutation, and so on. Examples: ṣabran lā jazaʿan as in iṣbir ṣabran wa-lā tajzaʿ jazaʿan ‘Be patient and 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 from me?’ subḥāna llāh as in ʾusabbiḥu subḥāna llāh ‘I praise the absolute glory of God!’ or sabbiḥ/ sabbiḥī subḥāna llāh ‘Praise the absolute glory of God!’3 ḫayra muqdamin as in qadimta ḫayra muqdamin ‘Welcome!’ (lit. ‘You have arrived the best of arrivals’)

(ii) when the verb may be easily guessed from the manner in which the noun in the accusative is uttered and the circumstances of the speaker, the verb is 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” and sabbiḥ/sabbiḥī subḥāna llāh is “an ʾinšāʾ a command or wish”, but both of these must be interpreted as ʾinšāʾ for pragmatic reasons.

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed?

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(a) phrases expressing wish, salutation, and the like. Example: marḥaban bika as ʾatayta makānan yarḥubu bi-ka ‘You have come to a comfortable place’. (b) in this section, Wright (1988:ii, 74–76) describes taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ in detail. He says taḥḏīr means “phrases in which an individual is called upon to guard himself, or a part of his person, against someone or something” and ʾiġrāʾ means phrases “in which one or more individuals are urged to do something or attack some object” (1988:ii, 74). As for taḥḏīr, “the speaker may mention (a) either the person who is to be on his guard; or (b) the person or thing he is to guard against, repeating the word or not, at pleasure; or lastly, (c) both together, connecting them by the conjunction wa”. As for ʾiġrāʾ, “he mentions only the object to be attacked, repeating the word or not, as he pleases” (1988:ii, 75). It should be noted that Wright includes attacking something in the category of ʾiġrāʾ. Wright quotes many examples from Classical Arabic, which will be examined in the following sections. Most are examples of omitting imperative forms of verbs, though some of them are examples of other forms of the verb, such as ʾiyyā-ka, as in ʾiyyā-ka ʾuḥaḏḏiru ‘I warn you’, or several examples of ism fiʿl, such as ḥadīṯa-ka, as in hāti ḥadīṯa-ka ‘Give your story here!’. Wright gives many such examples; however, he does not make clear which examples constitute taḥḏīr and which are ʾiġrāʾ. Wright (1988:ii, 76) furthermore states that it is only the second person pronoun which is commonly used in this way, and that examples of the first and third person are rare, i.e., ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra, as in naḥḥinī ʿan al-šarri wa-naḥḥi l-šarri ‘keep me from evil!’; ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kum al-ʾarnaba, as in naḥḥi-nī ʿan mušāhadati ḥaḏfi l-ʾarnabi wa-naḥḥi ḥaḏfa-hā ʿan ḥaḍrat-ī wa-mušāhadat-ī ‘Preserve me 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 alkilāba ʿalā l-baqari ‘Let the dogs loose on the antelopes!’. (d) iḫtiṣāṣ ‘specification’ or ‘particularization’ (of the pronoun), i.e., the accusative is the noun which the pronoun represents and to which the statement refers. It can be explained by an ellipsis of ʾaʿnī ‘I mean’ or ʾaḫuṣṣu ‘I specify’. One example is naḥnu l-ʿaraba ʾasḫā man baḏala ‘we Arabs [i.e. ‘we, (I mean) the Arabs’] are the most liberal among the generous’. Contemporary grammarians, too, such as Ḥasan (1992:126–139), explain taḥḏīr in detail. Ḥasan states that taḥḏīr comprises the following three elements: i.

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muḥaḏḏir (a speaker who addresses the warning to another person); ii. muḥaḏḏar (a person to whom the warning is addressed); and iii. maḥḏūr or muḥaḏḏar min-hu (the thing for which the warning is given). He distinguishes five kinds of taḥḏīr: i. ii. iii.

iv.

v.

2

al-nāra lit. ‘the fire’ (the speaker refers only to muḥaḏḏar min-hu.) al-barda l-barda lit. ‘the coldness, the coldness’, and al-barda wa-l-maṭara lit. ‘the coldness and the rain’ (muḥaḏḏar min-hu is repeated.) 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 speaker refers to muḥaḏḏar by -ka and so on.) raʾsa-ka wa-ḥarārata l-šamsi lit. ‘your head and the sun’s heat’, and mawāʿīda-ka wa-l-ḫulfa lit. ‘your promises and the difference’ (the speaker refers to muḥaḏḏar by -ka and so on and adds muḥaḏḏar min-hu with wa-.) ʾiyyā-ka lit. ‘you [masc. sg.]’, etc. (muḥaḏḏar is shown by the accusative pronoun.)

Taḥḏīr in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition

This section will deal first with Sībawayhi, then with Ibn Yaʿīš, Ibn Mālik, and Ibn ʿAqīl, and finally with Ibn Hišām in order to trace the transition in their descriptions of taḥḏīr. 2.1 Sībawayhi’s Kitāb Sībawayhi (d. 177/793 or 179/796) explains taḥḏīr ‘warning’ in the chapter on command (ʾamr) and warning (taḥḏīr) of his Kitāb.4 He states that in order to give a warning, speakers say ʾiyyā-ka ‘you [acc.]’, which has the intended meaning ʾiyyā-ka naḥḥi ‘Take yourself away!’, ʾiyyā-ka bāʿid ‘Keep yourself far away!’, ʾiyyā-ka ttaqi ‘Keep yourself away!’, and other similar expressions. One such expression is nafsa-ka yā fulānu lit. ‘yourself [acc.], so-and-so!’, which means 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.]’, which means ʾiyyā-ka fa-ttaqiyanna wa-l-ʾasada ‘Keep yourself away, and away from the lion!’, and ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra which means ʾiyyā-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 ‘Let me keep away from that one of you who throws the rabbit!’.5 In this sentence, bāʿid or naḥḥi is omitted. Sībawayhi claims that if someone warns someone else saying ʾiyyā-ka, that person may answer ʾiyyā-ya, which means ʾiyyā-ya ʾaḥfaẓu wa-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 their speech, just as they omit ḥīna-ʾiḏin ‘at that time’ when they talk about the past and al-ʾāna ‘now’ when they talk about the present. Thus, they say ʾiyyā-ka wal-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. ‘Against you your affair with the hajj!’ imraʾan wa nafsa-hu, which means daʿi mraʾan wa-nafsa-hu lit. ‘Leave a man with himself!’6 ʾahlaka wa-l-layla, which means bādir ʾahla-ka qabla l-layli lit. ‘Attend your people before the night!’7 māzi8 raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa lit. ‘Māzi, leave your head with the sword!’. This taḥḏīr can be explained just like raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa (the example quoted 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 said on the authority of al-ʾAzharī ‘I saw the Arab shepherds yaḥḏifūna the rabbits with their sticks when they [the rabbits] ran [with small slides] in front of them [the shepherds]; then maybe the stick injured their legs and they hunted them and slaughtered them’. The Arab shepherds thought that the rabbits were ill-omened, and encountering one was regarded as an 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 wadaʿ nafsa-hu ‘Leave a man and leave himself!’. Elsewhere (Kitāb i, 297), Sībawayhi gives similar examples, such as mā 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 must be 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 the man called Māzinu was not Māzinun (with

196

sakaedani

As shown above, speakers omit verbs that are used frequently, when something else is put after them. Thus, the first object may become a substitute for uttering the verb, as in ʾiyyā-ka, in which the verb is omitted. Nafsa-ka means iḥfaẓ nafsa-ka ‘Take care of yourself!’, and raʾsa-ka means ittaqi raʾsa-ka ‘Take care of your head!’. Likewise, al-jidār means ittaqi l-jidār ‘Keep away from the wall!’. If speakers add another element after the verb, it takes the position of ʾiyyāka. In other words, ʾiyyā-ka may be a substitute for uttering the verb, just as verbal nouns may be. Thus, one can say al-ḥaḏara l-ḥaḏara, which means ilzami l-ḥaḏara ‘Have caution!’. In a similar way, al-najāʾa l-najāʾa means ʿalay-ka lnajāʾa ‘You have to rescue’ and ḍarban ḍarban, which probably means ‘You have to hit’.9 The examples above omit the verbs making the repeated verbal nouns substitutes for ifʿal ‘Do!’; therefore, it is unreasonable to add verbs such as ilzam or ʿalay-ka here. One of the examples Sībawayhi gives of the use of verbal nouns is a line from a poem by ʿAmr bn Maʿdīkarib: ʾurīdu ḥibāʾa-hu wa-yurīdu qatlī / ʿaḏīra-ka min ḫalīli-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 regards ʿaḏīr ‘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’s Mufaṣṣal and Ibn Yaʿīš’ Comments Al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1143) refers to taḥḏīr in his Mufaṣṣal (ii, 25–30), dealing with it as a kind of ʾamr ‘imperative’. He uses the same examples as Sībawayhi does: ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-ʾasada, whose meaning is explained as ittaqi nafsa-ka ʾan tataʿarraḍa li-l-ʾasadi, wa-l-ʾasada ʾan yuhlika-ka ‘Keep yourself away from encountering the lion, and keep the lion away from its killing you!’. He also gives some examples confirming this: raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa and māzi10 raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa. In a similar way, al-Zamaḫšarī discusses ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra, which he explains as naḥḥi-nī ʿan al-šarri, wa-naḥḥi l-šarra ʿannī ‘Keep me away from evil,

9

10

nunation), but he was from the Banū Māzin, or Māzinī. The speakers omitted the last yāʾ of 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, and this phrase māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa was said to him. The meaning of ḍarban ḍarban is not explained here, though it may mean ‘You have to hit’. Sībawayhi gives some examples of verbal nouns in the accusative repeated twice in another chapter (Kitāb i, 335). See above, n. 8.

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed?

197

and keep evil away from me!’. Then, he explains ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadukumu l-ʾarnaba11 as naḥḥi-nī mušāhadat-ī ḥaḏfi l-ʾarnabi wa-naḥḥi ḥaḏfa-hā ʿan ḥaḍrat-ī wa-mušāhadat-ī’ ‘Keep me away from my looking at the throwing of the rabbit, and keep its throwing from my presence and my looking!’, whose meaning is a prohibition of throwing the rabbit (wa-l-maʿnā l-nahyu ʿan ḥaḏfi l-ʾarnabi). Al-Zamaḫšarī also gives the same examples without ʾiyyā- as Sībawayhi does: šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajja, imraʾan wa nafsa-hu, and ʾahla-ka wa-l-layla. In addition, he gives another example. Remember that Sībawayhi quotes a verse containing the expression ʿaḏīra-ka ‘your justification’. Al-Zamaḫšarī interprets this as ʾaḥḍir ʿuḏra-ka ʾaw ʿāḏira-ka ‘Bring your justification, i.e. your ʿāḏir’. According to 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 verbal noun is repeated twice. On his part, al-Zamaḫšarī (Mufaṣṣal ii, 29) cites expressions in which a noun is repeated twice: al-ʾasada l-ʾasada al-jidāra l-jidāra, i.e. al-jidāra l-mutadāʿiya al-ṣabiyya l-ṣabiyya, i.e. ʾibṭāʾa l-ṣabiyyi ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka, i.e. ilzam-hu al-ṭarīqa l-ṭarīqa, i.e. ḫalli-hi

lit. ‘the lion, the lion’ ‘the wall on the verge of collapse’ ‘letting the young man down slowly’ ‘Stick to him [your brother]!’ ‘Vacate it [the way]!’

Ibn Yaʿīš (d. 643/1246) comments that it is not allowed to put twice-repeated nouns after a verb, as in *ittaqi l-ʾasada l-ʾasada lit. ‘Keep away from the lion, the lion!’. He recommends avoiding such expressions and using instead sentences such as the following: ḥāḏiri l-ʾasada ttaqi l-ʾasada ‘Beware of the lion, keep away from the lion!’. 2.3 Ibn Mālik’s ʾAlfiyya In his ʾAlfiyya (540) Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274) gives the following example of taḥḏīr: ʾiyyā-ka wa-l-šarra lit. ‘you and the evil’ (line 622). We have seen above that Sībawayhi and al-Zamaḫšarī quote the example ʾiyyā-ya wa-l-šarra ‘Keep me away from evil’, but Ibn Mālik changes the first person pronoun to the second person, pointing out that ʾiyyā-ya ‘me’ is infrequent (šāḏḏ) and that ʾiyyā-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 occurrence of the first person, like ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba, is exceptional 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 another word with wa-, because they are supposed to be like ʾiyyā-ka ʾuḥaḏḏiru ‘I warn you’. 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 lḍayġama. The word ḍayġama means ‘jawbone’, but in this case, it means the wide-jawboned lion. This example corresponds, therefore, to al-Zamaḫšarī’s example, al-ʾasada l-ʾasada. Ibn ʿAqīl mentions māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa, saying that it means yā māzinu qi raʾsa-ka wa-ḥḏari l-sayfa ‘Māzin, protect your head and be aware of the sword’. Ibn Mālik explains that objects of encouragement (muġran bihi) are to be treated as objects of cautioning (muḥaḏḏar) without ʾiyyā- (ʾAlfiyya 541, line 626). Subsequently, Ibn ʿAqīl distinguishes between taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ ‘inciting, encouraging’. He explains that ʾiġrāʾ being a command to stick to something praiseworthy is like taḥḏīr: the coordinating wa- or the repeated noun without a verb causes their object to be accusative, while ʾiyyā- may not be used in either case. Ibn ʿAqīl discusses the examples ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka and ʾaḫā-ka wa-l-ʾiḥsāna ʾilay-hi ‘Be kind to your brother!’, which means ilzam-hu ‘Stick to him!’. He clearly distinguishes ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka from other taḥḏīr expressions like alʾasada l-ʾasada. 2.4 Ibn Hišām’s Šuḏūr al-ḏahab Unlike the authors mentioned above, Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1359) does not mention 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 something praised in order to keep close to it” (tanbīh al-muḫāṭab ʿalā ʾamrin maḥmūdin li-yalzama-hu), for which he gives the example ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka.12 He says that when a noun is repeated, or when it is attached to another noun, as in almurūʾata wa-l-najdata ‘the manhood and the heroism’, its agent (i.e. what makes 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 the second ʾaḫā-ka as emphasis or confirmation of the first one.

199

how have the descriptions of taḥḏīr changed?

Hišām regards ʾiġrāʾ as an accusative whose regent is omitted, and he does not lay weight on whether it is a kind of imperative. As an example of ʾiġrāʾ without repeating or attaching, Ibn Hišām presents the 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 on editing pedagogical textbooks in the 5th/11th century, that is, the era of alZamaḫšarī. The grammarians arranged the grammatical items and put them in order, focusing most of their attention on clarification and concretization of the styles and terms. Furthermore, as in the case of Ibn Mālik’s ʾAlfiyya, they sometimes versified the grammatical treatises, so that these could be learnt by heart more easily (Ikeda 1970). In studying the transition in the description of taḥḏīr, we see that al-Zamaḫšarī has borrowed some things from Sībawayhi, but that he also adds new findings. Moreover, Ibn Mālik and Ibn Hišām apparently attempt to introduce a 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

ʾiyyā-ka nafsa-ka

ʾiyyā-ka nafsa-ka

ʾiyyā-ka ʾiyyā-ki ʾiyyā-kumā ʾiyyā-kum ʾiyyā-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 yaḥḏifa ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba (exceptional)

Šuḏūr al-ḏahab

200 table 1

sakaedani Comparison of the examples of taḥḏīr cited by Arabic grammarians (cont.)

al-Kitāb

Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal

raʾsa-hu wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajja imraʾan wa nafsa-hu ʾahla-ka wa-l-layla

šaʾna-ka wa-l-ḥajja imraʾan wa nafsa-hu ʾahla-ka wa-l-layla

Šarḥ al-ʾAlfiyya

Šuḏūr al-ḏahab

māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa māzi raʾsa-ka wa-l-sayfa māzi raʾsa-ka raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa raʾsa-ka wa-l-ḥāʾiṭa wa-l-sayfa nafsa-ka raʾsa-ka al-jidār al-ḥaḏara l-ḥaḏara al-najāʾa l-najāʾa ḍarban ḍarban ʿaḏīraka

ʿaḏīraka al-ʾasada l-ʾasada al-jidāra l-jidāra al-ṣabiyya l-ṣabiyya ʾaḫā-ka ʾaḫā-ka al-ṭarīqa l-ṭarīqa

(ʾaḫāka ʾaḫāka)

al-ḍayġama l-ḍayġama

ʾaḫāka ʾaḫāka ʾaḫāka wa-l-ʾiḥsāna ʾilayhi

ʾaḫāka ʾaḫāka al-marūʾata wa-n-najdata ʾaḫāka llaḏī ʾin tadʿuhu li-mulimmati yujibka iġrāʾ

For example, ʾiyyā-ya wa-ʾan yaḥḏifa ʾaḥadu-kumu l-ʾarnaba is quoted by both Sībawayhi and al-Zamaḫšarī, and Ibn ʿAqīl also uses this example but he states that 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-hu wa-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 distinguishes it from taḥḏīr as ʾiġrāʾ, and in this way it comes down to Ibn Hišām. This means that the distinction between illocutionary forces that Austin proposed was known at least to some grammarians. According to Larcher’s hypothesis, Ibn al-Ḥājib expanded the category of ʾinšāʾ to the linguistic sciences, and grammarians after him distinguish between taḥḏīr and ʾiġrāʾ. This may mean that historical factors must be taken into consideration in arguing this point. On the other hand, while taḥḏīr was treated as a kind of imperative and prohibitive, 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 Sources

Farrāʾ, 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. Ibn Hišām, Šuḏūr = Jamāl al-Dīn ʾAbū Muḥammad ʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Hišām, 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: Maktabat 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: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, n.d. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr ibn ʿUṯmān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn. 3rd ed. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 1988.

b

Secondary Sources

Austin, 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.

202

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Ikeda, Osamu. 1970. “The history of Arabic philology from the 10th century up to the 19th century [in Japanese]”. Osaka Gaikokugo Daigaku Gakuho, Osaka University of Foreign Studies 22.35–49. Larcher, Pierre. 2007. “ʾInšāʾ”. Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, ed. by Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Kees Versteegh, Manfred Woidich, and Andrzej 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., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Origin and Conceptual Evolution of the Term taḫṣīṣ in Arabic Grammar* Manuel Sartori

1

Introduction: Taḫṣīṣ, a Forgotten Term?

The third volume of The foundations of Arabic linguistics, subtitled The development of a tradition: Continuity and change, constitutes an appropriate framework 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 technical term taḫṣīṣ, commonly rendered as ‘particularization’, whose history and evolution within the Arabic grammatical tradition I trace. Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/ 1249) first drew my attention to this category, of which I had never heard in my Arabic studies. Taḫṣīṣ remains a little-known term. First of all, it is not treated as a separate category in the Classical Arabic grammars,1 which do not reserve a special chapter to it. Moreover, the term is almost completely absent from Orientalist grammars, 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 Encyclopaedia of Islam, nor the Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics devote an entry to taḫṣīṣ. When the term or the concept denoted by it are mentioned, it is usually in passing. Thus, in the Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, Hoyt (2009:316b) mentions the phenomenon in the entry “Specificity”, but does not give its name, while the entry “ʾIḍāfa” incidentally mentions the phenomenon by citing iḫtiṣāṣ (cf. Ryding and Versteegh 2007:295b). Likewise, in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, taḫṣīṣ is quoted incidentally in the entries

* In quotes, I keep the author’s transliteration. I thank Michael Carter and Jean Druel for their remarks, 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 yaḫuṣṣuhu bihi (2/105; 3/74), once for ḫāṣṣatan (8/25) and once for ḫaṣāṣatun (59/9) (cf. ʿAbd al-Bāqī 1997:297).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_012

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“ʾiḍāfa” (Fleisch 1986:1008b), “naʿt” (Troupeau 1993:1034a) and “taʿrīf ” (Carter 2000:241b). Finally, Brustad (2000:21) briefly mentions it in passing. By placing this work in the context of continuity and change, I have three objectives: i. to conduct an archeological search of the term taḫṣīṣ in Arabic grammar; ii. to trace the evolution of its conceptual content; iii. to identify its origin. First, however, we need to define the notion of taḫṣīṣ, which, given the scattered nature of the information, can only be done by a combination of sources.

2

Taḫṣīṣ: First Definition

2.1 Lexical Family and Meaning of ḫ-ṣ-ṣ The term taḫṣīṣ is a verbal noun (maṣdar) of what is called in the Orientalist 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, to be 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 ‘general’,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 designate the specific object of praise or blame in structures involving ʾafʿāl al-madḥ wa-l-ḏamm, the praised or blamed object being the maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ ʾaw bil-ḏamm. From this verb base some augmented stems are derived: the monotransitive Form ii ḫaṣṣaṣahu ‘to particularize, to specify’, which is the factitive of Form i and whose maṣdar 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’; a monotransitive iḫtaṣṣahu ‘to take exclusive possession of’ with the meaning of ‘to characterize s.th.’; an intransitive iḫtaṣṣa ‘to distinguish one’s self, to specialize’, 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.

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(bihi) ‘to particularize one’s self (by), to be peculiar (to)’. In the present paper I will focus mainly on taḫṣīṣ, whose precise technical meaning remains to be defined, as well as to derivatives of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ, relating thereto.4 2.2

The Grammatical Technical Meaning of taḫṣīṣ among Modern Authors Given the scattered nature of the information about taḫṣīṣ, its definition can only be achieved by combining sources. Relying on secondary sources but also on primary (old as well as late), I shall give a first definition of taḫṣīṣ. This idealtypical definition will then be used to identify the phenomenon in Classical Arabic grammatical treatises and proceed to engage in an archeology of taḫṣīṣ. This archeology will then allow us to assess the evolution of the conceptual content of the notion. Wright (1996:ii, 198d, 199a, 260–261d)5 assigns to taḫṣīṣ the semantic function of limiting, more specifically that of ‘partial determination’.6 Terminologically, taḫṣīṣ is very clearly stated to be connected with tankīr and taʿrīf.7 Contextually, 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), or ii) 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 taḫṣīṣ in the chapter on annexation, but in those dealing with the adjective and with indefiniteness (tankīr). Overall, the same information may be culled from Reckendorf as from Wright. 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 praise or blame (maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ/ḏamm). 5 The passages in which taḫṣīṣ occurs are in fact Wright’s additions in the form of footnotes to the 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 (1848:221f., 250; 1859:288 f., 330). 6 Goguyer (1888:208) translates the term in verse 919 of the ʾAlfiyya of Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274) as ‘reserving’; in his translation of the Qaṭr 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). The latter translation will be adopted here. 7 Note that Fleisch (1961:i, 339f.) remarks that the issue of determination and indetermination in Arabic “est difficile et jusqu’ici n’a pas reçu une élucidation suffisante”, which seems to imply the existence of taḫṣīṣ.

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derung, 57), a ‘quasi-determination’ (nähere Bestimmung, 200), and a ‘restriction’ (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, to my knowledge, to reserve an entry to taḫṣīṣ in a dictionary of Arabic grammar and/or of fiqh al-luġa.8 In addition to the entry (i, 367) where it is specifically linked 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 to it the same connection with tankīr and taʿrīf, in the same contexts, plus the explanatory apposition (ʿaṭf al-bayān). I will end this first part with two ‘late’ authors: al-Sayyid al-Šarīf, i.e. ʿAlī ibn 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 altaʿrīfāt he defines this term when it has the technical sense we are interested in, as follows: “particularization among grammarians is an expression meaning the restriction of equivocity occuring in indefinite expressions like ‘a learned man’” (al-taḫṣīṣ ʿinda al-nuḥāt ʿibāra ʿan taqlīl al-ištirāk al-ḥāṣil fī l-nakirāt naḥwa ‘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 antecedent may occur when justified by specialization, generalization, or inversion. Specialization may be effected either by annexation […] or by adjectival qualification” (wa-yaqaʿu nakira bimusawwiġ wa-huwa ʾimmā al-taḫṣīṣ ʾaw al-taʿmīm ʾaw al-taʾḫīr fa-l-ʾawwal wahuwa 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 indefinition and pure definition [… and] that ‘specialized’ elements (i.e. qualified by adjectives, like fulukin māḵirin […]) are sufficiently defined to function as 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 own words have, according to the practice of the day, been directly integrated into aš-Širbīnī’s commentary, and are therefore distinguished by overlining”. Occurrences of taḫṣīṣ not being highlighted, they are indeed additions made by the commentator, al-Širbīnī, to the primary text (matn).

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He notes (1981:461) that “‘Specialization’ is taḵṣīṣ, cognate (and almost synonymous with) iḵtiṣāṣ ‘particularization’ […], in both cases denoting an intermediate 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 definition of the phenomenon may be proposed: taḫṣīṣ is a technical term that is connected with tankīr and taʿrīf. Occurring in the context of indefiniteness, it is related to several terms denoting definiteness, on which I will focus in other studies. Taḫṣīṣ is, besides, related to the grammatical categories of annexation, qualification, and explanatory apposition. Understood as ‘partial determination’ or ‘quasi-determination’, it is not only a grammatical category but also, first and foremost, a semantic category and, therefore, a pragmatic one, something well understood by the grammarian, logician and pragmatician al-ʾAstarābāḏī (d. 688/1289).10 In the following lines I will address only the syntactic aspect of taḫṣīṣ and its derivatives.

3

Terminological Evolution of taḫṣīṣ

The question to be answered now is: at what point did this term or its cognates appear in Arabic grammar with the precise meaning defined above? To do this, I have listed, in all grammatical treatises at my disposal, not only significant occurrences of taḫṣīṣ, but more generally of those terms that are derived from the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ. Taḫṣīṣ is used once in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi, according to Troupeau’s Lexique-index (1976:81), but only with a general meaning, not as a grammatical technical term (Kitāb i, 302). Suffice it to note that of all derivations from the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ, only two occurrences are close to the technical meaning we are looking for. In both cases this concerns the quasi-technical use of Form viii iḫtaṣṣa-hu in association with specification. We will see later that a link may justly be made between taḫṣīṣ and tamyīz.11 Sībawayhi says: “When

10

11

In fact, al-ʾAstarābāḏī appears to be the only grammarian to recognize clearly this pragmatic dimension of taḫṣīṣ and some of the terms derived from it, and that in some well defined contexts. The scope of the present article does not allow me to deal with this topic, which would justify a study on al-ʾAstarābāḏī. On the pragmatic aspects of al-ʾAstarābāḏī’s approach, cf. Larcher (1990, 1992, 1994, 1998 and more generally, 2014). Cf. infra.

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you say ‘I have twenty’, you have made the species imprecise, and when you say ‘dirham’, you have characterized a species and thanks to this, it is known of what species is this number” (ʾiḏā qulta ‘lī ʿišrūna’ fa-qad ʾabhamta l-ʾanwāʿ fa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘dirhaman’ fa-qad iḫtaṣaṣta nawʿan wa-bihi yuʿrafu min ʾayy nawʿ ḏālika l-ʿadad, Kitāb ii, 174, and 192 for a similar example). Although in fact Sībawayhi’s use of the term is not technical, but general (like the other occurrences of iḫtiṣāṣ in the Kitāb), and even if this use does not strictly fall within the framework defined by taḫṣīṣ (annexation, qualification, and explanatory apposition), it may very well be the first occurrence of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ with the technical meaning we are looking for, or perhaps, a proto-manifestation of it. In contrast, according to Kinberg’s index (1996), no trace of taḫṣīṣ or any other word of this root occurs in al-Farrāʾ’s (d. 207/822) Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, nor does it occur in al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), neither in his Muqtaḍab, nor in his Kāmil. Nevertheless, at least one occurrence of muḫtaṣṣ, passive participle of Form viii, in connection with annexation could count as a proto-technical usage, when al-Mubarrad writes (Muqtaḍab iii, 198) about ḫamsatahum: “Then you annexed it to its plural and it became particularized by it” ( faʾaḍaftahu [ḫamsa] ʾilā jamīʿihi fa-ṣāra muḫtaṣṣan bihi). We find again a single occurrence of taḫṣīṣ in the ʾUṣūl fī l-naḥw of Ibn alSarrāj (d. 316/928), in connection with the admirative formula (ʾUṣūl i, 102). However, while his use of taḫṣīṣ certainly refers to a technical grammatical category, Ibn al-Sarrāj has in mind that of maḫṣūṣ (bi-l-madḥ/bi-l-ḏamm). What is more, some of the terms from the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ in Ibn al-Sarrāj actually describe the inverse of the phenomenon we are interested in (the first term of annexation particularizing the second, see ʾUṣūl i, 85, 153), since he uses maḫṣūṣ in the sense of muḫaṣṣaṣ. Indeed, here is what he writes: “This does not include the case of ḍarabanī ġulāmu ḫamsata ʿašara rajulan ‘the servant of fifteen men hit me’, since ‘the servant’ is particularized, known and not ambiguous” (walā yadḫulu fī hāḏā ‘ḍarabanī ġulāmu ḫamsata ʿašara rajulan’ li-ʾanna l-ġulām maḫṣūṣ maʿlūm ġayr mubham, ʾUṣūl i, 276). We find here maḫṣūṣ in the sense of muḫaṣṣaṣ in the technical meaning we are looking for, while we find taḫṣīṣ in the sense of maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ/ḏamm. Since the term does not occur neither in the ʾĪḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-naḥw nor in the Jumal fī l-naḥw of al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949), one might say that al-Zajjājī ignores the notion as such. Indeed, he writes about the active participle: Know that the active participle, when it has the meaning of the past and you annex it to an indefinite expression, becomes indefinite, and that if you annex it to a definite expression, it becomes definite (wa-ʿlam ʾanna

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ism al-fāʿil ʾiḏā kāna bi-maʿnā l-muḍiyy fa-ʾaḍaftahu ʾilā nakira tanakkara wa-ʾin ʾaḍaftahu ʾilā maʿrifa taʿarrafa). Jumal ii, 90

Thus, he is aware of the phenomenon of particularization, (in this case with the annexation of an indefinite to an indefinite), but does not link it to the term we know. There is a single occurrence of taḫṣīṣ in al-Zajjājī’s short treatise Kitāb al-lāmāt, but it lacks the relevant technical meaning (Lāmāt 32). Presumably, the first occurrence of a derivative of the root ḫ-ṣ-ṣ with an obvious 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 the meaning of the adjective was to characterize the essence of the qualified element and to bring it out from vagueness and general toward a more precise sense. Thus, the adjective brings out the undefined qualified elements of a species toward a more precise kind. As for the [qualified] defined elements, the adjective brings them out from an individual whose name is shared and who is therefore subject to ambiguity at a stage where ambiguity disappears from it. As for the indefinite expression, it is [like] when you say marartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin ‘I passed by a friendly man’. If you limited yourself to ‘man’, it would have fallen under the set of all men, and the species to which it belongs would have been general, while when you qualify it by ‘friendly’, it becomes part of the class of friendly men, which is more restricted than men in general (qāla ʾAbū Saʿīd maʿnā l-naʿt ʾannahu iḫtiṣāṣ nafs al-manʿūt waʾiḫrāj lahu min ʾibhām wa-ʿumūm ʾilā mā huwa ʾaḫaṣṣ minhu wa-l-nakirāt al-manʿūta yuḫrijuhā al-naʿt min nawʿ ʾilā nawʿ ʾaḫaṣṣ minhu wa-ʾammā lmaʿārif fa-yuḫrijuhā l-naʿt min šaḫṣ muštarak al-ism ʿinda wuqūʿ al-labs fīhi ʾilā ʾan yazūla al-labs ʿanhu ʾammā l-nakira fa-qawluka ‘marartu bi-rajulin ẓarīfin’ law iqtaṣarta ʿalā ‘rajul’ waḥdahu la-kāna l-rajul waḥdahu min jumlat al-rijāl kullihim wa-nawʿuhu llaḏī huwa minhum al-rijāl ʿalā l-ʿumūm falammā naʿattahu bi-‘ẓarīf’ ṣāra min jumlat al-rijāl al-ẓirāf wa-huwa ʾaqall min al-rijāl bi-ʾiṭlāq). Šarḥ ii, 312f.

Thus, the result of the qualification of an indefinite noun is more precise than the indefinite noun alone, which al-Sīrāfī expresses in his own way by using iḫtiṣāṣ and ʾaḫaṣṣ. Nevertheless, these are still only proto-technical terms that do not encompass the whole concept defined under taḫṣīṣ since they concern only qualification; a fortiori, this is not yet a matter of taḫṣīṣ.

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ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) uses taḫṣīṣ more frequently than his predecessors. 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 particular instance, involving a vocative particle (nidāʾ)12 functioning as a common factor for two nouns, al-Fārisī writes: The point of the resemblance of this type with the annexation is that the second [term] particularizes the first, just like the second term of the annexation particularizes the first term of the annexation (wa-wajh šabah hāḏā l-ḍarb bi-l-ʾiḍāfa ʾanna l-ṯānī muḫaṣṣiṣ li-l-ʾawwal kamā ʾanna l-muḍāf ʾilayhi muḫaṣṣiṣ li-l-muḍāf ). ʾĪḍāḥ 190

This passage is quite remarkable, first because as far as I know, this is the first appearance in Arabic grammar of the term muḫaṣṣiṣ, active participle of taḫṣīṣ, used here with its technical meaning in connection with annexation. Further on, again in connection with annexation, but this time with the Form viii verb iḫtaṣṣa, al-Fārisī also refers to the proto-determined character mentioned above: And when you annex an indefinite [expression] to an indefinite one, it is particularized by the annexation, even if it does not become definite, as in ‘a donkey’s rider’ (wa-ʾiḏā ʾaḍafta nakira ʾilā nakira iḫtaṣṣat bi-l-ʾiḍāfa wa-ʾin lam tataʿarraf naḥwa ‘rākibu ḥimārin’). ʾĪḍāḥ 210f.

Apparently, then, al-Fārisī does identify the phenomenon and clearly states that it is connected with tankīr and taʿrīf. At the same time, it should be stressed that the terminology is still unstable, since he uses a Form viii verb rather than Form ii (cf. also Fārisī, Takmila 268). Moreover, he only deals with it as part of the annexation and does not refer to the explanatory apposition, nor to the qualification. Seven instances of taḫṣīṣ are found in Ibn al-Warrāq’s (d. 381/991) ʿIlal alnaḥw, where it occurs both in connection with annexation (ʿIlal 145, 228, 304) and with 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 a group of people: wa-law nādayta jamāʿatan hāḏihi l-ʿidda ʿiddatuhā la-rafaʿta fa-qulta yā ṯalāṯatu wa-l-ṯalāṯūna fī-man qāla zaydu wa-l-ḥāriṯu wa-man qāla wa-l-ḥāriṯa naṣaba alṯalāṯīna ʾaw qāla yā ṯalāṯata wa-[yā] ṯalāṯūna.

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The characteristic feature of annexation is that the first term of annexation 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 ‘hāḏā ġulāmun’ la-kāna mubhaman fa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘ġulāmu zaydin’ iḫtaṣṣa bi-milk zayd). ʿIlal 145

As for the qualification, Ibn al-Warrāq writes: “Regarding the indefinite expression […], the adjective only signifies in it a particularization” (ʾammā l-nakira […] fa-l-ṣifa ʾinnamā tufīdu fīhā taḫṣīṣan, ʿIlal 371) and “as for the indefinite expression, the principle in it is to be qualified because the aim of the qualification is the particularization of the qualified element” (wa-ʾamma l-nakira fa-l-ʾaṣl fīhā ʾan tunʿata li-ʾanna l-ġaraḍ min al-naʿt taḫṣīṣ al-manʿūt, ʿIlal 380). As we see, taḫṣīṣ appears in connection with qualification and annexation and in the framework of indefiniteness since the first term of annexation and the qualified element are both indefinite. Thus, it could correspond to the ideal-typical definition given above, but for Ibn al-Warrāq annexation has the property of defining the first term since he writes that “the first term of annexation takes on definiteness from the second term” (wa-l-muḍāf yaktasibu taʿrīfan min almuḍāf ʾilayhi, ʿIlal 383) and that “the first term of annexation is supposed to be an indefinite expression before annexation and then to be annexed, because the aim of annexation is its definition” (al-muḍāf yuqaddaru qabla l-ʾiḍāfa nakira ṯumma yuḍāfu li-ʾanna al-ġaraḍ fī l-ʾiḍāfa taʿrīfuhu, ʿIlal 416). Even clearer is the following statement: The characteristic of annexation is the particularization of the first term and its definition. When the first term has the article, it becomes defined by it and does not need another definition by means of annexation (al-faṣl fī l-ʾiḍāfa taḫṣīṣ al-muḍāf wa-taʿrīfuhu fa-ʾiḏā kānat fī l-muḍāf al-ʾalif wa-llām taʿarrafa bihimā wa-lam yaḥtaj ʾilā taʿrīf ʾāḫar min jihat al-ʾiḍāfa). ʿIlal 304

Thus, for Ibn al-Warrāq, annexation always involves definiteness and particularization, while qualification only involves particularization within the framework of indefiniteness. In particular, Ibn al-Warrāq does not address the case where the second term of annexion is itself indefinite (as in bayt muʿallim), which shows that, unlike later grammarians, he does not take into account this phenomenon.

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At least one passage of the Šarḥ Kitāb Sībawayhi of ʾAbū l-Ḥasan al-Rummānī (d. 384/994) suggests that he is aware of this phenomenon: “… since the governed element particularizes, as does annexation and as does the adjective” (ʾiḏ al-maʿmūl yuḫaṣṣiṣu kamā tuḫaṣṣiṣu l-ʾiḍāfa wa-kamā tuḫaṣṣiṣu l-ṣifa, Šarḥ i, 374). Here indeed we find for the first time the Form ii verb ḫaṣṣaṣa, both in connection with annexation and with qualification. Apart from the many occurrences of the expression taḫṣīṣ al-ʿilla in the Ḫaṣāʾiṣ of Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), taḫṣīṣ often has the technical meaning we are dealing with. He writes: “In fact, the adjective in the utterance is of two types: 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 waʾimmā li-l-madḥ wa-l-ṯanāʾ, Ḫaṣāʾiṣ ii, 146). In another passage, which has no connection with qualification, but only with annexation, Ibn Jinnī writes: “It has been said that the purpose in annexation is only to define and to particularize” (qīla li-ʾanna al-ġaraḍ fī l-ʾiḍāfa ʾinnamā huwa l-taʿrīf wa-l-taḫṣīṣ, Ḫaṣāʾiṣ ii, 267). This is expressed in the same way in his Sirr ṣināʿat al-ʾiʿrāb where he states that “annexation imparts definiteness and particularization” (al-ʾiḍāfa tuksibu l-taʿrīf wa-l-taḫṣīṣ, Sirr ii, 37). With Ibn Jinnī we thus clearly pass from Form viii iḫtaṣṣa to Form ii ḫaṣṣaṣa, and more specifically, to its maṣdar. This means that with Ibn Jinnī the notion of taḫṣīṣ, for the first time in the history of Arabic grammar, acquires the familiar technical meaning. This transition to Form ii is understandable, because it fits into a set of systematic notions from this form, such as tankīr and taʿrīf. Moreover, it allows the formation of pairs of terms, of which Arabic grammar is fond, such as muḍāf and muḍāf ʾilayhi, manʿūt and naʿt, mawṣūf and ṣifa, mubdal and mubdal minhu, mustaṯnā and mustaṯnā minhu, etc. From the factitive Form ii, pairs of terms distinguishing an agent from a patient may be derived, such as munakkir and munakkar, muʿarrif and muʿarraf, muḫaṣṣiṣ and muḫaṣṣaṣ. Nevertheless, Ibn Jinnī appears to be less explicit than al-Fārisī about the connection of taḫṣīṣ with tankīr and taʿrīf. 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 Fiqh al-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 his Muḫaṣṣaṣ in the context of qualification as he writes: “Its particularization by means of annexation became like its particularization by means of qualification” ( faṣāra taḫṣīṣuhu bi-l-ʾiḍāfa ka-taḫṣīṣihi bi-l-waṣf, Muḫaṣṣaṣ xvi, 66), providing as an example sayrun šadīdun ‘a difficult walk’, i.e., the qualification of an indefinite noun by an indefinite adjective.

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ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078), a student of a nephew of al-Fārisī,13 illustrates a new turning point in the terminological history of taḫṣīṣ by placing it in a precise system and by explicitly linking it to the framework of indefiniteness: Know then that, with respect to indefinite expressions, the adjective conveys particularization and, with respect to definite expressions, clarification. The explanation for this is that when you say marartu bi-rajulin ṭawīlin ‘I passed by a tall man’, you reduce the generality of the noun by making 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 the meaning covered by particularization and it only occurs with the indefinite expression (ṯumma iʿlam ʾanna l-ṣifa tufīdu fī l-nakira al-taḫṣīṣ wa-fī lmaʿrifa al-tawḍīḥ tafsīr hāḏā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ‘marartu bi-rajulin ṭawīlin’ kunta qad naqaṣta min ʿumūm al-ism fa-jaʿaltahu yaqaʿu ʿalā baʿḍ al-jins dūna kullihi min ḥayṯu lā tudḫilu man lā yakūnu ṭawīlan min al-rijāl fīhi fa-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 and tawḍīḥ, which is therefore understood to be its complementary rather than its equivalent.14 Yet, taḫṣīṣ is limited here to qualification, while nothing is said about taḫṣīṣ in annexation. Finally, ʾAbū l-Qāsim al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144) provides the first accurate description in the history of Arabic grammar of taḫṣīṣ, as we currently understand it:15 Annexation of a noun to a noun is of two types: semantic and formal. The semantic one signifies definiteness, as when you say dāru ʿamrin ‘ʿAmr’s house’, or (ʾaw) particularization, as when you say ġulāmu rajulin ‘a man’s servant’ (ʾiḍāfat al-ism li-l-ism ʿalā ḍarbayn maʿnawiyya wa-lafẓiyya fa-l-

13

14

15

He was the student of ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn alḤusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Wāriṯ al-Fārisī al-Naḥwī (d. 421/1030), himself a nephew by his mother of ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (cf. Jurjānī, Šarḥ 30). On al-Jurjānī see Larcher (1993). This case is dealt with in a forthcoming study, “Definition and determination in Medieval Arabic grammatical thought”, to appear in the proceedings of the 4th Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics. 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 kaqawli-ka ‘ġulāmu rajulin’). Mufaṣṣal 119

As we see, al-Zamaḫšarī carefully distinguishes between taʿrīf and taḫṣīṣ. He does so by using two contrastive examples: a definite second term of annexation for taʿrīf, and an indefinite one for taḫṣīṣ. He also does so by using an actually disjunctive coordination, ʾaw, where others before him had used wa-, so that the disjunction had to be imagined. In another passage, this time in connection with the treatment of the adjective, he writes: “It is said that it serves for particularization within the indefinite expressions and for clarification within the definite ones” (wa-yuqālu ʾinnahā li-l-taḫṣīṣ fī l-nakirāt wa-li-l-tawḍīḥ fī lmaʿārif, Mufaṣṣal 148). While the work of al-Suhaylī (d. 581/1185) provides us with only a few instances of this term (Natāʾij 28 for annexation, and 158 for qualification), it is clear that taḫṣīṣ, in and after al-Zamaḫšarī, is the act of particularizing an indefinite noun by the second term of an annexation, itself indefinite, or by a following indefinite adjective. In either case, taḫṣīṣ is linked to the state of tankīr. It is something else than taʿrīf and has a complementary term within the state of taʿrīf, that of tawḍīḥ. We find the same technical uses and the same systematic relations in later grammarians.16 Within the line of the Mufaṣṣal, this is the case of Ibn Yaʿīš (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 whose approach this category takes a more pronounced pragmatic dimension, taḫṣīṣ and its derivatives being connected to the notions of speaker (mutakallim) and interlocutor (muḫāṭab) (cf. notably Šarḥ al-Kāfiya i, 202ff., in particular 206;17 ii, 238f.; ii, 314). Although al-Zajjājī does not mention taḫṣīṣ at all or even ignores the phenomenon, Ibn Ḫarūf (d. 609/1212), commentator of al-Zajjājī’s Jumal, should be partly included within al-Zamaḫšarī’s legacy, since for him “the adjective serves to particularize the indefinite expression and to remove the supposed equivocity concerning the definite qualified element” (wa-fāʾidat al-naʿt taḫṣīṣ al-nakira wa-rafʿ al-ištirāk al-mutawahham fī l-manʿūt al-maʿrifa, Šarḥ i, 300).

16

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In the appendix two grammarians will be dealt with, whose use of taḫṣīṣ is sufficiently against the current to warrant separate treatment, Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 577/1181) and ʾAbū Mūsā al-Juzūlī (d. 607/1210 or 616/1219). I refer here to Larcher (1983:253) about salām which “is specified by its relation to the one that greets”, muḫtaṣṣ bi-.

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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 being more stable, is not identical for all grammarians. Ibn ʿUṣfūr (d. 669/1271) has the 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 the qualification of an indefinite expression (Šarḥ i, 131), but he does keep taḫṣīṣ in the case of annexation (Šarḥ i, 495). Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274) recognizes the phenomenon, both in his ʾAlfiyya and his 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 affects the first term of annexation, defining it if the second [term] is a definite expression, and particularizing it if the second is an indefinite expression ( fa-hāḏihi kulluhu mimmā ʾiḍāfatuhu maʿnawiyya wa-ḥaqīqiyya wamaḥḍa li-ʾannahā muʾaṯṯira fī l-muḍāf taʿrīfan ʾin kāna l-ṯānī maʿrifa wataḫṣīṣan ʾin kāna l-ṯānī nakira). Šarḥ i, 408

He does the same for qualification by an adjective. Yet, his examples concern qualification of nouns already definite, so that they do not fall within the strict framework of the ideal-typical definition of taḫṣīṣ (cf. Šarḥ i, 520). Ibn Hišām 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 ]) as well as derived terms (Ibn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī Sabīl alhudā: muḫaṣṣaṣa 347 [ḥāl]; muḫaṣṣiṣ 433 [twice], 434 [ʿaṭf ]). Finally Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 769/1367) uses taḫṣīṣ in the same way (Šarḥ i, 368 f.). Let us go back to Ibn Mālik in order to draw conclusions about the development of the conceptual content of taḫṣīṣ. First, Ibn Mālik, just like Ibn ʿAqīl later on, subsume tawḍīḥ and taḫṣīṣ under one type of taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ1) (cf. Ibn Mālik Šarḥ i, 520 and Ibn ʿAqīl Šarḥ ii, 43). This is not what Ibn Hišām does, because he always distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns (ʾAwḍaḥ iii, 64, 223, 256; Sabīl al-hudā 416, 433–435). But Ibn Mālik is also the one who expands the category of taḫṣīṣ beyond the borders of qualification and annexation, and he is followed in this by his commentators. He begins by extending it to the explanatory apposition (ʿaṭf al-bayān), close to the adjective (cf. Ibn Mālik Šarḥ i, 533). Following him, Ibn Hišām al-ʾAnṣārī does the same; he writes in connection 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 fī tawḍīḥ matbūʿihi ʾin kāna maʿrifa wa-taḫṣīṣihi nakira). ʾAwḍaḥ iii, 256; see also Sabīl al-hudā 434f.

Furthermore, he observes about muḫaṣṣiṣ: I have referred with the two examples to what is included in the definition in terms of its being used to clarify the definite [expressions] and particularize the indefinite ones (ʾašartu bi-l-miṯālayn ʾilā mā taḍammanahu l-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, when he 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), to illustrate the fact that taḫṣīṣ serves within an annexation in the framework of 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 in the 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 connected with tankīr and taʿrīf ; its complementary terms are in intension, tawḍīḥ (or others on which I will focus elsewhere) and in extension, tamyīz. Technically, taḫṣīṣ means the particularization of an indefinite noun by another indefinite element (the second term of an annexation or a qualification in the broad sense that includes the attributive qualification, the explanatory apposition, and the prepositional group). It is therefore surprising that this technical term, with its long history, thus far has not attracted more interest, and even more that this term is far from unknown or ignored in other fields than grammar.

18

This is echoed at a late period by al-Kafawī (d. 1094/1683) al-taḫṣīṣ wa-huwa l-ḥukm bi-ṯubūt al-muḫaṣṣaṣ li-šayʾ wa-nafyihi ʿammā siwāhu [wa-kilāhumā ʿibarātān ʿan maʿnā wāḥid] wayuqālu ʾayḍan tamyīz ʾafrād baʿḍ al-jumla bi-ḥukm iḫtaṣṣa bihi (Kulliyyāt 284, 422), and more recently by Baraké (1985:154).

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The Extra-Grammatical Origins of taḫṣīṣ: The ʾuṣūl al-fiqh

Relatively unknown or ignored in grammar, taḫṣīṣ is rather well represented as a 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 term an entry in his Muʿjam muṣṭalaḥāt ʾuṣūḷ al-fiqh, and translates taḫṣīṣ in English by ‘specification’.19 Similarly, Hilāl (2003:71–78) devotes eight pages to the study of taḫṣīṣ in jurology. He distinguishes taḫaṣṣuṣ from taḫṣīṣ and subdivides the latter in several subentries. Finally, entire books are reserved to it. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Šaylaḫānī is the author of a book on the issue of taḫṣīṣ among legal scholars, entitled Mabāḥiṯ al-taḫṣīṣ ʿinda l-ʾuṣūliyyīna (al-Šaylaḫānī 2000), and ʾIsmāʿīl Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān devotes to it a monograph entitled 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 who deal with taḫṣīṣ would become too long. As a matter of fact, this category is dealt with extensively in one or more sections of its own, unlike its status in grammar.20 Finally, taḫṣīṣ is not only well-known among Arab specialists in legal theory, but also among Arabist specializing in this field,21 although, just like in studies on Arabic grammar, it has not been the subject of special studies. As for al-Šaylaḫānī (2000:128, 212), he focuses on legal scholars, but does not forget to mention Ibn al-Ḥājib. The latter, in addition to being known in the Orientalist West as a grammarian, is indeed also known in the East as a legal

19

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21

al-taḫṣīṣ: min ḫaṣṣaṣahu bi-l-šayʾ ʾiḏā qaṣarahu ʿalayhi. qaṣr al-ʿāmm ʿalā baʿḍ ʾafrādihi bi-dalīl, muṭlaqa qaṣrin sawāʾ ʾa-kāna ḏālika al-dalīl mustaqillan, ʾam ġayr mustaqill, wasawāʾ ʾa-kāna muqtarinan bi-l-dalīl al-ʿāmm al-murād taḫṣīṣuhu, ʾam kāna ġayr muqtarin bi-hi. miṯāluhu qawluhu […]: “wa-ʾaḥalla llāhu l-bayʿa wa-ḥarrama l-ribā” [Q. 2/275], fakalimat al-bayʿ tašmulu al-ribā li-ʾanna al-bayʿ mubādalat māl bi-māl, wa-ka-ḏālika al-ribā fa-ʾinnahu mubādalat māl bi-māl maʿa al-ziyāda, wa-li-ḏālika ḫaṣṣaṣa qawlahu […]: “waḥarrama al-ribā” al-ʿumūm allaḏī warada fī qawlihi: “wa-ʾaḥalla llāhu l-bayʿa” […] Among legal scholars dedicating a whole 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, 300 f.; Zarkašī, Tašnīf ii, 715f. 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 devoted to the subject of ‘particularisation of the general expression’ (tak̲h̲ṣīṣ al-ʿāmm). An interpreter was always obliged to look for a ‘particulariser’ (muk̲h̲aṣṣiṣ, dalīl al-tak̲h̲ṣīṣ) in the context before making a final conclusion concerning the scope of reference of a general expression”.

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scholar.22 As a legal scholar and a grammarian, he informs us about the status and origin of taḫṣīṣ. Apparently, since he dedicates an entire section of his Muḫtaṣar Muntahā to taḫṣīṣ,23 something he does not do in his grammatical works (neither in the Kāfiya, nor in the ʾImlāʾ ʿalā l-Kāfiya, nor in the ʾĪḍāḥ fī šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal), for him taḫṣīṣ is first and foremost a legal category (as proven by the entries in ʾuṣūl al-fiqh) rather than a grammatical one (as proven by the absence of systematic treatment of this category in grammar). Here, I will confine myself to speculate that al-Fārisī, or his student Ibn Jinnī (or even al-Rummānī), the former being the first in the history of Arabic grammar to use the term muḫaṣṣiṣ, the latter being the one who innovated by introducing the maṣdar related to this active participle, i.e. taḫṣīṣ, may have been the ones responsible for the introduction of this concept from the ʾuṣūl al-fiqh. What is certain is that al-Šāfiʿī (d. 204/819) almost never employs the root ḫ-ṣṣ,24 while al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1012) quotes taḫṣīṣ (cf. Bāqillānī, Taqrīb iii, 63).25 The answer to the question which one of them (or one of his successors) could have invented the concept and introduced it into grammar must be looked for between these two extremes and in particular in the works on ṭabaqāt alʾuṣūliyyīna. After having consulted one of these books, the Fatḥ al-mubīn fī ṭabaqāt al-ʾuṣūliyyīna of al-Murāġī, and assuming that the person I was looking for was a contemporary of al-Fārisī, I found no fewer than 26 legal scholars, from Ibn 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 this work of archeology on taḫṣīṣ in the ʾuṣūl al-fiqh to specialists in Islamic law.

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He is notably the author of Muntahā l-suʾal wa-l-ʾamal fī ʿilmay al-ʾuṣūl wa-l-jadal, a treatise on the sources of law according to the Maliki school, and a treatise in which he summarizes the ʾIḥkām of Sayf al-Dīn al-ʾĀmidī (d. 631/1233). From the first he brings out a summary, the Muḫtaṣar Muntahā l-suʾal wa-l-ʾamal fī ʿilmay al-ʾuṣūl wa-l-jadal. Cf. Ibn al-Ḥājib, Muḫtaṣar 786–858. Only three times yaḫuṣṣu is found in the Risāla, but neither iḫtiṣāṣ nor taḫṣīṣ nor any verbal or nominal derivative. 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, professor 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 to it” (ʾiḫrāj baʿḍ mā tanāwalahu l-ḫiṭāb maʿa kawnihi muqārinan lahu). This definition presumably 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 201f., 231).

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Conclusion

The category of taḫṣīṣ in Arabic grammar relates, first, to annexation, then to qualification, and later to explanatory apposition. It forms a terminological pair with tamyīz. It is connected with tankīr and taʿrīf, and is to be understood as ‘particularization’26 (that is to say a kind of ‘determination’). It is complementary to other terms, including tawḍīḥ ‘clarification’. In this context, it refers to the particularization of an indefinite noun by another indefinite element, which can also be a prepositional group, the noun of the group being definite or not. Probably, al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979) was the first to refer to a closely related meaning, although without using the term itself (since he uses iḫtiṣāṣ), but ʾAbū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) should be considered the one who introduced this category 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 quite close to the later definition, but he does not explicitly distinguish between it and taʿrīf (with respect to annexation) and consequently, he does not present it 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 Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066), but especially by ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078), a student of a nephew of al-Fārisī, and even more so by al-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144), who gives a systematic presentation of taḫṣīṣ, but only within the state of tankīr or 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 immense authority: he became the master par excellence. In principle, everything had 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 accurate ones. 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 a kind of determination specially not linked with referentiability. Moreover, taḫṣīṣ is not the only term meaning a kind of determination, as I will show in my forthcoming publication in the proceedings of the 4th Conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, where the term will be dealt in connection with ‘specification’, ‘clarification’, ‘elucidation’, and even ‘completion’, all of those terms being kinds of special determination. This also explains why taḫṣīṣ is translated here by ‘particularization’.

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but also his silences (just as was done with the Prophet of the Arabs): consequently, what was not found in the Kitāb, was dismissed beforehand, as devoid of authority.27 It is clear that as a technical term, taḫṣīṣ—certainly not the most important term in Arabic grammar, although we have seen that its full scope encompasses both annexation and qualification, as connected with between taʿrīf and tankīr—is not present in Sībawayhi, nor in his immediate successors. However, the term did have a place in the Arabic grammatical tradition and it has maintained this place till the present day, as we find it in a few well-informed modern authors. We must therefore conclude, in accordance with Fleisch’s criticism, that not everything is said in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb.

Appendix: Two Dissenting Grammarians In his book ʾAsrār al-ʿarabiyya Ibn al-ʾAnbārī (d. 577/1181) uses taḫṣīṣ in a quite surprising way, compared to the other grammarians. First, with respect to annexation, he writes that “impure annexation does not signify taʿrīf,28 unlike the pure one, as in ġulāmu zaydin ‘Zayd’s servant’” (al-ʾiḍāfa ġayr maḥḍa lam tufid al-taʿrīf bi-ḫilāf mā ʾiḏā kānat maḥḍa naḥw ‘ġulāmu zaydin’, ʾAsrār 151). Apparently, he does not distinguish within the pure annexation between those cases where the second term is definite and those where it is not. Even more surprising terminologically, is Ibn al-ʾAnbārī’s usage in connection with qualification: If someone asks ‘what is the purpose of qualification?’, he is told that it is particularization and distinction. Thus, if it is a definite expression, the purpose of qualification is particularization, because of the inherent equivocity. Don’t you see that there are many people called Zayd or something similar, so that when we say jāʾanī zaydun ‘Zayd came to me’, it is not known which one of

27

28

“Sībawayhi, élevé sur le pavois par al-Mubarrad, obtint une autorité immense: il devint le Maître 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 être les seules exactes. On en vint aussi à conclure non seulement de ses dires, mais de ses silences (comme pour le Prophète des Arabes): ainsi, ce que l’ on ne trouvait pas dans le Kitāb était d’avance écarté comme dénué d’autorité” (Fleisch 1961:i, 34). 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 cannot serve to translate taʿrīf as such.

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them we mean? Thus, when we say zaydun al-ʿāqilu ‘Zayd the intelligent’ or alʿālimu ‘the learned’ or al-ʾadību ‘the educated’, or something similar, we single him out from among the others. Now, if the noun is an indefinite expression, the purpose of qualification is distinction. Don’t you see that when you say jāʾanī rajulun ‘a man came to me’, it is not known which man is meant, and that when you say rajulun ʿāqilun ‘an intelligent man’, you distinguish him from those who do not possess this qualification, and that it is not a matter of particularizing him, because by distinguishing we mean a specific entity, which was not aimed here? (ʾin qāla qāʾil ‘mā al-ġaraḍ fī l-waṣf’ qīla al-taḫṣīṣ wa-l-tafḍīl fa-ʾin kāna maʿrifa kāna l-ġaraḍ min al-waṣf al-taḫṣīṣ li-ʾanna l-ištirāk yaqaʿu fīhā ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna l-musammā bi-‘zayd’ wa-naḥwihi kaṯīr fa-ʾiḏā qāla ‘jāʾānī zaydun’ lam yuʿlam ʾayyahum yurīdu fa-ʾiḏā qāla ‘zaydun al-ʿāqilu’ ʾaw ‘al-ʿālimu’ ʾaw ‘al-ʾadību’ wa-mā ʾašbaha ḏālika fa-qad ḫaṣṣahu min ġayri-hi wa-ʾin kāna l-ism nakira kāna l-ġaraḍ min al-waṣf al-tafḍīl ʾa-lā tarā ʾannaka ʾiḏā qulta ‘jāʾanī rajulun’ lam yuʿlam ʾayy rajul huwa fa-ʾiḏā qulta ‘rajulun ʿāqilun’ fa-qad faḍḍaltahu ʿalā man laysa lahu hāḏā l-waṣf wa-lam taḫuṣṣahu li-ʾannā naʿnī bi-l-tafḍīl šayʾan bi-ʿaynihi wa-lam nuridhu hāhunā). ʾAsrār 155

What is particularly interesting here is that, while distinguishing within the qualification of a noun between its definiteness or indefiniteness, and while reserving two different technical terms for each of these qualifications, Ibn al-ʾAnbārī does not comply with the terminology. Indeed, for him, taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ2) corresponds in fact with the complementary term to taḫṣīṣ of the other grammarians, while tafḍīl, a term encountered anywhere else with that sense, is, on its own, the equivalent of taḫṣīṣ among other grammarians. 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 in this case, one that was less stabilized. First of all, for him taḫṣīṣ (= taḫṣīṣ3) clearly is the 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 addressing annexation, from distinguishing between ʾiḍāfa maḥḍa and ʾiḍāfa ġayr maḥḍa, and from specifying then that “pure [annexation] is what signifies definiteness or particularization” (al-maḥḍa mā ʾafāda taʿrīfan ʾaw taḫṣīṣan, Muqaddima 131). Doing so, he returns to the use of ‘Oriental’ terminology. At last, he renders at least once taḫṣīṣ with its 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 of particularization, particularly correlated with the particle li-, is then rendered by ʾAbū Mūsā by taḫṣīṣ (cf. Muqaddima 128).

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The Classification of the Verb in the Arab Grammatical Tradition From Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī Zeinab A. Taha

1

Introduction

There has never been a lack of interest in providing semantic justification for certain structures in Arabic grammar. Medieval grammarians had a varying interest in semantics, and often presented semantic arguments to explain the syntactic behavior of the different syntactic categories. The present study examines the history of grammatical ideas about verb classification in Arabic. It briefly reviews the contributions of Sībawayhi, alMubarrad, 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, by al-Zajjājī, al-Sīrāfī, and al-Jurjānī. The discussion focuses on the status of the verb in treatises written by these grammarians with particular emphasis on verb classes, status of the direct object, and the use of selected terminology for transitivity.

2

Sībawayhi (d. 180/796)

Depending on their morphological pattern, verbs are introduced in the Kitāb with respect to transitivity as forming two major categories: those with a transitive pattern and those with an intransitive pattern. Fig. 1 illustrates these two categories. The Kitāb does not provide any other criterion for (in)transitivity than the morphological pattern of the verb in question. However, one can infer how Sībawayhi looked at the act of transitivity from the way he presents his argument with 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 a direct object in a proposition including a transitive verb. Sībawayhi uses the term ṣinf to differentiate between the maṣdar used with an intransitive verb, as in ḏahabtu ḏahāban ‘I definitely went away’ and the direct object bakran in ḍaraba zaydun bakran ‘Zayd hit Bakr’. In several passages of the Kitāb it is

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004365216_013

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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 terms of their meaning, or the completion of kalām. He uses the term istaġnā ‘to do without’ continuously to refer to the object of the transitive verb as being an essential part of the sentence (e.g. Kitāb i, 149). These repeated references indicate, albeit indirectly, how the verb’s object is indicated once the verb is used. If you say ʿajibtu min ḍarbin ‘I did not like a hitting’, you have not mentioned the agent because the masdar is not the agent, although it indicates it. Therefore, you need in it [i.e., this masdar construction] an agent and a patient (wa-ʾiḏā qulta: ʿajibtu min ḍarbin fa-ʾinnaka lam taḏkur al-fāʿil fal-maṣdar laysa bi-l-fāʿil wa-ʾin kāna fīhi dalīlun ʿalā l-fāʿil fa-li-ḏālika ḥtajta fīhi 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 of having a direct object, and also to the ability of the verb to have other accusative noun complements in its sphere, irrespective of whether or not it is transitive. The terms waṣala and ʾawṣala are used unsystematically to refer to the action of reaching the accusative object. The difference between the construction with kāna and the regular transitive construction is pointed at by Sībawayhi

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(Kitāb i, 31), when he explains that there is no action ‘reaching’ the accusative predicate in the kāna construction. kāna is not a verb that reaches from one thing to another […]. You say: ‘Abdallah was your brother’, so you wanted to inform [i.e. predicate] about being brothers and therefore you used kāna in order to make it in the past tense (kāna laysa bi-fiʿl yaṣilu min šayʾin ʾilā ʾāḫar […] taqūlu kāna ʿabdullāh ʾaḫāka fa-ʾinnamā ʾaradta ʾan tuḫbira ʿan al-ʾuḫuwwa wa-ʾadḫalta kāna li-tajʿala ḏālika fīmā maḍā) The term yanfuḏ is employed to refer to the action going from the verb to its direct object, but is then used sporadically to refer to other intransitive verbs with other accusative complements (Kitāb i, 37), which makes it difficult to claim that the term is connected with the notion of transitivity or specifically with 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 the first time the category of non-real verbs. Verbs are clearly described as those lexical items that are capable of providing certain syntactic and morphological functions. Thus, kāna ‘to be’ and its sisters, the verbs of admiration (altaʿajjub), and those particles that only resemble verbs in their meaning, such as mā when it has the meaning of laysa, are all considered by al-Mubarrad to be non-real verbs. Real verbs, on the other hand, are categorized as either transitive or intransitive (Muqtaḍab iii, 188–190). Intransitive verbs are of three kinds: the morphological pattern of faʿula and infaʿala, in addition to the socalled ‘metaphorical’ verbs, such as māta ‘to die’ and saqaṭa ‘to fall’. For this last kind in particular, it is obvious that the role of agency is central to verb classification. 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-Mubarrad to be a metaphorical verb (Muqtaḍab iii, 188). The category of transitive verbs includes 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 syntactically behave in the same manner, yet, their categorization depends on reasons other than syntactic ones. Regarding the status of the direct object, al-Mubarrad states that it is implied by 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’s Muqtaḍab

together form a complete sentence (for which the term jumla appears for the first time in al-Muqtaḍab), and that the object is introduced after the sentence has been completed (Muqtaḍab i, 146): The agent [i.e., the subject of the verb] is in the nominative case because together with the verb it forms a sentence after which one could appropriately stop, and whose meaning is fulfilled (wa-ʾinnamā kāna l-fāʿil rafʿan li-ʾannahu huwa wa-l-fiʿl jumla yaḥsunu ʿalayhā l-sukūt wa-tajibu bihā lfāʾida) Although he uses the term faḍla to refer to any item that is included in the sentence beyond its verb and agent, he indirectly implies that the direct object is in fact different. Al-Mubarrad uses the term faḍla to refer to all accusative complements of the verb, making clear that they are additional items in the jumla, while at the same time emphasizing the fact that transitive verbs imply the existence of a mafʿūl bihi (Muqtaḍab i, 146; iii, 116; iv, 335). Al-Mubarrad uses the term wāṣil to refer to a group of transitive verbs. It refers consistently to a binding effect that the verb’s denotation has in reaching and affecting its patient. The term muʾaṯṯir is only used once in the Muqtaḍab, but wāṣala is used throughout the discussion of transitivity, though not always consistently, to refer to a domain other than syntax. The term mutaʿaddī, however, continues to be the term for syntactic transitivity and continues to be used to refer to the ability of the verb to govern accusative nouns in its domain.

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The confusion is clear when verbs such as ḏakara and šatama are called ġayr wāṣila. We shall see below that al-Zajjājī considers them to be wāṣila, but not muʾaṯṯira. In the discussion of verb classification in the Muqtaḍab, verb denotation begins to play an important role. In an earlier period, Sībawayhi had classified both ḍaraba and ḏakara as transitive verbs, and he had not initiated any further subdivision of these two transitive verbs. The reference to one as wāṣila and the other as not wāṣila was an innovation of al-Mubarrad. For him, the physical effect and the representation of the act were of importance. Therefore, he not only 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 and ġayr muʾaṯṯira verbs. From his classification of verbs, it can be seen that al-Mubarrad represents both continuity, and innovation. His innovation consists in introducing new terms that could easily fit in a semantic analysis of verbal structures where the verb 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-real verbs become more restrictive. A real verb denotes a certain meaning whereby its agent carries out the action denoted by it causatively, i.e., it causes the action/event to take place. Such arguments are not clearly formulated in alMubarrad’s explanations. According to Ibn al-Sarrāj, if the agent is not actually causing 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 for conciseness, and in them is an indication that their agents are in fact the acted upon [i.e., their objects], such as ‘Zayd died’, ‘the wall fell down’, and ‘Bakr got sick’ (al-ḍarb al-ʾawwal: ʾafʿāl mustaʿāra li-l-ʾiḫtiṣār wa-fīhā bayān ʾanna fāʿilīhā fī l-ḥaqīqa mafʿūlūna naḥwa māta zayd wa-saqaṭa l-ḥāʾiṭ wamariḍa bakr). Verbs are first divided into the two large categories of whether or not they actually come in contact with any other entity than the agent (see Fig. 3). The term mulāqiya is widely used by Ibn al-Sarrāj to refer to the type of action involved in the meaning of the verb. Verbs are then categorized according to whether or not they are transitive, but more 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

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shape their transitivity (see Fig. 4). The terms wāṣil and muʾaṯṯir come to be very important in this classification. Regarding the status of the direct object, Ibn al-Sarrāj considers the mafʿūl bihi to be an intrinsic part of the transitive verb’s semantic entity, since “there is always an implication of it within [the verb]” (hunāka dalīlun ʿalayhi, ʾUṣūl i, 412). The term faḍla is used, but it is restricted to the linear structure of the sentence, i.e., it refers to accusative complements that may appear after the verb. Ibn al-Sarrāj continues to use the term wāṣil to refer to the direct object in a strict sense, while using the term mutaʿaddī to refer to the syntactic features of the verb and its ability to operate on noun complements. His classification, although very similar to al-Mubarrad’s, includes new subdivisions that further emphasize the semantic features of actions and events denoted by verbs. Interestingly, Ibn al-Sarrāj does talk about transitivity by using several levels of analysis, employing both old and new terminology. His Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl features a consistent approach of the use of couplets of terms such as wāṣil and mutaʿaddī. This is apparent in how he subcategorizes the mutaʿaddiya verbs as either wāṣila or wāṣila wa-muʾaṯṯira. As far as syntax is concerned, all of these represent transitive verbs with direct objects. The sub-categorization here does not yield any additional syntactic information, but rather adds to the semantic description of verbs and highlights the verbs’ effect on their noun complements.

4

Al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949)

With respect to the classification of verbs, there is a clearer change in direction manifest 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 to the meaning conveyed by the verbs and how he distinguishes this meaning from the verb’s syntactic behavior. In his Kitāb al-Jumal, al-Zajjājī was clearly interested in explaining how the different syntactic categories behave in terms of the ʾiʿrāb. The bulk of the book is dedicated to the different syntactic rules and case endings. On the other hand, the swift description of the verb in his Kitāb al-ʾīḍāḥ fī ʿilal al-nahw and the intensity of the logical arguments whereby the linguistic representation of the syntactic structure becomes involved with the verbal structure, marks clearly the convoluted picture painted by al-Zajjājī (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299). The term mutaʿaddī is used in the Jumal to refer to the act of ‘going beyond the 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 not be called mutaʿaddī. The syntactic test for transitivity is according to al-Zajjājī the possibility to derive the ism mafʿūl. Thus, if from jalasa ‘to sit down’, we are not in fact able to derive majlūs to refer to an item in the sentence, then the verb is intransitive. On the other hand, in ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’, it is possible to say that the maḍrūb is ʿAmr, which demonstrates that ḍaraba is transitive (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299): Thus, the one that is intransitive is the one that no passive participle is derived from […], such as the verbs ‘to sit’ and ‘to stand’ […] and the opposite of this is the transitive verb from which a passive participle may be derived and about which you may inquire whom the action befell, as in ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’. Don’t you see that it is possible to derive from it passive participle, so that it is possible to say maḍrūb ‘[one who has been] hit’, and it is possible to inquire whom the action of hitting befell? ( fa-llaḏī lā yataʿaddā huwa llaḏī lā yubnā minhu ism mafʿūl […] naḥwa jalasa wa-qāma […] wa-l-mutaʿaddī ʿaksuhu wa-huwa llaḏī yubnā minhu ism mafʿūl wa-yuṣbiḥu l-suʾāl ʿanhu biʾayy šayʾ waqaʿa naḥwa ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran; ʾa-lā tarā ʾannahu yaṣiḥhu ʾan tabniya minhu ism al-mafʿūl fa-yuqālu maḍrūb wa-yuqālu bi -ʾayy šayʾ waqaʿa ḍarb zayd?)

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According to al-Zajjājī (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 299), the transitive verb may be divided into three types. The first type is the one that is transitive directly to the object as in the two verbs ḍaraba and ḏakara. He does, however, make a distinction between these two verbs, in that the sentence ḍaraba zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’ refers to an action that befalls ʿAmr, whereas in the sentence ḏakara zaydun ʿamran ‘Zayd mentioned ʿAmr’, one cannot see anything befalling ʿAmr. Al-Zajjājī explains that in fact there is an understood muḍāf : ʾamr ‘the matter of’, so that the sentence should read ḏakara zaydun ʾamra ʿamrin ‘Zayd mentioned 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 when the verb is transitive by means of a preposition. The justification here is that the verb actually does not settle or befall the object, as in marartu bi-zaydin ‘I passed by Zayd’ or ḥaḍartu ʾilā ʿamrin ‘I came to ʿAmr’. Neither verb manifests an action happening to the two objects. The third category is the transitive verb that is optionally used with a preposition. There are also two passages where he speaks directly of the verb transitivity when he introduces some morphological 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 was never entirely deserted by subsequent grammarians. From the above, it is obvious that the way al-Zajjājī classifies verbs according to their (in)transitivity takes a quite different approach from that of Ibn alSarrāj. Although he set syntactic criteria for the three categories of transitive verbs, he included in his presentation some explanation of why the verbs ḏakara and ḍaraba are in the same category, although they feature a different effect 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 comes as an obvious contradiction to Ibn al-Sarrāj, who included causation or effect as a criterion for transitivity. Following a radically different argument, al-Zajjājī addresses actions and their doers in the ʾĪḍāḥ in a few places. For him (ʾĪḍāḥ 53), verbs are the representation of the movements of their agents (ʿibāra ʿan ḥarakāt al-faʿilīn), but they are not in reality their actions (ʾafʿāl). Rather, they are an expression (= representation) of their agents’ actions and a representation of the actions of those expressing these verbs (al-muʿabbirīn ʿan tilka l-ʾafʿāl). He adds that the existence of the doer precedes the existence of the action, because it is he who did the action. Thus, al-Zajjājī makes a difference between the sentences as ‘representations of events’ and their semantic denotations and he emphasizes that these two should not be confused. What is on the surface syntactic structure has nothing to do with agency or patience as represented physically in real life.

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With respect to the status of the direct object, although al-Zajjajī states that the 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 case ending 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 terminology as it first appeared in Sībawayhi’s Kitab. This non-specificity had been challenged and more specific terminology started to appear with al-Mubarrad. This terminology was elaborated and applied extensively to semantic relations in 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 holding two distinctive views of verb classification. In his Jumal, he mostly uses syntactic arguments to explain the linear word order and the ʾiʿrāb, while in the ʾĪḍāḥ, he goes beyond the linear level to explain ‘causes’, which are in many ways far from being syntactic ones. The categorization of verbs into real and unreal as introduced by both alMubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj, was not part of al-Zajjājī’s classification. However, the absence of the terms ḥaqīqiyya and ġayr ḥaqīqiyya should not be taken as an indication of his ignoring verb denotations. It might very well be an extension of how he philosophically looked at the denotation of verbs as representations of their agents’ actions, hence, the immaterial character of the ḥaqīqī vs. not ḥaqīqī binary division. These categories, however, later reappeared in al-Sirāfī’s and al-Jurjāni’s treatises. Other significant terminology did re-appear in alZajjaji’s works. In discussing transitive verbs, he used the term yaṣilu from the verb waṣala to refer to the binding of the action to the object. He also continued 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 is transitive (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 303). However, he did not include this as a clear category when transitive vs. intransitive verbs were introduced. In later parts of the book, al-Zajjājī starts using the term yataʿaddā ʾilā to refer to all verbs, whether transitive or intransitive, having accusative noun complements other than the direct object (in Ibn ʿUṣfūr, Šarḥ i, 324). A statement that stands in direct contradiction to an earlier statement confining the term mutaʿaddī to transitive 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) and al-Jurjānī choose to distinguish verbs from the other parts of speech on the basis of their grammatical qualities and their functions. There emerges a clear

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distinction between the purpose for which verbs are introduced into the sentence and the syntactic functions these verbs perform. The involvement of the meaning conveyed by the verbs becomes more and more peripheral compared to their syntactic role, as the explanation of their function proceeds in the Muqtaṣid. Several items from the terminology used by al-Jurjānī’s predecessors have survived, but not always with the same weight given to the semantic side, as has become apparent in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s discussion in particular. Both al-Sīrāfī and al-Jurjānī agree that the verb is what predicates, but does not itself receive a predicate (mā kāna musnadan wa-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 the verb’s agent as the item on which the verb ‘leans’ ( yusnadu ʾilayhi), assuming a distinctive role of the agent in causing the action to happen. Agency with alJurjānī starts to be explained along somewhat different lines. He says (Muqtaṣid i, 327): It is not necessary for the agent actually to do something. Don’t you see that you say ṭāba l-ḫabar ‘the message was good’, when the ḫabar does not have an action as there is one for Zayd in qāma zaydun ‘Zayd got up’. Likewise, you say lam yaqum zaydun ‘Zayd didn’t get up’, marking it as nominative, even though you have negated its action … If it were a condition for being an agent to carry out an action, it would not have been allowed 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 ṭāba l-ḫabar wa-laysa li-l-ḫabar fiʿlun kamā yakūnu li-zaydin fī qawlika qāma zaydun wa-kaḏā taqūlu lam yaqum zaydun fa-tarfaʿuhu wa-qad nafayta ʿanhu l-fiʿla … fa-law kāna li-l-fāʿil min šarṭihi ʾan yakūna ʾaḥdaṯa šayʾan lamā jāza rafʿ zaydin fī qawlika lam yaqum zaydun). Thus, receiving the nominative case takes priority in al-Jurjānī’s argument over the role of the agent in fulfilling the action denoted by its verb. The agent is seen as an intrinsic element of the verb whereas the causation element does not carry any syntactic implications. Al-Jurjānī also argues that there is a distinction between the lexical meaning and the abstract meaning and explains that the agent is contained in the verb, as in zayd ḍaraba ‘Zayd hit’, meaning that the verb itself indicates and encompasses the agent, while the mafʿūl is not contained in it. The argument is purely syntactic and refers to the ʾalif at the end of the dual verb ḍarabā ‘the two 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 say ḍarabaka ‘he hit you’, -ka is only connected to the verb at the lexical level, not at the abstract or maʿnawī level. This syntactic argument aims at illustrating the difference between the fāʿil as the recipient of the nominative case, while the mafʿūl 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 original ḥadd of the verb, while the mafʿūl is attached to the word or is referred to by a 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 apparent when al-Jurjānī places verbs in the same category that were treated by Ibn al-Sarrāj as belonging to different categories. He draws an analogy between the admirative verb ( fiʿl al-taʿajjub), which has the pattern ʾafʿala and the verb ʾaḏhaba (Form iv ‘to make someone go’). In his argument, the taʿajjub verb is fiʿl manqūl, i.e., derived by the addition of a hamza, which changes the Form i verb to Form iv. Thus, the fiʿl al-taʿajjub is treated with respect to transitivity in the same manner as morphologically causative just like any other Form iv verb derived from Form i. The specificity of the fiʿl al-taʿajjub, as introduced by Ibn al- Sarrāj, is lost completely in al-Jurjānī’s classification of verbs. To illustrate his point, al-Jurjānī cites the analogy between the admirative and the causative verb (Muqtaṣid i, 384): The expression mā ʾaḥsana zaydan ‘How good is Zayd!’ has the same status as ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan ‘ʿAmr made Zayd go away’, in that you derive it from the verb ḥasuna with the meaning of šayʾun jaʿalahu ḥasanan ‘something caused him to be good’, just like ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan means jaʿalahu ḏāhiban ‘he caused him to be going away’ ( fa-qawluka mā ʾaḥsana zaydan bi-manzilat ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan fī ʾannaka naqaltahu min ḥasuna bi-maʿnā šayʾun jaʿalahu ḥasanan kamā ʾanna ʿamrun ʾaḏhaba zaydan bi maʿnā jaʿalahu ḏāhiban). Here, it is clear that verbs are discussed as structural units, irrespective of whether or not they denote actions or experience. Another parallel is made between two verbs that also formed two different types 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 are doubly transitive. Once again, al-Jurjānī resorts to a morphological argument to 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

figure 6

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The classification of verbs in al-Jurjānī’s Muqtaṣid

manipulation/dealing (ʿilāj), i.e. action verbs, or not (ġayr ʿilāj), i.e. non-action verbs. The ʿilāj category includes verbs like ḍaraba ‘to hit’, qatala ‘to kill’, ʾaḫaḏa ‘to take’, kasara ‘to break’, and naqala ‘to move away’, while the ġayr ʿilāj category includes verbs like ʿalima ‘to know’, ẓanna ‘to assume’, fahima ‘to understand’, ḏakara ‘to mention’, and hawiya ‘to love’, which are all experiential verbs (Muqtaṣid i, 596). Al-Jurjānī explains that the term ʿilāj implies that the verbs are those of the limbs ( jawāriḥ), including eyes, hand, legs, and tongue. Every act done with 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 agree with their predecessors that all verbs of the limbs are transitive. What does not involve ʿilāj are the verbs of cognition and whatever behaves in the same manner, such as hawītuhu ‘I fell in love with him’ and fahimtuhu ‘I understood him’, because of the lack of physical evidence these actions effect. Such verbs are rather ‘indicated by circumstances’, i.e., state verbs as in ‘to love’ and ‘to understand’. It is worth mentioning that the dichotomy of ʿilāj vs. non-ʿilāj does not only refer to verbs that are transitive to only one mafʿūl, because kasā ‘to cover [s.th. with s.th.]’ is considered to involve ʿilāj while being doubly transitive. Although al-Jurjānī states that the mafʿūl bihi comes after the thought is completed, he believes that the transitive verb meets the requirement by including a direct object. Once this requirement has been met, the transitive verb acts like an intransitive one in that it starts to be ‘transitive’ (mutaʿaddī) to the other accusatives, such as, time, place, maṣdar, ḥāl, etc. (Muqtaṣid i, 628f.). Al-Jurjānī explains, however, that the direct object as in ʾaʿṭaytu zaydan aldirhama ‘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 like zayd and dirham are object of the verb in the former sentence. Yet, there is a difference between the two sets of objects: Don’t you see that the giving includes the dirham, while the hitting in ḍarabtu zaydan al-ḍarba ‘I hit Zayd a beating’ is not like that, because it does not resemble zayd in having the verb ḍaraba encompassing it (ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna l-ʾiʿṭāʾ yaštamilu ʿalā l-dirham wa-l-ḍarb laysa ka-ḏālika liʾannahu 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 is different from that of other noun complements, such as the cognate accusative in this case. If we compare the two structures in (1a, b) (1) a. ḍarab-tu zayd-an al-ḍarb-a hit.past-1s Zayd-acc art-hitting-acc ‘I hit Zayd a beating’ b. ʾaʿṭay-tu zayd-an al-dirham-a give.past-1s Zayd-acc art-dirham-acc ‘I gave Zayd a dirham’ we see that in (1a) the verb ḍaraba is involved only with zayd, while in (1b), the verb 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 to have an effect and to encompass a different number of noun complements depending on its denotation (Muqtaṣid i, 352). Expressions such as ʾawṣalta al-fiʿl ʾilā l-ism, nāfiḏ ʾilā l-mafʿūl (Sībawayhi’s terminology, as well as al- Sīrāfī’s) are used frequently to refer to the relationship between the verb and the noun complements. The two expressions are used to refer to the use of Form iv verbs as opposed to Form i and thus causing the derived verb to ‘reach’ an object as in ḏahaba vs. ʾaḏhaba. The argument here includes other consonants than the hamza. For example, the bāʾ in ḏahabtu bizaydin as well as the doubling of the second consonant of the root in Form ii farraḥa ‘to make happy’ as opposed to the intransitive Form i verb fariḥa ‘to be glad’ Thus, al-Jurjānī argues that the doubling of the ḥ transfers the verb to a transitive verb as in farraḥtu zaydan ‘I made Zayd happy’. The three examples are discussed in the same section dealing with the consonants that make the verb ‘reach, go into’ an object (Muqtaṣid i, 347).

classification of the verb in the arab grammatical tradition

figure 7

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Valency relations in sentences (1a, b)

In general, the term waṣṣala appears in al-Muqtaṣid only a few times. AlJurjānī says that with phrasal verbs, the preposition is sometimes omitted and the verb reaches or goes into the accusative complements directly (Muqtaṣid i, 643). It it not entirely clear anymore what the terms ʾawṣala and naffaḏa mean in this context, and whether or not they still represent the semantic role of the verb as they did for his predecessors. What is obvious, though, is that the term wāṣil has completely disappeared as implying a semantic quality of some transitive verbs.

6

Conclusion

From Sībawayhi to al-Jurjānī, there have been signs of continuity and signs of convergence. Each grammarian had his own approach in representing the inter-sentential relationships between the different constituents in verbal constructions. Although they basically agreed on the different features and roles of the different syntactic categories, their treatment of verb transitivity, and consequently on the effect of the verb on the different noun complements did vary from one grammarian to the other. We have seen above that greater interest in the semantic denotation of the verb gradually appeared from the time of Sībawayhi onward, reaching its peak in the 4th/10th century with the way Ibn al-Sarrāj classified verbs. Although the view of the verb as the source of effect on its surrounding continued into the writings of subsequent grammarians, we find that a different tradition had emerged with al -Zajjājī’s effort to separate semantic arguments from syntactic ones. The fact that he composed two 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 significant arguments with respect to verb valency, it has become clear that there was an increasing effort to keep the arguments within the domain of syntax. With al- Jurjānī’s contribution, the view of what syntax was, got somewhat altered for he emphasized the role of meaning in what he called ‘syntactic functions’ (maʿānī l-naḥw), which encompassed the intended meaning, and he showed how syntactic relations provided the means to convey them. On that level, the significance of the whole utterance, rather than the verbal element, became the heart of the linguistic analysis.

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Bibliographical References a

Primary Sources

Ibn al-Sarrāj, ʾUṣūl = ʿAbū Bakr Muḥammad 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 alʾAmal, 1984. Jurjānī, Muqtaṣid = ʾAbū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad alJurjānī, al-Muqtaṣid fī šarḥ al-ʾĪḍāḥ. Ed. by Kāẓim al-Marjān. Baghdad: Wizārat alṮaqāfa wa-l-ʾIʿlām, 1982. Mubarrad, Muqtaḍab = ʾAbū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-ʾAzdī al-Mubarrad, alMuqtaḍab. 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 ʿAbd al-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 Sources

Owens, Jonathan. 1990. Early Arabic grammatical theory: Heterogeneity and standardization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Taha, Zeinab. 1993. “The term ṣila in early Arab grammatical theory: The case of Ibn al-Sarrāj”. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Arabic Lexicology and Lexicography, 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 of ibn al-Sarrāj’s ʾuṣūl fil-naḥw”. Multiple Perspectives on the Historical Dimensions of Language, ed. by Kurt Jankowsky, 281–289. Munster: Nodus Publikationen. Taha, Zeinab. 2008. “Mafʿūl”. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. by Mushira Eid a.o., iii, 100–106. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Taha, Zeinab. 2009. “Taʿaddī”. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. by Mushira Eid a.o., iv, 410–416. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Taha, Zeinab Ahmed. 2011. Development of Arab grammatical thought from the 2nd to the 4th century of Hijra (In Arabic). Cairo: Maktabat al-ʾĀdāb. Versteegh, Kees. 1995. The explanation of linguistic causes: Al-Zajjāji’s theory of grammar. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Learning Arabic in the Islamic World Kees Versteegh

1

Learning Arabic: The Curriculum

In his autobiography al-ʾAyyām, Taha Hussein (1889–1973) recounts his early education in the Azhar, including the grammatical treatises he had to learn by heart, among them the ʾĀjurrūmiyya by Ibn ʾĀjurrūm (d. 723/1323) and the ʾAlfiyya by Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274).1 Children like the young Taha Hussein grow up speaking an Arabic dialect as their mother tongue, which no doubt helps them to some extent to make sense of the texts they are memorizing. The present paper will be about learning Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. It is difficult to imagine how children who do not speak Arabic can learn the language by memorizing texts that are well-nigh incomprehensible to them. The difference between teaching Arabic to first and second language learners is formidable, yet it turns out that in many respects the curriculum used all over the Islamic world is remarkably similar, regardless of the students’ mother tongues. This similarity may be explained by the status of Arabic, especially in the East. Zadeh (2012) has shown how the use of Persian translations, even of the Qurʾān, was much more widespread than has commonly been assumed. In the eastern part of the empire Ḥanafī scholars and Sufi travellers alike propagated the new creed in the indigenous languages from the beginning of the daʿwa. Interlinear translation of the Qurʾān and Persian exegesis of the Qurʾān were widespread in schools and universities all over the eastern provinces (Zadeh 2012:282); sometimes, Persian was even used for liturgical purposes. This does not mean that Arabic was no longer learnt in these parts. Islamic scholars, from al-Šāfiʿī (d. 204/820) to Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), had made it very clear that learning Arabic was one of the obligations any Muslim had to fulfill (Zadeh 2012:80, 124, 128). Yet, especially in the eastern Islamic world, though Arabic was the “favoured mode of written communication” in scholarship, Persian was the current language of oral instruction (Zadeh 2012:41). Arabic was

1 See van Gelder (1995:103). On the teaching of grammar in the educational system at the Azhar see also Gesink (2009:30).

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learnt primarily as a dead language.2 Precisely because of this, knowledge of Arabic became one of the principal hallmarks of scholarship (Zadeh 2012:408) in the East and the level of knowledge of Arabic grammar was reputedly much higher here than in the West, at least according to the testimony of the Arab traveller al-Maqdisī, who visited Persia in 374/984 (Zadeh 2012:373). Unfortunately, we do not have at our disposal much information concerning the methods with which students learnt Arabic. For the older period, such information is completely lacking as far as the elementary stages of education are concerned. Biographies of scholars do not normally enlighten us about their early training. Even when we know that children received special training, as in the case of the young Mamluks in Egypt (Haarmann 1988), we do not know exactly how they became proficient in Arabic. During the Mamluk period in 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 political matters, they still strove after a classical education for their children in which Arabic held an important place.3 Some of the higher Mamluk functionaries even became grammarians, and we may assume that grammatical treatises formed part of their curriculum, but we have no information about the texts with which they learned Arabic. From the 19th century onwards more information is available. The curriculum described by Taha Hussein resembles that of schools throughout the Islamic world outside the Arabic-speaking countries, as illustrated by the universal popularity of the two main treatises mentioned by him, the ʾĀjurrūmiyya and the ʾAlfiyya, and their commentaries.4 It seems that madāris all over the Islamic world used these treatises. The limitation in our information pertains to 2 This does not seem to have changed in the modern period; Iranian students of Arabic in Tehran apparently do not learn Arabic as a living language, at least that is what the observations by von Maltzahn (2013, ch. 6) suggest. 3 On the grammatical training of the Mamluks see Mahamid (2011); Mauder (2012). See also Flemming (1977) about the writing exercises some of the young Mamluks had to write during their training. 4 For a detailed analysis of the pedagogical set-up of the ʾAlfiyya see Viain (2014:228–253); she regards the ʾAlfiyya as “une version parallèle de classements antérieurs dans une optique plus 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 to the preceding tradition, Viain characterizes them as the product of “une tradition andalouse privilégiant, dans l’organisation des données, l’efficacité pédagogique, parfois au détriment de la logique théorique”. As such, they do not follow the innovatory classifications of alZamaḫšarī’s (d. 538/1144) Mufaṣṣal, but return to texts by earlier grammarians, notably Ibn al-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 table 1

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Arabic grammatical texts used in Indonesian pesantrens in the 19th century (after van den Berg 1886)

Author

Arabic title

Ibn ʾĀjurrūm (d. 723/1323) al-Ruʿayni al-Ḫaṭṭāb (d. 954/1547)

al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya al-Mutammima (supplement to al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya) al-Durra al-Bahiyya (versification of al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya) commentary on al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya al-ʿAwāmil al-miʾa commentary on ʿAwāmil (starting with the words ʾinna ʾawlā) al-ʾAlfiyya Šarḥ al-ʾAlfiyya Tamrīn al-ṭullāb (commentary on al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya) al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw Qaṭr al-nadā

al-ʾImrīṭī/ʿAmrīṭī (fl. 989/1581)5 Ḥasan al-Kafrāwī (d. 1202/1787) ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) anonymous Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1272) Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 769/1367) al-ʾAzharī (d. 905/1499) Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1360)

the fact that, although we have extensive lists of books used in teaching grammar, theology, law, and even Sufism, these titles do not tell us how children learned Arabic and, in particular, how proficient they became in Arabic. Roughly at the same time that Taha Hussein received his schooling, students in Indonesian pesantrens and East African vyuo (plural of chuo) studied the same texts in roughly the same order. According to a report from the 1880s, commissioned by the Dutch government in the Dutch East Indies (van den Berg 1886), education in Indonesian pesantrens took place on the basis of a small number of fundamental textbooks (see Table 1). Specifically with respect to grammar, Drewes (1971) distinguishes between what he calls the ‘native type’ of instruction and the ‘Meccan style’. In the former, no grammar is taught at all, so that the students’ understanding of the text is strictly limited to the memorized translation of the Arabic text. In the Meccan 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).

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taries. In the case of the ʾAlfiyya the main commentaries studied in Indonesia 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 commentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya are those by al-ʾAzharī, al-Kafrāwī (d. 1207/1787), and ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān (see below). A few commentaries or glosses were written locally, among them the commentaries by the Banten scholar Muḥammad Nawawī (d. 1897, van Bruinessen 1990:236, n. 20) and the gloss on Daḥlān’s commentary by Muḥammad Maʿṣūm ibn Sālim from Semarang (Drewes 1971:69). The basic texts of the old-fashioned pesantrens have remained popular in present-day Indonesia, where they continue to be reprinted in the so-called ‘yellow books’ (kitab kuning, van Bruinessen 1990, 1994). Concerning grammatical teaching, van Bruinessen (1990:241–243) states that the normal order in which grammar is studied starts with an elementary treatise on ṣarf, such as al-Bināʾ wa-l-ʾasās by Mullā ʿAbdallāh al-Danqarī (date of death unknown) or ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Zanjānī’s (d. 654/1257) al-Taṣrīf al-ʿIzzī, and then progresses with an elementary treatise on naḥw, such as al-ʿAwāmil al-miʾa by ʿAbd al-Qāhir alJurjānī (d. 471/1078) or the ʾĀjurrūmiyya. Van Bruinessen (1990:241) stresses the fact that these treatises are the first introduction to Arabic grammar all over the eastern Islamic world, from Kurdistan to Sumatra and Java. After the introductory texts students continue either with commentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya or directly with the ʾAlfiyya and the commentary on it by Ibn ʿAqīl. Another popular work that has remained in use in contemporary pesantrens is Ibn Hišām’s Qaṭr al-nadā. The classical canon is not absolute and immutable, however. Van Bruinessen (1990:263) presents data on forty-six pesantrens; among them five have shifted to the Qawāʿid al-luġa, which were introduced in the Egyptian school reform at the end of the 19th century (see below), and four to al-Naḥw al-wāḍiḥ (see below). For East Africa, Loimeier (2009:169–170) describes the educational system in Zanzibar, which was organized around basic introductory texts, studied by all students, and specialized texts in various disciplines. The student learned the basic texts, the so-called ʾummahāt by heart, while the teacher explained the text with the help of commentaries. In the field of grammar, the students began 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.

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– Mullā ʿAbdallāh al-Danqarī, Matn al-bināʾ wa-l-ʾasās (with the commentary by 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 – Ibn Mālik, Lāmiyyat al-ʾafʿāl (with the commentary by Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad 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 in Zanzibar (1870–1888), Arabic literacy became increasingly important in this region because of the growth of the bureaucracy, which required a large number of employees being able to read and write Arabic. This necessitated a more intensive way of teaching Arabic (Bang 2014:112–116). Bang connects this development with the expansion of the Sufi brotherhoods in the late 1800s. The main introductory book was the ʾĀjurrūmiyya with the Šarḥ by ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān; an older commentary, whose copies may be found in the East-African libraries, is that by al-ʾAzharī.7 The second most important book was 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 grammatical treatises were also written in East Africa itself, e.g. the Šarḥ tarbiyat al-ʾaṭfāl bi-taṣrīf al-ʾafʿāl by Muḥyī l-Dīn al-Qaḥṭānī (d. 1227/1869; Bang 2014:116), which is a commentary on his own poem Tarbiyat al-ʾaṭfāl. A second example is a summary of Ibn Hišām’s al-ʾIʿrāb ʿan qawāʿid al-ʾiʿrāb by Muṣabbiḥ ibn Sālim ibn Muṣabbiḥ al-Barwānī from Brava (date of death unknown), entitled Mirqāt

7 Al-ʾAzharī also wrote a commentary on Ibn Hišām’s commentary on the ʾAlfiyya, entitled alTaṣrīḥ ʿalā l-Tawḍīḥ.

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al-ʾiʿrāb (Muḫtaṣar fī ṣarf wa-naḥw). Its main interest lies in the fact that after presenting the material of the grammar, this summary contains a set of questions and answers clearly intended for young students. In the extreme West of the Maghreb, the Sous region was part of the Arabicspeaking world, yet, the local scholars spoke Berber as well as Arabic. Van den Boogert (1997) describes the elementary education in this region on the basis of three accounts in Berber, dating from the middle of the 20th century, by Muḥammad al-Muḫtār al-Sūsī and Sī ʾIbrāhīm al-Kunkī. The most interesting part of these accounts is the description of the more advanced stage, after the memorization of the Qurʾān. At this stage, the students continue with the study of Arabic grammar, the first of the Arabic sciences they have to master (van den 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 of other grammatical treatises, of which al-Kunkī mentions Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd alMuʿṭī al-Zawāwī’s (d. 628/1231) al-Durra al-ʾAlfiyya, and two treatises by Ibn Mālik, al-ʾAlfiyya and Lāmiyyat al-ʾafʿāl. In West Africa, from Mauritania to Mali and Niger, the curriculum for learning Arabic was highly homogeneous, and the textbooks used were largely identical.8 In the numerous madrasas of Timbuktu, one of the largest centres of Islamic learning in this area, grammatical instruction took up an important part of a scholar’s education, and proficiency in Arabic was highly regarded (Saad 1983:74f.). Grammar was studied together with the text of the Qurʾān and even before tafsīr. Several commentaries on the ʾĀjurrūmiyya were written by local scholars, for instance the one by al-Sayyid ʾAḥmad ibn ʾAndʾAġ-Muḥammad (d. 1054/1635), al-Futūḥ al-Qayūmiyya fī šarḥ al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya, copies of which have been found in Egypt and Morocco. Locally, it remained in use up till the end of the 19th century. In addition to the ʾĀjurrūmiyya and its commentaries, the second basic text taught and commented in Timbuktu was Ibn Mālik’s ʾAlfiyya with its auto-commentary Tashīl al-fawāʾid alnaḥwiyya. Even though the list of fundamental texts is roughly the same all over the Islamic world, there seems to have been a certain amount of regional distribution. 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-nusūḫ man ʾaḫaḏtu ʿanhu min al-šuyūḫ by Abdallahi dan Fodio (d. 1829), contain valuable information on the books these scholars studied. For the books used in grammatical instruction see Hall and Stewart (2011:120–123).

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(d. 646/1249) al-Kāfiya fī l-naḥw, Sartori (2013:68) notes that these commentaries are concentrated in the Turco-Iranian and Central-Asian region, which suggests that this treatise was more popular in the Islamic East than in the Maghreb and in West Africa.9 In their study of the core curriculum in West Africa, Hall and Stewart (2011:123) remark on the absence of the Kāfiya in the autobiographical accounts of West African scholars: in spite of copies of the treatise and its commentaries in the libraries, the text does not seem to have been part of the curriculum in this region. Conversely, the most popular treatise in the West, the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, does not seem to have been very popular in South Asia, at least it does not figure in the list of grammar books mentioned by Rahman (2008:509) for the Dars-i Nizami, the traditional Islamic curriculum, whose establishment is attributed to 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 Ḥamza 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

10

On Sunniforum, about which see below, one member (Faqeeh An-Nafs) posts the order of grammatical treatises in India as he remembers it from the dars Nizamy, which he claims derives from Mulla Nizam ud-Deen: Nahwa meer (= al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī, Naḥw-i Mīr), 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 versions of it, like the Hidāyat al-naḥw, are indeed much more popular than elsewhere http://www .sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2710.html: “It seems that the Kafiyah is not normally studied in the Arab world and it is mainly studied in the Indian Subcontient”. Mīr was the title of some aristocratic leaders in India; it is also used as a honorific title for a 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-Šarīf al-Jurjānī) – al-Šarīf al-Jurjānī, Naḥw-i Mīr Through the migration of Indian/Pakistani scholars to Africa and Europe, some of the specifically Indian Arabic grammatical texts also became popular outside South Asia, e.g. the commentary on the Kāfiya by Mullā Jāmī.

3

Learning Arabic: The Method

The most obvious feature of Islamic learning in general is its emphasis on memorization of the learnt materials, linguistic education being no exception.11 Eickelman (1978:489) analyzes this method, especially in the Islamic West, and remarks on its role in fixing knowledge: “The cultural idea of religious knowledge has remained remarkably constant over time throughout the regions of Islamic influence”. He goes on to state that this aspect of the transmission of religious knowledge in no way “prevents the emergence of an intellectual elite that 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 intended to foster an ideal of individual searching for the truth, but was meant as a guarantee that the student would more easily memorize the texts they studied. Students were expected to understand to some extent the contents of these texts, or rather, their grammatical structure. Yet, understanding the texts was not the primary goal of the traditional educational system, and it was not regarded as a necessary condition for memorization (see also Wagner 1993:47). In the discussions in the first half of the 20th century about the role of Arabic in the educational system of colonial Zanzibar, for instance, the opinion was expressed that students do not need to understand the meaning of the texts as long as they learn them by heart (Loimeier 2009:289–338). Even today on the internet, a popular wiki advises boys striving to become a ḥāfiẓ to concentrate on memorizing the text: it helps to know the meaning of the text, but this is not regarded as essential.12 Indeed, the advice states, it is part of the miraculous nature of the Qurʾān that one can recite the text without understanding it.

11 12

On the use of mnemotechnical strategies in learning grammar see Fortier (1993:243 f.). http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Hafiz; downloaded 10.02.18.

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Eickelman explains the permanent character of the canon in the religious sciences by the fact that “knowledge was considered to be fixed and memorizable” (1978:511). Teachers were, therefore, not free to change the form or content of their instruction and had to stick to the established canon. In the Moroccan educational system, independent study of texts was not generally regarded as something praiseworthy. In the Indian madrasas, too, students were actively discouraged from reading Arabic books that were not in the curriculum (Sikand 2008:55). As a result of the general reluctance to introduce new texts in the curriculum and the fact that most language teaching was text-based, it became hard to change anything at all, either in the subjects taught, or in the didactics of language teaching. In assessing the value of the old-fashioned ḥalqa system of teaching in Malaysia, Ab. Rahim Bin hj. Ismail (1993:7) states: The success rate of Halqah system in producing students with a good command of Arabic is extremely limited. The system is only of benefit for a small number of students who have a considerable degree of intelligence and have great devotion to learning Arabic … In most cases these students can read only those texts that they have already read and learned from the teacher. In such educational systems, the shift to Western-style schools, in which knowledge can be acquired through books, is likely to be regarded with mistrust, since fixing 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 alḤaddād, a Sufi text, which according to some scholars lost its power when it became available to everyone through written publications. The emergence of new forms of education did indeed lead to the disappearance of an established class 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 always mean an innovatory and revolutionary change. According to Berkey (1992:21), the revival of scholarship in the Maghreb during the 13th century did not arise “through the reception of unknown or forgotten texts, but through the personal efforts of individual scholars who traveled to the Middle East, studied there with prominent professors 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 attempts to create new ways of learning Arabic when people were no longer satisfied with the conventional transmission of knowledge because it had become fossilized. Around the turn of the 20th century, Egypt went through a series of reforms,13 in which the old grammatical treatises were replaced with a new book, Qawāʿid al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya by Ḥifnī Bek Nāṣif al-Miṣrī and Muḥammad Effendi Diyāb al-Miṣrī.14 The changes concerned not so much the grammatical contents themselves, but the way they were presented. Linguistic examples, for instance, were taken from contemporary Standard Arabic, rather than from Classical Arabic texts. The total impact of these changes was not impressive: as before, Arabic grammar remained one of the most unpopular and feared topics in the curriculum. After the rediscovery of Ibn Maḍāʾ’s (d. 592/1196) Kitāb al-radd ʿalā l-nuḥāt, Šawqī Ḍayf, who edited the text, expressed his belief that Ibn Maḍāʾ’s ideas about the uselessness of grammatical theory (Versteegh 2013) were the answer to what he perceived as the main cause of the dismal situation in the educational system, the complexity of the Classical Arabic grammatical system. His drive for a ‘simplification of grammar’ (tabsīṭ al-naḥw) does not seem to have had much success. In fact, reforms of the educational system regularly floundered on the establishment’s conviction that the old books were the best. Šawqī Ḍayf’s ideas on simplification of grammar (or the language) certainly did not reach all schools at all levels of education. Many of the institutes for the Arabic language that have sprung all over the Arab world, still base their education on the old-fashioned ways. The Rumman Academy in Amman, Jordan, for instance, advertizes its commitment to excellence in language teaching in the following way:15 As a measure for the highest skill in the Arabic Language Sciences, we extensively test applying teachers for mastery of the Alfiyya of Ibn Malik, a 1,000 line poem that codifies Arabic Grammar and is considered the pinnacle of Arabic Grammar mastery Not surprisingly, even some of the modernized textbooks still look like translations of the old texts, with exactly the same terminology and definitions and 13 14 15

According to Eickelman (1978), the term ‘reform’ was avoided; reformers preferred to speak of a reorganization (niẓām), instead. About this book and its adoption in South Africa see Versteegh (2011). http://rummanacademy.com/our-team; downloaded in 2016; website seems to have disappeared since.

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with exactly the same set of grammatical issues that grammarians dealt with centuries ago. Outside the Arabic-speaking world, the risk of fossilization of the educational system was even greater. In some regions, there simply was not enough direct communication with the Arab world to enable people to procure new texts. As a result, students were educated by memorizing a small set of texts, usually together with their translation in an indigenous language. In these regions, reforms had to wait until the contacts between local Muslim community and the Islamic heartlands intensified through the increase in the number of pilgrims to Mecca. Pilgrimage brought people in contact with Muslim scholars in the Arabian peninsula and enabled some of the richer families to send their sons to Mecca or Jedda to study with these scholars. Two examples of the impact of these contacts may be mentioned here, one from 19th century Indonesia, and one from contemporary Mali. At the end of the 19th century, when Indonesia was still part of the Dutch colonial empire, the introduction of printed books represented a revolutionary change. Books became available because they could be ordered from abroad through booksellers’ catalogues. This meant that it became worthwhile to achieve proficiency in Arabic because with it one could read any text beyond the limited canon. Scholars who went on pilgrimage used their new knowledge to meet reformists in the Arab countries and to procure books, in a movement which Laffan (2008) has called the ‘Meccan turn’. In Mali, just as in other West-African countries, new types of madrasa, sometimes with Wahhabi financing, emerged in the post-colonial period. These new madrasas aimed at proficiency in the living language. Yet, the detailed description by Bouwman (2005:67–97) of the teaching of Arabic in madrasas in Mali shows that, even though the curriculum of these schools has been modernized, it is still based on the Arabic grammatical tradition. Children first learn Arabic through a modern method published in Morocco for use in WestAfrican schools, al-Tilāwa al-ʾifrīqiyya li-l-madāris al-ʿarabiyya. The didactic setup of this series of books differs considerably from the traditional way, since they contain exercises, questions and answers, and illustrations. The topics are contemporary and the focus is on Modern Standard Arabic. Grammar in these books is taught by deduction, rather than by introducing rules, as is the case in traditional grammar. From the 3rd class onward, however, grammar is taught again as a separate subject, rather than an integral part of the acquisition process. The textbooks used at this stage are al-Durūs al-naḥwiyya, written by a Malian scholar, Saada Toure, and al-Risāla al-naḥwiyya by another Malian scholar, Aboubakar Tiam (Bouwman 2005:76–77). These books, too, follow the deductive method, but they use traditional terminology, classification, and

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theory. The traditional treatises themselves are not studied until the 6th or 7th class and are only intended for the most advanced students (Bouwman 2005:77f.); 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 Ibn Mālik, itself a commentary on the ʾAlfiyya Yet, even in these modernized schools, some young students feel dissatisfied with the limited canon of texts that is transmitted in the school system. They wish to learn Classical Arabic at a level where they can read the original sources for themselves. Bouwman cites the example of televized discussions about contemporary issues, in which the representatives of traditional scholarship are unable to go beyond the fixed set of responses from the few texts they know by heart, whereas the new arabisants can quote from new books they have read for themselves. In this new approach to learning Arabic, the standard language remains the target. Students from these new madrasas, when they visit Arab countries or go there in order to study, often express their disdain for the Arabs, who use dialect in their everyday language (and even introduce dialect courses at university, intended for foreign Western students!). For the Malinese students this is an affront: as a Muslim one ought to stick to the rules of Standard Arabic and never use dialect in one’s everyday conversation, let alone 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, sitting in a pesantren in Indonesia or a chuo in East Africa and listening to a teacher explaining a line from the ʾĀjurrūmiyya with the help of the commentary by al-Kafrāwī. But there is one modern source with abundant material about the feelings of young Muslims earnestly striving to learn Arabic in 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 a satisfactory language teaching programme. One type of modern pesantren in Indonesia is the Gontor branch (van Bruinessen 2008:223), where students are even obliged to communicate in Arabic (and in English) in order to improve their proficiency in the language.

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www.shariahprogramme.com or www.sunniforum.org create internet communities in which proficiency in Arabic brings status and prestige. Those who are able to read and translate Arabic texts gain a position of authority. Sometimes they are even addressed formally as teacher (ʾustāḏ). This is true for Salafi circles, where the study of the original sources is propagated rather than instruction 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 with each other about the ways and means to master the huge task of learning Arabic. Their goal is to read the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīṯ and other religious tracts in Arabic. For the members of this forum the need to learn Arabic is self-evident because it is the only way to read the text of the Qurʾān and the Sunna in the original version. But how does one go about learning a language that is perceived by all to be very difficult, if only because of the script? The participants in the forum discussions try to help each other with advice about the best method to study Arabic. Questions that are typically and frequently asked include: what is a good book for beginners, how many hours per day are necessary to read the ʾAlfiyya, is it o.k. to step right up to the ʾAlfiyya after having studied the ʾĀjurrūmiyya, or is it better to first read the Qaṭr al-nadā, what is the best dictionary to use for Qurʾānic Arabic, is it useful to attend a course in an Arabic-speaking country, etc. There is some kind of consensus about the texts to be studied and the order in which they should be studied. The recommended pattern seems to 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 advanced text.17 The following list is posted by a member of the forum as suggestion for a curriculum:18 A Arab scholar of the arabic language once told me that the syllabus for nahw is: 17 18

For local differences and for the popularity of al-Kāfiya in South Asia see above, n. 8; for the organization of the Kāfiya see Viain (2014:214–218). www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-22710.html. Note that all quotations from the forum discussions are given in the original spelling and transliteration as downloaded on 20.09.14; my explanatory remarks are added between square brackets. After finishing the text of the present article, I found out that the highly popular Sunniforum was no longer accessible. It seems that because of ideological differences, the administrators decided to continue the discussion in a forum with limited access, although it is 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.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 9.

Tuhfatusiniyya sharh on the Ajarumiyyah [i.e. al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya bišarḥ al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya by Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, a 20th century scholar] Sharh Fawakihi on the Mutammimat Ajarumiyah [i.e., Šarḥ al-fawākih al-janiyya by Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʾAḥmad al-Fākihī, d. 972/ 1565] Kawakib ad Duriyya sharh on the Mutamimat Ajarumiyyah [i.e., al-Kawākib al-durriyya by Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-ʾAhdal, a commentary on al-Ruʿaynī’s Mutammimat al-ʾĀjurrūmiyya] Qatr An Nada wa Bal as Sada [i.e., Ibn Hišām’s Qaṭr al-nadā wa-ball al-ṣadā] Shudhur Adh Dhahab [i.e., Ibn Hišām’s Šuḏūr al-ḏahab] Sharh ibn Aqeel on the Alfiyyah ibn Malik [i.e., Ibn ʿAqīl’s commentary on the ʾAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik] and 8. Two more commentaries on the Alfiyyah which I don’t remember the name of 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 as popular among the internet learners as they are in madrasas all over the Islamic world. Western-style textbooks, on the other hand, do not seem to be very popular among the members of this forum. The reason cannot be that these were written by non-Muslims: Hans Wehr’s dictionary is regarded by many members of the forum as the best dictionary for Arabic, and Michael Carter’s translation of al-Širbīnī’s (d. 978/1570) commentary Nūr al-sajiyya fī ḥall ʾalfāẓ al-ʾAjurrūmiyya (1981) is hailed as an example of something Muslims should be doing 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 is made on Sunniforum about this translation: “Michael Carter is among the more sympathetic western scholars towards the Arabic grammatical tradition, and tries to present Arabic grammatical theory within that perspective rather than within a Western (Greek/Latin) perspective. He is also doing a great service in giving the legacy of Sibawayh its rightful place in history (see his website on the Sibawayhi Project and wonderful 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/Middle Eastern scholarship, which, obviously, is by no means an Islamic traditional scholarship as we know it. Hence, that element (an affiliation and loyalty to an Islamic tradition) is absent from the work” (http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?45723-How -long-does-it-usually-take-to-study-Sharh-ul-Ajurumiyyah-in-complete/page2&).

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price may be an issue: Western textbooks tend to be more expensive than the Arabic ones. As a matter of fact, one of the most frequently asked questions concerns the availability of downloads on the internet. Some students worry, though, that it might be ḥarām to learn Arabic from an illegal download! There is one other factor that may play a role. The Sunniforum is rather orthodox and even prohibits avatars with a picture in them. It is therefore not surprising that some of the members express their unease with textbooks containing pictures of unveiled women in tight clothing.20 The main reason for the popularity of the Classical treatises, however, seems to be that the participants in the forum discussions have a clear idea about the proper way to study Arabic. Some members note that the choice of books depends on one’s precise aim: if one wishes to learn how to speak Arabic, one might benefit from newer textbooks such as the Madinah series, which was designed by the University of Medina for non-Arabic speakers. For most of the learners on the forum, however, such communicative aims are less important than 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. One member characterizes them as texts that have to be decoded and are therefore eminently suited to prepare one for the reading of Classical texts, which also have to be decoded in order to understand their meaning: Something else about the Hidayah al-Nahw, which is very important is that it prepares the student much better to decode, negotiate and analyse texts because it is itself a text that needs to be decoded, negotiated and analysed. al-Nahw al-Wadih is quite straight forward, and the text is not cryptic such that it develops the student’s analytical and critical reading abilities. The Hidayah al-Nahw, then, prepares you better for reading subsequent texts (fiqh, tafsir, ’aqidah, etc.) as you work through it as a text. al-Nahw al-Wadih offers no such challenges to the reader that will make of the student a good analytical reader unless the student gets exposed to such cryptic texts as exercise.21 The old-fashioned method is better because it has been in use for a long time and it has proven its succesfulness. The advantage is, moreover, that the Classical treatises contain the entire structure of Arabic grammar and prepare the learner for the Classical texts rather than throwing them into the deep, as 20 21

http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-19194.html. http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6043.html; for al-Naḥw al-wāḍiḥ see above, p. 256.

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the modern textbooks do.22 These present the material piecemeal, so that one never knows beforehand what awaits one, and one never arrives at a synthetic view 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 Ajarrumiyya, even as a beginner (although with a teacher of course!) because it will give you a clear idea of how Arabic is structured […]. Obviously, the language only really comes to life through texts, but knowing something about the structure beforehand is like having the picture on the box of a jigsaw puzzle in front of you before attempting the puzzle.23 Critical voices, although in the minority, are not entirely absent. One critical remark concerns the terminology in these Classical treatises, which is perceived as being very difficult. However, as someone is quick to explain, there is a difference between the terminology of the linguists who use genitive, accusative etc., and the real Arabic grammar, with its jarr, naṣb, etc. The latter is axiomatically taken to be superior to other methods for learning Arabic. It is learnt as a model to do ‘tarkeebs’, somewhat analogous to parsing in Western systems of education. According to one thread in the forum, tarkeeb is different from grammar, but it is a good way to revise your grammar: first you translate the text, then you analyze its meaning, and then you practice your tarkeeb on it.24 Explanation often takes the form of a rough translation of the Arabic grammatical treatise, leaving as many terms as possible untranslated.25 22 23 24

25

In the same post this member says: “Modern texts, I feel, are often made too easy such that the student is never made to swim without a life-jacket”. http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2710.html. 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 a request 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 verb uu- the waw infront of jaa is the doer of the verb. abaahum- is the object of the verb hum—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 fiihi yabkoon- 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 those who came were crying while coming). An example of such a passage is posted by godilali (http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/

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Because of the universal nature of the grammar of Arabic, the terminology of the tarkeeb should also be applicable to English sentences. On one occasion, a student asks about the function of the word quickly in the sentence zayd came quickly, 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’ would become maf’ool mutlaq not ‘haal’. It would sound odd if it was made the haal … Zaid came in a state where he was quick (at what?) Wassalaam, Saad It is quite understandable why one topic is almost entirely absent from the forums on which learning Arabic is discussed: pronunciation. It is important to know how to write Arabic, otherwise you could not read the texts. But it is not important to know how it is pronounced. These learners approach the language in exactly the same way as students in West-European grammar schools used to approach Greek and Latin. Phonology is relevant insofar as it helps to understand the morphology; therefore, you need to know the rules about the changes in the ‘letters’, as in the following explanation of the imperative of the verb ʾakrama.27 the baab for akrama is different. the beginning hamza is not an enabling hamza (hamzatulwasl). the rule you are thinking about is different. what

26 27

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’ terminology and theories: Know that the ma’Toof (taabi’) follows the ruling of the ma’Toof ‘alaih (matboo’), meaning when the first is a Sifah for something, a khabr, a Silah, or a Haal, then the second is also like that. The rule is that whenever it is permissible for the ma’Toof to stand in the place of the ma’Toof ‘alaih, ‘aTf is permissible, and whenever it is not (permissible … stand in place of … .), then it (‘aTf) is not (permissible). ‘aTf upon the ma’mools of two different ‘aamils is permissible if the ma’Toof ‘alaih is majroor muqaddam (meaning the majroor is muqaddam over marfoo’ and manSoob), and the ma’Toof is likewise. http://forums.shariahprogram.ca/first-year-students-semester-2/3171-quickly-haal -mafool-mutlaq.html. 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 the baab. when you construct the amr for it, you drop the mudhari sign and the hamza comes back. it only left to accomodate the mudhari sign, so when it leaves, the hamza can come back. the ending changes to the word are treated the same. hope that helps This attitude toward the phonetics of Classical Arabic is also visible in the complete lack of interest in correct transcription.28 In the discussions on Sunniforum, knowledge of language seems to be equated with grammatical knowledge. Vocabulary has to be learnt separately and is covered more or less by the memorization of the Qurʾān, which familiarizes one with the Qurʾānic lexicon. Within the study of grammar different branches are distinguished, usually referred to as different sciences, such as naḥw, ṣarf and balāġa. One post defines these as follows: The Arabic language is composed of different sciences. When someone learns Arabic he/she must understand that he is in fact learning three sciences. Realizing this separation between the various sciences assist the student of Arabic in grasping the language. With this he will know where the language begins and where it ends. It is indeed unfortunate that most modern books of Arabic language instruction fail to even mention this.29 All in all, the discussions on the internet give us a clear idea of what it is like to learn Arabic in this way. Most participants warn that it is impossible to learn Arabic on your own, you need a sheikh, i.e. someone who knows how to teach the language in the old-fashioned way, by making you repeat

28

29

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 madrasas in Indonesia, who make an effort to get rid of their Javanese accent in recitation and actively train the correct pronunciation, for instance, by listening to cassettes. It appears that these madrasas actually changed the traditional curriculum and introduced new textbooks. Hasan (2008:273, n. 30) mentions the following grammar texts that are used in these madrasas, often with the financial support of the Saudi embassy: al-Naḥw alwāḍiḥ, 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 from Jombang; Qawāʿid al-ṣarf ; al-Balāġa al-wāḍiḥa. http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1568.html.

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the lesson until you know it (have memorized it), something you achieve by repeating the lesson ten or fifteen times. The teacher explains difficult terms, usually by giving definitions. Even in the modernized versions of language teaching, for instance in the schools that use the Madinah series, explanation usually takes the form of a definition of the term that is to be explained.30

6

Learning Arabic: The Results

It may seem strange that a didactic poem written in doggerel verse, such as the ʾAlfiyya, which we associate with the early stages of learning, is actually intended for advanced students. The ʾAlfiyya is not meant as a reflection on grammatical theory, but as a handy tool for summarizing all the rules of Arabic grammar, always accompanied by a commentary, as Viain (2014:254) observes. As such, it marks the last stage of the curriculum for grammar as an ancillary science. Only those few students who specialize in grammar, go beyond this level and study texts like Sībawayhi’s Kitāb or al-Mubarrad’s Muqtaḍab, or Ibn al-Sarrāj’s Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl, which are hardly ever mentioned in the discussions on the internet, or, for that matter, in any of the reports about grammatical instruction in the Islamic world. Ordinary students who reach the level of the ʾAlfiyya already know Arabic, or at least they know its structure. The aim of memorizing the ʾAlfiyya is twofold: it is a summary of everything they have learnt; and it gives all the details that were skipped at earlier stages. In the discussions, the ʾAlfiyya is always praised for its completeness.31 As van Gelder (1995:108) aptly observes, “[i]t is obvious that many an urjūza is not so much an introduction to be presented to beginners as an aide-mémoire, a handy compendium for those who have already mastered all or most of the subject”. ‘Mastering the subject’ is a goal not all learners reach. The discussions on the internet forums also make clear that there are many false starts and that even though all of the members of the forum love Arabic dearly and are highly motivated 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 31

See the instruction films on Youtube, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tSyG_ wnPLQ. Apparently, the text has other appealing features as well, see http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VkLCTjb1p4w.

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as teachers by the others, but most of the students do not reach this level. The alternative 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 that success is measured in terms of being able to read the texts. Those who actually wish to speak Arabic are in a minority. It is difficult to assess the success of this type of curriculum, whether for the students on the internet, or for students in Islamic countries outside the Arab world who visit a madrasa. On the one hand, one has the impression that much of the knowledge gained is theoretical and does not lead directly to deeper insight in the texts studied or memorized. On the other hand, it is true that at least some scholars continue the tradition of commenting on difficult texts and publishing glosses, such as the commentaries in Bambara on Classical Arabic poetry and maqāmāt that were published by Tamari (2005, 2013). One proviso should be made here. Sometimes, one gets the impression that much of what is 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 Latin that used to be the hallmark of Western grammar schools: students learned various strategies to tackle Latin texts and were not expected to be able to speak Latin—although they were expected sometimes to compose texts in Latin (Waquet 1998), just like Islamic schoolboys still write essays in Classical Arabic.32 The main question underlying the present article was: is it possible to learn a foreign language like Arabic for purposes of communication by memorizing a grammatical treatise like the ʾAlfiyya, which presupposes a large amount of grammatical knowledge. The discussions on the internet forums provide us with an answer: it is indeed practically impossible to achieve communicative proficiency in this way, yet, this is not the goal of the learners of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Their aim is to be able to read the Islamic texts in the Arabic original. The discussions also show that if one persists in studying and memorizing the grammatical treatises, with the help of a teacher, one can indeed reach this goal. This is as true nowadays in the Muslim internet communities, as it was in the past in the Islamic world.

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For an exception in the madrasa system see above, n. 14, about the Gontor-type madrasas where students are trained in using Arabic actively and n. 28.

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Index Ab. Rahim bin hj. Ismail 253 ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn 198, 258 ʿAbd al-Tawwāb, Ramaḍān 2 Abdallahi dan Fodio 250 Abed, Shukri 124 ʾabhama 208 ʾablaġ 86f. ʾabniya see bināʾ ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ 16, 51f., 77 ʾAbū Ḥayyān 81f., 91, 172–174 ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq al-Ḥarbī 65 ʾAbū l-ʿAmayṯal 62 ʾAbū l-ʾAswad al-Duʾalī 155 ʾAbū l-ʿAtāhiya 66 ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī 217 ʾAbū l-Najm al-ʿIjlī 66 ʾAbū l-Ṭayyib al-Luġawī 51, 63, 155 ʾAbū Nuwās 66 ʾAbū Tammām 66 ʾAbū ʿUbayd 51f., 62, 65, 67 ʾAbū ʿUbayda 51, 64, 67 ʾAbū ʿUmar al-Zāhid see al-Zāhid accusative 6, 12f., 192 accusative, cognate 241f. accusative of exclamation 191f. action of the verb 233, 237–240 actual reference 22 ʾadā 118, 150 ʿadad 104 ʾaḍāfa 208f. ʿadam tamakkun 33 ʿadam taṣarruf 39 ʾadawāt see ʾadā ʾaḍdād see ḍidd adjective 103f., 107, 111, 126, 205, 209, 211f., 214f. ʿadl 19, 41f. admirative 208 adverbial of time/place 3 ʾafāda 11, 22, 124, 213f., 221 ʾafʿal 23 ʾafʿāl see fiʿl ʾafʿala 60, 63, 240 agency 231, 237, 239 agent 167, 230, 232f., 235–237, 239

agent of declension 108 f., 112 ʾaḫaff 17f., 20 ʾaḫaṣṣ 209 ʾaḫawāt kāna 146 ʾaḫbār see ḫabar ʾAhdal, Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad al-Yamanī al249, 257 ʾaḥdaṯa 239 ʾAḫfaš al-ʾAwsaṭ, al- 64, 77, 146, 154–156 ʾAḫfaš al-Kabīr, al- 51 ʾahl al-ʿaql 118 ʾahl al-naḥw 154 ʾAḥmad ibn ʾAnd-Aġ-Muḥammad, al-Sayyid 250 ʾaʿjamī 36 ʿAjjāj, al- 66 ʾaksaba 212 ʾāla 107 ʿalam 182 ʿalāma 17 f., 27, 33, 107 f., 184 ʿalāmat al-mutamakkin 33 ʿalāmat al-taʾnīṯ 184 Alexander of Aphrodisias 124 ʿAlī ʾAkbar ʾAllāhābādī 251 ʾalif al-waṣl 37 ʾalif lām 23, 36, 182, 211 allaḏī 126 Alon, Ilon 124 ʿamal 11, 28, 107–110 ambiguity 109, 209, 220 ambiguous 211 ʾĀmidī, al- 217 ʿāmil 12, 66, 107, 110, 169 ʿāmil fī l-ḥaqīqa 108 ʿāmil naḥwī 108 ʿāmil of the ḥāl 174 ʿamila fī 29 ʾAmīn, Muṣṭafā 256 ʾamina l-tanwīn 16 ʾamkan 18 ʿāmm 204 ʾamr 191, 194 ʿAmr ibn Maʿdīkarib 196 ʿAmrīṭī, al- see ʾImrīṭī, alʾamṣār see miṣr ʾamṯila see miṯāl

270 ʾan 12, 46 analogy 31f., 36, 45f., 57, 66, 99 Anghelescu, Nadia 8 annexation see annexion annexion 16, 30, 98f., 102f., 105f., 149, 205, 207f., 210–216, 219, 221 annexion of indefinite to indefinite 209f. ʾAnṣārī, ʾAbu Zayd Saʿīd ibn ʾAws al- 51f., 56, 67, 77 ʾAnṣārī, Zayn al-Din Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyāʾ alMiṣrī al- 249 antonyms 84 aplasticity 39 apposition 98f. apposition, explanatory 206–208, 210, 215f. ʾAʿrāb 52–54 Arabic, ʾAsad 53 Arabic, ʾAzdī 54 Arabic, Bakr ibn Wāʾil 53 Arabic, characteristics of 56f. Arabic, conversation in 256 Arabic, Fazāra 53 Arabic, Ġaniyy 53 Arabic, Ḫaṯʿam 53 Arabic, Ḥijāzī 53 Arabic, Huḏayl 53 Arabic, Kaʿb 53 Arabic, learning of 245–267 Arabic, native speaker of 112 Arabic, Qays 53 Arabic, Qurayš 81 Arabic, Šaʾāmī 54 Arabic, Saʿd 53 Arabic, Sulaym 53 Arabic, Tamīmī 53 Arabic, Ṭayyiʾ 53 Arabic, Yamānī 54 arabicized 36, 58 arabisants 256 ʾArdabīlī, al- 86 Aristotle 82, 116f., 122f., 125, 134, 138 article see definite article ʿarūḍ 50, 156 ʿasā 151 ʾAʿšā, al- 66 ʾašāra 187 ʿašarāt 62f. ʿĀṣī, al- 206

index ʿAskarī, ʾAbū Hilāl al- 155 ʾaṣl 19 f., 41, 44, 66, 103–106, 192, 211 ʾasmāʾ Allāh 64 ʾasmāʾ see ism ʾAṣmaʿī, al- 2, 51, 55, 62, 64, 67 assertive 6, 12 ʾAstarābāḏī, al- 5 f., 34, 45, 96–114, 207, 214 ʾašyāʾ al-ʾasmāʾ 126 ʾašyāʾ see šayʾ -at 23, 35, 184 ʾaṯar 65 ʿaṭf 215 ʿaṭf al-bayān 206, 215 f. ʾaṯqal 18, 34 ʿAṭṭār, Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿUṯmān al63 attributes of God 64 Austin, John 5, 190 f., 200 ʾaw 214 ʾAwaḏī, Sirāj al-Dīn 251 ʾawqaʿa 13 ʾAws ibn Ḥajar 66 ʾawṣala 230, 242 f. ʾawwal 17–22, 34 f., 40–43 ʾaymu 37 ʾayna 151–153, 156 Ayoub, Georgine 6, 11–49, 135 f. ʾayyuhā 126 ʾAzharī, al- 14, 29, 54, 58, 182, 247–249, 256 Baalbaki, Ramzi 7, 17 f., 33, 39, 50, 75, 110, 155 f. baʿḍ 138 f., 141 f. baʿda 159 Badawi, Elsaid 127 Badayūnī, Ḥamza 251 bādiya 52 Baḥraq, Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar 249 bal 153 balāġa 50, 60, 110, 262 balāġiyyūn 60, 68 Bally, Charles 22 Bambara 264 Bandanījī, al- 65, 67 Bang, Anne 249 Bāqillānī, al- 217 Baraké, Bassam 206 Barghash, Sayyid 249

271

index Barwānī, Muṣabbiḥ ibn Sālim ibn Muṣabbiḥ al- 249 Basrans 37, 45, 57, 66f., 77f., 146, 148 Baṭalyawsī, al- 6, 76–95 Bedouin 52f., 55 Bedouin, language of 112 Berber 250 Berkey, Jonathan 253 Bihriz 124 biliterals 58 bināʾ 20, 59 bināʾ al-kalām 57 biʾsa 151, 156, 159 blending 60 Bohas, Georges 2f., 98, 205 Boogert, Nico van den 250 book printing 255 Bouwman, Dinie 255f. Bruinessen, Martin van 248, 256, 262 Buḥturī, 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, 11–49 case endings 109 categories, Aristotelian 117f. categories, grammatical 43 causation as criterion for transitivity 237 causation see causativity causative 240 causativity 233, 237, 239 cause 238 Chairet, Mohamed 39 Chatti, Saloua 120 Chomsky, Noam 11 chuo 247, 256 circumstantial 167–177, 187 clarification 219 cognate accusative 241f. cognition 37, 39 Colman, Fran 24 command 192 comment 134 communication 128f. communication, effective 129 communicative value 126 complement 101f., 109, 137f. complement, accusative 235, 238, 243

complement, dependent form 109 complement, numerical 109 complement of the verb 13 completion 219 compound 41 compound name 19 f., 42 constative 190 continuity 6 conversation 123 coordination, disjunctive 214 correct usage 68 Culioli, Antoine 39 curriculum of grammar 246, 251 daḫīl 57 Daḥlān, ʾAḥmad ibn Zaynī 248 f. dahr, ẓarf al- 35 dalīl 230, 235 dalla 127 ḍamīr 136 Danecki, Janusz 33 Danqarī, Mullā ʿAbdallāh 248 f. Ḍarīr, Muḥammad ibn Sādān al- 78 Dars-i- Nizami 251 ḏawāq 56 Ḍayf, Šawqī 254 deceiving 122 declension 6, 11 f., 42, 110 declension of the verb 45 f. declinability 17, 33–35, 40 f. declinability, full 30 f., 35, 44 definite 21, 23, 32, 36 f., 41 definite article 16, 23, 31, 36, 38, 45, 99 f., 126, 182 definite article in proper names 86 definite expression 213 definite noun 126 f., 215 definite, formally 127 definite, morphosyntactically 127, 129 f., 133, 135–137, 139 f., 142 definite, pragmatically 34, 127, 138–140 definite, semantically 127 definiteness 8, 21 f., 24, 32, 43–45, 109 f., 126, 128f., 133, 140, 207, 211 f. definiteness, definition of 133 definiteness of proper names 130 demonstrative 6, 27, 126, 131, 137, 151 f., 154, 156, 159, 178–189 demonstrative as proper name 185

272 demonstrative, diminutive of 179, 185 demonstrative, dual of 185 denial 119–121 Derenbourg, Hartwig 89f. description 131f., 137 determination 5, 205, 207, 219 diachrony 3 dialectal usage 53 dialogue, logical 122 dialogue, metaphysical 125 dialogue, philosophical 124 ḍidd 58, 61f., 88, 104 diminutive 34, 36, 38, 60, 185 diminutive of demonstratives 179, 185 Dimyāṭī, Muḥammad al-Ḫiḍr 249 diptote 108 discourse 43 distribution, syntactic 42 Diyāb al-Miṣrī, Muḥammad Effendi 249, 254 Drewes, Gerard 247 Druel, Jean 5, 96–114 Ḏu l-Rumma 66, 83 dual 60 dual of demonstrative 185 dūna 150 East Africa 248f. East Indies, Dutch 247 education, reform of 253–256 Egypt, education in 254 Eickelman, Dale 252–254 elative 18, 30 ellipsis 88 elucidation 219 Equivalence Claim 128, 130, 134, 136, 138, 140 equivocity 220 error, logical 120 essence, individual 131 event, representation of 237 exclamation 88, 90, 191f. existential 138 explanatory apposition 219 fāʾ 11, 156 faʿala 60, 63 factual 12 faḍla 105–109, 232, 235, 238 faḫr 85 fāʾida 123–126, 214, 232

index fāʿil

108, 155, 157, 160, 167 f., 209, 230, 232, 237, 239 f. Fākihī, Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʾAḥmad al257 faʿlāʾ 23 farʿ 41, 44 Fārābī, al- 78, 80–82, 90, 115 f., 124 f., 134 Fāriqī, al- 172 Fārisī, al- 77, 148, 150, 160, 210, 212 f., 217, 219 Fārisī, ʾAbū l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al- 213 Farrāʾ, al- 52, 64, 67, 78, 91, 146, 149 f., 152, 156, 191, 208 faṣāḥa 66 Fāsī, ʾAbū ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al249 faṣīḥ 53 Fatlī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn 2 faʿula 231 fawāʿil 31 f. feminine 18 f., 23, 35 f., 41 f., 59, 104 feminine marker 104 fiʿl 12, 43 fiʿl al-madḥ wa-l-ḏamm 204 fiʿl al-taʿajjub 240 fiʿl ġayr ḥaqīqī see ġayr ḥaqīqī fiʿl ḥaqīqī see ḥaqīqī fiʿl maḥḍ 192 fiʿl manqūl see manqūl fiʿl muʾaṯṯir see muʾaṯṯir fiʿl muḍmar 192 fiʿl mulāqī see mulāqī fiʿl mustaʿār see mustaʿār fiʿl mutaʿaddī see mutaʿaddī fiʿl wāṣil see wāṣil fiqh 52, 125, 191 fiqh al-luġa 51, 206 Firanescu, Daniela 191 Fischer, Wolfdietrich 153 Fleisch, Henri 90, 98, 205, 219 f. Flemming, Barbara 246 flexibility 33, 37–40, 42 f. foreign names 41 function, syntactic 243 fuṣaḥāʾ see faṣīḥ future 45, 174 ġaraḍ 125 ġarīb 51, 53–55, 61–64

index ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ 55, 65 ġarīb al-Qurʾān 55, 64 Gätje, Helmut 8 ġāya 125 ġayr 35f., 38, 137, 141f. ġayr ḥaqīqī 238 ġayr ʿilāj 241 ġayr muʾaṯṯir 233 ġayr muʿayyan 135 ġayr mubham 208 ġayr munqaṭiʿ 42 ġayr munṣarif 34, 37, 42 ġayr mustaqīm 42 ġayr mutamakkin 16, 34f. ġayr wājib 11f., 46 ġayr wāqiʿ 12 ġayr wāṣil 233 Gelder, Geert-Jan van 263 gender 43 gender agreement 104, 106 gender of numerals 102 generalization 206 Generative Grammar 28 genitive 16 genus 141 Giolfo, Manuela 7f., 115–145 God’s names 64 Goguyer, Antonin 205 Gontor pesantren 256, 264 Government, Theory of 43, 105 grammar books 255 grammar, Greek 125 grammar, invention of 155 grammar, pedagogical 7f., 146–166 grammar, study of 248–250 grammar, teaching of 254 grammar, theoretical 146 Greek 135, 138f. Greek grammar 125 Greek philosophy 7 Greenberg, Joseph 41 Guillaume, Jean-Patrick 2f., 98, 105 Ġulām Ṯaʿlab see Zāhid, alGully, Adrian 127 Gutas, Dimitri 117 hāʾ ʿāʾida 136 ḫabar 15, 108, 125f., 133f., 139, 141, 152–154, 156, 158, 190f.

273 ḫabar ʾayna 159 ḫabar kāna 15 ḫabar kayfa 159 ḫabar mā lam yusamma fāʿiluhu 146 ḫabar matā 159 ḫabarī 192 ḥabbaḏā 151 ḫabbara 129 hāḏā 151 ḥadaṯ 12 ḥadd al-kalima 240 Ḥadīṯ 7, 52 Ḥadīṯ, use as linguistic evidence 65 f. ḫafaḍa 149, 158 ḫafḍ 16, 148–150, 156, 160 ḥāfiẓ 252 hal 151–154, 159 hal wa-ʾaḫawātuhā 159 ḥāl 5, 167, 186, 215, 241 ḥāl muʾakkida 187 ḥāl muqaddar(a) 5, 167–170 ḥāl muqārina 173 ḥāl muṣāḥiba li-l-fiʿl 168 ḥāl mustaṣḥaba 169–171, 173 f. ḥāl, definition of 168 ḥāl, ḏū l- 167 ḥāl, ṣāḥib al- 167 ḥāl, tense of 173 f. Ḫalaf al-ʾAḥmar 158 Ḫalīl, al- 15 f., 25, 27–29, 31 f., 52 f., 56–58, 67, 77, 81, 159 Hall, Bruce 251 ḥalqa-system 253 Hamaḏānī, al- 62 hamza 186, 241 f. Ḥanafī 245 ḥaqīqī 238 ḥarf 44, 105, 118, 146, 152, 155 ḥarf al-ḫafḍ 149 f., 160 ḥarf al-ibtidāʾ 150, 154, 156 ḥarf al-ʾiʿrāb 156 ḥarf al-istiʾnāf 152 ḥarf al-jarr 7, 146, 148–160 ḥarf al-jazm 150 ḥarf al-naṣb 150 ḥarf al-rafʿ 7, 146, 148–160 ḥarf, definition of 158 Ḥasan, ʿAbbās 193 f. Hasan, Noorhaidi 262

274 ḥaṣr 138 ḫāṣṣ 204 ḫaṣṣaṣa 212 ḥattā 11, 159 hayʾa 168 head noun 137f., 141 heaviness 17 Hebrew 148 hierarchy 6, 18, 22f., 41, 43, 45 hierarchy in language 40 hierarchy of categories 17 ḫiffa 18, 37, 42, 44 Ḥigāzī, Maḥmūd Fahmī 2 ḥikāya 28 ḥikāya as proper name 19 Hilāl, Hayṯam 217 ḥilya 26f. Hišām ibn Muʿāwiya 78 Hodges, Wilfrid 7, 115–145 homonym 61, 109 Howell, Mortimer 39 ḥuḍūr 174 ḥujja 55 ḥukm 216 ḥukm al-ḫiṭāb 129 ḥurūf see ḥarf ḥūšī 63 huwa 151 Ḫwārizmī, al- 153 hyperbole 84 ʿibāra 216, 237 ʾibhām 209 Ibn ʾAbī ʾIsḥāq 16 Ibn ʾAbī l-Rabīʿ 82, 150 Ibn ʾĀjurrūm 156, 206, 245, 247f., 250f., 257, 260 Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾAbu Bakr 59 Ibn al-ʾAnbārī, ʾAbū l-Barakāt 57, 59, 157, 214, 220 Ibn ʿAqīl 24, 194, 198, 200, 215f., 247–249, 257 Ibn al-ʾAʿrābī 52 Ibn ʿĀšūr, Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir 158 Ibn al-ʾAṯīr 65 Ibn Bābašāḏ 78, 187 Ibn al-Dahhān 63 Ibn al-Ḍāʾiʿ 80 Ibn Durayd 34, 53f., 56, 58, 62, 64f., 67 Ibn al-Faḫḫār 215

index Ibn Fāris 51, 55, 58 f., 212 Ibn Farīʿūn 153 Ibn al-Furāt 116 Ibn al-Ḥājib 96 f., 103, 105, 110, 191, 200, 203, 214, 217 f., 247, 250 f. Ibn Ḫālawayhi 55 Ibn Ḫaldūn 51 Ibn Harma 66 Ibn Ḫarūf 214 Ibn al-Ḫaššāb 172 Ibn Hišām 55, 173 f., 190 f., 194, 198–200, 205, 215 f., 247 f., 256 f. Ibn Jinnī 5, 59, 78, 116, 148, 160, 212, 217, 219 Ibn Kaysān 67, 147, 150, 153 Ibn Maḍāʾ 57, 254 Ibn Mālik 7, 76, 194, 197–199, 205, 215 f., 245– 250, 254, 256 f., 259, 263 Ibn Manẓūr 52, 65–67, 182 Ibn Manẓūr see Lisān al-ʿArab Ibn al-Marzubān al-Bāḥiṯ 62 Ibn Masʿūd, ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAlī 251 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ 124 Ibn al-Naḥḥās 82 Ibn Qutayba 62, 64 f., 76, 79, 159 Ibn al-Rūmī 66, 83 Ibn al-Sarrāj 2, 5 f., 63, 65, 77, 98, 102 f., 109– 111, 125, 146, 148 f., 167–170, 208, 229, 233, 235, 237 f., 240, 243, 246, 263 Ibn al-Sīd see Baṭalyawsī, alIbn Sīda 51, 58, 67, 212 Ibn al-Sikkīt 6, 67, 123 Ibn Sīnā 7, 115–145 Ibn Šuqayr 158 Ibn Ṭaymiyya 245 Ibn ʿUṣfūr 215 Ibn Wallād 154 f. Ibn al-Warrāq 210 f., 219 Ibn Yaʿīš 34, 46, 63, 103, 175, 194 f., 214 ibtidāʾ 150–152, 154 f. ibtidāʾ, bi-l- 154 ʾiḍāfa 36, 102, 108, 136 f., 140 f., 203 f., 206, 210–212, 215 ʾiḍāfa ġayr maḥḍa 220 f. ʾiḍāfa ḥaqīqiyya 215 ʾiḍāfa lafẓiyya 213 ʾiḍāfa maḥḍa 215, 220 f. ʾiḍāfa maʿnawiyya 213–215 ʾiḍāfat al-ism li-l-ism 213 ʾiḏan 11

index ʾiḍmār 182 ʾifāda 123f., 126 iftiʿāl al-ʿarabiyya 54 iftiḫār 85, 91 ʾiġrāʾ 193, 198–200 ʾiḫbār 192 ʾiḫbārī 191 iḫtaṣṣa 208, 210–212, 216 iḫtilāf al-lafẓayn 61 iḫtilāf al-maʿnayayn 61 iḫtiṣāṣ 193, 207, 209, 215, 221 ʾijrāʾ 15 ijtihād 78 Ikeda, Osamu 191 iktasaba 211 ʿilāj 241 ʿilal see ʿilla ʿilla 57, 66, 110, 205 ʿilla muʾaṯṯira 107 illocutionary 190, 200 ʿilm al-balāġa 7 ʿilm al-lisān 51 ʿilm al-luġa 51 ʿilm al-naḥw 50 ʿilm al-waḍʿ 7, 68 imperative 192 ʾImrīṭī, al- 247 Imruʾ al-Qays 66, 83 ʿinda 151, 159 indeclinable 34 indeclinable noun 108 indefinite 14, 20–23, 32, 35–38, 41, 129, 208f., 211 indefinite expression 213, 221 indefinite, morphosyntactically 139 indefinite noun 205, 209, 215f., 219 indefinite, pragmatically 135–137 indefiniteness 8, 13, 21, 109, 140, 205, 207, 211, 213 indefiniteness, marker of 21 indeterminate 135 indetermination 205 India, Arabic in 251ff. India, education in 251–253 indicator 158 Indo-European 43 Indonesia 247f., 255 Indonesia, education in 262 infaʿala 104, 231

275 infiʿāl 104 inflection 13 inflection, partial 13, 30 f. information 125 f., 130 information, conveying of 123, 126 information, metaphysical 124 informational content 133 ʾinnamā 80, 150–152, 156 f. innovation 6 ʾinšāʾ 110f., 190 f., 200 ʾinšāʾ ʾīqāʿī 191 ʾinšāʾ ṭalabī 191 ʾinšāʾī 191 inṣarafa 11–49 inṣirāf 14f., 21 intention of the speaker 169, 174 interjection 192 interlocutor 122, 214 internet, discussions about Arabic on 256– 263 interrogative 38 intransitive 231 intransitive, double 241 inversion 206 ʾīqāʿī 191 iqtaṣara 209 iqtirān 173 f. ʾiʿrāb 8, 60 f., 107, 159, 235, 238 ʾiʿrāb al-fiʿl 46 ʾiʿrāb al-ism 46 irregularity 42 irtafaʿa 152 ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar 51 f., 77 ʾišāra 132, 183 ism 23, 43, 82, 99, 118, 127, 130 f., 133 f., 152–158 ism ʿalam 130, 182 ism al-fāʿil 109 ism al-mafʿūl 109, 236 ism al-tafḍīl 109 ism ʾišāra 183 ism fiʿl 193 ism kāna 175 ism matā 159 ism mubham 6, 182 f., 188 ism wāḥid 23 ismiyya 34 istafāda 136 istaġnā 230 ištiġāl 12

276

index

istiʾnāf 150 ištiqāq 64 ištirāk 214, 221 ittifāq al-lafẓayn 61 iyyā- 192–198, 200 Jackendoff, Ray 137 jadal 125 Jāḥiẓ, al- 60f. Jakobson, Roman 42 jamʿ 60 jamʿ al-luġa 51 jamāʿa 127 jamīʿ 40 Jāmī, ʾAbu Barkat Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 251 jamʿiyya 106 jarā 15 Jārim, ʿAlī al- 256 Jarmī, al- 77 jarr 146, 148–160 jawāb bi-l-fāʾ 156 Jawālīqī al- 63 jawhar 124 jazama 156, 158 jazm 12, 155 Jedda 255 Jirjāwī, ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn ʿAwaḍ al- 249 Jumaḥī, al- 155–157 jumla 216, 232 jumla ḫabariyya 192 jumla ʾiḫbāriyya 191 jumla ʾinšāʾiyya 191 Jurjānī, al- 5–7, 50, 60, 213, 219, 229, 238–243, 247–249, 252 Jurjānī, al-Sayyid al-Šarīf 206, 251f. jussive 191 juzʾī 138 juzʾiyya 138 Juzūlī, al- 22, 214 kāf in demonstratives 184f. Kafawī, ʾAbū l-Baqāʾ al-Ḥusaynī alKafrāwī, Ḥasan al- 247–249, 256 kalām 12, 35f., 53, 190, 212, 230 kalām al-ʿArab 57, 118 kalām, completion of 230, 238 kalām, tadāḫul al- 63 kalim 150

191, 216

kalima 15, 118 kam 84 f., 88, 151 kāna 231 kāna al-nāqiṣa 175 kāna, ʾaḫawāt 146 Kasher, Almog 7, 146–166 kātib 153 kay 12 kayfa 151–153 Kinberg, Naphtali 208 Kisāʾī, al- 52, 67, 68, 149 Koerner, Konrad 2 Kouloughli, Djamel Eddine 3, 89, 98, 105 Kufans 45 f., 57, 66 f., 77 f., 91, 108, 148–151, 156 kull 138 f., 142 kullī 138 Kumayt, al- 66 Kunkī, Sī ʾIbrāhīm al- 250 Kurāʿ al-Naml 6, 64 lā 46, 89 labs 209 labs, wuqūʿ al- 209 Laffan, Michael 255 lafẓ 58, 170, 174 lafẓat al-taqdīr 138 lākin 15, 150 Langendonck, Willy van 24, 26 f. language, notion of 4 laqab 132 Larcher, Pierre 81, 97 f., 103, 110, 191, 200, 207, 214, 217 lāta 35, 38 Latin 264 Latin in Medieval Europe 138 lawlā 151, 155 f. laysa 35, 38, 231 Layṯ ibn al-Muẓaffar, al- 81 lāzim 104 Levin, Aryeh 3, 5, 167–177, 182, 186–188 lexica 51 f. lexica, arranged according to pattern 63 lexica, arranged according to root 53 lexica, arranged alphabetically 58, 63 lexica, arrangement of 67 lexica, mubawwab see mubawwab lexica, mujannas see mujannas lexica, onomasiological 58 lexica, Qurʾānic 64

index lexica, semasiological 58 lexical meaning 51 lexicography 7, 50–75 lexicography, Kufan 66 li- 221 lightness 17, 37–39, 105f. linguistic data 51 linguistic sciences 55 linguistic sciences, classification of 50f. Lisān al-ʿArab 14f., 34, 52, 65, 67, 182, 195 Lisān al-ʿArab see Ibn Manẓūr listener 129f. local domain 28 locutionary 190 logic 115–145 logic and grammar 7 logic, Arabic 122 logic, categorical 138f. logic, Greek 116 logic, justification of 123 logic, Peripatetic 115f., 118, 131, 133 logic, translation of 123f. Loimeier, Roman 248 luġa 16, 50–53, 55f., 58, 61 luġawiyyūn 51–53, 55, 59 Luġda 7, 146, 149, 152 Lyons, John 22, 24, 123, 140, 219 mā 231 mā lā yanṣarif 15–18, 24, 33, 39–41, 44f. mā yanṣarif 15, 17f., 24, 39f., 41, 44 maʿa 195 maʿānī l-naḥw 50, 243 maʿānī see maʿnā Maʿarrī, al- 66, 76 madḥ 212 Madinah series of textbooks 259, 263 madrasa 246, 250, 253, 255f., 262, 264 maʿdūl 20 mafāʿil 22f. mafhūm 106, 129 mafʿūl 13, 108, 155, 157, 160, 167, 230, 233, 238–241 mafʿūl bihi 157, 232, 235 mafʿūl muṭlaq 192 Maghreb, education in 253 maḥall 105f., 110, 149, 159 maḥḍ 192, 220f. maḥḏūr 194

277 maḥmūl 134 maḫṣūṣ 139, 204 f., 208 maḫṣūṣ bi-l-madḥ wa-l-ḏamm 205, 208 majāz 85 majhūl 123 majrā 15, 34, 182 majrūr 105 majrūr bi-l-ḥarf 105 makān 34 makāna 334 Makram, ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim 98 Malaysia, education in 253 malfūẓ 171 Mali 250, 255 Mali, education in 255 f. malleability of language 39, 42 Maltzahn, Nadia von 246 maʿlūm 123, 208 mamdūd 59 f. Mamluks 246 mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf 44 maʿnā 26, 46, 58, 61, 84, 142 maʿnā l-ʾiḍāfa 108 maʿnā l-tanwīn 182 maʿnā l-waṣf 103 manfaʿa 125 mankūr 128 manqūl 240 manṣūb 102 manṭiqiyyūn 118 manʿūt 209, 211 f., 214 manzila 23, 32, 84, 140, 184 f. Maqdisī, al- 246 maqṣūr 59 f. marfūʿ 151 maʿrifa 4, 17, 20, 23–25, 31 f., 35, 126 f., 129, 133, 141, 182 f., 209, 213–216 marked 41 f. markedness theory 6, 41 f., 44 marker, declensional 43 marker, feminine 59, 104 marker of indefiniteness 21 marker of plural 36 marker, person 38 Marogy, Amal 1, 128 Marzūqī, al- 8 masculine 18 f., 35, 41 f., 59, 104 maṣdar 109, 229 f., 241 maṣdar manṣūb bi-fiʿl muḍmar 192

278 masʾūl 122 Maʿṣūm ibn ʿAlī, Muḥammad 248, 262 matā 153 matbūʿ 216 Mattā ibn Yūnus 116–121 Mauritania 250 mawḍiʿ 37f., 91, 129, 184 mawḍūʿ 134 mawqiʿ 118 mawṣūf 105f., 135, 212 Māzinī, al- 50, 77 M-definite see definite, morphosyntactically meaning, lexical 51 Mecca 255 Meccan type of instruction 247 Medina, university of 259 memorization 55, 247, 252f., 263 memorization of the Qurʾān 250, 262 message 126 metaphor 84 metonymy 13 Milner, Jean-Claude 22 min 100f. M-indefinite see indefinite, morphosyntactically minimal domain 28 minimal sentence 28 miṣr 53 miṯāl 25, 36 miṯl 136f. mobility 39 Morocco, education in 253 Muʿāḏ al-Ḥarrāʾ 78, 82 muʾakkid 187 muʾannaṯ 18, 59 muʿarrab 58 muʿarraf 212 muʿarrif 212 muʾaṯṯir 107, 215, 232f., 235 mubāhāh 85, 91 Mubarrad, al- 2, 5f., 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., 67 mubdal 212 mubdal minhu 212 mubham 6, 26, 45, 100, 103, 109, 126, 182f., 188, 211

index mubham mustaqirr 109 mubtadaʾ 6, 12, 108, 133–137, 139 f., 146, 154, 159 mubtadiʾ 146 muḍāf 126, 139, 155, 182, 210–212, 215, 237 muḍāf ʾilayhi 102, 105–109, 210–212 mudāḫal 62 muḏakkar 18, 59 muḍāraʿa 36, 43 muḍāriʿ 12, 45 f. muḍiyy 209 muḍmar 192 Mufaḍḍal ibn Salama 59 mufīd 126 muḥaḏḏar 194, 198 muḥaḏḏar minhu 194 muḥaddaṯ 122 muḥaḏḏir 194 muḥāl 169 f. muḫālif 142 Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʾIsmāʿīl 217 f. Muḥammad ibn Sādān al-Ḍarīr 78 muḫaṣṣaṣ 208, 212, 215 f. muḫaṣṣiṣ 210, 212, 215–217, 219 muḫāṭab 23, 26, 122, 127–130, 136, 141, 198, 214 muḫāṭaba 184 f. muḥdaṯūn 83 muhmal 139 muḫtaṣṣ 208, 214 mujannas 51, 58, 65–67 mujīb 122, 136 mukaḏḏib 120 mulāqī 233 munakkar 212 munakkir 212 munawwan 100 munqaṭiʿ 42 munṣarif 6, 14 f., 17, 34, 37, 42 muqaddar 167–176 muqaddima 129 muqārin 173 muʿrab 34 murād 213 Murāġī, ʿAbdallāh Muṣṭafā al- 217 muṣāḥib 168 mušajjar 62 musalsal 62

279

index musāmaḥa 155 musammā 21, 82, 130 musnad 50, 239 musnad ʾilayhi 50 mustaʿār 233 mustaʿmal 63 mustaqbal 156 mustaqīm 42, 129 mustaqirr, mubham 109 muštarak 45, 61f. mustaṣḥab 168–171, 173f. mustaṯnā 212 mustaṯnā minhu 212 mutaʿaddī 230, 232, 235f., 238, 241 mutakallim 107, 121, 127f., 214 muʿtall 31f. mutamakkin 16, 18–21, 33–38, 40, 44 Mutanabbī, al- 66, 76, 83 mutarādif 61f. mutarāḫī 184 muṭlaq 80, 192 muṭlaq al-ʿadad 104 muwaḍḍiḥ 216 muwallad 66 muwalladāt 57 Mūzanī, al- 120 naʿata 209 nabbaha 184, 187 Nābiġa al-Ḏubyānī, al- 66 Nābiġa al-Jaʿdī, al- 66 nādir 53f., 56 Naḍr ibn Šumayl, al- 52 nafaḏa 231 naffaḏa 243 nāfiḏ 242 nafs 192, 196 nafy 119 naḥārīr 57 Naḥḥās, al- 7, 78, 80, 148f., 151, 156 naḥt 60 naḥw 50–53, 55, 58–61, 110, 262 naḥw, tabsīṭ al- 254 naḥwa 136 naḥwiyyūn 50–53, 55–57, 59, 61, 150 nahy 191, 197 nakira 14–18, 20, 23f., 32, 35f., 40, 129, 136, 206, 209–211, 213–216, 221 naqala 240

naqīḍ 119 naṣaba 156, 158 naṣb 12, 105, 151, 154 f., 158 f. Nāṣif al-Miṣrī, Ḥifnī Bek 249, 254 naʿt 153, 182, 204, 206, 209, 212, 214 f. native speaker 112 Nawawī, Muḥammad 248 naẓīr 31, 86 naẓm 50 negation 7, 119–121, 139 f. negation, contradictory 119, 121 neologism 54, 57 nidāʾ 191, 210 Niger 250 niʿma 15, 151, 156 nomination 19, 24 f., 27, 40 non-assertive 6, 12 non-definite 20 f., 23 noun 126, 149 noun phrase, plural 140 noun, definite 126 f., 215 noun, definition of 127 f. noun, indeclinable 10 noun, indefinite 205, 209, 215 f., 219 noun, properties of 138 noun, referential properties of 36–38 numerals 5, 96–114, 210, 216 numerals, basic 100–102 numerals, gender of 102 numerals in a vocative 210 numerals, subsidiary 100–102 nūn, compensatory 103 nuʿūt see naʿt oath 37 object 167, 196, 229–244 object, counted 100–104, 106 f. object, direct 13, 229 f., 236, 238, 241 f. object of praise and blame 204 operator 150, 156 operator of the predicate 152 operator of the rafʿ 154 order 191 order, right 122 Owens, Jonathan 2 f., 33 f., 41, 233, 148 Pakistan, Arabic in 251, 252 paraphrase 140–142 partial declension 30

280 partial declinability 35, 44 partial inflection 16, 30f. participle, active 45, 98f., 102, 168, 188, 208 particle 21, 119, 146, 149, 153, 156 particle, sentence-introducing 156 particle, vocative 183, 210 particularization 5, 193, 203–228 partitive 100f. parts of speech 102, 146, 155 patient 235 P-definite see definite, pragmatically pedagogical grammar 7f., 146–166 Peled, Yishai 108, 150 performative 24, 110, 190 performative, primary 5, 191 perlocutionary 190 permutation of roots 58 Persian 132, 134, 245 person marker 38 personal pronoun 126, 131, 135f., 139, 152, 154, 156, 159 personal pronoun, third person 182 pesantren 247f., 256 philologists 51, 61 phonetics 262 pilgrimage, transmission of knowledge during 255 P-indefinite see indefinite, pragmatically plasticity 39, 43 plural 60 plural marker 36 poetry 53, 55f., 60, 66f. poetry narrators 61 poetry, language of 112, 122 poetry, pre-Islamic 66, 83 poetry used in šawāhid 55 polysemy 45, 61 possession 102f. pragmatics 14, 111, 126, 207, 214 praise 192 precursorism 4 predicate 134, 138, 152, 156 predicate, verbal 167f., 170 predication 98f., 105 preposition 105, 149f., 154, 216 principle of locality 28 prohibition 191 pronoun 126 pronoun, personal see personal pronoun

index pronoun, demonstrative see demonstrative pronoun, relative see relative pronoun proper name 6, 13 f., 19, 22 f., 24–32, 34 f., 41, 45, 126, 130–133, 135, 139 proper name, definition of 130 proper name, etymology of 64 proper name, foreign 41 proper name, demonstrative as 185 proper name, relative as 19 property, distinctive 132 proverbs 53 qabl 41, 44, 159 qablu 20 qaddara 211 Qaḥṭānī, Muḥyī l-Dīn al- 249 Qālī, al- 58, 67, 79, 85 qallamā 90 qarāba 26 Qazzāz al-Qayrawānī, al- 62 Qifṭī, al- 63, 160 qirāʾāt 5, 78 qiyās 57, 66, 104 quadriliterals 54 qualification 207 f., 211 f., 214, 219, 221 qualification, adjectival 206, 215 qualification, attributive 216 qualification of an indefinite noun 209, 215 qualifier 30 quantified, existentially 141 quantifier 137 quasi-determination 206 f. Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar 62 quinqueliterals 54, 57 Qurʾān 64 Qurʾān, exegesis of 245 Qurʾān, language of 112, 122 Qurʾān, memorization of 252, 262 Qurʾān, translation of 245 Quṭrub 62 quwwa 90, 110 rafʿ 11, 105, 146, 148–160, 232 rafʿ al-ištirāk 214 rafaʿa 152–155, 158 Raḥmān, Ṭāriq 251 rajaz 55 f. rare words 54 Rāzī, Faḫr al-Dīn al- 120

281

index reasoning, language used for 123 Reckendorf, Hermann 167, 191f., 205 reference 6, 11–49 reference, deictic 27 reference, indefinite 132 referentiability 219 regularity 31 relative pronoun 127 relative pronoun as proper name 19 reproach 192 restriction 137, 206 rhetoric 123 root 67 Ruʿaynī al-Ḫaṭṭāb, al- 247, 249 Ruʾba 66 rubba 6, 76–95 rubbamā 87–90 Rumman academy 254 Rummānī, al- 77, 212, 217, 219 Sadan, Arik 6, 157, 160, 178–189 šāḏḏ 54, 197 Šāfiʿī, al- 217, 245 Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād, al- 58 šāhid 52, 55f., 58, 60, 62, 66f., 83 sāʾil 122 Sakaedani, Haruko 5, 190–202 Sakkākī, al- 50 Salafis 257, 262 salutation 192f. Samāra, Rāʾif 53 sāmiʿ 123 sammā 36 Šammāḫ, al- 66 Šantamarī al-ʿAlam al- 15, 91 Sānū, Quṭb Muṣṭafā 217 ṣarafa 15 ṣarf 6, 14–17, 20, 43f., 50f., 248, 262 ṣarf, mamnūʿ min al- 44 ṣarf, tark al- 20, 32, 43 Sartori, Manuel 5, 7, 101, 203–228 satisfiability 138 Saussure, Ferdinand de 4 šawāhid see šāhid šayʾ 126f., 135 Šaybānī, al- 52f., 63, 67 Šaylaḫānī, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz alschool see madrasa school see pesantren

217

school, modernization of 256 school, Western-style 253 Sehalvi, Nizamuddin 251 semantic 127 semantic relationship 61 sentence, affirmative 190 sentence, categorical 140 sentence, equational 133 sentence, imperative 190 sentence, interrogative 190 sentence, mubtadaʾ/ḫabar 139 sentence, negative 190 sentence, nominal 133 sentence, prohibitive 190 sentence, topicalized verbal 133 sentence, topic-comment 134, 141 sentence, verbal 135 Sezgin, Fuat 81, 148, 158 Sheyhatovitch, Beata 125 f. Sībawayhi 1, 3, 5 f., 11–50, 52, 54, 56–61, 63– 65, 77, 84, 92, 98 f., 103, 109, 111, 119–123, 125–131, 133, 137, 139, 141, 148, 154–157, 167–189, 191, 194–197, 199 f., 203, 207 f., 219f., 229, 231, 233, 238, 242 f., 263 šibh 136f. ṣifa 17, 19, 26, 30, 64, 86, 88, 106, 150 f., 154, 212f., 216 ṣifa, bi-l- 154 ṣifa mušabbaha bi-l-fāʿil 98 f., 109, 111 ṣifa muštaqqa 105 Sijistānī, al- 54, 59 f., 62, 65, 67 ṣināʿat al-luġa 138 ṣinf 229 singular 139 šiʿr 55f., 60 f. Sīrāfī, al- 7, 60, 63, 78, 115–145, 171, 209, 219, 229, 238–243 Širbīnī, al- 17, 206, 257 Sous 250 speaker 111 f., 129 f., 135 speaker, native 112 speaker’s intention 128 specialization 206 f. species 102 f., 208 f. specification 5, 99, 103, 105, 107, 109, 193, 203–228 specificity 203, 219 specifier 100, 102, 106, 137 f., 140–142 Speech Act Theory 5, 191

282 speech acts 190f. speech, tripartite division of 191 Stewart,Charles 251 strength 102 strength, syntactic 100f., 110f. structuralism 42 subject 134, 138, 156f. subject, logical 134 Sufis 245, 249, 253 Sufism 247 Suhaylī, al- 214 Sunniforum 251, 257–263 suppletive insertion 66 sūr 138 Sūsī, Muḥammad al-Muḫtār al- 250 Suyūṭī, al- 54, 63, 82, 91, 173 synchrony 3 synonyms 61 syntactic categories, theory of 38 syntactic strength 100f., 110f. Syriac 135 tāʾ marbūṭa 103f. taʿaddā 13, 236, 238 taʿajjub 231 Ṯaʿālibī, al- 212 taʿarrafa 141f., 209f. tābiʿ 108, 216 tabsīṭ al-naḥw 254 tadāḫul al-kalām 63 taḏkīr 20 tafḍīl 221 tafsīr 52, 250 taġyīr 27, 141 Taha Hussein 245–247 Taha, Zeinab 6, 229–244 taḫaṣṣuṣ 217 taḥdīd 132 taḥḏīr 5, 190–202 taḫfīf 15 taʾḫīr 206 taḫliṣ 212 taḥqīr 185 taḫṣīṣ 5, 101, 203–228 taḫṣīṣ al-ʿilla 205, 212 taḫṣīṣ, definition of 205–207 takṯīr 76–78, 80–82, 84f., 87f., 91f. ṭalab 190 ṭalabī 191

index taʿlīl 82 Talmon, Rafael 33, 156–159 tamakkana 33–35 tamakkun 3, 17–20, 36–40, 43 tamām 106 tamām al-kalām 108 Tamari, Tal 264 taʿmīm 206 tamyīz 5, 100–103, 106, 108 f., 111, 206 f., 216, 219 tamyīz, numerical 102 tanbīh 198 tankīr 5, 205–207, 210, 212, 216, 219 tanwīn 6, 13–18, 21, 24, 32 f., 35, 40, 43–45, 100, 182 tanwīn al-ṣarf 17 tanwīn al-tamakkun 34 tanwīn al-tamkīn 17 tanwīn, compensatory 32 taqdīr 57, 66, 134, 138, 169–176, 186 taqlīb 58 taqlīl 76–78, 80–86, 88, 91 f. taqrīb ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ 146, 175 taqsīm 154 taqyīd 80, 137 Ṭarafa 66 tarāfuʿ 108, 151 taraka ʿalā ḥālihi 186 taʿrīf 128, 132, 136, 204–207, 210–212, 215 f., 219–221 tark al-ṣarf 20, 32, 43 tarkeeb method 260 f. tasammuḥ 155, 157 taṣarruf 14, 39 taṣġīr 60 taṣrīf 14 taṯniya 60, 185 tawābiʿ see tābiʿ tawḍīḥ 5, 213–216, 219 Tawfīq, ʾAmīra ʿAlī 97, 107 Tawḥīdī, ʾAbu Ḥayyān al- 116 taʾwīl 169 tawkīd 89 f. tawlīd al-ʾalfāẓ 54 Tawwazī, al- 62 taysīr ʿalā l-mubtadiʾ 175 télos 125 tense of the ḥāl 173 f. terminology 3

283

index terminology, grammatical 260 test, proper names as 25, 27 textbooks, Madinah series of 259, 263 textbooks, Western 259f. Theodorus 134 Tiam, Aboubakar 255 Timbuktu 250 ṯiqal 18 Ṭirimmāḥ, al- 66 topic 134f., 141 topic-comment 133 Toure, Saada 255 transitive, doubly 240f. transitivity 229–244 transitivity, morphological patterns of 237 transitivity, syntactic test for 236 translation 247, 255 transmission of religious knowledge 253f. transposition 27–30, 32 triliterals 58 Troupeau, Gérard 14f., 178, 214 ʿUmar, Yūsuf Ḥasan 98 ʿUmāra ibn ʿAqīl 55 ʿumda 105, 107 ʾUmm al-Hayṯam 54 ʾummahāt 248 Umru l-Qays see Imruʾ al-Qays ʿumūm 138, 209 ʿumūm al-ism 213 underlying form 103–105, 107 universal 138 unmarked 41f. unquantified 139 ʾurjūza 263 ʾUšmūnī, al- 248 ʾustāḏ 257 ʾuṣūl al-fiqh 5, 8, 204, 217 ʾuṣūl al-naḥw 67 ʿuṣūr al-iḥtijāj 53, 66 utterance 190 utterance, constative 191 utterance, meaningful 111 utterance, performative 91 vagueness 111 valency 6, 233, 242f. verb 43, 229–244 verb, admirative 28, 231, 240

verb, assimilated 45 f. verb, causative 240 verb, classification of 6, 229–244 verb, declension of 46 verb, experiential 241 verb, intransitive 229–244 verb, metaphorical 231 verb, non-real 231, 233, 238 verb of cognition 241 verb of sense 238 verb of the limbs 241 verb, phrasal 143 verb, real 231, 233, 238 verb, state 241 verb, transitive 229–244 verbal noun 192, 196 verbal patterns 60 verbatim quotation 28 Versteegh, Kees 8, 17, 32 f., 37–39, 82, 112, 124f., 245–267 Viain, Marie 7, 154, 246, 263 Vidro, Nadia 148, 151, 154 virtual 12 virtual reference 22 vocative 24, 28, 183 vocative particle 210 voie diffuse 125 vyuo see chuo wa- 118f., 193, 198 wa- meaning maʿa 195 waḍʿ 84 Wahhabi 255 wāḥid 40 wajh 11f., 46 waqaʿa 11 f., 23, 42, 168, 213, 236 wāqiʿ 11f. Waquet, Françoise 264 warning 191, 193 f. waṣala 230, 238 wāṣala 232 waṣf 103, 169, 206, 212, 221 wāṣil 232f., 235, 243 waṣṣala 243 wazn 25 Wehr, Hans 257 Weiss, Bernard 217 West Africa, Arabic in 251 Western linguistics 4

284

index

Western textbooks 259f. Wilmet, Marc 25 wish 192f. word class 27, 28 words, non-Arabic 56 Wright, William 167, 192f., 205 wujūh see wajh wuqūʿ 216 wuqūʿ al-labs 209 x-bar Theory

137

Yazīdī, ʿAbdallāh ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al64 Yazīdī, Yaḥyā ibn al-Mubārak al- 52 Yaʿqūb, ʾImīl Badīʿ 206 Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb 16, 31f., 51f., 77, 137 Zadeh, Travis 245f. Zāhid, ʾAbū ʿUmar Ġulām Ṯaʿlab al-

62f., 65

Zajjāj, al- 77, 91, 187 Zajjājī, al- 6 f., 17, 36–38, 51, 64, 77–80, 146, 148, 150, 152, 154, 160, 208, 214, 229, 233, 235, 237 f., 243 Zamaḫšarī, al- 46, 65 f., 90, 97, 126–128, 133, 196–200, 213–215, 219, 246 Zanjānī, ʿIzz al-Dīn al- 248 Zanzibar 249 Zanzibar, Arabic in 252 Zanzibar, education in 252 ẓarf 16, 19, 34 f., 149, 152–154, 159, 169 ẓarf al-dahr 35, 38 ẓarf as ʿāmil 174 ẓarf, interrogative 156 ẓarf, predicative 156 Zawāwī, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī al- 250 ziyāda 23 Zubaydī, al- 51, 60, 148, 150, 153 Zuhayr 66 ẓurūf see ẓarf