The importance and richness of the Arabic linguistic tradition, largely neglected by Western literature, is amply demonstrated by this book, first published in 1990. Written by three experts in the field, it provides us with a comprehensive survey of the historical constitution and theoretical structure of the Arabic linguistic tradition from its beginnings in the eighth century to its mature state around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Besides grammar, the book covers such fields as rhetoric, grammatical semantics, and methodological issues, and pays particular attention to the most representative works of the classical period. It also has the unique benefit of containing the historical background.
Author(s): Georges Bohas, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, Djamel Eddine Kouloughli
Series: Routledge Library Editions: Language & Literature of the Middle East 3
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2017
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Transcription system
1 General Introduction
The Growth of the Arabic Linguistic Tradition: a Historical Survey
Early grammatical thinking to the end of the second/eighth century
From Sībawayhi to al-Mubarrad
The codification of grammar in the fourth/tenth century
Maturity and decline (fifth/eleventh-tenth/fifteenth centuries)
Facts, Rules, and Arguments
Data
The integrative logic of qiyās
Grammar and reality
2 Sībawayhi's Kitāb: an Enunciative Approach to Syntax
Problems and Hypotheses
Interpreting the Kitāb
The enunciative hypothesis
Predication and Enunciation: Sībawayhi's Theory of the Utterance
3 The Canonical Theory of Grammar: Syntax (Naḥw)
Basic Concepts
Parts of speech
I'rāb and binā'
Sentence and utterance
The Theory of Government
General principles
The
governing operators
Abstractness in the theory of government
Government and Predication
The two models
Two models or just one?
4 The Canonical Theory of Grammar: Morphology, Phonology, and Phonetics (Taṣrīf)
Morphology
Verbal morphology
Derived nominal morphology
Phonology
Substitution (badal)
Erasure (ḥaḏf)
Mutation (qalb)
Transfer (naql)
Gemination (idḡām)
The late phonological processes
Phonetics
The phonetics of the grammarians
The phonetics of the reciters
The phonetics of the physiologists
Notes
5 Major Trends in the Study of Texts
Literary Criticism
'Greek' Rhetoric (Xaṭāba)
The Foundations of Jurisprudence
Arabo-Islamic Rhetoric (Balāḡa)
6 Rhetoric and Grammatical Semantics
The General Organization of Grammatical Semantics
Some Basic Tenets
Utterance Analysis
Types of Predications
General Operations on Nominals
Informative Predication
Performative Predication
The Scope of Predications
Inter-utterance Relationships
Proper and Figurative Meaning
7 Metrics
Preliminaries
Observations
The Xalīlian Circles
The Ziḥāfāt
Overgeneration in the Xalīlian System
The Orientalists and the Xalīlian System
Bibliography
A Selection
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Indexes
