Sibawayhi's Apple Smell E-Book

El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 50

Beschreibung

This book is a glimpse on the encyclopedic work done on arabic grammar by persian notorious scholar sibawayhi. To put it in mazini's words: "whoever wants to write about arabic nahw after sibawayhi, let him feel deeply humble." it is simply a masterpiece.

Leseprobe

To 'Ash Cat' with God's Peace

CONTENTS

FIRST A STORY

INTRODUCTION

THE STATUS OF ARABIC

SIBAWAIHI'S LIFE & AL-KITAB

THE SOUND SYSTEM OF ARABIC

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES

NON-CONCATENATIVE MORPHOLOGY

TRANSFORMATIONAL SYNTAX

GOVERNMENT

SEMANTICS & DIALECTOLOGY

CONCLUSION

SMALL POTATOES

NOTES

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FIRST A STORY

My speciality is Chomsky's syntax. I once met a bitter confrontation from some colleagues from the Arabic Department, who are studying Arabic nahw. They criticised, even 'insulted,' Chomsky grammatical theory, to tease me! Giving them the credit of the doubt, I asked: 'What is the alternative!' They boastfully answered: 'The Ocean!' I asked: 'What is the ocean?' They answered Kitabu Sibawayh!' I went to the nearest bookshop and bought the 5 Volumes and spent much time reading it and finally debated it with them. They didn't have much to say after that. I did learn much from this incident. I wish I could thank them! Now I know Chomsky's theory and have crossed the 'Ocean'!

With a little Help from My Friends (Joe Coker)

INTRODUCTION

The title 'Sibawaihi's TG grammar' may sound as an anachronism since it is well known that the notion 'transformation' was promoted by Noam Chomsky ever since he published his first book Syntactic Structures in 1957. Chomsky's contribution was dubbed 'major break' (Robins 1967), even 'revolution in modern linguistics' (Smith & Wilson 1980). Still, the reader of Sibawaihi's Al-Kitab finds that the notion 'Transformation’ is present and indeed cuts through the three levels of linguistic analyses viz. phonetics, morphology and syntax.

Islamic Culture

The Islamic culture was a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Persian, Moorish, Indian and even Chinese cultures! The Umayyad dynasty promoted medicine and astronomy, whereas the Abbasids focused on the Arabic language that had become the instrument and container of all sciences. Iraq in particular became the focal center of learning as Europe and the U.S.A. are nowadays! Sibawaihi came as the culmination of that enormous linguistic endeavor with his notorious book Al-Kitab, that was labeled “the Ocean” and a 'King's Gift.'

THE STATUS OF ARABIC

There are more than 3.000 languages in the world (Summer Institute of Linguistics). The linguists have grouped them into families viz. Germanic, Celtic, Romance, Indic, Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan, Polynesian, Mayan, etc. While linguists assert absolute equality among languages, Gleason states, “The Semitic branch is the best known (…) Hebrew (…) is of importance chiefly as the vehicle of the large part of the Old Testament…” (Gleason 1969: 464).

French Diderot stated: « Le bon sens choisirait la langue française ; mais…l'imagination et les passions donneront la préférence aux langues anciennes et à celle de nos voisins…Notre langue sera celle de la vérité, si jamais elle revient sur la terre ; et…la grecque, la latine et les autres seront les langues de la fable et du mensonge. » (Diderot 1751).

Others have suggested other languages as having priority viz. Sanskrit, Berber “the mother of languages!” Concerning Arabic, American Bernard Comrie from the University of California states: “the Arabic language is already studied intensively as the language of a major culture and of a major religion; here I want to adopt a narrower perspective, to show even those linguists who do not, or do not yet, share such broader cultural perspective on Arabic studies that the Arabic language has much to offer them.” (Comrie 1990: 4)

“As with any language that is no longer living, Biblical Hebrew is subject to conflicting interpretations of the orthographic record. On the other level, the fact that no aspect of the orthography other than the consonants demonstrably dates earlier than the sixth century AD has led some scholars to conclude that certain aspects of the traditional pronunciation were borrowed from the native language of post-biblical speakers of Hebrew. On the other hand, we know that a long oral tradition of study and memorization preceded the fixing of the non-consonantal orthography. The parallel to the reputed accuracy of transmission of Vedic Sanskrit is not inappropriate here.” (McCarthy 1990: 35) “The centrality of the Koran in the Moslem religion and the fact that it is written in Arabic have probably prevented the Arab language from breaking up into mutually unintelligible dialects, which otherwise would have occurred in the intervening thirteen centuries.” (Hart 1995 : 10)

“I have read, I believe, nearly everything that has been published of late years upon this subject (…) my standpoint remains, however, nearly the same as it formerly was. The ancient Semitic languages –Arabic and Ethiopic, Assyrian, Canaanitic (Phoenician and Hebrew), and Aramaic (…) are as closely connected with each other as the Romance languages-Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Provencal and French: they are all daughters of a deceased mother… Arabic and Ethiopic, -but essentially the former, -have, I think, preserved a higher degree of likeness to the original Semitic language. The Hebrew of the Pentateuch, and the Assyrian, as it appears in even the oldest inscriptions, seem to me to have already attained nearly the same stage of grammatical development or decay as the post-classical Arabic, the spoken language of modern times.” (Wright 1979: vi)

“In the 17th c. (German philosopher) Leibniz … considered Arabic to be the mother of Hebrew.” (Robins 1980: 167)

SIBAWAIHI’S LIFE & AL-KITAB

In the 8th c. a young Persian student entered Iraq so as to learn Hadith (the prophetic tradition). Being a nonnative speaker of Arabic, he found problems with that language and was sent by his teacher Hamad to take a course of Arabic first. He went to the circle of Arabic grammar, led by Khalil Bnu Ahmad al-Farahidi, only to become the master of that field for ever, to the extent that Mazini considered Al-Kitab to be unique. His grammar is also referred to as THE OCEAN