Approaches to Arabic Linguistics
Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial board
T. Muraoka
VOLUME 49
Kees Versteegh
Approaches to Arabic Linguistics Presented to Kees Versteegh on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday
Edited by
Everhard Ditters and Harald Motzki
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 0081-8461 ISBN 978 90 04 16015 6 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Preface ..................................................................................................
xi
Bibliography Kees Versteegh ............................................................
xv
HISTORY Inside the Speaker’s Mind: Speaker’s Awareness as Arbiter of Usage in Arabic Grammatical Theory ......................................... Ramzi Baalbaki
3
Pragmatics and Contractual Language in Early Arabic Grammar and Legal Theory ......................................................... Michael Carter
25
ʙIdˢmār in the Maʚānī of al-Farrāʙ: A Grammatical Approach between Description and Explanation ......................................... Kinga Dévényi
45
Arabic allad˟ī as a Conjunction: An old Problem and a New Approach ......................................................................................... Werner Diem
67
Les origines de la grammaire arabe, selon la tradition: description, interprétation, discussion .......................................... Pierre Larcher
113
Sībawayhi’s View of the zˢarf as an ʚāmil ......................................... Aryeh Levin
135
Problems in the Medieval Arabic Theory of Sentence Types ......... Yishai Peled
149
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Arabic avant la lettre. Divine, Prophetic, and Heroic Arabic ....... Stefan Wild Inflection and Government in Arabic According to Spanish Missionary Grammarians from Damascus (XVIIIth Century): Grammars at the Crossroads of Two Systems ............................. Otto Zwartjes
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LINGUISTICS The Linguistic Analysis and Rules of Pause in Arabic ................... Salman H. Al-Ani
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The Explanation of Homonymy in the Lexicon of Arabic ............. Georges Bohas and Abderrahim Saguer
255
The Periphrastic Bilingual Verb Construction as a Marker of Intense Language Contact. Evidence from Greek, Portuguese and Maghribian Arabic ................................................................. Louis Boumans
291
Faʚula, faʚila, faʚala: dispersion et régularités sémantiques dans les trois schèmes simples du verbe arabe ..................................... Joseph Dichy
313
Featuring as a Disambiguation Tool in Arabic Natural Language Processing ....................................................................... Everhard Ditters
367
Arabic on the Media: Hybridity and Styles ..................................... Mushira Eid The Use of Morphological Patterns in Arabic Grammars of Turkic ............................................................................................... Robert Ermers Lexical Gaps in Arabic: Evidence from Dictionaries ...................... Jan Hoogland
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contents Masˢdar Formation .............................................................................. Joost Kremers Méthodologie linguistique: organisation de la langue arabe. Organisation générale des langues ............................................... André Roman
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DIALECTS How to be KOOL in Arabic Writing: Linguistic Observations from the Side Line .......................................................................... Gert Borg “Hello, I say, and welcome! Where from, these riding men?” Arabic Popular Poetry and Political Satire: a Study in Intertextuality from Jordan ........................................................... Clive Holes Notes on the Dialects of the ‘Lēgāt and Hˢ amāda˟ˢ h of Southern Sinai ................................................................................................. Rudolf de Jong Classical and Colloquial Arabic Archaisms ..................................... Alan S. Kaye †
527
543
565
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Do They Speak the Same Language? Language Use in Juba Local Courts .................................................................................... Catherine Miller
607
Paradigmatic Stability and Final Laryngeals in Nigerian Arabic: Why History Repeats itself, without Actually Doing so ............. Jonathan Owens
639
Some Aspects of Diglossia as Reflected in the Vocabulary of Literary and Colloquial Arabic ..................................................... Judith Rosenhouse
653
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Everything you Always Wanted to Know about ʙāl, yiʙūl ‘to say’ in Egyptian Arabic ......................................................................... Manfred Woidich
675
Index ....................................................................................................
701
PREFACE
From when we began to compile a Festschrift for Kees Versteegh on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, the first problem we had to tackle was: Who should we invite to contribute? The broad range of his scholarly interests, his expertise in different fields, his academic contribution to them, as well as his network of global contacts made it clear that the circle of his colleagues and friends is too large to invite all to contribute. So we decided to confine this volume to Kees Versteegh’s core contribution: Arabic linguistics. This decision will surely be regretted by his colleagues working in related fields of scholarship in which Kees Versteegh is engaged as well, but we had to make a choice. Moreover, our time schedule forced us to only select the first set of early contributions brought in. In the end, what does it matter? Someone will have to prepare another for his sixty-fifth! Even with this limitation, the present Festschrift has become voluminous, since the eagerness of scholars in the field of Arabic linguistics to contribute has been overwhelming. It clearly demonstrates: Kees Versteegh has been widely considered to be one of the most eminent scholars in this discipline. He also is appreciated as a tirelessly working editor and co-editor of renowned book series, collective volumes and encyclopaedias. Moreover, he has won many friends by his kindness and dependability. With the list of Kees Versteegh’s publications at hand, one realises the number, diversity, and depth of his scholarly interests, from Hellenistic elements in Arabic linguistics and other fields of Islamic culture, to the history of Arabic grammar as a scholarly discipline from classical to modern times, grammatical and linguistic phenomena described by scholars of Arabic grammar, changes in written and spoken Arabic through the ages, as well as early Qurʙānic exegesis as source for the beginnings of Arabic grammar. In addition, he ranslated and commented on Arabic texts, grammatical treatises and other genres including a novel. His books Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking; Pidginization and Creolization: the Case of Arabic; Arabic Grammar and Qurʙānic Exegesis in Early Islam; and The Arabic Language are handbooks. Every single scholar and student of Arabic linguistics can not bypass them.
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Several of his publications have been translated into Arabic, and others will follow. At Nijmegen University, where Kees Versteegh is working since 1972, first as lecturer and later as full professor, he organized several workshops about the ‘History of Arabic Grammar’ (1984 and 1987) and the ‘Model of Arabic Grammar in other Languages’ (1997). With intense pleasure the participants of these conferences remember these fruitful academic gatherings occurring in a very informal and convivial atmosphere. These gatherings resulted in two collective volumes he edited in cooperation with one of his many colleagues. Thanks to his co-editorship, international publication projects such as the History of Language Sciences and the Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Arabic linguistics acquired a firm place in the field of linguistics in general. Generations of Dutch students, translators and interpreters of Arabic will know his name from the two volumes of the dictionary Woordenboek Arabisch-Nederlands/Nederlands-Arabisch of which he is one of the editors. This Festschrift will be a monument for Kees Versteegh in Arabic studies, as a homage to his scholarly oeuvre. Several contributions camd from former students who wrote their Ph.D. theses under his supervision. As a matter of fact, all contributors studied with him. We divided the collected articles into three chapters reflecting the foci of his scholarly oeuvre: history of Arabic grammar, Arabic linguistics, and Arabic dialectology. We have put the history of Arabic grammar first, since it is Kees Versteegh’s true domain. He wrote his Ph.D. in this field, dedicated most of his publications to it, and returns to it. He translated and commented upon al-Zajjājī’s Kitāb al-ʙĪdˢāhˢ , a theoretical treatise on Arabic grammar and one of the classical works on this issue. Since the 1980s, his research and publications also have been directed towards other historical and thematical topics in linguistics, and he certainly will recognize many of his own ideas in the contributions in all three sections. His studies on pidginization and creolization in Arabic and his interest in Arabic dialects express his feeling for the historical development of the Arabic language. Kees Versteegh is a polyglot. When invited to lecture outside the Netherlands he enjoys lecturing in the language of is audience, in English, French, German and Arabic, as well as Spanish or Czech. From the start of his academic career—he first studied Greek and Latin—he cherished a fondness for these languages. In his research this became
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apparent in his search for Hellenistic elements in Arabic linguistics. Together with a colleague of Classical Studies, he also teaches regular classes on linguistics. His interest in—well, let us say—‘exotic’ languages is exceptional. His eyes sparkle when he tells how he learned Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit, from an indigenous scholar in Alaska or how he mastered Hottentot clicks in South Africa. Many colleagues enjoyed Kees Versteegh’s hospitality in his ‘sexton’s house’ in picturesque Batenburg. They will never forget the tasty meals he prepares himself as the evening’s conversation quickly passes from scholarly issues to personal and private ones, as for example his experiences as director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo or the birds he suddenly noticed by a Zamalek window. One may be engaged with Kees in a really basic discussion of Arabic linguistics, only to be interrupted by his quick sprint outdoors to observe an ornithological event, afterwards resuming the discussion exactly at the comma or full stop of his last intervention. Bird watching remains his hobby and on a walk along the Maas (or any other river), he never forgets his binoculars. Besides linguistics, a guest learns a lot about the birds of the region, their names in Dutch and other languages, including Arabic. Guests get free access to his rich private library with its rare books on Arabic linguistics and even the privilege of borrowing without any check for solvability. The study of Arabic has been Arabic-speaking scholars’ domain for many centuries. Kees Versteegh has unearthed their understanding of the language and ‘translated’ it for Western scholarship. Western scholars’ linguistic study of Arabic, according to current standards, started only at the beginning of the 19th century. So while the western linguistic approach is much younger than that of those native scholars, Western Arabic linguistics are on par with even native intellectual efforts, and Kees Versteegh has contributed to this state of affairs. Had classic scholars of the Arabic language like Sībawayhi or al-Zajjājī the change to witness the linguistic achievements of their modern Western colleagues like Kees Versteegh, they would have been impressed. They might have cited the verses of Ibn Hˢ amdīs (Sicily, 447–527/1056–1133): ʚalā šadawāti tˢuyūrin fisˢāhˢ in lahunna ʙaʚārīdˢu ʚinda ʙl-h˭alīli turajjiʚu fīhā dˢurūba ʙl-luhˢ ūni
ʚalā ʙanna ʙafsˢahˢ ahā ʙaʚjamu muhammalatu ʙl-wazni lā tuʚlamu fa-tutˢribunā wa-hya lā tufhamu
On the tunes of birds that speak true Arabic, but the most eloquent of them are foreigners
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preface who use metres that are neglected by al-Khalīl and unknown in which they quaver notes of various melodies, delighting us although they are unintelligible.
This Festschrift would not have seen the light without several helping hands. Greetje Heemskerk compiled the bibliography of his publications. Marjolein van der Heul and Ine Smeets produced the raw version of the index. Elizabeth Bishop copy-edited the English contributions. Joed Elich of Brill has been willing to publish the book. Ingrid Heijckers lead us safely through the whole of the production process and beyond. Renee Otto supervised the publication process. We are very grateful for their commitment. Everhard Ditters and Harald Motzki
BIBLIOGRAPHY KEES VERSTEEGH
1977 Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. (= Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 7). Leiden: E. J. Brill. Also published as PhD thesis University of Nijmegen. [Arabic translation by Mahˢmud Kanākrī, 2000: ʚAnāsˢir yūnāniyya fī l-fikr al-luġawī al-ʚarabī. Amman: Jamʚiyyat ʚummāl al-matāˢ biʚ at-taʚāwuniyya]. 1978 ‘The Arabic Terminology of Syntactic Position.’ Arabica 25, 261–281. 1979 ‘Die Mission des Kyrillos im Lichte der arabo-byzantinischen Beziehungen.’ Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 129, 233–262. Reviews Ephrem Hunayn Festival Baghdād 4–7/2/1974. 1974. Baghdad: Mat ˢbūʚāt Majmaʚ al-Luġa al-Suryāniyya, Bibliotheca Orientalis 36, 96–97. Rundgren, Frithiof. 1976. Über den griechischen Einfluß auf die arabische Nationalgrammatik. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. N.S. 2(5), 119–144. Bibliotheca Orientalis 36, 235–236. 1980 ‘Hellenistic Education and the Origin of Arabic Grammar.’ Progress in Linguistic Historiography: Papers from the International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, Ottawa, 28–31 August 1978. Edited by Konrad Koerner. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 333–344. ‘Logique et grammaire au dixième siècle.’ Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage 2. 39–52. ‘Notice bibliographique.’ Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage 2. 67–75. ‘The International Project Onomasticon Arabicum.’ Bibliotheca Orientalis 37, 291–294. ‘The Origin of the Term qiyās in Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 4, 7–30. ‘The Stoic Verbal System.’ Hermes 108, 338–357.
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Reviews Ambros, Edith. 1979. Sieben Kapitel des Šarhˢ Kitāb Sībawaihī von arRummānī in Edition und Übersetzung. Wien: Verlag des Verbandes der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs. Bibliotheca Orientalis 37, 361–362. Malti Douglas, Fedwa and Geneviève Fourcade. 1976. The Treatment by Computer of Medieval Arabic Biographical Data: An introduction and guide to the “Onomasticum Arabicum”. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Bibliotheca Orientalis 37, 362. Traini, Renato. 1977. Sources biographiques des Zaïdites (années 122–1200 h.): Letters alif-ha’. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Bibliotheca Orientalis 37, 362–363. 1981 ‘A Dissenting Grammarian: Qutˢrub on declension.’ Historiographia Linguistica 8, 403–429. [See also The History of Linguistics in the Near East. Edited by Kees Versteegh, Konrad Koerner and Hans-Josef Niederehe. 1983. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 167–193]. ‘De taalsituatie in de Arabische wereld.’ De taal van de Islam: Opstellen over Arabische, Turkse en Afghaanse cultuur. Nijmegen: Nederlandse Vereniging voor de Studie van het Midden-Oosten en de Islam. 19–38. ‘La conception des temps du verbe chez les grammairiens arabes.’ Analyses, théorie 3, 47–68. Reviews Klein-Franke, Felix. 1980. Die klassische Antike in der Tradition des Islam. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Bibliotheca Orientalis 38, 734–737. 1982 ‘Progress and Change in the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Linguistics in the Netherlands 1982. Edited by Saskia Daalder and Marinel Gerritsen. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 39–50. ‘Structural Change and Pidginization in the History of the Arabic Language.’ Papers from the 5th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Galway, April 6–10 1981. Edited by Anders Ahlqvist. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 362–373. Vertalingen voor 1ste jaarsstudenten Arabisch (with Gert Borg). Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen.
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Reviews Dagorn, René. 1981. La geste d’Ismaël d’après l’onomastique et la tradition arabes, Genève: Droz; Paris: Champion. Bibliotheca Orientalis 39, 720–726. Rowson, Everett and Seeger Bonebakker. 1980. A Computerized Listing of Biographical Data from the Yatīmat al-Dahr by al-Thaʚālibī. Malibu: Undena Publications. Bibliotheca Orientalis 39, 727–729. 1983 ‘A Dissenting Grammarian: Qutˢrub on declension.’ The History of Linguistics in the Near East. Konrad Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh (Eds.). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 167–193. [See also Historiographia Linguistica 1981. 8, 403–429]. ‘Arabic Grammar and the Corruption of Speech.’ Arab Language and Culture. Edited by Ramzi Baalbaki. Beirut: American University of Beirut. [= al-Abhˢāth 31]. 139–160. ‘Current Bibliography on the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 10, 86–89. ‘Current Bibliography on the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 11, 84–86. ‘History of Eastern Linguistics in the Soviet Union.’ Historiographia Linguistica 10, 289–307. The History of Linguistics in the Near East. (= Studies in the History of Linguistics, 28). Editor (with Konrad Koerner and Hans-Josef Niederehe). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 1984 ‘Arab Grammatical Studies before Sībawayh.’ Matériaux pour une histoire des théories linguistiques = Essays toward a history of linguistic theories = Materialien zu einer Geschichte der sprachwissenschaftlichen Theorien. Edited by Sylvain Auroux, Michel Glatigny, André Jolly, Anne Nicolas and Irène Rosier. Lille: Université de Lille III. 227–238. ‘Current Bibliography on the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 12, 86–89. ‘Piginigado, kreoligado kaj Esperanto.’ Hungara Vivo 4, 127–129. Pidginization and Creolization: The case of Arabic. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 33). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
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Reviews Bakalla, Muhammad. 1983. Arabic linguistics. London: Mansell. Bibliotheca Orientalis 41, 751–754. Carter, Michael. 1982. Arab Linguistics: An introductory classical text with translation and notes. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Bibliotheca Orientalis 41, 225–230. Nebes, Norbert. 1982. Funktionsanalyse von kāna yafʚalu. Hildesheim: Olms. Bibliotheca Orientalis 41, 754–757. 1985 ‘Current Bibliography on the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 14, 79–81. ‘La ‘Grande étymologie’ d’Ibn Jinnī.’ La linguistique fantastique. Edited by Sylvain Auroux, Jean-Claude Chevalier, Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and Christiane Marchello-Nizia. Paris: Denoël. 44–50. Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar. Papers Presented during a Workshop held at the University of Nijmegen, April 16–19, 1984. Editor (with Hartmut Bobzin). Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. (= Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 15). ‘Survey of Journals.’ Arab Journal of Language Studies / al-Majalla al-ʚarabiyya li-d-dirāsāt al-luġawiyya 2, 189–197. ‘The Development of Argumentation in Arabic Grammar: The declension of the dual and the plural.’ Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar. Edited by Hartmut Bobzin and Kees Versteegh. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 1985. 152–173. [= Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 15]. Translation Salih, Tayyib. Seizoen van de trek naar het noorden. Uit het Arabisch vertaald en van een nawoord voorzien. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. [Dutch translation of Mawsim al-hijra ʙilā š-šamāl]. Reviews Sezgin, Fuat. 1982, 1984. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. VIII. Lexikographie. IX. Grammatik. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Historiographia Linguistica 12, 452–461. 1986 History of Arabic Grammar. Nijmegen: Instituut voor Talen en Culturen van het Midden Oosten, Katholieke Universiteit.
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‘Latinitas, Hellènismós, ʚArabiyya.’ The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period. Edited by Daniel J. Taylor. (= Historiographia Linguistica 13, 425–448). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1987. 251–274.]. ‘The Origin of the Romance Languages and the Arabic Dialects.’ Islão e arabismo na península ibérica: Actas do XI. congresso da União Europeia de Arabistas e Islamólogos, Evora, Faro, Silves, 29 set.–6 out. 1982. Edited by Adel Y. Sidarus. Évora: Universidade de Évora. 337–352. ‘Word Order in Uzbekistan Arabic and Universal Grammar.’ On the Dignity of Man: Oriental and classical studies in honour of Frithiof Rundgren. Edited by Tryggve Kronholm and Eva Riad. (= Orientalia Suecana 33–34). Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell. 443–453. 1987 ‘al-ʚArab fī jibāl al-Alp.’ al-Azmina 7, 26–30. ‘Current Bibliography on the History of Arabic Grammar.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 16, 130–133. ‘Die arabische Sprachwissenschaft.’ Grundriß der arabischen Philologie, II. Edited by Helmut Gätje, Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. 148–176. Het Arabisch: Norm en realiteit (with Arie Schippers). Muiderberg: D. Coutinho. ‘Marginality in the Arab Grammatical Tradition.’ Papers in the History of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS III), Princeton, 19–23 August 1984. Edited by Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly and Hans-Josef Niederehe. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 87–96. ‘Nahˢwiyyūna wa-luġawiyyūna wa-mawqif Dozy izāʙ at-turāt˟ an-nahˢwī al-ʚarabī.’ Fī l-muʚjamiyya al-ʚarabiyya al-muʚāsˢira. Edited by Ahmed El-Ayed and Ibrahim Ben Mrad. Tunis: Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī. 401–413. Reviews Sublet, Jacqueline. 1985. Cahiers d’onomastique Arabe, 1982–1984. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Bibliotheca Orientalis 44, 130–133. 1988 ‘De ontwikkeling van de technische woordenschat in Modern Standaard Arabisch: Naar aanleiding van een recente publicatie.’ Sharqiyyât 1, 80–85.
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‘Geschiedschrijving in de klassieke Arabisch-Islamitische samenleving.’ Tussen traditie en wetenschap: Geschiedbeoefening in niet-westerse culturen. Edited by R.B. van de Weijer, P.G.B. Thissen and R. Schönberger. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. 133–145. ‘Pourquoi étudier la tradition grammaticale?’ Le Maroc et la Hollande: Études sur l’histoire, la migration, la linguistique et la sémiologie de la culture. Edited by Abdelmajid Kaddouri, Jilali Saïb and Abdelmajid Zeggaf. Rabat: Université Mohammed V. 207–217. 1989 ‘A Sociological View of the Arab Grammatical Tradition: Grammarians and their professions.’ Studia linguistica et orientalia memoriae Haim Blanc dedicate. Edited by Paul Wexler, Alexander Borg and Sasson Somekh. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 289–302. ‘‘Early’ and ‘late’ Grammarians in the Arab Tradition: The ‘morphonology’ of the hollow verbs.’ Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 20, 9–22. ‘La tradition arabe. I : Le langage, la religion et la raison.’ Histoire des idées linguistiques, I : La naissance des métalangages en Orient et en Occident. Edited by Sylvain Auroux. Liège: P. Mardaga. 243–259. ‘The Definition of Philosophy in a Tenth-century Grammarian.’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 12, 66–92. ‘Vulgair Latijn en Koine-Grieks: De verhouding tussen standaardtaal en volkstaal.’ Lampas 22, 74–91. Reviews Bergter, Annette. 1989. Das Kapitel inna wa-ah˟awātuhā aus dem ‘Manhaj as-sālik’ des Grammatikers Abū Hˢ ayyān al-Ġarnāt ˢī (1256–1344). Hildesheim: G. Olms. Historiographia Linguistica 16, 180–184. 1990 ‘Are Linguists Ridiculous? Notes on a heavenly discussion between grammarians in the 11th century.’ History and Historiography of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS IV), Trier, 24–28 August 1987, I: Antiquitity–17th Century. Edited by Konrad Koerner and Hans-Josef Niederehe. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. 147–155. ‘Borrowing and Influence: Greek grammar as a model.’ Le langage dans l’antiquité. Edited by Pierre Swiggers and Alphons Wouters. Leuven: Peeters. 197–212.
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‘Freedom of the Speaker? The term ittisāʚ and related notions in Arabic grammar.’ Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar, II. Edited by Michael G. Carter and Kees Versteegh. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1990. 281–293 [Arabic translation by Bouchaib Barramou: ‘Hˢ urriyyat al-mutakallim? Musˢsaˢ lahˢ al-ittisāʚ wa-l-mafāhīm al-murtabihˢa bihi fī n-nahˢw al-ʚarabī.’ Fikr wa-naqd 3:24 (1999). 99–110]. ‘Grammar and Exegesis: The origins of Kufan grammar and the Tafsīr Muqātil.’ Der Islam 67, 206–242. [Reprint in The Early Islamic Grammatical Tradition. Edited by Ramzi Baalbaki. Aldershot [etc.]: Ashgate/Variorum. 2007. 37–73]. Over taal en verandering. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit. Inaugural lecture, University of Nijmegen. 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. Editor (with Michael G. Carter). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. ‘The Arab Presence in France and Switzerland in the 10th Century.’ Arabica 37, 359–388. ‘The Earliest Commentary on the Qurʙān: Muqātil’s Tafsīr.’ Makalahmakalah yang disampaikan dalam rangka kunjungan menteri Agama R.I.H. Munawir Sjadzali, M.A. ke Negeri Belanda (31 Oktober– 7 November 1988). Edited by Wim Stokhof and Nico Kaptein. Jakarta: INIS. 213–219. [with Indonesian translation: “Tafsir Quran paling awal: Tafsir Muqatil”]. Reviews Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The Foundations of Grammar: An introduction to medieval Arabic grammatical theory. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Die Welt des Islams 30, 248–250. 1991 ‘Arabic Language Teaching and the Status of Standard Arabic.’ Proceedings of the Symposium on Differentiation in LSP, Learning and Teaching, Leuven, 7–10 November 1990. Edited by Serge Verlinde. Leuven: Instituut voor levende talen. 95–102. ‘Greek Translations of the Qurʙān in Christian Polemics (9th century A.D.).’ Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 141, 52–68. ‘Maʚnā. 1. In grammar.’ The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New edition. Edited by C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, B. Lewis and Ch. Pellat, assisted by F. Th. Dijkema and S. Nurit. Leiden: E. J. Brill. VI, 346.
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HISTORY
INSIDE THE SPEAKER’S MIND: SPEAKER’S AWARENESS AS ARBITER OF USAGE IN ARAB GRAMMATICAL THEORY Ramzi Baalbaki American University, Beirut
1. Introduction The Arab grammatical theory as represented by the later grammarians is generally characterized by its focus on the formal aspects of the utterance within well-defined, albeit complex and often controversial rules of usage. Although it is very difficult to represent linearly the shift which took place during the evolution of the theory towards formal aspects at the expense of meaning since there have indeed been some attempts to restore to meaning its primary position in linguistic analysis, it may be safely argued that this shift started immediately after the first major grammatical work, namely Sībawayhi’s (d. 180/796) Kitāb. It is, of course, true that at the levels of morpho-phonology and morpho-syntax Sībawayhi’s formal considerations were adopted almost in their entirety by subsequent grammarians. But Sībawayhi’s method of probing the relationship, at the syntactico-semantic level, between form and meaning was continuously eroded by the grammarians’ attempt to codify rules, systematize usage, and analyze structure largely on the basis of formal considerations which govern its constituent elements. Generally speaking, the continuous shift from Sībawayhi’s method of syntactico-semantic analysis culminates in works from the seventh century A.H. onward, such as ʙAlfiyya commentaries and the extensive sources (mutˢawwalāt), where pedantic formulae and rigid rules almost fully replace the vivid and dynamic nature of Sībawayhi’s analysis which takes into account both the formal and the semantic aspects of citations and utterances.1 1 In his Muqaddima (1081–1084), Ibn Xaldūn (d. 808/1406) praises Sībawayhi’s Kitāb on the grounds that its author did not confine it to the formal rules related to ʙiʚrāb and that it is replete with proverbs and citations from poetry and speech. Those who study the Kitāb are therefore likely to enhance their malaka (natural linguis-
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One of the most significant aspects of Sībawayhi’s method of grammatical analysis is the pragmatic role he assigns to the speaker (mutakallim), and by extension to the listener (muxātab), as part of the social interaction which language represents for him. This aspect which lies at the core of Sībawayhi’s understanding of language as a form of social behavior and which embodies his originality, and perhaps the essence of his value in the history of linguistic ideas, has unfortunately been severely diminished, if not totally annulled, by later authors. Although this development is obvious in the works which immediately follow the Kitāb—such as Mubarrad’s (d.285/898) Muqtadab and Ibn as-Sarrāj’s (d. 316/929) Usūl—the shift of focus in linguistic analysis from social interaction and context of situation to formal considerations becomes more dramatic in later stages of the history of grammar. Equally unfortunate is that modern scholarship has only recently paid any meaningful attention to the role which Sībawayhi assigns to the speaker, the listener, and the context in which speech takes place. Carter (2004, 56–57) observes that “one of the most striking features of Sībawayhi’s analysis is that it concerns itself almost exclusively with language as behavior: speech is a set of actions, each named according to its intention, e.g. istifhām ‘asking a question’, tatniya ‘making something dual’, tanbīh ‘drawing attention to something”. He further observes (p. 57) that “every utterance takes place in a context of a ‘speaker’ . . . and listener” and that this approach “places great emphasis on the pragmatic roles of speaker, listener and context” and “invites the analyst to propose psychological explanations of linguistic phenomena”.2 Bohas et al. (1990, 38) convincingly argues that, from a typological perspective, “grammatical and linguistic systems can be divided into two rough classes: on the one hand, those which analyze utterances in terms of formal relationships between their components; on the other hand, those which analyze them in terms
tic ability), although some of them end up mastering grammar as a sināa (craft), but not as a malaka. Contrarily, the books of the later authors (kutub al-mutaaxxirīn) are void of poetry and the speech of the Arabs, and contain nothing but grammatical rules (al-qawānīn an-nahwiyya). Readers of such works, according to Ibn Xaldūn, can hardly be expected to enhance their malaka and can only master the craft. See also Zakariyyā (1986, 23 ff.). 2 See also Carter (2004, 95–98) for further discussion of the speaker’s role and its significance to Sībawayhi’s reasoning. It would be particularly interesting to examine in more detail the effect of the speaker’s choice (96) and the speaker’s intention (97) on utterances in Sībawayhi’s analysis of speech.
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of operations performed by the speaker in order to achieve a specific effect on the allocutee”. Based on this distinction, they maintain that “Sībawayhi’s approach basically belongs to the latter category, while the classical grammarians’, typically belongs to the former”. It must be stressed that what we shall call the linguistic awareness of the speaker is, according to Sībawayhi, an essential component of the competence which is demonstrated in successful interaction with the listener. By linguistic awareness we refer to what he and a few other authors perceive as the speaker’s alertness to the various tools which language places at his disposal and his ability to use them to decide what form best expresses the meaning which he intends to convey to the listener. Within this context, the purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, we shall try to show that although Sībawayhi’s method, which assigns a central role to the meaning and to the speaker’s awareness, was generally not followed by subsequent authors, some of them have indeed attempted to restore that central role, albeit from different perspectives. In a cursory look at the basic elements of the most important of these attempts, it may be possible to establish that what they have in common with Sībawayhi is a genuine concern for meaning and for the role of the speaker. The latter part of the paper looks into how Sībawayhi’s assumption of the speaker’s awareness is practically applied in his analysis of particles whose etymology is essential in determining usage. For this, we shall examine his analysis of those compound particles which may be used as single words or split into their constituent elements.
2. Meaning and speaker’s awareness The relationship between meaning and the speaker’s awareness in Sībawayhi’s analysis cannot be overemphasized. As a general rule, whenever Sībawayhi highlights the role of the speaker in the utterance or his competence in producing correct speech, the reader should expect meaning to be at the center of the author’s argument. The Kitāb abounds with examples which support this conclusion, and it is certainly beyond the scope of this paper to investigate the larger number of formal, semantic and contextual elements which contribute to the link between meaning and the speaker’s awareness in Sībawayhi’s analysis. This notwithstanding, it is important to establish the link between meaning and one of the most basic concepts in the Kitāb, namely taqdīr
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(suppletive insertion of elided elements), mainly because, as a grammatical tool, taqdīr embraces the formal, semantic and contextual elements that are at the core of correct speech according to Sībawayhi. Another compelling reason for establishing this link is that it can help us understand the sharp contrast between Sībawayhi’s approach and that of the later grammarians, for whereas they have largely adopted the formal aspects of his taqdīr, they have, more often than not, ignored the semantic and contextual dimensions of the process of supplying missing elements to structure. We shall not, however, make any detailed comparison between Sībawayhi and the later grammarians in this respect as this would require an independent study. Rather, we shall point out two of the most illuminating principles of the relationship between meaning and taqdīr in Sībawayhi’s system of grammatical analysis.3 The first principle is that in the process of taqdīr, the proposed construction should not contradict the meaning of the original construction, i.e. before the suppletion of the elements which are judged to be elided. In an earlier study of the harmony which Sībawayhi tries to establish, through taqdīr, in several types of constructions (Baalbaki 1979, 7–14), I discussed his method of breaking up one sentence into two, both of which share a common feature and thus demonstrate an underlying harmony. For example, the two sentences Zaydan dˢarabtuhu and ʙa-ʚAbdullāhi dˢaraba ʙaxūhu Zaydan are interpreted, at the level of “deep structure”, as *dˢarabtu Zaydan dˢarabtuhu and *ʙa-dˢaraba ʚAbdullāhi dˢaraba ʙaxūhu Zaydan respectively (Kitāb I:81, 102). If a nominal sentence is conjoined to a verbal sentence, as in raʙaytu Zaydan wa-ʚAmran kallamtuhu, he intervenes to restore the harmony by supplying a verb to the nominal sentence, hence the proposed construction *raʙaytu Zaydan wa-kallamtu ʚAmran kallamtuhu (Kitāb I:88). In defending the restoration of a verb to produce a verbal sentence parallel to the first one, he argues that the introduction of the verb causes no contradiction in meaning (lā yanqudˢ maʚnā; Kitāb I:88–89). Closely related to this argument is his assertion that in utterances which express ʙamr (command) or nahy (prohibition), the verb may be uniformly elided, as in (ʙidˢrib) Zaydan, (lā taqrabi) l-ʙasada, and (xalli) tˢ-tˢarīqa (Kitāb I:253–254). Sībawayhi’s discussion of such constructions reveals that the element of
3 Carter (1991, 127–128) notes that although Sībawayhi uses the term taqdīr exceedingly sparingly, only 24 times in fact (see Troupeau 1976, 167), he does give plenty of advice on reconstruction without calling it taqdīr.
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meaning which justifies the elision of the verb is present in the context of situation since the listener would assume the virtual existence of a verb of which he is the agent. Consequently, the grammarian’s intervention to restore this verb would only elucidate, rather than contradict meaning, based on his understanding of what the speaker has in mind. The second principle which governs the relationship between taqdīr and meaning represents a further stage in Sībawayhi’s analysis of constructions. While he remains faithful to the rule that taqdīr should not contradict meaning, he explores the niyya4 (intention) of the speaker to explain why he may well utter a certain part of the construction although he has another usage in mind. An example of this is his belief that each of the two constructions lam ātika and lā ātīka has the status (manzila) of a noun at the level of the speaker’s niyya, and can thus be interpreted as lam yakun ityānun (Kitāb III:28–29). The grammatical implication of this niyya is only fully revealed when the uttered part is virtually replaced by what the speaker intended to say. Thus, in Farazdaq’s line: mašāīmu laysū muslih īna ašīratan * wa-lā nāibin illā bi-baynin ġurābuhā, nāibin is in the genitive although at the level of the actual utterance it is conjoined to muslih īna, which, being the predicate of laysa, is in the accusative. According to Sībawayhi, the recurrent use of the preposition bi- with the predicate of laysa (e.g., laysū bi-muslih īna) reveals the true intention of the speaker, and hence nāibin is in reality conjoined to a genitive noun which does not feature in speech, but is as valid as an uttered noun. In other words, the preposition, which the speaker has in mind, is syntactically valid and operational, and it determines usage as if it were actually uttered (h attā kaannahum qad takallamū bihā fī l-awwal; Kitāb III:29). As far as meaning is concerned, Sībawayhi asserts that the assumption of the preposition bi- in bi-muslih īna does not alter the meaning5 (lā yuġayyir al-manā) because the preposition is indeed frequently used with the predicate of laysa. Similarly, Sībawayhi intervenes in constructions of the type marartu bihi fa-idā lahu sawtun sawta h imārin/surāxun surāxa t-taklā to supply a verb (i.e. yusawwitu,
4 According to Troupeau (1976, 208), the terms nawā and niyya occur 13 and 27 times respectively in the Kitāb. The concept of “intention,” however, is often expressed by much more frequent terms—including anā (136 times), manā (891 times), arāda (1361 times), etc. (Troupeau 1976, 150; 102)—or by expressions such as kaannahum qālū, tawahhamū, ixtīra, etc. 5 The significance of preserving the meaning of the construction in this line as well as the meaning of other constructions within the context of Sībawayhi’s analysis of the taqdīr of an after fā is discussed by Baalbaki (2001, 186–209, esp. 188).
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yasˢruxu) before the accusative noun (Kitāb I:355f.). The intention of the speaker is expressed here by the term tawahhama,6 and the actually uttered words lahu sˢawtun are said to have the same status as yusˢawwitu. Syntactically, the outcome of taqdīr is the use of the accusative in sˢawta and sˢurāxa, whereas at the semantic level, it is implicit that the introduction of yusˢawwitu and yasˢruxu does not contradict the meaning because these verbs share the same root with the nouns they govern. The study of the relationship between meaning and taqdīr in the Kitāb strongly indicates that in his analysis of constructions, Sībawayhi transcends the levels of grammatical correctness and the effect of the operants on case-endings to examine the speaker’s thinking and the mental processes involved in the choices he makes. This linguistic awareness on the part of the speaker becomes a real arbiter of usage and allows him, for example, to use nāʚibin where nāʚiban is expected, or to use sˢawta hˢ imārin in spite of the absence of a verb from the utterance. It is this feature in Sībawayhi’s analysis that one so much misses in the work of the later grammarians. In spite of that, some authors were indeed interested in the role of the speaker and the effect of his awareness on the speech he produces. From this perspective we shall briefly examine the contribution of two leading figures, Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002) and Jurjānī (d. 471/1098), and show how their priorities are largely consistent with those of Sībawayhi’s. In the light of the speaker’s awareness and his internal thinking, we shall then examine the analysis proposed by Sībawayhi for constructions in which the etymology and word-class of certain particles are crucial for the speaker to achieve correct speech and for the listener to comprehend what is meant.
3. Post-Sībawayhi authors The first post-Sībawayhi author whose work reflects serious concern for the speaker’s awareness is certainly Ibn Jinnī. Groomed in the grammatical tradition and himself author of several works which are in full conformity with the general grammatical theory—most notably Sirr sˢināʚat al-ʙiʚrāb, al-Lumaʚ fī l-ʚArabiyya, and at-Tasˢrīf al-mulūkī—Ibn 6 For the various senses in which the term tawahhum is used in the Kitāb, see Baalbaki (1982, 234–237). In this particular case of Farazdaq’s line, tawahhum refers to the speaker’s mental restoration of elided parts in the utterance, resulting in their government of parts actually uttered.
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Jinnī stands out as a unique scholar whose innovative approach in his most impressive work, al-Xasāis, represents a major step in the direction of determining the theoretical bases of language usage. The traditional phonetic, morphologic and syntactic data becomes in al-Xasāis the subject of study from a methodological and epistemological perspective. Within this framework, the speaker takes a central role in Ibn Jinnī’s interpretation of linguistic activity. His point of departure for this is a firm belief in the intuitiveness7 of native speakers of Arabic as well as in their mental abilities, which are manifest in their production of speech and subtle analysis of a host of linguistic phenomena. A particularly illuminating example is that in which he tries to examine the linguistic awareness of a Tamīmī informer of his. When asked why he would say darabtu axāka, and not *darabtu axūka, but would still use axūka in darabanī axūka, the Tamīmī expresses his astonishment and wittily comments that each of the two expressions has a different perspective (ixtalafat jihatā l-kalām; Xasāis I:76; cp. 1:250). Ibn Jinnī confidently concludes that the Arab native speakers scrutinize the syntactic positions of speech elements (adall šay alā taammulihim mawāqi al-kalām) and that they knowingly and consciously (an mīza wa-alā basīra) assign to each element the position and case-ending it merits. Similarly, he describes vowel mutation which results from the speakers’ sense of lightness (istixfāf ) and heaviness (istitqāl ) as proof of keen insight and fineness of perception and observation (li-quwwat nazarihim wa-lutf istišfāfihim wa-tasaffuh ihim; I:78). Ibn Jinnī’s interest in the intuitiveness of Arab native speakers and in their mental awareness of the various phonetic, morphologic, and syntactic processes involved in speech is best understood as part of his attempt to reveal the h ikma which underlies Arabic and which constitutes its intellectual basis. Whether the discussion relates to the reasons (ilal ), purposes (aġrād) and intention (qasd ) associated with speech (I:237, 245), or to the change which forms, etc. undergo due to recurrent usage (II:31), or to the temporal precedence of one part of speech
7 Ibn Jinnī often expresses the notion of intuitiveness by derivatives of the root t-b- (e.g., sun al-bārī subh ānahu fī an tabaa n-nās alā hādā; tahjum bihim tibāuhum alā mā yantiqūna bihi; a-turāhu lā yuh sin bi-tabihi . . . hādā l-qadr; Xasāis II:117; III:273, 275 respectively). Cf. also the terms salīqiyya and najr (I:76) for intuitiveness, and the expressions min lutf al-h iss wa-safāihi wa-nasāat jawhar al-fikr wa-naqāihi; quwwat nafsihi wa-lutf h issihi; I:239; III:75). See also the comments of Suleiman (1999, 64–65) on the intuition of native speakers and the rationality of Arabic within the more general framework of Ibn Jinnī ’s study of talīl (causation).
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over others (II:33), or to the onomatopoeic nature of phonemes within words (II:162, 164), or to the occurrence of two dialects side by side in speech (III:317), the term h ikma is used as an inalienable trait of the original wādi (creator) of Arabic and of his logic in deciding on what is to be used or not and how it should be used. It can thus be argued that the abstract notion of the wādi finds its practical dimension in the role of the speaker (or, more generally, the speech community) since Ibn Jinnī ascribes to him an awareness of the linguistic processes that are the result of the original h ikma. In this respect, Ibn Jinnī’s ideas are very much in line with Sībawayhi’s not only because both of them place the speaker at the center of their linguistic analysis, but also due to their mutual interest in the communication of meaning as the ultimate aim of successful speech. One of the most striking results of Ibn Jinnī’s focus on the speaker’s role and of his firm belief that, at all levels of analysis, the linguistic phenomena of Arabic are essentially rational is his discussion of grammatical awāmil or operants and their relatedness to meaning. Although he adopts the traditional division of these operants into two types, lafzī (formal; expressed) and manawī (abstract), his interpretation of the awāmil in the light of the speaker’s role redresses the imbalance between the two types in the tradition. For example, Jurjānī in his al-awāmil al-mia n-nahwiyya (85–86; 312), labels ninety-eight of the awāmil as lafzī and only two as manawī.8 This imbalance, of course, predates Jurjānī, and it is interesting to note that Ibn Jinnī’s own master, ʙAbū ʚAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987), is reported to have authored a book entitled al-awāmil al-mia (Sezgin 1984, 107). By insisting that all types of amal (rection)— i.e., raf , nasb, jarr and jazm, which cover the three nominal types (nominative, accusative and genitive) and the three verbal types (indicative, subjunctive and jussive)—are in reality ( fī l-h aqīqa) produced by the speaker (Xasāis I:109–110), Ibn Jinnī effectively reduces the traditional divide between lafzī and manawī operants merely into a didactic technique that tries to distinguish between amal which is accompanied by an uttered operant and amal which lacks such accompaniment (I:109). In other words, whether an operant is actually uttered or not, rection is in all cases the result of the speaker’s internal thinking and 8 Note also the assertion of some grammarians that no āmil may be classified as manawī unless it cannot possibly be explained as lafzī (lā yudal ilā jal al-āmil manawiyyan illā inda taadd u r al-lafī as-sālih ; Suyūtˢī, Ham I:159).
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a reflection of the meaning he intends. Based on this and on the similarly untraditional view that qiyās lafzˢī (formal analogical extension) is not devoid of meaning, Ibn Jinnī confidently formulates the general principle that one cannot but bestow a maʚnawī dimension on what is lafzˢī, whereas what is maʚnawī may well do without a lafzˢī dimension (I:111). It may be useful at this point, at the risk of disrupting the historical sequence, to bring into the discussion the sixth-century Zˢ āhirite scholar, Ibn Madˢā (d. 592/1196). Ironically, Ibn Jinnī’s attribution of ʚamal to the speaker is enthusiastically received by Ibn Madˢāʙ. He quotes Ibn Jinnī’s statement fa-l-ʚamal . . . ʙinnamā huwa li-l-mutakallim nafsihi lā li-šayʙ ġayrihi and highlights his use of nafsihi as a corroborative to emphasize al-mutakallim, followed by the assertion that rection is attributable to nothing other than the speaker (lā li-šayʙ ġayrihi; Radd, 77). Ibn Madˢāʙ quickly recognizes his odd position as a Zˢ āhirite embracing a Muʚtazilite view, and thus hastens to resolve the situation by explaining that contrary to the Muʚtazilites, the doctrine of ʙahl-al-hˢ aqq (i.e., the Zˢ āhirites) stipulates that case-endings (here, ʙasˢwāt) are in reality produced by God (ʙinnamā hiya min fiʚl Allāh taʚālā) but metaphorically attributed to man. Irrespective, however, of this modification and of Ibn Madˢāʙ’s argument that neither the uttered forms of the operants nor their meanings cause rection, his merciless criticism of the grammarians’ focus on ʚamal and taqdīr rests in part on their disregard for both the speaker and the intended meaning. In fact, he often refers to the speaker’s intention (cf. yanwī, 89; yurīd, 93) and assesses the relationship between meaning and taqdīr (80, 109). These two aspects of his theory obviously form his best defense against traditional grammar and firmly place him, albeit from the different perspective of his Zˢ āhirite doctrine, with the few authors who challenged its shortcomings. After Ibn Jinnī, the most important attempt to reinstate a primary role to meaning and the speaker who intends it is undeniably that of Jurjānī. Like his predecessor, Jurjānī followed in the footsteps of the traditional grammarians in some of his works. In addition to al-ʚAwāmil al-miʙa n-nahˢwiyya mentioned earlier, such works include al-Jumal, most of which is a didactic summary of ʚawāmil (chapters 2 to 4), and a commentary on Fārisī’s ʙĪdˢāhˢ entitled al-muqtasˢid fī šarhˢ al-ʙĪdˢāhˢ . However, Jurjānī’s two major works in the field of stylistics, primarily Dalāʙil al-ʙiʚjāz but also ʙAsrār al-balāġa, represent a major shift from the traditional syntactical analysis of the grammarians. In his Dalāʙil, he
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makes a zealous appeal for placing meaning at the center stage of grammatical analysis and repeatedly argues that nazm—whose narrow sense corresponds to word order, but which more generally refers to the complex relations among the constituents of a structure—is nothing other than the proper adherence to the discipline of grammar (laysa n-nazm illā an tada kalāmaka l-wad alladī yaqtadīhi ilm an-nahw, 64). As such, nazm should aim at what he calls the meanings of grammar (an-nazm huwa tawaxxī maānī n-nahw, 276, 282, 310, 403–404; cf. Asrār, 65). This means that syntactical rules, which govern the relationships among the various parts of any utterance, can express the exact meaning intended by the speaker since speech formation begins in one’s mind ( fī n-nafs) and only then are words arranged to formulate the outcome of this mental process according to a set of syntactical relationships (43f.). Based on the conviction that the arrangement of meanings (at-tartīb fī l-maānī) is prior to the arrangement of words, and that form is subsidiary to meaning (44–45), it follows that any change in syntax is necessarily accompanied by a change in meaning (86f.) The speaker’s awareness of the intricacies of syntactic relations hence acts as a virtual arbiter in his choice of the nazm, which best expresses the intended meaning. Jurjānī’s theory of nazm is to a large extent a reaction against traditional grammar in which formal aspects acquired greater prominence at the expense of meaning. Even Sībawayhi, it has been suggested (Baalbaki 1983, 12f.), may have been the target of some of Jurjānī’s critical comments in which he accuses the grammarians of giving too little attention to meaning. This notwithstanding, Jurjānī is surely much closer in spirit to Sībawayhi than to the later grammarians. Both authors strive to investigate the internal thinking of the speaker and examine its influence on actual utterances. On a wider scale, Sībawayhi, Ibn Jinnī and Jurjānī, the three most original authors in the related fields of nahw (grammar), philology (ilm al-luġa), and stylistics (balāġa) respectively, share the view that meaning should be the main focus of linguistic analysis. A variety of concepts—such as the speaker’s intuitiveness, competence, intention and awareness of the tools at his disposal—feature in the works of the three authors as part of their study of meaning and the mental processes to which it is related. Unfortunately, however, the three have one more thing in common, for although their focus on meaning and the speaker’s awareness represents the most significant and original aspect of their contribution, that focus gave way in later writings to an ever-growing shift towards formal considerations and pedantic formulae which rel-
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egate meaning and those concepts that are related to it to a much lower position in their scale of linguistic analysis.
4. The importance of the particles The importance which Sībawayhi attaches to the speaker’s competence and his alertness to the means of successful communication of meaning feature distinctly in his discussion of some particles.9 More specifically, Sībawayhi is interested in proving that the speaker can express the intended meaning only if he is aware of certain peculiarities of these particles. The rest of this paper shall deal with etymology of particles as one such peculiarity, the awareness of which by the speaker, according to Sībawayhi, is crucial for correct speech. It should be noted here that the later grammarians largely adopt Sībawayhi’s analysis of particles and their usage, but this does not at all mean that they have preserved his method of syntactical analysis or embraced the psychological and contextual explanations which he emphasizes so much. Rather, they seem to dwell on the formal side of his analysis, or simply repeat his views without incorporating them into their own methods of analysis or developing them in any meaningful way. Initially, it is essential to introduce the concept of hˢ ikāya, which Sībawayhi applies to those particles which he discusses from the etymological perspective. The original sense of the root hˢ -k-y, “to report; to imitate”, is preserved in Sībawayhi’s use of hˢ ikāya for ‘direct speech’. For example, in the construction qāla Zaydun ʚAmran xayru n-nāsi (III:142), Zayd’s words are reported verbatim and therefore qāla does not govern ʚAmrun, which remains in the nominative as in the original utterance. Derived from this sense is the use of the term to refer to elements that are intentionally not integrated into the syntactical build of the construction. Commenting on the sentence marartu bi-Zaydin, for example, one may respond by saying man Zaydin, in the genitive (II:413). This strategy in dialogue can result in the creation of forms that are only used in
9 The term “particle” is used here in a general sense which includes not only what the traditional grammarians classify as particles proper (hˢ urūf ), but also what they consider to be verbs or nouns. We shall therefore refer, for example, to ʙammā, interrogative mā, and the halumma as particles although they are traditionally classified as particle, noun, and verb respectively.
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h ikāya, as in the use of ayyayni/ayyīna or manayni/manīna in response to raaytu rajulayni/rijālan (II:407–408). Further removed from the original sense of the term h ikāya is its use to describe proper nouns that are syntactically whole sentences or phrases and are uttered verbatim regardless of their grammatical position. These include attested proper nouns such as taabbata šarran (II:269; III:326), baraqa nah ruhu (II:269; III:326), šāba qarnāhā (II:85; III:207, 326), ibn jalā (III:207), and forms such as xayran minka, dāriban rajulan and min Zaydin (III:328–329), which are hypothetically proposed as proper nouns and serve as a testing device for the full potential of h ikāya. Sībawayhi’s use of the term h ikāya in connection with proper nouns that are made of more than one element is most probably what facilitated his generalization of the term to apply to compound particles, that is, particles which he believes are etymologically made up of more than one element. As a preliminary example, we can consider the particle h aytumā which Sībawayhi describes as h ikāya. This sense of the term is clearly distinguished in the Kitāb from neighboring concepts, most notably ism wāh id and laġw. The latter term, laġw, refers to elements of speech which are otiose or redundant. The negative particle lā, for example, is considered to be laġw when it does not signify negation, as in liallā yalama ahlu l-kitābi (Q 57:29), which is interpreted as li-an yalama in the affirmative (IV:222).10 As for the term ism wāh id, Sībawayhi recurrently uses it in connection with the place name H adramawta, which he cites as an example of two distinct nouns that coalesced into one (e.g., the four chapter titles in II:267; III:296, 374, 475). Although at times he refers to particles which exemplify h ikāya as ism wāh id (II:417–418), h arf wāh id (II:418), or kalima wāh ida (III:115), Sībawayhi clearly demarcates h ikāya, as in h aytumā, from ism wāh id in the sense which H adramawta embodies. He achieves this by looking into the function of -mā in h aytumā and similar particles (see below) and comparing it with the corresponding element -mawta in H adramawta. The difference lies in the relationship which each of -mā and -mawta has with the preceding element (III:331). The introduction of -mā to h aytu-, he observes, does not result in the retention of the final damma in h aytu- since h aytamā, with a fath a, is also attested. Moreover, and more importantly, the introduction of -mā causes a semantic change since to the adverbial sense of
10 Another example of laġw is mā in mahmā (interpreted as mā- + -mā), and after conditional in, adverbial id, and pronominal ayy (III:59–60).
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h aytu- is added to the conditional sense which h aytumā expresses. Similarly, -mā is introduced to an- in ammā (ammā <an- + -mā) to cause a grammatical change, namely the annulment of the rection of an-. Because of these semantic and grammatical changes, which its introduction brings about, -mā in h aytumā and ammā is called muġayyira. The difference between -mā and -mawta becomes clear semantically and grammatically. Although Sībawayhi does not explicitly describe the difference, it is implied that h adra- can only have a fath a and not any other vowel, and that one cannot speak of semantic or grammatical change caused by -mawta, at least not in the sense which applies to particles. Furthermore, the term muġayyira draws a sharp distinction between the nature of -mā in h ikāya and the concept of laġw which is essentially antithetical to change. Based on the above discussion, particles that are classified as h ikāya can be described as typically made up of two constituent elements (e.g., h aytumā> h aytu- + -mā; innamā> inna- + -mā),11 and the element which is identified as being introduced—either as a prefix, such as lain laalla, or suffix, such as -mā in h aytumā—is not laġw. But there is another dimension to this issue since there are particles, such as exceptive illā, which may seem to be examples of h ikāya according to the above criteria, but which Sībawayhi interprets as non-compound particles. Since Sībawayhi does not use a special term for such particles, we shall refer to them as non-h ikāya or non-compound particles. The differentiation between the two types is crucial for our understanding of the role which Sībawayhi assigns for the speaker in using certain particles. Following is an illustrative list of h ikāya particles, with the most essential characteristics which Sībawayhi ascribes to each. These will be analyzed and then compared to non-h ikāya particles. The h ikāya particles12 comprise the following:
11
Only rarely does h ikāya involve more than two constituent elements, as in dālika which Sībawayhi mentions side by side with other h ikāya particles that are made up of two elements (III:332), and laallamā in which -mā is added to laalla- (IV:221), itself a compound particle (la- + -alla; III:332). 12 Sībawayhi also uses the term h ikāya in connection with personal and demonstrative pronouns (e.g., anta, hādā, hāulāi, dāka, dālika, etc.; III:332; IV:218), but these are not relevant to our discussion. Also beyond our scope are particles like lan which may well be the result of merging two elements (III:5) but which speakers do not normally recognize as compound particles.
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1. innamā: h ikāya (III:331); h arf wāh id (II:418; III:57); laysat -mā bilaġw (III:57); -mā changes inna- by imparting a new meaning to it (IV:222; cf. II:138); -mā changes (i.e., annuls) the rection of inna(IV:222). 2. annamā: h ikāya (III:331). 3. h aytumā: h ikāya (III:331); -mā does not prevent the final vowel of h aytu- from being either -u- or -a- (III:331); -mā imparts to h aytuthe meaning of conditional (III:331; cf. III:59, 518; IV:222); -mā is muġayyira (III:331; cf. III:59), is unlike -mawta in H adramawta (III:331), and is not laġw (III:331); h arf wāh id (II:418; cf. III:57); has the status of in, immā (III:59) and ayna (IV:221). 4. immā: h ikāya (III:331); -mā is attached (madmūma) to in- and may be elided (III:331–332; cf. I:266; III:141; IV:222); has the status of ammā in ammā anta muntaliqan intalaqtu maaka (III:332); see also h aytumā. 5. ammā (in ammā anta, as in “4” above); introduction of -mā prevents an- from governing the subjunctive and -mā is hence muġayyira (III:331, 332). 6. halumma: h ikāya in both H ijāzī and Tamīmī dialects (III:332; cf. I:252; III:529, 534). 7. idmā: -mā imparts to id- the meaning of conditional (III:56); has the status of innamā and kaannamā (III:57); laysat -mā bi-laġw (III:57); h arf wāh id (III:57). 8. lawmā and lawlā: h ikāya (III:333); -mā and -lā impart a new meaning to law- (III:115; IV:222); -mā is muġayyira (IV:222–223); h arf wāh id (III:115); kalima wāh ida (II:180); as excitative (tah dīd) particles, they precede only verbs (III:115). 9. lammā (which governs the jussive): -mā is muġayyira (i.e., it changes the syntactic properties of lam-; IV:223). 10. kamā: h arf wāh id (III:116). 11. kadā: h ikāya (III:332; cf. III:151); šay wāh id (III:171). 12. kaayyin: h ikāya (III:332; cf. II:171; III:151). 13. kaanna: h ikāya (III:332; cf. III:151, 164); šay wāh id (II:171). 14. kaannamā: h ikāya (III:331); h arf wāh id (II:418; III:57); laysat -mā bi-laġw (III:57); -mā changes the rection of kaanna- (IV:221; cf. II:138). 15. laalla: h ikāya (III:332). 16. laallamā: -mā changes the rection of laalla- (IV:221; cf. II:138).
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17. rubbamā: kalima wāh ida, like qallamā and other similar particles (ašbāhuhumā; III:115); precedes verbs, unlike rubba- (III:116). 18. h abbadā: kalima wāh ida (II:180). 19. alā and amā (as interrogative particles): h ikāya (III:332). 20. allā and hallā: h arf wāh id (III:5, 115); -lā imparts a new meaning to hal- (IV:222). 21. illā (as a conditional particle): h ikāya (III:332). 22. immā (as a conditional particle): h ikāya (III:332); see also h aytumā. 23. mādā and badamā: see below. Sībawayhi spares no effort to demonstrate the coherency of the above group through cross-references in various and often distant parts of the Kitāb and by using a largely unified terminology to describe the properties of the particles within the group. Furthermore, this coherency is supported by the characteristics, which its members share particularly at the level of meaning (nos. 1, 3, 7, 8, 20), syntax (8, 9, 17) and rection (1, 5, 14, 16). This notwithstanding, the particles within this group considerably vary in their clarity, from the perspective of the speaker, as to whether they are compound in nature or not. For example, one can safely assume that idmā, kadā and laallamā are much more easily recognizable by the speaker as compound particles than, say, halumma or ammā which are far removed from their supposed origin and which can even be the object of disagreement among grammarians concerning what that origin really is (cf. the case of halumma in Suyūtīˢ , Ham II:106–107). The most revealing examples, as far as speaker’s awareness is concerned, are those in which the particle may be either broken down into two elements or used as a single entity. To use the late grammatical term lamh al-asl13 (lit. recognition of origin), one can say that the speaker who splits such particles into two elements is aware of their etymological origin as compound words, unlike the speaker
13
The term lamh al-asl is used by the later grammarians mainly to refer to the speaker’s recognition of word class as reflected in usage. One example is that proper nouns such as H ārit and H asan, contrary to the norm, may be prefixed with the definite article al- since they are originally adjectives. The article is hence called al-allatī li-lamh al-asl (Suyūtīˢ , Ham I:174–175), and the speaker’s recognition of the adjectival origin (lamh as-sifa) of such proper nouns justifies its prefixation to them (Ibn Aqīl, Šarh 91; ʙUšmūnī, Šarh I:85–86). Due to the obvious similarity between the recognition of an original word class and the recognition of a particle’s etymology, the term lamh al-asl is perfectly applicable to mā dā, man dā, etc. when they are split into two units.
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who treats them as single-word particles. Sībawayhi specifically deals with this issue in a chapter which he designates for mādā and mandā. Depending on whether dā enjoys the independent status of the relative pronoun alladī or is integrated with mā into a single unit, which Sībawayhi typically describes as ism wāh id (II:417), the speaker respectively uses either the nominative or the accusative in the noun which follows mādā. In Labīd’s line alā tasalāni l-mara mā dā yuh āwilu * a-nah bun fa-yuqdā am dalālun wa-bātilu, dā is given an independent status equivalent to alladī and mā by itself acts as interrogative. The corroborative noun nah bun thus acquires the nominative because it modifies mā, which has the grammatical function of the subject of a nominal sentence (i.e., mubtada). Conversely, mādā could have been treated as a single interrogative particle which grammatically serves as the direct object of yuh āwilu. In this case, corroborative nah ban would be, like mādā which it modifies, in the accusative. It is clear in Sībawayhi’s discussion that the speaker has the choice of using mādā as a single-word particle or splitting it into its constituent elements. The mental process which leads up to the speaker’s decision is not restricted to the deconstruction of the particle into its elements or its retention as one unit. It also has to do with the syntactical ramifications of the speaker’s choice since the case-endings of the noun which follows the particle have to be consistent with that choice.14 The speaker’s competence is thus demonstrable at two levels, namely his awareness of the nature of mādā as a compound particle which admits two possibilities of usage, and his confirmation of this awareness by observing the syntactical implications of each possibility. Furthermore, Sībawayhi takes into consideration the listener’s interpretation of the speaker’s use of the particle in order to prove that successful communication also depends on the listener’s awareness of how the speaker’s choice between two possibilities of usage affects his own response. The correct response to mā dā raayta, for example, would be matāun h asanun in the nominative since mā itself is mubtada and hence nominative. On the other hand, mādā raayta is equivalent to mā raayta since the verb governs 14 Note that Sībawayhi does not refer to the fact that, in actual speech, stress may be an essential factor in differentiating mādā from mā dā. As a single word, mādā would normally receive stress on its first syllable. Conversely, the separation of the two elements would be indicated by a stronger stress on dā than mā, perhaps to underline the likely demonstrative function of dā. In short, the difference in meaning between the two options can be best demonstrated by translating mādā faalta and mā dā faalta as “What have you done?” and “What is this that you have done?” respectively.
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the single-word interrogative particle which precedes it in both cases, and the answer should thus be in the accusative as in mādā anzala rabbukum qālū xayran (Q 16:30).15 As part of his discussion of mādā/mā dā and mandā/man dā, Sībawayhi mentions two other particles which the speaker can use as a single word or as two separate elements. These are kaannamā and h aytumā (II:418; cf. also badamā II:139). Sībawayhi often examines the function of the suffixed -mā in these and similar particles (see detailed list above), including annulment of rection (cf. innamā) and shift in the part of speech which the particle precedes. For instance, rubba and qalla can only precede nouns—as one cannot say *rubba yaqūlu and *qalla yaqūlu—but the suffixation of -mā causes the new particle to precede verbs only (axlasūhumā li-l-fil; III:115). In such cases, correct speech is contingent on the speaker’s reanalysis16 of such compound particles with respect to their constituents as this would ensure proper distinction between utterances like qallamā yaf alu, innamā yaf alu, kaannamā yaf alu, etc. and their counterparts with relative mā; i.e., qalla mā yaf alu, inna mā yaf alu, kaanna mā yaf alu, etc.17 For his part, the listener is obviously expected to differentiate between the two types for successful communication to take place. As we pointed out earlier, there is a group of particles which may seem to be examples of h ikāya but which Sībawayhi interprets as simple or non-compound (i.e., non-h ikāya) particles. In order to highlight the contrast between these particles and the h ikāya particles, Sībawayhi discusses both types side by side in one of his chapters (III:331–332). It is important, however, to determine at which level this contrast exists. By classifying, for example, the exceptive particle illā with non-h ikāya particles, Sībawayhi does not want to specifically deny that it is historically the result of a merger between in- and -lā, in contrast with the
15 Sībawayhi cites the reverse usage, i.e., the accusative after mā dā and the nominative after mādā. But although this is grammatically explicable, he asserts that to use the nominative after mā dā and the accusative after mādā is the most appropriate manner of response (wajh; aqrab ilā an taxud bihi; II:418–419). 16 Cf. the role of reanalysis in the use of tālamā as discussed by Anghelescu (2004, 115–116). 17 To illustrate this distinction in the case of innamā, for example, we can replace it by inna mā in some Qurānic verses where this is syntactically possible. The resulting constructions are grammatically sound, but they obviously differ in meaning from the original constructions. Cf. innamā/inna mā ūtītuhu alā ilmin indī (Q, 28:78); waman yabxal fa-innamā/fa-inna mā yabxalu an nafsihi (Q, 47, 38); innamā/inna mā tuxzawna mā kuntum tamalūna (Q, 66:7).
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conditional particle ʙillā (see no. 21 in the list of hˢ ikāya particles). But irrespective of whether or not he actually differentiates between the two types of ʙillā at the etymological level, it is obvious that he intends to establish the contrast between hˢ ikāya and non-hˢ ikāya particles at the level of the speaker’s awareness of their compound versus non-compound nature. In other words, the fact that linguistic analysis may well prove the compound nature of exceptive ʙillā and similar particles is of no interest here to Sībawayhi since it has little to do with the speaker’s awareness of their etymology. Based on the fact that proper usage and comprehension of pairs of utterances which have two apparently identical particles is dependent on the distinction between the simple versus the compound nature of each particle in a pair (e.g., exceptive versus conditional ʙillā), we can interpret Sībawayhi’s interest in such pairs as part of his overriding interest in the competence of the speaker in correctly communicating the intended meaning to his listener. As for why the particles which he describes as non-hˢ ikāya are considerably fewer in number than the hˢ ikāya particles, two reasons may be suggested. The first is Sībawayhi’s faith in the speaker’s ability to break down compound particles into their components—although some of them are more easily recognizable as compounds than others—and thus arrive at what the later authors call lamhˢ al-ʙasˢl. The second reason may have to do with the grammarians’ own failure, due to their largely synchronic and non-comparative approach, to ascertain the compound nature of a large number of particles (e.g., lam, layta, lāta, laysa, kayfa, ʙayna, etc.). Within the above confines, the particles which Sībawayhi explicitly describes as non-hˢ ikāya (III:332) are the following: 1. ʙillā: As an exceptive particle, it has the status of diflā (oleander)—i.e., it is a simple or non-hˢ ikāya particle—and stands in contrast to the conditional particle ʙillā (see hˢ ikāya particles, no. 21). 2. hˢ attā: Like ʙillā, it has the status of diflā. It should be noted that hˢ attā is the only member of Sībawayhi’s group of non-hˢ ikāya particles which is apparently not made up of two elements and which has no counterpart in the hˢ ikāya group. We list it here, nevertheless, for the sake of completeness. 3. ʙammā: As an inceptive particle in constructions like ʙammā Zaydun fa-muntˢaliqun, it is a non-hˢ ikāya particle which has the status of šarwā (the like of a thing) and stands in contrast to ʙammā as in ʙammā ʙanta muntˢaliqan ʙintˢalaqtu maʚaka (see hˢ iyāka particles, no. 5).
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4. alā: When used inceptively, it is a non-h ikāya particle which has the status of words like qafā (back) and rah ā (quern), in contrast to interrogative alā which is a h ikāya particle (no. 19 above). 5. amā: Like alā, it is a non-h ikāya particle when used inceptively, in contrast to interrogative amā (no. 19 above). The distinction between non-h ikāya particles and their h ikāya counterparts in context is, of course, dependent on the speaker’s competence in using the appropriate syntax, stress intonation, etc. But proper communication—as is implied in Sībawayhi’s text—is also to a large extent a function of the listener’s ability to identify each of two identical particles one of which is simple and the other is compound. This “etymological” distinction is to be assumed in the listener’s comprehension of sentences in which these particles appear. Cf., for example: lā tatīnā fa-tuh additanā illā izdadnā fīka raġbatan (III:32) and wa-illā taġfir lī wa-tarh amnī akun min al-xāsirīna (Q 11:74; note that the choice of these two examples is ours, since Sībawayhi does not provide contrasting examples for illā); ammā Zaydun fa-muntaliqun (III:332), and ammā anta muntaliqan intalaqtu maaka (III:332); and alā innahu dāhibun (IV:235) and alā rajula immā Zaydun wa-immā Amrun (I:289). The fact that the distinction between formally identical particles in the above sentences on the basis of their simple or compound nature is accompanied by certain syntactic peculiarities is not without parallels in the grammatical corpus. The mandatory use of fā after simple or non-h ikāya ammā—e.g., ammā anta fa-muntaliqun versus ammā anta muntaliqan intalaqtu maaka—is strikingly similar to the mandatory use of lām in constructions like in kāna la-sālih an (cf. III:104). Although Sībawayhi does not use a special term for this lām, it acquired later the name of al-lām al-fāriqa because its presence indicates that in is not a negative particle but the lightened form of inna, known as in al-muxaffafa. In other words, lām contributes to the distinction of two formally identical particles both of which, unlike the case of ammā, are not compound. In Sībawayhi’s own words, this lām is mandatory (alzamahā l-lām) in order that the lightened form of inna not be confused with in which has the status of mā (li-allā taltabis bi-in allatī hiya bi-manzilat mā allatī tanfī bihā; II:139).
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Sībawayhi’s interest in the speaker’s awareness of the etymology of particles and its effect on his usage and on the listener’s response is yet another proof of his method of grammatical analysis which aims at examining the mental operations which the speaker performs and at determining the formal and semantic effects of these operations. As the study of mādā and mandā versus mā dā and man dā in the Kitāb shows, successful communication between the speaker and the listener (who in turn assumes the role of speaker) is measured by their ability to associate each of the two possibilities of usage (i.e., simple versus compound particle) with the formal and semantic aspects which pertain to it. In this particular case, what the grammarians refer to as “etymology” and is intuitively discerned both by the speaker and the listener represents the crucial factor upon which successful communication hinges. The close association between form, meaning, and speaker’s awareness—as exemplified in Sībawayhi’s analysis of h ikāya and non-h ikāya particles—has certainly been degraded, and at times even totally obliterated by subsequent grammarians. On a wider scale, Sībawayhi’s model of linguistic analysis which, like that of Ibn Jinnī’s and Jurjānī’s, largely rests on exploring the “dialectics” or “interplay”, so to speak, between form and meaning, gave way to an alternative model which is heavily tipped in favor of formal considerations. Proponents of this model consequently failed to delve, as did Sībawayhi, into the mind of the speaker in order to pursue the complex processes which result in his choice of the form that most appropriately expresses the intended meaning and is expected to have the desired effect and elicit the “correct” response from the listener.
6. References 6.1 Primary sources Ibn Aqīl, Šarh = Bahā ad-Dīn Abdallāh Ibn Aqīl, Šarh Ibn Aqīl alā Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Ed. by Ramzī Munīr Baalbakī. Beirut: Dār al-Ilm lil-Malāyīn, 1992. Ibn Jinnī, Xasāis = Abū l-Fath Utm ān Ibn Jinnī, al-Xasāis. Ed. by Muhammad Alī anNajjār. Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1952–56. Ibn Madā, Radd = Abū l-Abbās Ahmad b. Abd ar-Rahmān Ibn Madā al-Laxmī, arRadd alā n-nuh āt. Ed. by Šawqī D ayf. 3rd ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif, 1988. Ibn as-Sarrāj, Usūl = Abū Bakr Muhammad b. Sahl Ibn as-Sarrāj, al-Usūl fī n-nahw. Ed. by Abd al-H usayn al-Fatlī. Beirut: Muassasat ar-Risāla, 1985.
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Ibn Xaldūn, Muqaddima = Waliyy ad-Dīn Abū Zayd Abd ar-Rahmān b. Muhammad Ibn Xaldūn, al-Muqaddima. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1956. Jurjānī, ʙAsrār = Abū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir b. Abd ar-Rahmān al-Jurjānī, ʙAsrār al-balāġa. Ed. By Helmut Ritter. Istanbul: Government Press, 1954. Jurjānī, ʚAwāmil = Abū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir b. Abd ar-Rahmān al-Jurjānī, al-ʚAwāmil al-miʙa n-nahˢwiyya fī ʙusˢūl ʚilm al-ʚArabiyya, bi-šarh Xālid al-Azharī. Ed. by al-Badrāwī Zahrān. 2nd ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif, 1988. Jurjānī, Dalāʙil = Abū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir b. Abd ar-Rahmān al-Jurjānī, Dalāʙil al-ʙiʚjāz. Ed. by Muhammad Rašīd Ridā. Repr. from the Cairo edition, Beirut: Dār al-Marifa, 1981. Jurjānī, Jumal = Abū Bakr Abd al-Qāhir b. Abd ar-Rahmān al-Jurjānī, al-Jumal. Ed. by Alī H aydar. Damascus: Dār al-H ikma, 1972. Mubarrad, Muqtadˢab = Abū l-ʚAbbās Muhammad b. Yazīd al-Mubarrad, al-Muqtadˢab. Ed. by Muhammad ʚAbd al-Xāliq ʚUdayma. Cairo: Dār at-Tahrīr, 1965–68. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = Abū Bišr Amr b. Utm ān Sībawayhi: al-Kitāb. Ed. by Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn. Cairo: al-Haya l-Misriyya l-Āmma, 1977. Suyūtī, Hamʚ = Jalāl ad-Dīn Abū l-Fadl Abd ar-Rahmān b. Abī Bakr as-Suyūtī , Hamʚ al-hawāmiʚ šarhˢ jamʚ al-jawāmiʚ fī ʚilm al-ʚArabiyya. Cairo: Matb aat as-Saʚāda, 1327 A.H. Ušmūnī, Šarhˢ = Abū l-H asan Alī b. Muhammad al-Ušmūnī, Šarhˢ al-ʙUšmūnī ʚalā ʙAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik al-musammā Manhaj as-sālik ʙilā ʙAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Ed. by Muhammad Muhyī d-Dīn Abd al-H amīd. Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Arabī, 1955. 6.2
Secondary sources
Anghelescu, Nadia. 2004. La langue arabe dans une perspective typologique. Bucharest: University of Bucharest. Baalbaki, Ramzi. 1979. “Some Aspects of Harmony and Hierarchy in Sībawayhi’s Grammatical Analysis.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 2, 7–22. ——. 1982. “Tawahhum: An Ambiguous Concept in Early Arabic Grammar.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 45, pt. 2. 223–44. ——. 1983. “The Relation between nahˢw and balāġa: A Comparative Study of the Methods of Sībawayhi and Jurjānī.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 11. 7–23. ——. 2001. “Bāb al-fāʙ [ fāʙ + Subjunctive] in Arabic Grammatical Sources.” Arabica 48. 186–209. Bohas, Georges, J. P. Guillaume and D. E. Kouloughli. 1990. The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. London: Routledge. Carter, Michael, G. 1991. “Elision.” Proceedings of the Colloquium on Arabic Grammar, Budapest 1–7 September 1991, Kinga Dévényi and Tamás Iványi: eds. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University and Csoma de Kőrös Society. 121–33. ——. 2004. Sibawayhi. London and New York: I.B. Tauris and Oxford University Press. Sezgin, Fuat. 1984. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. IX. Grammatik. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Suleiman, Yasir. 1999. The Arabic Grammatical Tradition: A Study in taʚlīl. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi. Paris: Klincksieck. Zakariyyā, Michel. 1986. al-Malaka l-lisāniyya fī Muqaddimat Ibn Xaldūn. Beirut: alMuassasa l-jāmiiyya li-d-dirāsāt wa-n-našr wa-t-tawzī.
PRAGMATICS AND CONTRACTUAL LANGUAGE IN EARLY ARABIC GRAMMAR AND LEGAL THEORY Michael Carter University of Sydney
It is well known that Arabic grammar and Islamic law enjoy a peculiarly close relationship. The two sciences are united by a common purpose, to control linguistic and general behaviour respectively, and they share a common methodology, namely the inductive derivation of rules from a linguistic corpus and the deductive application of these universal rules to particular acts of the Muslim. Where they differ is in their sources. Grammar relies on the natural, worldly speech of a select range of human speakers (Bedouin), law on the inspired texts of the Qurān and the H adīt, which are supernatural in origin and holy in status. All legal systems are linguistic codes of one sort or another, spoken or written, but the total dependence of Islamic law on a finite body of revealed and prophetic language is unique. Its modern secular analogue is the type of law which is derived from a written constitution, and here too, the law has to be discovered by an essentially linguistic process, whereby there is often disagreement over the presumed intentions of those (invariably dead) who framed the document. The development of a method for interpreting the language of the Qurān and H adīt took several centuries, and at risk of oversimplification it can be said that the two sciences of grammar and law, aided by imported Aristotelian logic, leap-frogged each other in an evolutionary series, where the advances of one made further progress possible in the other. This paper will review the general similarities in the approach to language in early grammar and law, especially Sībawayhi’s intuitive pragmatism (here in the non-technical sense) and his awareness of the legal implications of grammatical form. There follows a brief account of some grammatical/legal problems discussed in an intermediate phase in the 3rd–4th/9th–10th centuries, and the paper concludes by listing a number of features of legal methodology which can be linked with ideas first noted in Sībawayhi, but which only acquired their fully developed form after the maturing of usū l al-fiqh as a discipline.
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Islamic legal hermeneutics proceeds from the axiom that, regardless of its supernatural origin, the language of the holy texts conforms entirely to the principles of human discourse. Two short quotations, one from Sībawayhi (d. ca 180/796) and one from aš-Šāfiʚī (d. 204/820, and probably born about the same time as Sībawayhi) will testify that this notion was well defined at the very birth of the sciences of grammar and law : God’s servants were spoken to in their own speech and the Qurʙān came down in their language and according to what they mean ʚibād[u] llāhi kullimū bi-kalāmihim wa-jāʙa l-Qurʙānu ʚalā luġatihim wa-ʚ alā mā yaʚnūna (Kitāb Der. I:139/Būl. I:167).
In almost identical wording from aš-Šāfiʚī (the original Arabic could not be checked: this is from Khadduri 1987, 94, and looks very like a quotation from or paraphrase of the Kitāb): God has addressed his book to the Arabs in their tongue in accordance with the meanings known to them.
The context in aš-Šāfiʚī’s case was the dispute over the possibility of foreign words in the Qurʙān, while for Sībawayhi it was a syntactical issue of indefinite expressions such as salāmun ʚalayka; although a definite as-salāmu would be expected, the indefinite is an old-established Arab usage that must be accepted, especially when it appears in the Qurʙān. Aš-Šāfiʚī is regarded as the first legal theorist to give proper weight to the linguistic aspects of the law, since which time both grammarians and lawyers have shown themselves to be remarkably strict and uncompromising in subordinating the language of God to the linguistic conventions of ordinary Arabic. The latter, for Sībawayhi, was a dialogue between speaker and listener, both being required to conform to what are basically ethical criteria to speak ‘well’ (hˢ asan) and ‘rightly’ (mustaqīm). For the lawyers there could be no dialogue with God, only the contemplation of the written record of what he and his Prophet said, but over time they evolved a system of interpretation in which they played the role of silent listeners to a speaker of their own tongue, under the same conditions as natural speech. For this they constructed an elaborate hermeneutical mechanism (ʙusˢūl al-fiqh) which, as documented by Ali (2000), exhibits an impressive congruence in many details with the modern branch of linguistics
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known as Pragmatics (henceforth with capital P as a school of thought). The thesis of the present article is that a form of Pragmatics can be discerned in Sībawayhi’s analysis of speech (kalām) long before the the ʙusˢūl al-fiqh were codified, and, further, that this approach to language passed through at least two stages before it grew into the explicit type of Pragmatics seen in Ali’s sources. For the purposes of this article ʙusˢūl al-fiqh will be taken in the broad sense of the principles of legal argumentation in deriving law from the texts. As for Pragmatics, here is a recent definition which so closely reflects the ʙusˢūlīs’ position that it might have been written by one of them, or even by Sībawayhi: The study of language from the point of view of the users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in a social interaction, and the effects their use of language has on the other participants in the conversation [. . .] including aspects of deixis, implicatures, presuppositions, speech acts and discourse structure. [. . .] It has been characterized as the study of the principles and practice of conversational performance—this including all aspects of language usage, understanding and appropriateness (Crystal 2000, s.v. ‘Pragmatics’).
Readers of the Kitāb will find all these notions very familiar, and some will be illustrated below. But first it is necessary to introduce the essential elements of Pragmatics as laid down by Grice. Grice (1989) treats speech (writing, significantly, does not fit easily into his model, nor into Sībawayhi’s, see below) as a cooperative activity that is both purposeful and rational, in which the participants understand each other by a logically structured process of ‘conversational implicature.’ Speech is a ‘quasi-contractual matter’, governed by four ‘maxims’ (Grice 1989, 26f): The maxim of Quantity : 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The maxim of Quality : 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. The maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
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The maxim of Manner: 1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). 4. Be orderly. All these maxims can be deliberately ignored or flouted, sometimes for personal reasons, e.g. a desire to mislead or deceive, sometimes for rhetorical purposes, e.g. exaggeration, irony, implying what one is reluctant to say explicitly, intentional ambiguity etc. There can be and often is a difference between the words actually spoken (‘sentence meaning’) and what is really meant (‘utterance meaning’). In Larcher (1998) an earlier form of Pragmatics is applied to the category of inšā, i.e. performative utterances of the type qabiltu hādā n-nikāh a “I hereby accept this marriage [proposal].” This is the Pragmatics of J. Searle and J. L. Austin of “How to do things with words” fame (bibliographical details in Larcher), out of which Grice’s maxims were later elaborated. However, Grice has been invoked at least twice over the past few years in articles on Arabic linguistics. Moutaouakil, who quotes the above maxims in full (1990, 233), deals only with the Pragmatics of the relatively late scholastic author as-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) and will not detain us further, except to remark, following Simon (1993, 15) (where further sources), that it was not until grammar and ʙusūl al-fiqh had themselves achieved systematic perfection that an independent science of rhetoric could emerge, effectively the last of the ‘Islamic sciences’ to appear. The other is a direct comparison between Grice and Sībawayhi made by Buburuzan. She interprets the constructions nima l-rajulu abdullāhi ‘What a fine man Abdullāh is!’ and abdullāhi nima l-rajulu ‘Abdullāh, what a fine man [he is]!’ (1993, 424, Kitāb Der. I:259f/Būl. I:300f) as compound expressions where the second part presupposes a question from the listener. The first part, she says, has violated Grice’s maxim of quantity and requires completion in answer to the question ‘who?’ or ‘what about him?’1
1 It is relevant here to recall a similar analysis of the syntax of the zaydun jāa abūhu structure, “Zayd, his father came”, which Bravmann (1953, 1–36) explained as deriving from a self-answered question, “What about Zayd? His father came”; Sībawayhi loc. cit. actually compares the nima construction to this same type, viz. abdullāhi dahaba axūhu “ ῾Abdullāh, his brother has gone.” Bravmann’s Isolated Natural Subject is not
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Sībawayhi makes more or less the same statement about the syntax of marartu bi-rajulayni muslimin wa-kāfirin/muslimun wa-kāfirun “I passed by two men, one Muslim, one pagan,” where the speaker will choose between the oblique case ( jarr) in adjectival agreement or the independent (raf ʚ) case as if muslimun wa-kāfirun were predicates of elided subjects, because, as Sībawayhi observes (Der. I:182/Būl. I:214, and see Der. I:215/Būl. I:252 for another, similar case), the speaker tries to anticipate the question the listener might pose, either, “what sort of men?” or, “who were these two men?” Like Grice, Sībawayhi is very concerned with the listener’s role in conversation, and there are many linguistic events in which the listener influences the speaker’s choices. In what would be a ‘neither [. . .] nor [. . .]’ construction in English, it is qabīhˢ . i.e. structurally incorrect, to say marartu bi-rajulin lā fārisin “I passed by a man who was neither a knight” without completing it with wa-lā šujā῾in “nor a valiant person” or the like, because “it is an answer to someone who asked you—or whom you have put in the status of having asked—whether you passed by a knight or a valiant man” (Der. I:313/Būl. I:358, translator’s italics). By the same token a listener who answers ‘no’ to the disjunctive question “Is it Zayd who is with you or Bišr?” when one of them is known to be there, has broken the communicative contract so gravely that his answer is classified as muhˢ āl “[morally] wrong, [semantically] absurd,” i.e. an utterance which is self-contradictory and therefore meaningless (Der. I:432/Būl. I:483). As if to reinforce the importance of the listener, Sībawayhi comments that in talking to oneself, e.g. hallā ʙaf ʚalu “why don’t I do this,” “you are like the listener” (Der. I:114/Būl. I:136, kunta fīhi ka-l-muxātˢabi). There is even a discussion of what looks like body-language when Sībawayhi describes how, on seeing the figure of an unknown person, some ‘sign’ (ʙāya, the same word as for the verses of the Qurʙān!) appears by which you identify him, so you exclaim, “ ʚAbdullāh! Good Lord!” Not only that, the same elliptical exclamation (that is, a predicate without a subject) can be uttered when the ‘sign’ by which you identify a person is his voice or perfume, or simply what you hear said about him (Der. I:240/Būl. I:279). intrinsically Gricean, but it accords well with the eminently Pragmatic principle stated by Sībawayhi (Kitāb Der. I:346/Būl. I:394, a notion he acquired from his teacher alXalīl b. Ahˢmad), that every subject must have a predicate because the listener is expecting it.
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It will be apparent that as well as the speaker and listener, the physical context is also linguistically relevant. Both Grice and Sībawayhi like to present their data in the form of utterances set in a described situation. In Grice it is undoubtedly fictitious and often involves broken-down cars or sherry parties, in Sībawayhi it probably reflects actual observation, e.g.: an example of the suppression of the verb which could be expressed in normal usage is when you see a man who has just returned from a journey and you say, ‘the best of returns’ xayra maqdamin, [. . .] where the dependent (nasb) form is as if [the speaker] had [syntactically] constructed it on the basis of having said ‘may you return’, viz. qadimta xayra maqdamin, and even though he was not heard to say this expression, the arrival of the other person and the sight of him have the same [linguistic] status as the speaker’s saying qadimta (Der. I:114f./Būl. I:136f.).
The similarity with Gricean Pragmatics is unmistakable here: not only does the speaker engage in a cooperative activity with the listener in a real context, but that context itself can become an active constituent in the grammatical form of the utterance (cf. Carter 2002, 7, where the above item is discussed). In the same way the vocative particle can be dispensed with when the listener is standing right in front of the speaker (Der. I:104, 274/ Būl. I:125, 316); the object of a blessing does not have to be indicated if the intended recipient is obvious from the context (Der. I:131/Būl. I:157)—the speaker however remains free to name the recipient for purposes of emphasis). In a rather violent scenario (Der. I:107/Būl. I:128) the speaker can dispense with the verb and merely shout the person’s name if he sees someone about to be killed or being abused. This is common in warnings, e.g. al-jidār(a) ‘[mind] the wall!’, al-ʙasad(a) ‘[don’t go near] the lion!’, and the cry of at-tarīq(a), at-tārīq(a) ‘[get out of] the way! [Get out of] the way!’2 A striking feature of the Kitāb is the sheer quantity of commercial and contractual talk, much of it admittedly trivial, though it does tell us how preoccupied the Bedouin in the Mirbad were with the price of sheep, camels and wheat.3 But many items are strictly legal in form and con-
2 These are always printed with dependent (nasb) case endings, however, in the circumstances they are bound to be in pausal form. 3 The Mirbad was not only a market but also a place where H adīt scholars came to check their vocabulary (EI 2, art. “Mirbad” by C. Pellat), and this may be one of the reasons why Sībawayhi came to Basˢra to study ʙātār or H adīt. As it happens mirbad
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tent, involving contracts, debts, sale of goods and property, testimony, deposits, theft and the activity of fiqh itself. The following list appeared in Carter 1972, 90ff: inna fī alfi dirhamin la-madrabun (Der. I:99/Būl. I:119); baya l-malatā lā ahda wa-lā aqda (Der. I:115/Būl. I:137); tabīu d-dāra h addun minhā kadā wa-h addun minhā kadā (Der. I:137/Būl. I:165: note that the sale of undefined property was not legal, at least among the Hˢ anafīs, see Hamilton 1870, 257), lahu ilmun ilmu l-fuqahāi (Der. I:151/Būl. I:181); lahu ʚalayya alfu dirhamin urfan (Der. I:160/Būl. I:190); bitu š-šāa šātan wa-dirhaman, qāmartuhu dirhaman fī dirhamin, bituhu dārī dirāan bi-dirhamin, etc. (Der. I:165/Būl. I:196); hādā dirhamun waznan and others (Der. I:235/ Būl. I:275); inna alfan fī darāhimika bīdun (Der. I:245/Būl. I:285); kam minkum šāhidun alā fulānin (Der. I:256/Būl. I:297); alayhi šaru kalbayni daynan (Der. I:257/B I:298); al-wadīatu ayyuhā l-bāiu (Der. I:284/Būl. I:326); qadiyyatun wa-lā Abā H asanayni = the caliph ‘Alī, (Der. I:310/Būl. I:355); āti l-amīra lā yaqtau l-lissa (Der. I:402/Būl. I:435); ʙammā juhda rayī (Der. I:418/Būl. I:470). The pre-emptive in šāa llāhu to avoid being bound by an oath may also be mentioned here: it is called istitnā both by Sībawayhi and in later legal terminology (Der. I:399/Būl. I:448, see also Carter 1972, 90 n. 2).
Additional legal or commercial material which has come to light since includes (and is not exhaustive: marginal items have been ignored such as “have you barley, wheat or dates?”, though this may well reflect a mercantile context, Der. I:434f/Būl. I:485f): Placement of merchandise (Der. I:64/Būl. I:76: even in those days it was better to buy from the top of the pile rather than the bottom!); expressions of time (important for contracts, Der. I:90–93, 176/Būl. I:110–114, 208); litigation (Der. I:94/Būl. I:114); price variations (Der. I:122, 170/Būl. I:147, 200); profit, sadaqa and zakāh, rendering accounts (Der. I:165f/Būl. I:196f); weights and measures (Der. I:141f, 183/Būl. I:216, 292f); substitution of goods (Der. I:245/Būl. I:285); giving testimony (Der. I:421/ Būl. I:473); default masc. for mixed genders, i.e. slaves (Der. II:180/Būl. II:174).
One specifically contractual type of utterance will be discussed here in some detail, involving the way prices are stated. In a long analysis (over four chapters, 92–95, Der. I:165–168/Būl. I:195–8) Sībawayhi explores how deals are struck, beginning significantly with the grammar of kallamtuhu fāhu ilā fiyya “I spoke to him face to face” and bāyatuhu
is mentioned once in the Kitāb (Der. II:265/Būl. II:248) but only as an example of the mif ʚal pattern.
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yadan bi-yadin “I traded with him hand in hand” (i.e. for cash), where the dependent (nasb) forms are obligatory, since they are not literal, but simply mean “immediately, on the spot”, no matter how physically close the listener might be. In other words the legal (utterance) meaning is different from the overt (sentence) meaning: by saying these words in this form a legal obligation is created regardless of their literal meaning. This leads to a whole string of commercial expressions, bitu š-šāa šātan wa-dirhaman, qāmartuhu dirhaman fī dirhamin, bituhu dārī dirāan bi-dirhamin, bitu l-burra qafīzayni bi-dirhamin, axadtu zakāta mālihi dirhaman li-kulli arbaīna dirhaman, bayyantu lahu h isābahu bāban bāban, in all of which the phrase indicating the unit and price (scil. šātan wa-dirhaman “one sheep and one dirham”) must be stated in its entirety, otherwise “the meaning will not be valid” lā yasih h u l-manā, i.e. legally. By this Sībawayhi means only in the case of a contractual intent, since the shortened expressions omitting the price are still meaningful but not in any contractual sense, e.g. bitu šāī šātan šātan “I hereby sell my [collective] sheep, sheep by sheep”, bituhu dārī dirāan “I hereby sell him my house, one cubit”, but this would lead the listener to believe that you were selling your sheep one at a time or that your house was only one cubit in size, and so on. Nevertheless, as he observes, the price or the unit are frequently omitted in ordinary speech, and people will say kāna l-burru qafīzayni “the wheat was [for sale] at two bushels’, omitting the price, or al-burru bi-sittīna ‘the wheat is for sixty [dirhams]’, omitting the unit of quantity. They do this, Sībawayhi says, because in the first instance they know in their hearts ( fī sudūrihim) that bi-dirhamin is meant and that the dirham is the standard price unit (alladī yusaaru alayhi), so it is as if they were answering the question, “How much you get for a dirham?”, while in the second they and the listener both know what they mean, as if someone had asked “What is the price of a load?” and received the answer “The load is [for sale] at sixty [dirhams]” (Der. I:166/Būl. I:196). Sībawayhi advises us to follow the practice of the Arabs in this, though al-Xalīl complicates the picture somewhat by pointing out alternative formulations. Sībawayhi’s Pragmatic approach is self-evident here: he puts the conversation in a real-life setting, which assumes all the Gricean maxims: he distinguishes between utterance and sentence meaning, and he accounts for the grammatical features of the expressions in terms of the extralinguistic situation and the intentions of the participants. If a statement such as yajūzu an taqūla bitu d-dāra dirāun bi-dirhamin (Der.
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I:166/Būl. I:197) were taken out of context there would be no way of knowing whether it was from a legal work, scil. ‘it is [legally] permitted4 to utter [the binding contractual formula] “I hereby sell etc.”, or a grammatical work, scil. it is allowed [by the rules of grammar] to say, “I hereby sell etc.” ’5 Only when Sībawayhi goes on to discuss the possibility of the independent (raf ) case in dirāun here (as advocated by al-Xalīl) do we learn that the topic is syntax. The goal, however, is to determine the legal consequences of the syntactic options. Why else would he raise the matter at all? In the 3rd/9th century a new weapon enters the methodological armory, the concept, borrowed from Aristotle, that science has to be logically structured and its enquiries carried out along systematic, that is, logical lines. For about a century and a half there was a great deal of experimentation before the sciences reached the point where they could be defined and classified, notably in such works as the Mafātīh al-ulūm of al-Xwārazmī, written between 366/976 and 387/997. Two debates from that period will be mentioned here as evidence of the transitional stage in the development of grammar and law. Ibn Wallād (d. 332/943) reports a dispute which originated with Mubarrad (d. 285/898) over the semantic status of commands and prohibitions, whether they were logically complementary, i.e. whether a command is equivalent to a prohibition from doing the opposite and a prohibition is equivalent to a positive command to do the opposite. Ibn Wallād’s wording (Intisār 42) is: kullu amrin amarta bihi fa-anta fī l-manā nāhin an xilāfihi [. . .] fa-idā nahayta amarta bi-xilāfihi hence the positive exclamation h adaraka “beware!” has the negative meaning, “do not approach”. The probable Stoic origins of this controversy (cf. Versteegh 1977, 181) are not the main point of interest here:6 what is important is to observe how the intellectual environment stimulated such arguments while the usūl al-fiqh were still in gestation. Al-Mubarrad is among the earliest of the grammarians to reveal the direct influence
4
The old definition of jāiz by Bergsträßer (1935, 32) is still the most informative: zuläßig im moralisch-religiösen und zugleich rechtlichen Sinne, und daher rechtsgültig, rechtswirksam. Replace ‘legal’ by ‘linguistic’ to see what the term meant to Sībawayhi: “permissible in a religious-moral and at the same time linguistic sense, hence linguistically valid, linguistically effective.” 5 Sībawayhi’s examples in this section are not unambigously performatives, and they can be, and have been translated elsewhere as literal statements “I have sold” etc. 6 The Stoic term pragmata for the “things done” which are represented by words is the basis of our linguistic “Pragmatics” in the sense of “doing things with words”.
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of Greek ideas before there is any reliable documentation, suggesting that the ideas circulated informally, perhaps from Christian to Muslim scholars. Ibn Wallād himself is very sceptical, and he flatly asserts that there is nothing intrinsically positive or negative about commands: only by inference (istidlāl) can we determine whether an imperative verb is ordering us to do something or prohibiting us from doing the opposite. The language and style of this argument are exactly what we encounter when the ʙusūlīs take up the theme later in the century. In al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013, and a strong supporter of the notion of complementarity), the debate is given a thorough airing (Taqrīb II:198–207), and by this time both the grammatical and the logical techniques are well advanced, and the level of argumentation shows that the Aristotelian dialectic had been fully absorbed. There is a good deal of sophistry from al-Bāqillānī’s opponents, who claim, amongst other things, that imperative and prohibitive verbs have different forms, therefore cannot be complementary to each other. He matches their sophistry with a reductio ad absurdum, putting it to them that by their own criteria a positive act would have to be defined as “not refraining from doing the opposite” ġayru tarki diddihi and he concludes with the practical argument that the meanings of commands or prohibitions are understood naturally and grasped immediately from the words themselves, without the need for any kind of logical inference (while this may not look like Pragmatics, it is really a question of differing opinions on conversational implicature: the methods of inference were a very contentious issue among usūlīs, see Ali 2000, especially ch. 5). There is thus a clear line of progression from Sībawayhi’s casual recognition of ʙamr and nahy as grammatical categories (e.g. Der. I:105/Būl. I:126–7), through Ibn Wallād’s early dialectical treatment to the fully structured arguments of al-Bāqillānī and his fellow usūlīs. In other words, there is now a theory where before there was only data. Under these circumstances there is a universal tendency for theory to triumph over data, and a very illuminating example is the treatment of the word kadā “such and such [an amount]”. For Sībawayhi, it was no more than a dummy numeral (kināya, as he calls it, an “allusion” to any number, just as fulān “so-and-so” is an allusion to any person), and it behaves like interrogative kam, with a dependent (nasb) complement, kadā wa-kadā dirhaman “so and so many dirhams” (Der. I:256/Būl. I:297). By the end of the 4th/10th century a more complicated system makes its appearance, when ar-Rummānī (d. 384/994, Šarh fol. 161r) proposes that kadā by itself has the value of 11–20 (because these numbers are
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regarded as single words) while kadā wa-kādā stands for compound numbers from 21 upwards.7 Ar-Rummānī was famous for the exaggerated logical rigor of his experiments with language, but he did not go as far as he could have done. Others did go further, and by the 7th/13th century we find the fully elaborated system in Ibn Muʚtīˢ (d. 628/1231, Fusūl 23, further references in 244–5), exactly mimicking the syntax of the numerals: kadā wa-kadā darāhima = from 3 to 10 dirhams. kadā wa-kadā dirhaman = from 11 to 99 dirhams. kadā wa-kadā dirhamin = from 100 dirhams upwards.8
This exquisitely artificial and almost certainly unattested scheme is connected with the Hˢ anafīs and (which is not much different in this context) with the Kūfans, and it survived at least until the 19th century in the work of Nāsˢīf al-Yāzijī (d. 1871, in Nār al-Qirā, see Fleischer I:568 for references). What it shows is that as the linguistic and legal sciences evolved they became increasingly abstract, passing beyond the limits of actual usage. It does not seem likely that ʙAbū Hˢ anīfa himself explicitly correlated the syntax of kadā with that of the numerals in this manner, but it fits the reputation of the Hˢ anafīs for artificial and over-systematic reasoning, and can be seen as a fine specimen of what can happen when a legal judgement (scil. how much is meant by kadā in such and such a case?) has to depend more on the methodology than on actual speech. Classical Arabic was no longer a living language at this time, and the usūlīs could only consult the rules of the dead language. In doing so they nevertheless assumed that their one-way communication with the texts was a natural use of language. Here follow some illustrations of the inherent similarities between Sībawayhi’s concept of speech and the lawyer’s approach to consultations with God. It has already been said above that God’s speech had to follow the formal rules of Arabic grammar. Furthermore, as the usūlīs were well aware, in order to make himself understood, God had to obey the conventions of human communication. For this reason the usūlīs, exactly like Sībawayhi, strove to account for meaning in terms of the motives of the speaker (man or God) and the real-life context of the utterance. A good specimen from Sībawayhi of the dependence of meaning on 7 Through a scribal error the single kadā (scil. kadā dirhaman) and paired kadā (scil. kadā wa-kadā dirhaman) are not distinguished in the manuscript. 8 Further references in Carter 2003a, endnote 27 referring to p. 180.
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motive and context is the statement mā atānī rajulun: it can mean “no man [at all] came to me”, “not one man came to me[but several]”, “no [real] man came to me [but a weakling]”, or “no man came to me [but a woman did]” (Der. I:20/Būl. I:27). There are no formal linguistic clues whatsoever as to which meaning the speaker has in mind: the clues lie in the extra-linguistic context, in this case, what question might the speaker be answering, and this is why Sībawayhi spends so much time offering psychological explanations for the speaker’s choices. Some centuries later the lawyers had to do the same for God, trying to penetrate his words to divine his purpose, which they could only do by assuming that he spoke to his servants in the same way as a rational human being would under normal circumstances. Sībawayhi took this for granted. The muxātabūna in this next quotation are the same people who are the muxātabūna of everyday conversation, but this time it is God speaking to them: When [God] said ‘your mothers are prohibited to you’ and so on to the end of his speech (kalām), those being addressed (al-muxātabūna) knew that this was proscribed for them, and affirmed, but God went on to say kitāba llāhi ‘by written decree’ to add emphasis, tawkīdan (Der. I:160/Būl. I:191, on Q 4/23–24).
Striking here is the attempt to explain away the mention of the written decree: writing is ill-suited to Pragmatic analysis for the simple reason that the recipient of writing (or in this case the sender!) is usually absent. There can be no conversation, still less any conversational implicature, without the presence of both participants. Writing is mentioned only occasionally in the Kitāb, and is completely marginal and secondary. For the usūlīs, too, it was not part of normal communication: it was a special case, a kind of act of faith in the future, like farming, lending or borrowing, and other actions which require a presumption of continuity, istish āb al-h āl, i.e. that the recipient would still be alive when the letter was delivered (see Ali 2000, 80). We have to admire the usūlīs for their commitment to the belief that the spoken words of God and Muhˢammad can be directly experienced through their written record: the paradox was to a large extent resolved by the device of learning the texts by heart so that, once implanted in the memory, they ceased to be a document (mush af, kitāb) and became a virtual oral event (Qurān, h adīt), neurologically the same as a remembered discourse. God as a speaker also has the same privilege as humans of presuming knowledge in his listeners: in Q 3/180 (Der. I:347/Būl. I:395) he says “let
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not those who are miserly with the bounty that has come to them reckon [being miserly] is better for them . . .”, and Sībawayhi explains that God here omits the word al-buxla “being miserly” which would be required as the first direct object of “reckon”, because the listener, al-muxātˢab, will know from the verb yabxalūna “they are miserly” that miserliness is meant. Anyone who has consulted a tafsīr will be familiar with this method of filling gaps in the Qurʙān, and the ʙusˢūlī sources are no exception in the use of this procedure. A second point of similarity between Sībawayhi and the ʙusˢūlīs is the presumption of sanity. Sībawayhi assumes, without spelling it out, that a speaker will be mentally capable of formulating an idea and conveying it successfully—this is implicit in his criterion of mustaqīm “right”, used for utterances which are fully understood in their intended meaning, and in the term murād “what is intended” for the meaning of speech acts. The lawyers turned this into an overt legal principle. They had to decide who was allowed to speak, and to eliminate those who were not legal persons, and therefore had no voice, such as infants and the insane, and they produced the following conditions of legally valid speech (here paraphrased from Ali 2000, 42 based on al-Āmidī, d. 631/1233): 1. It must be uttered intentionally. 2. It must be intended for a particular listener. 3. The listener must be rational and understand it.
The first condition presupposes sanity, because only a sane person can form an intention at all (legal or otherwise), or indeed be a Muslim for that matter (sanity later formed part of the definition of a Muslim); the second criterion excludes soliloquy, and the third anchors speech in a sane society, as well as giving us a hint as to how the ʙusˢūlīs saw themselves in the dialogue. To recall the notion of leap-frogging introduced above, it should be noted that these new legal definitions of speech found their way back into grammar, where the speech of the insane, or of those talking in their sleep, or even of birds imitating humans, were excluded for the sole reason that their speech could not be intentional (e.g. ašŠirbīnī d. 977/1570, Nūr 10, though it appeared before his time). God himself comes under the same constraints: in order to communicate with humanity he must speak rationally. His attributes allow for this: he has an intellect, a will and the power of speech, and his language is that of the people he is addressing (there is some literature, which cannot be looked at here, on the requirement that God address his prophets in the language of their own people otherwise the revelation will be in
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vain: you cannot punish sinners for disobeying laws they are unable to understand). For the usūlīs God’s mode of communication (bayān) is inevitably a major theme in their treatises: they either begin their works with a detailed review of the nature of Arabic and of legal semantics, e.g. the introductory chapters of ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn al-Basˢrī (d. 436/1044), Mutamad, or else the subject is raised after the epistemological topics have been covered, e.g. al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), Taqrīb, from I:316. For Sībawayhi, and later the usūlīs, lexical meaning is arbitrary. Definition by synonyms only leads to infinite regression (Der. II:339/Būl. II:312), and meaning is nothing more than intention, hence the verb arāda ‘to want’ and its derivatives are among the commonest terms in the Kitāb (1,362 times, plus 20 in the passive, according to Troupeau (1976), s.v., and there are also synonyms). It is clear, too, that Sībawayhi fully aware of the distinction between ‘utterance meaning’ and ‘sentence meaning’: he refers more than once to manā l-kalām and manā l-h adīt “the [integral] meaning of the utterance” i.e. not simply the sum of its lexical parts, and manā itself is almost exclusively used to denote the meaning of speech acts, not of words, such as the acts of expressing surprise, asking a question, giving an order etc., e.g. “the meaning of swearing an oath” manā l-qasam, “the meaning of calling” manā n-nidā, and even of grammatical categories, “the meaning of the dependent form” manā n-nasb, “the meaning of tanwīn”, etc. A significant similarity between Sībawayhi and the lawyers is that they both define the meanings of the particles (h urūf ) in terms of their discourse functions: thus wa- “and” is used to “to bring one thing together with another and join them without indication of order”, and fa- “and [then]” is the same except that “you leave some scope for one to be after the other” (Der. II:330/Būl. II:304), cf. ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn, Mutamad I:20, very concisely, wa- is li-l-jam “for joining” while fa- is li-l-taʚqīb “for arranging consecutively”. Sībawayhi’s definition of naam “yes” is interesting: instead of the expected “agreement” or “consent” he gives us a rather legalistic definition: naam indicates “promise and belief ”, ʚida wa-tasdīq (Der. II:339/Būl. II:312), the former implying some kind of contractual commitment (“yes, I promise do it”), the latter indicating assent to a proposition (“yes, I believe what you say”), which in our context could mean believing the seller’s description of the goods or the terms of a contract. Sībawayhi never even asks where meaning originates, but the usūlīs were obliged to agree on an answer before they could proceed to the
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derivation of law from the texts. Here is a case where the debates of the intervening century and a half carried the lawyers a long way from Sībawayhi’s agnostic position. They had to reconcile the potentially infinite backward extension of meaning with the historical fact that Arabic is not the oldest human language. Part of the solution, which will not be discussed here, was to attribute to Adam the bridging role connecting the supernatural Arabic he spoke in Heaven with the temporal world he inhabited after the Fall. He himself did not speak Arabic on earth which appeared only later, evolving naturally until it reached perfection in the time of Adam’s prophetic heir and descendant, Muhˢammad.9 After Sībawayhi there was considerable discussion of the origins of language, which has been investigated for the grammarians by Loucel (1963–64), with the general conclusion that the choice lay between divine ordination (tawqīf) or human convention (tawādˢuʚ). The lacuna which Loucel pointed out, that there was no comparable study of the origins of language in the legal sciences, remains unfilled and will not be dealt with here. For our purposes it must suffice to note that there was overall preference for the view that language is in some way conventionally “imposed” (by wadˢʚ) but the identity of the “imposer”, wādˢiʚ, is left obscure, perhaps deliberately: it may be God, it may be the first users of Arabic, it may be all users of Arabic who agree amongst themselves on the meaning of a word. The real dispute concerned whether meaning could be imposed independently of a word’s being used. At one end of the spectrum (Muʚtazilī), a word does have a meaning before it is used, and at the other (Ibn Taymiyya), a word cannot have a meaning until or indeed unless it is used. These issues are well described by Ali (2000): what is important for this paper is that none of these ideas, including the term wadˢʚ in this sense, are found in the Kitāb. The concept must have emerged later, probably under the influence of the Platonic debate over whether words had meaning by their nature ( physis, cf. Arabic tˢabīʚa, replaced in Islām by the creating God) or by imposition (thesis, the same as the wadˢʚ of the grammarians and lawyers). From the lawyers’ point of view it was important to detach meaning from prehistory: in spite of disagreement about the origins of language, lexical meaning was taken as given, either a priori or as recorded by lexicographical experts (ʙahl al-luġa), or synchronically by mere usage. It
9
See Carter (2003b).
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could then be treated as purely conventional, and in this way the lawyers, after a long debate in which Sībawayhi took no part, eventually returned to his Pragmatist position. Meaning, regardless of where it comes from, is what you do with the language, or, put another way, language is only meaningful for usūlīs when it has legal effects outside the actual utterance. This restriction of meaning to habit and community usage enables the law to control that community’s behaviour. The result is the same for both grammarians and lawyers: speakers are obliged to stay within the habitual codes, whether linguistic or social. We might say that Sībawayhi took a lawyer’s view of language and lawyers a Sībawayhian view. Consider his Pragmatist interpretation of such verbs as raā etc. “to see, consider, regard, be of the view that”, of which he says, “even a blind man can use raā ‘to see’ and say, ‘I regarded Zayd as the good man’ raaytu zaydan-i s-sālih a” (Der. I:13/Būl. I:18).10 The equivalent lawyer’s position is stated by aš-Šaybānī (b. 132/749, d. 189/804, and therefore a contemporary of Sībawayhi): a blind man who has to feel the goods for sale when making a purchase is in the same “place” (mawdi, i.e. legal situation) as a sighted man ( Jāmi 81). The primacy of usage and habit is asserted many times by Sībawayhi, and there is no better illustration (because one senses a tongue in cheek here) than his discussion of expressions of praise and blame. They are not unconstrained, he says, you must follow the speech habits of the Arabs, so you cannot, for example, praise someone for being a tailor or a seed-merchant, still less praise a person in terms normally used of God, e.g. al-h amdu li-zaydin “praise be to Zayd!”. Sībawayhi, or possibly a commentator, allows himself a pun here by saying “that would be a grave sin”, aīm, playing on taīm “magnification”, the name for this laudatory construction (Der. I:214f/Būl. I:251). And although it is correct to use such attested idioms as “he is as close to me as where my waist-cloth is tied” huwa minnī maqida l-izāri, you cannot say “he is as close to me as where the horse is tethered *huwa minnī marbita l-farasi (Der. I:174/Būl. I:206). ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn discusses the interdependence of meaning and use in a similar way (e.g. Mutamad I:17f, 22–28), and it is, of course the central problem of usūlī semantics, as Ali (2000) demonstrates in great detail.
10 The example is perhaps deliberately perverse, as the natural reading would be “I saw the good man Zayd”, but this is in a chapter on “verbs of the heart”, so raā must have the complete sentence “Zayd [is] the good man” as its direct object.
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Finally Sībawayhi’s recognition of the performative and illocutionary uses of speech can be compared with the far more elaborate and selfconscious expressions of the same ideas in the legal works, written after the lawyers had had time to absorb Aristotle’s categories of ‘sentences’ (a post-Sībawayhian innovation), which include vocatives, requests, commands and entreaties. Thus when Sībawayhi defines the vocative noun in yā abdallāhi as “made dependent (nasb) through the suppression of the verb which [in this context] is not expressed” (Der. I:262/Būl. I:303, nasbun alā idmāri l-fili l-matrūki ihāruhu), he does leave it open for others to supply a verb such as unādī “I call out to”, though his choice of “the verb” here is significant, and in fact there are situations where a verb cannot be restored, e.g. subh āna llāhi “glory be to God”, for which there is no verb available to be suppressed. This is enough (especially when taken with Sībawayhi’s other observations on elliptical utterances, see above with xayra maqdamin) to permit the assumption than he was aware of the performative aspects of yā and other speech elements. In the usūlī treatment, those who did regard yā as representing an elided verb such as “I call” are roundly rebuked by ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn (Mutamad, I:20). He firmly rejects this on the grounds that merely to say the word yā and its noun conveys in itself the information that an act of calling has occurred. Here he makes explicit what is left implicit in Sībawayhi, as so often happens. By ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn’s time it had become a polemical issue, and he accuses those who would restore a verb in this situation of either oversimplifying for pedagogical purposes (how condescending!) or misinterpreting what Sībawayhi meant by h arf nidā a “particle of calling”, a performative element by nature, which needs no verb, as ʙAbū l-Hˢ usayn observes. What this article has tried to show is that Sībawayhi, perhaps by his own genius, perhaps encouraged and inspired by the community of pioneering Islamic scholars around him, chose to treat language in a manner which shows a remarkable affinity with modern Pragmatics. The nine points which Ali (2000, 3f) regarded as “essential pragmatic insights” are taken from usūlī sources, but equivalents to most of them can easily be found in the Kitāb. Indeed it might have made a tidier version of this paper simply to match them seriatim with material from the Kitāb. These ideas were, so to speak, embryonic in Sībawayhi, but the marriage of Aristotelian logic and Arab linguistic studies in the 4th/10th century led to the birth of a much more self-conscious and program-matic version of the same attitude in legal science, reaching its peak of
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development in the 7th/13th century works which provide the bulk of the material for Ali (2000). Symbolically we may point to the term qānūn “law” as an indication of the change of direction, though the term has never carried much weight in medieval Islām. It would not have meant much to Sībawayhi, who had half a dozen terms for the correct use of Arabic, one of them sunna, nor is it prominent in medieval legal contexts, but perhaps because it was circulating in the 4th/10th century, e.g. in Fārābī (d. ca 339/950) Ihˢ sāˢ ʙ 10, it may have fostered the notion that a systematic code of behaviour along the lines of Greek ethics was desirable and possible. As with grammar from that point on, works on ʙusˢūl al-fiqh display an impressive mastery not only of the large body of historical Islamic data but also the methods of logical enquiry and dialectical disputation. The two disciplines henceforth continue in parallel, grammar becoming increasingly legalistic to stop the language from changing, and jurisprudence becoming more and more a grammatical analysis of the unchangeable texts. One result is that it was possible to formulate a set of five principles of communication which, as set out by Ali (2000, 64), present an instructive analogue to Grice’s four maxims, here briefly paraphrased: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The speaker’s disposition to make his intention manifest. The speaker’s truthfulness. That what is said should have its due effect. That what is said should be grasped immediately. That the existing conventions should be maintained.
With great diligence and subtlety the classical ʙusˢūlīs applied these and other principles to the interpretation of God’s speech “in search of God’s law” as it has been put. This had not been Sībawayhi’s goal, but his exhaustive description of how the Arabic language works between speaker and listener prefigured the Pragmatics of the ʙusˢūlīs and provided a basis (filtered through the subsequent grammatical tradition) for their scholarly exertions. In a sense there was always an implicit Pragmatics in Arabic grammar and Islamic law. On the macro-level Islām itself is a covenant with God, and Islamic society is a kind of social contract in which everything said between Muslims has a contractual dimension, exactly as in Grice’s perception of speech. That is one reason why Muslims are enjoined not to lie to each other, particularly when transmitting the religious knowledge on which the survival of their faith depends. Sībawayhi could afford to take truthfulness for granted, since it does not affect linguistic form, but the
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ʙusˢūlīs had to stipulate truthfulness as a condition of a valid legal utterance precisely because there was no way to tell from the words themselves whether the speaker was lying, i.e. breaking Grice’s unenforceable maxim of Quality, where lying is likewise formally undetectable. The last point to make is that all this legal matter found in the Kitāb goes to confirm two other aspects of Sībawayhi’s life and work which tie him closely to the lawyers. Firstly, from what little we know of his biography we can deduce that he associated not only with revered authorities on Arabic but also with early legal and religious scholars, and secondly it is evident from the Kitāb that these scholars were the inspiration for much of his technical vocabulary and methodology. While this does not solve the problem of the origins of grammar completely, it does make it more likely that the Kitāb is the creation of a single mind, an unprecedented description of Arabic in all its domains, religious, poetic, public and private, in a theoretical framework which drew deeply upon the principles of the nascent legal system and owes almost nothing to external traditions. This view may not meet with the approval of the dedicatee of the present volume, but it is a tribute to his belief in the right of dissent that such heresies can be published without fear of legal action.
References 2.1
Primary sources
Abū H usayn, Muʚtamad = Abū l-H usayn al-Basrī, Kitāb al-Muʚtamad fī ʙusˢūl al-fiqh. M. H amīdullāh with M. Bekir and H . H anafī, eds. Damascus, 1964. al-Bāqillānī, Taqrīb = Abū Bakr Muhammad b. at -Tayyib al-Bāqillānī, at-Taqrīb wa-lʙiršād asˢ-sˢaġīr. Abd al-H amīd b. Alī, Abū Zayd, ed. Beirut, 1998. al-Fārābī, ʙIhˢ sāˢ ʙ= Abū Nasr Muhammad b. Muhammad, ʙIhˢ sāˢ ʙ al-ʚulūm. A. Gonzáles Palencia, ed. Madrid, 1932. Ibn Mutī, Fusˢūl = Abū l-H usayn Yahyā b. Abd an-Nūr, Ibn Mutī , al-Fusˢūl al-xamsūn. Mahmūd Muhammad at -Tanāhī, ed. Cairo, 1976. Ibn Wallād, ʙIntisˢār = Ahmad b. Muhammad b. al-Walīd, Ibn al-Wallād, Kitāb al-ʙIntisˢār. Monique Bernards, ed. Changing Traditions. Al-Mubarrad’s Refutation of Sībawayh and the Subsequent Reception of the Kitāb, Arabic pp. 1–212. Leiden, New York, Köln, 1997. ar-Rummānī, Šarhˢ = Abū l-H asan Alī b. Īsā ar-Rummānī, Šarhˢ Kitāb Sībawayhi. MS Feyzulla 1984. aš-Šaybānī, Jāmiʚ = Muhammad b. al-H asan aš-Šaybānī, al-Jāmiʚ asˢ-sˢaġīr fī l-fiqh. Margin of Abū Yūsuf, Kitāb al-xarāj. Būlāq, 1884. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = Abū Bišr Amr b. Utm ān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. (1) Hartwig Derenbourg, ed. Le livre de Sibawaihi. Paris, 1881–1889. Repr. Hildesheim, 1970. (2) Kitāb Sībawayhi. Būlāq Press, 1898–1900. Repr. Baghdad, 1965. (3) Kitāb Sībawayhi. Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn, ed. Cairo, 1968–77 (cross-paginated with the Būlāq edition). References to the Kitāb are usually in the form Der/Būl.
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as-Sīrāfī, Šarhˢ = ʙAbū Saʚīd as-Sīrāfī, Šarhˢ Kitāb Sībawayhi. MS Atif Efendi 2548. aš-Širbīnī, Nūr = Muhˢammad aš-Širbīnī al-Xatˢīb, Arab Linguistics, an introductory classical text with translation and notes [Nūr al-sajiyya fī hˢ all ʙalfāzˢ al-ʙĀjurrūmiyya]. Michael G. Carter, ed. Amsterdam. 1981. 2.2 Secondary sources Ali Mohamed M. Yunis. 2000. Medieval Islamic Pragmatics. Sunni legal theorists’ models of textual communication. Richmond. Bergsträßer, G. 1935. G. Bergsträßer’s Grundzüge des islamischen Rechts: bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Joseph Schacht. Berlin, Leipzig. Bravmann, Meir. 1953. Studies in Arabic and General Syntax. Cairo. Buburuzan, Rodica. 1993. “Exclamation et actes de langage chez Sībawayhi.” Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 38, 421–437. Carter, Michael G. 2002. “Patterns of reasoning: Sibawayhi’s analysis of the hˢ āl.” Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the Union of European Arabists and Islamicists, Part One, Linguistics, Literature, History [= The Arabist, vol. 24–25]. K. Dévényi, ed. Budapest. 3–15. ——. 2003a. “Legal Schools and Grammatical Theory.” Arabistikai islamoznanie. Tom 2. Studi po sluchai 60–godishnata na dots. d.f.n. Penka Samsareva, Simeon Evstatiev, ed. Sofia. 177–183. ——. 2003b. “Talking with and about God, Adam and the Arabic language.” Majāz, culture e contatti nell’area del Mediterraneo. It ruoli dell’ Islam (21st Congress of the Union of European Arabists and Islamicists, Palermo 2002) [= La Memoria vol. 15]. Antonino Pellitteri, ed. Palermo. 197–208. Crystal, David. 2000. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 4th ed. Oxford. Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht. 1885–88. Kleinere Schriften, gesammelt durchgesehen und vermehrt von A. Huber, prof. Thorbecke, und F. Bühlau. Leipzig. Repr. Osnabrück. 1968. Grice, H. Paul. 1989. “Logic and Conversation.” Studies in the Way of Words, 22–40. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Khadduri, Majid. 1987. Al-ʙImām Muhˢ ammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʚī’s al-Risāla fī ʙusˢūl alfiqh. Treatise on the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence. Translated with an introduction, notes and appendices. 2nd ed. Cambridge. Larcher, P. 1990. “Éléments pragmatiques dans la théorie grammaticale arabe post-classique.” Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar II. Kees Versteegh, Michael G. Carter, eds. Amsterdam. 193–214. ——. 1998. “Une pragmatique avant la pragmatique: ‘mediévale,’ ‘arabe’ et ‘islamique’.” Histoire, Epistémologie, Langage 20, 101–116. Loucel, Henri. 1963, 1964. “Les origines du langage d’après les grammairiens arabes.” Arabica 10, 188–208, 253–291; 11, 57–72, 151–187. al-Marġīnānī, Burhān ad-Dīn. 1870. The Hedaya or Guide: a commentary on Musulman laws, trans. by Charles Hamilton, 2nd edition. Standish G. Grady, ed. London (reference is to the reprint 1963). Moutaouakil, Ahmad. 1990. “La notion d’actes de langage dans la pensée linguistique arabe ancienne.” Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar II. Kees Versteegh, Michael G. Carter, eds. Amsterdam. 229–238. Simon, Udo. 1993. Mittlelalterliche arabische Sprachbetrachtung zwischen Grammatik und Rhetorik. Heidelberg. Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi. Paris. Versteegh, Kees [C.H.M.]. 1977. Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
ʙIDˢ MĀR IN THE MAʚĀNĪ OF AL-FARRĀ: A GRAMMATICAL APPROACH BETWEEN DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION Kinga Dévényi Corvinus University, Budapest
1. Introduction Kees Versteegh stimulated the discussion on the history and development of Arab grammatical thinking in a number of his publications. In one of his books (Versteegh 1993, 150), he reflects upon my earlier analysis of al-Farrā’s linguistic methods in his Maʚānī (Dévényi 1990). He pointed out the insufficient analysis of ʙidˢmār and its related terms in this author’s work. In another chapter of the same work (Versteegh 1993, chapter five), he assembled data in an attempt to present the interrelationship between grammarians, readers and commentators who worked in the 2nd/8th century. The present contribution would like to pick up these two threads and examine, on the one hand, in some detail the role of ʙidˢmār in the Maʚānī l-Qurʙān of al-Farrā and, on the other hand, analyze the role and place of this grammatical commentary of the Qurʙān from the point of view of other grammars (mainly Sībawayhi’s Kitāb) and other exegetical works, like for example those of al-Axfaš and at- Tabarī. It is a well-known fact that al-Farrā (d. 207/822) held in great esteem Sībawayhi’s (d. 180/796) Kitāb, which more than twenty years predated his composition. Their starting points and approaches were, however, widely different. Versteegh (1993, 180) has already pointed out that the interests of the two authors lay elsewhere. To this, we can add that alFarrā and Sībawayhi, though working within the framework of practically one grammar—or one grammatical ideal—had widely different aims. While al-Farrā, in his Maʚānī, used his grammatical knowledge for the analysis of an existing corpus which he described from the point of view of the listener to this text, Sībawayhi aimed at creating, from the point of view of the speaker, a comprehensive grammar in which he used poetical and Qurʙānic excerpts only by way of illustration.
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kinga dévényi 2. An overview of al-Farrāʙ’s methods
In order to have a brief overview of the methods used by al-Farrāʙ, a few examples from the beginning of the Maʚānī will be presented first. That the corpus al-Farrāʙ is working on is the text of the revelation has special importance. On the one hand, al-Farrāʙ—like grammarians and later rhetoricians—considers that ʙiʚrāb is a necessary prerequisite for the understanding of any text and so the text of the Qurʙān. On the other hand, since the Qurʙānic text is usually understood without relying on the ʙiʚrāb endings, there is a strong tendency to analyze different endings at a given place without entailing a change in the meaning. 1 This method aims at eliminating the problems posed by the different qirāʙāt. Although in most of the cases the grammatical analysis only underlines and systematizes the interpretation given by the first exegetes of the Qurʙānic text, in several cases, however, it is the grammatical analysis which helps to disclose the meaning of the ʙāya. 2.1
Maʚānī I:3 regarding Q 1:2 al-hˢ amdu li-llāhi
The task here is to determine the vowel ending of the word al-hˢ amd. Step (1): The examination of the readings (qirāʙāt): According to al-Farrāʙ the readers are in total agreement concerning the raf ʚ ending.2 It is also interesting to note, that al-Farrāʙ only mentions this ending but does not present a grammatical explanation for it.3 Step (2): The elicitation of extra-textual linguistic source: The Bedouins (ahl al-badw) say three things: (a) al-hˢ amda li-llāh, (b) al-hˢ amdi li-llāh, (c) al-hˢ amdu lu-llāh.
1 A notable exception, where different readings reflect a difference in meaning is e.g. Q 5:6. For the analysis of this ʙāya, see Dévényi 1987–88 and Burton 1988. 2 Makram and ʚUmar (1985, I:5) also list al-hˢ amda and al-hˢ amdi among the readings of this verse. 3 This is in contrast with al-Axfaš (Maʚānī I:9 ff.) whose analysis at this place is rather similar to that of al-Farrāʙ, but who also provides a detailed grammatical analysis of the raf ʚ ending.
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Step (3): The explanation of the variants: For (a), i.e. the nasb ending, al-Farrāʙ (i) gives a grammatical rule according to which h amd is a masdar in place of which a verb could also have been used. This is an example that fixes the rule; (ii) supports it with other similar instances in the Qurān, like: Q 47:4: fa-idā laqītumu lladīna kafarū fa-darba r-riqābi—instead of which one could say in kalām: fa-dribū r-riqāba Q 12:79: maāda llāhi an naxuda . . .—which is the same as: naūdu bi-llāhi; (iii) and props it with Bedouin usage (qawl al-arab) where saqyan laka may be used instead of saqāka llāh. The (b) variant, i.e. al-h amdi li-llāh is treated as one word. As such, it is compared to ibil, where two i vowels follow each other. This is a descriptive explanation making reference to usage. Other parallels are presented as well, among them the (c) variant: al-h amdu lu-llāh. Al-Farrāʙ approached this corpus from the point of view of the listener to the text. And it seems from the second step employed by al-Farrāʙ that the listener could hear some variants. And because al-Farrāʙ was interested not only in the text of the Qurān, but obviously placed it in the context of the Arabic language as a whole, he analyzed these versions. What is even more, he proceeded to explain these variants in detail though—according to his knowledge—these variations were not Qurānic readings. 2.2 Maʚānī I:7–8 regarding Q 1:7 [. . . anamta alayhim] ġayri l-maġdūbi [alayhim wa-lā d-dāllīna] The task here is to determine the vowel ending of the word ġayr. There are neither variant readings nor extra-textual variants. Step (1): Grammatical analysis: Al-Farrāʙ explains the i in ġayri as a nat to alladīna, mentioning that it is definite (marifa) because of the following word (al-maġdūbi).4 He also
4 It is important to note in this respect, that while the analysis of al-Axfaš goes along the same lines (Maānī I:18) (with the usual difference in terminology), but with one basic difference, i.e. that he does not define negatively the ending of the word, in other words he does not say what it is not, rather contents himself with saying what it is. That is to say, he does not deal with the refutation of grammatically incorrect endings or with
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categorically refuses to connect ġayri to the preceding word, alayhim. Doing this he seems to argue against the view of those among his contemporaries who carry the surface descriptive analysis or the analysis based upon proximity (itbā) to the extremes. Step (2): Semantic analysis: Turning to the semantic side of the explanation, he states that ġayri is connected to wa-lā d-dāllīna which follows it and its meaning is lā. He also adds that if it meant siwā, it could not have been followed by lā. So it can be established that al-Farrāʙ connects the two types of analysis, the semantic and the grammatical. 2.3 Maʚānī I:11–12 regarding Q 2:2 [dālika l-kitābu lā rayba fīhi] hudan li-l-muttaqīna The question is whether hudan is in raf or nasb. Though in the case of this particular word both endings are realized in the same surface form, the question should be decided both from the point of view of the semantic interpretation of the structure and for the sake of other similar structures in the Qurān where even the surface realization is different. In the case of similar phrases in the Qurān a number of qirāāt have been preserved with readings in both raf and nasb, as e.g. Q 31:1–3 (ā lām tilka āyāt al-kitāb al-h akīm hudan wa-rah matun/an li-l-muh sinīn) and Q 11:72 (a alidu wa-hādā balī šayxun/an). Step (1): Grammatical statement: Both endings can be explained in different ways (wajh). If the interpreter of grammatical structures does not deviate from the intended meaning, he may freely choose between raf and nasb or the different ways. This freedom is expressed by al-Farrāʙ in the use of the 2nd person: idā aradta . . ., wa-in jaalta . . . rafata . . . (Maānī I:11, 12ff.). Step (2): The detailed grammatical analysis: (i) raf (1) It can be the xabar of dālika l-kitāb which—in this case—is analyzed as the mubtada. A paraphrase is given: dālika hudan.
the refutation of grammatically not permissible analyses. This difference will remain characteristic throughout the two books.
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(2) It can be a nat (modifier) of the xabar: lā rayba fīhi. A Qurānic parallel is quoted: wa-hādā kitābun anzalnāhu mubārakun (Q 6:92, 6:155). (3) It can also be considered the beginning of a new structure which comes after a complete phrase (alā stināf li-tamām mā qablahu).5 A Qurānic parallel is quoted: wa-hādā balī šayxun (Q 11:72).6 (ii) nasb alā l-qat (1) It is either cut off from al-kitābu, which in this case would be analyzed as the xabar of dālika. (2) Or it is cut off from the -hi in lā rayba fīhi. A paraphrase is given as: ‘lā šakka fīhi hādiyan’. A ready-made grammatical rule is given as an explanation for both possibilities: li-anna hudan nakira ittasalat bi-marifa qad tamma xabaruhā fa-nasabtahā li-anna n-nakira lā takūnu dalīlan alā l-marifa. 2.4
Maʚānī I:14–15 regarding Q 2:16 fa-mā rabih at tijāratuhum
The task is to define the reason why certain structures are permissible in contrast to other seemingly similar structures that are not. Step (1): Parallels from kalām al-arab: hādā laylun nāimun Step (2): Parallels from the Qurān: Q 47:21 fa-idā azama l-amru Step (3): Semantic definition The permissibility of specific structures greatly depends upon their communicational value, i.e. they can only be permitted if they can be understood unambiguously (ulima manāhu I:14, 17). In these examples, the reference of the verbs and the adjective is unambiguously not to
5 In connection with this third analysis, attention should be called to the difficulties of grammatical and semantic analysis arising from the lack of punctuation. No wonder that writings on qat and istināf developed into a special branch of the Qurānic sciences. On the use of istināf and related terms in early grammar and exegesis in general, see Versteegh 1993, 132–136 and the literature cited there. 6 The reading in nasb can be found at this place in today’s printed editions, and this was al-Farrāʙ ’s reading as well (Maānī I:12, 2). The raf ending was read by Ibn Masʚūd and ʙUbayy among others (see Makram and ʚUmar 1985, III:125).
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the other word in the phrase which is a common noun (tijāra, layl, amr) but to the ‘people’ who act ‘behind these words’. Similar structures are not permitted in the case of possible ambiguity, e.g. *qad xasara abduka is not permitted because of the ambiguity of the word abd (he can both be trader and the object of trade), as al-Farrāʙ puts it, its meaning cannot be known: fa-lā yulamu manāhu (Maānī I:15, 3). 2.5 Maʚānī I:16 regarding Q 2:17–18 wa-tarakahum fī ulumātin . . . summun bukmun umyun The task is to explain the endings of summ, bukm and umy. (i) The raf ending is explained by istināf and the completeness of the preceding clause in itself (li-anna l-kalām tamma). An additional reason is that the whole phrase is split between two āyas, but this is not a prerequisite of istināf. It should, however, be mentioned that istināf is frequently found at the beginning of āyas. (ii) The nasb reading (summan bukman umyan) is explained in two ways: (1) according to the meaning (alā l-manā), i.e. by referring back to the verb in the preceding clause (tarakahum); (2) by their being expressions of blame (damm). A parallel Qur’ānic passage quoted by al-Farrāʙ is Q 9:111–112: wa-man awfā bi-ahdihi mina llāhi . . . at-tāibūna l-ābidūna l-h āmidūna—explained as istināf or the reading in nasb . . . at-tāibīna l-ābidīna l-h āmidīna—explained as qat The use of the explanatory terms istināf and qat shows clearly that for al-Farrāʙ the most important issue was to understand the text as a whole. And one of the first issues to be dealt with was the correct segmentation of the text. The term qat expresses more clearly the syntactic structure, whereas the term h āl can only refer to the meaning.7 2.6 Maʚānī I:17 regarding Q 2:19 yajalūna asābiahum . . . h adara l-mawti Meaning, however, can also play a decisive role in the explanation of an irāb ending and the determination of the syntactic structure, as it is the
7
For the difference in al-Farrā’s usage between hāl and qat, see Kinberg 1996, 194.
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case, e.g. in Q 2:19 (Maānī I:17, 1ff.): yajalūna asābiahum . . . h adara l-mawti. The word h adara is in nasb not because the verb yajalūna affects it (*yajalūnahā h adaran) but by way of specification (tafsīr). It is the same as e.g. in the phrase ataytuka xawfan where ‘fear’ is not given but something is given because of it.
3. The explanatory technique of ʙidˢmār in the Maʚānī The above examples were presented to show the steps followed by al-Farrāʙ in his explanations. One of the basic explanatory techniques used by al-Farrāʙ in the Maānī is the term idmār (together with its related forms). In the course of the explanation of the text of the Qurān, al-Farrāʙ is basically confronted with three types of problems: (i) The meaning of the āya needs clarification; (ii) Though the meaning is clear, there is a problematical irāb-ending; (iii) The qirāāt of similar structures at different places in the Qurān should be harmonized and explained. It will be seen that the technique of idmār features as a prominent solution in all of these cases. It is outside the scope of the present paper to examine all the occurrences of idmār and its related terms in the Maānī. In the following, however, we shall try to present a typology of the most significant types of occurrences of this term. 3.1 ʙidˢmār is supported by another place in the Qurān where the suppressed element occurs in the text 3.1.1 Maʚānī I:13 regarding Q 2:7 xatama llāh alā qulūbihim wa-alā samihim wa-alā absārihim ġišāwatun This āya has a variant reading, ġišāwatan, which entails no difference in the meaning of the āya (wa-manāhumā wāh id ).8 This reading is explained by others—says al-Farrāʙ—by the idmār of jaala. This
8 It might be interesting to note that al-Axfaš did not mention the existence of different readings here (see al-Axfaš, Maānī I:34).
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is supported by Q 45:23 where the phrase actually occurs as wa-jaala alā basarihi ġišāwatan. Al-Farrāʙ accepts this explanation, i.e. the use of another Qurānic place to support the explanation by idmār, though he emphasizes that were it not for the Qurānic parallel, the idmār in this sentence could not have been accepted. This is because according to al-Farrāʙ, idmār is acceptable only in those utterances (kalām) which are coherent ( yajtami), i.e. where the beginning refers ( yadullu alā) to the end. The idmār is acceptable (yah sunu) if it is well known (urifa; or at other places malūm). A kalām example is brought in to illustrate what is meant by the term yadullu alā, and how it operates in structures. The example is as follows: qad asāba fulānun al-māla fa-banā d-dūra wa-l-abīda wa-limāa wa-l-libāsa l-h asana. It can be seen from this example, proceeds al-Farrāʙ, that the notion of ‘building’ (binā) cannot be extended to slaves and clothes. By quoting this example from kalām, al-Farrāʙ appeals to the listener’s linguistic insight and competence in the Qurānic text. He explains that the first part of the utterance (asāba) refers to the slaves, etc., i.e. qad asāba fulānun al-māla fa-banā d-dūra wa-[asāba] l-abīda wa-l-imāa wa-l-libāsa l-h asana. Without saying that it should be repeated, instead he uses the term dalla, yadullu alā. Sībawayhi would rather say explicitly that asāba should be repeated before al-abīda. Al-Farrāʙ only hints at the idmār of asāba. In the following (Maānī I:14), Q 56:22 is mentioned as a similar example: yatūfu alayhim wildānun muxalladūna bi-akwābin . . . wah ūrin īnin.9 Al-Farrāʙ accepts the -in reading on the basis of proximity (itbā) but mentions that those who put it in raf (wa-h ūrun īnun) do this on the basis of the meaning, since the cups cannot be co-ordinated with the beautiful companions, and by the idmār of a word like indahum, fīhā, maa dālika. Again, as in the previous example from kalām, al-Farrāʙ does not use the term idmār here, but only hints at it. The limits of idmār are imposed by understandability and coherence, or rather their lack. This is called by al-Farrāʙ qillat al-ijtimā. So. e.g. the idmār of qataltu is not permissible in the following utterance: darabtu fulānan wa-fulānan [*qataltu]. The reason is that there is no reference
9 Mainly because he considered it the accepted reading. This was the reading of a great number of readers, among them al-Kisāʙī (cf. Makram and ʚUmar 1985, VII:65), but in today’s printed mush af the -un reading can be found.
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(dalīl) to the meaning here, the speaker’s intention cannot be known by the listener. At-ˢ Tˢabarī adds (Tafsīr I:87) that xatama cannot refer to the eyes because they are never described by xatama either in the Qurān or in the kalām. 3.1.2 Maʚānī I:35 regarding Q 2:72: wa-id qataltum nafsan fa-ddāratum fīhā The jawāb of id is present neither in this āya nor several others similar to it in the Qurān. Al-Farrāʙ explains the structure by the idmār of udkurū before id, and supports this explanation by similar utterances in the Qurān where this word is present, as e.g. in Q 8:26 (wa-dkurū id antum qalīl . . .). Suppression of udkurū with id can be inferred from places like Q 8:26 and Q 7:86. al-Farrāʙ adds that if udkurū was not mentioned in Q 7:86, you could still infer that this is what is intended because it occurs previously. A parallel case of idmār is also mentioned: Q 7:73 (wa-ilā Tamūda axāhum Sālih an) where the known meaning allows the explanation of this structure by the idmār of arsalnā, i.e. arsalnā Sālih an. This example in itself can be regarded as a sub-case of the acceptance of idmār on the basis of parallel Qurānic passages, since though the verb arsala is used in the Qurān, it is mainly the content of the āya which determines the selection of the suppressed element.10 3.1.3
Maʚānī I:166 regarding Q 2:246 wa-mā lanā allā nuqātila
Al-Farrāʙ starts his analysis with comparing similar utterances from different parts of the Qurān, some of them with an and some other without it, like e.g.: Q 14:12: mā lanā allā natawakkala alā llāh Q 57:8: wa-mā lakum lā tuminūna bi-llāhi wa-r-rasūlu yadūkum lituminū bi-rabbikum Dropping (ilqā) an here cannot be considered deficiency (illa) according to al-Farrāʙ because of its frequent usage in the arabiyya. The usage of an relies on the meaning of manaa. According to this explanation,
10
On the meaning of this term in the Maānī, see Kinberg 1996, 377.
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the utterance mā laka lā tusallī fī jamāa means: mā yamnauka an tusalliya. The an may be inserted into the mā laka phrase because the latter’s meaning is identical with manaa. And a last evidence is put forward from the text of the Qurān itself: Q 7:12: mā manaaka allā tasjuda id amartuka runs parallel to Q 15:32: mā laka allā takūna maa s-sājidīna. ʙidˢmār is supported basically by kalām
3.2
3.2.1 Maʚānī I:32 regarding Q 2:48 wa-ttaqū yawman lā tajzī nafsun an nafsin šayan Al-Farrāʙ explains this passage by the idmār of fīhi after tajzī, insisting on the necessity of distinguishing by reference to the meaning adverbial structures allowing idmār from verbal structures with sifa (prepositional phrase) complement, where idmār is not possible. For example, anta lladī takallamtu fīhi should be distinguished from anta lladī takallamtu. In doing this he argues with al-Kisāʙī and others who understand too rigidly the formal description and identify the two, formally similar but semantically different types. On the basis of this identification al-Kisā’ī refutes both structures with idmār while others permit both of them. The same holds true, says al-Farrāʙ, for the fīhi—hu alternation within adverbial structures of time and place but not in verbal prepositional phrases. The phrase ātīka yawma l-xamīs is interchangeable with ātīka fī yawmi l-xamīs, since the sifa and hā here agree in meaning (muttafaq manāhumā). But when the meaning differs it is not allowed to suppress fī in place of hā and vice versa: yuh ibbuhā does not equal with yuh ibbu fīhā. atˢ-Tˢabarī, who quotes extensively (Tafsīr I:203, 11ff.) al-Farrāʙ’s interpretation, adds that the idmār in this āya is possible because it is wellknown (malūm), this being the generally accepted explanation for idmār by the exegetes (ash āb at-tawīl). 3.2.2
Maʚānī I:113, 9, Q 2:185: wa-li-tukmilū l-idda
The li- + verb cannot be šart11 (cause) of a previous verb because the wāw blocks its impact. Al-Farrāʙ discusses in many places that some particles,
11
On the meaning of this term in the Maānī, see Kinberg 1996, 377.
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especially the wāw, do not allow us to suppose a grammatical link with a preceding regent. This phenomenon is explained on the basis of kalām examples: jituka li-tuh sina ilayya cannot be transformed to jituka wa-li-tuh sina ilayya only if you mean (jituka) wa-li-tuh sina ilayya jituka. This second occurrence of the same verbal phrase is, naturally, suppressed (al-arab tudxiluhā fī kalāmihim alā idmār fil badahā). This rule stated, al-Farrāʙ cites many Qurānic places where the same causal structure—wa-li and the idmār of a verbal phrase—can be observed signifying the result of this cause, e.g. wa-kadālika nurī Ibrāhīma malakūta s-samawāti wa-l-ardi wa-li-yakūna min al-mūqinīna (Q 6:75) where the suppressed (mudmar) phrase is a repetition of the verbal phrase before wāw: araynāhu. Atˢ-Tˢabarī (Tafsīr II:88, 3ff.) quotes two opinions. One is a verbatim quotation of al-Farrāʙ’s view without mentioning his name (qāla bad nahwiyyī l-Kūfa). The other is the view of bad ahl al-arabiyya which was rejected by al-Farrāʙ. This supports our analysis that whenever al-Farrāʙ rejects a seemingly only theoretical possibility of analysis, he rejects the opinion of a certain group of people without attributing their view to anybody. 3.2.3 Maʚānī I:271 regarding Q 4:46 mina lladīna hādū yuh arrifūna l-kalim The meaning is: man yuh arrifūna l-kalim. This is supported by kalām examples where man is suppressed in the beginning of the utterance (mubtada al-kalām): minnā [man] yaqūlu or minnā [man] lā yaqūlu. This is possible according to al-Farrāʙ, because min, i.e. the first part (awwal) of the utterance refers to the meaning of what has been left out, being its part (bad). Al-Farrāʙ considers it important to note that man cannot be left out (idmār) as a rule, but only in those cases where the prepositional phrase refers to it. This latter sometimes may be fī too: fīhā sālih ūna wa-fīhā dūna dālika. 3.3 ʙidˢmār is supported by the immediately preceding context (the first part of the utterance or the previous utterance): Maʚānī I:141–142 regarding Q 2:220: wa-in tuxālitūhum fa-ixwānukum With idmār of the rāfi, i.e. the nominal subject: hum, or if it is nasb, with idmār of the second occurrence of the verbal phrase: fa-ixwānakum tuxālitūna. In both cases the suppressed element is given in the first
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part of the utterance or, sometimes, in a previous utterance, as in Q 2:239: fa-in xiftum fa-rijālan. This is called ijtimā al-kalām. Here, says al-Farrāʙ, it would not be correct to suppose huwa because it is not an (everlasting) state (dāim) but an action. The previous āya (h āfiū alā s-salawāti . . . wa-qūmū li-llāhi . . .) gives a clue for the explanation. Hence the meaning can be restored as: in xiftum an tusallū qiyāman fa-sallū rijālan. Atˢ-Tˢabarī (Tafsīr II:208) follows al-Farrāʙ’s argument, and refers to the same Qurānic passage, etc. but everything is more detailed. It is as if he worked from a fuller version of the Maānī. 3.4 ʙidˢmār is supported primarily by the readings of Abdallāh and Ubayy: Maānī I:156 regarding Q 2:240: wa-lladīna yutawaffawna minkum wa-yadarūna azwājan wasiyyatan Here al-Farrāʙ presents two readings, nasb (wasiyyatan) and raf (wasiyyatun), and both of them are explained on the basis of idmār. The first idmār relies on the rule of the absolute object, the suppressed verb being a jussive of the same root (li-yūsū . . . wasiyyatan). He refuses, however, to accept the supposition that the previous verb in the yadarūna azwājan phrase could have put wasiyya into nasb. This may have been held by the supporters of the proximity-theory who always preferred the explanation on the basis of the neighboring word. The second, raf, reading (wasiyyatun) may also be explained by idmār. The source of this idmār is the reading of Ibn Masʚūd or ʙUbayy:12 fa-matāun li-azwājikum or kutiba alaykum al-wasiyyatu li-azwājikum, both containing raf , the first also a lexical variation.
12 From among the 64 Qurān readers whom al-Farrāʙ quotes by name, Ibn Masʚūd is by far the most frequently quoted, with 411 references. ʚUbayy is the seventh most frequently quoted reader, with 92 occurrences. Cf. Dévényi 1991, 160–161.
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3.5 The use of major, meaning-triggered grammatical rules in supposing ʙidˢmār 3.5.1
h āl
3.5.1.1 Maānī I:24 regarding Q 2:28: kayfa takfirūna bi-llāhi wa-kuntum amwātan The meaning is established as ‘qad kuntum’, since the second verb is a h āl to the first one and it refers back to a state prior to the past action denoted by the first verb. After the definition of the meaning, al-Farrāʙ formulates the following rule: this type of h āl necessitates qad, either overtly (ihār) or in a suppressed way (idmār). If this condition is not fulfilled, i.e. the first verb does not refer to the past (like e.g. in the case of kāda, asā) then the second cannot contain qad in either way. This rule is reinforced by another type of proof, a parallel place in the Qurān where qad is being suppressed and where it is generally understood to be necessary for the correct meaning (Q 12:27: in kāna qamīsuhu qudda min duburin fa-kadibat). Atˢ-Tˢabarī (Tafsīr I:146, 18ff.) follows al-Farrāʙ’s arguments but he adds that the explanation for the suppression of qad lies in the fact that if the verbal form faala takes the place of h āl it is self-evident (malūm) that it requires qad. It is to be emphasized that al-Farrāʙ also considers that only those elements can be suppressed which are well-known to the speakers. 3.5.1.2 Maānī I:372 regarding Q 7:4: fa-jāahā basunā bayātan aw hum qāilūna The meaning is established: [wa]-hum qāilūna is a h āl, parallel to bayātan. Its grammatical rule is: wa-huwa fāilun, accordingly the idmār of wa- is compulsory. The wa- should be present either overtly or in a suppressed way. All this is supported by an example from kalām where both ways (ihār and idmār) are correct: ataytanī wāliyan aw wa-anā mazūl or awanā mazūl.13
13 Az-Zajjāj (Maānī II:317) refutes this explanation without mentioning al-Farrāʙ and says that it is not necessary to suppose wa- in h āl in general.
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3.5.2
The delimitation and rules of ʙidˢmār in quotation (hˢikāya)
3.5.2.1 Maʚānī I:38 regarding Q 2:58 wa-qūlū hˢ itˢtaˢ tun Considering hˢ itˢtaˢ tun as a hˢ ikāya entails the ʙidˢmār of the rāfiʚ (i.e. the nominal subject) which is supposed to be mā ʙumirtum bihi or simply hiya. Though not called ʙidˢmār in this place, it is analyzed as such, as will be seen below. It is a quotation (hˢ ikāya) which presupposes that it should be correct (sˢaluhˢ a) if the rāfiʚ/nāsˢib or xāfidˢ is suppressed. Al-Farrāʙ exemplifies this rule as follows: qultu lā ʙilāha ʙillā llāh fa-yaqūl al-qāʙil: qultu kalimatan sˢālihˢ atan. But kalimatan sˢālihˢ atan cannot stand alone without a nāsˢib. To decide whether an utterance is quotation or indirect speech is very important for the Qurʙānic text where change(s) of speaker and hearer can occur even within the same ʙāya. 3.5.2.2 Maʚānī I:40 regarding Q 11:69: qālū salāman qāla salāmun The word salām is used here in two meanings (ʚalā maʚnāyayni). In the first step the two endings (nasˢb and raf ʚ) are explained. The explanation of the endings relies on the grammatical rule differentiating indirect speech from quotation (hˢ ikāya). Having fixed this al-Farrāʙ adds that in the case of hˢ ikāya the ʙidˢmār of ʚalaykum should be supposed. In a third step he demonstrates that this ʙidˢmār is possible because salām frequently occurs in kalām alone, i.e. without ʚalaykum. 3.5.2.3 Maʚānī I:93 regarding Q 2:154: wa-lā taqūlū li-man yuqtalu fī sabīli llāh ʙamwātun It is another instance of hˢ ikāya where the raf ʚ ending is explained by the ʙidˢmār of hum.14 The ʙiʚrāb ending and the difference between quotation and indirect speech is demonstrated by substitutional analysis (huwa bimanzilat . . .). He says that the nasˢb ending is not permitted here because ʙamwāt is an ism and not a qawl, i.e. it is not a nominalized phrase. He illustrates the possible and impossible usages as follows: qultu laka xayran, i.e. kalāman hˢ asanan. qultu laka xayrun, is similar to: qultu laka mālun.
14
Az-Zajjāj (Maʚānī I:229) also accepts this analysis.
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In the case of xayr both structures are correct whereas their substitutes cannot be used in the other structure. Since there are no different readings here it might be supposed that by illustrating these structures in detail al-Farrāʙ may possibly refute analyzing techniques that take into account only the surface structure. 3.5.2.4 Maānī I:296, 7 regarding Q 4:171: wa-lā taqūlū talātatun This and similar examples show that it is a general grammatical rule that necessitates the use of idmār, scil. if there is a marfū after the qawl (as a quotation after the verb qāla), there must be a rāfi (subject) as well, in the above example: wa-lā taqūlū hum talātatun General rule: if something is in raf after qāla (yaqūlu, qawl), there should be a rāfi either overtly or in a suppressed way (idmār). Here alFarrāʙ gives a formal explanation of an irāb ending. 3.5.3 The ʚāʙid in the relative clause: Maʚānī I:157 regarding Q 2:246 ibat lanā malikan nuqātil fī sabīli llāhi The verb may not be nuqātilu (in raf ) referring to the preceding noun as a sila, because there is no reference back to malikan. However, if one accepts the yuqātil reading, it can be explained as either sila ( yuqātilu) or jazā (yuqātil) after an imperative (amr), as in the case of nuqātil. Al-Farrāʙ shows that the form yuqātilu can also be used when there is no antecedent, with idmār: ibat lanā lladī yuqātilu. Then he presents a kalām example: allimnī ilman antafiu bihi and allimnī lladī antafiu bihi. But if bihi is dropped, then only the jazm is correct, since there is no reference back (āid). 3.5.4 jazāʙ: Maʚānī I:178, 4, Q 2:265: fa-in lam yusibhā wābilun fa-tallun Al-Farrāʙ here refers to the grammatical rule of jazā that requires mādī forms, thus he supposes the suppression of kāna before tallun. The interesting point of his analysis is, however, when he says: udmirat kāna fa-saluh a l-kalām, because it sheds light on the meaning of idmār: It is not simply suppression or deletion but the supposition of a suppressed element which corrects the utterance and makes it fit the grammatical rules.
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3.5.5 ammā . . . fa-: Maʚānī I:228 regarding Q 3:106: fa-ammā lladīna swaddat wujūhuhum a-kafartum This is a good example of a well-known grammatical rule (the obligatory use of fa- after ammā) which makes the grammarian suppose the idmār of fa-. At the same time the meaning of the āya also requires the supposition of a suppressed phrase yuqāl. After dropping yuqāl, however, the fa- is also dropped. In reconstructing the meaning one needs to reconstruct the utterance as well: fa-ammā lladīna swaddat wujūhuhum fa-yuqāl a-kafartum. In the above five examples idmār is necessitated by some basic grammatical rules considered by al-Farrāʙ to be generally accepted and evident to such an extent that he does not even try to explain them with the exception of the last example. 3.6 The impossibility of ʙidˢmār: Maʚānī I:195–197 regarding Q 3:15: qul a-unabbiukum bi-xayrin min dālikum li-lladīna ttaqū inda rabbihim jannātun Jannāt is in raf because of the influence of lām. This intervening lām prevents referring back to the beginning of the utterance (awwal al-kalām). He then draws the conclusion: the xāfid (here bi-) cannot be suppressed (lam yudmar), therefore one cannot suppose that the bi- (in bixayrin) is suppressed before jannāt causing it to be in xafd. This also means that the irāb-ending xafd cannot be used independently. The same principle is stated in connection with Q 6:96 (Maānī I:346) where a h āl stands in the way of the effect of a preceding verbal noun (jāil): wa-jāilu l-layli sakanan wa-š-šamsa wa-l-qamara h usbānan. Since aš-šamsa and al-qamara cannot be in xafd, therefore in al-Farrāʙ’s view they take nasb ending according to their meaning.
4. Concluding remarks 4.1
A summary of ʙidˢmār types
To sum up the method of idmār, it can be established that al-Farrāʙ derives the explanations of specific Qur’ānic passages from the following main types of sources:
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(i) the end of an utterance is related to its beginning, the preceding context (sometimes on the basis of the different segmentations of the text), where—as al-Farrāʙ (Maānī I:13, 14–15) puts it—wainnamā yah sunu l-idmāru fī l-kalāmi lladī yajtamiu wa-yadullu awwaluhu alā āxirihi, i.e. the context is coherent. It is contrasted with inqataa, where the context is incoherent. (ii) another place in the Qurān; (iii) an extra-textual linguistic source: kalām al-arab/badw or sometimes a poem, though it should be pointed out that poems do not have their central significance they have in the Kitāb; (iv) a grammatical rule often quoted without example or proof. Its main types are: (a) only the rule is mentioned; (b) a rule-like example is given (kamā taqūl . . .); (c) a grammatically incorrect example is used to support his reasoning (lā yajūz . . .); (v) a qirāa; (vi) the codex of ʚAbdallāh b. Masʚūd or, less frequently, that of ʙUbayy b. Kaʚb or the codices of their followers which sometimes contain non-canonical variations. 4.2
The meaning of ʙidˢmār
The meaning of idmār is not simply h adf (deletion), but rather the obligatory supposition of an element. Thus when al-Farrāʙ writes that lā budda min idmār kāna li-anna l-kalām jazā (Maānī I:178, 4) it means just the opposite of obligatory h adf (the obligatory deletion); it means that it is obligatory to suppose the existence of an element either present in the utterance or suppressed. The use of the terms uskitat and ulqiyat also sheds light on the main characteristic of idmār, i.e. its obligatory nature. For example at Maānī I:163 regarding Q 2:246 there are two options to express the same meaning: either with allā or only lā. The dropping of an, however, cannot be considered idmār, since both variants are equally correct Arabic (alā wajh al-arabiyya), the structure with only lā not being brought back to the one with an.
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kinga dévényi Two kinds of traditions in the Maʚānī
It can be established that al-Farrāʙ relied on two kinds of traditions in his Maʚānī. I
The grammatical tradition
A) al-Farrāʙ and Sībawayhi Disregarding the terminological differences it can be stated that on the whole he followed the same grammatical tradition that became exemplified by Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. a) He takes sides with a Sībawayhi-like grammatical analysis on the basis of the ʚāmil theory, without, however, using the same terminology.15 b) Frequent reference can be found to grammatical rules considered self-evident and thus in no need of further explanations. c) We can see the main difference between the Maʚānī of al-Farrāʙ and Sībawayhi’s Kitāb not in the method of grammatical analysis but in their approach. Al-Farrāʙ, starting from a complete text, always has in mind the text as a whole, as a series of utterances, and he proceeds accordingly. Whereas Sībawayhi cites only specific examples to illustrate the grammatical rules he wishes to present. B) al-Farrāʙ and al-ʙAxfaš The difference between al-Farrāʙ and al-ʙAxfaš lies in the fact that the latter basically writes about grammar, while the former deals essentially with Qurʙānic exegesis on a grammatical basis. This may account for al-ʙAxfaš’s lack of interest in eliciting all the known readings at a given place whereas al-Farrāʙ seems keen on mentioning whatever can be heard (see, e.g. al-hˢ amdu/al-hˢ amda/al-hˢ amdi above), whereas does not seem to attach great importance to the explanation of structures or endings that he considers self-evident.
15 According to Talmon (2003, 309–312) Sībawayhi’s main concern in syntax is ʙiʚrāb carried out by ʚamal effect. Talmon also postulated that in the Kitāb al-hˢ udūd, al-Farrāʙ seemed to focus in his syntactic description on sentence-types and the determination of syntactic relations. We can also experience in the Maʚānī that while al-Farrāʙ dealt with ʙiʚrāb-endings in a somewhat flexible way, he did not make allowances in the case of syntactic structures.
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C) al-Farrāʙ’s opinion on the linear interpretation of the text a) At least half of al-Farrāʙ’s analysis of ʙidˢmār deals with the interpretation of different ʙiʚrāb endings which he considers fundamental in clarifying the meaning of the Qurʙānic text. Therefore he is in constant struggle with those views according to which the short vowel endings are merely phonetic or morphological phenomena and not ʙiʚrāb endings. The most frequent of these solutions is the choice of the final vowel on the basis of proximity, ʙitbāʚ.16 b) He also introduced some formal descriptive interpretations in which he might have followed Kūfan exegetical methods. He accepts these explanations if they fit into his concept of the linear descriptive text analysis. The best examples to demonstrate this are those places where he insists that certain particles, such as wa-or the prepositions, may block the impact of the previous grammatical structure (e.g. Q 2:185 as analyzed in 3.2.2 above). c) al-Farrāʙ, however, refuses to accept superficial formal analyses which run contrary to the meaningful interpretation (e.g. Q 2:48 when he refuses identification of fī in temporal adverbs with fī in prepositional verbs). In such cases he does not say whose opinion, whose analysis is rejected by him. Sometimes he uses the passive (yuqāl), some other times it can only be supposed that he is at variance with some people who only looked upon the text as a linear string of utterances and derived the explanations quasi mechanically from the preceding string. II
The exegetical tradition
Al-Farrāʙ’s grammatical activities in the field of Qurʙānic exegesis cannot be overestimated. It becomes especially evident if we compare his explanations to the relevant passages in at-ˢ Tˢabarī’s Tafsīr. It goes without saying that the scope of at ˢ-Tˢabarī’s commentary is much wider than that of al-Farrāʙ’s work. But if we limit our comparison to the linguistic exegesis, we find that al-Farrāʙ’s explanations are most of the time taken over verbatim without his name being mentioned. One can also suppose that 16 Al-Farrāʙ accepts these variant forms in case of different existing samāʚ in the collected corpus, as e.g. in the case of al-hˢ amda/i/u (Q 1:2). If, however, the difference appears not in the given vowel ending but in the explanation, then he always advocates the explanation based on ʙiʚmāl, as e.g. in Q 1:7 where he does not accept the explanation according to which the ending of ġayri would be determined by the preceding ʚalayhim.
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at-Tabarī had access to a fuller version of the Maʚānī, it is, however, also possible that al-Farrā was only one prominent exponent of a common thinking about grammatical issues in the Qurʙān and the analyses he dictated from his memory belonged to a common stock of knowledge, a long line of grammatical exegetical tradition, with which at-Tabarī was still familiar. It is interesting to note, however, that the two other Maʚānī works, Abū Ubayda’s Majāz and al-Axfaš’s Maʚānī do not seem to have been incorporated into what became the ‘definitive commentary’ of the Qurʙān for centuries. So it might be concluded that while the grammatical tradition as it was shaped in Basra outshone the Kūfan, its trace in the grammatical analysis of the Qurʙān is not significant.17
5. References 5.1 Primary sources Abū Ubayda, Majāz = Abū Ubayda Mamar b. al-Muta nnā at-Taymī, Majāz al-Qurʙān. Muhammad Fuād Sazgīn [Fuat Sezgin], ed. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Xānjī, n.d. al-Axfaš, Maʚānī = Abū l-H asan Saīd b. Masada al-Mujāšiī al-Axfaš al-Awsat , Maʚānī l-Qurʙān. Fāiz Fāris, ed. 2 vols. Amman: Dār al-Bašīr, 1981. Farrā, Maʚānī = Abū Zakariyyā Yahyā b. Ziyād al-Farrā, Maʚānī l-Qurʙān. Ahmad Yūsuf Najātī and Muhammad Alī an-Najjār, eds. 3 vols. Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya l-Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 19802. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = Abū Bišr Amr b. Utm ān Sībawayhi, al-Kitāb. Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn, ed. 5 vols. Beirut: Ālam al-Kutub, 1966–1977. n.d. at-Tabarī, Tafsīr = Abū Jafar Muhammad b. Jarīr at-Tabarī, Jāmiʚ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʙān. 30 vols. Cairo: al-Mat baa al-Maymaniyya, n.d. az-Zajjāj, Maʚānī = Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm b. as-Sarī az-Zajjāj, Maʚānī l-Qurʙān wa-ʙiʚrābuhu. Abdaljalīl Abduh Šalabī, ed. 5 vols. Beirut: Ālam al-Kutub, 1988.
17 An interesting feature of al-Farrā ’s explanatory method is his usage—at certain places—of the 2nd person singular in the case of ʙiʚrāb endings and other grammatical interpretations. The use of 2nd person singular is on the one hand the usual practice in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, but Sībawayhi presents his linguistic analysis from the point of view of the speaker, the producer of different utterances, whereas al-Farrā deals with a concrete text, and what is even more, the text of the revelation. The use of the 2nd person singular in this case might indicate that al-Farrā considered that the sacred text was the one without the short vowel endings or that it had been revealed according to what is termed as sabʚat ʙahˢ ruf which leaves the reader of the text some freedom in the vocalic realization. It should, however, be noted that al-Farrā’—similarly to other commentators, or in fact Sībawayhi when he deals with the Qurʙān (e.g. Kitāb II:155, 10 ad Q 5:69)—does use the 3rd person singular or the passive when he deals with different ʙiʚrāb endings in the Qurʙān.
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Secondary sources
Burton, John. 1988. “The Qurʙān and the Islamic Practice of wudˢūʙ.” BSOAS 51:1:21–58. Dévényi, Kinga. 1987–88. “Mujāwara: A Crack in the Building of ʙiʚrāb.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 5–6, 196–207. ——. 1990. “On Farrāʙ’s linguistic methods in his work Maʚānī l-Qurʙān.” 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, Michael G. Carter and Kees Versteegh, eds. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. ——. 1991. “Al-Farrāʙ and al-Kisāʙī: References to Grammarians and Qurʙān Readers in the Maʚānī l-Qurʙān of al-Farrā.” The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 3–4, 159– 176. Kinberg, Naphtali. 1996. A Lexicon of al-Farrāʙ’s Terminology in his Qurʙān Commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Makram, ʚAbd al-ʚĀl Sālim and Ahˢmad Muxtār ʚUmar. 1985. Muʚjam al-qirāʙāt alQurʙāniyya. 8 vols. Kuwait: Jāmiʚat al-Kuwayt. Talmon, Rafael. 2003. Eighth-century Iraqi Grammar. A Critical Exploration of PreXalīlian Arabic Linguistics. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Versteegh, C.H.M. 1993. Arabic Grammar and Qurʙānic Exegesis in Early Islam. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
ARABIC ALLADĪ AS A CONJUNCTION: AN OLD PROBLEM AND A NEW APPROACH Werner Diem Cologne
Sunt aliquot quoque res, quarum unam dicere causam non satis est, verum pluris, unde una tamen sit. Lucretius: De rerum natura VI 703f.
1. Introduction This paper is devoted to the Arabic sub-standard phenomenon of the relative pronoun alladī in the function of a conjunction predominantly meaning “that; because”. The historical interpretation of this phenomenon, which had been noted by Arab purists for the formula al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī “Praise be to God that” as early as the 9th century C.E., has been a topic for Arabists during the last fifty years. Considering the intensity with which the historical dimension of alladī “that; because” has been discussed, it may seem superfluous to want to take it up yet again. This, however, would be a rash conclusion as no communis opinio concerning the origin of the conjunctional alladī has ever been agreed upon. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, I shall discuss the theories as to the diachronic aspects of alladī as a conjunction in chronological order. Then I shall present additional early evidence from documentary sources dating from the 11th–12th centuries C.E. and later. After that, I shall present my own theoretical approach combining important insights of my predecessors with hitherto neglected aspects. Finally, I shall deal with the origin of the formula al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī. A point that I shall not consider in this paper is the general function of the H amdalah in formulaic expressions used by today’s Arab Muslims. The important role of this formula, simple and expanded, in “everyday Arabic speech” is borne out by numerous examples in Piamenta (1979, 247f., Index) and (1983, 209, Index), among them examples of the
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al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type with alladī as a conjunction meaning “that; because” (Piamenta 1979, 89, 172f., 176).
2. Theoretical approaches 2.1
Meir M. Bravman (1953)
In the chapter “The development of the ‘psychological’ (‘logical’) subjectpredicate relation” in his Studies in Arabic and General Syntax (1953), Meir M. Bravmann, after stating that in constructions of the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type and similar expressions alladī can be interpreted as “that”, maintains that the construction is already found in Classical Arabic, for which he adduces a verse by Imra’ al-Qays. This verse need not be discussed here as it allows of other interpretations. More important is Bravmann’s general theory about the origin of alladī as a conjunction (1953, 41): [. . .] we have to assume [. . .] relative clauses which do not link up with the immediately preceding expression (as al-h amdu li-llāhi etc.), but are parts of an independent new sentence or, more exactly, predicates whose subject—known from the preceding sentence or from the situation—is mentally supplied but not linguistically expressed [. . .]. [. . .] the sentence al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī lam ’amut would mean: “Thank God. [I am one] who has not died” etc.
Spitaler (1963) rejected Bravmann’s theory (see below 2.3), and it was not discussed by other scholars. I tend toward Spitaler’s rejection of this theory as it does not explain satisfactorily the phenomenon in question, and therefore I shall disregard it. 2.2
Joshua Blau (1961)
In his grammar of Judaeo-Arabic, Joshua Blau treats the conjunctional alladī in § 346, which begins with the words “alladī introducing noun clauses”.1 The paragraph falls into five sections according to the syntactic status of the alladī clauses: (a) attributive clauses, (b) subject clauses, (c) predicate clauses, (d) object clauses, (e) clauses in which alladī has a causative function. Most of the examples refer to past events, but there
1
This and the following translations from the Hebrew of Blau are mine.
arabic allad ī as a conjunction
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are also some referring to future events with the heads of the clauses expressing prevention and necessity. As to the origin of the conjunctional alladī, Blau begins section (a) with the following words (1961, 226): Relatively usual are attributive clauses (apposition), which represent the transition from relative clauses,
a statement which is continued in a note with the remark (words in brackets are my additions): However, this does not mean that alladī introducing noun clauses has originated from attributive clauses only. It is, for example, possible that from sentences such as al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī ’a‘ānanī “Praise be to God who helped me” alladī = kī, še- [“that; because”] originated, marking object clauses or mipne še [“because”].
These are quite general statements, which hint to the direction where, according to Blau, a historical interpretation should be looked for. In his opinion, as can be grasped from both remarks cited above, the origin of alladī as a conjunction has to be seen (a) in attributive relative clauses and (b) in the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type. 2.3
Anton Spitaler (1963)
Spitaler’s approach differs fundamentally from Bravmann’s and Blau’s as it is monocausal. He starts from the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type and assumes that this construction was first re-interpreted (Spitaler does not use this word) as meaning “gottlob, daß”, after which it was generalized. The following quotations will illustrate Spitaler’s approach: al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī ist der Anfang eines normalen, von dem Wort Allāh abhängigen Relativsatzes, aber aus seinem eigentlichen Zusammenhang gelöst und sekundär in eine neue Konstruktion übertragen. (1963, 101) Es ist nun ganz eindeutig, dass das stereotyp wiederkehrende al-h amdu li-llāhi im Lauf der Zeit einer Funktionsschwächung unterlegen ist [. . .]. Dadurch verlor das nachfolgende alladī zwangsläufig den lebendigen Zusammenhang mit seinem Beziehungsnomen und der ganze Ausdruck wurde zu einem starren, wenn auch mit einem ganz bestimmten Affektgehalt geladenen Syntagma, bei dem alladī nur mehr als überleitendes Element, als verbindende Partikel, letztenendes eben als Konjunktion empfunden wurde. Und nunmehr war es natürlich gleichgültig, welche syntaktische Form der anschließende Satz hatte. (1963, 235)
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After presenting some examples semantically corresponding to al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī “praise be to God that” which, however, contain finite forms of h md I and škr I instead of the nominal al-h amdu li- (1963, 105), and after rejecting Bravmann’s above-mentioned theory (2.2), Spitaler continues with the words: Mit der Herauslösung aus seinem ursprünglichen legitimen Relativsatzgefüge und der Übertragung in eine ganz neue Konstruktion hat nun aber unser Typus seine Entwicklung nicht abgeschlossen; es zeigt sich nämlich, dass die Formel al-h amdu li-llāhi als solche zurücktritt und durch andere Ausdrücke ersetzt wird, die ebenfalls der Äusserung des Dankes, der Freude, frohen Überraschung, Befriedigung usw. dienen. [. . .] Die dabei gegebenen phraseologischen Möglichkeiten sind sehr mannigfaltig [. . .]. Sie werden aber noch dadurch bereichert, dass die Konstruktion nunmehr [. . .] auch für die damit kontrastierenden Gefühle des Bedauerns, der Reue usw. verwendet wird. (1963, 109)
There follow in Spitaler’s article numerous examples of these latter constructions both from post-classical writings and modern dialects, all of them referring to events in the past. Additionally, Spitaler presents some examples of alladī “that” after verbs from other semantic fields, among them some where the alladī-clause, as in some of Blau’s examples, refers to future events expressed by the Arabic imperfect. While Spitaler’s approach to the problem is definitely a monocausal one, he was well aware of the fact that a multicausal approach would also in principle have been possible, all the more in view of Hebr. ’ašer (on its origin see now Rubin 2005, 49f.) and Aram. dī-, which, besides their original function as relative particles, developed the meaning “that; because” (1963, 106f.). In his final remarks, Spitaler emphatically defended his own theory on the grounds: (a) that the Arab grammarians noted the conjunctional alladī only for the H amdalah, which therefore seems to be central, (b) that the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type possesses the chronological priority within the evidence of the conjunctional alladī, and (c) that it would be implausible to assume two different starting points of the conjunctional alladī converging into one phenomenon (1963, 111f.). There is no reference to Blau’s Diqduq (1961) in Spitaler’s article, probably due to the fact that he was unaware of it when he wrote the article. In fact, Blau in some respect anticipated Spitaler’s theory about the central role of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī.
arabic allad ī as a conjunction 2.4
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Joshua Blau (1965)
In his Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic (1965), which appeared four years after Diqduq, Blau is essentially of the same opinion as in Diqduq (1961) about the origin of alladī “that”, and even the wording reminds one of that used in Diqduq although it is more explicit: Since a relative clause may often be mistaken for a substantive clause, the transition of ’alladī into a conjunction introducing substantive clauses was easily accomplished. (1965, 109)
After this general statement, Blau gives two examples: wa-kamā ‘alimta min h adīti bni Dwrdy’ jamī‘a mā fa‘alahu lladī ‘abida s-sanama and lillāhi l-h amdu lladī ’aslamahu fī ’aydīkum, in Blau’s translation “and likewise, you know the story of B. D., everything that he had done, that he had served the idols” and “praise be to God that he has delivered him into your hands”. According to Blau, it is in both cases only the word order that indicates that alladī introduces a substantive clause and not a relative clause, i.e. that alladī is a conjunction and not a relative pronoun. While the second example indeed illustrates this transition, as alladī can be interpreted both as a relative particle and a conjunction (“praise be to God, who delivered him into your hands” and “praise be to God that He delivered him into your hands”), this, in my opinion, is not possible with the first example as it admits of the interpretation of alladī as a conjunction only. From a semantic point of view, the alladī clause in this sentence is an apposition to mā fa‘alahu, which means that it cannot be interpreted at the same time as an attribute to Ibn Dwrdy’. Thus, this example does not represent the starting point of the re-interpretation of alladī but alladī in its new conjunctional function. Spitaler’s theory is not taken into consideration by Blau, but his article is mentioned in a footnote (1965, 109). 2.5
Joshua Blau (1967)
In contrast with Emergence (1965), where Spitaler’s article (1963) is mentioned in a footnote only, having no impact on Blau’s theoretical approach, it is fully considered in the third volume of Blau’s monumental Grammar of Christian Arabic, which appeared in 1967. Blau writes there:
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werner diem ’alladhî opens substantive clauses. Beginnings of this construction already appear in CA2 and it becomes rather frequent in MA. A. Spitaler [. . .] has brought out in full relief the early and very interesting history of the type ’al-h amdu li-llâhi-lladhî ‘thank God that’ and its development. The use of ’alladhî for introducing substantive clauses in ASP, insofar this is not due to literal translation of Aramaic d-, is mainly from this type and its developments. This is all the more remarkable since in JA other substantive clauses (especially apposition clauses) introduced by ’alladhî are quite common. It stands to reason that, in accord with Spitaler’s findings, this use of ’alladhî first developed in the type al-h amdu li-llâhi. Early ASP exhibits mainly this stage, whereas in later JA other kinds of ’alladhî introducing substantive clauses have arisen. (1967, 526f.)
Among Blau’s examples there is none of the nominal al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type. As to his examples of the corresponding verbal type that contains a reference to God, such as h amida llāhi lladī or šakara llāhi lladī, it must be stated that none of them unequivocally represent the new type with alladī as a conjunction because each can also be interpreted as a relative clause referring to Allāh. Of Blau’s remaining examples, many are likewise syntactically ambiguous, while some do represent the new type. In several cases, Blau himself draws attention to the alternative interpretation as relative clauses. Apart from that, as Blau remarks himself, some examples might be calques on the Aramaic d-, which, as has been mentioned above, is both a relative particle and a conjunction meaning “that; because”. Thus unequivocal evidence of the new type is less for Ancient South Palestinian than might be inferred from the number of Blau’s examples at first glance. 2.6
Manfred Woidich (1980)
Manfred Woidich’s article “illi als Konjunktion im Kairenischen” (1980) is an investigation into illi, which goes back to alladī, as a conjunction in modern Cairene Arabic. In his masterly analysis, which shows an interest and a competence in syntax not common for Arabic dialectology, Woidich gives a thorough picture of illi as a conjunction from a synchronic perspective. Woidich’s examples are mostly drawn from written sources, but he also asked native speakers of what is called “Educated Cairene Arabic”. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to comment
2 CA = Classical Arabic, MA = Middle Arabic, ASP = Ancient South Palestinian, JA = Judaeo-Arabic.
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extensively on what Woidich found out about illi as a conjunction in Cairene Arabic. Therefore I shall concentrate on some points that are also important from a historical perspective. Woidich begins with the statement that the “üA” (übergeordnete Ausdrücke), i.e. the heads on which the illi clauses as “uS” (untergeordnete Sätze) depend, are: Äußerungen des Dankes, der Freude, der Befriedigung, des Bedauerns usw. [. . .] Der Sprecher nimmt jeweils emotional Stellung zu einem im untergeordneten Satz (uS) geschilderten Sachverhalt und wertet ihn in diesem Sinne. [. . .] Wir teilen das gesammelte Material nach der Art der üAA ein, von denen sich zwei Typen unterscheiden lassen. Die einen (Gruppe A) werten den Sachverhalt des uS direkt, indem sie [. . .] emotional Stellung nehmen, die anderen (Gruppe B) werten auf eine indirekte Weise, indem sie angeben, wie eine Person sich oder andere wertet aufgrund des Sachverhalts des uS, oder zu welcher affektisch bestimmten Handlung eine Person durch diesen veranlaßt wird. (1980, 225f.)
Examples of type A are il-h amdu li-llāh illi ultaha b-nafsak “Gott sei Dank, daß du es selbst gesagt hast!” and kuwayyis illi wiit fi gēbak inta “Gut, daß es in deine Tasche gefallen ist!” Characteristic of this type is according to Woidich the absence of resumptive pronouns: Eine Verknüpfung des üA mit dem uS durch pronominale Rück- und Verweise kann hier nicht stattfinden, da im üA keine Pronomen auftreten. (1980, 226).
Though this statement is corroborated by the above-cited examples, the last two examples of Woidich’s type A do have a pronominal concatenation, among them ġayizni lli dayya‘t il-bazburt-i btāi “Es ärgert mich, daß ich meinen Paß verloren habe”. Woidich considers examples of this type “einen Übergang zur Gruppe B” (1980, 227). In my opinion, such examples do not belong to group A but rather to group B, as expressions like ġayiz + object pronoun are a kind of pseudo-verbs, the pronoun being the logical subject, and there are similar examples in group B. As for type B, examples are d-ana batnaddim illi gēt “Ich bereue, daß ich gekommen bin” and inta karihni lli baūl il-h a “Du kannst mich nicht leiden, weil ich die Wahrheit sage”. Concerning the syntactic characteristics of this type B, Woidich says: Logisches Subjekt des üA ist [. . .] eine Person, die im uS als Subjekt auftritt. Dadurch kommt eine Verknüpfung der beiden Teilsätze durch pronominalen Verweis zustande, der ein Charakteristikum für diese Gruppe darstellt. (1980, 227)
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Contrary to this statement, the person in the üA (i.e., the head) to whom the illi clause refers is not always the logical subject, as is, e.g., borne out by the above-mentioned example inta karihni lli baʙūl il-hˢ aʙʙ, where the “Person, die im uS als Subjekt auftritt” is the (logical) object, not the (logical) subject of the sentence. Furthermore, there are examples of type B declared by Woidich to be marginal where there is no pronominal concatenation between the illi clause and an element of the head at all, e.g. ana mabsūtˢ illi ma-gāš “I am glad he did not come” (1980, 229). Considering this evidence, it seems to me that the feature of coreferentiality is questionable for Woidich’s type B in Cairene Arabic, and it is evident from Blau’s, Spitaler’s and my evidence that it cannot be sustained in a general diachronic and diatopic perspective. A certain degree of coreferentiality is per se bound to exist for the simple reason that when in the heads of sentences emotions are spoken of the causes of these emotions as expressed in substantival clauses depending on those heads are in most cases connected with the persons mentioned in the heads of the sentences as having these emotions. Important insights in Woidich’s article are that in type B the element of the head to which the illi clause refers must be human (1980, 230), that the predicates are “faktiv”, that is, refer to real facts, mostly past events (1980, 231), and that this kind of illi can always be replaced by inn- “that”, with the difference that illi is considered by the informants as being “ stärker” than inn-, that is, more affective (1980, 234). 2.7
Manfred Woidich (1989)
While Woidich’s article of 1980 is essentially descriptive, his contribution “illi ‘dass’, illi ‘weil’ und zayy illi ‘als ob’: zur Reinterpretation von Relativsatzgefügen im Kairenischen,” which was published in 1989, is diachronically oriented. As announced in the title, Woidich distinguishes between three different kinds of illi: illi “that”, illi “because” and zayy illi “as if ”. (a) illi “that” The type illi “that” corresponds to type A of Woidich (1980), e.g., il-hˢ amdu li-llāh illi sabitak “gottlob, daß sie dich verlassen hat” and kuwayyis illi gēt “gut, daß du gekommen bist” (1989, 110f.). As for the origin of this type, Woidich follows Spitaler (1963) in saying that il-hˢ amdu li-llāh in
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sentences like il-h amdu li-llāh illi waaik fiyya “Lob sei Gott, der dich mit mir zusammengebracht hat”: unterlag einer Funktionsschwäche [. . .]. Als “starres Syntagma” wurde diese Formel nicht mehr als analysierbar aufgefaßt, was zur Folge hatte, daß insbesondere N = allāh nicht mehr als Nomen gesehen wurde, dem ein syndetischer Relativsatz angeschlossen werden konnte. (1989, 111)
While in the assumption of “Funktionsschwäche” Woidich explicitly follows Spitaler, he differs from him in assuming that the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī formula was re-interpreted because there are similar sentences in Cairene Arabic having the same marked structure of “Rhema-Thema”, that is, comment-topic, such as h ilwa di “prima ist die!” or ‘ēb ikkalām da “eine Schande sind solche Worte!” He sums this up by saying daß die Reinterpretation von illi als Relativpronomen zu illi “daß” ausgelöst wurde durch den Umstand, daß die ursprüngliche syntaktische Struktur mit dem eingebetteten Relativsatz nicht der thematisch-kommunikativen Funktion dieser Sätze entsprach. Sie war markiert und wurde durch Reinterpretation der bei diesen Sätzen üblichen funktionalen Satzstruktur Präd.—Subjekt angeglichen. Dadurch konnte dem illi die Funktion einer Konjunktion zugeordnet werden, die Subjektssätze einleitet. (1989, 115)
Here we have to ask what Woidich intends to demonstrate from a general Arabic perspective. Does he want to demonstrate a historical development valid for Cairene Arabic only, or a general development in Neo-Arabic the results of which are palpable in Cairene Arabic also? A reconstruction of the first kind would be flawed by the fact that the Cairene conjunctional alladī cannot be detached from the common history of Neo-Arabic, and a reconstruction of the second kind by the fact that it would be problematic to reconstruct a common Neo-Arabic development on the basis of the specific evidence of one modern dialect, while disregarding other evidence, older and newer. Since we are concerned here with the second perspective only, which is tantamount to a general reconstruction of the conjunction alladī in Neo-Arabic, we have to ask what Woidich’s theory means for the history of the conjunctional alladī in early Neo-Arabic. In Neo-Arabic the equivalents of Woidich’s above-mentioned two Cairene examples would probably be something like h ilwa hādī and ‘ayb hādā l-kalām. Comparing these sentences with a sentence like al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī jita, it seems very improbable that the two types of sentences should have been mentally connected by any speaker of Arabic,
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and thus Woidich’s theory seems to me to be farfetched. Nevertheless, his drawing attention to the Rhema-Thema (or comment-topic) structure, which syntactically corresponds to a predicate-subject structure, is an important insight, to which I shall come back below when discussing my own theory (4.3). Goldenberg comments on Woidich’s theory with the words “This form is structurally parallel to the classical Arabic constructions of cleft sentences with mā having the same order of constituents” (1994, 16/261), but I doubt the validity of this alleged parallel, as the cleft sentences mentioned by Goldenberg, apart from their Rhema-Thema structure, differ fundamentally from the sentences mentioned by Woidich. (b) illi “because” illi “because” corresponds to type B of Woidich (1980), and examples are ana farh ān illi šuftak “I am happy because (that) I saw you” (1989, 116) or itnaddimit illi gat maāya “sie bereute es, daß sie mit mir gekommen war” (1989, 117). As for the meaning of illi in the second example, it remains to be shown that in Cairene Arabic illi in such sentences can be replaced by the causal conjunctions ašān and li-ann-. Interestingly, no transformations of sentences containing expressions of this type are among those adduced by Woidich (1980, 235) for the replacement of illi by the causal conjunctions ašān and li-ann-. In view of the semantic difference between the two kinds of illi in Cairene Arabic as seen by him and also in view of the feature “Referenzidentität” (that is, “coreferentiality”) in the second type, which he thinks is essential, Woidich assumes for the second type (type B in Woidich 1980) an origin independent of the al-h amdu li-llāhi type (type A in Woidich 1980). This origin he finds in sentences such as ana h mār illi dafat il-h isāb “ich bin ein Esel, der ich die Rechnung bezahlt habe!”, which contains a direct relative clause depending on ana. Since in sentences of this kind there exists a causal connection between the relative clause and the head, Woidich assumes that illi could be re-interpreted as a causal conjunction, “ich bin ein Esel, daß ich die Rechnung bezahlt habe!”, adding that this re-interpretation is also true of “alle anderen Sätze dieser Struktur” (1989, 118). It goes without saying that if we are to assume this kind of re-interpretation for early Neo-Arabic in general (and not only for Cairene Arabic), we would have to assume that alladī had been generalized as a relative particle by then, an assumption which poses no problem.
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The fact that Woidich declares his example (13) itnaddimit illi gat maāya “sie bereute es, daß sie mit mir gekommen war” not to belong to the original type, confirms that, in his opinion, it is in nominal sentences that this type originated (1989, 119). Against this it can be argued (a) that verbal sentences (such as itnaddamit illi) seem to prevail over nominal sentences (such as ana h mār illi), and (b) that it seems highly improbable to me that speakers should have used sentences like ana h imāruni lladī addaytu d-danānīra “I am an ass, (I) who have paid the dinars”, anā farh ānuni lladī najawtu “I am glad, (I) who have escaped” or anā mutaassifuni lladī taaxxartu “I am sorry, (I) who was late” at all. For this theory to be accepted, it would be prerequisite to find unambiguous relative clauses of this kind in Classical Arabic. I have checked more than a thousand items with alladī in Tradition, many of them in dialogues, without finding even one example of such constructions, and I dare say that it is very improbable that they occurred at all. To sum up, as long as the syntactic type ana h imār illi dafat il-h isāb, which Woidich presumes to be the starting point of this type, is not shown to have been a normal construction in pre-Neo-Arabic, I consider sentences of this kind in Neo-Arabic the result of a specific development, which should be explained otherwise, rather than the origin thereof. (c) zayy illi “as if ” In interpreting this third type, Woidich starts with cases such as ir-rāgil firih bīna zayy illi laa līya “der Mann freute sich über uns, wie einer, der einen Fund gemacht hat”, in which the syntagma zayy illi “wie jemand, der; like somebody who” could be interpreted as meaning “als ob; as if ”. In cases representing unequivocally the result of this re-interpretation, only the interpretation of zayy illi as “as if ” is possible, such as ma-kanš-i fī tagāwub, zayy illi kunt-i bakallim h agar “es gab keine Resonanz, es war, als ob ich mit einem Stein spräche”. As for earlier evidence of this type, the ka-lladī mentioned in grammars, which structurally corresponds to zayy illi, has a different function, namely that of a conjunction of comparison with real facts, such as xudtum ka-lladī xādū “You have plunged as they have plunged” Qurān 9:69, already adduced by Reckendorf (1921, § 192, 4). For more evidence of this ka-lladī, see Blau (1967, 527f.), Hopkins (1984, 238) and Goldenberg (1994, 27f./276).
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An example of ka-lladī that functionally corresponds to zayy illi as a particle of comparison with unreal or hypothetical facts, as described by Woidich, was adduced by Spitaler (1962, 108) in a footnote: fa-lā yazālu kadālika ka-lladī yuh ibbu an yasxara min sāh ibihī 3 “and he continues to behave in this manner like one (or as if) intending to mock his friend”, sc. the tomcat (as-sinnawr) who plays with the mouse (al-farah) after having caught her (al-Jāhˢizˢ, H ayawān V, 202). Spitaler’s second example concerns the well-known other ka-lladī type: fa-sallaw ka-lladī kānū yaf alūna “and they prayed as they always had”. Another example of ka-lladī as a particle of comparison with hypothetical facts is wa-man axadahu bi-išrāfi nafsin lam yubārak lahu fīhi ka-lladī yakulu wa-lā yašbau “and who takes it (sc. certain money) with haughtiness of mind will not be blessed regarding it, like one (or as if) eating without getting replete” (al-Buxārī, Sah īh , Kitāb az-zakāh, No 1379), and more evidence of this kind can be found in Tradition. Since in examples of this kind alladī can still be interpreted as a relative pronoun, they represent kalladī in the meaning “as if ” in statu nascendi. Obviously, Spitaler did not realize that his two examples belong to two fundamentally different types. The first ka-lladī is a conjunction corresponding to kamā (accordingly it should perhaps be transcribed as kalladī), while the second ka-lladī consists of the particle ka- and the relative pronoun of the 3rd masc. sing. In Cairene Arabic, this second type was grammaticalized as zayy illi, with zayy standing for ka-, which is unusual in Cairene Arabic. Future research should pay attention to the existence of two different types of ka-lladī. It is, then, evident that ka-lladī has to be separated from alladī “that”, which is the topic of this paper. Therefore, these remarks must suffice, and I shall not return to this special type. 2.8 Gideon Goldenberg (1994) In his article “alladī al-masdariyyah in Arab grammatical tradition” (1994), which was reprinted in 1998, Gideon Goldenberg begins with general observations, then mentions Spitaler’s article (1962) and Woidich’s second article (1989). Goldenberg describes the aim of his paper as follows: 3 There follow four further an-clauses dependent on ka-lladī yuh ibbu. Spitaler’s quotation has the variant bi-sāh ibihī.
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About the distribution of “infinitival” alladī in Arabic writings in general I have nothing to add; in the present paper I just wish to adduce some further evidence for a fuller understanding of the relevant structures as described and treated in Arabic grammatical literature. Such examination is important, because syntactical constructions that are considered grammatical by the great masters of Arabic grammar cannot easily be discarded as inadmissible or non-Classical. (1994, 16f., 262)
Some of the examples that the Arab grammarians commented on are from the Qurān, while other examples were made up by the grammarians themselves. A survey of the examples in the “Concluding remarks” shows that the examples belong to disparate types. In some of them, alladī is combined with a preposition, such as ka-lladī “as”, alā lladī “for that”, bada lladī “after”, in which alladī stands for the more usual mā. In other cases, it is again either mā, or an, which alladī stands for. It might even be doubted that some of the sentences on which the grammarians dwelt in length ever occurred in normal speech, such as alladī mararta mamarrun h asanun “It is a good passing that you passed”, apart from the fact that the syntactic interpretation of alladī in this sentence is far from being unequivocal. As far as I can see, Goldenberg makes no attempt to draw historical conclusions from his examples within the general discourse of conjunctional alladī, nor can I do this myself. So, in spite of Goldenberg’s thorough and learned approach, the historical dimension of his examples has yet to be demonstrated.
3. Additional early documentary evidence In the following, I shall give documentary evidence of alladī as a conjunction, which is the result of a wide and systematic reading of premodern Arabic documents. The major part of the evidence comes from Judaeo-Arabic documents found in the Genizah in al-Fustˢāt ˢ (Old Cairo). Considering that I likewise have read Arabic documents written by Muslims as well as Christians, the preponderance of the Judaeo-Arabic evidence is noteworthy, being due to the more sub-standard character of Judaeo-Arabic writings as compared with Muslim and Christian ones. The value of documentary examples lies in that they are chronologically well-defined, which is not necessarily the case with literary examples, especially when these occur in sub-standard texts which have come down to us through late manuscripts.
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Meanwhile, many of the Judaeo-Arabic documents which I had read in their editiones principes have been re-edited by Moshe Gil in his two comprehensive collections of Genizah documents. Where this is the case I shall cite both editions, partially in order to give credit to the original editors and partially because there are occasionally differences between Gil’s re-editions and the original versions. While some interesting or difficult cases of dialectal divergences from the literary language will be commented upon in footnotes, substandard elements as such are not systematically marked. Some of my examples have already been cited by Blau (1961), as became clear to me while preparing this article. I have retained these examples for the reason that they belong to an exclusively documentary corpus, whereas Blau draws his examples from both literary and documentary sources, with the majority being literary. My examples will be presented according to a linguistic typology which mirrors the historical development of alladī as I see it. My division owes much to Woidich’s division of his Cairene material into his types A and B (see above 2.6 and 2.7), even if his division and mine do not fully overlap from a historical perspective as I assume more subtypes to have existed than he does. Many examples contain vulgarisms, which I shall not mark systematically. A. The head of the sentence expresses praise of or gratitude to God (a) Nominal type (1) li-llāhi l-h amdu lladī kānati l-āqibatu li-xayrin4 “Praise be to God that the result (of the affair) was good” Goitein, “Arkiyon,” No 39r, 21 = Gil, Texts, No 215r, 20 (letter to al-Fustāt, early 11th c. C.E.) (2) fa-li-llāhi l-h amdu wa-l-minnatu llatī5 kānati l-aqībatu h amīdatan “So to God be praise and gratitude that the result (of the 6 affair) was praiseworthy”
4
Goitein reads [ilā l-]xayri, Gil li-xayrin. Gil does not mention Goitein’s reading. allatī, which seemingly refers to al-minnah, is due to a kind of hypercorrection. 6 Another example with allatī “that,” or, more exactly, li-llatī “in order that,” is lianna qawm mina l-maġāribati qad sārū yusallū indanā li-llatī (!7%%) yutībahum in Goitein, “Kneset,” No 4v, 4f. Indeed, Goitein rendered !7%% as the Hebrew final conjunction *.)%. However, Gil’s re-edition in Texts, No 328, has %% instead of !7%%. So what we have here is the simple prayer Allāhu yutībhum “May God reward them!”—sc. the Maghrebis for praying in the synagogue of the Jerusalemites in Old Cairo. 5
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Diem, Geschäftsbriefe Wien, No 45r, 10 (letter to a merchant in Egypt, 12th–13th c.s C.E.) (b) Verbal type (3) fa-h amidnā llāha alā dālika lladī nazara ilaynā wa-lam yušmit binā “and we praised God for this (happy outcome),7 namely that He cared for us and did not have us mocked at”8 Goitein, “Iggeret” r, 16 = Gil, Texts, No 616r, 17 (letter of al-Mahdīyah to al-Fustā t, 11th c. C.E.) (4) wa-h amidtu llāha]9 anā wa-axī lladī masaynā10 lah iqnā alā xayr wa-āfiyah li-Māsār11 “and we praised God], I and my brother, that we (finally) reached Egypt on foot well and in good health” Toledano, “Teudot”, No 2, 1 (letter from Egypt, 1540 C.E.) B. The head of the sentence does not express praise of or gratitude to God (a) The head of the sentence contains an abstract noun expressing a non-personal emotional evaluation of the contents of the alladī clause (5) wa-mā wajadnā azāan li-qulūbinā ġayra annahu l-waylu lanā nah nu lladī išnā li-hādihi l-masāibi wa-našrabū hādihi l-akwāsa l-murrata “We did not find consolation for our hearts but (all we can say is) that woe is us that we have lived (long enough to go through) these disasters und (that we) have to drink these bitter cups!” Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 27r, 7–9 = Gil, Texts, No 501r, 7–9 (letter from Jerusalem to al-Fustāt, 1065 C.E.)
7 The details of the happy outcome of the affair in question are imparted immediately before the passage cited. 8 Gil in his translation considers dālika an antecedens of alladī in the sense of the German “darüber, daß.” However, the alladī—clause is an apposition to dālika, which in its turn refers to details mentioned before. In other words, the sentence is an expansion of the usual fa-h amidnā llāha alā dālika. 9 The addition is mine. Other additions are possible, but praise of God is the most probable one. 10 Dialectal form for mašaynā.—The language of the letter is substandard and exhibits features of Moroccan Jewish Arabic. 11 The grapheme renders Masar < Masr < Misr.
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werner diem (b) The head of the sentence contains a verb or a participle expressing the emotion of a person caused by the contents of the alladī clause Joy (6) wa-anā bi-h amdi llāhi muġtabitun bi-lladī ttasaltu ilayhim “I am, thank God, rejoicing that I joined them12 (in marriage)”13 Ashtor, “Documentos,” No 2r, 11 = Gil, Documents, No 457r, 12 (letter from Jerusalem to Toledo, 1057 C.E.)14 (7) wa-qad sarranī lladī anfadta lahu rah lahu “It pleased me that you sent him his merchandise” Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 9v, margin, 11–13 (letter from al-Fustāt to Aden, probably 12th c. C.E.) (8) fa-qad radītu laka bi-lladī uxidtum fa-hāulāi nāsun muhtašimīn wa-llāhi z-zabbālīn mā radū bi-lladī uxidtum “I was content concerning you that you (both)15 were punished
for these are decent people. Only the street-sweepers 16 were, by God, not content that you (two) were punished” Diem, Geschäftsbriefe Wien, No 10, 8 (letter of a jealous wife to her husband, 12th c. C.E.) Wonder (9) wa-tumma innī ajabu minka lladī lam tusīb man yaktubu laka kitāb illā daf atan “Furthermore, I am astonished at you that you (allegedly) found only once somebody writing a letter down for you”17 Goitein, “Saloniqi,” No 1r, 37f. (letter from Saloniki to alFustāt, 11th c. C.E.)
12
Sc. the male relatives of the bride. Ashtor conceives of alladī as standing for alladīna, translating “Estoy contento de aquellos con que [he emparentado por matrimonio].” 14 According to Ashtor, the date is 1053. The difference consists in the reading of the last letter in the date according to the Jewish era on the margin (ttyd vs. ttyh ) 15 Sc. the addressee and his mistress, the plural standing for the dual in vulgar language. 16 That is, the mob. 17 Sc. a letter to be sent to the writer of the letter, who is the addressee’s father. 13
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Anger (10) wa-anā ġadbānu alayka yā-axī katīr alladī wasal[ta il]ā Misra wa-lam tasil ilā Adana “I am very angry about you, O brother, that you came to Egypt (or Cairo), whereas you did not come to Aden”18 Braslavski, “Mishar,” r 12 (Letter from Aden to al-Mahdīyah, c. 1149 C.E.) Reproach19 (11) mā baqiya alaynā šayun illā lladī lam tuarrifnā kayfa kānat wasīyatu xālika naxuduhu (!) lladī lam tuarrifnī in kāna wasala laka šayun mina l-kutubi “Nothing remains for us (to say) except that (until now) you have not informed us as to how your uncle’s last will was. What we reproach him (!)20 with is that you did not inform me as to whether you received any of our letters” Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 9v, 40f. (letter from al-Fustā t to Aden, probably 12th c. C.E.) Grief (12) wa-azza alaynā dālika katīr alladī lam yakūn ah adun minnā indaka yuāwinuka fī-mā jarā alayka fī taabika fī mā yaxussu amra xālika “and we were very much grieved by that,21 (namely) that none of us was with you to assist you in that which you had to endure in your concerns regarding the affair of (the illness and death of) your uncle” Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 9r, 12f. (letter from al-Fustā t to Aden, probably 12th c. C.E.) (13) wa-dāqa sadrunā katīr alladī lam yakūn laka maahu kitābun yutamminunā “and we were very much distressed that he had no letter of yours with him setting our minds at rest (with regard to you)” 18 The writer intends to say that continuing the travel from Egypt to Aden would have been easy for the addressee, his brother. 19 Only the second alladī in (11) is an example of alladī following a verb expressing reproach. For the first alladī, see (17). 20 Scribal error for “you.” 21 Reference to the illness and death of the addressee’s uncle, the details of which are recapitulated by the writer before.
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werner diem Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 9r, 28f. (letter from al-Fustā t to Aden, probably 12th c. C.E.) (14) nulimukum annī bi-xayrin fī āfiyatin wa-qad azza alayya katīr alladī lam takūn h ādir h attā tuxallisa laka rah laka “I inform you (herewith) that I am well (and) in good health, but (that) I am much grieved that you are not present so that you might free your luggage (from the authorities)” Amari, Diplomi, 53, 2f. (letter from Tunis to Pisa, 12th– 13th c.s. C.E.) (c) The head of the sentence contains a verb or noun not expressing an emotion (15) wa-qad šakartu tafaddulahumā—h arasahumā llāhu—lladī qad dakarūnī fī kitābihimā bi-s-salāmi wa-bi-fili l-jamīli fī bābī “I am also grateful for their22 kindness—may God protect them—(consisting in) that in their letter they gave greetings to me and (also consisting) in performing good deeds to me” Assaf, Meqorot, 51, line 20f. = Gil, Documents, No 298r, 20f. (letter from Jerusalem to al-Qayrawān, 1039 C.E.) (16) wa-jāb lanā kitābaka wa-nah nu laysa indanā xabarun h attā jābahu r-rajulu l-warrāqu—jazāhu llāhu annā xayr alladī nalamu “and he brought us your letter while we (still) had no news of you until that man, the book-seller, brought it—may God requite him in our stead with good that we (now) know (how you are)” Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments, No 9v, 36–8 (letter from al-Fustā t to Aden, probably 12th c. C.E.) (17) See (11), first alladī.
I am the first to admit that 17 examples of alladī “that” are a somewhat meagre result of a decade-long reading of texts, but this result simply shows how rare this phenomenon is in texts whose writers intended literary Arabic. Surprisingly scarce is especially evidence of the type A(a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī. 22
Reference to two addressees, whose letter the writer answers.
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Asking whether we can conclude from the scarcity of this type in documents, especially letters, that it was likewise marginal in the spoken language, we must allow for some reservations. The H amdalah occurs frequently in letters, mostly at the beginning but also in other parts. Usually the H amdalah is mentioned in the context of news which are deemed praiseworthy, as, for example, the writer’s or other persons’ good health or a good outcome of a difficult situation. However, this kind of the H amdalah is usually preceded by the report of the fact to which it refers, as, e.g., katabtu ilayka . . . wa-anā wa-man qibalī bixayrin wa-āfiyatin wa-l-h amdu li-llāhi (alā dālika) “I am writing you . . ., while I and my family are in good health—Praise be to God (for this)”. This conventional structure prevents the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type from frequently occurring in letters, which in its turn must also lead to lower frequency of the re-interpreted al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī in letters than may have been the case in the spoken language. Documentary texts where the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type usually does occur are, e.g., waqf documents, appointments of high officials and marriage contracts between persons belonging to the upper class. In these kinds of texts, an introductory al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is expanded into long complicated passages praising God for bounties related to the topic of the text, but they are of so elaborated a style that they lack any deviation from the literary language. To sum up, the rare occurrence of the re-interpreted al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī in documents is of no relevance for the question of its potential frequency in the spoken substandard language. Scarce is also my evidence of the type B(a), where an abstract noun expresses a non-personal evaluation of the contents of the alladī clause, especially when compared with the abundant evidence of this type in Cairene Arabic as collected by Woidich (1980 and 1989). Again it is possible that the scarcity of early evidence of this type in documents is due to specific circumstances. Expressions of this type are mostly exclamatory and thus have a clear “Kundgabefunktion,” which makes it more likely for them to be used in the spoken language than in writing.
4. Historical typology 4.1
Introductory remark
Since the question of whether, and if so, how the different subtypes of alladī “that” are connected with each other is still open at this stage
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of this investigation (even if the answer to this question is admittedly anticipated by the arrangement of my own material in the preceding paragraph), I shall deal with them one by one. In doing so I shall consider whether there is reason to assume that the subtype in question had an origin of its own independent of the other subtypes or whatever other origin there might be. The sequence of the subtypes corresponds to decreasing syntactic and semantic markedness and specificity. 4.2 Types A(a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī “Praise be to God that” and type A(b) h amidtu llāha lladī “I praised God that” There seems to be nobody so far denying the validity of Spitaler’s theory that in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī, to which my type A(a) corresponds, the relative particle came to be re-interpreted as a conjunction meaning “daß; that”. In Spitaler’s view, this development is due to a “Funktionsschwächung” of alladī, whereby “das nachfolgende alladī zwangsläufig den lebendigen Zusammenhang mit seinem Beziehungsnomen [verlor]” (for details see above 2.3), and this opinion is whole-heartedly shared by Woidich (see above 2.7). In my opinion, this approach is flawed by the fact that, besides the nominal type al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī, attested in the Qurān and elsewhere, there existed a corresponding verbal type, as e.g., in the saying ascribed to Muhˢammad, yā-mašara l-arabi h madū llāha lladī rafaa ankumu l-ušūra “O company of the Arabs, praise God, who took the tithes from you!” Ibn Hˢ anbal, Musnad, Musnadu l-ʚašarati l-mubašširīna bi-l-jannati, No 1566. This verbal type is likewise attested in the form of the re-interpreted verbal type A(b), along with the re-interpreted nominal type A(a). The existence of the re-interpreted verbal type A(b), whose verb varies according to the syntactic context, clearly proves that when the re-interpretation of al-h amdu li-llāhi took place its constituents, in spite of its formulaic character, must have been present in the minds of the speakers and cannot have been a de-etymologized complex as, e.g., addēš “how much?” (< *qadr ayyi šayin) in Syrian Arabic or izzayy “how?” (< *ēš zayy) in Cairene Arabic. Both the nominal al-h amdu li-llāhi and the verbal h amidtu llāha are equally attested as early as in pre-Islamic poetry,23 which proves that they had existed side by side from the first. 23 An example of al-h amdu li-llāhi occurs in the Muʚallaqah of Imraʙ al-Qays, verse 124, in Ahlwardt’s edition, and for examples of the verbal type see Brockelmann (1922,
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Rather, the re-interpretation took place because the implicit logical structure of many items of the Qurānic al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is causal. A typical example is al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī najjānā mina l-qawmi z-zālimīna Q 23:28, in Arthur J. Arberry’s translation: “Praise belongs to God, who has delivered us from the people of the evildoers.” This literal translation of the relative clause is of course correct. However, when considering the propositional structure of the Arabic sentence we can easily discern that there is between the relative clause and the head of the sentence an intrinsic connection consisting in the implication that God is to be praised because He delivered the believers from the evildoers.24 It should be noted that this causal structure does not automatically exist in all al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī sentences but, it seems, only or mainly in those which refer to certain individual bounties of God. In this respect, it may, e.g., be doubted that the relation in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī xalaqa s-samāwāti wa-l-arda “Praise be to God, who created the heavens and the earth” Qurān 6:1 or al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī wasia samuhu l-aswāta “Praise be to God, whose ear comprises all sounds” an-Nasāʙī, Sunan, Kitāb atˢ-taˢ lāq, No 3406 and Ibn Hˢ anbal, Musnad, Bāqī musnad al-ʙAnsˢār, No 23064, is as causal as the first example or causal at all. But the cases of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī in the Qurān and still more those in Tradition refer mostly to individual deeds of God and thus express also an inherent causal relation. A combination of a non-causal relation and a causal relation is, e.g., found in the following passage in Ibn ʙAbī d-Dam aš-Šāfiʚīʙs (d. 1244 C.E.) Kitāb adab al-qadā: al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī šahidati l-uqūlu bi-qidamihi wa-wah dānīyatih / wa-waqafat dūna idrāki jalālihi waazamatih || alladī btadaa l-maxlūqāti bi-badīi h ikmatih / wa-sawwara
116). Additional verbal examples occur in Labīd’s Dīwān No 6, 1 (h amidtu llāha wallāhu l-h amīdu etc.) and No 5, 1 (wa-llāhu rabbī mājidun mah mūdun). For examples of the related bi-h amdi llāhi, see Brockelmann (1922), and an additional example occurs in the Muʚallaqah of an-Nābiġah, verse 12, likewise in Ahlwardt’s edition. 24 Such causal function of relative clauses is, it seems, not dealt with by Lehmann 1989 in his otherwise comprehensive morphological and semantic analysis of the relative clause in a great number of languages, including Arabic. Nor is his chapter “Vom Relativpronomen zur Konjunktion” (1989, 389–393) of much help for the problem of alladī as a conjunction, as he considers any relative pronouns that have lost their inflection to be “Konjunktionen” if there is no resumptive pronoun in the subordinate clause. How Lehmann thinks the transition from uninflected relative pronouns to “true” conjunctions meaning “that” or “because” to have been remains unclear, in spite of some final remarks (1989, 391).
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l-kāināti bi-lutfi sanatih etc.25 “Praise be to God to whose pre-existence and uniqueness all minds testify and whose magnificence and power they are unable to grasp, who made creation with His wonderful and singular wisdom and designed the existing world with His kind work, etc.” The first alladī clause is non-causal as it describes attributes of God, and thus it is not possible to paraphrase it with a causal clause such as *“Praise be to God because all minds testify to His priority and uniqueness and are unable to grasp His magnificence and power.” In contrast to the first alladī clause, the second one is inherently causal, which is evident from the fact that it can easily be re-formulated as a causal clause: “Praise be to God because He made creation with His wonderful and singular wisdom and designed the existing world with His kind work, etc.” The causal character of this alladī clause is due to the fact that men own their existence to God having created them and thus have to thank Him for His benevolence. It is also interesting that the content of the first alladī clause is of a more inherent nature than the second in that it describes inherent, inalienable attributes of God, while the second refers to a deed that God performed of His own will. This hierarchy of the two alladī clauses conforms with a rule of Arabic syntax which says that attributes follow the noun they refer to in order of decreasing inherence. Considering that there is an inherent causal relation in many items of the Qurānic al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī between the head of the sentence and the relative clause, it comes as no surprise that the alladī that connects the two parts of the sentence and thus holds the position which a conjunction explicitly expressing the causal relation would have, should have been re-interpreted as a causal conjunction. This re-interpretation was in all probability triggered by parallel constructions in which the same causal relation is expressed explicitly. These constructions are as follows: (a) al-h amdu li-llāhi alā + noun/pronoun “praise be to God for . . .” and h amidtu llāha alā + noun/pronoun “I praised God for . . .” In both constructions, the alā phrase indicates the reason why God shall be praised. They are so frequent, particularly the former, that it is superfluous to give examples.
25
Adab al-qadā I, p. 247.
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(b) al-h amdu li-llāhi (alā) an(na) “praise be to God (for) that . . .” and h amidtu llāha (alā) an(na) “I praised God (for) that . . .” The preposition alā can be elided as can any preposition preceding an(na). Sentences of this kind seem absolutely normal, but I can adduce only few examples of the verbal type, one from pre-Islamic times and the other examples later: h amidtu llāha an amsā Rubayun * bi-dāri l-hūni malh īyan muqāmā (Wāfir) “I praised God that Rubayʚ got * in the house of disgrace, placed there in a shameful way” (Maʚqil b. Xuwaylid) Dīwān al-Hudalīyīn I, No 14, 3; istahalla yah madu rabbahu an lā yakūna asābahu dū h aqqin fī l-fayi “and he began to praise his Lord that none who had a right to the booty had injured him” ad-Dārimī, Sunan, Kitāb al-muqaddimah, No 91; allāha ah madu alā an jaalanī min ulamāi l-arabīyati “God I praise that he made me belong to the scholars of the Arabic language” az-Zamaxšarī, Mufassa l, 2, 2. Another example of the verbal type with God as the subject of an anna-clause is cited by Blau for Christian Arabic for škr I: šakara llāha annahu lam yuxallīhi yusīu ilā abdihi “He thanked God that He had not let (or made) him act unjustly to His servant” (1966–1967, 526). With subordinate clauses whose subject is coreferential with Allāh (second and third examples), this construction is optional instead of (a), whereas it is the only possible construction for subordinate clauses whose subject is not coreferential with Allāh (first example). It cannot be excluded that this construction is more usual in or even restricted to the verbal type, which is less formulaic than the nominal type. More examples would be desirable; their being so scarce so far is perhaps due to my (and my predecessors’) not noting them simply because they are so normal and therefore do not seem to deserve attention. (c) ah maduhu (alā) an(na) “I praise Him (for) that . . .” Whenever Allāh is replaced by the personal pronoun, only this construction is possible. This construction is especially frequent as a continuation of the relative clause type in the religious arengas (xutbahs) of Mamluk documents: al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī . . . nah maduhu alā annahu . . . This construction would also be the only one possible for the nominal head lahu l-h amdu but I have no examples. (d) h amidtu llāha id/fa- “I praised God because.” In this type, the subordinate clause is not dependent on the verb of the head as in the preceding types but forms a subordinate causal clause. Examples of each of the two conjunctions are the pre-Islamic verse h amidtu
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These functional and syntactic correspondences are set off in the following table, in which all sentences express the notion of praise being due to God for the salvation of the speakers, which is directly or indirectly ascribed to Him. Of the types marked with ?, no evidence has been adduced so far, but they would be normal Arabic from a syntactic point of view. (a) Nominal type Head
Expansion
Head
Expansion
al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī najjānā al-h amdu li-llāhi alā najātinā ?al-h amdu li-llāhi (alā) an najjānā
Praise be to God who saved us Praise be to God for our salvation Praise be to God (for) that He saved us ?al-h amdu li-llāhi (alā) an najawnā Praise be to God (for) that we were saved (b) Verbal type Head
Expansion
Head
Expansion
h amidtu llāha h amidtu llāha h amidtu llāha
lladī najjānā alā najātinā (alā) an najjānā
I praised God I praised God I praised God
h amidtu llāha
(alā) an najawnā I praised God
h amidtuhu
(alā) an najjānā
I Praised Him
h amidtu llāha h amidtu llāha
id/fa-najjānā id/fa-najawnā
I praised God I praised God
who saved us for our salvation (for) that He saved us (for) that we were saved (for) that He saved us because He saved us because we were saved
26
badī in the rhyme.
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It is from this specific constellation that the re-interpretation of alladī in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī and h amidtu llāha lladī as a causal conjunction meaning “(for) that” started. Since the relative clause type shared with the other types both the overall construction and the causal meaning of the subordinate clause, alladī could by analogy be interpreted as a particle expressing this causal relation. It is in sentences such as al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī najawnā “Praise be to God (for) that we were saved” and h amidtu llāha lladī najawnā “I praised God (for) that we were saved,” with the subject of the alladī no longer being coreferential with Allāh of the head, that the re-interpretation surfaced. It should be stressed that this re-interpretation of the relative clause as a causal subordinate clause was only possible because of the three following characteristics of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī (and the corresponding h amidtu llāha lladī), of which the first is syntactic, the second semantic and the third morphological. (a) The relative clause of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is non-restrictive, which means that it does not serve the purpose of identifying Allāh, who is the object of praise. It is the loose connection typical of non-restrictive relative clauses that permitted the syntactic shift of the subordinate clause from its status as a relative clause depending on the antecedent Allāh to its new status as a causal subordinate clause which no longer depends on Allāh but on the head of the sentence as a whole. (b) Verbs such as “to praise” or “to thank” have, due to their specific semantics, an inherent causal complement indicating the grounds for praise or gratitude. Even if in the case of an isolated H amdalah in a religious context the reason is not explicitly expressed it is nevertheless there, consisting in God’s general bounties, the knowledge of which exists in the religious subtext. Thus whenever something positive is mentioned in the syntactic context of a H amdalah it is in principle subject to being interpreted as being the reason for it. Exactly this happened in the case of the relative clause of the H amdalah, but it happened only there because it is only the non-restrictive clause that, due to its structure, has the syntactic potential of such a subordinate clause, while this is not the case with, e.g., nominal attributes referring to Allāh. (c) The re-interpretation of alladī may have been helped by the fact that at the time when it happened the relative pronouns had probably already been reduced in the spoken language to alladī, which etymologically is the pronoun of the 3rd masc. sing. As a result of this development, the congruence between the antecedent and the relative pronoun in terms of gender, number and, in the case of the dual, case had
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disappeared, and thus the syntactic connection between the antecedent and the relative clause had been weakened. However, behind this development there is yet another factor, which is of an ontological nature. Of the constructions mentioned above sub (a) and (b), those where the subject of the subordinate clause is not coreferential with Allāh are as a rule not or less possible with other syntactic objects of “to praise”, unless the specific reason of praise is mentioned before or otherwise known to the person addressed. Thus one could say in English (and correspondingly in German and Arabic and many other languages), “I would like to thank you that you helped me” (coreferential subject of the subordinate clause), but usually not “I would like to thank you that we were helped” (non-coreferential subject of the subordinate clause), whereas the second, non-coreferential construction is a normal construction with God as the syntactic object of “to thank, to praise”: “(I) thank God that we were helped.” The difference lies here in that whenever something (positive) happens it can be attributed by the believer to God as the one who with His power has caused it. This is why the H amdalah (nominal or verbal) could be followed from the beginning by non-coreferential causal clauses (alā an, an, id) as mentioned above, and this is also why in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī the coreferentiality of the subject of the relative clause with its antecedent Allāh was not an inherently indispensable syntactic feature, a fact which made it possible for coreferentiality to be given up in the course of the re-interpretation of the relative clause. As for the question of chronological priority of the re-interpreted nominal and verbal types, Spitaler seems to have assumed the verbal type to have been secondary (1962, 105). In support of this assumption it may be argued, as Spitaler has, that there is evidence of the nominal type from as early as the 9th century C.E. whereas the verbal type is attested somewhat later, but this does not necessarily mean that the verbal type had not existed before the earliest written evidence of it. More convincing is the argument that it is only the nominal type al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī that is part of the Qurān and thus a formula the Muslims had been familiar with from the beginning of Islam. Accordingly, we find in Tradition numerous examples of (the correct) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī + a coreferential verb and many examples of al-h amdu li-llāhi alā + a noun, but few examples of the verbal type. We could even say that al-h amdu li-llāhi unexpanded or expanded has been and still is part of everyday Muslim speech, while this is not the case with the verbal type to the same
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extent. On the other hand, it is the verbal type who seems to exhibit greater variability, and thus it may have been this type, or perhaps rather the existence of this type in its various subtypes, that may have triggered the re-interpretation of the more formulaic nominal type. Besides the examples of h md, there are examples of the same basic structures containing synonymous expressions, which shows a first semantic generalization of the re-interpreted alladī. There is my example (2) fa-li-llāhi l-h amdu wa-l-minnatu llatī (!) kānati l-aqībatu h amīdatan, and among Spitaler’s examples there is uškuri r-Rah īma r-Rah mān / alladī lam tajid al-malik Qays fī hādā l-makān “danke dem Allbarmherzigen, dass du den König Qais nicht an diesem Ort gefunden hast” from the ʚAntar novel, where additionally Allāh is replaced by its synonym ar-Rah mān ar-Rah īm, reversed there because of the rhyme. Blau adduces further examples of synonymous verbs (sbh II, škr I, mjd II), which, however, are syntactically ambiguous (1967). We have reason to assume that the synonymous roots had already been in use, besides h md, as alternatives of h md from the first, as we have nominal examples such as wa-li-llāhi l-h amdu wa-š-šukru “To God praise and thanks are due!” (Dietrich, Briefe Hamburg, No 42a, 3 [c. 916/7 C.E.], and likewise in Tradition fa-laka l-h amdu wa-laka š-šukru ʙAbū Dāwūd, Sunan, Kitāb al-ʙadab, No 4411); wa-š-šukru li-llāhi “Thanks be to God!” (Anawati and Jomier, “Papyrus chrétien,” line 3 [9th c. C.E.]); wa-li-llāhi š-šukru katīran kamā huwa ahluhu wa-mustah iqquhu “To God repeated thanks are due as he is entitled to and worthy of it” (Rāġib, “Lettres” II, No 17r, 5 [9th c. C.E.]). Furthermore, there are the Christian formulae as-subh u li-llāhi “Praise be to God!” and al-majdu li-llāhi “Glory be to God!,” for which the reader is referred to my Briefe Heidelberg, 24 and 25 respectively. An example of šukr and a relative clause is fa-aqimi š-šukra li-llāhi lladī sānaka bi-dālika “Therefore extend in the right way your thanks to God, who preserved you thereby” (Rāġib, “Lettres” I, No 5, 22 [9th c. C.E.]). When al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī and h amidtu llāha lladī were re-interpreted, this development comprised the synonyms of h md also. A final point to be made regards the translation of the re-interpreted alladī as “that, daß.” Asking why alladī can be translated with simple “that” “daß,” while, according to what I have tried to point out above, its re-interpretation is based on an implicit causal relation, we should be aware of a hitherto neglected fact: the syntactic opacity of “that,” “daß.” As with Arabic an and anna, prepositions preceding “that,” “daß” in English and German can or must be elided, which leads to the basic
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logical relations, as expressed by the prepositions, becoming blurred on the surface. But the prepositions can also be retained on the surface, probably more so in German than in English. Thus, instead of the syntactically opaque “Lob sei Gott, daß wir gerettet worden sind” the more explicit “Lob sei Gott dafür, daß wir gerettet worden sind” is also possible. 4.3
Type B(a) malīh alladī “(it is) good that”
Half a dozen examples of this type were adduced by Spitaler (1962, 109f.) for modern dialects, intermingled however with examples of the farihtu lladī type (for this latter type, see below 4.4). It was Woidich who distinguished between the two groups, of which he characterized the first one as “satzäquivalente Ausdrücke” (1980, 226). Examples of his type A for Cairene Arabic are, apart from il-h amdu li-llāhi illi “Gott sei Dank, daß”, e.g., baraka illi “ein Segen, daß”, ya-xsāra lli “schade, daß”, and kuwayyis illi “gut, daß”. Corresponding examples were given by Spitaler for other modern dialects, whereas he had, according to himself, not come across examples in literary texts (1962, 110). Earlier evidence of this kind is my example (5) from the 11th century C.E. containing al-wayl lanā nah nu lladī “woe is us that”.27 Two other examples from that time quoted by Blau are yā-baxtik alladī “what good fortune for you (fem. sing.) that” and yā-h ayf alā abūkī lladī “what a pity for your (fem. sing.) father that” (1961, 227 sub ). These three early examples contain references to persons in their heads, but this is also the case with two modern Cairene examples cited by Woidich for this type A, and therefore this should not lead us to assume historically different types. As Woidich (1980) begins his Cairene evidence of this type with two examples of the re-interpreted il-h amdu li-llāh illi it is clear that he considers this type to be somehow the prototype of the whole group. This conclusion is confirmed by Woidich (1989), where he derives this group from the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī expression, assuming as a first step “Funktionsschwäche” and as a second step a re-interpretation according to the “Satzstruktur Präd.—Subjekt” as in h ilwa di “prima ist die!” or ēb ikkalām da “eine Schande sind solche Worte!” As I have remarked above (2.7), sentences of this kind are not likely to have been connected by native speakers with al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī.
27
alladī might also be interpreted here as a relative pronoun standing for alladīna.
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In my opinion the solution to this problem should not and need not be looked for in Cairene examples such as h ilwa di or their early NeoArabic equivalents if any existed. But before going into details, I think it appropriate to recapitulate some important points: (a) That the type A(a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is likely to be the starting point of the type B(a) malīh un alladī may be assumed for the simple fact that it is only al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī where the transition of the relative particle alladī to a conjunction can be explained, whereas this is not feasible for malīh un alladī and the other expressions of this type. (b) The sentences of my type B(a) have a comment-topic structure. (c) When asking for a link between the type A(a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī and the type B(a) malīh un alladī, one can rightly assume, as Woidich did, that this link lies in that al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī had (finally) been reduced to being a (positive) evaluation of the fact mentioned in the alladī-clause. This reduced meaning of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī would have been equivalent to ‘good that; nice that.’ However, there remains the question of the structure of the type B(a) malīh un alladī. In this respect, my theory differs from Woidich’s. In my opinion, we should not start from sentences such as Cairene h ilwa di or ēb ik-kalām da nor their Neo-Arabic equivalents in order to explain malīh un alladī and similar expressions. Asking rather whether there are other examples of the structure “comment + that + topic” in Classical Arabic (and Neo-Arabic), we can answer in the affirmative: there is an absolutely normal type consisting of a noun + an(na) clause, as for example malūmun anna “it is known that,” h asanun anna “it is good that,” barakatun anna “it is a blessing that” and so on.28 This is why we can transpose all examples of my type B(a) into “normal” Arabic by replacing alladī by an(na), with potential small changes due to anna demanding an accusative. It should be noted that the transformation is always possible from alladī to an(na) but not always from an(na) to alladī. Thus the transformation of malūmun an(naka) ji’ta into ? malūm alladī ji’ta would be very questionable, and for Cairene Arabic ? malūm illi gēt would probably not be acceptable to most speakers. This
28 In modern literary Arabic, the type mina l-malūmi anna would be more likely to correspond.
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is due to the restriction of this alladī type to specific heads referring to emotions. Starting from sentences evaluating events in an emotional manner of the type barakatun (h asanun) an(na) + perfect, which were structurally and semantically equivalent to al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī + perfect, the next step of the development, as I see it, was the replacement of an(na) by alladī in analogy with al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī. This development was made possible by two factors: (a) A semantic-syntactic connection between the type al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī + perfect and the type barakatun (h asanun) an(na) + perfect was mentally established, due to “Funktionsschwäche” of the H amdalah. (b) The alladī of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī was mentally connected with an(na), because it overlapped with it in function after it had been re-interpreted as a conjunction. The generalization of alladī led to an opposition between an(na) and alladī, with alladī as the marked element being subject to certain restrictions as compared with the unmarked an(na). These restrictions, which the type B(a) had inherited from the primary type al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī “Praise be to God who” via the secondary type A(a), are as follows: (a) The structure of the type B(a) is always “comment + alladī + topic” and cannot be reversed. Thus malīh alladī ji’ta “It is nice that you came” is possible, whereas *?alladī ji’ta malīh is not. Woidich remarked this for his type B, with which my type B(b) partially overlaps, but this restriction is valid of his type A and my type B(a) also (1980, 235). (b) The head of the sentence consists of an “evaluating” expression. Thus malīh alladī jita “It is nice that you came” is possible, whereas *?malūm alladī jita “It is known that you came” is usually not. (c) The logical subject of the alladī-clause is human. Woidich remarked this for his type B for the syntactic subject of the alladī clause, but the same holds true for this type (1980, 230). Thus a sentence such as malīh lladī wasala is possible in the meaning “It is nice that he (sc. a certain person) arrived,” whereas the meaning “It is nice that it (sc. a letter or a parcel) arrived” is excluded or questionable. What, however, is attested in both the old and new evidence are alladī clauses with a non-human syntactic subject which however refer to a logical human subject. Thus, a sentence such as malīh alladī wasalanī “It is nice that it (sc. the letter) reached me” or, more freely,
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“It is nice that I received it” would probably be possible, though perhaps not accepted by all speakers of individual dialects. (d) The subject of the alladī clause is almost exclusively pronominal and as such mostly implied in a finite verb. Thus again a sentence such as malīh alladī wasala “It is nice that he arrived” is possible, whereas malīh alladī wasala Ah mad “It is nice that Ahˢmad arrived” is with all probability either not possible at all or at least doubtful in most dialects. (e) The alladī clause refers to actual, mostly past events. Woidich found out this feature of “Faktivität” for his type B, but this is also true of his type A and my type B(a) (1980, 231). Thus malīh alladī jita “It is nice that you came” is possible, whereas malīh alladī tajī “It would be nice for you to come” is not in most dialects. These restrictions of alladī in type B(a) as compared with an(na) corroborate the assumption of its being the result of a generalization of the original al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī “Praise be to God who,” whereby the head was replaced with similar expressions while the other features of the construction were retained: (a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī najjānā has the structure “al-h amdu li-llāhi + alladī clause,” which is not reversible. (b) The head is evaluating. (c) The subject of the alladī clause, which is Allāh, is, in a anthropomorphistic perspective, “human.” (d) The subject of the alladī clause is pronominal, being implied in the verb that refers to Allāh. (e) The relative clause refers to past events only due to the semantics of “to praise” in the meaning of “to thank.” 4.4
Type B(b) farihtu alladī “I was glad that”
Turning now to the type farih a alladī “he was happy that,” that is, alladī after verbs expressing emotions, the function of alladī as a conjunction is clearly borne out by cases where it follows a preposition as in (6) and (8) of my examples which have bi-lladī “by that.” While Spitaler holds that this type goes directly back to the al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī type by way of generalization (1962; see above 2.3), Woidich
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declares it to have had a separate origin in relative clauses where the subject of the head and the subject of the alladī clause are coreferential, as in Cairene ana h mār illi dafat il-h isāb (1989). In my opinion, this interpretation is flawed in several respects, for which the reader is referred to paragraph 2.7. Even if I do not find Woidich’s historical explanation of this type convincing, it is worthwhile to mention that the sentence which, according to him, was the starting point shares with al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī, in spite of their different structures, the three characteristics mentioned above: (a) The relative clause is non-restrictive, (b) there is an underlying causal relation between the head and the relative clause (“I am an ass! Why?”), (c) illi goes back to the uninflected alladī, to which the relative pronouns had been reduced. Before continuing, I think it appropriate and useful to draw attention to the fact that this type B(b) shares with type B(a) the restrictions (b)–(e) mentioned above, that is, all restrictions with the exception of the one concerning specific heads. As in the case of type B(a), a historical theory must take account of these restrictions and explain why they exist. The assumption that this type had developed from coreferential relative clauses as claimed by Woidich would explain the restrictions (a)–(c) but not (d) nor (e), as some emotions can concern both past and future events. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that this type B(b) developed from the verbal type A(b) h amidtu llāha lladī in the same way as the type B(a) developed from the nominal type A(a) al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī. In the first case, features of an impersonal expression were generalized, and in the other case, features of a personal expression. This development, as I see it, was as follows: The inherited conjunction in Arabic sentences of the type “I was glad that he came” was in Classical Arabic, and still is in most dialects, an(na), e.g. farihtu an (or annahu) jāa in the classical language. In a certain sense, praising God for an agreeable event that has happened is an expression of an emotion. Saying, for example, in German “Ich danke Gott, daß ich davon verschont geblieben bin,” is equivalent to “Ich bin froh, daß etc.” This semantic overlap made it possible for the alladī of h amidtu llāha lladī “I praised (thanked) God that” to be generalized to verbs expressing likewise the positive emotions of joy, contentment etc. Subsequently, as Spitaler assumed, this generalization was extended, by “Kontrastanalogie,” to verbs expressing negative emotions such as anger, reproach, grief and so on (1962, 109).
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As a result of this development, the replacement of the marked alladī in B(b) by the unmarked an(na) is always possible, whereas the replacement of an(na) by alladī is only possible where the an(na) clause fulfills the above-mentioned restrictions. 4.5
Type B(c) alamtuhu lladī “I informed him that”
In Spitaler’s, Blau’s and my material examples remain where alladī “that” is preceded by verbs not expressing emotions. As I have mentioned above (2.3), this was a major problem for Spitaler. In my opinion, the problem is less serious than Spitaler thought it to be. It is true that the heads of these sentences do not contain expressions of emotion, but the contents of the alladī-clauses are something calling for positive or negative comments. Take, for example, the two following examples cited by Spitaler: wa-axbarūhu lladī qatalahu Antar “und sie teilten ihm mit, dass ʚAntar ihn getötet hatte” (1962, 111) and, quoting Michel Feghali (1928, 313) for Lebanese Arabic, min hayk illi twaffiqti b-jāztik “c’est à cause de cela que tu as été heureuse dans ton mariage!,” with Feghali adding: “avec ironie.” Supporting evidence for this are also my example (11) with its first alladī and my examples (15)–(16). In sentences of this type, alladī has the function of expressing a certain emotion or the empathy of the speaker or narrator, the kind of which can be inferred from the context only. Thus, alladī in axbarūhu lladī qatalahu Antar indicates a certain emotion on the part of the narrator, which, depending on the specific context, can either be positive (joy) or negative (grief). It should be stressed that this kind of affective alladī is not a result of a secondary development but something inherent in alladī “that” from the beginning. From the moment when in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī and h amidtu llāha lladī the relative pronoun was re-interpreted as a conjunction it became the marked counterpart of an(na), which through this development became unmarked. The difference between them lay in that an(na) continued to express the simple “that,” while alladī as its marked counterpart expressed a certain emotional involvement of the speaker. Should one try to express the specific affective content of alladī in sentences of this type B(c), one could do this, for example, by means of adverbs. Consequently, the first of the two sentences could be rendered, depending on the context, alternatively with “and they informed
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him that ʚAntar had fortunately/regrettably killed him”. Strictly speaking, such explicit translation would be appropriate for any case of the conjunction alladī as long as it is restricted to this and the aforementioned types, translating, e.g., Cairene ana mutaassif illi taxxart with “I am so sorry that I was late.” 4.6
Remaining cases
There remain some examples in Spitaler’s corpus and elsewhere where the clause following alladī (illi) does not refer to past, but to future or possible events. It is interesting that two of Spitaler’s three examples are from Tunisian Arabic, among them ammin elli tūsil l-martek w-ulādek “sei sicher, dass du zu deiner Frau und deinen Kindern kommen wirst.” Here we have the final point of the development of alladī. As HansRudolf Singer pointed out for the dialect of Tunis, illi is used there in every context (1984, 669), apparently in the same sense and distribution as would be an(na) in Classical Arabic and inn- in many modern dialects including Cairene Arabic, e.g. andna z-zhar illi lqīnāhum29 “wir hatten Glück, daß wir sie trafen” on the one hand (referring to a past event) and tāh il-ahid illi ma yšūfhāš h atta . . . “er gab ihm das Versprechen, daß er sie bis [zum Hochzeitstag] nicht anschauen würde” (future 30 event). In this dialect, illi “that” is unmarked, and its marked “emotional” counterpart for expressing “that” is kīf (< kayfa “how”), for which this function is not an isolated phenomenon in modern dialects nor in the pre-modern substandard language. This remark about kīf typical of the dialect of Tunis must suffice here as the hitherto unwritten story of kayfa as a conjunction is too long to be told here in a few words. The dialect of Tunis is not the only one to have generalized the usage of alladī as a conjunction. The same usage of illi/li “that” is found in Maltese Arabic (Schabert 1976, 216 and Aquilina 1987, I 566), which is no coincidence as “La langue maltaise a pour origine un dialecte arabe, vraisemblablement proche des vieux dialectes citadins de Tunisie” (Vanhove 1993, 1). The Jewish dialect of Tripolis in Libya is yet another dialect using ëlli/li “that” (Yoda 2005, 278). In addition, similar extreme examples of illi “that” are known from other dialects but we lack compre-
29
I have simplified Singer’s complicated transcription. See also Woidich (1980, 224) for the same function of illi in the Judaeo-Arabic dialect of Tunis. 30
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hensive studies of their exact distribution. For Cairene Arabic, one can state on the basis of Woidich’s two studies that examples as cited above for Tunisian Arabic would most certainly be declared to be ungrammatical or unusual by native speakers. As for the early history of Cairene Arabic, one should be cautious about taking the language of the Jewish-Arabic documents of the Cairo Genizah from the 11th century C.E. and later as early evidence of Cairene Arabic, because many of the writers of those documents hailed from the Maghreb, especially from what is today Tunisia, and there remained strong bonds between the Jewish traders who had settled in al-Fustāˢ tˢ and elsewhere in the Islamic East and their relatives and partners in the Maghreb. This means that deviations in those documents in the usage of alladī as a conjunction as compared with today’s Cairene Arabic might be ascribed to the Maghrebine background of their writers. Therefore “extreme” examples of the conjunction alladī in Judaeo-Arabic documents are to be connected to modern Tunisian Arabic rather than to modern Cairene Arabic. 4.7
alladī vs. an(na)
In describing the development of alladī as a conjunction, I have not dealt in detail with the various functions which it can assume. Some additional remarks might therefore be helpful. According to the development of alladī as I see it, the relative pronoun alladī in al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī and h amidtu llāha lladī was first re-interpreted in the sense of “that”, which is normally expressed by an(na), and then, by a gradual generalization, it replaced an(na) in specific syntactic and semantic contexts. We can express this by saying that alladī took over part of the functions of an(na) step by step, a process that led to an(na) and alladī becoming the unmarked and marked members of an opposition in many, if not all, dialects. There is a well-known rule in Arabic that any preposition preceding an(na) can be deleted. When alladī replaced an(na) in specific contexts, which have been described above, alladī consequently was felt to be submitted to the deletion rule as its counterpart alladī was. This meant that where, according to the syntactic context, a preposition was to be expected before alladī in analogy with an(na), this preposition could be considered to exist in the deep structure of the construction. On the other hand, since a preposition could be retained before an(na) without being deleted, alladī could likewise be preceded by prepositions, again in
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analogy with an(na). To put it another way, the existence of cases such as (6) wa-anā . . . muġtabitun bi-lladī ttasaltu ilayhim “I am . . . rejoicing that I joined them”, where alladī is preceded by the preposition bi- typical of the verb ġbt VIII on which it depends, proves that the process of the re-interpretation of alladī as a conjunction meaning “that” had taken place to its full extent. In the modern dialects, the combination of illi with prepositions does not seem possible; at least Woidich does not mention it for Cairene Arabic (1980 and 1989), and I do not have examples thereof either. Let us now have a look at some of my examples and see what syntactic status alladī has and which prepositions are possibly missing. I shall insert the prepositions missing in the surface structure but existing in the depth structure in brackets, and also give a translation of these prepositions: (1)
(15)
(13)
li-llāhi l-h amdu {alā} lladī kānati l-āqibatu li-xayrin “Praise be to God for the result having been good” Remark: The verb is h md I fulānan alā “to praise s.o. for s.th.” wa-qad šakartu tafaddulahumā . . . {bi-}lladī qad dakarūnī fī kitābihimā bi-s-salāmi wa-bi-fili l-jamīli fī bābī “I am also grateful for their kindness . . . of giving greetings to me and of performing good deeds to me” Remark: The verb is fdl V bi- “to be so kind as to do s.th.” wa-dāqa sadrunā katīr {li-}alladī lam yakūn laka maahu kitābun yutamminunā “and we were very much distressed due to his not having a letter of yours with him setting our minds at rest” Remark: (li-)lladī indicates the cause as (li-)an(na) does.
On the other hand, there do exist many sentences where alladī introduces a subject or an object clause so that no preposition can be supplemented in the deep structure: (7)
wa-qad sarranī lladī anfadta lahu rah lahu “It pleased me that you sent him his merchandise” Remark: the alladī-clause is the subject of the sentence.
There is also the adnominal usage of alladī, forming, as is frequent with an(na), a syntagma that seems to be an apposition to a noun. It would
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be difficult to elucidate the true syntactic status of alladī here. However, this is not necessary; it suffices to say that the status of alladī is here analogous to the status of an(na), by which it can be replaced. (9) innī ajabu minka lladī lam tusīb man yaktubu laka kitāb illā daf atan “I am astonished at you that you (allegedly) found only once somebody writing a letter down for you”
5. Summary In the preceding paragraphs, I have endeavored to sketch a picture of the development of alladī as a conjunction valid of all varieties of NeoArabic as far as they are known. The stages of the development are set off in the following table: (a) Original expressions containing relative clauses: al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī h amidtu llāha lladī “Praise be to God who” “I praised God who” (b) Re-interpretation of alladī as a causal conjunction on the pattern of parallel constructions with semantically explicit syntactic means, this process being due to (a) the relative clause being non-restrictive, (b) verbs such as “to praise” having an inherent complement indicating the cause of praise, (c) the relative pronouns having been reduced to alladī, whereby the connection of the relative clause to the head was weakened: 31 al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī h amidtu llāha lladī “Praise be to God that” “I praised God that” (c) Generalization of alladī for heads expressing positive emotions, by (optional) replacement of an(na) with alladī, while the syntactic and semantic restrictions typical of (a)–(b) were retained: malīh alladī (for malīh anna) farihtu lladī (for farihtu anna) “It is nice that” “I was glad that” (d) Generalization of alladī for heads expressing negative emotions ceteris paribus as in (c):
31
And by analogy semantically related verbs such as škr I, sbh II and mjd II.
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wayl laka lladī (for wayl laka taassaftu lladī (for taassaftu anna) anna) “Woe is you that” “I regretted that” (e) Generalization of alladī for heads not expressing emotions, with alladī still having an affective value and retaining its original restrictions as in (a)–(d): alamtuhu lladī “I informed him (of the pleasant/regrettable fact) that” (f) Generalization of alladī as an unmarked conjunction “that” without syntactic or semantic restrictions: tāh il-ahid illi ma yšūfhāš “He made a pledge that he would not see her” (Tunisian Arabic) Stage (f), which is found in the dialect of Tunis and the dialect of the Jews of Tripolis (Libya), is the final point of the development of alladī as a conjunction. The development of alladī (illi) in Cairene Arabic, which is the best-known of all Arabic dialects, reached stage (d) only.
6. Appendix: Notes on the origin of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī As demonstrated in paragraph 4.2, there were, besides the relative clause, other, more explicit means of expanding the H amdalah. This raises the question, which has not yet been given the attention it deserves, why in the case of al-h amdu li-llāhi a causal relation between a subordinate clause and the head is expressed by a relative clause if the subject of the relative clause is coreferential with Allāh of the head, and not more explicitly. Indeed, in terms of “normal” Arabic one is in some respect entitled to say that al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī expressing causal relations is a special case, which is, however, so innate in the religious language of Islam that Muslims are not likely to be aware of this fact. On the other hand, the very fact that the relative pronoun was re-interpreted, at some time in the history of Arabic, as a conjunction demonstrates that this relative clause was something peculiar not wholly in line with the normal syntax of Arabic. That Western Arabists do not seem to have felt al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī to be something special either, must be ascribed to the existence of corresponding relative clauses in the religious style of the Western languages. For German, I can say by way of introspection that this kind of causal relative clauses, apart from the religious language, e.g. “Lob
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sei Gott dem Herrn, der etc.,” is restricted to a high stylistic level and is possible for verbs such as “danken, preisen, loben” only, e.g. “Es ist mir ein Anliegen, an dieser Stelle Herrn N.N. zu danken, der dieses Projekt hochherzig gefördert hat.” A corresponding formulation in less formal language is, e.g., “Ich möchte Herrn N.N. dafür danken, daß er dieses Projekt unterstützt hat.” So the fact that al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī seems familiar to us must not prevent us from enquiring as to the reason for this construction. To this question the following lines will be dedicated. Considering that al-h amdu li-llāhi was in use in pre-Islamic times already (see above 5.2), we can assume that its expanded form al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is likewise pre-Islamic, although there is no explicit evidence of it so far, at least none that I am aware of. The basic formula itself is probably a calque on the Syriac šubh ā l-alāhā, as remarked by Theodor Nöldeke and Friedrich Schwally (1909, 112, footnote 1) for the Fātih ah of the Qurān: “ entspricht genau syrischem šubh ā l-alāhā32 bezw. tešbohtā l-alāhā und neutestamentlichem δόξα τῷ θεῷ.” In this context, Nöldeke and Schwally also mention the so-called Berākā in the Old Testament and the Christian liturgy as a parallel to the Syriac and Greek formulae, without, however, connecting it to the Qurān. Anton Baumstark’s article “Jüdischer und christlicher Gebetstypus im Koran” (1922) is in a certain sense a comment on the short remarks of Nöldeke and Schwally, although he does not refer to them. In the following, I shall first sum up some important points of Baumstark’s article and then add some deliberations of my own: (a) In the Old Testament, there is the so-called Berākā (“blessing”) of the structure bārūk Yahwē “Blessed is (or be) Yahwe,” to which a nominal attribute or a relative clause can be added, e.g. bārūk Yahwē ašer hissī l etke m miy-yad Misrayim ū-miy-yad Parō “Blessed be Yahwe, who delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and the hand of Pharaoh” Exodus 18:10.33 A corresponding Qurānic expression is tabāraka in the subtypes tabāraka llāhu rabbu l-ālamīna “Blessed be God, the Lord of the whole world” Q 7:54 and tabāraka lladī bi-yadihī l-mulku “Blessed be the One in whose hand is the kingdom” Q 67:1, as well as the exceptional būrika in būrika man fī n-nāri 32
In the original text in Syriac script. This passage has already been cited by Spitaler (1962, 107) but in another context, where he asks whether this expression might be a parallel to the development of al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī. Instead of Spitaler’s h issī l, read hissī l. 33
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wa-man h awlahā “Blessed be He Who is in the fire and around it” Q 27:8. Baumstark tends to assume that the Berākā was transmitted to Muhˢammad via Christian formulae in the New Testament and elsewhere, in which the Jewish Berākā lives on, of the type Εὐλογητός ὁ Θεός, a last echo of this development being Benedictus dominus (Baumstark 1922, 231ff.). A fact not mentioned by Baumstark is that the Qurānic formula is syntactically different both from the Biblical Berākā and the H amdalah, as it lacks a subtype tabāraka llāhu lladī “Blessed be God who.” (b) The type which in the Christian liturgy, especially of the East, has become the prevailing one is the so-called doxology, which has probably developed from the Hebrew Berākā, e.g. Σoὶ ἡ δόξα, Gloria tibi domine, Laus tibi Christe, and so forth, the doxology being “[eine] possessive Form der Prädikation, durch welche Herrlichkeit, Ruhm, Lob, Ehre oder wie immer man das schillernde griechische δόξα wiedergeben will, als der Gottheit eigen oder gebührend bezeichnet wird” (Baumstark 1922, 234). The dative of the Greek formula can be expanded by “eine partizipiale Apposition oder Anrede,” and the reason for God’s praise can also be given in the form of a ὅτι clause. This Christian doxology is likewise found in the Qurān, in two forms: as subh āna + a pronoun or a genitive (which does not interest us in this context) and as al-h amdu li- (Baumstark 1922, 234ff.). However, as Baumstark remarks: Der frühchristlichen partizipialen Ergänzung einer Doxologie entspricht diejenige eines fast immer vielmehr durch einen Relativsatz [. . .] (1922, 237)
After dealing with details of subh āna and al-h amdu li- in the Qurān and comparing them to Christian liturgical formulae they are likely to be derived from, Baumstark finally poses the question of how these formulae may have passed to Muhˢammad. He supposes that they were brought to the Arabs by Nestorian missionaries, who translated their Syriac religious texts into Arabic, which he says is typical of the Nestorians: Die nestorianische Kirche hat aber immer wieder eine auffallende Geneigtheit bekundet, ihre angestammte syrische Kultsprache beim Betreten neuer Missionsgebiete der Volkssprache derselben zu opfern (1922, 247f.)
So far my summary of Baumstark’s article. As we have seen, Baumstark is aware of the fact that the Qurānic al-h amdu li-llāhi is expanded by a
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relative clause while there are participles and ὅτι clauses in the Greek doxologies, but he does not pay further attention to this difference. In my opinion, the solution to this problem is found in the Syriac context, through which the doxology was probably transmitted to the Arabs. Baumstark (1922, 235) mentions himself that the Syriac doxology is šubh ā l-, without however further dwelling upon it, while Nöldeke and Schwally (1909), as mentioned above, were of the opinion that al-h amdu li-llāhi goes back to šubh ā l-alāhā. It is also interesting in this context that for Barhebræus, as cited by S. Payne Smith (1879 II, 4026), the šubh ā l- formula must have been closely connected to the H amdalah, as he renders in his dictionary the Syriac šubh ā l-mrayymā l-ālmīn “Praise be to the Elevated One to all eternity” with the Arabic al-h amdu li-l-ālī ilā d-dahri. In the Syriac New Testament, the simple doxology is part of a sentence in w-kulleh ammā da-h zā yab-wā šubh ā l-alāhā “Et omnis plebs ut vidit, dedit laudem Deo” Lk 18:43. Syntactically independent simple doxologies are šubh ā l-alāhā “Praise be to God” (Payne Smith 1903, 563a) and šubh ā l-abā w-la-brā wa-l-rūh ā qaddīšā “Praise be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Payne Smith 1879 II, 4026). As for expanded doxologies, we find evidence of them in the Breviarium Chaldaicum, e.g. šubh ā l-tābā da-b-yad h ubbeh glā tešbohtā la-bnaynāšā “Praise be to the Good One, who through His love revealed glory to men” (Breviarium I, khˢ = 28) or šubh ā l-māryā da-b-yad tuqpeh hg am la-trūnā wa-p raq l-abdaw “Praise be to the Lord, who through His power overthrew the tyrant and saved His servants” (Breviarium III, 333). Examples of expanded doxologies in colophons of books are šubh ā l-abā w-la-brā wa-l-rūh ā qaddīšā d-h ayyel wa-dar w-sayya “Praise be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who strengthened, assisted and supported (respectively)” and šubh ā l-abā d-h ayyel w-la-brā d-sayya wa-l-rūh ā d-qudšā d-šamlī “Praise be to the Father, who strengthened, the Son, who assisted, and the Spirit of Holiness, who accomplished” (Payne Smith 1879 II, 4026). We can safely infer from these examples that the expanded Arabic doxology al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is nothing but a rendition of the Syriac šubh ā l-alāhā d- in the same way as the simple Arabic doxology al-h amdu li-llāhi is a rendition of the Syriac šubh ā l-alāhā. This means that the Arabic relative pronoun alladī corresponds to the Syriac d-, which in its chief function is also a relative pronoun. It is true that d- is also a conjunction of wide and vague meaning so that the d-clauses of the
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above-mentioned Syriac doxologies might be translated as causal clauses as well, e.g., šubh ā l-abā d-h ayyel w-la-brā d-sayya wa-l-rūh ā d-qudšā d-šamlī as “Praise be to the Father because He strengthened, the Son because he assisted, and the Spirit of Holiness because he accomplished.” On the other side, it may be argued that the d-clauses of Syriac doxologies, at least to my knowledge, are all coreferential with the nouns of the l-phrases and thus likely to have been conceived of as relative clauses rather than as causal clauses. Although the relative pronoun of the Qurānic al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī is thus accounted for, there remains the question why the Syriac doxology is expanded by d-clauses while the older Greek formulae have participles and ὅτι clauses. The solution to this problem lies probably in the difference of the verbal systems. The Greek verbal system, which per se is more complex than the West Semitic one, is still more so with regard to the active participle, as there are different Greek participles derived from the corresponding tenses, whereas the Semitic languages have but one active participle, whose temporal value depends on various factors. Therefore, when Greek doxologies with active participial attributes were translated into Syriac, the problems connected with this disparity seem to have been avoided by translating the Greek participle, if the specific context demanded this, with a relative clause containing a finite verb in the (Syriac) perfect. As the Syriac relative pronoun d- is also a causal conjunction, Greek expansions of the doxology by means of the conjunction ὅτι “that; because” could likewise be rendered with d-. In this process of rendering Greek attributive participles and ὅτι clauses with Syriac d- clauses, the translators may also have been influenced by the Berākā of the Old Testament with its ašer, which is also both a relative particle and a causal conjunction, and which in the Syriac Old Testament is rendered with d-. Thus the Hebrew bārūk Yahwē ašer hissī l etke m miy-yad Misrayim ū-miy-yad Parō Exodus 18:10 is rendered as the Syriac brīk-ū māryā d-p assī kōn men īdā d-Misrāyē w-men īdeh d-P erōn, with d- exactly corresponding to ašer. Even if there exists, as I have tried to demonstrate, a historical connection between the Hebrew bārūk Yahwē ašer, the Syriac šubh ā l-alāhā d- and the Arabic al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī, this does not fully explain why relative clauses were chosen from the beginning and not explicit causal conjunctions as the Hebrew kī, the Syriac mettu l d- or the Arabic alā an or li-an. The reason is probably that the implicit indication of the cause is more in line with the religious attitude deemed appropriate
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towards God. If an explicit causal conjunction were used the praise of God would be limited to a specific deed of His as mentioned in the subordinate clause, that is, God would be praised for this specific deed and for nothing else. But this would not be adequate as God, according to Jewish, Christian and Islamic thinking, is entitled to praise in general, as is clearly borne out by the unexpanded Berākā and the unexpanded doxology. Thus by not explicitly expressing an (implicitly existent) causal relation the relative clause is much more in line with a general, unconditioned praise of God than an explicit causal clause would be. Accordingly, the Arabic H amdalahs, nominal and verbal ones, where the subordinate clause is introduced by an explicit conjunction (including the re-interpreted alladī followed by non-coreferential clauses) do not imply a general praise of God but are limited to praise of God for specific facts. In this respect, sentences of this kind belong to the language of everyday life and not the language of religious worship, a fact which is demonstrated by the contexts in which such sentences occur. A final remark concerns the Arabic verbal type h amidtu llāha lladī/ an. There is the Syriac verb šabbah “to praise,” and this verb is likely to have been used with God as the object. However, the dictionaries do not contain evidence of a formula such as šabbh et l-alāhā d- “I praised God who (or that)” used for the expression of gratitude to God for individual bounties as the Arabic h amidtu llāha lladī/an is. Furthermore, the verbal forms in both languages are different. Consequently, the verbal h amidtu llāha lladī/an is the result of a specific Arabic development rather than a calque on a Syriac expression. This in turn would suggest that the doxology had a history of its own in Arabic after it had been taken over in its formulaic nominal form from Syriac. Now, as Hartmut Bobzin (2004, 59) has stressed, it can be concluded from certain passages of the Qurān that even in pre-Islamic times Allāh had been considered a “Schöpfer- und Rettergott,” a designation of which the notion of “Rettergott” (saviour God) is significant in this context. For if Allāh was considered a “Rettergott” he was especially qualified for the H amdalah as in every day life the H amdalah, nominal or verbal, is mostly used for the happy outcome of an affair. It seems, therefore, that in the Arabic H amdalah the Christian doxology might well have melted in a syncretistic way with pre-existing pagan notions of the role of Allāh.
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7.1 Primary sources Abū Dāwūd, Sunan = Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. al-Ašat as-Sijistānī, Kitāb as-Sunan. See Mawsūat al-hadīt. Ahlwardt, Wilhelm see Arazi and Masalha Amari, Diplomi = Michele Amari, I diplomi arabi del R. Archivio fiorentino. Florence: Tipografia di Felice le Monnier, 1863. Anawati and Jomier, “Papyrus chrétien” = PP. Anawati and Jomier, “Un papyrus chrétien en arabe (Égypte, IXe siècle Ap. J.-C.).” Mélanges islamologiques 2, 1954, 91–102. Arazi and Masalha, Six Early Arab Poets = Albert Arazi and Salman Masalha, Six Early Arab Poets. New Edition and Concordance Based on W. Ahlwardt’s The Divans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1999. Ashtor, “Documentos” = Eli Ashtor, “Documentos españoles de la Genizah.” Sefarad 24, 1964, 41–80. Assaf, Meqorot = Simha Assaf, Meqorot u-meh qarim be-toledot Yisrael. Jerusalem, 1946. Braslavski, “Mishar” = Josef Braslavski, “Al ham-mishar hay-yehudi ben hay-yam hattikon wa-Hoddu bam-meah ha-12.” Zion 7, 1941–1942, 135–139. Breviarium Chaldaicum = Breviarium iuxta ritum Syrorum orientalium id est Chaldaeorum. Slawwātā qānūnāyātā d-kāhnē. Rome, 2002. (Reprint of Eugène Tisserant’s edition, Rome 1938, itself a reprint of the original edition, Rome 1886.) al-Buxārī, Sah īh = Muhammad b. Ismāīl al-Buxārī, Kitāb al-Jāmi as-sah īh. See Mawsūat al-hadīt. ad-Dārimī, Sunan = Abd Allāh b. Abd ar-Rahmān ad-Dārimī, Kitāb as-sunan. See Mawsūat al-hadīt. Diem, Briefe Heidelberg = Werner Diem, Arabische Briefe auf Papyrus und Papier aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1991. Diem, Geschäftsbriefe Wien = Werner Diem, Arabische Geschäftsbriefe des 10. bis 14. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995. Dietrich, Briefe Hamburg = Albert Dietrich, Arabische Briefe aus der Papyrussammlung der Hamburger Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek. Hamburg: J. H. Augustin, 1955. Dīwān al-Hudalīyīn = Kitāb šarh ašār al-Hudalīyīn sanat Abī Saīd al-H asan ibn al-H usayn as-Sukkarī. Ed. by Abd as-Sattār Ahmad Farrāj and Mahmūd Muhammad Šākir. Cairo: Dār al-Urūbah, 1965. Gil, Documents = Moshe Gil, Palestine during the First Muslim Period (634–1099). Part I. Studies. Part II. Cairo Geniza Documents. Part III. Cairo Geniza Documents. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University etc., 1983. Gil, Texts = Moshe Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael. Volume I. Studies in Jewish History in Islamic Lands in the Early Middle Ages. Volume II. Texts from the Cairo Geniza. The Jews of Iraq and Persia (nos. 1–101). Letters of Jewish Merchants (nos. 102–303). Volume III. Texts from the Cairo Geniza. Letters of Jewish Merchants (nos. 304–607). Volume IV. Texts from the Cairo Geniza. Letters of Jewish Merchants (nos. 608–846). Indexes. Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University etc., 1997. Goitein, “Arkiyon” = Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Olelot me-arkiyono šel Yūsuf ibn Awkal.” Tarbiz 38, 1968, 18–42. Goitein, “Iggeret” = Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Iggeret Labrat ben Moše ben Siġmār dayyan ha-ir al-Mahdīyah.” Tarbiz 36, 1967, 59–72. Goitein, “Kneset” = Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Bet hak-kneset we-siyyudo lepi kitbe hagGenizah.” Erez Israel 7, 1964, 81–97. Goitein, “Saloniqi” = Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Eduyot qedumot min hag-Genizah al qehillat Saloniqi.” Sefunot, 11, 1970, 11–33.
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Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments = Richard Gottheil and William H. Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Ibn Abī d-Dam aš-Šāfiī, Adab al-qadā = Šihāb ad-Dīn Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm b. Abd Allāh al-Hamdānī al-H amawī al-marūf bi-bn Abī d-Dam aš-Šāfiī, Kitāb adab al-qadā. Ed. by Muhyī Hilāl as-Sarhān. 2 volumes. Bagdad: Matbaat al-iršād, 1984. Ibn H anbal, Musnad = Ahmad b. H anbal, Kitāb al-Musnad. See Mawsūat al-hadīt. al-Jāhiz, H ayawān = Abū Utm ān Amr b. Bahr al-Jāhiz, Kitāb al-h ayawān. Ed. by Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn. Cairo: Matbaat Lajnat at-talīf wa-t-tarjamah wa-nnašr, 1969. Labīd, Dīwān = Šarh Dīwān Labīd b. Rabīah al-Āmirī. Ed. by Ihsān Abbās. Kuwait: Governmental Press, 1962. Mawsūat al-hadīt = Mawsūat al-hadīt aš-šarīf. al-Kutub at-tisah. CD-Rom. 1st edition. Šarikat Saxr li-barāmij al-hāsib (1991–1996). an-Nasāī, Sunan = Abū Abd ar-Rahmān an-Nasāī, Kitāb as-Sunan. See Mawsūat al-hadīt. Rāġib, “Lettres” I–II = Yūsuf Rāġib, “Lettres arabes.” Annales islamologiques 14, 1978, 15–35; 16, 1980, 1–29. Toledano, “Teudot” = Jacob Moses Toledano, “Teudot mik-kitbe yad.” Hebrew Union College Annual 4, 1927, 449–467. az-Zamaxšarī, Mufassa l = Abū l-Qāsim Mahmūd b. Umar az-Zamaxšarī, Kitāb al-Mufassa l fī n-nahw. Ed. by J. P. Broch. Christiania etc.: P. T. Mallingius, 1879. 7.2
Secondary sources
Aquilina, Joseph. 1987. Maltese-English Dictionary. Malta. Baumstark, Anton. 1927. “Jüdischer und christlicher Gebetstypus im Koran.” Der Islam 16, 229–248. Blau, Joshua. 1961. Diqduq ha-arabit ha-yehudit šel yeme hab-benayim. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University. ——. 1965. The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic. A Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——. 1966–1967. A Grammar of Christian Arabic Based Mainly on South-Palestinian Texts from the First Millennium. 1–3. Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus SCO. Bobzin, Hartmut. 2004. Der Koran. Eine Einführung. München: C.H. Beck, 5th edition. Bravmann, Meir M. 1953. Studies in Arabic and General Syntax. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Brockelmann, Carl. 1922. “Allah und die Götzen, der Ursprung des islamischen Montheismus.” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 21, 99–121. Feghali, Michel. 1928. Syntaxe des parlers arabes actuels du Liban. Paris: P. Geuthner. Goldenberg, Gideon. 1994. “alladī al-masdariyyah in Arab grammatical tradition.” Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 28, 7–35 = Gideon Goldenberg, Studies in Semitic Linguistics. Selected Writings, 250–285. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1998. Hopkins, Simon. 1984. Studies in the Grammar of Early Arabic Based upon Papyri Datable to before 300 A.H./912 A.D. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian.1984. Der Relativsatz. Typologie seiner Strukturen—Theorie seiner Funktionen—Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tübingen: G. Narr. Nöldeke, Theodor. 1909. Geschichte des Qorāns. Bearbeitet von Friedrich Schwally. Erster Teil. Über den Ursprung des Qorāns. Leipzig. Reprint Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961. Payne Smith, J. 1903. A Compendious Syriac Dictionary founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith, DD. Ed. by J. Payne Smith (Mrs. Margoliouth). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Payne Smith, R. 1879. Thesaurus Syriacus. Oxford: Clarendon. Piamenta, Moshe. 1979. Islam in Everyday Arabic Speech. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 1983. The Muslim Conception of God and Human Welfare as Reflected in Everyday Arabic Speech. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Reckendorf, Hermann. 1921. Arabische Syntax. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Rubin, Aaron D. 2005. Studies in Semitic Grammaticalization. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Schabert, Peter. 1976. Laut- und Formenlehre des Maltesischen anhand zweier Mundarten. Erlangen. Singer, Hans-Rudolf. 1984. Grammatik der arabischen Mundart der Medina von Tunis. Berlin—New York: W. de Gruyter. Spitaler, Anton. 1962. “al-h amdu li-llāhi lladī und Verwandtes. Ein Beitrag zur mittel- und neuarabischen Syntax.” Oriens 15, 1962, 97–114 = Anton Spitaler, Philologica. Beiträge zur Arabistik und Semitistik, ed. by Hartmut Bobzin, 230–247, 248 (“Zusätze”). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998. Vanhove, Martine. 1993. La langue maltaise. Etudes syntaxiques d’un dialecte arabe ‘périphérique.’ Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Woidich, Manfred. 1980. “illi als Konjunktion im Kairenischen.” Studien aus Arabistik und Semitistik. Anton Spitaler zum siebzigsten Geburtstag von seinen Schülern überreicht, ed. by Werner Diem and Stefan Wild, 224–238. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ——. 1989. “illi ‘dass,’ illi ‘weil’ und zayy illi ‘als ob’: zur Reinterpretation von Relativsatzgefügen im Kairenischen.” Mediterranean Language Review 4–5, 1989, 109–128. Yoda, Sumikazu. 2005. The Arabic Dialect of the Jews of Tripoli (Libya). Grammar, Text and Glossary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
LES ORIGINES DE LA GRAMMAIRE ARABE, SELON LA TRADITION : DESCRIPTION, INTERPRÉTATION, DISCUSSION1 Pierre Larcher Université de Provence (Aix-en-Provence, France)
1. Introduction Le texte, bien connu, que nous traduisons en annexe, est extrait du Kitāb al-ʙĪdˢāhˢ fī ʚilal al-nahˢw d’az-Zajjājī. Az-Zajjājī « le Zajjâjien » est le surnom sous lequel est connu ʙAbū l-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahˢmān b. Ishˢāq. Ce grammairien d’origine iranienne du IVe/Xe siècle doit son surnom au fait qu’il étudia à Bagdad auprès du grammairien Ibrāhīm b. as-Sarī az-Zajjāj (m. 311/923–4). Il s’installa ensuite en Syrie, à Alep, puis à Damas, avant de se rendre en Palestine, à Tibériade, où il mourut en 337/949. On connaît un peu moins d’une vingtaine d’ouvrages d’az-Zajjājī. Une dizaine environ a été publiée. Parmi ceux-ci, deux se distinguent : – le Kitāb al-Jumal, qui est un ouvrage de grammaire devant son nom au fait, non qu’il traite de phrases, mais qu’il est constitué de « notes de synthèse » (jumal) sur les différents chapitres de la grammaire. Il a été publié en 1926 à Alger par Mohammed Ben Cheneb et republié à Paris en 1957. – le Kitāb al-ʙĪdˢāhˢ fī ʚilal al-nahˢw, qui n’est pas un ouvrage de grammaire, mais sur la grammaire. Il a été publié par Māzin Mubārak au Caire en 1959, puis republié à Beyrouth en 1973 et 1979. Vers la fin des années 60 et le début des années 70, il y eut, avec l’explosion de la linguistique, celle d’une sous-discipline : l’histoire de la linguistique. Le mouvement atteignit même les arabisants. De par sa nature même, le ʙĪdˢāhˢ d’al-Zajjājī attira l’attention, en particulier celle 1 Ce texte est la version écrite de la leçon ERASMUS faite au séminaire du Pr. Dr. Andreas Kaplony, à l’Orientalisches Seminar de l’Université de Zürich, le mardi 19 Avril 2005. Que les collègues et étudiants de l’Orientalisches Seminar soient remerciés pour leurs remarques et questions, dont a bénéficié la version finale.
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de Kees Versteegh, qui le traduisit dans le cadre de son MA (1971), et l’utilisa abondamment dans sa thèse Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking (1977). Néanmoins, c’est seulement en 1995 que Versteegh publia cette traduction, sous le titre de The Explanation of Linguistic Causes. Az-Zajjājī’s Theory of Grammar. L’ouvrage est typique du IVe/Xe siècle, en ce que s’y révèle partout l’influence de la falsafa (ou philosophie hellénisante), à commencer sur la forme même de l’ouvrage : celle, dialectique, héritée de l’Antiquité grecque, par question et réponse. Notre texte constitue le chapitre XIV (89–90) de l’ouvrage. Il répond à la question de savoir pourquoi la grammaire a été nommée nahˢw en arabe. Notons que c’est le même mot de ʚilla, pluriel ʚilal, qui apparaît dans le titre du chapitre et dans le titre de l’ouvrage. En revanche, dans la formulation de la question, au début du chapitre, apparaît celui de sabab. Cela peut amener à penser que les deux termes sont synonymes. Et c’est sûrement ce qui détermine Versteegh à traduire ʚilal par causes dans le titre de l’ouvrage et ʚilla et sabab dans le texte du chapitre par le même mot de reason. Il existe cependant entre sabab et ʚilla la même différence qu’en français entre cause et justification. La cause est objective et relève de l’ordre logique : A parce que B. La justification en revanche est intersubjective et relève de l’ordre dialectique : A car/puisque B. N’oublions jamais que le rapport des autres disciplines à la falsafa est dialectique : par les questions qu’elle pose, la falsafa les oblige à répondre, en se justifiant. Ce texte est capital, non seulement pour l’histoire de la grammaire arabe, mais encore celle de la langue arabe. Telle qu’elle a été comprise par la tradition arabe, la première tire en effet son origine de la « corruption » ( fasād) de la seconde.
2. Description Le texte nous dit où, quand et comment ce processus a lieu et il nous dit aussi en quoi il consiste. Où : à Basˢra, c’est-à-dire dans une des villes nouvelles créées à la suite de la conquête islamique, ce qui répond en même temps à la question du quand : Basˢra a été fondée en 16/637. Comment : par un double processus de sédentarisation des Bédouins et de mélange des populations arabes avec des populations non-arabes.
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Apparaissent dans le texte quelques termes fondamentaux. D’abord celui de ʚArab, dans l’expression ʙabnāʚ al-ʚArab (litt. Fils, enfants des Arabes), opposé tout à la fois à al-hˢ ādˢira et ʙabnāʙ al-ʚAjam (litt. Fils, enfants des non-Arabes). Cela veut dire que ʚArab ne s’oppose pas seulement ici à ʚAjam comme Arabes à non-Arabes (et, plus particulièrement, dans le contexte local, à Persans), mais encore comme Bédouins à sédentaires. Au témoignage même du Lisān al-Arab (désormais LA) de Ibn Manzˢūr, m. 711/1311 (art. hˢdˢr) : « al-hˢ adˢar, al-hˢ adˢra et al-hˢ ādˢira sont le contraire de al-bādiya et il s’agit des villes, des villages et de la campagne » (alhˢ adˢar wa-l-hˢ adˢra wa-l-hˢ ādˢira xilāf al-bādiya wa-hiya al-mudun wal-qurā wa-r-rīf ). Al-hˢ ādˢira désigne donc bien le pays sédentaire par opposition à al-bādiya ou pays bédouin. Voilà pour la sédentarisation. Venons en maintenant au mélange des populations. Celui-ci n’est pas évoqué explicitement au travers du terme habituel de muxālatˢa, mais implicitement au travers de celui de muwalladūna-īna. On traduit ordinairement par « métis » (< lat. mixticius « mélangé »). On a voulu voir dans muwallad l’étymon de « mulâtre » (Kazimirski 1846–7, art. wld), via l’espagnol mulato, mais ce dernier terme se rapporte peut-être plus simplement au latin mulus/mula (« mule(t) », cf. en espagnol même, outre mulo/mula « mule(t) », muleto/ muleta « jeune mule(t) »), à tout le moins a subi une contamination de cette famille lexicale. Dans la même veine l’article muwallad de EI2 indique qu’il s’agit d’un « terme appartenant au vocabulaire des éleveurs et désignant le produit d’un croisement (tawlīd) entre deux races animales différentes, donc un hybridé, un sang mêlé » et que c’est par analogie que le terme a été étendu aux humains. Mais l’article ne donne aucune référence pour ce sens, que nous ne trouvons pas, par exemple, dans LA (art. wld). La question se pose donc au linguiste de l’articulation de la désignation historique du terme et de sa signification. Morphologiquement, muwallad est le participe passif du verbe wallada. Wallada est le factitif du verbe de base, mais il renvoie à l’actif ou au passif de celui-ci, donc à walada-yalidu ou à wulida-yūladu, selon qu’il est doublement ou simplement transitif. Le verbe de base walada-yalidu, simplement transitif, signifie « engendrer un enfant » (et plus particulièrement « accoucher d’un enfant », s’il se dit d’une femme, ou « mettre bas un petit », s’il se dit d’une femelle). Le verbe doublement transitif wallada-hā -hu signifie « faire en sorte qu’une femme accouche ou qu’une femelle mette bas », c’est-à-dire l’aider à accoucher ou à mettre bas. Muwallida est un des noms de la sage-femme (qābila). Le verbe simplement transitif wallada signifie « faire naître quelqu’un » ou « générer quelque chose ».
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Dans les deux cas, cependant, muwallad signifie, comme seul objet ou second des deux objets de wallada, « engendré ». C’est sûrement par l’idée de « mis au monde » que le terme muwallad a pris, tout à la fois par métaphore et généralisation, le sens de « tout ce qui est nouveau, moderne » (al-muh dat min kulli šay LA, art. wld). Il peut se dire, soit de quelqu’un, soit de quelque chose : il se dit en particulier des « poètes modernes » (al-muwalladūn min aš-šuarā) et des néologismes (summiya al-muwallad min al-kalām muwalladan idā istah datūhu wa-lam yakun min kalāmihim fīmā madā « ce qu’il y a de muwallad dans le parler a été ainsi appelé, quand on le produit, sans qu’il ait existé dans le parler auparavant »). Comme tout ce qui est nouveau, le terme peut s’entendre en mauvaise part comme quelque chose de fabriqué, controuvé, apocryphe. C’est sans doute par une extension de ce dernier sens que très tôt le terme a pris le sens de « non purement arabe », pouvant se dire, là encore, soit de quelqu’un soit de quelque chose, cf. LA, art. WLD arabiyya muwallada wa-rajul muwallad idā kāna arabiyyan ġayr mah d « de l’arabe ou un homme muwallad(a), s’il n’est pas purement arabe ». Historiquement, le terme s’est dit des enfants nés, à la suite des conquêtes islamiques, d’unions mixtes, généralement entre des pères arabes et des mères non arabes. Si donc l’on suit le mouvement sémantique suggéré par LA, le sens de « métis » n’est pas à mettre au départ, mais au contraire à l’arrivée d’un processus d’évolution sémantique . . . Notons que ce dernier sens pourrait aussi s’atteindre par un simple et banal processus de tadmīn, consistant à « faire entrer » dans un mot le sens de toute une collocation, muwallad étant mis pour muwallad min muxālatat al-Arab al-Ajam (« issu/produit du mélange des Arabes et des non-Arabes »).2 Maintenant, en quoi consiste précisément ce processus de « corruption de la langue » ? Celui-ci est décrit au travers d’une anecdote mettant en scène ʙAbū l-Aswad ad-Du’alī et sa fille. La tradition a vu dans ce personnage du Ier/VIIe siècle le « père » de la grammaire arabe. Pourquoi lui plutôt qu’un autre ? D’abord, parce qu’il est d’origine arabe : sa généalogie complète, telle que donnée par les Tabaqāt (21) de Zubaydī, m. 379/989–90, le rattache aux Kināna, tribu
2 C’est un processus fondamental, tant dans le lexique de l’arabe classique (e.g. jihād « guerre sainte » mis pour jihād fī sabīl li-llāh « combat pour Allah », siyāsa « politique », mis pour siyāsa madaniyya (« gouvernement de la cité ») que dans celui de l’arabe moderne (tālib « étudiant » mis pour tālib al-ilm « celui qui cherche le savoir », amīn « secrétaire » mis pour amīn as-sirr « dépositaire du secret »).
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de la région de la Mecque. Il serait né vers 606 de notre ère et aurait séjourné chez les Qušayr d’Arabie centrale (nous verrons ultérieurement l’importance de ces notations). Ensuite, rallié à ʚAlī, il est nommé par ce dernier cadi puis gouverneur de Basˢra, en 36/656, mais la disparition de ʚAlī en 41/661 ne l’empêche pas, comme le montre notre texte (et d’autres sources) d’entretenir des relations avec le gouverneur Umayyade Ziyād b. Abīhi. Il serait mort vers 69/688. Enfin, il était également poète. Le personnage est donc le prototype de l’arabe sédentarisé, que son origine et son parcours désignent comme un maître et un gardien de la langue. Il est de Basˢra, dont la tradition ultérieure fera le siège de l’école dominante de la grammaire arabe, et voir dans un Basrien le père de la grammaire arabe n’est rien d’autre qu’une manière de signaler l’ancienneté du travail grammatical dans cette ville et surtout son antériorité par rapport à l’école rivale de Kūfa. Il est consensuel socialement et politiquement : nomades et sédentaires, partisans de ʚAlī comme des Umayyades peuvent s’en réclamer. Venons en maintenant à l’anecdote elle-même. La fille dit à son père mā ašaddu l-h arri. Celui-ci interprète le propos comme une question sur la chaleur la plus intense (« Quelle est la chaleur la plus intense ? ») et répond, par suite, ar-ramdau fī l-hājira, c’est-à-dire « la canicule en plein midi ». Mais la fille rejette cette interprétation lam asalka an hādā « je ne t’ai pas demandé cela », ajoutant « je me suis étonné de l’intensité de la chaleur » (innamā taajjabtu min šiddati l-h arri). « Alors dis, rétorque son père, mā ašadda l-h arra (« Quelle chaleur intense !») ». Autrement dit le père reproche à sa fille d’avoir confondu les structures interrogative (istifhām) et exclamative (taajjub) et d’avoir employé l’une pour l’autre. C’est cela un lah n, autre terme fondamental apparaissant dans le texte : non pas une faute de langage en général, mais une faute contre la flexion désinentielle, casuelle et modale, en particulier. C’est cette flexion qu’on appelle en arabe même irāb. Une telle faute serait d’autant plus grave qu’elle créerait un quiproquo. De cette anecdote, il existe plusieurs versions (comme le reconnaît le texte lui-même) : Versteegh (1997b, 59) cite la version donnée par Sīrāfī (m. 368/979), dans son Axbār (éd. Krenkow, 19) avec les exemples de mā ah sanu as-samāi « What is the most beautiful thing in the sky? » / mā ah sana s-samāa « How beautiful is the sky! ». A travers cette anecdote, il s’agit en fait de mettre au centre de la arabiyya ou « langue des Arabes » le irāb (mot étymologiquement lié à Arab) et de suggérer que cet irāb est pertinent, en ce qu’il distingue des
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significations (muwaddih , mubayyin, mufarriq, munabbi . . . li-maānī al-luġa), pour citer ici quelques-uns des mots que l’on relève dans les sources. Et c’est l’aggravation de la situation qui amène à la constitution de la grammaire, son nom arabe de nahw étant justifié par le fait que le grammairien se fait l’indicateur de la « voie à suivre » (unh ū hādā n-nahw). Nahw est en effet le masdar du verbe nah ā-yanh ū, qu’on emploie toujours comme circonstanciatif, figé à l’accusatif (nahwa), de sens « vers ». Peu importe si cette étymologie est fantaisiste ou non. Ce qui nous intéresse ici, ce sont les différentes interprétations qu’un linguiste est susceptible de faire de ce texte pour l’histoire de la langue.
3. Interprétation 3.1
De l’histoire . . .
Au XIXe siècle, la linguistique, née au tournant du XVIIIe et du XIXe, sous forme de la grammaire comparée (des langues indo-européennes), devient historique. On ne cherche plus seulement à reconstruire en amont des protolangues (Ursprache). Plus modestement, on cherche à retracer en aval l’évolution des langues existantes. La linguistique historique est une spécialité essentiellement allemande. On ne s’étonnera donc pas que ce soient les arabisants allemands qui, les premiers, se sont intéressés à l’histoire de l’arabe. Ils réinterpréteront le fasād al-luġa de la tradition arabe, caractérisée par les lah n ou fautes de irāb, comme le signe d’une évolution d’un type ancien arabe (en allemand Altarabisch et en anglais Old Arabic) vers un type néo-arabe (en allemand Neuarabisch et en anglais New ou Neo-Arabic). Le type ancien arabe est évidemment caractérisé par l’existence d’une flexion désinentielle, casuelle et modale, le type néo-arabe par la disparition de cette flexion. Le type ancien arabe est donc plus synthétique et le type néoarabe plus analytique. Corollairement, dans le type ancien arabe, l’ordre des mots est plus libre, mais, dans le type néo-arabe, moins libre. Quand le type ancien arabe commence à se dégrader en type néo-arabe, nous entrons dans le moyen arabe (en allemand Mittelarabisch et en anglais Middle Arabic). C’est Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer (1801–1888) qui projettera, implicitement dans un article de 1847, explicitement dans un article de 1854, sur l’arabe cette tripartition célèbre en linguistique historique. Voici ce qu’il écrit en 1854 (2–3) :
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Als heilige Sprache des Islam, Organ der Gelehrsamkeit und höhern Wissenschaftlichkeit, Mittelpunkt oder vielmehr ausschliesslicher Gegenstand aller Schulphilologie, steht das Altarabische seinem Abkömmling, dem Neuarabischen, in der Anschauung des Morgenlandes selbst schroff gegenüber. Nur jenes heisst bei den Gelehrten al-luġah, die Sprache, al‘arabiyyah, das Arabische schlechthin, dieses al-lisān al-‘āmm oder alʚāmmī, die gemeine Mundart, la lingua volgare.
Il est clair, d’après la description même qu’en donne Fleischer, que l’ancien arabe est l’arabe classique et le néo-arabe l’arabe dialectal et non moins clair que si les deux variétés coexistent en synchronie, l’arabe dialectal est explicitement compris comme étant historiquement le « descendant » (Abkömmling) de l’arabe classique. Un peu plus loin (4), il mentionne le moyen arabe. Il l’avait déjà exactement décrit (du point de vue de la linguistique historique) en 1847, à propos de la langue d’un codex gréco-arabe (155), qu’il compare à celle des Mille et une nuits, auxquelles il avait consacré sa dissertatio en 1836 : « Wie in der Tausend und Einen Nachten sind auch hier einzelne jener ältern Formen mit der neuern gleichsam noch im Kampfe begriffen ; willkürlich tritt bald die eine, bald die andere ein ». L’état moyen d’une langue se caractérise en effet par l’alternance, en synchronie, d’éléments interprétables, en diachronie, comme relevant encore de l’état ancien (älter) ou déjà de l’état moderne (neuer). Un de ses élèves, Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), dans un écrit de jeunesse rédigé en hongrois et aujourd’hui traduit en anglais, compare explicitement la relation entre ancien arabe et néo-arabe à celle du latin et des langues romanes, appelées jadis néo-latines (Goldziher 1994, 20) : As French abandoned the case inflection of Latin and developed the Roman synthesis into analysis, making de l’homme from hominis, so did the living Arabic of today dissolve the old rajulin into metāʚ r-rajul ; as latin scrip-si developed into French j’ai écrit (. . .), so was Old Arab[ic] aktubu turned into biddi aktub ou bi-aktub.
Cette conception « allemande » de l’histoire de l’arabe se retrouve au XXe siècle, en particulier chez Johann Fück (1894–1974) dans son grand ouvrage ʚArabīya (Fück, 1955[1950]), et, aujourd’hui encore, chez Joshua Blau, le grand maître du moyen arabe (e.g. Blau 2002, 16). Objectivement, cette conception rejoint celle que s’en faisait au VIIIe/ XIVe siècle Ibn Xaldūn (m. 808/1406) et qu’il expose à deux reprises dans la Muqaddima : une première fois dans la section 22 (675–7), intitulée fī luġāt ʙahl al-ʙamsˢār (« Des parlers des habitants des villes ») du chapitre IV, consacré aux « villes et pays », et une seconde aux chapitres
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47 et 48 (1073–1080), consacrés respectivement aux parlers nomades et aux parlers sédentaires de son temps, du chapitre VI, lui-même consacré aux « sciences ». Pour Ibn Xaldūn, ce qu’il appelle « langue de Mudˢar » (luġat Mudar, al-lisān al-mudarī) est la « langue première » (allisān al-awwal) et « originelle » (al-lisān al-aslī) de l’Arabie et la langue du Coran et du h adīt. Cette langue est parlée de manière d’autant plus châtiée ( fasāh a) que ceux qui la parlent sont plus éloignés des autres nations, « la manière de parler des Qurayš étant pour cette raison la plus châtiée et la plus pure des manières de parler arabes » (wa-li-hādā kānat luġat Qurayš afsah al-luġāt 3 al-arabiyya wa-asrah uhā): si l’on retraduit en termes géographiques la généalogie, l’appellation « langue de Mudˢar » revient à désigner le centre et l’ouest de l’Arabie comme le domaine de l’arabe fasīh . Ibn Xaldūn fait ici la synthèse de deux thèses, sur lesquelles nous reviendrons ci-dessous : d’une part la thèse philologique (qui voit ce domaine comme constitué de deux sous-domaines dits Hedjaz et Tamīm),4 et d’autre part la thèse théologique (qui identifie, sur la base de Cor. 14:4, la langue du Coran à la luġat Qurayš et, sur une base dogmatique, la luġat Qurayš à la luġa al-fush ā), tout en les croisant avec une thèse philosophique, issue du Kitāb al-h urūf de Fārābī (m. 339/950),5 et qui est le corrollaire de la thèse liant « corruption » et « mélange ». A l’inverse, cette langue est déjà corrompue dès l’époque préislamique, là où les Arabes sont en contact avec d’autres nations, et se corrompt encore davantage après la conquête islamique et les nouvelles fondations urbaines, et donc en milieu sédentaire plus encore que nomade, jusqu’à donner naissance à de nouvelles langues. L’originalité d’Ibn Xaldūn est en effet de ne pas considérer les dialectes comme de simples formes dégradées de la « langue de Mudˢar », mais comme des variétés autonomes par rapport à celle-ci et distinctes d’elle, en ce qu’elles ont substitué à la syntaxe basée sur la flexion désinentielle une syntaxe de position (at-taqdīm wa-t-taxīr).6
3
C’est cette expression qui donne, par réécriture, celle de al-luġa al-fush ā. Sur cette subdivision, cf. Rabin (1951). On comprend pourquoi ʙAbū l-Aswad d-Du’alī, natif du Hedjaz, est dit avoir fait un détour par l’Arabie centrale . . . 5 Du moins la version de ce texte connue par le Muzhir (I:211–212) ou, mieux, le Iqtirāh (20) de Suyūtˢī (m. 911/1505), non celle publiée par Mahdi en 1969. Sur les deux versions de ce texte, cf. Langhade (1994, 248–258) et Larcher (2006a). 6 Sur Ibn Xaldūn et l’histoire de l’arabe, cf. Versteegh (1997a, 153–165) et Larcher (2006b). 4
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à la sociolinguistique
En citant l’expression italienne de lingua volgare, certes attirée par celle de al-lisān al-āmm(ī),7 Fleischer montre qu’il n’a pas seulement en tête la linguistique historique, mais aussi le modèle italien. Or, dans ce modèle, la « langue vulgaire » n’est évidemment pas désignée en termes diachroniques, c’est-à-dire historiques, comme « descendant » du latin ; elle l’est au contraire, en termes synchroniques et sociolinguistiques, comme langue du vulgum pecus, par opposition au latin « langue des clercs ».8 Mais, là encore, cette conception, qui, pour l’arabe, sera baptisée ultérieurement par les arabisants diglossie,9 rejoint objectivement celle que se font les auteurs de langue arabe, à commencer d’ailleurs par az-Zajjājī lui-même. Au chapitre XVII, intitulé bāb dikr al-fāida fī taallum alnahw, il demande (95) : « à quoi sert d’apprendre la grammaire, la plupart des gens parlant naturellement10 sans flexion désinentielle, qu’ils ne connaissent pas, tout en comprenant les autres et en [se] faisant comprendre d’eux » ( fa-mā al-fāida fī taallum an-nahw wa-aktar an-nās yatakallamūn alā sajiyyatihim bi-ġayr irāb wa-lā marifa minhum bihi fa-yafhamūn wa-yufhimūn ġayrahum mitl dālika).
7 Fleischer ne donne aucune référence pour ces deux expressions. C’est dommage, car si, à l’époque où il écrit (milieu du XIXe siècle), l’expression al-arabiyya est, comme il le note, couramment utilisée, par une métonymie significative, pour désigner l’arabe classique, c’est l’expression de al-luġa ad-dārija qui est utilisée pour désigner l’arabe dialectal. L’expression d’al-luġa al-āmmiyya (vs al-luġa al-fushā) n’apparaîtra que vers la fin du XIXe siècle, du moins comme nom de cette variété, mais dès le Moyen Age, on la rencontre pour désigner un « vulgarisme » au sein de la langue. 8 La comparaison avec la situation italienne ne peut d’ailleurs être poussée trop loin sans aporie. Le domaine arabe n’a pas connu la révolution qu’a connue le domaine roman (et, mutatis mutandis, l’Europe entière), à savoir la promotion des langues « vulgaires » au rang de langues littéraires, ce qui fera du latin (et seulement pour un temps, plus ou moins long selon les pays) le véhicule de la seule culture savante. Ainsi, après Il cantico delle creature (1226) de Saint François d’Assise (1182–1226), Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), logiquement, écrit La Divine Comédie en langue vulgaire, mais traite de celle-ci en latin (De vulgari eloquentia). 9 Ce terme, venu de la linguistique néo-hellénique (1885), a été explicitement introduit en linguistique arabe par William Marçais (1874–1956), dans un article de 1935, avant que le concept ne soit théorisé, à partir de l’arabe et d’autres langues, par Charles A. Ferguson (1921–1998), dans un article de 1959. Pour le détail, cf. Larcher (2003). 10 Blanc (1979, 165, n. 20) traduit par « spontaneously » et Versteegh (1995) par « intuitively ».
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Il revient sur ce point à la fin du chapitre (96) : « Quant aux gens du commun qui parlent l’arabe sans flexion désinentielle, on les comprend. Mais cela est seulement possible pour ce qui est bien connu et d’usage courant, ce dont on a une connaissance familière et est usité. Mais si, d’aventure, l’un d’eux se risquait à éclaircir une ambiguïté, sans le faire comprendre au moyen de la flexion désinentielle, il ne le pourrait pas » ( fa-ammā man takallama min al-āmma bi-l-arabiyya bi-ġayr irāb fa-yufham anhu fa-innamā dālika fī al-mutaāraf al-mašhūr wa-lmustamal al-malūf bi-d-dirāya wa-law iltajaa ah aduhum ilā al-īdāh an manā multabis min ġayr fahmihi bi-l-irāb lam yumkinhu dālika).
Alors que le chapitre XIV concerne le Ier/VIIIe siècle, le chapitre XVII concerne l’époque d’al-Zajjājī lui-même, c’est-à-dire le IVe/Xe siècle. La situation décrite dans ce chapitre semble pouvoir être interprétée comme l’aboutissement du processus décrit au chapitre XIV. Au Ier/VIIIe siècle le type ancien arabe commence à se dégrader en type néo-arabe. Trois siècles plus tard, cette dégradation a abouti, non à une substitution d’un type à l’autre, mais, le type ancien arabe subsistant, à une coexistence des deux, chaque type étant caractérisé non seulement linguistiquement par la présence/absence du irāb, mais encore socialement et culturellement : dire que le type non fléchi est l’expression « naturelle » de « la plupart des gens » revient à dire que le type fléchi est celle non seulement d’une minorité, mais encore l’expression artificielle de cette minorité (artificielle, puisque scolairement apprise et non naturellement acquise et pratiquée !). Qualifier explicitement la majorité de āmma revient non seulement à qualifier implicitement la minorité de xāssa , mais encore semble préfigurer l’appellation de al-luġa al-āmmiyya, aujourd’hui utilisée pour désigner l’arabe dialectal. Enfin reconnaître par deux fois que l’absence de flexion désinentielle ne nuit en rien à la communication explique que, pour sauver cette flexion (son gagne pain !), le grammairien distingue entre communication quotidienne et communication savante et cherche, voire fabrique, des structures ambiguës, que seule la flexion, censément pertinente, est à même de désambiguïser (on voit tout de suite que l’exemple proposé au chapitre XIV relève exactement de ce cas de figure et, comme tout arabisant en a fait l’expérience, ce petit jeu perdure, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, dans certains milieux « puristes » !). La vérité oblige cependant à dire qu’il subsiste un doute sur cette interprétation. On doit se rappeler ce que dit al-Jāhˢizˢ (m. 255/869) dans le Bayān (I:137). Il n’oppose nullement āmma à xāssa comme la masse illettrée à l’élite lettrée, mais seulement, parmi les gens lettrés, les gens ordinaires aux happy few. C’est exactement le sens que les spécialistes
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donnent à ʚāmma dans la littérature spécialisée des ouvrages de lahˢ n alʚāmma.11 Il n’y a rien là que de logique : lahˢ n présuppose ʙiʚrāb ; par suite, s’il n’y a pas ʙiʚrāb, il n’y a pas lahˢ n ! Si l’on projette le sens « jāhˢizˢien » de ʚāmma sur le texte d’az-Zajjājī, il ne s’agirait plus alors de deux variétés d’arabe, mais seulement de deux registres d’une même variété : l’un « soutenu » (avec réalisation du iʚrāb) et l’autre « relâché » (sans réalisation de ce ʙiʚrāb). Jusqu’à aujourd’hui l’école enseigne le ʙiʚrāb qui « terrorise » (ʙirhāb) les apprenants, parce que sa réalisation est source de lahˢ n, d’où le sage conseil ijzim taslam « Supprime la voyelle brève finale, tu seras préservé de l’erreur ! ». Un seul élément du texte d’az-Zajjājī peut faire pencher la balance en faveur de la première interprétation, plutôt que de la seconde : c’est la notation que les locuteurs de l’arabe sans flexion désinentielle « n’ont pas connaissance de celle-ci ». La ʚāmma, au sens d’al-Jāhˢizˢ, ne l’ignore pas ; elle en a seulement une connaissance imparfaite12 . . .
4. Discussion On le voit : tout tourne autour du iʚrāb, tant dans le texte d’az-Zajjājī que dans l’interprétation, tout à la fois historique et sociolinguistique, qui en est faite. Pourtant, dès avant le XIXe siècle et l’essor de la linguistique historique, une tout autre tendance était apparue chez certains arabisants. Dès le XVIIIe siècle, des arabisants, également allemands d’ailleurs, comme Johann Davis Michaelis (1717–1791) et Johann Gottfried Hasse (1759–1806), avaient développé ce que Gruntfest (1991), qui l’a étudiée, appelle « A Early theory of Redundancy of Arabic Case Endings ». Notons qu’ils réinterprétaient des idées déjà exprimées, au XVIIe siècle, par l’Italien Antonius ab Aquila (Antonio dell’Aquila), Franciscain envoyé en mission auprès des Chrétiens d’Alep et auteur de la première
11 On lira avec profit l’article Lahˢ n al-ʚāmma, de EI2, dû à Charles Pellat (1914– 1992). 12 On notera que dans l’unique manuscrit, daté de 617H, qui sert de base à l’édition du ʙĪdˢāhˢ , il y a dans l’avant-dernier paragraphe de ce chapitre XVII, une magnifique faute de ʙiʚrāb : lan yumkin ʙahˢ ad [corrigé par l’éditeur en ʙahˢ adan] min al-muwalladīn ʙiqāmat-hu ʙillā bi-maʚrifat an-nahˢw (« Nul, parmi les muwalladīn, ne pourrait l’établir (la poésie), sauf par la connaissance de la grammaire »). L’absence du ʙalif révèle au minimum qu’il n’est pas prononcé, voire suggère que ʙahˢ ad a été traité comme le sujet de yumkin et par suite ʙiqāma comme l’objet, ce que peut également suggérer le masculin yumkin.
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grammaire de la « langue (arabe) vulgaire » (1650).13 Notons également que tous les arabisants du temps savaient le latin et le grec : quand on a souffert dans sa jeunesse sur une version grecque ou latine, on voit tout de suite la différence entre grec et latin classiques et arabe classique. En grec et en latin, c’est la déclinaison qui permet de construire la phrase ; en arabe, c’est la construction de la phrase qui permet de restituer la déclinaison . . . Les grammairiens arabes le reconnaissent eux-mêmes implicitement, en couplant, dans leur théorie, le ʙiʚrāb au ʚamal : le ʙiʚrāb est l’effet de l’ « action » d’un élément dit ʚāmil sur un autre dit maʚmūl, ainsi lan, dit nāsˢib, qui détermine le nasˢb (subjonctif ) du mudˢāriʙ (inaccompli) dit mansˢūb. Par ailleurs, le fait même que les grammairiens arabes cherchent des cas où cette flexion serait pertinente suffit à prouver qu’elle ne l’est pas ! On voit tout de suite le caractère artificiel de l’exemple proposé par az-Zajjājī. Dans beaucoup de langues, structures interrogatives et exclamatives sont confondues, étant distinguées par l’intonation, ainsi en français ou en allemand Quel artiste/Welcher Künstler ? vs Quel artiste/Welch ein Künstler ! Les exemples donnés de l’ « aggravation de la situation », qui font défaut chez az-Zajjājī lui-même, mais qu’on trouve chez d’autres auteurs, ne sont guère plus convaincants. Ainsi le fameux tuwuffiya ʙabānā wataraka banūna (« notre père est mort et a laissé des fils ») est si peu probant pour un fasād al-luġa interprété en termes historiques que Versteegh (1997b, 51), qui le cite d’après le Nuzha d’Ibn al-Anbārī (m. 577/1181), l’interprète en termes sociolinguistiques (alors même que l’anecdote concerne le temps de Ziyād, donc le Ier/VIIIe siècle). En termes historiques, on se serait en effet attendu à l’emploi des formes néo-arabes ʙabū et banīn (respectivement nominatif de la flexion triptote ʙabū/ā/ī et cas régime de la flexion diptote banū/ī(na) du type ancien arabe), de sorte qu’avec la phrase donnée en exemple, il n’y aurait pas eu de « faute » ! En termes sociolinguistiques, en revanche, la coexistence de deux types dont l’un a plus de prestige que l’autre peut amener le locuteur, dans une circonstance formelle, à substituer à l’unique forme du type néo-arabe, qu’il emploie ordinairement, mais pense fautive, l’autre forme du type 13 Cf. Fück 1955, 78. Fück considère que la Fabrica overo Dittioniario della lingua volgare arabica et italiana (1636) de Dominicus Germanus de Silesia (1588–1670) n’est pas, malgré son titre, un dictionnaire, mais une introduction, presque sans valeur, à l’arabe vulgaire. En tout cas, on voit que ce sont des clercs, Italiens ou liés à l’Italie, qui, sous l’appellation, valant signature, de « langue vulgaire », sont les « inventeurs » de l’arabe dialectal. Cette double qualité, jointe au fait qu’ils étaient des hommes de terrain et non de cabinet, les y prédisposait.
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ancien arabe, qu’il n’emploie pas et pense correcte : pour éviter une faute, il en commet une autre ! Certes, ces arabisants voyaient dans les désinences casuelles une invention des grammairiens arabes, position encore défendue au XIXe siècle par Aloïs Sprenger (1813–1893). Si personne aujourd’hui ne croit plus cela, en revanche la redondance de la flexion en arabe classique amène beaucoup d’arabisants à douter que l’histoire de l’arabe consiste en une évolution du type ancien arabe vers le type néo-arabe, caractérisés respectivement par la présence et l’absence de cette flexion. Deux positions se sont fait jour. L’une est très répandue chez les arabisants. L’akkadien possédant une flexion casuelle triptote et d’autres langues sémitiques exhibant des restes de flexion casuelle, les arabisants admettent que la flexion casuelle de l’arabe classique est un trait de haute antiquité, qui s’est maintenu dans le seul registre poétique de la langue. Sous l’influence de la représentation diglossique de l’arabe, rétoprojetée sur l’histoire de la langue, ce registre poétique est souvent vu comme une langue commune (koinè), véhiculaire, opposé aux vernaculaires que sont les anciens dialectes arabes. Cette koinè serait également la langue du Coran, à quelques « hedjazismes » près. Malgré les apparences, cette hypothèse arabisante n’est pas si différente de la thèse théologique ! Celle-ci, on l’a vu, se résume en une double identification : l’une, opérée sur une base scripturaire, de la langue du Coran avec la « langue de Qurayš » et l’autre, opérée sur une base purement dogmatique, de la langue de Qurayš avec al-luġa al-fusˢhˢ ā. Il y a un siècle, Vollers (1906) acceptait la première identification, mais refusait la seconde. Il supposait en effet que le Coran avait d’abord été énoncé et écrit dans le vernaculaire de la Mecque, parler ouest-arabique dépourvu de ʙiʚrāb, avant d’être réécrit dans la langue véhiculaire de la poésie, parler est-arabique pourvu de ce ʙiʚrāb. Kahle (1959[1947]) reprit cette hypothèse en l’atténuant : si le ductus coranique (rasm) reflète le vernaculaire de la Mecque, les qirāʙāt, elles, reflètent la langue véhiculaire de la poésie. La plupart des arabisants (cf. Blachère 1952, 66–82) refusent la première identification et, par suite, la seconde, mais acceptent la troisième, découlant de la suppression du moyen terme, i.e. langue du Coran = al-luġa al-fusˢhˢ ā. Or, si l’on relit le célèbre texte du Sˢāhˢ ibī (52–53) d’Ibn Fāris (m. 395/1004), dont la source n’est autre que celui attribué à al-Farrā’ (m. 207/822) et jadis exhumé par Kahle (1959[1947]), on s’aperçoit que pour concilier vérité théologique et vérité philologique (i.e. le fait que la langue du Coran, identifiée à la luġat Qurayš, exhibe des traits, les fameux « hedjazismes », qui ne sont pas ceux de la luġa al-fusˢhˢ ā) ces auteurs imaginaient un
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scénario expliquant comment la luġat Qurayš était devenue la luġa al-fusˢhˢ ā : comme produit d’un processus de koinéïsation justifié par le fait que, la Mecque étant un centre de pèlerinage intertribal, les Qurayš avaient ainsi pu « sélectionner » (taxayyur) le meilleur de chaque parler arabe !14 Mais une autre position, originale et marginale, est en train de gagner du terrain. La poésie archaïque pratique la qāfiya mutˢlaqa (« rime absolue »), c’est-à-dire réalise les voyelles brèves u, a et i, avec ou sans tanwīn, uniformément comme des voyelles longues ū, ā, ī. C’est dire si le tanwīn ne sert à rien !15 La récitation psalmodiée du Coran (tajwīd) va plus loin : elle pratique généralement la qāfiya muqayyada (« rime liée »), c’est-àdire supprime les voyelles brèves u, a et i en finale. Elle supprime également -un et -in, et réalise -an comme -ā. Cette prononciation pausale de -an en -ā est la seule trace de flexion casuelle qui apparaisse dans le maigre matériel épigraphique conservé16 et c’est aussi sa seule manifestation dans les dialectes modernes (marhˢ aban ou ʙahlan wa-sahlan prononcés marhˢ abā et ʙahlā w-sahlā). Le cas du suffixe relateur -(V)n qu’on trouve dans maint dialecte ancien et moderne est à disjoindre, dans la mesure où sa fonction (marquer la relation mawsˢūf/sˢifa, celle-ci pouvant être un N, un SP ou une phrase) ne le relie en rien au tanwīn de l’arabe classique et amène à penser que c’est la conservation d’un trait archaïque (cf. Ferrando 2000). Qu’on doive supprimer les voyelles brèves en finale (y compris donc les voyelles flexionnelles) est évidemment un argument en faveur de la non pertinence de cette flexion sur le plan syntaxique.17 En revanche, qu’en dehors de la pause, elle soit réalisée, suggère que cette flexion n’est pas syntaxique, mais prosodique. L’idée était déjà émise au XIXe siècle par Johann Gottfried Wetzstein (1815–1905), dans un article paru en 1868. Les historiens de la grammaire arabe savent aujourd’hui, grâce à Versteegh (1981[1983]), qu’il s’est trouvé au moins un grammairien arabe, Qutrˢ ub (m. 206/821), pour anticiper cette idée. Nous connaissons sa théorie grâce à az-Zajjājī (ch. VII, 69–71, bāb al-qawl fī al-ʙiʚrāb
14
Sur ces deux textes, cf. Larcher 2004 et 2005b. Comme le suggère en outre la réalisation du ā long résultant de la qāfiya mutˢlaqa comme . . . -an (tanwīn at-tarannum) attribuée aux Tamīm, dans la récitation poétique (ʙinšād). Dans les deux cas, on peut donc avoir l’article et voir et/ou entendre ā/an. 16 Un exemple dans l’inscription d’Umm al-Jimāl (Ve ou VIe siècle ap. JC ?), avec un mot lu successivement par Littmann en 1929 et 1949 comme ġiyāran et ġafran. Nous parlons bien sûr ici de la seule flexion marquée par des voyelles brèves. 17 Cf. l’analyse qui est proposée de Cor. 85 :21–22 dans Larcher (2005a). 15
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limā daxala fī-kalām « pourquoi la flexion s’est-elle introduite dans le discours ? »), qui explique que pour Qutrˢ ub les voyelles de flexion sont liées à l’enchaînement (wasl) des mots dans la phrase. Des idées, sinon identiques, du moins comparables sont défendues aujourd’hui par Owens (1998). Un bon argument en faveur de la conception prosodique et non syntaxique de la flexion peut être trouvé dans le traitement contradictoire de Tamūd dans le Coran. Contradictoire, dans la mesure où il est traité partout comme un diptote sans tanwīn Tamūd-u/a, sauf en 11 : 68 ; 25 :38 ; 29 :38 ; 53 :51, où apparaît un alif. Alors que Hˢ afsˢ ‘an ‘Asˢim (Coran du Caire) « neutralise » ce alif, Warš ‘an Nāfi‘ (Coran du Maghreb) le traite bien, en ces endroits, comme un triptote avec tanwīn et lit Tamūdan. Pourquoi, donc, deux déclinaisons pour un même mot, alors qu’aucune des deux ne sert à rien sur le plan syntaxique (en 17 :59, nous avons un Tamūd complément d’objet sans alif) ? On a tôt fait d’observer que dans trois des quatre cas où apparaît ce alif, Tamūd est coordonné à Ād, également muni de ce alif (et partout traité lui comme un triptote Ād-u/ a/i-n). L’apparition du alif peut s’expliquer par un simple et banal ajustement forme/sens : c’est la coordination syntaxique de deux mots qui, sémantiquement, vont ensemble, comme noms de peuples « reprouvés », qui explique qu’on donne au second le traitement syntaxique du premier. L’explication ne vaut cependant pas pour le quatrième cas (11 :68), où Tamūd apparaît seul : (ka-al-lam yaġnaw fīhā) a-lā inna Tamūda (Hˢ afsˢ)/an (Warš) kafarū rabbahum a-lā budal-li-Tamūd[a]. Sauf à lire ce alif comme il est écrit, c’est-à-dire non comme -an, mais bien comme -ā, auquel cas il forme aussitôt assonance avec les nombreux -ā de son environnement syntaxique immédiat, que nous avons mis en gras . . . On peut aller plus loin. Le début du verset, que nous mettons entre parenthèses, va avec ce qui précède. Le reste s’organise en un parallélisme marqué par l’anaphore de a-lā. On voit que si on lit, non budan, d’où, par assimilation (idġām) du nūn au lām budal-li-, mais budā, on n’a plus seulement alors une assonance en ā, mais encore une rime interne en -dā, soit : a-lā inna Tamūdā kafarū rabbahum a-lā budā li-Tamūd « Holà ! Oui, les Thamoud, ils ont été infidèles à leur seigneur ! Holà ! Arrière aux Thamoud ! ».18 18 Tamūd est loin d’être un cas unique. On peut également citer salāsilā de 76 :4 et qawārīrā de 76 :15–16. Par ailleurs on a compris que, pour ma part, je ne considère pas -ā comme la prononciation pausale de -an, mais -an comme une réinterprétation ultérieure d’un -ā « fondamental ». L’inscription du Jabal Usays (528–9 ap. JC) montre
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On ne perdra pas de vue que l’histoire de l’arabe est toujours dépendante des idées du moment. Ainsi Versteegh (1984), surfant sur la vague des études créoles, a proposé de réinterpréter le fasād al-luġa dans les termes d’un processus de pidginisation-créolisation. La conquête islamique a pour effet de mettre en contact des populations arabophones et des populations non arabophones. On peut donc imaginer, pour les besoins de la communication, l’émergence de langues de contact hétérogènes, ce qu’on appelait jadis des sabirs et qu’on appelle aujourd’hui des pidgins (Fück 1955 [1950], 8, en fait déjà l’hypothèse). Si les enfants qui naissent d’unions mixtes (les muwalladūn) la prennent pour langue maternelle, cette langue de contact devient un créole. Et, enfin, si au contact de l’arabe, le créole se réarabise (ou se décréolise), ce pidgincréole décréolisé peut être vu comme le point de départ des dialectes arabes, sur le modèle du Juba-Arabic au Sud Soudan.19 L’hypothèse de Versteegh suscita un vaste débat et fut généralement rejetée (cf. Holes 1995, 19–24). Il me semble néanmoins qu’on ne devrait pas jeter le bébé avec l’eau du bain !20 On ne peut exclure a priori que des processus de ce genre aient joué, localement, un rôle. Pour ma part, je me contenterai de signaler et souligner ici une phrase de la Muqaddima d’Ibn Xaldūn qui m’a fait parler, pour tenter une comparaison éloquente, de « case de l’Oncle Tom sur les bords du Tigre et de l’Euphrate ».21 Traitant de la genèse des parlers sédentaires dans les différentes régions du monde musulman (Maghreb, Machrek, Andalousie), il écrit à propos du second (1077–1078) : « De même, quand les Arabes eurent vaincu les nations de l’Orient, Persans et Turcs, et se furent mélangés à eux, les langues de ceux-ci se diffusèrent parmi eux, par l’intermédiaire des laboureurs, des paysans et des captifs qu’ils prenaient comme intendants, sages-femmes, pères nourriciers et nourrices : leur langue se corrompit du fait de la corruption de
qu’avant l’invention du tāʙ marbūtˢa les deux réalisations d’un même morphème se traduisent par deux graphies : -h à la pause, mais -t en liaison (il reste des traces de cet état de choses dans le ductus coranique, avec des exemples de rahˢ mat ou niʚmat). On voit d’autant moins pourquoi les deux réalisations phoniques du tanwīnan de l’arabe classique auraient donné lieu dans le matériel préclassique à une graphie unique (correspondant à -ā) que, dans les textes du moyen arabe, le suffixe relateur -(V)n se traduit dans la graphie par un n. 19 Ma collègue Catherine Miller, consultée, m’indique qu’à l’heure actuelle le JubaArabic est encore loin d’être un dialecte arabe. En outre les choses vont un peu dans tous les sens, manifestant des tendances contradictoires. 20 Cf. d’ailleurs, Versteegh lui-même (2004). 21 Cf. Larcher (2006b).
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l’habitus, au point de muter en une autre langue » (wa-kadā al-Mašriq lammā al-Arab ġalaba alā umamihi min Fāris wa-t-Turk fa-xālatahum wa-tadāwalat baynahum luġātuhum fī l-akara wa-l-fallāh īn wa-s-subiyy alladīna ittaxadūhum xawalan wa-dāyātin wa-adh āran wa-marādi fa-fasudat luġatuhum bi-fasād al-malaka h attā inqalabat luġa uxrā).
Il serait évidemment intéressant de remonter ici aux sources mêmes d’Ibn Xaldūn. Bien sûr, la notation va dans le sens de l’argumentation d’Ibn Xaldūn (interruption du processus « naturel » d’apprentissage de la langue de Mudˢar, par transmission d’une génération à l’autre d’Arabes, qui seule crée l’ « habitus »). Mais même le plus « intégriste » des créolistes ne peut nier que la phrase soulignée décrit ce que ce genre de créolistes considère être la base objective, sur le plan social, d’un processus de créolisation : une population servile, parlant une ou d’autres langues que celle de ses maîtres. En outre deux, voire trois, des quatre catégories mentionnées renvoient à l’étymologie même de créole (< lat. criare « nourrir, élever »), terme qui peut désigner aussi bien les enfants blancs que les esclaves noirs et leurs langues (généralement le parler des Noirs, mais au moins en un cas, celui de Saint-Barthélemy dans les Antilles, celui des Blancs). La linguistique arabe est aujourd’hui sous l’influence de la sociolinguistique américaine « variationniste », issue des travaux de William Labov (né en 1927). Cela a amené au dépassement de la représentation diglossique de l’arabe. Mais cela a aussi amené, en matière d’histoire de la langue, à renouer avec la vision des plus anciens grammairiens arabes, notamment Sībawayhi (m. 177/793 ?) et al-Farrā’. Ceux-ci concevaient l’arabe tout à la fois comme une langue une et plurielle, luġa faite de luġāt, c’est-à-dire non pas de variétés autonomes, mais de variantes, tribales ou régionales, bonnes ou mauvaises (cette hiérarchie suffit bien sûr pour ne pas en faire des « variationnistes » avant l’heure !). Aujourd’hui, l’arabe dit classique est généralement compris, non comme un état de la langue, mais comme une langue standardisée, c’est-à-dire retenant certaines luġāt et en éliminant d’autres. Elle est un aboutissement, non un point de départ, et, par suite, les dialectes arabes modernes ne sauraient en être des « corruptions ». Dans la mesure où beaucoup des traits décrits par les grammairiens arabes (notamment les plus anciens d’entre eux : Sībawayhi et al-Farrāʙ) se retrouvent, identiques ou analogues, dans les parlers arabes d’aujourd’hui, il n’y a pas de raison de penser qu’ils ne prolongent pas les anciens parlers arabes, selon des modalités complexes en fonction des lieux et des temps (c’est le travail de la dialectologie historique
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que de débrouiller l’écheveau). Simplement, même si les parlers arabes d’aujourd’hui relèvent uniformément de ce qui est pour la linguistique historique le type néo-arabe, on se gardera bien de croire qu’ils descendent uniformément d’un type ancien arabe. L’opposition des deux types, compte tenu de la non-fonctionnalité de la flexion désinentielle en arabe classique même, apparaît très largement outrée et, par suite, ils ont pu très bien coexister à date ancienne et, non pas en opposition, mais en continuité . . . Un argument en ce sens peut d’ailleurs être trouvé dans la « faute » relevée dans l’un des deux plus vieux papyrus datés (22 de l’Hégire), où l’on a Abū Qīr pour Abī Qīr (cf. Diem 1984, 271). Abū Qīr n’est pas un nom arabe, mais l’arabisation d’un nom grec, qui est Apa Kyros. Pour parvenir à Abū Qīr, il faut donc bien passer par Abā Qīr, réinterprété comme l’accusatif d’une flexion triptote Abū/ā/ī. Cela n’empêche pourtant pas le scripteur d’utiliser le « nominatif » Abū Qīr à une place réclamant le « génitif » ! Le papyrus étant contemporain de la conquête de l’Egypte (celle-ci, commencée en 18 de l’Hégire, s’achève en 25 avec l’occupation définitive d’Alexandrie) et, plus précisément de la fondation de Fustāˢ t ˢ (22H), il paraît difficile, pour ne pas dire impossible, de voir dans ce fait le signe d’une évolution d’un type à l’autre, liée au « métissage » des populations dans les centres urbains nouvellement créés à la suite de la conquête ! Et si on a donc bien ici, en même temps, référence implicite au type ancien arabe et utilisation explicite du type néo-arabe, il vaut mieux y voir la continuation d’une situation de langue « plurielle », non encore standardisée. Un autre argument dans le même sens peut être trouvé dans le Coran même, avec les incertitudes de la flexion visible, casuelle ou modale (pour des exemples et une analyse, cf. Larcher 2005a).
5. Conclusion Le récit traditionnel des origines de la grammaire arabe, née de la « corruption de la langue », a l’apparence d’un récit historique. Les orientalistes du XIXe siècle, siècle d’histoire et d’esprit critique, s’y sont laissé prendre, même si, en 1906, Karl Vollers jeta un fameux pavé dans la mare ! Cent ans après, les linguistes arabisants voient dans l’arabe dit classique, comme dans toute autre langue classique, une construction. Ils verront alors ce récit comme une reconstruction, ayant pour seul but la légitimation de cette construction.
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6. Références 6.1
Sources primaires
al-Fārābī, Abū Nasr. 1969. Kitāb al-hˢ urūf (Alfarabi’s Book of Letters), éd. Muhsin Mahdi, coll. Recherches publiées sous la direction de l’Institut de Lettres Orientales de Beyrouth n°46, Première série : Pensée arabe et musulmane. Beyrouth : Dar el-Machreq. al-Jāhiz, Bayān = Abū Utmān Amr b. Bahr al-Jāhiz, Kitāb al-bayān wa-t-tabyīn, éd. Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn, 4 parties en 2 vols, Le Caire, 1367/1948. Ibn Fāris, Sˢāhˢ ibī = Abū l-H usayn Ahmad Ibn Fāris asˢ-Sˢāhˢ ibī fī fiqh al-luġa wa-sunan al-ʚarab fī kalāmihā, éd. Moustafa El-Chouémi. Coll. Bibliotheca philologica arabica, publiée sous la direction de R. Blachère et J. Abdel-Nour, vol. 1. Beyrouth : A. Badran & Co. 1383/1964. Ibn Manzūr, Lisān al-ʚArab = Muhammad b. Mukarram b. Alī b. Ahmad al-Ansārī al-Ifrīqī al-Misrī Jamāl ad-Dīn Abū l-Fadl Ibn Manzūr. Lisān al-ʚArab al-muhˢ ītˢ. Ed. par Yūsuf Xayyāt , 4 vols. Beyrouth: Dār Lisān al-Arab. s.d. Ibn Xaldūn, Muqaddima = Walī d-Dīn Abd ar-Rahmān b. Muhammad Ibn Xaldūn. al-Muqaddima, t. I du Kitāb al-ʚibar. Beyrouth: Maktabat al-madrasa et Dār al-kitāb al-lubnānī, 1967. Suyūtī, Iqtirāhˢ = Jalāl ad-Dīn Abd ar-Rahmān Abū Bakr as-Suyūtī , Kitāb al-Iqtirāhˢ fī ʚilm ʙusˢūl an-nahˢw, H aydarābād, 1359 H. [reimp. Alep : Dār al-Maārif, s.d.]. Suyūtī, Muzhir = Abd ar-Rahmān Jalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūtī al-Muzhir fī ʚulūm al-luġa wa-ʙanwāʚihā, éd. Muhammad Ahmad Jār al-Mawlā, Alī Muhammad al-Bajāwī et Muhammad Abū l-Fadl Ibrāhīm, 2 vols. Le Caire : Īsā l-Bābī l-H alabī. s.d. az-Zajjājī, Abū l-Qāsim. 1973. al-ʙĪdˢāhˢ fī ʚilal an-nahˢw, éd. Māzin Mubārak, 2ème edition, Beyrouth, Dār an-Nafāis. ——. 1957. Al-Jumal. Précis de grammaire arabe publié avec une introduction et un index par Mohamed ben Cheneb, coll. Etudes arabes et islamiques, Première série : Manuels. Paris : Klincksieck. Zubaydī, Tˢabaqāt = Abū Bakr Muhammad b. al-H asan az-Zubaydī al-Andalūsī, Tˢabaqāt an-nahˢwiyyīn wa-l-luġawiyyīn, éd. M. Abū l-Fadl Ibrāhīm, coll. D axāir al-Arab 50. Le Caire, Dār al-Maārif, 1984. 6.2 Sources secondaires Blachère, Régis. 1952–1964–1966. Histoire de la littérature arabe des origines à la fin du XV e siècle de J.C., I, II et III. Paris : Adrien-Maisonneuve. Blanc, Haïm. 1979. “Diachronic and Synchronic Ordering in Medieval Arab Grammatical Theory.” in Studia Orientalia Memoriae D.H. Baneth Dedicata. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University. 155–180. Blau, Joshua. 2002. A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Studies Monographs 6, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Faculty of Humanities, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Diem, Werner. 1984. “Philologisches zu den arabischen Aphrodito-Papyri.” in: Der Islam 61, 251–275. EI2 = Encyclopédie de lʙIslam, nouvelle édition, Leiden, Brill, 1960–. Ferrando, Ignacio. 2000. « Le morphème de liaison /an/ en arabe andalou : Notes de dialectologie comparée », in : Oriente moderno, 80:1, 25–46. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word, 15:2, 325–340. Fleischer, H. 1847. “Ueber einen griechisch-arabischen Codex rescriptus der Leipziger Universitäts-Bibliothek.” ZDMG, I, 148–160 [repris dans Kleinere Schriften, 1885– 1888 t. III, ch. XXII, 378–388].
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Fleischer, Heinrich. 1885–88. “Ueber arabische Lexicographie und Ta‘ālibī’s Fikh alluġah.” Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königlich Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Philol.-histor. Cl. 1–14 [repris dans Kleinere Schriften, 1885–1888, t. III, ch. IX, 152–166]. Fück, Johann. 1955 [1950]. ʚArabīya. Recherches sur l’histoire de la langue et du style arabe, Paris, Didier [tr. fr. de Arabīya. Untersuchungen zur arabischen Sprach- und Stilgeschichte, Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische Klasse. Band 45, Heft 1, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1950]. ——. 1955. Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz. Goldziher, Ignaz. 1994. On the History of Grammar among the Arabs. An Essay in Literary History, translated and edited by K. Dévényi et T. Iványi, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 73, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994 [traduction anglaise de “A nyelvtudomány története az araboknál”, Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 14, 307–375, 1878]. Gruntfest, Y. 1991. “From the History of Semitic Linguistics in Europe: an Early Theory of Redundancy of Arabic Case-endings.” in: K. Dévényi et T. Iványi, eds. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Arabic Grammar, The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 3–4. Budapest. 195–200. Holes, Clive. 1995 [2004]. Modern Arabic. Structures, Functions, and Varieties. London: Longman [Revised Edition, Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press]. Kahle, Paul. 1947 [1959]. The Cairo Geniza, First Edition: 1947, Second Edition: 1959. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kazimirski, A. de Biberstein. 1846–7. Dictionnaire arabe français, 2 vols. Paris : Théophile Barrois. Langhade, Jacques. 1994. Du Coran à la philosophie. La langue arabe et la formation du vocabulaire philosophique de Farabi. Préface de Jean Jolivet. Damas : IFEAD. Larcher, Pierre. 2003. « Diglossie arabisante et fusˢhˢ ā vs ʚāmmiyya arabes : essai d’histoire parallèle ». Auroux, Sylvain et al. eds. History of Linguistics 1999. Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS VIII), Fontenay-St.Cloud, France, coll. SIHoLS 99. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 47–61. ——. 2004. « Théologie et philologie dans l’islam médiéval : relecture d’un texte célèbre de Ibn Fâris (Xe siècle) », dans Le discours sur la langue sous les régimes autoritaires, Cahiers de l’ILSL, n° 17. Université de Lausanne. 101–114. ——. 2005a. « Arabe préislamique, arabe coranique, arabe classique : un continuum ? », dans Karl-Heinz Ohlig et Gerd-Rüdiger Puin (Hrsg) : Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam. Berlin : Verlag Hans Schiler. 248–265. ——. 2005b. ‘D’Ibn Fāris à al-Farrā’ ou un retour aux sources sur la luġa al-fusˢhˢ ā’, Asiatische Studien/Etudes asiatiques, LIX, 3, 797–814. ——. 2006a. « Un texte d’al-Fārābī sur la ‘langue arabe’ réécrit ? » Lutz Edzard and Janet Watson (eds.). Grammar as a Window onto Arabic Humanism. A Collection of Articles in honour of Michael G. Carter. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 108–129. ——. 2006b. « Sociolinguistique et histoire de l’arabe selon la Muqaddima d’Ibn Xaldūn (VIIIe/XIVe siècle) ». Pier Giorgio Borbone, Alessandro Mengozzi e Mauro Tosco (eds.), Loquentes Linguis Studi linguistici e orientali in onore di F.A. Pennacchietti / Linguistic and Oriental Studies to Honour F.A. Pennacchietti / Lingvistika kaj orientaj studoj honore al Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti. Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz. 425–435. Littmann, Enno. 1929. « Die vorislamisch-arabische Inschrift aus Umm ij-Jimāl », ZS, VII, 197–204. ——. 1949. Arabic Inscriptions (Syria : Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1904–5 and 1909. Division IV, Section D). Leiden: E. J. Brill. Marçais, William. 1930. « La diglossie arabe », in L’Enseignement public—Revue pédagogique, tome 104 n°12 (1930), 401–409.
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Owens, Jonathan. 1998. “Case and proto-Arabic.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, I:61/1, 51–73 et II:61/2, 215–227. Rabin, Chaïm. 1951. Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press. Versteegh, C. H. M. 1977. Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Versteegh, Kees. 1981 [1983]. “A dissenting grammarian: Qutrˢ ub on declension.” Historiographia Linguistica 8:2–3, 403–429 [repris dans Cornelis H.M. Versteegh, Konrad Koerner and Hans-J. Niederehe, eds. The History of Linguistics in the Near East, Studies in the History of Linguistics, 28. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1983.167–193]. ——. 1984. Pidginization and Creolization: The Case of Arabic. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV-Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. ——. 1995. The Explanation of Linguistic Causes, Az-Zajjājī’s Theory of Grammar. Introduction, Translation, Commentary. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——. 1997a. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought III. The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. Coll. History of Linguistic Thought. London: Routledge. ——. 1997b [2001]. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: University Press [2ème éd. 2001]. ——. 2004. “Pidginization and Creolization revisited: The Case of Arabic.” dans Martine Haak, Rudolf de Jong and Kees Versteegh, eds. Approaches to Arabic Dialects. A Collection of Articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 343–357. Wetzstein, Johann Gottfried. 1868. “Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 22. 69–194.
7. Traduction du texte d’al-Zajjājī Pourquoi cette sorte de science a été appelée nahˢw Si l’on demande pour quelle raison cette sorte de science a été appelée nahˢw et s’est vue attribuer ce nom, on répondra : la raison en est l’histoire rapportée au sujet de Abū l-Aswad ad-Duʙalī. Lorsqu’il entendit parler les métis d’Arabes à Basˢra, il réprouva les fautes de langage qu’ils commettaient, du fait de leur contact avec la vie sédentaire et les enfants des non-Arabes. Une fille à lui dit un jour : « Papa, mā ʙašaddu l-hˢ arri ? [quelle est la chaleur la plus intense ?] »—« La canicule en plein midi, ma petite fille», lui répondit-il, ou quelque chose de ce genre, car il y a divergence dans le récit. « Je ne t’ai pas demandé cela, lui dit-elle, je me suis seulement étonnée de la chaleur intense ».—« Alors dis, reprit-il, mā ʙašadda l-hˢ arra ! [quelle chaleur intense !] ». Et d’ajouter : « Nous appartenons à Dieu; la langue de nos enfants s’est corrompue ». Il songea à faire un ouvrage, où il rassemblerait les fondements de l’arabe, mais Ziyād l’en empêcha. « Nous ne croyons pas, dit-il, que les gens se fient à ce livre, ni qu’ils abandonnent la [bonne] langue et cessent de tirer la pureté [linguistique] de la bouche des Arabes ». Et, ce, jusqu’à ce que les fautes de langage se répandent, deviennent nombreuses et affreuses. Alors, il lui ordonna de faire ce qu’il lui avait interdit. Et Abū l-Aswad fit un livre
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contenant la syntaxe de l’arabe et dit aux gens : « suivez cette voie, c’està-dire allez dans ce sens » ; nahˢw signifie direction et c’est pourquoi la grammaire a été appelée nahˢw. On dit qu’il fut le premier à écrire dans un ouvrage que le discours est nom, verbe et particule, dotée d’une valeur sémantique. Interrogé à ce sujet, il déclara : « je l’ai emprunté au commandeur des croyants Alī b. Abī Tālib (Dieu étende ses bénédictions et son salut sur lui !) ». Il arrive qu’un nom, un qualificatif ou un surnom l’emporte pour une chose. Celle-ci est alors connue sous ce nom spécifiquement, à l’exclusion de tout autre objet entrant dans la compréhension de ce nom. Le fiqh, on le sait, est l’intelligence des choses. On dit « faqihtu le récit » aussi bien que « je [l’] ai compris » et un homme faqīh ou faqih, c’est-à-dire qui comprend. Puis le fiqh est devenue la science religieuse, spécialement. Et quand on dit un homme faqīh, on vise seulement l’homme savant en matière de Loi, même si toute personne qui comprend une science et y excelle est un faqīh en cette science. Et, de même, tˢibb est l’habileté. C’est de là que l’on dit un homme de tˢibb et tˢabīb, s’il est habile. Puis tˢabīb est devenu inspérable de ceux qui s’intéressent à la science des philosophes ayant pour effet la conservation de la santé et, plus spécialement, permettant de la recouvrer. Les exemples de ce genre de choses abondent.
SĪBAWAYHI’S VIEW OF THE ZˢARF AS AN ʚĀMIL Aryeh Levin The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
1. Introduction 1.1
The meaning of the term zˢarf
In Sībawayhi’s terminology the term zˢarf (plural zˢurūf ), designates an expression denoting place or time. The zˢarf is an accusative as in al-laylata ‘to-night’,1 or a combination of an accusative + genitive as in maʚahu ‘with him’,2 xalfa-ka ‘behind you’3 and yawma l-jumʚati ‘Friday’,4 or a combination of a hˢ arf jarr + genitive, as in fī-hā ‘in it.’5 1.2
The syntactic status of the zˢarf
In given syntactic constructions the zˢarf is an indispensable part of the sentence, while in others it is a dispensable part. When the zˢarf is an indispensable part it occurs as a predicate in some types of the nominal sentence, as in the examples ʚabdu llāhi fīhā (Sīb. I:222, 18) and fīhā ʚabdu llāhi (Sīb. I:222, 17) “ ʚAbdallah is in it”6 and ʚabdu llahi fīhā qāʙiman “ ʚAbdallah is standing in it” (Sīb. I:222, 15). A zˢarf also occurs as the indispensable predicate in sentences beginning with ʙinna and the kind of kāna the later grammarians called kāna an-nāqisˢa, as in the examples ʙinna fīhā zaydan and ʙinna zaydan fīhā “verily Zayd is in it” (Sīb. I:222, 20); ʙinna zaydan lafīhā qāʙiman “verily Zayd is standing in it.” (Sīb. I:242, 12); mā kāna fīhā ʙahˢ adun xayrun minka “nobody better than you was in it” (Sīb. I:21, 7) and mā kāna 1
See Sīb. I:176, 17–20. The form maʚa is conceived of by Sībawayhi and the other grammarians as a noun taking the accusative (see Sīb. I:177, 14–15). When following the particle min maʚ takes the genitive, as in the example min maʚihi—‘from him’ (ibid.). 3 See Sīb. I:170, 17–20. 4 See Sīb. I:176, 17–20. 5 See Sīb. I:207, 20–21. 6 See Sīb. I:222, 14–20. Cf. Sīb. I:207, 20–21. 2
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ah adun mitluka fīhā “nobody like you was in it” (ibid.). When the zarf is the indispensable predicate of the sentence it is called mustaqarr,7 lit., ‘a place where someone is.’ As a grammatical term mustaqarr designates ‘an indispensable predicate of the nominal sentence, denoting the place where the subject is.’8 The term mustaqarr is sometimes restricted by an expression denoting its grammatical quality as an indispensable part of the sentence, as in mustaqarran taktafī bihi ‘a predicate denoting the place where the subject is, with which you content yourself [when intending to express a complete sentence]’ (Sīb I:21, 11), and mustaqarran lizaydin yastaġnī bihi s-sukūtu ‘a predicate denoting the place where Zayd is [occurring in the sentences inna fīhā zaydun and inna zaydan fīhā], with which a complete sentence can be satisfied as its complement.’9 (Sīb. I:222, 20–21). When the zarf is not an indispensable part of the sentence it is called ġayr mustaqarr ‘not a mustaqarr.’10 It is said that the zarf in this case is mulġan or laġw ‘a dispensable zarf which does not operate as an āmil’ (see below § 4). The form mustaqarr sometimes occurs in combinations referring to a dispensable part of the sentence. These combinations include restrictive expressions indicating that the whole combination refers to a dispensable part: in referring to the example fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun “Abdallah is standing in it” (Sīb. I:223, 2), where fīhā is a dispensable part of the sentence, Sībawayhi says that fīhā here is a mustaqarr lil-qiyām ‘an expression denoting the place where the act of standing [expressed in the predicate qāimun] takes place.’11 Similarly, in referring to the examples fīha abdu llahi qāiman and abdu llāhi fīha qāiman “ʚAbdallah is standing in it” (Sīb. I:222,15), Sībawayhi says that qāiman is a h ālun mustaqarrun fīhā ‘[an expression denoting] a h āl (= a state) where [the subject abdu llāhi] is.’ Note that the above combination refers to a part of the sentence that is a h āl and not a zarf.
7
See Sīb, I:21, 7–17; 222, 14–22. This definition is inferred from Sīb. I:222, 14–22; See also Sīb. I:21, 4–11; as-Sīrāfī III, 11, 9–14; as-Sīrāfī according to Jahn, 1895, I/2, 73, note 16. 9 Lit. “with which silence can be satisfied [after expressing a complete sentence].” 10 See Sīb. I:21, 14–15. 11 See Sīb. I:223, 1–9. 8
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2. The ʚamal in sentences containing a zˢarf 2.1 A zˢarf cannot operate as the ʚāmil producing the nominative in the subject Sībawayhi believes that in nominal sentences a zˢarf cannot operate as the ʚāmil producing the nominative in the subject (= al-mubtadaʙ), irrespective of whether the zˢarf occurs as an indispensable predicate (= mustaqarr) or as a dispensable part of the sentence. Hence, in a sentence like fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙiman (Sīb. I:222,15), the ʚāmil of the subject ʚabdu llāhi is not the predicate fīhā, but the abstract ʚāmil called al-ibtidāʙ.12 In Sībawayhi’s view, the sense of al-ibtidāʙ is ‘the act of putting the noun in a position where it is unaffected by any word operating as an ʚāmil.’13 The view that the zˢarf cannot be the ʚāmil of the subject derives from the notion that in a nominal sentence, a word operating as an ʚāmil producing the nominative must be logically identical with the noun affected by it. For example: in the sentence ʚabdu llāhi ʙaxūka “ʚAbdallah is your brother” (Sīb. I:6, 11), the subject ʚabdu llāhi is logically identical with the predicate ʙaxūka, since ʚAbdallah is your brother and your brother is ʚAbdallah.14 Hence the subject ʚabdu llāhi is the ʚāmil producing the nominative in the predicate ʙaxūka.15 In contrast, in fīhā ʚabdu llahi qāʙiman, the predicate fīhā is not identical with the subject ʚabdu llāhi, since it is an expression denoting the place where the subject is, and hence fīhā cannot be the ʚāmil producing the nominative in the subject ʚabdu llāhi.16 As a result, this sentence does not include any word that can operate as an ʚāmil producing the nominative in the subject ʚabdu llāhi. Hence, ʚabdu llāhi takes the nominative because of the effect of al-ibtidāʙ.17 Sībawayhi contends that examples beginning with ʙinna, such as ʙinna fīha zaydan (Sīb. I:222, 20), confirm that fīhā does not produce the
12
See Sīb. I:222, 14–223, 18. See Levin, (forthcoming), mubtadaʙ, § 4.1. 14 This notion is discussed in detail in Levin, 1979, 199–202; Levin, 2002, 359, 15–360, 11; Levin, 2006, 110–111, §5; Levin, forthcoming, Cahiers linguistiques, § 3.2. 15 For this notion see Sīb. I:239, 5–9. 16 See Sīb. I:222, 14–223, 18. 17 See Sīb. I:222, 14–19. 13
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nominative in the subject, since in the above example ʙinna is the ʚāmil of the subject zaydan, as is shown by its accusative ending.18 Although Sībawayhi believes that the zˢarf cannot be the ʚāmil of the mubtadaʙ, it is inferred that he holds that the zˢarf can produce the accusative in nouns occurring as a hˢ āl, as in nominal sentences of the type ʚabdu llāhi fīhā qāʙiman and fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙiman “ʚAbdallah is standing in it” (Sīb. I:222, 15).19 In his view, in these examples, the ʚāmil producing the accusative in the hˢ āl qāʙiman is the zˢarf fīhā.20 Sībawayhi also explicitly says that the zˢarf is the ʚāmil producing the accusative in words denoting measures of distance occurring as a tamyīz 21 (see below § 3). 2.2 Arguments confirming that in Sībawayhi’s view the zˢarf is the ʚāmil of the hˢāl Sībawayhi does not explicitly say that the zˢarf is the ʚāmil producing the accusative in the hˢ āl in certain constructions of the nominal sentence. However, his view in this respect is inferred from some places in the Kitāb text. 2.2.1 In his discussion of sentences beginning with mā kāna, Sībawayhi refers to two types: (i) sentences where the zˢarf fīhā occurs as a mustaqarr, i.e., as the indispensable predicate of the sentence, as in mā kāna fīhā ʙahˢ adun xayrun minka “nobody better than you was in it” (Sīb. I:21, 7). (ii) sentences where the zˢarf fīhā occurs as a dispensable part of the sentence (mulġan or laġw), as in mā kāna ʙahˢ adun xayran minka fīhā (Sīb. I:21, 10). In this discussion Sībawayhi explicitly says that a zˢarf which is a mustaqarr can operate as an ʚāmil.22 He also adds here that since a mustaqarr
18
Sīb. I:222, 19–223, 1. Sībawayhi refers to the accusative in these examples both as a hˢ āl (Sīb. I:223, 1) and a xabar (Sīb. I:222, 140). For this special use of xabar see Levin, 1979, 193–196, § 2.4. 20 See Sīb. I:222, 4–9. See also Sīb. I:167, 11–16; Sīb. I:218, 6–16, especially lines 12–13. See below § 2.2–2.2.3.2. 21 The later grammarians’ term tamyīz does not occur in the Kitāb. 22 See Sīb. I:21, 7–19. 19
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can operate as an āmil, it is preferable to put it in a position where it precedes the noun affected by it. The more the speaker makes it precede this noun the better, he says. In contrast, he says that when the zarf is not a mustaqarr, it is preferable to put it at the end of the sentence, or at least in a position close to the end.23 2.2.2 In his above discussion, dealing with the possibility that a zarf can operate as an āmil, Sībawayhi does not give any example illustrating this point. However, it is clear that his statements in this respect refer to examples such as fīhā abdu llāhi qāiman and abdu llāhi fīhā qāiman, discussed elsewhere in the Kitāb.24 Since Sībawayhi explicitly says that in these examples the āmil of the mubtada abdu llāhi is not the zarf, but al-ibtidā (see above § 2.1), it is inferred that the āmil producing the accusative in qāiman, which is a h āl, is the zarf fīhā. It should be stressed that the zarf fīhā is the only part of the sentence which can be the āmil producing the accusative in qāiman, since the mubtada abdu llahi is logically identical with qāiman, and a noun which is logically identical with another noun can produce in it only the nominative, as in fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun (see above § 2.1). 2.2.3 The above inference is supported by the following considerations: 2.2.3.1 In his discussion of the example laka š-šāu šātan bidirhamin šātan bidirhamin “[The sale of] the sheep became binding on you25 [in a situation where their price is] one dirham a sheep, one dirham a sheep” (Sīb. I:167, 13), Sībawayhi says that the accusative šātan occurring twice in this example is a h āl. He explains how the accusative is produced in šātan as follows: wasāra laka š-šāu idā nasabta bimanzilati wajaba š-šāu kamā kāna fīhā zaydun qāiman bimanzilati staqarra zaydun qāiman “when you put [šātan] in the accusative [the utterance] laka š-šāu is equivalent to wajaba š-šāu, just as [the utterance] fīhā zaydun qāiman is equivalent to istaqarra zaydun qāiman” (Sīb. I:167, 13).26 Since Sībawayhi believes that in all verbal sentences the verb is the
23
See Sīb. I:21, 9–19. See Sīb. I:222, 14–224,2. 25 The translation here is based on Lane’s rendering of the expression wajaba l-bayu (see Lane VIII, 2922A,15–17). According to Sībawayhi laka š-šāu is equivalent to wajaba š-šāu. 26 See Sīb. I:167, 11–16. Cf. Sīb. I:222, 14–223, 1. 24
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ʚāmil of the hˢ āl,27 it is clear that in his view, the ʚāmil of šātan in wajaba š-šāʙu šatan bidirhamin šātan bidirhamin is the verb wajaba, while the ʚāmil of qāʙiman in istaqarra zaydun qāʙiman is the verb istaqarra. Since Sībawayhi holds that laka and fīhā are equivalent to wajaba and istaqarra which operate as ʚawāmil, it is inferred that in his view laka and fīhā also operate as ʚawāmil in the corresponding examples laka š-šāʙu šatan bidirhamin šātan bidirhamin and fīhā zaydun qāʙiman respectively. For similar examples where a combination of li + genitive or li + a relative clause operates as an ʚāmil see Sīb. I:223, 18–224, 2. 2.2.3.2 In referring to the example fīhā zaydun qāʙiman fīhā “In it is Zayd, in it” (Sīb. I:238, 15) Sībawayhi says: faʙinnamā ntasˢaba qāʙimun bistignāʙi zaydin bifīhā “[The hˢ āl qāʙiman] takes the accusative because of the fact that when [the first] fīha is added to zaydun, it makes the sentence complete.”28 The significance of this wording is that since the first fīhā in the above utterance is the indispensable predicate making the sentence complete, it is the ʚāmil producing the accusative in the hˢ āl qāʙiman in fīhā zaydun qāʙiman fīhā.
3. The zˢarf as an ʚāmil of a tamyīz denoting a measure of distance Sībawayhi explicitly says that in the example dārī xalfa dārika farsaxan “the wandering territory of my tribe is situated in a distance of one parasang from that of yours” (Sīb. I:176, 6–7), the ʚāmil producing the accusative in farsax is the zˢarf xalfa dārika, which is the indispensable predicate of the sentence.29 He adds that this zˢarf produces the accusative in farsaxan and in other measures of distance, since it is not logically identical with farsaxan, and since farsaxan is not the sˢifa of xalfa dārika. He compares the effect of xalfa dārika on farsaxan with that of ʚišrūna on dirhaman, in the example ʚišrūna dirhaman.30
27
See Sīb. I:15, 18–22. See Sīb. I:238, 14–18. 29 See Sīb. I:176, 6–12. For xalfa as a zˢarf see Sīb. I:177, 14. 30 See Sīb. I:176, 6–11. For the ʚamal in ʚišrūna dirhaman see Carter, 1972. See also Levin, (forthcoming), Cahiers linguistiques, § 3.2. 28
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4. The ʙilġāʙ of the zˢarf According to Sībawayhi, one of the syntactic qualities of the zˢarf is alʙilġā, lit. ‘the abolishment.’ It is inferred from the text of the Kitāb that this term, when referring to a zˢarf occurring in certain syntactic constructions, denotes the abolishment of the status of the zˢarf as an indispensable predicate of the sentence. In this case al-ilġāʙ is opposed to al-istiqrār “the occurrence of the zˢarf as an indispensable predicate.”31 In other syntactic constructions al-ʙilġāʙ denotes the abolishment of the status of the zˢarf both as an indispensable predicate and as an ʚāmil. In these constructions al-ʙilġāʙ is opposed both to al-istiqrār and al-ʙiʚmāl, i.e., “the appliance of the ʚamal of the zˢarf to the case ending of a certain noun.”32 The following examples illustrate the contrast between al-ʙilġāʙ on the one hand, and al-istiqrār and al-ʙiʚmāl on the other hand in certain syntactic constructions: (1) In the example mā kāna fīhā ʙahˢ adun xayrun minka “nobody better than you was in it” (Sīb. I:21, 7), the zˢarf fīhā is the indispensable predicate of the sentence33 (= al-mustaqarr). In contrast, in mā kāna ʙahˢ adun xayran minka fīhā (Sīb. I:21, 10), the ʙilġāʙ of the zˢarf fīhā takes place, since the indispensable predicate is xayran minka, and hence the status of fīhā as the indispensable predicate is abolished.34 (2) In the examples ʚabdu llahi fīha qāʙiman and fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙiman (Sīb. I:222, 15) the zˢārf fīhā is the indispensable predicate,35 and it is also the ʚāmil of the hˢ āl qāʙiman . In contrast, in fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙimun (Sīb. I:223,2) the ʙilġāʙ of fīhā takes place, since qāʙimun is the predicate, and fīhā loses its status as an indispensable predicate and as an ʚāmil.36
31
See Sīb. I:21, 14–15. The contrast between ʙilġāʙ and ʙiʚmāl is inferred from Sīb. I:21, 9–14, where Sībawayhi uses the forms ʚāmilan and yaʚmalāni in contrast to al-ilġāʙ and ʙalġayta. For the occurrence of the term ʙiʚmāl in the Kitāb, also when referring to other ʚawāmil, see Troupeau, 1976, 149, voc. ʙiʚmāl. 33 The expression ‘indispensable predicate’ here is based on Sībawayhi’s view of xabar kāna (see Levin, 1979, 203–205, § 2.6). 34 See Sīb. I:21, 7–14. 35 See Sīb. I:222, 14–223,1. 36 See Sīb. I:223, 1–2. 32
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Sībawayhi compares the ilġā of the amal of the zarf with that of the verbs later called afāl al-qulūb.37 He says that when the ilġā of the zarf takes place, it is preferable to pronounce it at the end or close to the end of the sentence. In contrast, when the zarf is a mustaqarr occurring as an āmil, it is preferable to put it at the beginning of the sentence, like verbs such as āzunnu and ah sibu, which are pronounced at the beginning of the sentence when they are awāmil.38 Sībawayhi illustrates two types of taqdīr construction of sentences containing a zarf mulġan: (i) In referring to the sentence inna bika zaydan maxūdun “Zayd is enchanted by you” (Sīb. I:242, 2), where the ilġā of the zarf bika takes place, Sībawayhi says that when the speaker expresses this sentence, it is as if he were saying inna zaydan maxūdun. Similarly, when saying inna fīka zaydan la rāġibun “Zayd covets you” (Sib. I:242, 5) it is as if the speaker were saying inna zaydan rāġibun.39 These taqdīr constructions illustrate the notion that when the above sentences are pronounced it is as if the zarf bika and fīka are not spoken, and hence they cannot operate as the āmil producing the accusative in maxūdun and rāġibun respectively. It appears that Sībawayhi holds this view in order to solve a theoretical difficulty arising from one of the main principles of the theory of amal: in his view, the effect of an āmil producing the nominative or the accusative in the noun is always applied, irrespective of whether this āmil is an indispensable part of the sentence or not.40 This principle seems to be violated if one assumes that when a zarf such as fīhā is an indispensable predicate, as in fīhā zaydun qāiman, it is the āmil producing the accusative in the h āl qāiman, but when fīhā is a dispensable part, as in fīhā zaydun qāimun, its amal is abolished. In order to solve this difficulty Sībawayhi says that when the amal of the zarf is abolished, the zarf does not occur in the taqdīr construction. Since according to the grammarians the relevant construction, as far as grammatical analysis is concerned, is that of the taqdīr, Sībawayhi assumes that fīhā
37 The ilġā of the amal of this category of verbs is discussed in chapter 31 of the Kitāb (= Sīb. I:49, 4–52, 15). 38 See Sīb. I:21, 10–13. 39 See Sīb. I:242, 2–8. Sībawayhi’s words expressing this notion are very clear: . . . kaannaka aradta inna zaydan rāġibun wainna zaydan maxūdun walam tadkur fīka walā bika faulġiyatā hāhunā kamā ulġiyatā fī l-ibtidāi (Sīb. I:242, 7–8). 40 See Sīb. I:223, 6–13.
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does not occur in the taqdīr construction,41 and hence it is clear that its amal cannot be applied. (ii) Sībawayhi says that when the speaker expresses the sentence fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun he intends it is as if he were saying abdu llāhi qāimun fīha. This taqdīr construction illustrates the view that when the zarf is not an indispensable predicate and hence is not an āmil, the speaker imagines that it is as if he were pronouncing the zarf at the end of the sentence, since as regards grammatical theory it is preferable to pronounce a zarf which is not an āmil at the end of the sentence, or at least in a position close to the end (see above § 2.2.1). Sībawayhi says that when the ilġā of the zarf occurs in an example like fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun the speaker imagines that it is as if he were saying abdu llāhi qāimun fīhā, since in this taqdīr construction the zarf which is not an āmil occurs at the end of the sentence.42
5. An interpretation of a difficult passage from the Kitāb (Sīb. I:207, 17–21) Sībawayhi’s discussion in Sīb. I:207, 17–21 is one of the most difficult passages in his text. It contains some points relevant to the topic of this paper. In referring to the example marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan “I passed by a man with a hawk who was intending to hunt with it tomorrow” (Sīb., Hārūn II:52, 6–7),43 Sībawayhi says: walam annaka idā nasabta fī hādā l-babi faqulta marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan fal-nasbu alā h ālihi lianna hādā laysa bibtidāin walā yušbihu fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun ġadan lianna z-zurūfa tulġā h attā yakūna l-mutakallimu kaannahu lam yadkurhā fī hādā l-mawdii, faidā sāra l-ismu majrūran aw āmilan fīhi filun aw mubtadaun lam tulġihi liannahu laysa yarfauhu l-ibtidāu, wafī z-zurūfi idā qulta fīha axawāka qāimāni yarfauhu l-ibtidāu
41 For taqdīr constructions which are shorter than their corresponding literal constructions see Levin, 1997, 146–148, § 3.3. 42 See Sīb. I:222, 22–223,6. 43 Derenbourg’s edition has āidan instead of sāidan (see Sīb. I:207, 17–18). However, Hārūn’s version sāidan is supported by Sīb. I:206, 8 in Derenbourg. The version sāidan also occurs in all the later grammarians’ treatises (see, for example, al-Fārisī, I: 250, 7–10; as-Sīrāfī, VI: 131, 7 (in a quotation from Sībawayhi’s text).
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aryeh levin know that if you put a noun in the accusative in [syntactic constructions of] this type,44 and you say marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan, the accusative ending [occurring in sāidan] remains unchanged, because this [utterance]45 is not [an independent sentence] occurring at the beginning of the utterance,46 and it does not resemble [the nominal sentence] fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun ġadan (= ʚAbdallah is standing in it tomorrow) [where the form qāim can take either the nominative or the accusative],47 because [when expressing sentences such as fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun ġadan ] the [ʚamal] of the expressions denoting place (= zurūf ) is abolished, [and the feeling of] the speaker is that [when expressing his literal utterance he intends] it is as if he were not pronouncing the zarf in this place at all.48 When the noun [rajulin] takes the genitive [in the example marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan], or when it is affected by a verb [as in the example raaytu rajulan maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan]49 or [when it is affected by the mubtada [in an example such as hādā rajulun maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan]50 you do not abolish the amal [of the zarf maa which produces the accusative in sāidan], because the ibtidā does not produce the nominative in the noun [rajulin in the example marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan], [and hence this noun is not a mubtada which can be the āmil producing the nominative in the word sāid]. [On the other hand, in sentences beginning with] a zarf,51 when you say fīhā axawāka qāimāni (= your two brothers are in it), the ibtidā produces the nominative in [the mubtada, which is axawāka]52 [so this mubtada is the āmil producing the nominative in the xabar, which is qāimāni (Sīb. I:207, 17–21).53
44 I.e., in syntactic constructions including a relative clause beginning with a zarf, such as marartu birajulin maahu kīsun maxtūmun alayhi “ I passed by a man having with him a sealed sack (Sīb. I:207, 15–16). Many examples of this type are discussed in Chapter 112 of the Kitāb (=Sīb. I:206,5–210,2). 45 I.e., the clause maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan. 46 The term al-ibtidā here denotes “a position occurring at the beginning of the utterance.” For al-ibtidā in this sense, see, for example, Sīb. II:295, 16; 296, 11–15; 297, 3–6; 362, 16–23. 47 See Sīb. I:222, 14–223, 2. See above § 4. 48 I.e., when the speaker says fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun he intends it is as if he were saying abdu llāhi qāimun (for this notion see as-Sīrāfī, VI:135, 18–136, 5; see above § 4). 49 This example does not occur in the Kitāb. It has been introduced here according to al-Fārisī’s interpretation (See al-Farisī, I:251, 3–5) in order to explain Sībawayhi’s intention. 50 This example does not occur in the Kitāb. It is introduced according to al-Fārisī’s interpretation (see al-Farisī, I:251, 3–7), in order to explain Sībawayhi’s intention. 51 In Sībawayhi’s manner of expression a combination such as fī az-zurūf denotes the sense of “in sentences beginning with a zarf ”. Similarly, the expression fī l-fil denotes “in sentences beginning with a verb” (see Sīb. I:17, 17); fī daraba—“in a sentence beginning with daraba” (see Sīb. I:16, 18–20); fī kāna—“in a sentence beginning with kāna” (Sīb. I:17, 12). 52 For this notion see Sīb. I:222, 14–223, 18. 53 Ibid.
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The following remarks and conclusions are inferred from the above passage. These conclusions are supported by other texts in the Kitāb, discussed in this paper. (1) A zarf can operate as an āmil only when it is a mustaqarr, i.e., only when it is the indispensable predicate of a certain sentence or of a certain clause. (2) The zarf cannot be an āmil producing the nominative in the subject or in the predicate. In a nominal sentence such as fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun the mubtada abdu llāhi takes the nominative because of the amal of al-ibtidā, and abdu llahi is the āmil producing the nominative in the predicate qāimun. (3) In a sentence such as marartu birajulin maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan, the noun rajulin cannot be the āmil producing the nominative in sāid, since rajulin is not affected by the ibtidā, and hence it is not a mubtada. In Sībawayhi’s view, in a nominal sentence, only a mubtada can produce the nominative in a noun occurring as a predicate. The noun affected by the mubtada must be logically identical with it. Since the sentence marartu birajulin and the clause maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan do not contain a mubtada logically identical with sāid, sāid cannot take the nominative. The only word, which can be the āmil of sāid in the above utterance is the zarf maa, which can produce the accusative in sāid. Hence it is impossible to abolish the amal of maa, since if its amal were to be abolished the word sāid would remain without an āmil. (4) But in fīhā axawāka qāimāni , the mubtada axawāka takes the nominative because of the amal of al-ibtidā, and hence it can be the āmil of the predicate qāimāni. It is also possible to say fīhā axawāka qāimayni “in it are your two brothers standing.” In this structure axawāka takes the nominative because of the amal of al-ibtidā, and fīhā, which is a mustaqarr, is the āmil producing the accusative in the h āl qāimayni. (5) The form ibtidā contained in the expression lianna hādā laysa bibtidāin denotes “an expression occurring at the beginning of the utterance.” It does not denote here any of the terms it designates in Sībawayhi’s terminology of the nominal sentence. The words lianna hāda laysa bibtidā express the notion that the clause maahu saqrun sāidan bihi is not an independent sentence occurring at the beginning of the utterance. (6) There is another argument which, according to as-Sīrāfī, prevents the ilġā of maahu in the clause maahu saqrun sāidan bihi ġadan:
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maʚahu, as-Sīrāfī says, includes the antecedent -hu , referring to rajulin in marartu birajulin maʚahu sˢaqrun sˢāʙidan bihi ġadan. If the ʙilġāʙ of maʚahu were applied, it would have been dropped from the taqdīr construction, which in this case would be marartu birajulin sˢaqrun sˢāʙidun bihi ġadan. This taqdīr construction cannot exist, since the clause contained in it does not include an antecedent referring to rajulin. Since in the grammarians’ view the taqdīr construction is the relevant one as far as grammatical analysis is concerned, it is impossible to apply here the ʙilġāʙ of maʚahu, since this would create an unacceptable taqdīr construction.
6. Conclusions 1
Syntactically, Sībawayhi distinguishes between two kinds of a zˢarf: 1.1 A zˢarf which is an indispensable predicate of a nominal sentence, as fīhā in the example fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙiman “In it is ʚAbdallah standing.” This kind of zˢarf is called mustaqarr ‘[A zˢarf] denoting the place where the subject is.’ 1.2 A zˢarf which is a dispensable part of the sentence, as fīhā in the example ʚabdu llāhi qāʙimun fīhā “ʚAbdallah is standing in it.” This kind of zˢarf is sometimes called mulġan or laġw or ġayr mustaqarr. 2 A zˢarf which is an indispensable predicate (= mustaqarr) is liable to operate as the ʚamil producing the accusative in a part of a sentence occurring as a hˢ āl or a tamyīz denoting a measure of distance. For example: (i) In fīhā ʚabdu llāhi qāʙiman, fīhā is the ʚāmil of the hˢ āl qāʙiman. (ii) In dārī xalfa dārika farsaxan “the wandering territory of my tribe is behind that of yours, at a distance of one parasang”, the zˢarf xalfa dārika is the ʚāmil of the tamyīz farsaxan. 3 In contrast, a zˢarf which is not an indispensable part of the sentence cannot operate as an ʚāmil. In Sībawayhi’s view, this zˢarf undergoes the process of al-ʙilġāʙ, i.e., the process of the abolishment of its status as an indispensable predicate and as an ʚāmil. Hence, this zˢarf is called mulġan or laġw “[a zˢarf whose] status as an indispensable predicate and as an ʚāmil is abolished.”
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4 Sībawayhi illustrates two types of taqdīr construction of sentences containing a zarf mulġan: 4.1 In referring to examples like inna bika zaydan maxūdun “Zayd is enchanted by you” (Sīb. I:242, 2), where the ilġā of the zarf bika occurs, Sībawayhi says that when the speaker expresses this sentence, he intends it is as if he were saying abdu llāhi maxūdun. This taqdīr construction illustrates the notion that when pronouncing the above sentence the speaker intends that it is as if the zarf bika is not pronounced, and hence it cannot operate as the āmil producing the accusative in maxūdun. 4.2 When the speaker expresses the sentence fīhā abdu llāhi qāimun he intends it is as if he were saying abdu llāhi qāimun fīha. This taqdīr construction illustrates the view that when the zarf is not an indispensable predicate and hence is not an āmil, the speaker imagines that it is as if he were pronouncing the zarf at the end of the sentence, since as regards grammatical theory it is preferable to pronounce a zarf which is not an āmil at the end of the sentence, or at least in a position close to the end.
7. References 7.1
Primary sources
al-Fārisī, Abū Alī al-H asan b. Ahmad b. Abd al-Ġaffār. (d. 377/987). at-Talīqa alā Kitāb Sībawayhi. Iwad b. H amad al-Qūzī, ed. 1410 A.H. = 1990. Cairo. Sībawayhi. (d. 177/793). Le livre de Sībawaihi. Traité de grammaire arabe. Hartwig Derenbourg, ed. 1881–1889. Paris. 2 vols. Abū Bišr Amr b. Utm ān b. Qanbar. (d. 177/793). al-Kitāb. Kitāb Sībawayhi. Abd as-Salām Hārūn, ed. Cairo, 1977. 5 vols. as-Sīrāfī, Abū Saīd. (d. 368/979). Šarh Kitāb Sībawayhi. Ramadān Abd at-Tawwāb and others, eds. Cairo, 1988–2004. 6 vols. 7.2
Secondary sources
Carter, Michael G. 1972. “ ‘Twenty Dirhams’ in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. London 35, 485–496. Jahn, G. 1895. Sībawaihi’s Buch über die Grammatik, übersetzt und erklärt von G. Jahn. Vol. I, second pagination. Berlin. Lane, E.W. 1863–1893. Arabic-English Lexicon. London (8 volumes). Levin, Aryeh. 1979. “Sībawayhi’s view of the Syntactical Structure of kāna wa-axawātuhā,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1, 185–211. ——. 1997. “The Theory of al-Taqdīr and its Terminology. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 21, 142–166.
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——. 2002. “An Interpretation of a Difficult Passage from the Kitāb.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27, 356–362. ——. 2006. “An Interpretation of Two Difficult Passages from al-Kitāb Referring to the ʚĀmil in Elliptical Sentences.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 31, 107–117. ——. (forthcoming). “Sībawayhi’s View of al-mubtadaʙ and al-ibtidāʙ.” Moshe Bar-Asher’s Festschrift. ——. (forthcoming). “The ʚāmil of the xabar in Old Arabic Grammar.” In: Cahiers linguistiques de Inalco. Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-Index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi. Paris: Klincksieck.
PROBLEMS IN THE MEDIEVAL ARABIC THEORY OF SENTENCE TYPES Yishai Peled Tel Aviv University
1. Introduction In medieval Arab grammatical tradition, the two basic sentence types jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya, are normally defined by the first occurring predicative constituent. A verb followed by its subject signals a jumla fiʚliyya (‘verbal sentence’), e.g. dˢaraba ʚabdu-llāhi zaydan (“ʚAbdullāh hit Zayd”). By contrast, a sentence introduced by a nominatival noun is a jumla ismiyya (‘nominal sentence’), e.g. zaydun rajulun (“Zayd is a man”). This binary division corresponds with the grammarians’ theory of ʚamal (‘regimen’), or, to be more specific, with two basic types of ʚamal. A jumla fiʚliyya correlates with a verbal ʚāmil (‘operator’), whereas a jumla ismiyya corresponds with ibtidāʙ, which is considered an abstract ʚāmil.1 The ibtidāʙ is normally said to consist of a zero phonological ʚāmil and the predicatival relationship between the mubtadaʙ and the xabar, respectively the subject and predicate in this type of sentence. The basic principle of ʚamal, stipulating that the ʚāmil should precede the maʚmūl, applies in both sentence types. In a jumla fiʚliyya, the verbal ʚāmil affects the complements following it; in a jumla ismiyya, the abstract ʚāmil, ibtidāʙ, occupies in principle a pre-mubtadaʙ position, from where it assigns the rafʚ case to the mubtadaʙ; the latter, in turn, assigns rafʚ to the xabar (according to Sībawayhi’s [Kitāb I:239] version). As for cases such as dˢaraba zaydan ʚabdu-llāhi and rajulun zaydun, these were presented as cases of taqdīm wa-taʙxīr (‘preposing and postposing’), i.e. as the inverted versions of dˢaraba ʚabdu-llāhi zaydan and zaydun rajulun; in other words, as inverted jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya respectively.
1
For a detailed discussion of this correspondence, see Levin 1985.
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However, the linkage between the concept of two sentence types on the one hand, and the theory of ʚamal on the other, turned out to constitute a major problem with regard to the binary division into jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya. The grammarians realized that such types as dˢaraba ʚabdu-llāhi zaydan and zaydun rajulun, with their inverted versions, leave various constructions that do not easily fit into any of the two categories. The two apparently most problematic cases may be represented by the two model sentences qāʙimun zaydun (“Standing is Zayd”), where a participle is followed by a definite noun phrase, and zaydun fī d-dār, or fī d-dāri (or fīhā) zaydun (“Zayd is in the house/in it”), where the predicate position is occupied either by a definite prepositional phrase or by an adverbial phrase such as hunā, hunāka etc. In the latter type, a definite subject noun may either precede or follow the adverbial/prepositional predicate; an indefinite subject must obligatorily follow its predicate. As it were, sentences such as qāʙimun zaydun and fī d-dāri (or fīhā) zaydun may be considered as cases of an inverted jumla ismiyya, pragmatically motivated. And modern linguists, uncommitted to the theory of ʚamal, would probably regard them as such. Yet for many of the medieval grammarians, they represent, rather, a sentence type in its own right. To be more precise, fī d-dāri zaydun is explicitly presented as such by some of the grammarians; qāʙimun zaydun, by contrast, is often dealt with in a way that leads one to believe that it was considered by certain grammarians as representing a third sentence type.2 I would argue that the controversies that arose over these (and other) constructions point to what may be viewed as gaps in the medieval theory of sentence types. In other words, an attempt will be made to show that the theory, based on a binary conception of jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya, representing two types of ʚamal, was highly vulnerable and far from stable. This paper concentrates on the theoretical problems presented by the above two constructions. We start with qāʙimun zaydun.
2 To be sure, there were grammarians who analyzed both constructions as an inverted jumla ismiyya with a fronted xabar; others accepted more than one type of analysis. For a discussion, cf. Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ, Basītˢ I:583ff.
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2. qāʙimun zaydun In his bāb al-ibtidā, Sībawayhi (Kitāb I:239) discusses the option of mubtada-xabar inversion. His starting point is that the standard preferred (al-h add) structure is for the mubtada to precede the xabar rather than the reverse, much as the standard word order in the verbal sentence is for the fāil to precede the maf ūl. When dealing with inversion, he singles out qāimun zaydun as a markedly complex case deserving special attention. He quotes his teacher al-Xalīl as saying that qāimun zaydun is an ill-formed (qabīh ) sentence unless analyzed as the inverted version of zaydun qāimun. As is well known, some of the later grammarians made the point that such an inversion is quite problematic, since it places the mamūl before the āmil, and the Kūfans saw a further problem in that it makes the pronoun implicit in the participial form qāimun precede its antecedent (al-idmār qabla d-dikr—see, e.g. Ibn al-ʙAnbārī, Insāf I:65). But these problems were easily dismissed by the claim that qāimun zaydun represents a secondary ( far) or surface (lafz) structure, whereas in the basic structure (manā, niyya, taqdīr) zaydun, the zāhir and āmil precedes qāimun, the mamūl, with the implicit pronoun (the mudmar) referring back—as required—to zaydun (for a detailed discussion, see, e.g. Ibn al-ʙAnbārī, Insāf I:65–66, 68). However, the real problem with qāimun zaydun was associated with a different—verbal—analysis of the participle, known to have been advocated by some of Sībawayhi’s contemporaries. Citing al-Xalīl, Sībawayhi points out that: fa-idā lam yurīdū hādā l-manā wa-arādū an yajalūhu filan ka-qawlihi yaqūmu zaydun wa-qāma zaydun qabuh a li-annahu smun “If, however, they do not accept this analysis [= inversion], and want to treat [qāimun] as a verb, in analogy to such sentences as yaqūmu zaydun and qāma zaydun, this should be rejected, because [qāimun] is a noun”— (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:239).
Yet Sībawayhi immediately makes it clear that under certain conditions an active participle, while categorized as a noun, may implement a verbal function (yajrī majrā l-fil). This could be accepted (h asuna indahum), he maintains, if the participle functions as part of an asyndetic relative clause (sifa) linked to some antecedent (mawsūf), or, otherwise, governed by a preceding operator such as a mubtada. In other words, qāimun zaydun is disallowed with a verbal analysis, much as dāribun zaydan (“hitting Zayd”) is unacceptable as a complete sentence. However,
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qāʙimun zaydun, as part of a larger sentence, is acceptable with a verbal analysis, in analogy to such cases as ʙanā dˢāribun zaydan (“I am hitting Zayd”).3 As we shall see shortly, Sībawayhi’s approach to the verbal analysis of qāʙimun zaydun was later established as a firm principle in medieval Arab grammatical thinking. Ibn as-Sarrāj (ʙUsˢūl I:59–60), whose position regarding mubtadaʙxabar inversion seems to be similar to that of Sībawayhi’s, readily accepts muntˢaliqun zaydun as an inverted version of zaydun muntˢaliqun. As for analyzing qāʙimun zaydun as analogous to yaqūmu zaydun where qāʙimun is not preceded by any ‘supporting’ element (see below), in other words, construing zaydun as fāʚil to muntˢaliqun—in principle, Ibn as-Sarrāj, much like Sībawayhi, regards such an analysis as misguided (qabuhˢ a), yet he admits it as jāʙiz (‘acceptable’). What both grammarians seem to accept without reservation is that the noun following the participle may be analyzed as a kind of fāʚil provided that it is anchored (yaʚtamidu ʚalā, in Ibn as-Sarrāj’s words) to some preceding constituent. As an illustration of how this condition can be met, Ibn as-Sarrāj adduces such sentences as: marartu bi-rajulin qāʙimin ʙabūhu (“I passed by a man whose father was standing”), zaydun qāʙimun ʙabūhu (“Zayd— his father is standing”), ʙa-qāʙimun ʙabūka (“is your father standing?”). This rule would be developed by later grammarians into a general principle of iʚtimād, designed to specify the conditions under which a non-verbal predicate may be analyzed as analogous to a verb preceding its subject.4 This principle stipulates that a non-verbal predicatival constituent, such as an active participle, or an adverbial/prepositional phrase (see section 3 below) may exercise ʚamal upon the constituent following it (the subject) only if supported by (yaʚtamidu ʚalā) some element such as an interrogative particle, a relative pronoun, or, otherwise, when the clause as a whole functions as an asyndetic relative clause or as xabar to a preceding mubtadaʙ. In such cases, the first predicatival constituent is perceived as behaving analogously to a verb. And as a verblike constituent it acts as a ʚāmil, assigning the raf ʚ case to the following
3 Sībawayhi (Kitāb I:239) asserts that while the active participle and the verb may be similar in some respects, one must appreciate the difference between them. Other grammarians (e.g. Ibn al-ʙAnbārī, ʙAsrār, 70) pointed out that the active participle is weaker than the verb, and cannot, therefore, exercise verbal ʚamal, unless supported by some preceding element (see below). 4 For the concept iʚtimād as it is used in al-Xalīl’s Kitāb al-ʚAyn with reference to other grammatical structures, see Talmon 1997, 210.
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nominal constituent.5 For discussion, see, e.g. Ibn al-ʙAnbārī, Asrār: 70; cf. Goldenberg 2002, 199–201. Ibn as-Sarrāj is aware, however, of the implications of a verbal analysis of qāimun zaydun for the theory of amal. He argues (Usūl I:60) that in qāimun abūka (“Your father is standing”), qāimun is assigned the raf ʚ case by the ibtidā, and abūka is assigned the same case by the ‘verb’ preceding it. He indicates further that abūka fills a xabar position. In any event, both Sībawayhi and Ibn as-Sarrāj reject the use of dāribun bakran amrun (“ ʚAmr hits Bakr”) as an independent sentence, on the ground that the active participle, while being analogous to the verb, is by definition a nominal, and as such cannot be made to function identically to a verb in terms of case assignment. The above examples, where the participle is linked to a preceding antecedent (mawsūf), a mubtada, or an interrogative particle, are viewed as analogous to the construction dāribun bakran when anchored, under the principle of itimād, to some external constituent (mah mūl alā ġayrihi), such as a mubtada, thus presenting a well-formed independent sentence (e.g. hādā dāribun bakran—“this [person] is hitting Bakr”) (Ibn as-Sarrāj, Usūl I:60; and cf. Sībawayhi’s position above; Levin 1985, 125–126). Like Sībawayhi and Ibn as-Sarrāj, as-Zajjājī (Jumal, 37–38) was aware of the theoretical problems raised by sentences consisting of an active participle followed by a noun phrase. In particular he demonstrated the implications for the grammatical agreement between the two constituents. To the extent that qāimun in qāimun zaydun is conceived of as xabar muqaddam (a fronted xabar), it must be replaced by qāimāni or qāimūna, once zaydun is substituted by a dual or a plural form respectively. But under the alternative analysis cited by as-Zajjājī, in which qāimun is assigned a verbal function, the active participle preceding its subject should invariably take the singular form. In other words, the proponents of this analysis would have qāimun az-zaydāni/az-zaydūna rather than qāimāni z-zaydāni and qāimūna z-zaydūna.6
5 Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ (Basīt I:585) remarks that some grammarians rejected the idea of an adverbial/prepositional phrase assigning case. They argued that such phrases were different in status (manzila) from the adjective. The latter, they argued, is capable of inflection, and as such is more powerful than the adverbial/prepositional phrase. Therefore, they concluded, the adverbial/prepositional phrase may not be analyzed as a case assigner even where the principle of itimād is met. I return to this issue later. 6 See, e.g. Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ (Basīt I:584), who also indicates that the proponents of akalūnī l-barāġīt must, by extension, say qāimāni z-zaydāni and qāimūna z-zaydūna,
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This rule, as stated by as-Zajjājī, highlights the verbal function of the participle under this particular analysis, relating qāimun az-zaydāni/azzaydūna to qāma z-zaydāni/z-zaydūna. It should be noted that the medieval grammarians treated participles, as well as other types of adjective, as complex forms incorporating a personal pronoun (for discussion, see Goldenberg 2002, 195). Ibn Yaʚīš (Šarh I:87–88) states clearly that participles and other adjectives are derived from the verb, and that in virtue of having a “verbal meaning” (manā fil) they must have a fāil.7 However, construing muntaliqun zaydun as modeled on yantaliqu zaydun implies neutralizing the pronominal element in muntaliqun exactly as it is done in yantaliqu.8 The argument is that the participle, much like a regular fil, cannot assign the raf case twice (lā yarfau fāilayni).9 Zajjājī (Jumal, 38) indicates that in such cases the active participle introducing the sentence is assigned raf by the ibtidā, whereas the constituent following it is assigned the same case by “its verb” (bi-filihi— apparently referring to the active participle; cf. Ibn as-Sarrāj’s analysis above). Zaydun in qāimun zaydun, it is argued, replaces the xabar (yasuddu masadd al-xabar); and the participle preceding it, he points out, is invariably singular li-annahu qad jarā majrā l-fili l-muqaddami (“for it behaves analogously to a verb preceding [its subject]”).10 Observe that, unlike the vast majority of grammarians, Zajjājī did not make the point of linking the verbal analysis of qāimun zaydun to an obligatory application of the principle of itimād. It should, indeed, be noted that some of the later grammarians held a narrower version of this principle, restricting the use of a participle in sentence-initial position to cases where the participle is attached to a negative or interroga-
since in this version of the language the verb preceding the subject agrees with it in number and gender (for a detailed discussion of akalūnī l-barāġīt, see Levin 1989). 7 The grammarians, however, recognized that the personal pronoun incorporated in an active participle cannot qualify as fāil in the way an implicit personal pronoun in a verb can. Thus, while alladī daraba zaydun (“The one who hit is Zayd”) is a perfectly grammatical sentence, alladī dāribun zaydun is not, since, unlike alladī daraba, alladī dāribun cannot implement the function of a subject clause (see Jurjānī, Muqtasid I:463–464). 8 This is, perhaps, why the Kūfans, who rejected the analysis of qāimun zaydun as an inverted nominal sentence, could accept it as modeled on a verbal sentence: under the verbal analysis the pronoun in qāimun is disabled so there is no problem of cataphora (cf. above). 9 For Ibn Yaʚīš (Šarh I:87–88), then, a sentence such as zaydun qāimun abūhu (“Zayd, his father is standing”) consists of a mubtada (zayd) and a xabar, the latter analyzed as a complex construction consisting of a fil (qāimun) and a fāil (abūhu). 10 This type of analysis is attributed to ʙAxfaš; see, e.g. Ibn ʚUsˢfūr, Šarh I:341.
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tive particle: mā qāʙimun az-zaydāni (“the two Zayds are not standing”), ʙa-qāʙimun az-zaydāni (“Are the two Zayds standing?”). According to Ibn ʚAqīl (d. 1367) (Šarhˢ I:189), qāʙimun, in each of the last two sentences, functions as a mubtada’, whereas az-zaydāni is a fāʚil sadda masadd alxabar (a fāʚil substituting for the xabar). Indeed, this is the common formula employed by those later grammarians who adopted the verbal analysis of the construction in question (cf. Carter 1981, 189). At this point one might ask how frequent in classical Arabic are such sentences as qāʙimun az-zaydāni? I looked for this construction in the Qurʙānic text, but no example of it was attested. In all the recorded cases, a singular participle is followed by a singular noun phrase, or, otherwise, a singular feminine participle by a plural (non-human) noun phrase. It is interesting to note, however, that all cases display some kind of a ‘supporting element’. In the vast majority of examples, the construction in question functions as predicate to a preceding subject realized as either a referential nominal (typically, but not necessarily, in a sentence introduced by ʙinna or one of its ‘sisters’), or, otherwise, as a nonreferential dˢamīr aš-šaʙn: wa-zˢannū ʙannahum māniʚatuhum hˢ usˢūnuhum (“They believed that their fortresses would protect them”—Q. 59:2), wa-huwa muhˢ arramun ʚalaykum ʙixrājuhum (“You are not allowed to expel them”—Q. 2:85). Huwa in the latter example functions as dˢamīr aš-šaʙn. One example was noted where the ‘supporting element’ is the interrogative particle ʙa-: ʙa-rāġibun ʙanta ʚan ʙālihatī (“do you loathe my gods?”—Q. 19:46). What is then the effect of the ‘supporting’ element that makes [zaydun/rajulun] qāʙimun ʙabūhu or ʙa-/mā qāʙimun ʙabūhu an acceptable verbal construction, as opposed to qāʙimun ʙabūhu? Al-Xalīl (see above) does not provide an elaborate answer. He argues, however, that a participle cannot easily replace a verb in pre-subject position, because it is an ism. A verb and a noun, he maintains, may in certain positions implement similar functions, but they must still be differentiated. Nor did later grammarians elaborate on the function of the ‘supporting’ element. But their discussion of the relevant cases might give us a clue. To phrase the question differently, how does the ‘supporting’ element impart further verbal force to the adjectival predicate that enables it to act analogously to a verb in such cases? If we compare the two constructions qāma zaydun and qāʙimun zaydun, we can see that the difference between the two is that the finite verb, while devoid of a pronominal element, is still inflected for person, whereas the participle is not. Lacking either a pronominal element or inflection for person, the participle is excluded as a
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pre-subject verbal predicate in an independent sentence. The function of the ‘supporting’ element zaydun in zaydun qāimun abūhu, is to make up for the lack of person inflection in qāimun, and thus empower the latter to implement a verbal function.11 Further, as has been indicated, the ‘supportive’ function may be implemented not only by a noun but also by an interrogative or a negative particle. These are, in other words, further sources from which the adjective could derive a verbal force. Already Sībawayhi attributed a verbal effect to certain interrogative particles (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:39f., 41f.—the latter dealing specifically with a-). Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ (Basīt II:712) points out that the interrogative particle a- requires a verb (alhamza tālibatun bi-l-fil), and that underlying (taqdīr) a-zaydun daraba amran is a-daraba zaydun amran (“Did Zayd hit ʚAmr?”) (and cf. his similar attitude to hal—II:679). Regarding the construction at issue he maintains that underlying a-qāimun zaydun is a-yaqūmu qāimun zaydun, and that the former is derived from the latter by suppressing the redundant yaqūmu, for which qāimun serves as an exponent (tafsīr). This explains why the interrogative a- qualified in the grammarians’ view as a supporting element in sentences consisting of an adjectival predicate followed by a subject. However, the verbal analysis of such constructions as (a-)qāimun zaydun raises a difficult problem for the medieval theory of sentence types. For if a sentence consists of a mubtada followed by a fāil, how should it be categorized in terms of sentence types? The fact that the fāil is presented as replacing the xabar does not make the issue any simpler. For under the suggested analysis, a verb-acting constituent is considered, in terms of irāb, as a mubtada assigned the raf case by the ibtidā. The conception of the participle in such cases as mubtada is quite understandable, given that it is a nominatival constituent in sentence-initial position. If one declines the inversion analysis of sentences such as qāimun zaydun, how else can one account for the raf case of qāimun? The main problem with this analysis lies in its stipulating that qāimun as a mubtada assigns raf to a fāil occupying a xabar position. 11 That, I believe, is what is intended by al-Xalīl (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:239) when he refers to the participle in such cases as [kāna] sifatan jarā alā mawsūfin aw jarā alā smin qad amila fīhi “[the participle] is an adjective agreeing with a head or [otherwise] with a noun acting upon it”, and further when he says: lā yakūnu maf ūlan fī dāribin h attā yakūnu mah mūlan alā ġayrihi fa-taqūlu hādā dāribun zaydan . . . “dārib cannot take an object unless it is linked to some other constituent, as for example in hādā dāribun zaydan—this [person] is hitting Zayd”.
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Once we correlate qāʙimun zaydun with qāma zaydun, rather than with zaydun qāʙimun, with the consequence that qāʙimun is to remain in the singular irrespective of the number of the following noun (qāʙimun azzaydāni/az-zaydūna), one can hardly see how sentences such as qāʙimun zaydun under a verbal analysis, let alone qāʙimun az-zaydāni, may be viewed other than as cases of jumla fiʚliyya. Indeed, when presenting the fāʚil, some of the grammarians, like Ibn Yaʚīš (Šarhˢ I:74), indicate that the position preceding the fāʚil is available for a verb ( fiʚl) or a nominal that is analogous to a verb (šabahuhu, mā huwa fī maʚnā l-fiʚl min al-ʙasmāʙ). In this latter category they normally include the active and passive participles, as well as such adjectives as hˢ asan (sˢifa mušabbaha bi-smi lfāʚil—‘an adjective analogous to the active participle’, e.g. Ibn Yaʚīš, Šarhˢ I:87). It is argued that in a sentence such as zaydun dˢāribun ġulāmuhu12 (“Zayd, his slave is hitting”), dˢāribun, much like yadˢribu, assigns raf ʚ to ġulāmuhu. One may infer, then, that Ibn Yaʚīš would regard a sentence such as qāʙimun zaydun as a verbal sentence. Yet I have not recorded any explicit reference to this type of sentence as a jumla fiʚliyya. In any case, the prevalent analysis of the construction under discussion was, as already indicated, mubtadaʙ+fāʚil sadda masadd al-xabar. It is not surprising, however, that the grammarians adhering to this analysis did not commit themselves to explicitly categorizing such sentences as either jumla fiʚliyya or jumla ismiyya. A remarkable exception is Ibn Hišām al-ʙAnsˢārī (d. 1360) who, in his famous book Muġnī l-Labīb, provides an elaborate discussion of Arabic sentence types. Ibn Hišām’s classification will be discussed in detail in section 5 below. As we shall see, he defined three sentence types (rather than two!) by the kind of constituent introducing the sentence. Thus, a sentence introduced by a nominal element is a jumla ismiyya. And among his examples of jumla ismiyya we find the sentence qāʙimun azzaydāni. Ibn Hišām was, indeed, aware of the controversy surrounding this sentence, indicating that it was accepted as a well-formed sentence by ʙAxfaš and the Kūfans. As we saw above, qāʙimun az-zaydāni was adduced as an acceptable sentence in Arabic also by Zajjājī, but the latter did not classify it as jumla ismiyya.
12 Note, however, that in Zamaxšarī’s and Ibn Yaʚīš’s examples the construction at issue is itself a xabar following a mubtadaʙ. As we have seen, this is consistent with the principle of iʚtimād.
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In sum, then, the analysis of qāʙimun zaydun into a mubtadaʙ+fāʚil replacing a xabar appears to reflect a twofold attempt: (1) to make this kind of sentence conform to the principle of ibtidāʙ; this is motivated by the fact that the first constituent is a nominal exhibiting a raf ʚ case ending, and; (2) to apply the principle of verbal taʚdiya, given the verbal properties of the active participle. But, to the extent that this analysis holds, does not it follow (at least from the grammarians’ viewpoint) that qāʙimun zaydun represents a sentence type in its own right? To my knowledge, no such proposition has ever been advanced in medieval Arab grammatical literature.13
3. fīhā / fī d-dāri zaydun Only a small minority of the grammarians suggested that sentences such as fīhā zaydun (“In it there is Zayd”) should be regarded as representing a sentence type in its own right. They designated this type jumla zˢarfiyya, but differed on whether this term should or should not cover also sentences such as zaydun fīhā/fī d-dār (‘Zayd is in it / in the house”). I return to this later. At this point, let us examine the grammarians’ conception of this construction, starting with Sībawayhi. 3.1
Sībawayhi
In his bāb al-ibtidāʙ (chapter 132), Sībawayhi does not develop any discussion of this sentence sub-type. But elsewhere in the Kitāb (I:170–171; cf. Levin 1987, 362, and Owens 1989, 224) he argues that in cases such as huwa xalfaka (“He is behind you”) it is the subject huwa that assigns the nasˢb case to xalfaka. Indeed, this is consistent with his argument (Kitāb
13 Badawi (2000, 8f.) claims that the grammarians recognized three types of sentences namely: fiʚliyya, ismiyya and wasˢfiyya, introduced, respectively, by a verb, a noun and an adjective (a participle or otherwise). He emphasizes the use of different terms for the subject and predicate in each sentence type, indicating that in the jumlat wasˢf these are referred to as mubtadaʙ and fāʚil sadda masadd al-xabar. However, the term jumlat wasˢf has not been attested in the grammarians’ writings studied for the present work.
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I:239) that in zaydun muntaliqun, it is the subject that assigns raf to the predicate.14 However, what about sentences such as fīhā zaydun, consisting of an adverbial/prepositional phrase followed by a nominatival noun phrase? Sībawayhi deals with these cases within the framework of his discussion of sentences such as fīhā abdu-llāhi qāiman and abdullāhi fīhā qāiman (“Abdullāh is in it, standing”—cf. Talmon 1993, 281). He starts his discussion analyzing qāiman as an accusatival xabar to abdu-llāhi. Then he goes on to indicate that abdu-llāhi in these cases: irtafaa bi-l-ibtidāi li-anna lladī dukira qablahu wa-badahu laysa bihi wa-innamā huwa mawdiun lahu wa-lākinnahu yajrī majrā l-ismi l-mabniyyi alā mā qablahu “is assigned the raf case by the ibtidā since the constituent occurring either before or after it [= the adverbial] is not it [= is not identical in reference with it], but rather signals its location. Yet [this adverbial] functions analogously to a noun built upon the [subject] preceding it”—(Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:222).
Sībawayhi, as can be seen, points out that fīhā is non-coreferential with abdu-llāhi, but rather refers to ʚAbdullāh’s location (mawdi). But it is precisely this observation that underlies his endeavor to establish, first of all, the acceptability of fīhā abdu-llāhi/abdu-llāhi fīhā as a complete independent sentence. To this end he draws an analogy between fīhā abdu-llāhi and hādā abdu-llāhi (“This is ʚAbdullāh”), claiming that in terms of completeness, the former, much like the latter, is a kalām mustaqīm (‘a correct sentence’) that h asuna [badahu] s-sukūtu (“that may appropriately be followed by silence”—Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:222 and 239–240). Similarly, abdu-llāhi fīhā is presented by him as analogous to abdu-llāhi axūka (“ʚAbdullāh is your brother”): in both cases the second constituent is ‘built’ (mabnī) upon the first. As for abdu-llāhi, Sībawayhi states clearly that, whether preceding or following the prepositional phrase, it is assigned the raf case by the ibtidā. But once a predicatival relationship is established between fīhā and abdu-llāhi, Sībawayhi reanalyzes the sentence assigning fīhā the function of xabar and abdu-llāhi the function of mubtada. The position of qāiman is then demoted to that of h āl (see Figure 1 below). He points out, however, that since fīhā represents the person’s location, fīhā abdullāhi is paraphrasable by istaqarra abdu-llāhi. In other words, fīhā
14 Note, however, that the amal in huwa xalfaka is presented by Sībawayhi as analogous to that in his model construction išrūna dirhaman (“Twenty dirhams”).
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xabar
fīhā
abdu-llāhi
qāiman
xabar
mubtada
hāl
Figure 1
behaves analogously to the verb istaqarra. As we shall see in 3.2, the verb istaqarra, or otherwise the participle mustaqirrun, have since become the grammarians’ most common device for explaining the grammatical structure of sentences such as zaydun fīhā / fīhā zaydun. A further indication of Sībawayhi’s consideration of fīhā as a verb-like element is his statement (Kitāb I:223) that qāiman in the above sentence may, alternatively, be replaced by qāimun in the nominative. This, he explains, is the result of ‘abrogating’ (alġayta) fīhā. In the medieval grammarians’ writings, ilgā is normally used as a technical term denoting the annulling of amal. It is typically used with reference to potential awāmil, that is, elements that normally exercise amal upon other elements in the sentence (for discussion see, e.g. Peled 1992a, 150–152). One may infer, then, that Sībawayhi considered fīhā, in virtue of its acting analogously to istaqarra, as an āmil assigning nasb to qāiman in fīhā abdu-llāhi qāiman. As we shall see later, such adverbials as fīhā were considered by some early grammarians as an āmil assigning raf to the following subject in such cases as fīhā zaydun. This view is typically attributed to the Kūfans. Yet, Sībawayhi (Kitāb I:223–224) then enters into an extensive discussion designed to exclude the possibility that fīhā in sentences such as fīhā abdu-llāhi qāimun is the āmil assigning raf to abdu-llāhi. He draws an analogy between this sentence and bika abdu-llāhi maxūdun (“Abdullāh is fascinated by you”). He argues that an operator assigning case to an optional constituent (qāimun in the former sentence) has the same status (manzila) as an operator acting upon an obligatory constituent (maxūdun in the latter).15 Sībawayhi emphasizes that in both cases (as well as in similar ones adduced by him) the adjective is ‘built upon’ the noun, thus establishing a predicatival relationship between the two. The prepositional phrase, by contrast, is a laġw, i.e. a constituent that neither assigns nor receives amal. In fīhā
15
Indeed, in later grammatical writings, the model sentence bika zaydun maxūdun features regularly in the Basran arguments against the Kūfan claim that in fīhā zaydun it is fīhā that functions as the āmil assigning raf to zaydun (cf. Ibn al-Anbārī, Insāf I:52–53).
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abdu-llāhi qāimun, fīhā is only designed to specify the location where the standing is taking place. Let us now return to the original construction fīhā abdu-llāhi to which Sībawayhi devotes a separate bāb, following his bāb al-ibtidā. In chapter 133 of the Kitāb, he deals with such cases as fīhā abdu-llāhi, tamma zaydun and ayna zaydun. Compared to his discussion above, Sībawayhi here seems to be less specific about the rāfi of zaydun: wa-lladī amila fīmā badahu h attā rafaahu huwa lladī amila fīhi h īna16 kāna qablahu “The operator assigning raf to the following constituent is the same operator that assigned it the raf case when that constituent was before it [i.e. before fīhā]”—(Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:239; cf. editor’s notes as well as the editions of Būlāq and Hārūn).17
Sībawayhi thus asserts that the operator assigning raf to zaydun in fīhā zaydun is the same one that assigns the raf case to zayd in zaydun fīhā, ‘where/when zayd occurs before it (i.e. before fīhā)’. Apparently, he leaves it to the reader to conclude that it is the ibtidā that functions as āmil in both cases. This could lead one to believe that for Sībawayhi, fīhā zaydun represents an inverted version of zaydun fīhā. Yet Sībawayhi does not make any explicit claim for taqdīm wa-taxīr in this particular case. He presents fīhā zaydun as a case in which fīhā: yaqau mawqia l-ismi l-mubtadai wa-yasuddu masaddahu “occupies the position of the mubtada and replaces it”—(Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:239; quoted also in Kouloughli 2002, 9).
As we saw in section 2, there were among later grammarians those who analyzed qāimun in qāimun zaydun as a mubtada followed by a fāil (replacing a xabar). It seems more than likely that they were influenced by the above Sībawayhian passage. Regarding ayna zaydun, Sībawayhi points out that ayna is paraphrasable by fī ayyi makān (“in which place?”), and emphasizes that ayna, as an interrogative, must obligatorily occur sentence-initially. In other words, fīhā zaydun is distinct from ayna zaydun only in that in the latter case the xabar occupies sentence-initial position obligatorily.
16
The words h aytu and h īna alternate in this position in two different versions of the text. 17 Talmon (1993, 283–284) confronts the long version cited here with a shorter one that to me looks rather obscure.
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It is interesting to note that Sībawayhi does not include in his discussion such cases as fīhā rajulun (“In it there is a man”), where the subject, being indefinite, obligatorily follows the predicate (much like in ʙayna zaydun). Indeed, as we will see later, this construction received little attention from the grammarians, compared to fīhā zaydun. As we shall see, while the grammarians never failed to point out that the predicatesubject order in fīhā rajulun is obligatory, only a small minority of them regarded this construction as representing a sentence type in its own right. For the vast majority, fīhā rajulun, much like fīhā zaydun, represented an inverted jumla ismiyya. A detailed discussion of constructions with an obligatorily fronted xabar is provided in section 4 below. 3.2
The istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis
Following Sībawayhi, the medieval grammarians continued to address themselves to the twofold problem posed by such sentences as zaydun fīhā and fīhā zaydun. This problem, as we have seen, consisted in establishing a predicatival relationship between the nominal and the adverbial/prepositional phrase, and accounting for the ʚāmil assigning case to each. The suggested solution of positing an underlying linking element such as istaqarra/mustaqirrun gave rise to extensive discussions that developed into what may be referred to as the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis. As we saw in 3.1, the origins of this theory can be easily traced back to Sībawayhi’s Kitāb.18 Throughout the centuries, the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis has become the common strategy used by the medieval grammarians in order to account for such sentences as zaydun fī d-dār (or, for that matter, zaydun xalfaka, where xalfaka alternates with min xalfika—for discussion of the status of the zˢarf, see Levin 1987, 351–357).19 As for the grammatical status of the adverbial following the mubtadaʙ, here the grammarians differed. For Sībawayhi (Kitāb I:222), muntˢaliqun and fīhā were equally admissible as xabar for zaydun. In Ibn as-Sarrāj’s (ʙUsˢūl I:62–63) view, the xabar in zaydun fī d-dār is the underlying mustaqir18 As we have seen, however, Sībawayhi used this device in dealing with sentences such as fīhā ʚabdu-llāhi qāʙiman, to account for the nasˢb of qāʙiman; he did not employ it in cases such as fīhā zaydun or zaydun fīhā, pointing rather to the ibtidāʙ, in both, as the ʚāmil assigning raf ʚ to zaydun. 19 For the Kūfan theory of xilāf (or muxālafa), see Astarābādī, Šarhˢ I:214; Ibn alAnbārī, ʙInsˢāf I:245–247; Mujāšiī, Šarhˢ , 87, n. 216; and cf. Carter 1973).
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run which, when coreferring with the mubtada, is optionally omitted (h adf). The adverbial fī d-dār fills the xabar’s slot, acting as a complement to the omitted genuine xabar (for a similar view, see Ibn Usfūr, Šarh I:347). Zaydun xalfaka/fī d-dār is thus paraphrasable by zaydun mustaqirrun xalfaka/fī d-dār. Ibn as-Sarrāj points out that the omitted element normally conveys some meaning of existence, and is redundant because it is retrievable from the adverbial. 20 He emphasizes that postulating an underlying constituent in such cases is obligatory, because, in itself, fī d-dār (or xalfaka) does not qualify as a predicate; that is, it does not predicate any quality of zayd (laysa bi-h adīt),21 but only specifies the location (mawdi) of Zayd. Jurjānī (Muqtasid I:274–275) argues that an adverbial, with either an explicit or implicit preposition, in principle presupposes a verb with which it is linked to form a syntactical unit (cf. Ibn al-Anbārī, Insāf I:246). Consequently, underlying fī d-dār, in zaydun fī d-dār, is the verbal clause istaqarra fī d-dār. This indeed represents the view of the majority of grammarians for whom positing an underlying (muqaddar) finite verb (istaqarra) is consistent with the clausal status of fī d-dār in sentences such as zaydun fī d-dār. Obviously, once established as the (head of the) xabar, istaqarra/yastaqirru is referred to as the āmil, assigning case to the following adverbial/prepositional phrase. However, the assumption of an underlying finite verb in cases such as zaydun fī d-dār was not universally accepted. The controversy here is linked to the fact that not all the grammarians regarded fī d-dār in zaydun fī d-dār as having a clausal status. Some grammarians posited a participle rather than a verb as the underlying element linking the adverbial/ prepositional phrase to the preceding mubtada. We have just seen that Ibn as-Sarrāj was one of the proponents of this hypothesis; indeed, he
20 Ibn Usfūr (Šarh I:347–348) emphasizes that using an adverbial/prepositional phrase as a xabar substitute is only admissible when the deleted element is recoverable from the surface construction—otherwise, the xabar should appear in full. Thus, for example, zaydun fī d-dār is only allowed if it is intended to convey the meaning mustaqirrun fī d-dār, because fī, signalling a receptacle (wiā), is compatible in meaning with istiqrār (‘staying’). If, however, zaydun fī d-dār is intended to convey the meaning of dāh ikun fī d-dār (“[Zayd] is laughing in the house”), then the word dāh ik must occur; for, unlike the meaning of ‘staying’, that of ‘laughing’ cannot be recovered from the preposition fī. Cf. Astarābādī, Šarh I:215, for linking elements like h āsil and kāin (‘be’); Levin 1987, 360. 21 Ibn as-Sarrāj’s use of the term h adīt in this case is significant, for it signalizes ‘predicate’ realized whether as fil or as xabar (cf. Goldenberg 1988, 46–49).
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viewed sentences such as zaydun xalfaka as displaying a single-phrasedrather than a clausal xabar (Ibn as-Sarrāj, Usūl I:63). Astarābādī (Šarh I:215) cites Ibn as-Sarrāj and Ibn Jinnī as two grammarians who advocated the participle rather than the verb hypothesis, on the ground that the participle as a single phrase (mufrad) is compatible with the basic structure of the xabar. Another proponent of the participle hypothesis is Mujāšiī (Šarh , 87) who derives such sentences as zaydun amāmaka (“Zayd is in front of you”) and amrun min al-kirām (“ Amr is one of the honorable”) from the underlying (taqdīr) structures zaydun mustaqirrun amāmaka and amrun kāinun min al-kirām respectively.22 Mujāšiī makes it clear that for him an adverbial/prepositional phrase in xabar position has the status of, and is therefore a substitute for, a participle (not a clause). Postulating a personal pronoun implicit in the participle, Mujāšiī argues further that this pronoun moves to, and resides in, the adverbial/prepositional xabar occupying the position of the deleted participle (in Mujāšiī’s words: wa-afdā d-damīru lladī kāna fī smi l-fāil ilā n-nāib anhu fa-statara fīhi).23 For further discussion of the istaqarra/ mustaqirrun hypothesis, see Jurjānī, Muqtasid I:275ff; Ibn al-Anbārī, Insāf I:245–247; Ibn Usfūr, Šarh I:344, 349–351. We can see that the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis is used by the grammarians to fit the construction zaydun fīhā/fīhā zaydun into their theory of amal, and, by implication, to their binary system of sentence types. Once zaydun in both zaydun fīhā and fīhā zaydun was recognized as a mubtada, both constructions could be said to represent a jumla ismiyya, the latter being an inverted version of the former. The xabar, when following the mubtada, is presented as either clausal or phrasal, depending on whether one assumes yastaqirru or mustaqirrun to be the underlying linking element. In both cases, this element is made accountable for the case of fī d-dār (see Kouloughli 2002, 13–16, for further discussion). However, the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis was not universally accepted. And as we shall see, the alternative hypotheses had substantial implications for the theory of sentence types.
22 Astarābādī (Šarh I:215) claims that the underlying element is obligatorily deleted, rejecting such sentences as zaydun kāinun fī d-dār. He indicates that Ibn Jinnī did allow such constructions, but points out that there is no evidence to support this position. 23 This is evidently Mujāšii’s way of claiming a xabar status for the adverbial/prepositional phrase. Astarābādī (Šarh I:216–217) points to Fārisī and his followers as advocating the same hypothesis. But Sīrāfī is cited by him as claiming that the pronoun is deleted as part of the linking constituent.
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ʙAbū ʚAlī l-Fārisī
ʙAbū ‘Alī l-Fārisī (d. 987) is considered to be one of the first grammarians who advanced in an explicit way and developed the idea of sentence types in Arabic (cf. Owens 1988, 36–37). He defined each type, and spelled out the problematic nature of the dichotomy verb+noun ( jumla fiʚliyya) versus noun+noun ( jumla ismiyya).24 Indeed, he was the first to present a detailed argument with the conclusion that zaydun fī d-dār is neither a jumla fiʚliyya nor a jumla ismiyya. Having defined the two basic sentence types in Arabic, Fārisī turns to concentrate upon the construction represented by zaydun fī d-dār. Indeed it looks as though Fārisī’s definition of the two basic sentence types is meant as an introduction to his discussion of this particular construction (Fārisī, ʚAskariyya, 105–109). He starts by indicating that, although such sentences are composed of a nominal element (i.e. the two nouns) and a particle (the preposition), they do not have the same status as ʙinna sentences, where the particle enters into a sentence made up of two nouns. This is because fī d-dār is non-coreferential with zaydun. And since zayd and fī d-dār are not identical in reference, they cannot be analyzed simply as subject and predicate. However, given that zaydun fī d-dār is definitely a well-formed sentence in Arabic, one must assume some underlying (muqaddar) linking element to account for the predicatival relationship between its two constituents. As we saw in 3.2, this linking element must inevitably be either a noun or a verb (a particle does not bear any reference). To the extent that either of these can be posited, a sentence such as zaydun fī d-dār must eventually belong either to the verb+noun or to the noun+noun type.25
24 Anxious to provide accurate and valid definitions, Fārisī (ʚAskariyya, 104–105) points further to the option of a particle (hˢ arf) entering into either of the two defined jumla’s, to form a kalām. What the reader is invited to infer is that the resulting construction is an independent grammatical sentence whose basic type (i.e. fiʚliyya or ismiyya) is unaffected. He exemplifies this by sentences introduced by hal, ʙinna, mā, qad and lam. (As a matter of fact, the same principle had already been stated by Ibn as-Sarrāj, ʙUsˢūl I:43.) 25 Fārisī (ʚAskariyya, 109) draws a comparison between the case in question and address (nidāʙ) expressions. He argues that yā zaydu (‘O, Zayd!’), much like fī d-dāri zaydun, consists of nominal elements and a particle, and constitutes an independent sentence. The difference between the two, he maintains, is that in the case of yā zaydu a verbal element should be assumed, which renders the address expression a sub-type of a jumla fiʚliyya, whereas in the case of zaydun fī d-dār/fī d-dāri zaydun no such element can be posited (see below).
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However, from this point onward, Fārisī’s argument continues in a direction designed to prove that this is not the case. In other words, a sentence such as zaydun fī d-dār, while conforming to the general principle governing the production of well-formed sentences, constitutes an exception in that it does not fall into any of the two basic categories, jumla filiyya and jumla ismiyya. In Fārisī’s words: a-lā tarā anna l-kalāma wa-in kāna lā yaxlū mimmā dakarnā fī l-asli faqad sāra lahu l-āna h ukmun yaxruju bihi an dālika l-asli “Notice that although a sentence must obey the basic principles indicated by us, in this case there is an [overriding] rule leading the sentence away from the basic principles” (Fārisī, Askariyya, 105).
What Fārisī is now trying to prove is that neither a verb nor a noun can be posited as a linking element establishing a predicatival relationship between zaydun and fī d-dār, a relationship modeled on that obtaining between the subject and predicate of a regular verbal or nominal sentence. And if it can be proved that neither a verb nor a noun can be posited as an underlying linking element between zaydun and fī d-dār, the conclusion must be that sentences such as zaydun fī d-dār represent a sentence type in its own right. He starts (Fārisī, Askariyya, 105) by adducing the sentence inna fī d-dāri zaydan, were the particle inna enters into the sentence fī d-dāri zaydun (his choice of this construction rather than zaydun fī d-dār is significant, as will be seen below.) Then he makes the following two points: (1) An underlying verbal link cannot be assumed, because a verb would exclude the use of inna. In other words, while fī d-dāri zaydun may be preceded by yastaqirru, inna and yastaqirru are mutually exclusive: inna fī d-dāri zaydan is a perfectly grammatical sentence in Arabic, but *inna yastaqirru fī d-dāri zaydan is disallowed. (2) A linking noun cannot be posited either, because that would amount to assuming—falsely—that inna exercises its effect (amal) upon zaydan across the underlying linking noun (Fārisī, Askariyya, 108). Having disqualified both noun and verb as possible underlying linking elements in cases such as zaydun fī d-dār and fī d-dāri zaydun, Fārisī (Askariyya, 108) argues further that in such cases the adverbial constituent as such cannot be claimed to implement a verbal function. This,
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he maintains, is borne out by the fact that the adverbial may not be preceded by a circumstantial phrase; a sentence such as *qāiman fī d-dāri zaydun is inadmissible, but it would be allowed if fī d-dār had a verbal value (a sentence such as qāiman dah ika zaydun is considered as perfectly acceptable by the grammarians.) All the above boils down to a rejection of the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis, and that, in turn, leads Fārisī to the conclusion that sentences such as zaydun fī d-dār/fī d-dāri zaydun should be considered neither as jumla filiyya nor as jumla ismiyya; they must be thought of, rather, as representing a sentence type in its own right. Note, however, that Fārisī did not assign the type of sentence under discussion any special designation. The term jumla zarfiyya to which we will be introduced below was coined in a later period. But if one is supposed to assume no underlying element linking the two predicatival constituents in zaydun fī d-dār/fī d-dāri zaydun, what is then the assigner of raf to zaydun in such cases? As we saw in 3.1, Sībawayhi, who was not committed to any theory of sentence types, had no problem presenting the ibtidā as raf assigner to zayd in both zaydun fī d-dār and fīhā zaydun. But for Fārisī, making a similar claim would imply classifying fīhā zaydun as a jumla ismiyya. Regarding the raf assigner in zaydun fī d-dār Fārisī does not develop any elaborate discussion, apparently because in such cases one would automatically refer to the ibtidā as the raf assigner. However, when it comes to fīhā zaydun, the construction on which he focuses his discussion, Fārisī presents a clear position as to the rāfi of zaydun. Having shown that neither a verb nor a noun can be posited as a linking element, and having proved, further, that the adverbial itself cannot be claimed to function as a verb, Fārisī (Askariyya, 108–109) refers the reader to Abū l-Hˢ asan [al-Axfaš] (d. 733), explaining that these are the reasons why Abū l-Hˢ asan regarded the adverbial per se as the rāfi when preceding a noun functioning as muh addat anhu (‘of whom the message is predicated’, ‘subject’). Notice that it is not the term fāil that is used with reference to that noun, but rather muh addat anhu, a term that cuts across all sentence types. As we shall see, however, later grammarians did not refrain from using the term fāil in this particular context. Obviously, attributing the assigning of raf to an adverbial/prepositional phrase constitutes a serious problem for the theory of amal. Since the formulation of this theory, the grammarians always insisted that the function of case assignment is implemented by either a verb or a particle. Various elements, notably active participles and other adjectives
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were claimed to have a ‘verbal force’. But in our case, as we have seen, Fārisī argued that fī d-dār was not verbal enough to allow a circumstantial phrase to precede it. So one might ask what it is that qualifies fīhā as raf ʚ assigner. To my knowledge, this point has never been clarified by the grammarians. And it is no wonder that the concept of jumla zˢarfiyya, where a predicatival prepositional phrase assigns raf ʚ to the following subject, remained marginal and never became part of mainstream medieval Arab grammatical thinking. Anyhow, for Fārisī, ʙAxfaš’s position regarding the rafʚ assigner in fīhā zaydun constituted further support for his thesis that this construction represents a sentence type in its own right.
4. Obligatory fronting of the xabar 4.1
Formal aspects
A remarkable feature of the grammarians’ (including Fārisī’s) discussion of the adverbial/prepositional xabar is that they base their argument on such sentences as zaydun fī d-dār/fī d-dāri zaydun, where the definite subject may either precede or follow the predicate (cf. Kouloughli 2002, 10, n. 7). But for the third sentence type advocated by Fārisī, sentences such as ʚindī mālun (“I have money”) would surely be a better example. For in this case the subject follows the predicate obligatorily; reversing the order is disallowed. Most of the grammarians adduce such sentences by way of illustrating an obligatorily fronted (taqdīm) xabar. However, within the framework of their grammatical discourse, obligatory fronting of the xabar presents a major conceptual problem. A xabar, by definition, must follow, not precede, the mubtadaʙ. The very concept of an obligatorily fronted xabar appears to conflict with two fundamental principles in medieval Arab grammatical theory : 1. The formal principle stipulating that the ʚāmil precede the maʚmūl—see, e.g. Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ, Basītˢ I:587); 2. The functional principle placing the constituent representing the ‘given’ information before the one representing what is ‘new’ for the addressee. To the extent that the mubtadaʙ is identified with the ‘given’, and the xabar with the ‘new’, such sentences pose a serious problem. Obviously, in cases such as fī d-dāri rajulun, the grammarians could not present rajulun fī d-dār as the ʙasˢl of fī d-dāri rajulun, since the former is disallowed as an independent sentence in Arabic. One may argue,
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therefore, that in fī d-dāri rajulun, as well as in other cases of obligatory fronting to be discussed below, the very concept of taqdīm is not normally intended in the sense that the above structure is the output of reversing the order of some basic structure in which the indefinite rajulun precedes fī d-dār. Rather, one must assume that taqdīm in such cases is used in the sense of ‘placing in initial position’, with no transformation involved. Ibn Yaīš (Šarhˢ I:86) argues that rajulun fī d-dār is excluded (1) because it could be wrongly interpreted as a noun phrase (with fī ddār functioning as the attribute—sˢifa—of rajulun) rather than as a complete sentence (see also Ibn Usfūr, Šarhˢ I:343), and (2) in order to avoid introducing a declarative (wājib) sentence by an indefinite noun.26 The idea of transformation in cases such as fī d-dāri rajulun was not, however, universally excluded. Not surprisingly, it was suggested, albeit in a rather idiosyncratic manner, by Ibn Jinnī, a grammarian noted for his originality and for frequently advancing dissenting arguments incompatible with mainstream medieval Arab grammatical thinking. In his Sirr sˢināʚat al-ʙiʚrāb, Ibn Jinnī (Sirr I:276) uses the concept ʙasˢl marfūdˢ (‘a rejected basic construction’) in dealing with cases which he regards as transformed constructions, but whose underlying structure (ʙasˢl) is inadmissible. The principle of ʙasˢl marfūdˢ is not explicitly applied by him to rajulun fī d-dār. But in his Xasˢāʙisˢ (I:300) he maintains that, while mubtadaʙ-xabar is the basic word order of a jumla ismiyya, a certain intervening factor (ʚāridˢ) might impose the reversal of that order. The occurrence of an indefinite mubtadaʙ at the beginning of an affirmative sentence constitutes in Ibn Jinnī’s view such an ʚāridˢ, a kind of contingency imposing the movement of the mubtadaʙ into the second position in the sentence (cf. Peled 1992b, 105–106).27 This is regarded 26 Astarābādī (Šarhˢ I:232) maintains that the problem of ambiguity between xabar and sˢifa is acute, owing to the common occurrence of an adverbial in xabar position in Arabic. He cites, however, one case where an adverbial xabar follows an indefinite mubtada, pointing out that it is perfectly acceptable when the sentence is used as an exclamation (duʚāʙ). Astarābādī also remarks that fronting a non-adverbial xabar to an indefinite mubtadaʙ does not eliminate the ambiguity. Thus, if you transform rajulun qāʙimun into qāʙimun rajulun, rajulun could be analyzed as xabar of qāʙimun or as an apposition (badal) to it, whereas a fronted adverbial in similar cases is bound to be interpreted as xabar, due to its nasˢb case, whether explicitly marked (lafzˢan), or understood by position (mahˢ allan). 27 Note that an indefinite mubtadaʙ introducing a negative or interrogative sentence is readily accepted by Ibn Jinnī. Thus he admits (Xasˢāʙisˢ I:300) sentences such as hal ġulāmun ʚindaka (“Is there a boy with you?”) and mā bisātˢun tahˢtaka (“There is no carpet under you”), claiming that they are communicatively useful, as opposed to sentences such as rajulun ʚindaka (“A man is with you”). The argument is that one can
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by him as a corrective procedure (ʙisˢlāhˢ al-lafzˢ):28 the second position, he reminds us, is in principle the xabar’s position; and since the xabar is essentially indefinite, the indefinite mubtadaʙ now fills the appropriate slot as far as (in)definiteness is concerned. He emphasizes, however, that in the underlying theoretical (muqaddar) level the mubtadaʙ precedes the xabar (Ibn Jinnī, Xasˢāʙisˢ I:318).29 There are other cases adduced by the grammarians as examples of obligatory fronting of the xabar. The first example presented by Ibn Abī r-Rabī (Basītˢ I:587) is the interrogative construction ʙayna zaydun (“Where is Zayd?”). This grammarian strived to demonstrate that such cases of obligatory xabar fronting do not violate the basic principle that the ʚāmil must precede the maʚmūl. Regarding ʙayna zaydun he indicated that the basic underlying (ʙasˢl) structure in this case is ʙa-zaydun fī d-dāri ʙam fī s-sūqi ʙam fī l-hˢ ānūti (“Is Zayd at home, in the market, or in the shop?”). The word ʙayna is an economy device designed to replace both the adverbials and the interrogative particle ʙa-, as well as the particle ʙam. It implements a xabar function in virtue of its being a replacement for the adverbials. At the same time, it is obligatorily fronted as a substitute for the interrogative particle ʙa-. Another semantic component in ʙayna is that of specification (taʚyīn), formally represented in the basic underlying structure by the particle ʙam. The transformation from the basic to the final surface structure thus proceeds in the following stages: First, the xabar ( fī d-dāri ʙam fī s-sūqi etc.) is moved to a frontal position immediately following ʙa- (ʙa-fī d-dāri ʙam fī s-sūqi . . . zaydun— the interrogative ʙa- is always positioned sentence-initially). Then ʙayna is introduced to replace all the constituents preceding zaydun. It is thus the adverbial semantic component in ʙayna that warrants its occurrence in pre-mubtada’ xabar position, whereas the interrogative component accounts for the obligatoriness of the movement. Ibn Abī r-Rabī indicates that the same applies to other interrogatives such as matā, kayfa, negate the existence of, or pose a question with regard to, an unknown entity (mankūr lā yuʚraf ), while there is no communicative value in predicating of an unknown entity affirmatively. 28 Similarly, Astarābādī (Šarhˢ I:232) regards the obligatory fronting of the xabar in cases such as fī d-dāri rajulun as a corrective (musˢahˢ hˢ ihˢ ) procedure designed to handle the indefiniteness of the mubtadaʙ. 29 Ibn Jinnī (Xasˢāʙisˢ I:319–320) then refers to sentences displaying an indefinite mubtadaʙ in sentence-initial position. He argues, however, that these are not predicatival sentences, in the sense that they are meant to express a wish or imprecation rather than convey information. Another case is explained by him as paraphrasable by a negative sentence (cf. n. 27 above).
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man and mā: kayfa axūka (“How is your brother?”), man axūka (“Who is your brother?”), and the like. Ibn Abī r-Rabī’s second case of obligatory xabar fronting is the construction fī d-dāri rajulun. This, however, is dealt by him in pragmatic rather than in purely formal terms, and will, therefore, be reviewed in the following sub-section. The third case is exemplified by Ibn Abī r-Rabī (Basīt I:588) by the sentence alā t-tamrati mitluhā zubdan (“on the date there is butter of an equal amount”). He indicates that the reverse order (mitluhā zubdan alā t-tamrati) is disallowed since -hā in mitluhā is an anticipatory pronoun in both lafz (surface) and martaba (underlying) structures, thus violating the rule of the anticipatory pronoun (al-idmār qabla d-dikr—cf. section 2 above). For further discussion of the relationship between anaphora and the position of the xabar, see Astarābādī, Šarh I:232–233. Introducing his fourth and final case of obligatory xabar fronting, Ibn Abī r-Rabī (Basīt I:588) cites the exceptive sentences mā fārisun illā zaydun (“No one is a horseman but Zayd”) and mā fī d-dāri illā amrun (“No one is in the house but Amr”). In these two sentences the subject nominal occurs sentence-finally and is dominated by the exceptive particle illā. Reversing the order in such cases, Ibn Abī r-Rabī points out, would not violate the rules of Arabic grammar, but result in a sentence different in meaning from the original one. The sentence mā fārisun illā zaydun assigns to Zayd, and only to him, the attribute of horsemanship. This sentence, however, is neutral as to whether or not Zayd possesses other qualities as well. But if the order of constituents is reversed so as to make the subject zaydun precede the predicate, the resulting sentence mā zaydun illā fārisun unmistakably excludes the possibility that Zayd possesses any quality beside horsemanship. Similarly, the sentence innamā fārisun zaydun is equivalent in meaning to mā fārisun illā zaydun, whereas innamā zaydun fārisun is synonymous with mā zaydun illā fārisun, which explains why a mubtada-xabar order is inadmissible in this related case as well. Ibn Usfūr (Šarh I:353) adds two more cases where the xabar is obligatorily placed sentence-initially: 1. When the mubtada is a nominalized clause introduced by anna: fī ilmī annaka qāimun (“It is known to me that you are standing”); 2. When the xabar is a kam al-xabariyya phrase: kam dirhamin māluka (“How many dirhams you have!”). The first of these two cases is dealt with also by Astarābādī (Šarh I:233–234) who cites Fārisī as claiming that the adverbial/prepositional phrase in such cases exercises amal (raf ) upon the following anna
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clause with no supporting element (cf. 3.3 above; for iʚtimād, see section 2 above). Astarābādī (Šarhˢ I:233) explains that the reason for the obligatory fronting of the xabar (whether adverbial or not) in such cases is that if the ʙanna clause were placed sentence-initially, the word ʙnna could be misread as ʙinna rather than ʙanna. For, between the two particles, it is the former rather than the latter that is associated with the initial position in the sentence. Astarābādī points out further that if the xabar precedes the ʙanna clause it is bound to be correctly analyzed as xabar to the following clause as a whole rather than as a fronted constituent governed by ʙanna, because a constituent within the scope of ʙinna/ ʙanna cannot be preposed to either of these particles. Furthermore, once the adverbial/prepositional phrase is established as the xabar of the following clause, then the particle heading that clause will be easily read as ʙanna, because a mubtada’ clause, being a noun clause, cannot be introduced by ʙinna. For further discussion of this issue, see Ibn Yaīš, Šarhˢ VIII:59–60. As we have just seen, fī d-dāri rajulun was only one item, and not necessarily the first, on the list of constructions presented by the grammarians as examples of obligatory fronting of the xabar. But it was apparently the most difficult to deal with in purely syntactic terms. For one thing, like the related fī d-dāri zaydun, it presented a challenge to the theory of ʚamal. For another, the indefiniteness of the mubtadaʙ could not, in itself, constitute sufficient grounds for ruling out its occurrence in sentence-initial position (cf. Astarābādī, Šarhˢ I:202–207 for a detailed discussion of cases of an indefinite mubtadaʙ in sentence-initial position). The grammarians’ main formal explanation for the obligatoriness of predicate-subject order in this case was that an adverbial/prepositional phrase following an indefinite nominal could be wrongly interpreted as an attribute rather than a predicate. But as we have just indicated, sentences with an indefinite mubtadaʙ do occur in Arabic. Indeed, as we will see shortly, the strongest argument against *rajulun fī d-dār was pragmatic rather than syntactic. 4.2
fī d-dāri rajulun—pragmatic aspects
When examining the construction fī d-dāri rajulun in terms of information structure, most of the grammarians appreciated that sentences of this kind represent a special case. Indeed they recognized that in these cases it is the definite adverbial/prepositional phrase, occupying sentence-initial position that represents the given information, whereas the
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following nominatival indefinite phrase signals the new information, and not the other way around (see, e.g. Ibn Yaʚīš, Šarh I:86–87).30 Ibn Yaʚīš (Šarh I:86) argues that, judging by the meaning of sentences such as laka mālun (“You have money”), it is the definite complement of the preposition (in this case the pronoun -ka) that represents the muh addat anhu (‘what the sentence is about’), even though, formally ( fī l-lafz), it is the nominatival noun that implements that function.31 In support of his claim he indicates (1) that laka mālun is paraphrasable by anta dū mālin, and (2) that an indefinite nominal is inadmissible in the position of the complement of the preposition: *li-rajulin mālun is disallowed (lam yakun kalāman—‘is not an [acceptable] sentence’). Another attempt to relate the construction in question to a mubtadaxabar order was made by Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ. This grammarian presents a number of cases where the xabar is obligatorily fronted (cf. 4.1 above), taking great pains to demonstrate that fronting the xabar in these cases is wholly justified, if not on purely formal, then on functional/semantic, grounds. Regarding fī d-dāri rajulun, Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ states the following: fa-hādā yulzimu t-taqdīma wa-lā yajūzu taxīruhu fa-taqūla rajulun fī d-dāri li-annahu lā yubtadau bi-n-nakirati wa-innamā jāza l-i-btidāu hunā bi-n-nakirati li-anna l-maqsūda l-ixbāru an-i d-dāri bi-annahā maskūnatun wa-laysati n-nakiratu l-maqsūdata bi-l-ixbāri wa-kāna l-aslu an taqūla ad-dāru mamūratun bi-rajulin tumma arādū l-i-xtisāra fa-qālū fī d-dāri rajulun wa-alzamū d-dāra t-taqdīma li-annahā l-muxbaru anhā bi-l-h aqīqati “in such cases [the xabar] is preposed obligatorily. It may not be postposed to yield rajulun fī d-dār, because an indefinite noun may not fill a mubtada position. In our case, the mubtada32 may be indefinite, because the intention is to predicate of the house that it is inhabited, rather than to predicate of the indefinite noun. Underlying [our sentence] is the sentence ad-dāru mamūratun bi-rajulin. But for the sake of brevity, they say
30 According to Talmon (1993, 285–287), the idea is already attested in ninth century writings where the locative is typically referred to as sifa and the nominatival noun following it as xabar as-sifa. 31 This obviously rests on the assumption that in a sentence containing only one nominatival noun, it is this noun that should be construed as the muh addat anhu. This term, while referring literally to a pragmatic function, signals in the grammarians’ usage, the subject, irrespective of sentence type; its counterpart h adīt signals the predicate (see Goldenberg 1988, 46–49, for discussion). 32 Notice that yubtadau and ibtidā are both construed in this case as ‘used as mubtada’ or ‘implementing a mubtada function.’
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yishai peled fī d-dāri rajulun. They obligatorily prepose the [phrase fī] d-dār, because it is really the house that is predicated of [i.e. the topic]” (Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ, Basīt I:587–588).
In other words, the sentence fī d-dāri rajulun is paraphrasable by ad-dāru mamūratun bi-rajulin (“The house is inhabited by a man”), where ad-dāru obviously functions as mubtada. Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ explains that the meaning intended by fī d-dāri rajulun is that the house is inhabited; it is ad-dār of which something is predicated, not the indefinite rajulun. The version fī d-dāri rajulun, Ibn ʙAbī r-Rabīʚ maintains, is preferred to ad-dāru mamūratun bi-rajulin for reasons of economy. The constituent ad-dār is obligatorily preposed, for it is the one that implements the function of muxbar anhu, which obviously entails that rajulun functions as xabar. (For the terms muxbar/muxbar anhu, see Goldenberg 1988, 46–51). A different, indeed exceptional, view on this issue is held by Jurjānī (Muqtasid I:308–309). Sentences such as indī mālun (“I have money”) are dealt with by him within the framework of his discussion of sentences with an indefinite mubtada. For Jurjānī, the mubtada in this particular case, albeit indefinite, implements the same pragmatic function as a definite sentence-initial mubtada. Mālun in the above sentence implements the function of mubtada li-ajli h usūli l-ixtisāsi fī l-xabari id kullu wāh idin lā yalamu anna indaka mālan “because the xabar signals some specification [regarding the mubtada], for it is not common knowledge that you have money” (Jurjānī Muqtasid I:308).
For Jurjānī, then, indī in its sentence-initial position makes the same contribution to the communicative value (ifāda) of the sentence as would a xabar occupying a post-mubtada position. Much like other grammarians, however, Jurjānī argues that in such cases the xabar is obligatorily fronted because mālun indī would be wrongly interpreted as a noun phrase, with indī analyzed as a complement (sifa) to mālun (see 4.1 above). Most of the grammarians, however, did not follow this line of thought. Rather, they discerned a discrepancy between the syntactic analysis of sentences such as fī d-dāri rajulun into xabar and mubtada, and the pragmatic functions of muxbar anhu and xabar implemented by fī ddār and rajulun respectively. They did, however, emphasize that in terms
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of definiteness sentences like laka mālun conform to the principle that the definite constituent, representing the given information, should precede the indefinite noun signalling the new information. In any case, the grammarians could not accept an analysis of fī d-dāri rajulun into a mubtadaʙ followed by a xabar, on the ground that if a sentence of this kind is introduced by ʙinna, the noun phrase rajul automatically takes the nasˢb case, which marks it unmistakably as subject. For discussion, see Kouloughli (2002, 16–17), and his references.
5. Ibn Hišām al-ʙAnsˢārī’s tripartite division 5.1
Background
Returning now to the question of the rafʚ assignment in cases such as fīhā zaydun, most of the grammarians from Sībawayhi onwards regarded ibtidāʙ as the operator assigning rafʚ to zaydun. This, however, was by no means universal, as we have seen. Indeed, Ibn al-Anbārī (ʙInsˢāf I:51–55) attributes this position to the Basrans while presenting the other (much less common) position as Kūfan. We learn that the Kūfans, as well as the Basran grammarians Mubarrad and Axfaš (cf. 3.3 above), regarded the adverbial/prepositional phrase in the above case as the assigner of rafʚ to the following noun zaydun.33 Ibn al-Anbārī maintains that both the Basrans and the Kūfans resort to Sībawayhi for support for their respective claims. The Basrans obviously point to chapter 133 in the Kitāb, where, as we have seen, Sībawayhi refers to the ibtidāʙ (though without using the actual term) as the ʚāmil assigning raf ʚ to zaydun. The Kūfans, for their part, draw upon a number of cases where, according to Sībawayhi, an adverbial assigns rafʚ to a following noun (Ibn al-Anbārī, ʙInsˢāf I:52). It is upon such cases, Ibn al-Anbārī argues, that the Kūfans base their claim that in fīhā zaydun it is fīhā that should be regarded as the rāfiʚ of zaydun. Astarābādī (Šarhˢ I:218) indicates that the analysis of zaydun in fī d-dāri zaydun as fāʚil of the adverbial/prepositional phrase was advanced by the Kūfans, as well as by Axfaš in one out of two statements he made
33 This position is clearly evidenced in Farrā’s Maānī l-Qurʙān (e.g. I:195–196; III:133). See Talmon (1993, 279) for further details and references.
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on the subject.34 The argument in both cases is that the adverbial/prepositional phrase has a ‘verbal force’ (maʚnā l-fiʚl), analogously to qāʙim in qāʙimun zaydun. In Astarābādī’s view, the Kūfans’ position emanates from their categorical objection to xabar fronting, irrespective of whether the xabar is a phrase or a clause. This objection, in its turn, is designed to forestall the occurrence of an anticipatory pronoun. To this, however, Astarābādī offers an outright rejection, claiming, as could be expected, that the anticipatory pronoun occurs only in the surface structure; in the basic structure the mubtadaʙ precedes the xabar with no anticipatory pronoun involved (cf. section 2 above). As for Axfaš, according to Astarābādī he did not object to xabar fronting, and (in his other statement) indeed regarded the ibtidāʙ as the assigner of rafʚ to zaydun in fī d-dāri zaydun. Axfaš’s position here is divergent from the one cited above. It rests upon two assumptions: 1. The verbal force of the adverbial/prepositional phrase is weaker than that of the adjective. 2. The acceptability of the construction fī dārihi zaydun (“in his house Zayd [is located]”). In this case, the option of analyzing zaydun as fāʚil is excluded on the ground that it would lead to an unacceptable anticipatory pronoun (since the pronoun, under this analysis, would be cataphoric both in the lafzˢ and maʚnā configurations—cf. Astarābādī, Šarhˢ I:202). The debate, as could only be expected, concludes with the Basrans having the upper hand. There is evidence to suggest, however, that, as in many other cases, the position dismissed as ‘Kūfan’ represented a view that was much more widely accepted than the ‘mainstream’ medieval grammarians would have us believe. As we shall see in the next sub-section, it remained viable centuries later, in the writings of one of the most prominent medieval grammarians, Ibn Hišām al-Ansārī. The relevance of this issue to our discussion is clear: it is closely related to the question of whether or not sentences such as fīhā zaydun represent a sentence type in its own right.
34 Ibn al-Anbārī (ʙInsˢāf I:51) adds Mubarrad to the proponents of this kind of analysis (and cf. Ibn Usfūr, Šarhˢ I:158–159).
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Ibn Hišām’s categorization and definitions
Coming now to the 14th century grammarian Ibn Hišām al-Ansārī (d. 1360), we find both a critical discussion of the concept jumla as compared with kalām, and an unambiguous division into three sentence types. Recall that Fārisī’s starting point was that there were two basic sentence types in Arabic. This was followed by an elaborate argument designed to prove that zaydun fī d-dār represented a sentence type in its own right. For Ibn Hišām the tripartite division is an established linguistic fact, and he makes it the starting point of his discussion. He does not, however, ignore the problems raised by this division, as we shall see. Ibn Hišām (Muġnī, 492) starts by defining the concepts kalām and jumla. The latter is defined by him as a construction made up of either fiʚl + fāʚil or, otherwise, mubtadaʙ + xabar. Then, however, he distinguishes three types of jumla, ismiyya, fiʚliyya and zˢarfiyya, introduced respectively by a noun, a verb and an adverbial (zˢarf) or a prepositional phrase ([ jārr wa-] majrūr).35 Being aware of the problem arising from his defining each type by the initially occurring constituent, he remarks (Muġnī, 492) that the definitions refer only to predicative constituents (musnad and musnad ʙilayhi). Thus, the sentence ʙa-zaydun ʙaxūka (“Is Zayd your brother?”) and the conditional clause ʙin qāma zaydun (“If Zayd stands up”) are, respectively, ismiyya and fiʚliyya, even though the first noun in the former and the verb in the latter are each preceded by a particle. Once the problem of the particles is settled, Ibn Hišām appears to be remarkably uncompromising in applying his principle, that Arabic sentence types must be defined by the initial predicative constituent. And this, indeed, leads to some conspicuous peculiarities. The jumla ismiyya, for instance, is exemplified by him by the following three sentences: zaydun qāʙimun (“Zayd is standing”), hayhāti l-ʚaqīq (“How far is the ravine!”) and qāʙimun az-zaydāni (“Standing are the two Zayds”). While the first of the three sentences is straightforward, the other two are not. The word hayhāt in the second example is regarded by the medieval grammarians as ism fiʚl representing, as the term suggests, a special word category whose members are considered as neither nouns nor verbs (see, e.g. Astarābādī, Šarhˢ III:165ff. for details). Such ʙasmāʙ
35 A fourth type, jumla šartˢiyya, which, as he indicates, was proposed by Zamaxšarī, is rejected by Ibn Hišām on the ground that the conditional clause should be categorized as jumla fiʚliyya.
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al-ʙaf ʚāl, in constructions like hayhāti l-ʚaqīq, are normally described as occupying a verb position, with the implication that the following noun implements the function of fāʚil. However, since hayhāt as an ism fiʚl is viewed as a special kind of noun (rather than as a kind of verb), a sentence introduced by it must, according to Ibn Hišām’s rigid principle of classification, be regarded as a jumla ismiyya rather than as jumla fiʚliyya. The special problems relating to the third case (qāʙimun az-zaydāni) have already been discussed in section 2 above, and will not be repeated here. It is, however, noteworthy that for Ibn Hišām the fact that qāʙimun az-zaydāni is introduced by a participle (viewed by the grammarians as a nominal element) was sufficient for classifying this sentence as jumla ismiyya; the fact that qāʙimun is followed by a noun in the dual form did not require, in his eyes, any further argument or elaboration. The jumla fiʚliyya is illustrated by Ibn Hišām by six sentences introduced by a verb. Out of these, five are straightforward: he uses qāma, yaqūmu, qum, dˢuriba and zˢanna to demonstrate that a jumla fiʚliyya may be introduced by any finite verb form. Specifically, by adducing the sentence zˢanantuhu qāʙiman (“I believed him to be standing”), Ibn Hišām makes the point that a cognitive verb may, like any other verb, introduce a jumla fiʚliyya. As is well known, in medieval Arab grammatical theory, from Sībawayhi onwards, cognitive verbs such as zˢanna (zˢanna wa-ʙaxawātuhā—‘zˢanna and sisters’) are presented as analogous to ʙinna and kāna (and their respective ‘sisters’), in that they enter into (yadxulna ʚalā) sentences composed of a mubtadaʙ and xabar, nullifying in the process the abstract operator ibtidāʙ, and assuming in its stead the function of a formal ʚāmil assigning case to both nominal constituents in the sentence (see, e.g. Sībawayhi, Kitāb I:6; Ibn Yaʚīš, Šarhˢ VII:77–78). In any case, the status of zˢanna as a verb was never disputed. By contrast, the verbal status of kāna was a matter of controversy among the grammarians. The vast majority of grammarians considered kāna as a semantically deficient (nāqisˢ) verb,36 in the sense that it lacks the semantic component of action.37 As such, its only function is to signal the time of the nominal sentence into which it ‘enters’. Significantly, 36 Unless signalling existence, in which case it is labelled kāna at-tāmma ‘complete kāna’, and treated as an ordinary verb. 37 This had been recognized already by Sibawayhi, although in his account (Sibawayhi, Kitāb I:16) he depicted kāna as analogous to dˢaraba in terms of transitivity (taʚdiya): like dˢaraba it takes two nominal complements, one in the nominative, the other in the accusative.
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while acknowledging the predicative relationship between zaydan and qāiman in zanantu zaydan qāiman, the grammarians analyze the two nominal constituents as direct objects (maf ūl) of zanna. By contrast, in kāna zaydun qāiman, zaydun and qāiman are normally analyzed in terms of a jumla ismiyya, namely as mubtada and xabar, or otherwise, as ism kāna and xabar kāna—respectively. True to his rigid definitions of the three sentence types, Ibn Hišām includes in his examples of jumla filiyya the sentence kāna zaydun qāiman (“Zayd was standing”). And this already seems to run counter to the mainstream conception of jumla filiyya. Indeed, the grammarians do not normally bring kāna into their discussions of sentence types. But given their special treatment of this verb, it is highly unlikely that they would have classified kāna zaydun qāiman as jumla filiyya just by the verbal morphology of kāna. But the most interesting for our present discussion is Ibn Hišām’s jumla zarfiyya. This he illustrates by the two sentences a-indaka zaydun (“Is Zayd with you?”) and a-fī d-dāri zaydun (“Is Zayd in the house?”), where the first predicatival constituent is an adverbial and a prepositional phrase, respectively. Ibn Hišām points out that sentences such as these can qualify as jumla zarfiyya only idā qaddarta zaydan fāilan bi-z-zarfi wa-l-jārri wa-l-majrūri lā bi-listiqrāri l-mah dū fi wa-lā mubtadaan muxbaran anhu bihimā “if you assume zayd to be a fāil [acted upon] by the adverbial/prepositional phrase, not by a deleted [verb/participle conveying the meaning of] istiqrār, and [only if] you do not analyze zayd as a mubtada for which the adverbial/prepositional phrase serves as xabar” (Ibn Hišām al-ʙAnsˢārī, Muġnī, 492).
The significance of this passage lies in that it seems to suggest that Ibn Hišām’s sentence-type definitions were not as rigid as they appeared to be when we looked at his definitions and illustrations of the jumla ismiyya and the jumla filiyya. It now turns out that for him, the predicative constituent that comes first in the sentence is not in itself the only criterion for determining the type of sentence. Rather, for a predicatival constituent to qualify as sentence-type identifier it must act as āmil upon the second predicatival constituent. Another important point to note is that in both of Ibn Hišām’s examples the adverbial/prepositional phrase is preceded by the interrogative particle a-. This may be taken to suggest that by the time of Ibn Hišām the principle of itimād, which, as we have seen (section 2 above), can be
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traced back to Sībawayhi, had already been firmly established in medieval Arab grammatical thought. When Ibn Hišām states that a sentence can only qualify as a jumla zarfiyya if the second constituent functions as fāil to the first, illustrating this with examples displaying the interrogative particle a- preceding the first predicative constituent, one is bound to conclude that for him a jumla zarfiyya is a sentence whose first predicatival constituent is an adverbial/prepositional phrase, where that phrase acts as a verb, thus assigning raf to the following constituent on the strength of the principle of itimād. Ibn Hišām then goes on to make a critical remark directed at Zamaxšarī. He indicates that Zamaxšarī exemplified jumla zarfiyya by the phrase fī d-dār in zaydun fī d-dār (cf. Ibn Yaʚīš, Šarh I:88). This position, he argues, is based: alā anna l-istiqrāra l-muqaddara filun lā ismun wa-alā annahu h udifa wah dahu wa-ntaqala d-damīru ilā z-zarfi bada an amila fīhi “on [the assumption] that [the underlying word conveying] istiqrār is a verb, not a noun, and that that verb was deleted alone while the pronoun implicit in it moved to the adverbial phrase, after [the verb] had exercised amal upon the adverbial” (Ibn Hišām al-ʙAnsˢārī, Muġnī, 492).
Recall that zaydun fī d-dār was described by Fārisī as representing a sentence type in its own right on the ground that, in his view, neither a verb nor a noun could be posited as a linking element between zayd and fī d-dār. Here Zamaxšarī is quoted as elevating fī d-dār to the status of a clausal xabar (jumla zarfiyya). This is done, so the argument goes, by positing an underlying verb that is deleted while the pronoun implicit in it is transferred to the adverbial, the verb having exercised amal upon that adverbial. In other words, the clausal status of fī d-dār stems from the pronoun it receives from the deleted verb istaqarra. What we see here is, indeed, another attempt to account for the predicatival relationship between zaydun and fī d-dār, two non-coreferential elements, as well as for the irāb of the xabar. However, this attempt is based on the istaqarra hypothesis (3.2 above), and that is precisely the reason why it is rejected by Ibn Hišām. Zamaxšarī’s analysis is incompatible with Ibn Hišām’s conception of jumla zarfiyya. For Ibn Hišām, once an underlying verb is assumed, the clause should be regarded as a jumla filiyya; exactly as, when one posits a xabar-mubtada relationship between fī d-dār and zayd, the sentence must be considered as jumla ismiyya. This will be further clarified below. In 3.3 we pointed to Fārisī’s reference to ʙAxfaš, who had attributed to the adverbial/prepositional phrase the function of operator assigning
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raf to the nominal following it. He did not, however, refer to that nominal explicitly as fāil. The term muh addat anhu which he used, signals in medieval Arabic grammatical literature the subject of the sentence, whether a fāil or a mubtada. Indeed, the specific grammatical status of the nominatival constituent, as determined by the āmil assigning it the raf case, never ceased to be a topic of debate among the grammarians. Yet one thing emerges quite clearly. The analysis of zaydun as fāil in both fī d-dāri zaydun and qāimun zaydun, normally attributed to the Kūfans and ʙAxfaš (see section 2 above), always comes up when these two constructions are discussed. It was never abandoned. However, of these two constructions, it is only fīhā/fī d-dāri zaydun that was considered, albeit by a small number of grammarians, as a sentence type in its own right. The reason for this should by now be clear. The opening predicative constituent in each of the three sentence types was regarded as an operator (āmil) assigning case to the following constituent(s): sentence types were unmistakably correlated with amal types. And since the participle (qāimun) could not be viewed as other than a verbal or a nominal element, it could not be regarded as introducing a sentence type in its own right. By the same token, a sentence such as zaydun fī ddār, introduced as it is by a nominatival noun, could only be defined as jumla ismiyya. The concept jumla zarfiyya was by and large associated with cases where a zarf could be claimed to be a āmil assigning raf to the nominal following it. As we will see in the next sub-section, it was Ibn Hišām, an eminent proponent of the tripartite division, who also appreciated and spelled out the problems arising from the actual notion of sentence types in Arabic, whether two or three. 5.3
Problems
As we have seen throughout, the problems the grammarians encountered in categorizing Arabic sentences stemmed from the fact that their conception of sentence types was deeply embedded in the theory of amal. This is manifested also in the way these problems are illustrated by Ibn Hišām (Muġnī, 493–497). He offers an illuminating discussion of ten cases where a sentence can be construed as either a jumla filiyya or a jumla ismiyya, or, otherwise, raise a controversy among grammarians as to the right categorization. Significantly, no case is cited as an unambiguous jumla zarfiyya. Since the basic arguments recur throughout his discussion, I will review only four of his examples that, I believe, well illustrate the problematic aspects of the traditional categorization of sentence types.
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Let us start with Ibn Hišām’s fourh example mādā sanata (“What have you done?”). He points out that this sentence may be paraphrased as either mā lladī sanatahu, or as ayya šayin sanata. Since lladī sanatahu is a nominalized constituent, the sentence, according to the first paraphrase, must be categorized as a jumla ismiyya. Ibn Hišām indicates that the first constituent mā is analyzed as a fronted xabar by ʙAxfaš, and as mubtada by Sībawayhi. By contrast, the proponents of the second paraphrase, ayya šayin sanata, would categorize the same sentence as a jumla filiyya, analyzing ayya šayin as a fronted direct object. (And see, further, Ibn Hišām’s discussion of the sentence mādā sanatahu.) Ibn Hišām’s sixth example reads qāmā axawāka (“Your two brothers stood up”). This sentence is presented by him as acceptable, subject to specific types of analysis. (To what extent this construction was in actual use in medieval Arabic is immaterial for the present discussion). First, the sentence could be categorized as jumla filiyya if (1) the ending -ā in qāmā is interpreted as a dual-marking particle (h arf tatniya), much as the -t in qāmat Hindun is analyzed as a feminine marker (and not as a pronoun); or alternatively if (2) the ending -ā is interpreted nominally and the following axawāka is analyzed as apposition (badal) to it. Second, qāmā axawāka may be categorized as jumla ismiyya with a fronted xabar (with the ending -ā interpreted nominally and axawāka analyzed as a postposed mubtada). Note that Ibn Hišām does not mention the possibility of analyzing qāmā axawāka as a jumla filiyya with axawāka functioning as fāil to qāmā (luġat akalūnī l-barāġīt see above, section 2, n. 6). The seventh example presented by Ibn Hišām is nima r-rajulu zaydun (“What a nice man is Zayd”). This sentence, he explains, may be viewed as an inverted jumla ismiyya, with nima r-rajulu functioning as a preposed xabar to zayd. Under an alternative analysis, however, zaydun could function as xabar to a deleted mubtada. Ibn Hišām argues that under the latter analysis, nima r-rajulu zaydun consists of two asyndetically coordinated clauses, the first one (nima r-rajulu) verbal, and the second nominal. But perhaps the most interesting is Ibn Hišām’s second example, where he makes the following statement regarding a-fī d-dāri zaydun and a-indaka amrun: fa-innā in qaddarnā l-marfūa mubtadaan aw marfūan bi-mubtadain mah dū fin taqdīruhu kāinun aw mustaqirrun fa-l-jumlatu ismiyyatun dātu xabarin fī l-ūlā wa-dātu fāilin muġnin an-i l-xabari fī t-tāniyati wa-in qaddarnāhu fāilan bi-staqarra fa-filiyyatun aw bi-z-zarfi fa-zarfiyyatun
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“if we analyze the nominatival constituent as mubtadaʙ, or otherwise, as a nominal assigned the raf ʚ case by a deleted mubtadaʙ such as kāʙinun or mustaqirrun, then the sentence should be considered as nominal, with a xabar under the first analysis, or with a fāʚil replacing the xabar under the second. If, however, we analyze it [i.e. zaydun or ʚamrun] as fāʚil of [an underlying] istaqarra, then the sentence is verbal; if [the operator assigning raf ʚ to the fāʚil] is the adverbial, then the sentence should be considered as a jumla zˢarfiyya” (Ibn Hišām al-ʙAnsˢārī, Muġnī, 494).
Here Ibn Hišām offers four ways for analyzing sentences such as ʙa-fī d-dāri zaydun, correlating each analysis with a different sentence type. These are the four options as presented in the above passage, in Ibn Hišām’s order: 1. zaydun could be analyzed as mubtadaʙ. This would imply that the sentence is a jumla ismiyya, with the adverbial/prepositional phrase implementing the function of (a preposed) xabar. 2. We could posit an underlying mubtadaʙ, such as kāʙinun or mustaqirrun, assigning the raf ʚ case to zaydun. In this case zaydun would implement the function of fāʚil replacing (muġnin ʚan) the xabar. The sentence under such an analysis would be regarded, according to Ibn Hišām, as jumla ismiyya. 3. zaydun could be analyzed as fāʚil assigned the raf ʚ case by the underlying verb istaqarra. In this case the sentence would be considered as jumla fiʚliyya. 4. If, however, we analyze zaydun as a fāʚil receiving its rafʚ case from the preceding adverbial/prepositional phrase, then the sentence should be regarded as jumla zˢarfiyya. In Ibn Hišām’s view, then, a fāʚil is not necessarily preceded by a finite verb. But it is only when the operator assigning rafʚ to the fāʚil is a finite verb (whether explicit or underlying) that the sentence may be conceived of as jumla fiʚliyya. When the raf ʚ assigner is a participle (whether explicit or underlying) or an adverbial/prepositional phrase, the sentence must be conceived of as a jumla ismiyya in the first case, and as a jumla zˢarfiyya in the second, even though the actual use of the term fāʚil suggests that the participle and the adverbial / prepositional phrase in such cases behave analogously to a verb. As can be seen, Ibn Hišām presents the four options without any attempt to ‘defend’ his categorization. His analyses are consistent with his definitions of the three sentence types (see 5.2 above), and manifestly reflect the controversies relating to the constructions in question.
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The proponents of the first option would presumably regard ʙa-fī d-dāri zaydun as the inverted version of ʙa-zaydun fī d-dār. The occurrence of the interrogative ʙa- in this case is irrelevant, as is the case also under the third analysis, where the sentence is presented as an unmistakable jumla fiʚliyya. Indeed, positing an underlying verb like istaqarra in order to account for the raf ʚ case of zaydun in sentences of this kind was common practice among the grammarians, as we saw in 3.2. What is really remarkable in Ibn Hišām’s third analysis is that it leads to the important conclusion that under a certain analysis a sentence such as ʙa-fī d-dāri zaydun could be conceived of as jumla fiʚliyya. Under the second analysis, zaydun implements the function of fāʚil following a deleted mubtadaʙ, thus occupying a xabar position. The adverbial/prepositional phrase, under this as well as under the third analysis (see above), would be analyzed as an adjunct. Obviously, the second analysis is reminiscent of the analysis of (ʙa-)qāʙimun zaydun into a mubtadaʙ followed by a fāʚil replacing the xabar, as we saw in section 2. Note that, unlike Sībawayhi (Kitāb I:239; and cf. 3.1 above), Ibn Hišām does not view the prepositional phrase as occupying a mubtadaʙ position. Rather, the mubtadaʙ in this case is an underlying participle. Here, at any rate, a sentence whose subject is labeled fāʚil is categorized as jumla ismiyya. As we have already indicated, the fourth analysis is consistent with Ibn Hišām’s theory of three sentence types, each defined by the predicative constituent introducing the sentence (and acting as ʚāmil upon the second constituent). But we have already seen (3.3 above) that it remains unclear how an adverbial/prepositional phrase can function as a verb assigning rafʚ to a following nominal constituent. Following Sībawayhi, it was often argued that such a phrase may act analogously to a verb when preceded by a ‘supporting’ element such as the interrogative particle ʙa- (iʚtimād—cf. sections 2, 4.1 above). But does that in itself warrant categorizing the construction ʙa-fī d-dāri zaydun as representing a sentence type in its own right? The concept of jumla zˢarfiyya does not seem to have been seriously discussed in the writings of the medieval Arab grammarians. Evidently, the vast majority found it difficult to fit the concept of jumla zˢarfiyya into their theory of ʚamal. Indeed, this is manifested even in Ibn Hišām’s position, which does not present ʙa-fī ddāri zaydun as a straightforward jumla zˢarfiyya. Rather, it makes it clear that the actual identification of a sentence as jumla zˢarfiyya is essentially dependent upon conceiving the adverbial/prepositional phrase as a ʚāmil assigning rafʚ to the following nominal. The other two types,
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in contrast, could be determined straightforwardly, since both the verb and the ibtidāʙ were established ʚawāmil in the medieval theory of ʚamal. Hence the grammarians’ adherence to the binary system of jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya.38
6. Summary Since the grammarians’ theory of sentence types grew out of, and has always been closely related to, their theory of ʚamal, it is not surprising that in elaborate discussions of Arabic sentence types, particularly those of Fārisī and Ibn Hišām, problems relating to the categorization of certain constructions were couched in terms of case assignment (ʚamal). The basic types of jumla fiʚliyya and jumla ismiyya are shown throughout to represent two types of ʚamal: verbal taʚdiya and ibtidāʙ. Sentences such as qāʙimun zaydun and fī d-dāri zaydun/rajulun are shown to be problematical in terms of ʚamal. With regard to qāʙimun zaydun, we have seen that many grammarians advocated the rather awkward analysis of mubtadaʙ+fāʚil sadda masadd al-xabar. This was designed to deal with the essentially nominal nature of the participle occurring sentence-initially, as well as with its verb-like behavior in this particular case. Apart from Ibn Hišām who regarded this construction as an example of jumla ismiyya, the proponents of the above analysis did not commit themselves to any clear-cut categorization of this particular structure. Regarding fī d-dāri zaydun/rajulun, the very fact that this construction displays an adverbial/prepositional predicative constituent in sentence-initial position, gave rise to the hypothesis that it represents a sentence type in its own right, a jumla zˢarfiyya. And it comes as no surprise that this was associated with the hypothesis that in such cases it is the adverbial/prepositional phrase that assigns raf ʚ to the nominal constituent following it. Obviously, this hypothesis and the long established istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis were mutually exclusive. In 3.3 we saw Fārisī’s attempt to refute the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis, arguing from the theory of ʚamal. This was his line of defending a tripartite sentence-type system.
38 For a modern study advocating a three-type division, see Kouloughli (2002, 21–24) who argues that sentences such as fī d-dāri rajulun/zaydun (referred to by him as ‘locative sentences’) should be viewd as representing a sentence type in its on right, since they exhibit a number of syntactic and semantic properties not shared by ‘regular’ topiccomment sentences.
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For him, indeed, claiming that fīhā zaydun represented a sentence type in its own right was tantamount to presenting fīhā as the assigner of raf ʚ to zaydun. But such an argument could never be accepted by the majority of grammarians, because it was considered a major violation of a central principle of the theory of ʚamal. The vast majority of grammarians did find the istaqarra/mustaqirrun hypothesis a convenient tool for fitting such constructions as zaydun fīhā and fīhā zaydun into their theory of ʚamal. The question of sentence type was apparently secondary. Once they established the status of mubtadaʙ to zaydun in both cases, they could argue that both represent a jumla ismiyya, irrespective of whether the underlying element linking the adverbial/prepositional phrase to the mubtadaʙ is a verb or a participle. Fīhā zaydun was thus conceived of as the inverted version of zaydun fīhā. To Ibn Hišām, as we have seen, this was unacceptable. For, if underlying fīhā zaydun is the structure yastaqirru fīhā zaydun, it follows that zaydun is assigned the rafʚ case by the underlying verb occupying sentence-initial position. And Ibn Hišām, indeed, drew the conclusion following from that assumption, namely that under the above analysis fīhā zaydun must be categorized as jumla fiʚliyya. But this position of Ibn Hišām’s is clearly exceptional in the medieval grammatical literature. The majority of grammarians, conforming to the theory of ʚamal, did posit istaqarra as the underlying case assigner to zaydun, but they never went as far as categorizing fīhā zaydun as jumla fiʚliyya. Rather, fīhā zaydun has always been regarded an ibtidāʙ construction, clearly associated with jumla ismiyya.
7. References 7.1 Primary sources Astarābādī, Šarhˢ = Radī ad-Dīn Muhammad b. al-H asan al-Astarābādī, Šarhˢ Kāfiyat Ibn al-Hˢ ājib. Emil Badī Yaqūb, ed. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1998. Fārisī, ʚAskariyya = Abū Alī l-Fārisī, al-Masāʙil al-ʚaskariyyah. Muhammad aš-Šāti r Ahmad Muhammad Ahmad, ed. Cairo: Matb aat al-Madanī, 1982. Farrā, Maʚānī = Abū Zakariyyā Yahyā b. Ziyād al-Farrā, Maʚānī l-Qurʙān. Ahmad Yūsuf Najātī and Muhammad Alī an-Najjār, eds. Cairo: ad-Dār al-Misriyya li-t-Talīf wa-t-Tarjama, 1955–1972. Ibn Abī r-Rabī, Basītˢ = Ubaydallāh b. Ahmad b. Ubaydallāh Ibn Abī r-Rabī, al-Basītˢ fī šarhˢ jumal az-Zajjājī. Ayyād b. ‘Īd at-Tabītī, ed. Beirut: Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, 1986. Ibn al-Anbārī, Asrār = Abū l-Barakāt Abd ar-Rahmān b. Muhammd b. Abī Saīd alAnbārī, Kitāb ʙAsrār al-ʚArabiyyah. Muhammad Bahjat al-Baytā r, ed. Damascus: Matbūāt al-Majma al-Ilmī al-Arabī bi-Dimašq, 1957. Ibn al-Anbārī, ʙInsˢāf = Abū l-Barakāt Abd ar-Rahmān b. Muhammd b. Abī Saīd alAnbārī, Kitāb al-ʙInsˢāf fī masāʙil al-xilāf bayn an-nahˢwiyyīn al-basˢriyyīn wa-l-kūfiyyīn. Muhammad Muhī ad-Dīn Abd al-H amīd, ed. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.
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Ibn Aqīl, Šarh = Bahā ad-Dīn Abdallāh Ibn Aqīl, Šarh Ibn Aqīl alā alfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Muhammad Muhyī ad-Dīn Abd al-H amīd, ed. n.p: Dār Sab, n.d. Ibn Hišām, Muġnī = Jamāl ad-Dīn Ibn Hišām al-Ansārī, Muġnī l-labīb an kutub alaārīb. Māzin al-Mubārak and Muhammad Alī H amdallāh, eds. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1985. Ibn Jinnī, Sirr = Abū l-Fath Utmān Ibn Jinnī, Sirr sināat al-irāb. H asan Hindāwī, ed. Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1985. Ibn Jinnī, Xasāis = Abū l-Fath Utmān Ibn Jinnī, al-Xasāis. Muhammad Alī an-Najjār, ed. Cairo: al-Haya l-Misriyya l-Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1986–1988. Ibn as-Sarrāj, Usūl = Abū Bakr Muhammad b. Sahl Ibn as-Sarrāj, Al-Usūl fī n-nahw. Abd al-H usayn al-Fatlī, ed. Beirut: Muassasat ar-Risāla, 1987. Ibn Usfūr, Šarh = Alī b. Mumin b. Muhammad b. Alī Ibn Usfūr, Šarh jumal azZajjājī. Sāhib Abū Janāh, ed. Mosul: Ihyā at-Turāt al-Islāmī, 1980–1982. Ibn Yaīš, Šarh = Muwaffaq ad-Dīn Yaīš b. Alī Ibn Yaīš, Šarh al-Mufassa l. Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbī, n.d. Jurjānī, Muqtasid = Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, Kitāb al-muqtasid fī šarh al-Īdāh . Kāzim Bahr al-Marjān, ed. Baghdad: Dār ar-Rašīd li-n-Našr, 1982. Mujāšiī, Šarh = Abū l-H asan Alī b. Faddāl al-Mujāšiī, Šarh uyūn al-irāb. Abd alFattāh Salīm, ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif, 1988. Sībawayhi, Kitāb = Abū Bišr Amr b. ‘Utm ān Sībawayhi, Al-Kitāb. Hartwig Derenbourg, ed. Hildesheim and New York: G. Olms, 1970. Zajjājī, Jumal = Abū l-Qāsim Abd ar-Rahmān b. Ishāq az-Zajjājī, Kitāb al-jumal fī nnahw. Alī Tawfīq al-H amad, ed. Beirut: Muassasat ar-Risāla, Dār al-Amal, 1988. 7.2
Secondary sources
Badawi, El-Said M. 2000. “Ray fī maānī l-irāb fī fush ā t-turāt: H ālat al-jumla lismiyya.” Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in Arabic and English Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Z. M. Ibrahim, S. T. Aydelott and N. Kassabgy, eds., 1–20. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Carter, Michael G. 1973. “Sarf et H ilāf: Contribution à l’histoire de la grammaire arabe.” Arabica 20–3, 292–304. ——. (ed.). 1981. Arab Linguistics: An introductory classical text with translation and notes (Širbīnī’s Nūr al-sajiyyah). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goldenberg, Gideon. 1988. “Subject and Predicate in Arab Grammatical Tradition.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 138–1, 39–73. ——. 2002. “Two Types of Phrase Adjectivization.” “Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten aramäisch, wir verstehen es!”: 60 Beiträge zur Semitistik, Festschrift für Otto Jastrow zum 60. Geburtstag, W. Arnold and H. Bobzin, eds. 193–208. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Kouloughli, D. E. 2002. “On locative sentences in Arabic.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 41, 7–26. Levin, Aryeh. 1985. “The distinction between nominal and verbal sentences according to the Arab grammarians.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 15, 118–127. ——. 1987. “The views of the Arab grammarians on the classification and syntactic function of prepositions.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10, 342–367. ——. 1989. “What is meant by akalūnī l-barāġītu?” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 12, 40–65. Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The Foundations of Grammar: An Introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——. 1989. “The Syntactic Basis of Arabic Word Classification.” Arabica 36, 211–234. Peled, Yishai. 1992a. “Amal and Ibtidā in Medieval Arabic Grammatical Tradition.” Abr-Nahrain 30, 146–171. ——. 1992b. “Cataphora and Taqdīr in medieval Arabic grammatical theory.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15, 94–112.
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Talmon, Rafael. 1993. “Two Early ‘non-Sībawaihian’ Views of ʚamal in Kernel-Sentences.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 25, 278–288. ——. 1997. Arabic Grammar in its Formative Age: Kitāb al-ʚAyn and its attribution to Xalīl b. Ahˢ mad. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
ARABIC AVANT LA LETTRE. DIVINE, PROPHETIC, AND HEROIC ARABIC Stefan Wild Bonn
1. Introduction: the Qurʙān The history of the Arabic language is indelibly marked by the fact that the Qurʙān has made Arabic a prophetic language with its own holy book and a worldwide appeal. Arabic had been a mantic language in pre-Islamic times. When the poet recited verses or when the soothsayer uttered his sayings, reciter and listener were sure that behind his voice there was another voice. This voice ‘really’ speaking was that of a higher power. With the Qurʙān, the mantic voice behind the voice of the Prophet Muhammad became in the believer’s ear the voice of the one and only God. Muslim dogma and the consensus of the unlearned considered the Qurʙān to be the direct, undiluted Arabic word of God. The status of Classical Arabic, the standardization of Arabic including the development of Modern Standard Arabic, the diglossia Standard Arabic versus Arabic dialects, the nature of the Arabic vocabulary, Arabic orthography, Arabic style and vocabulary—all are unthinkable without the ‘Qurʙānic fact’. The history of the Arabic language down to our times cannot be written without constant reference to the Qurʙān. Conversely, the Qurʙān is deeply marked by its ‘Arabness.’ The Qurʙān is the first literary document in Arabic. It is also the first Arabic document to mention the Arabic language. In contradistinction to the attitude of the Jewish Bible and the Christian New Testament toward their own linguistic forms, the language of the Qurʙān is an important topic of Qurʙānic self-reflection. While neither the Bible nor the New Testament refer to their Hebrew (or Aramaic) and Greek literary forms, the Arabic character of the Qurʙān is in its self-view a cornerstone of its divine quality. The adjective ʚarabī in the Qurʙān always refers to the language, never to a tribe or a social class. The term as an ethnic designation is also
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very rare in Jāhiliyya poetry.1 In the Qurʙān, ʚarabī refers always to the language of the holy text. It occurs eleven times in the Qurʙān, and only in Sura’s traditionally dated to the Middle and late Meccan period. In six passages, the adjective ʚarabī is a qualification of the word Qurʙān, a word meaning primarily ‘recitation, reading aloud . . .’ (Sura 12:1–2; 20:113; 39: 27–28; 41:1–4; 42:7; 43:1–4). The conjunction lisān ʚarabī ‘Arabic tongue’ occurs three times in the Qurʙān (Sura 16:103; 26:195, 46:12), and is used to describe the language of the Qurʙān. The conjunction hˢ ukm ʚarabī (Sura 13:37) ‘an Arabic judgment’ also refers to the holy text, and in 41:44, in which the possibility of a Qurʙān aʚjamī ‘a non-Arabic Qurʙān’ is dismissed, the adjective ʚarabī again refers to the holy text. The Arabic quality of Qurʙānic revelation could scarcely be more solidly established. On the other hand, the Qurʙān seems indifferent to the linguistic shape of preceding revelations. In the Qurʙān, the only language used is Arabic. Arabic is also the only language mentioned by name. The Qurʙān does not specify in which languages Nūh, Ibrāhīm, Ismāīl, Mūsā, Īsā or other prophets and messengers spoke to their peoples or in which languages their holy books might have been. God speaks Arabic to Adam and his wife, Satan whispers in Arabic (Sura 20:120), the angels and the jinn speak Arabic (Sura 72:1–15), Moses addresses the Pharaoh, Joseph addresses the Egyptian minister’s wife in Arabic, Jesus speaks Arabic from his cradle, D ū l-Qarnayn and the People of the Cave—they all use Arabic. Every single soul is made to speak Arabic at the Day of Judgment, animals like the ant (Sura 27:18) or the hoopoe (Sura 27:22), even inanimate entities like Hell (Sura 50:30) speak Arabic. Everybody and everything that speaks in the Qurʙān must necessarily speak Arabic, because Arabic is the only language used throughout the Qurʙān. But the intention of the text is in no way to convey that all mankind throughout history shared and will share the same language. I do not know of any exegete who concluded from the Qurʙānic accounts that the language used between Mūsā and the Egyptian Pharaoh was Arabic or that the language used between the Egyptian notable’s wife and her lady-friends must have been Arabic, or that the Messiah spoke in Arabic—just because the Qurʙān reproduces their words in Arabic. It is a different matter for Adam and Ismāīl (see below).
1
Cf. Agha and Khalidi: Poetry and Identity 70.
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On the other hand, the Qurān does mention the existence of languages other than Arabic and emphasizes that the plurality and variety of human languages is a sign of divine grace. The divine creation of different languages is as important as the creation of heaven and earth: wa-min āyātihī xalqu s-samawāti wa-l-ardi wa-xtilāfu alsinatikum wa-alwānikum īnna fī dālika la-āyātin li-l-ālimīn And of His signs is the creation of heavens and earth and the variety of your tongues and hues. Surely in this are signs for people who know (Sura 30:22).
Even as God created man and woman, heaven and earth, he created different colors (alwān, or: kinds of human skin) and different human languages (cf. the enumeration in Sura 30:20–25). The existence of different languages is one of God’s “signs for those who know.” Unless the word āya is here taken to mean a portent of warning, such a view seems difficult to reconcile with the myth of the Babylonian tower (Gen 11: 1–9), according to which the origin of a multitude of human languages is divine punishment. Sura 30:22 may even be an inter-textual stab at the narrative of the Babylonian Tower. There were, however, extra-Qurānic traditions that preserved the motif that the difference between human languages was due to an act of divine wrath (p. 196). A second important element in the Qurānic linguistic outlook flows forth from this esteem of other languages. In the course of history, God sent each messenger (rasūl) to a specific people (qawm), and this messenger brought the divine message to that people in its language. And We have sent no messenger save with the tongue of his people that he might make all clear to them wa-mā arsalnā min rasūlin illā bi-lisāni qawmihī li-yubayyina lahum (Sura 14:4).
The primary raison d’être of the Qurān is that the Prophet Muhammad’s message was in Arabic. Whereas the other prophets and messengers had been sent earlier with a message in the languages of their peoples, who did not speak Arabic, Muhammad is sent to the Arabs. The Arabic language vouchsafes the understanding of the Arabic-speaking audience. For a great part of the Qurān, the fact that this revelation was in Arabic was the most important difference between Muslim revelation and all previous revelation. These Qurānic elements influenced a theological-linguistic scenario that gave rise to a particular image of linguistic history. The claim that
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Arabic as the language of the Qurʙān had become a divine language, led to the construction of a religious pre-history of Arabic. There were three competing strands of knowledge that were interwoven to form a comprehensive imaginaire of the history of Arabic and by implication of human languages in general: 1. the philosophical question of the origin of language in general; 2. exegesis of the Qurʙān, including the Qisˢasˢ al-ʙanbiyāʙ literature, i.e., reports on earlier prophets, which depended heavily on Biblical and Aggadic material; and 3. historical traditions about pre-Islamic history, including the genealogies of the Arab tribes. One of the main issues was the origin of Arabic, an issue often framed as the question ‘Who was the first human being to speak Arabic?’ MuslimArab scholarship tried sometimes to disentangle, sometimes to combine and often to harmonize the heterogeneous strands of philosophical speculation, exegetical H adīt, and genealogical traditions. In many cases, however, contradictory reports were just left standing side by side. An extensive and useful overview of much of the Arabic material was given by as-Suyūtī in his Muzhir.2 The following remarks will outline the main lines of this colorful and often contradictory linguistic yarn.
2. Adam’s Arabic and Nūhˢ’s Syriac The basic divide between Arab philosophers and theologians concerned with the origin of language was whether it rested on human convention (isˢtiˢ lāhˢ , tawādˢuʚ) or on a divine act of revelation (ʙilhām, wahˢy, tawqīf ).3 The Platonic controversy whether human language was what it was physei or thesei, by nature or by imposition, here took a new form. A further problem was whether, theologically speaking, Arabic had a special linguistic status that set it apart from all other languages.
2 Andrzej Czapkiewicz, The Views of the Medieval Arab Philologists on Language and its Origin in the Light of Al-Suyuti’s Al-Muzhir, Krakow 1989. Czapkievicz’s translations are sometimes hard to understand. 3 For the difference between tawqīf and ʙilhām, cf. J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft IV 325.
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An important part of tradition seems to be in general agreement that Adam, who is in Islam a prophet, was the first human being to speak Arabic. The ‘revelationists’ based their view mainly on the early exegesis of Qurān 2:31 wa-allama Ādama l-asmāa kullahā “and He (God) taught Adam all names.” Weiss explains: ‘According to atˢ-Tˢabarī, the majority of early exegetes, including the noted Companion and tafsīr-authority Ibn ʚAbbās, interpreted this verse as meaning that God taught Adam the Arabic names of all existing things. This meant that Adam’s language was revealed by divine teaching. It also clearly implied that God taught Adam language in its entirety.4 According to Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), most Muʚtazilites, on the other hand, taught that all languages including Arabic rested on convention, not on revelation.5 Even those who accepted the revelationist theory could argue that Sura 2:31 meant that Adam was taught the names of all things created in all languages, in Arabic, of course, but also in Persian, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, and all other languages as Ibn Jinnī explains. Adam and his offspring spoke all these languages. But in the course of time, Adam’s offspring spread over the world and each of them stuck to one of these languages until this language became his main language and other languages eluded him because of his lack of contact with them (qad fussira hādā bi-an qīla inna llāha subh ānahū allama Ādama asmāa jamīi l-maxlūqāti bi-jamīi l-lug āti l-arabiyyati wa-l-fārisiyyati wa-lsuryāniyyati wa-l-ibrāniyyati wa-r-rūmiyyati wa-g ayri dālika min sāiri l-lug āti fa-kāna Ādamu wa-waladuhū yatakallamūna bihā tumma inna waladahū tafarraqū fī d-dunyā wa-aliqa kullun minhum bi-lug atin min tilka l-lug āti fa-g alabat alayhi wa-dmahalla anhu mā siwāhā li-budi ahdihim bihā, Ibn Jinnī, Xasāis I 41). This model safeguarded the priority of Arabic; Arabic as the language of the divine word must be prior to all other languages, whether their origin was revealed or due to convention. But according to some, all other languages were also revealed to Adam by God. Others with a different timetable thought that different linguistic communities emerged only after the Flood. The idea that Adam had known all human languages found a parallel in the belief of some Shiites in the 9th century that the Prophet Muhammad had known
4
Weiss, Muslim Discussions 37. aktaru ahli n-nazari alā anna asla l-lug āti innama huwa tawādu wa-sti lāh lā wahy wa-tawqīf (Al-Xasāis I 40–41). 5
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all languages.6 The plurality of human languages is sometimes seen as due to a benevolent divine intervention: “He (God) shaped every nation conforming to a language in which He made them speak and which He made easy for them.”7 God had made His Arabic revelation ‘easy’ for the Arabs (e.g. Sura 54:17); in a similar way, earlier revelations had been made in other languages in order to make them ‘easy’ for their listeners. The most widely accepted historical model that explained the existence of languages other than Arabic was built on the supposition that Arabic had been at a certain time the universal language. The idea of a universal common language can also be found in Gen 11:1, where, however, this language does not have a name. For most Arabic scholars, Arabic was the earliest existing language.8 But this universality had at some point in history come to an end, and decadence, corruption, and confusion ( fasād, tah rīf, tabalbul) had set in. This statement was hard to reconcile with the Qurānic assertion that God himself had created the variety of human languages (Sura 30:22). The reason for the development of other languages was nevertheless frequently seen either in a divine act of punishing Adam or mankind, or in a general confusion (balbala), which ‘mixed up’ what had been one common human language in a gradual process of ‘corruption’ (tah rīf ). Tah rīf and tabalbul were sometimes expressly linked to a punitive act of God, sometimes they seem to be seen more as a general tendency of history. According to Ibn ʚAsākir’s chronicle, Arabic was Adam’s language in Paradise until he disobeyed God. Then God deprived him of Arabic and he started speaking Syriac, evidently considered a lesser language or a corrupted form of Arabic. When Adam repented, however, God gave the Arabic language back to him.9 A second less ‘revelationist’ tradition was the following: The first language with which Adam came down from Paradise was Arabic. When the contact with Arabic became far and distant, Arabic was corrupted (h urrifa) and became Syriac (suryāniyya) which is a Nisba to ard sūrā or Suryāna. This is the land of al-Jazīra, where Nūhˢ and his
6
Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft IV 324. az-Zubaydī, Tabaqāt an-nahwiyyīn (ed. Muhˢammad ʙAbū l-Fadˢl Ibrāhīm), Cairo 1954/1373, 1 jabala kulla ummatin mina l-umami alā lug atin antaqahum bihā wayassara lahum. 8 lug atu l-arabi asbaqu l-lug āti wujūdan, as-Suyūtīˢ , Muzhir I 28, 4. 9 as-Suyūtˢī, Muzhir I 30, 10. 7
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people lived before the flood. Syriac resembled Arabic, but it was corrupted (muh arraf ), and Syriac was the language of all people in Nūh’s ark except for one man, whose name was Jurhum, and his language was still the original Arabic. When they left the ark, Īram b. Sām married one of his (Jurhum’s) daughters. From them the Arabic language came down on his offspring Aws Abū Ād, Ubayl, Jāir Abū Tamūd, and Jādis. Ād was given the name of Jurhum, because he was their maternal forefather. And Syriac stayed with the offspring of Arfaxšad b. Sām until it reached Yašjub b. Qahtā n. He was in Yemen. There the Banū Ismāīl settled and the Banū Qahtā n learned from them the Arabic language.10
It is interesting to see that the term tah rīf, which is the usual word denoting the falsification of the revealed scriptures by Jews and Christians, is here used to explain a fact of imagined linguistic history : the ‘corruption’ and subsequent loss of Arabic. According to this account, Nūh’s language was not Arabic, but Syriac. Arabic had survived only with Jurhum and his tribe. Abdalmalik b. H abīb (d. 238/852) developed a stemma of prophetic languages. According to him, these prophetic languages are Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew. All the sons of Israel spoke Hebrew, the first to speak it was Ishāq. Syriac was the language of five prophets: Idrīs, Nūh, Ibrāhīm, Lūt and Yūnus. And twelve of the Prophets spoke Arabic: Adam, Shīt, Hūd, Sālih, Ismāīl, Šuayb, al-Xidr, ‘the three in surat Yāsīn’ i.e. the three nameless messengers who were sent as the ‘Companions of the City’ (ash āb al-qarya, sura 36:13ff.), Xālid b. Sinān al-Absī, the legendary forerunner of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Prophet Muhammad himself.11 Others added more and more details. According to al-Azraqī, Nūh had eighty men with their families on his ark. When the ark came to a halt on Mount Jūdī, Nūh founded a village called Tamānūn (‘eighty’). The next morning, they found that their tongues/languages had been confused and that there were now eighty languages, one of which was Arabic. They did not understand each other any more. 12 This account offers no explanation for the emergence of these eighty languages, but
as-Suyūtī , Muzhir I 30,-6 according to Abdalmalik b. H abīb. Claude Gilliot and Pierre Larcher “Language and Style of the Qurān.” EQ 3, 109– 135, especially “The mythical narratives on the superiority of Arabic” 118ff. 12 fa-btanā qaryatan wa-sammāhā Tamānin fa-asbah ū dāta yawmin wa-qad tabalbalat alsinatuhum alā tamānīn lughatan ih dāhā l-arabiyyatu (al-Azraqī, Axbār Makka, /ed. F. Wüstenfeld) vol. 1, 20. 10 11
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is based on the idea that Nūh and his followers originally did not speak Arabic. In other accounts, Ibrāhīm is said to have spoken two languages, Syriac and Hebrew. When he fled from the persecution by Namrūd in Kūta in the land of Babylon, his language was Syriac (lisānuhū suryānī). Namrūd wanted to catch him and gave order that anybody speaking Syriac should be arrested and brought before him. But when Ibrāhīm crossed the Euphrates from H arrān, God ‘changed’ his language and Ibrāhīm miraculously started speaking Hebrew (ibrānī). He escaped because his persecutors did not know this language.13 A further version closer to the narrative of the Babylonian Tower is reported by at- Tabarī: Namrūd has a high building (sarh ) made, until it reaches the sky. God destroys the building and on that day the languages of people become confused from fright. They then speak in seventythree languages. This is why the place was called Bābil. The language of mankind before that was Syriac.14 A different kind of etiological explanation is linked to Yarub (see below section 4). The etymological connection between balbala and the name Bābil is often invoked and finds its way into Arabic lexicography.15 This connection between the Arabic word for ‘confusion’ (balbala) and the name of Bābil is prefigured in the Bible, in which the name of the city of Babel is linked to the Hebrew verb balal, also meaning ‘to confuse’ (Gen 11:7). The number of existing languages is given in different ways. According to al-Masūdī, there were seventy-two languages divided under Nūh’s sons: the descendants of Sām spoke nineteen languages, the descendants of H ām seventeen, and those of Yāfit thirty six.16 As far as I can see, nobody in pre-modern times ever claimed that the prophet Ibrāhīm spoke Arabic—although his unequalled importance for the link between earlier monotheistic religions and Islam, especially through his role in building the Kaba, would have made such a claim attractive. Abraham is called a Muslim in the Qurān (h anīf muslim
13
Ibn Sad, Tabaqāt ed. Eugen Mittwoch, Leiden 1905, I:1 21, 14; a similar tradition in Ibn Mutarrif at -Tarafī, Qisas al-anbiyā no. 124. 14 fa-tabalbalat alsunu n-nāsi min yawmaidin mina l-fazai fa-takallamū bi-talātati wa-sabīna lisānan fa-li-dālika summiyat Bābil wa-innamā kāna lisānu n-nāsi qabla dālika s-suryāniyyata., At-Tabarī, Tārīx I 322. 15 Lisān al-Arab s.v. bll: summiyat ardu Bābil li-anna llāha h īna arāda an yuxālifa bayna alsinati banī Ādama baatha r-rīh an fa-h ašarahum min kulli ufuqin ilā Bābil fabalbala llāhu bihā alsinatahum tumma farraqahum tilka r-rīh u fi l-bilād. 16 al-Masūdī, Murūj ad-dahab, ed. Barbier de Meynard I 78.
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sura 3:67)—but never an Arab. This claim was put forward only by zealous Arab nationalists. When in 1999 Pope John Paul II announced his plan to visit Ur in Iraq, members of the ruling Bat -party criticized that the Pope in his announcement had not spoken of Ibrāhīm as “an Arab.” They argued: “Ibrāhīm was born in the land of the Arabs and he lived in Iraq, in the Sumerian city of Ur. When he was chased out of his place of birth because of his monotheist creed, Ibrāhīm started his combative journey through the lands of the Arabs, H arrān, Palestine, Egypt, and Mecca . . .” ‘Combative’ was a favorite attribute of praise in the Bat-party. The Batīs do not expressly identify Arabic as Ibrāhīm’s language—even though the reader is forced to conclude that the language that the combative Arab Ibrāhīm spoke must have been Arabic.17 Such a linguistic myth could be elaborated. There is frequently a tendency in modern popular Arab discourse to call ‘Arabic’ what is elsewhere called ‘Semitic,’ in order to extol the importance of Arabic. The Canaanite tribes preceding the Israelite settlers are then called ‘Arab Canaanite’ tribes, and the variant of Akkadian to be found in the Ebla texts is called ‘Arabic.’18 For the claim that the Aramaic of the Nabatean inscriptions is ‘really’ Arabic, see below.
3. Ismāʚīl’s Arabic Next to Adam, the most important figure with whom the introduction of Arabic is firmly connected is Ibrāhīm’s son Ismāīl. In one of the most important foundational Muslim narratives, God orders Ibrāhīm to migrate to Mecca with young Ismāīl and the latter’s mother Hagar. Ibrāhīm builds the Kaba together with Ismāīl. There they meet members of the (Arabic-speaking) Jurhum tribe. Ismāīl grows up with their children, learns how to shoot (the bow) and to speak in their language, and he takes a Jurhum-wife.19 Another report says, without reference to where and how, Ismail learned Arabic: ‘Sarah gave Hajar to Ibrāhīm, he slept with her and she bore him Ismāīl, who was Ibrāhīm’s eldest son. His name used to be Išmōēl which was later arabicized (wa-kāna smuhū
17 Amatzia Baram, ‘Der moderne Irak, die Baath-Partei und der Antisemitismus’ in Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 12 (2003) 99–119 p. 114. 18 Welt des Islams 21 /1982, 240f. 19 Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʚārif, ed. Tarwat Ukāša, Cairo 1960, 34.
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šmwyl fa-uriba).’20 This Arabic tradition closely follows the Biblical account (Gen 21:20)—even the bow is already there—and preserves in Išmōʚēl a dialectical Hebrew form of the classical Hebrew Yišmāʚēl. Abraham had given his son a Hebrew name, because he spoke Hebrew. The link between Ismāʚīl and the Arabic language became part of the awāil-literature. The Prophet had said: all Arabs descend from the offspring of Ismāʚīl b. Ibrāhīm. The question who was the first to speak Arabic could, therefore, be answered and the answer is contained in a short didactic dialogue in which an ʙAbū Jaʚfar Qurayʙ b. ʚUqba b. Bašīr asks and a Muhˢammad b. ʚAlī answers: Q: Who was the first to speak Arabic? A: The first to speak Arabic was Ismāʚīl b. Ibrāhīm, when he was thirteen years old. Q: And what did people speak before that? A: Hebrew. Q: And what was God’s language that was sent down to his messengers and servants? A: Hebrew.21
Here, Adam is not even mentioned as the first recipient of Arabic. And God’s language of pre-Arabic revelation is simply Hebrew. In awāilcollections, the particular that Ishmael was the first to write in Arabic is not too frequent.22 See below p. 200. The report that Ismāʚīl picked up Arabic from Arabic-speaking tribes was widely disseminated, but there was a competing tradition saying that Ismāʚīl received the Arabic language by revelation on the day he was born. The three other sons of Ibrāhīm stuck to their father’s (Hebrew) language.23 According to a H adīt, the Prophet Muhammad recited (the verse) ‘an Arabic Qurān for people who know’ (Sura 41:3); then he said: ‘Ismāʚīl received this Arabic language by a great revelation’ (ulhima Ismāīlu hādā l-lisāna l-arabiyya ilhāman). This tradition contradicted the view that Ismāʚīl had learnt Arabic from the Jurhum tribe. In the latter case, the tribe must have logically preceded Ismāʚīl in speaking Arabic. Another H adīt mentions Ismāʚīl’s age: when he learned Arabic, he was 14 years old.24
20
Ibn Saʚd, Tabaqāt I/1 23, 9. Ibn Saʚd, Tabaqāt I/1 24, 16. Tottoli p. 82. Cf. Sibtˢ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirāt 310; Ibn ʚAsākir, Tārīkh II 331. 22 See the comment of Šiblī, Mah āsin al-wasāil fī marifat al-awāil 143. 23 Ibn Saʚd, Tabaqāt I/1 24, 21. 24 as-Suyūtˢī, Muzhir I 22, 13. 21
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Ibn Sad transmits a report that contradicts the idea that Ismāīl was born with Arabic and traces Arabic only to Ismāīl’s offspring. According to this tradition, Ismāīl never spoke Arabic, because in his filial piety he did not deem it permissible to act differently from his father. According to this report, the first of his offspring to speak Arabic were the Banū Rala bint Yašjub b. Yarub b. Lūdan b. Jurhum b. Āmir b. Saba b. Yaqtān b. Ābir b. Šālikh b. Arafxašad b. Sām b. Nūh.25 Nevertheless, the fact that Ismāīl ‘forgot’ his father’s Hebrew is expressly stated in a tradition traced to Muhammad b. Salām:26 ‘The first one to speak Arabic and to forget his father’s language was Ismāīl.’ Muslim Arab tradition, therefore, agrees that Ibrāhīm’s language was not Arabic, whereas there is disagreement on whether it was Ismāīl who was the first to speak Arabic and, if so, when and how Ismāīl learned it. For the tribal aspects of such traditions, cf. below under 4. Yarub’s Arabic. The most frequently quoted account, successful as a canonical H adīt, was, however, that Ismāīl learned Arabic from the Jurhum tribe in his youth (wa-shabba l-ghulāmu wa-taallama l-arabiyyata minhum, i.e., Jurhum, s. Buxārī, Sah īh , Anbiyā 21). He marries twice, in both cases a wife from the Jurhum tribe. This again meant, of course, that Ismāīl was, strictly speaking, not the first one to use Arabic, because he had to learn it from somebody else. In some reports, the gift of the Arabic language is mentioned next to other privileges of Ismāīl: the traditionists report that Ismāīl was the first one to speak Arabic, the first one to build the h aram after his father Ibrāhīm, and the first one to install the rites of pilgrimage. He was also the first to ride full-grown horses, which before were wild and could not be ridden. Some say: ‘Ismāīl was the first whose tongue God opened to speak Arabic. And when he grew up, God gave him the Arabic bow.’ This report implies that God revealed Arabic to Ismāīl and that Ismāīl did not have to learn it from the Jurhum.27 This report became part of Adab literature. At- Taālibī mentions it in his Latāif al-Maārif. ‘The first person to speak Arabic was Ismāīl, peace be upon him; all the Arabs came subsequently from his progeny, except for three tribes, those of Auzā, H adramawt and Taqīf. He was the first to
25 26 27
Ibn Sad, Tabaqāt I/1 24, 22. as-Suyūtī , Muzhir I 32, -2. al-Yaqūbī, Tārīx I 22.
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ride horses, these mounts being originally wild horses which had never been ridden before.’28 There was also some concern about the fact that the long time that had elapsed between the period in which Ismāʚīl had started speaking Arabic and the time of the Prophet Muhˢammad made it difficult to accept that the Arabic language should not have changed during this interval. The Prophet gave the answer: ‘Ismāʚīl’s language had been obfuscated (darusat). But Jibrīl came and made me retain the language and I retained it,’29 i.e. the Qurānic message saved Arabic. In other versions, it is not only the Arabic language whose origin is attributed to Adam or Ismāʚīl, but also the Arabic script, which is in this case imagined as written on clay tablets: ‘The first who installed the Arabic script, the Syriac script, and all other scripts was Adam, 300 years before his death. He wrote them in clay and baked them. When the earth was hit by the flood, each people received its script and used it to write. Ismāʚīl b. Ibrāhīm received the Arabic writing.’30 Some of these conflicting mythological reports are woven together and transformed into scholarship by modern Wahhabi scholars. Taking such accounts as factually historical, Muhˢammad Musˢtaˢ fā al-Aʚzˢamī is led in a recently published book31 to a re-writing of linguistic history on a grand scale. He asks himself the question ‘What language did the Nabateans speak?’ And the answer is: Growing up in Makkah from his earliest childhood Ismāʚīl, eldest son of Ibrāhīm, was raised among the Jurhum tribe and married within them twice. This tribe spoke Arabic, and so, undoubtedly, must have Ismāʚīl. The Jurhum Arabic probably lacked the sophistication and polish of the Quraishi Arabic, preceding it as it did almost by two thousand years. Ibn Ushta records a statement from Ibn ʚAbbās, that the first person to initiate set rules for the Arabic grammar and alphabet was none other than Ismāʚīl. Eventually, Allah commissioned Ismāʚīl as a messenger and prophet, to call his people for the worship of the one true God Allah, to
28 In: C.E. Bosworth (ed.), The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information. The LatˢÂʙif al-maʚÂrif of al-Thaʚālibī, Edinburgh 1968, p. 40, cf. Lammens, La cité arabe de Taif à la veille de l’Hégire, Beirut 1922, 57–68. 29 as-Suyūtīˢ , Muzhir I 35, 3. 30 as-Suyuti, Itqān IV 143 quoting ʙAbĬ Bakr M. b. ʚAbdallāh b. Muhˢammad b. Ušta al-Isˢbahānī (d. 360) and his Kitāb al-masāh if after Kaʚb al-Ahˢbār: cf. as-Suyūtˢī, Bug ya 59; asˢ-Sˢafadī, Wāfī III 347; and Nöldeke GdQ II 53 and GdQ III 1 fn. 2. 31 Muhˢammad Musˢtaˢ f al-Aʚzˢamì, The History of the Quranic Text. From Revelation to Compilation. A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, UK Islamic Academy, Leicester 2003.
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establish prayers and pay alms to the poor. Since Allah sends every messenger in the language of his own people, Ismāʚīl must have preached in Arabic. Genesis credits Ismāʚīl with twelve sons, among them Nebajoth/ Nabatˢ; born and nurtured in these Arabian surroundings they must have adopted Arabic as their mother tongue. These sons may have preserved their father’s message by using the prevailing Arabic script; certainly, they would not have resorted to whatever script was then current in Palestine (Ibrāhīm’s homeland), since two generations had already lived in Arabia. When Nabatˢ subsequently migrated northwards he must have taken the Arabic language and alphabet with him. It was his descendants who established the Nabatean Kingdom (600 B.C.E.–105 C.E.).
Al-Aʚzˢamī dates Ismāʚīl and his early Arabic at around 1400 B.C.E. and concludes: The Nabatean language and script were ‘. . . a form of Arabic’ (121). Such a sentence disregards that the Nabateans’ spoken language was indeed Arabic, while the texts they wrote were in Aramaic. The thesis that Nabatean is a form of Arabic comes close to a linguistic panorama, which sees in all languages usually called ‘Semitic’ a form of Arabic. ‘The Arabic language and script, in their primitive forms, gave birth to the Nabatean and most probably predated the Syriac’ (121) is but one example of such a view.
4. Yaʚrub’s Arabic A further source in tracing the first Arabic speaker was tribal history. The Arabs, in their own self-view, were not only a linguistic community, but also marked by common ancestors. Descent was a primary symbol of a tribal community, and the self-esteem and prestige of individuals and communities were linked to the purity of descent. The efforts of the Arab genealogists to establish a link between living Arab tribal groups and past forefathers were, of course, highly tenuous. The skeptical observation of Ibn Hˢ azm (d. 456/1064) that ‘on the face of the earth there is no one whose descent from them is verifiable’ did not prevent the emergence of the most speculative lineages.32 By and large, the Arab tribes claimed descent from one of two ancestors, either a North Arabic origin
32 Ibn Hˢ azm, Jamharat ʙansāb al-ʚarab, ed. Lévy-Provencal, Cairo 1948, 8, quoted by EI 2nd ed. I 546.
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connected to the North Arab Adnān (also to Maadd and Nizār, later Qays) or a South Arabic origin connected to Qahtā n (also called “Yamanis,” later also Kalb). Some tribes such as Ād, Tamūd, Īram, Jurhum, Tasm and Jadīs were believed to have disappeared before Islam. Hostility between the offspring of Qahtā n and those of Adnān emerged after the advent of Islam in the form of the cleavage between the Ansār in Medina and the Qurayš. The fact that the Prophet Muhammad belonged to the Qurayš brought enormous prestige to the Adnān, i.e., the North Arabs. The narrative that linked Ismāīl to Arabic was counterbalanced by the argument that Ismāīl had learned Arabic from the Jurhum, a South Arabic tribe. While al-Masūdī accepted that Ismāīl had been given Arabic by God, he did not deny that Yarub b. Qahtā n, the ancestor of the Yamanis, was the first to speak Arabic. ‘Which of the three Arab group, the extinct Arabs, the Nizāris, or the Yamanis was the first to speak Arabic? The Nizāri and Yamani groups vigorously upheld their own claims to this honour. The Nizāris held that Ismāīl was given the language by God, while the Yamanis contended that Ismāīl had learned the language from a Yamani tribe living in Mecca.33 ‘This conflict of claims masked a deeper social and political conflict between the two groups. Al-Masūdī, while granting that Yarub Ibn Qahtā n, the ancestor of the Yamanis, was the first to speak Arabic (Murūj sec. 71), believes that Ishmael too was granted this honour by God, independently of his association with the Yamanis.’34 The tribal family trees set up by Arab genealogists always have an agenda. When names are inserted or omitted, insertion and omission usually serve a purpose. When in the list of Qahtā n’s ancestors there are two new names, those of Yašjub and Yarub, inserted between Saba and Qahtā n (Yoqtan) in a family tree that is otherwise based on Gen 10, 1–32, this happens because these two names fulfill two important functions. Yarub symbolizes and personalizes the change from Syriac to pure Arabic, while Yašjub/Yaman gives his name to the land Yaman. The appearance and etiological function of persons with such telling names is a common feature of Arab genealogy.35 A tradition quoted by Yāqūt and traced to ad-Dīnawarī’s Mujālasa links Bābil with Yarub and Arabic as the heavenly language: ‘When God 33 Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography. The histories of Masʚudi, Albany 1975, 116; conflicting claims are set forth in Tanbīh 79–83 and Murūj 996–99. 34 Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography ibid. 35 Manfred Kropp, Geschichte der ‘reinen’ Araber II 379f.
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assembled mankind in Babylon, He sent them an Eastern, a Western, a Southern, and a Northern wind. And He assembled them in Babylon and they assembled to see why they had been called. Suddenly, a voice called out: “He who has the West on his right, the East to his left, and faces Mecca—his is the language of the people of heaven.” Then Yarub b. Qahtā n stood up, and the voice said: “Yarub b. Qahtā n b. Hūd, you are the one.” And he was the first to speak Arabic.”36 According to Ibn Durayd, “the pure Arabs were seven tribes Ād, Tamūd, Imlīq, Tasm, Jadīs, Umayyim und Jāsim. Most of them have vanished except for some remnants dispersed in the sub-tribes. And Yarub, whose name was Muhazzim b. Qahtā n, received his byname because he was the first whose tongue switched from Syriac to Arabic. This is the meaning of al-Jawharī’s statement in asˢ-Sˢihˢ āhˢ : ‘the first to speak Arabic was Yarub b. Qahtā n.’ ’’37 Here, the eponymon Yarub is linked to the root ʚrb, another example for the favorite method of the genealogists of connecting proper names with imagined history, etymology with linguistic history. In this mixture of traditions, Yarub b. Qahtā n is finally also located in Babylon and celebrates his virtues in the style of a poetic self-praise. ‘The majority of historians among them, the author of Tawārīx alʙumam (al-Isfahānī), and the author of al-Maʚārif (Ibn Qutayba) tell us that Yarub b. Qahtā n was the first to speak in clear Arabic, the first to bear the crown in Yaman, the first who was greeted by his sons with the formula ‘May you avoid the curse and your day be happy!’ Ibn Hishām, the author of the ‘Book of Crowns’, which he wrote on the kings of H imyar reports: “It was Yarub who went with the Arabs to Yaman and settled there. Therefore Yaman was called after him, because Yarub’s name was ‘Yaman.’ ” Al-Bayhaqī says: “Yarub was the first to speak in clear Arabic and left the confused way of talking used by the Arabs. He and his offspring were successful and God bestowed on them the land of Yaman as heritage. To them belong the kings of Tubba, who conquered the regions of the earth. On the strength of this privilege they are ranked before Adnān, while the Adnān can boast the prophethood of Muhammad. . . .” At the time, in which the languages had already been confused, the Banū H ām had come to the highlands of
36 37
Yāqūt, Muʚjam al-buldān ed. F. Wüstenfeld, I 447, 19. as-Suyūtī , Muzhir I 31, -3.
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Yaman. . . . And Yaʚrub was the most high-minded youth in Babylon and spoke clear Arabic, while the others spoke in confused language. 38 And Yaʚrub recited the following verse: I am the youth favored by the richest gift, the happy one, well known for his virtue. I am the son of Qahˢtāˢ n, the influential and rich, I spoke in Arabic, while the people were in (linguistic) confusion. (I spoke) in the clearest unambiguous language and in the perfect language of the kingdoms after me. anā l-g ulāmu dū n-nasībi l-ajzali / al-aymanu l-marūfu bi-t-tajammuli / anā bnu Qahtā na l-hammāmi l-aqyali / arabtu wa-l-ummatu fī tabalbuli / bi-l-mantiqi l-abyani g ayri muškili / wa-mantiqi l-amlāki badi l-kamali.
This is pure poetic self-praise in the rajaz meter as we know it from the earliest Arabic poetry. According to this report, Yaʚrub b. Qahˢtāˢ n was the first to speak clear Arabic and turned away from the ‘confused’ version of Arabic (namatu l-arabiyyati l-mubalbalati). He let his sons greet him with the greeting abayta l-lana (‘may you avoid the curse!’) and with ‘good morning!’ This Arabic is not so much seen as a prophetic language but as a heroic language spoken by a tribal noble forefather. The hero of this poem, Yaʚrub, praises himself for speaking pure Arabic, a royal language of noble kings, while lesser Arab mortals used mixed and confused languages. In a further verse, Yaʚrub predicts the coming of the Prophet Muhammad: Muh ammadu l-hādī n-nabiyyu l-mursalu / li-llāhi darru l-mājidi l-mustaqbili Muhammad, the guide, the God-sent Prophet—/ how praiseworthy is the blessed one who is coming.
Such a tradition combined tribal history with revelation. And to round things out, the report claims that the same Yaʚrub was the first to recite Arabic poetry and to put it into meters. He invented the poetic genres and composed praise-poetry, self-praise, and love poetry.39 Earlier traditions see the Banū Hāshim and the Banū Yaʚrub in fierce competition. When the rival of the Prophet Muhˢammad, Musaylima ‘the Liar,’ who traced his descent to the Banū Yaʚrub, heard of Muhˢammad’s death, he hoped to outstrip the Prophet and is said to have recited the verse:
38 39
Kropp, I Arab. text 9ff. Kropp 11, transl. 149.
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‘Passed away the prophet of the Banū Hāshim / and rose up the prophet of the Banū Yarub!’40
5. The Prophet Muhˢ ammad’s Arabic As we have seen, after the advent of Islam, the unique character of Arabic was extrapolated by theologians, philosophers, and genealogists back to times immemorial. In their view, after the revelation of the Arabic Qurʙān, Arabic became even more of a special language. Arabic itself, not only its Qurʙānic form, was something sacred, superhuman. Yet, in a famous description, aš-Šāfiī (d. 204/820) explained the special character of Arabic mainly by its most important hermeneutical challenge, i.e., its vast and ramified vocabulary. According to him, this was the primary reason for the privileged status of Arabic: We do not know that any man except for a prophet can claim to know the Arabic language completely. However, nothing Arabic escapes the Arabs collectively, so that there would be nobody among the Arabs who knows it. The knowledge of Arabic among the Arabs resembles the knowledge of the traditions (sunan) among the scholars of religious Law. We do not know anybody who could claim to know all traditions, so that not a single one would escape him. But when the knowledge of traditions of all scholars is collected, the whole of tradition is found. When the knowledge of each of these scholars is divided, something of the traditions will escape each of them. But what escapes him will be found with someone else.41
The Prophet, who as an individual can claim to know Arabic completely, is, of course, Muhammad. His knowledge of Arabic is superhuman. But the Arabs collectively also know the whole language. The Prophet’s own mastering of Arabic was related to the Qurʙānic revelation, as well. When a man admires the Prophet’s rhetorical talent and says, ‘What a good speaker you are: We have not seen anybody speaking better Arabic than you!’ the Prophet answers: ‘This is my right. For the Qurʙān was revealed to me in clear Arabic.’42 And the Prophet could boast: ‘I am the best Arabic speaker’ (ʙanā ʙafsˢahˢ u l-ʚarab43 or ʙanā
40 Ibn Katīr, Bidāya vi, 341, quoted according to M. J. Kister, ‘Musaylima’ in EQ 3 (2003) 462. 41 Aš-Šāfiī, Risāla, ed. Ahmad Muhammad Šākir, Cairo 1940, 42, 8ff. 42 as-Suyūtī , Muzhir I 35, 6. 43 Muzhir I 209, 2.
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arabukum).44 It is not always clear whether such statements refer to Qurānic revelation or to the Prophet’s non-Qurānic words. In the same vein, the Prophet was immune against linguistic mistakes (lah n) in his speech. He was reported to have said: ‘I am from the Qurayš and I grew up among the Banī Sad—how should I commit a linguistic error?’ (anā min Qurayš wa-našatu fī banī Sad wa-annā fiyya l-lah n).45 The Banī Sad b. Bakr b. Hawāzin were the clan of Muhammad’s wet-nurse. In this case, the Prophet’s claim to linguistic excellence was definitely rooted in his tribal background and not in divine grace. Among the further signs of the Prophet’s unprecedented eloquence was that he was said to have coined expressions that allegedly had never been used in Arabic before him and that later became part of an elevated Arabic style, such as māta h atfa anfihī, ‘he died a natural death.’46 In some traditions, the Prophet became a second Adam. In a H adīt, he said: ‘My community appeared to me in water and clay. And I was taught all names even as Adam was taught all names.’47 Arab grammarians connect the linguistic quality of the Arabic of the Qurayš with pre-Islamic times and with the role the Qurayš played at the Kaba in Mecca. A privileged position vis-à-vis the Arabic language was also conferred on the companions of the Prophet—they also spoke nothing but the purest Arabic. The proof was that they never coined a new word (mā alimnāhumu sta lah ū alā xtirāi lug atin aw ih dāthi lafzatin lam tataqaddamhum).48 This was most probably connected to the fact that the companions were the guardians of the Prophet’s word and deeds. If their Arabic had been doubtful, it could have influenced the correctness of tradition. In a comparable manner, the ethical, philosophical, and religious letters and pronouncements, ascribed under the title Nahj al-balāg a (‘The Method of Eloquence’) to Alī b. Abī Tālib, were considered by many Shiites in essence and style as ‘second only to the Qurān.’49
44
Ibn Sad, Tabaqāt I 113. Abū t- Tayyib al-Lugawì, Marātib an-nahwiyyīn, ed. Muhammad Abū l-Fadl Ibrāhīm, Cairo n.d. <1955>, Maktabat Nahdat Misr 6,1. 46 Muzhir I 209, 5. 47 Muzhir I 35, 4. 48 Muzhir I 10, 9. 49 Nahj al-Balāg a—wa-huwa majmū mā xtārahu š-Šarīf Abū l-H asan Muh ammad ar-Rādī b. al-H asan al-Mūsawī min kalām Amīr al-muminīn Abī l-H asan Alī b. Abī T ālib, ed. Subhī Sālih, Beirut 1982; Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shii Islam, The History and Doctrine of Twelver Shiism, New Haven/London 1983, 25. 45
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6. The fate of Arabic after the Islamic conquest The Arabic language celebrated its greatest triumph with the vast expansion of the Islamic conquest and the concomitant expansion of the Arabic language. But most Arab grammarians and lexicographers did not see it that way. In an almost incredible volte-face, they saw the fate of the Arabic language sealed and its purity doomed to corruption precisely at the moment when the Muslim faith and the Qurān won over the world: wa-lam tazal il-arabu tantiqu alā sajiyyatihā fī sadri islāmihā wa-mādī jāhiliyyatihā h attā azhara llāhu l-islāma alā sāiri l-adyāni fa-daxala n-nāsu fīhi afwājan wa-aqbalū ilayhi arsālan wa-jtamaat fīhi l-alsinatu l-mutafarriqatu wa-l-lug ātu l-muxtalifatu fa-fašā l-fasādu fī l-lug ati l-arabiyyati.50 The Arabs did not cease to speak Arabic according to its disposition in the beginning of the era of Islam and in the pre-Islamic past until God let Islam prevail over all other religions. Then people entered Islam in masses and turned to it in flocks. In Islam all separate languages and different tongues came together and therefore corruption ( fasād) spread in the Arabic language.
This rather anticlimactic statement marks the beginning of Arabic as the language of an Islamic world civilization. For many an Arab grammarian and lexicographer, this period was at the same time the starting point of its decadence and corruption.
7. References Agha, Saleh Said and Tarif Khalidi. 2002/03. “Poetry and Identity in the Umayyad Age.” Al-Abhāth 50–51, 55–119. al-Aʚzˢamī, Muhˢammad Musˢtaˢ fā. 2003. The History of the Quranic Text. From Revelation to Compilation. A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments. Leicester: UK Islamic Academy. al-Azraqī. 1858. Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka (F. Wüstenfeld, ed.), vol. 1 Axbār Makka. Leipzig. Czapkiewicz, Andrzej. 1988. The Views of the Medieval Arab Philologists on Language and its Origin in the Light of Al-Suyuti’s Al-Muzhir. Krakow: Universitas Jagellonica Acta Scientiarum Litterarumque CMIX.
50 az-Zubaydī, Tabaqāt an-nahwiyyīn wa-l-lug awiyyīn (ed. Muhˢammad ʙAbū l-Fadˢl Ibrāhīm), Cairo 1954, 1.
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EQ 2001–2006 = Jane McAuliffe, ed. Encyclopaedia of the Qurān, vol. 1–5. Leiden: E. J. Brill Fischer, A. and A.K. Irvine. 1978. “Kˢahˢtāˢ n.” EI 2nd ed., 4: 447–449. Gilliot, Claude and Pierre Larcher. 2003. “Language and Style of the Qurān.” EQ 3, 109–135, especially ‘The mythical narratives on the superiority of Arabic’, 118ff. Goldziher, Ignaz. 1873. “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachgelehrsamkeit bei den Arabern.” Sitzungsber. d. Kaiserl. Ak. d.W. Wien, Phil-Hist.Kl. 73, 511–52. Ibn Hˢ azm. 1948. Jamharat ansāb al-arab. Ed. É. Levy-Provencal, Cairo. Ibn Mutˢarrif at ˢ-Tˢarafī, ʙAbū ʚAbdallāh M. b. A. al-Kinānī. 2003. Qisas al-anbiyā (‘The Stories of the Prophets’). Roberto Tottoli, ed. Berlin: Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 253. al-Jumahˢī Muhˢammad b. Sallām 1916. Tabaqāt aš-šuarā. Joseph Hell, ed. Leiden. Khalidi, Tarif. 1975. Islamic Historiography. The histories of Masʚudi. Albano. Kropp, Manfred. 1975. Die Geschichte der ‘reinen Araber’ vom Stamme Qahtā n aus dem Kitāb Nashwat at-Tarab fī tārīkh jāhiliyyat al-arab des Ibn Saīd al-Maghribī, hrsg. u. übersetzt von Manfred Kropp, Bd. I: Einleitung und Text, Bd. II: Übersetzung und Anmerkungen, Diss. Heidelberg. Loucel, Henri. 1963. “L’origine du langage d’après les grammairiens arabes.” Arabica 10 I 188–208; II 253–281; 11 (1964) III 57–72; IV 151–187. Rubin, Uri. 1990. “Hˢ anīfiyya and Kaʚba. An inquiry into the Arabian pre-Islamic background of dīn Ibrāhīm.” JSAI 13, 85–112. as-Suyūtīˢ , ʚAbdarrahˢmān Jalāladdīn. n.d. al-Muzhir fī ulūm al-lug a. Muhˢammad Ahˢmad Jād al-Mawlā Bek, Muhˢammad Abū l-Fadˢl Ibrāhīm, ʚAlī Muhˢammad al-Bījāwī, eds. Cairo n.d., 2nd ed., Dār Ihˢyāʙ al-Kutub al-ʚarabiyya, vol. 1–2. Tottoli, Roberto, ed. 2003. The Stories of the Prophets by Ibn Mutarrif al-Tarafi, edited with an introduction. Berlin, 253. ——. 2002. Biblical Prophets in the Qurʙān and Muslim Literature. Richmond. Weiss, Bernard G. 1974. “Medieval Muslim Discussions on the Origin of Language.” ZDMG 124, 33–41.
INFLECTION AND GOVERNMENT IN ARABIC ACCORDING TO SPANISH MISSIONARY GRAMMARIANS FROM DAMASCUS (XVIIITH CENTURY): GRAMMARS AT THE CROSSROADS OF TWO SYSTEMS?1 Otto Zwartjes University of Amsterdam, NIAS
1. Introduction Grammars of Hebrew written in Europe in the Renaissance by Christians could benefit from the Hebrew grammatical tradition. Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) quotes in his De rudimentis hebraicis (1506) Priscian and ‘Rabbi David’ (i.e. Qimhˢi) as well (Law 2002, 247–248). In grammars of Sanskrit written in Europe we see also that the framework of grammatical description has been derived from the Indian grammatical tradition. The German Jesuit Heinrich Roth (1620–1668), as Hauschild (1988, 13–14) observes, ‘uses with perfect familiarity the technical terms of Indian grammar [. . .] Roth stands entirely within the Indian grammatical tradition, and probably he used the practical grammar of Anubhûti Svarûpâcârya, called the Sârasvata Vyâkarana, which was in general circulation in Hindustân, Bihâr and Benares. [. . .]. Another candidate, though a less likely one, would be the grammar called Mugdhabodha, which was composed in the second half of the 13th century by Vopadeva, but the usage of which was more common
1 This article is an elaborated version of paper delivered at the IIIrd International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Hong Kong and Macau, 12th–15th March 2005. The organization of the conference and participation in Hong Kong has been made possible by financial support of the Norwegian Research Council (Norges Forskingsråd) and the Language Centre of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I have to acknowledge Kees Versteegh who inspired me to do research in the field of the History of Linguistics and particularly Michael Carter for his valuable corrections and suggestions. Thanks to my colleague Maria Cândida Barros, I came across the reference to the grammar of Lucas Caballero. Research has been made possible by the Radboud University (TCMO) where my 2 research on Pedro de Alcalá started. I continued this research topic at the University of Oslo, supported by the NFR-project OsProMil (Oslo Project on Missionary Linguistics). I am grateful to the Rogge Library (Strängnäs) for the reproduction of the MS. I gladly acknowledge Pierre Winkler for his translations from Latin.
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in Bengal . . . The work of Roth was a ‘masterpiece,’ which does not differ considerably from current grammars, which similarly depend on the linguistic achievements of India’s own grammatical tradition’ (Hauschild 1988, 13–14). In the grammars of Japanese written by the Portuguese Jesuit João Rodrigues (1561–1634), particularly in his description of particles and verbal endings, we can also find information concerning the study of ‘tenifa’ or ‘tenivofa’ (the study of particles and verbal endings) from contemporary Japanese scholars (Maruyama 2004, 155). As has been demonstrated by Gregory James (2007), some missionaries describing the Tamil language, such as Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682– 1719), were familiar with some ancient Tamil works on grammar. These missionaries worked under favourable conditions compared to their colleagues who described languages, particularly Amerindian and Austronesian, without any written tradition or an adequate ‘indigenous’ grammatical framework they could rely on. The use of Arabic grammatical terms in the first grammar written in Europe of vernacular Arabic, the Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arabiga (1505) of Pedro de Alcalá (Order of St. Jerome) has been the subject of an article written by William Cowan (1981). In de Alcalá’s grammar, some technical terms were incorporated in the descriptive framework, including terms such as damir, temiz, masdar, amr and xucla. In this article, Spanish grammars of Arabic—vernacular and classical—written by Franciscans in Damascus and completed, copied, or printed in Spain in the 18th century occupy our attention, particularly the grammars of Francisco Caballero and Juan de la Encarnación (18th century) and Francisco Cañes (1730–1795). Of the first we have an unpublished manuscript, which has escaped the attention of researchers until today,2 and of the second a printed work has been conserved,
2 Bibliographical information concerning Francisco Cañes can be found in Schnurrer (1811, 79, no. 113) BICRES III, and in Monroe (1970) we find some historical background. However Cañes is not mentioned by Fück (1955), Dannenfeldt (1955), and Killean (1984) and particularly the grammar of Caballero has been neglected by all. After a century-long period of silence and total neglect, an important monograph on Bernardino González appeared recently, together with a facsimile edition of the dictionary (Intérprete arábico) and his grammar (Epítome) (Lourido Díaz 2005), not long after this paper had been delivered in Hong Kong. When the proofs were almost ready for publication, I received a copy of this monograph, courtesy of Emilio Ridruejo. Lourido Díaz (2005, I, 21–22) had traced seven manuscripts of the dictionary, and six copies of Epítome de la gramática árabe made by Bernardino González’ pupils, probably for their own use. One copy was completed by Blas Francisco de Salamanca in 1704, the second by Lucas Caballero and Juan de la Encarnación between 1709 and 1710, the so-called Tingstadius copy. Two copies were compiled in 1719, one from the El Escorial
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studied sporadically by dialectologists describing the urban colloquial Arabic of Damascus (Lentin 1997), but which also escaped the attention of researchers working in the field of the history of linguistics. In the Damascene Franciscan tradition, the authors used a great number of Arabic grammatical terms, adapted in a hispanicised form, which substituted, accompanied or sometimes superseded Latin terminology : examples are: ‘arabicación’ (ʙiʚrāb), ‘moziones’ (hˢ arakāt) or the ‘partículas nasbantes, chazmantes and charrantes.’ Obviously, these Franciscan authors were informed by the Maronite Christians, but in the prologue of the grammar of Francisco Cañes, we read that Spanish Franciscans not only were familiar with the work of Pedro de Alcalá, but also that they were inspired by north-European grammars and dictionaries of Arabic, such as the famous grammar written in Latin by Thomas van Erpen (= Erpenius 1585–1624) and lexicographical work of Jacob Golius
and the other from the University of Valencia and two further anonymous and undated manuscripts from the Real Academia de la Historia. Lourido Díaz states that all these works were calques of that of Bernardino González (Lourido Díaz 2005, I, 13). All the Latin grammars analysed in this article are also listed in two footnotes by Lourido Díaz (2005, I, 130 and 135) but very little importance is given to the influence of these on the grammatical tradition of the Franciscans linked to Damascus. After having consulted all these Latin grammars, we have come to the conclusion that the Spanish grammars of Arabic completed by Franciscans in Damascus or in Spain were heavily inspired by the Latin grammars, and in some cases they are Spanish calques, or translations of the Latin examples. This is particularly evident in the grammatical examples and the use of literally almost the same ‘orientalising’ terminology, inherited from the Arabic tradition. Thanks to the evidence of Lourido Díaz’ study, a direct link between the Franciscans in Damascus and Spain and the Holy Congregation of the Propaganda Fide and the San Pietro di Montorio can now be confirmed. Juan de la Encarnación learned Arabic from his teacher Lucas Caballero, a pupil of Bernardino González. The latter, in his turn, was a pupil of the Italian Fray Bonaventura da Molazzana, who taught at the San Pietro di Montorio and who arrived in Seville in 1693. It is known that the grammars and dictionaries used at the San Pietro di Montorio were those of Dominicus Germanus and Philip Guadagnoli, among others, and it is thus probable that Bernardino González had direct access to the ‘Italian’ grammatical tradition. It is also important for the purposes of this article to know that the work of Bernardino González was also obligatory in the curriculum for Spanish and Portuguese missionaries (Lourido Díaz 2005, I, 34). Morevoer, the Portuguese Arabist de Sousa was born in Damascus, so all these grammars are thus linked and use common sources. Germanus of Silesia was educated in the Holy Land, and was later an Arabic instructor in the El Escorial Monastery in Spain. Although Lourido Díaz’ monograph is without any doubt extremely important for all those interested in the bio-bibliographical data related to Bernardino González and his successors, little importance is given in it to the influence of Latin sources and almost nothing is said about possible Arabic sources, the significance of these works from the perspective of the history of linguistics or the history of Arabic. Are these grammars to be considered as key creative productions on the part of Spanish missionaries, or are they nothing more than a chain in a long tradition? In the future we hope to give an answer to this question.
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(1596–1667). Other sources mentioned by Cañes are the grammars of Felipe Guadañoli,3 Antonio de Aguila,4 Agapito de Valle Flammarum,5 and Francisco Gonzalez,6 and the Franciscan grammarian also informs us that he used a “considerable number of manuscripts,” without specifying which sources these were. In Renaissance grammars, we find usually two subdisciplines in syntax. In the Spanish tradition, syntax, often called ‘construcción’, can be subdivided in ‘construcción de régimen’ and ‘construcción de concordancia’ and Francisco Cañes does not form an exception. In this article we concentrate on the first and we particularly attempt to analyze how the concept of ʚāmil (often translated as ‘governor’) has been incorporated into this model. The subject of concord (agreement) has been analysed in Zwartjes (2007). The use of Arabic grammatical terms in these grammars will be analyzed, and we will concentrate on the following questions related to morphosyntax: – Which Arabic grammatical terms are used in these Spanish grammars particularly in the sections dedicated to inflection and agreement? – What did they mean and why did they use them? – Which sources could they have used?
2. The grammar and dictionary of Arabic of Pedro de Alcalá As we all know, Arabic speaking communities are diglossic. Pedro de Alcalá’s dictionary and grammar of Granadan Arabic is obviously a description of colloquial Arabic. His purpose was to teach the ‘ordinary people’ (‘los populares’) and not the language of ‘the wise’ (‘alfaquíes’). The aims to compose his dictionary are also slightly different if we compare them to other missionary dictionaries in the New World, where missionary composed dictionaries for their own use and for the novices from the Old World. As we can read in the prologue to his dictionary, Pedro de Alcalá wrote his dictionary not only for the Old Christians who wanted to learn Arabic, but also for the New Christians.7
3
Schnurrer (1811, 47, no. 72). Antonius Ab Aquila (Schnurrer 1811, 50, no. 78). 5 Schnurrer (1811, 59, no. 85), or Agapito à Valle Flemmarum (da Val di Fiemme). 6 I have not identified this author yet, but this could possibly be Bernardino González, as Lourido Díaz suggests (2005). 7 “Ca assi como los aljamiados (o cristianos viejos) pueden por esta obra saber el arauia, viniendo del romance al arauia: assi los arauigos (o nueuos cristianos), sabiendo leer la 4
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As has been demonstrated in recent research, mainly from Federico Corriente (1988), it is true that the language described is predominantly colloquial,8 but at the same time it is also obvious that there is some interference between the colloquial and the classical registers. The main objective of all missionary grammars is practical: the teaching of a certain language. Nevertheless, missionary works can be predominantly didactic, showing many paradigms with few explanations and linguistic theory, while in other works the didactic-pedagogical approach is much more theoretical. Pedro de Alcalá also states that his grammar is more a practical introduction, not a learned theoretical work. His approach reveals itself to be universalist, since he observes that there are definitions and explanations in one language in respect to the expression of its concepts in its own terms, these are the same in all other languages regarding the expression of their own concepts. Thus for the same reason that this name ‘Pedro’ is a proper noun in Latin, it is also such in ‘Arabic’ (Alcalá 1505[1883], 2). This observation is characteristic of Renaissance grammars in general and can be found in many other sources from this period. As Vivian Law observed: Questions as ‘what is a proper noun?’, ‘what is a verb?’ ‘how many word classes are there?’ ‘what are properties of the conjunction?’ are as close to universal as any you are likely to find in a medieval grammar. Such concerns apply equally well to any European language; indeed, they had already been transferred from Greek to Latin. There is no inherent reason why they should not also be asked about Old Irish or Old Icelandic: one can find proper nouns (for instance) just as easily there as in Latin. (Law 2002, 191)
Obviously, Alcalá did not find it necessary to give his pupils definitions of the parts of speech, since they are the same for all languages. So one would wonder why the author decided to include Arabic grammatical terminology, which seems to be in contradiction with his own ‘universalistic’ approach. A possible explanation is that he did this only for ‘scientific’ reasons. He might have introduced them with the purpose to have a more adequate or sophisticated framework to fit in phenomena
letra castellana: tomando primero el arauia, ligeramente pueden venir en conocimiento del aljamia).” (Pedro de Alcalá 1505, prologue, ii v.) See also Cowan (1981, 358). [As the ‘aljamiados’, or old Christians can learn Arabic through this work, coming from Romance to Arabic, so the Arabs (or new Christians), having mastery of the Castilian alphabeth, taking first the Arabic, easily can have knowledge of the ‘aljamia’]. 8 His purpose was “hazer vocabulista de la habla comun y usada de la gente deste.” (ibid.) “to compose a dictionary of the common speech and used by the people.”
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he was not so familiar with. As has been demonstrated by Cowen, this is only in a few cases a satisfactory explanation. Sometimes Arabic terms are only used as equivalents or translations of Latin terms. Clear examples are the names for the cases in the nominal paradigm. Pedro de Alcalá recognizes when dealing with ‘declensions’ that the Arabic noun has only one declension, since all Arabic nouns are invariable.9 However, admitting that there is only one declension, he states that Arabic nouns have six cases. We reproduce here the table according to Cowan (1981, 359): TABLE 1
THE SIX CASES ACCORDING TO PEDRO DE ALCALÁ
Alcalá
Translation
Classical term
mubtedĕ ‘subject’ mudăf ‘genitive’ maxrŏr ‘dative’ mafuʚŭl10 ‘object’ munĕde ‘vocative’ zˢarf ‘adverb’
‘nominatiuo’
mubtadaʙ
‘genitiuo’
mudˢāf
‘datiuo’
majrūr
‘acusatiuo’
maf ʚūl
‘vocatiuo’
munādā
‘ablatiuo’
zˢarf
As William Cowan observed:10 they are not true cases in either the Arabic or the Latin sense of being an inflection added to a noun, a fact that Alcalá was quite aware of, but are regarded by him in the same way that modern theoreticians of case grammar regard the syntactic positions in an utterance. Such relations are not expressed by inflections, since colloquial Arabic has none, but through abitudines or conocimientos. The markers of the equivalents of these Latin cases are in fact combinations of prepositions and particles and the definite article (lil, maal, lal, etc.) (Cowan 1981, 359).
9 “La declinacion de todos los nombres arauigos es vna solamente. Porque todos los nombres arauigos son inuariables” (Alcalá 1505, capitulo nono). 10 In the original text, a small hamza in superscript is placed on the first vowel ‘u’.
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The information given by William Cowan, however, is not complete, since translations from his dictionary are not included here. Although we do not find all the terms in his dictionary, we do find some of them: mubtedĕ is not only translated by Pedro de Alcalá as ‘nominative’, but also as ‘principio de oracion’ (Corriente 1988, 12), which is not without importance (see below). Ízm mudáf is rendered as ‘posesivo nonbre’.11 The term ‘abitud’ seems to be inherited from other grammars than the Latin and Castilian grammars of Antonio de Nebrija (c. 1444–1522). The term ‘habitudo’ is used by Ferdinandus Nepos in his Materies (completed between 1469 and 1485) and Juan de Pastrana Compendium grammatica (1462).12 Item per hanc regulam primo iuvenes component per unum casum tantum sic dicendo: la tierra ‘terra’; de la tierra ‘terre’, etc.; uel per duos, sic: la tierra del rey; uel per tres et quatuor et amplius, sic: o leyente la lection a los scolares en el general de las escuelas componitur ‘o legens lectionem scolaribus in generali scolarum’, dando cuilibet casui propriam habitudinem, interrogando cuius casus, numeri et cuius declinationis hoc principio. (Codoñer 2000, 90).
However, it is not so clear what Pedro de Alcalá’s exactly means with the term ‘abitud’ (pl. ‘abitudines’), since he uses it as a synonym of the definite article (‘Nota que porque ay algunas abitudines en cada vno delos casos que en alguna manera parescen preposiciones, porque se preponen alos casos, avn que en verdad no lo sean, mas son articulos’) (Alcalá 1505[1971], 26). In another section, Alcalá uses the term as a synonym of ‘preposicion’, since according to his observations, the maxrór case (see below) has the four ‘abitudines’ la, lal, li, lil, whereas the term ‘abitud’ is not used for ba, bal, bi, bil, fa, etc. which are described in the paragraph on the zˢarf case (Alcalá 1505[1971], 27). Here they are just called ‘prepositions’ and not ‘abitudines’ and there is no explanation
11 Other terms not mentioned by Cowen, are ‘jezme’, translated as ‘consonante’ (letra mazjun [sic] (Corriente (1988, 34), and ‘médde’, translated as ‘acento’ (Corriente 1988, 189). 12 “With this rule, the novices first build constituents with only one ‘case’ [= ‘head’ of the NP], saying “la tierra” ‘terra’, “de la tierra”, ‘terre’, etc., or with two ‘cases’ [= ‘head’ + complement of the NP], as “la tierra del rey”, or with four and so on, as: “reading the lesson in general for the scholars of the schools,” assigning the appropriate “habitudo” [= grammatical form] to whatever case [= grammatical function]. The term ‘habitudo casualis’ is also used by Nepos in relation with government: “Haec enim regula maxima est in construendo [. . .] quia talem casum regit dictio qualis fuerit habitudo casualis.” (ibid.).
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why he used these different terms. In other sections, Alcalá uses ‘abitud’ as synonym of ‘conocimientos’ (see also Zwartjes 1993, and 1994). In Arabic grammatical theory a nominal sentence can be divided into ‘topic’ for which mubtadaʙ (lit. ‘what is begun with’) is normally used, and ‘comment’ (xabar), or ‘predicate’ (Owens 1988, 32), or according to Sībawayhi’s terminology also called mabnīy ʚalā-l-mubtadaʙ (‘what is built upon what is begun with’) (Owens 1990, 45). Mudˢāf is the word Pedro de Alcalá uses for the genitive, which in Arabic tradition means literally ‘what is added’, i.e. possessed (Owens 1988, 34; 1990, 104). Majrūr from the same root as jarr (see below), means ‘pulling’, or governing the -i inflected form. Pedro de Alcalá follows in his sections about the prepositions the Latin system and tries to apply Arabic terms to them, without realizing that in the dialect he describes, case-endings are not used, and without realizing that in classical Arabic nominal declension, there are three inflectional vowels, the -u, the -a, whereas for the verbal inflection the three vowels -u, -a and ø (zero ending) can be distinguished. Pedro de Alcalá did not take the Arabic inflectional endings as starting point, but the Latin prepositions in alphabetic order: prepositions + accusative, prepositions + ablative, etc. and at the same time he translated the names of these ‘Latin’ terminology into Arabic: Capitulo XXXII. De las preposiciones. Hallamos en el Arauia todas las preposiciones que en la gramatica [latina], y ayuntadas a essos mesmos casos, que son mafúul y darf (que son acusatiuo y ablatiuo), y son las del acusativo las siguientes: A A
ad al
apud aynd
circa carib
circa qued
ante acábal
longe baád
ante cudim
[. . .] [. . .]
Las preposiciones del darf (que es ablativo) son las siguientes, conuiene saber: Con con con Ba bal bi
con bil
en fa
en fal
en en fi fil . . . (Alcalá 1505[1883], 26).
“Chapter XXXII. About the prepositions. We find in the Arabic language all the same prepositions as in Latin grammar, and they are combined with the same cases, which are mafʚūl and zˢarf (which are accusative and ablative), and those which can be combined with the accusative are the following: A. A
ad al
apud aynd
circa carib
circa qued
ante acábal
longe baád
ante cudim
[. . .] [. . .]
inflection and government in arabic
217
The prepositions of the darf (which is ablative) are the following: con con ba bal
con bi
con bil
en fa
en fal
en fi
en fil . . .”
As we can see, Pedro de Alcalá did not separate the prepositions from the definite article (al). Mafʚūl is the term used for ‘object.’ Sībawayhi distinguishes five subtypes: mafʚūl bihi ‘direct object’, mafʚūl fīhi ‘locative object’, mafʚūl maʚahu ‘accompaniment object’, mafʚūl lahu ‘reason object’, and mafʚūl minhu ‘object from it’. (Owens 1990, 160). For the ‘locative object’, instead of mafʚūl fīhi the term zˢarf is also used (Owens 1990, 51,141–151), which is the term Alcalá uses here for the ‘ablative’. Munādā is the direct translation of ‘vocative’. According to Cowan (1981, 360), Alcalá ‘was apparently trying to make unfamiliar material intelligible to his audience, but at the same time to avoid a direct equation with the Latin categories.’ In fact, the first might be true, but we must be aware that in his paradigm of the case-system, we do find an equation with Latin cases, and we never find any traces of the four traditional Arabic inflectional endings, -zero, -u, -a, and –i and never the original Arabic names for these inflectional endings are introduced here. Other technical grammatical terms in Alcalá’s grammar are: ʚamir (‘conocimiento’;13 cl. Ar. dˢamīr ‘conjunct pronoun’), temiz (cl. Ar. tamyīz ‘accusative of specification’),14 amr (‘imperatiuo’; cl. Ar. ʚamr ‘imperative’), xucla ‘señal’; cl. Ar. šakl(a) ‘orthographic sign’:15 Es otrosi de notar, que los Arauigos non tienen letras vocales como los Latinos, mas tienen en lugar dellas ciertas señales, que ellos dizen xúclas, con las quales y con todos los caracteres suso dichos leen y escriuen lo necessario (Alcalá 1505[1883], 4). It has to be observed that the Arabs do not have the letters for the vowels as the Latins, but instead of them, they have certain signs, which they call xuclas, and with all the above-mentioned characters they read and write anything which is necessary.
13
Cf. Zwartjes (1994). Temĭç is also translated as ‘conocimiento’ in his dictionary (Corriente 1988, 197). 15 In his dictionary Alcalá translates the word aâléma as ‘(signo por) señal’ (Corriente 1988, 140). The señal is also used in his grammar for the article (señal de demostración), so this term could be the technical grammatical term, but as happens often in these grammars, it is not always possible to distinguish between language and metalanguage. 14
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otto zwartjes
The origins of the mnemonic vowel terms with and without tanwīn (the ‘nunated’ forms) which expresses indefiniteness in Arabic are unknown to me and this could be a local teaching method, not recorded elsewhere: TABLE 2 THE VOWELS AND THE ‘NUNATED FORMS’ ACCORDING TO PEDRO DE ALCALÁ (1505[1883], 4)16 minibĕ minibĭ minibŭ minenbĕn mininbĭn minunbŭn minĕb
fathˢ a kasra dˢamma fathˢ atān kasratān dˢammatān sukūn16
a i u an in un ø
The remaining Arabic terms analyzed by Cowan are alif cequin (ʙalif sākin ‘silent ʙalif ’), and in his dictionary we find iarab (‘oración de gramática’; clas. Ar. ʙiʚrāb (the inflectional endings ø, a, i, u (see below)17 and harf (‘letra’; Cl. Ar. hˢ arf), which are not analyzed at all in the grammatical treatise. Summarizing the preceding paragraphs, we can conclude that in most cases Pedro de Alcalá could easily use Latin terminology, such as the names for the cases or the imperative. The use of an ‘exo-grammatical’ term dˢamīr for the conjunct pronoun does make sense since traditional grammar did not have precise equivalents from contemporary sources yet. Probably, Pedro de Alcalá understood very well that the conjunct pronoun in Arabic can be used differently from the Spanish pronouns; they can also be affixed to prepositions and nouns, for instance and that explains probably the reason why he used the Arabic term. In the remaining cases, Arabic terms are used for mnemonic or pedagogicaldidactical reasons. It is questionable if these terms made his teaching
16 The terms fathˢ a, kasra and dˢamma are not found in his grammar which gives us the impression that Pedro de Alcalá did not know them. 17 Again, we find more information in the dictionary, neglected by Cowan: iaráb is translated as ‘declinacion de palabras’ (Corriente 1988, 134), which is not unimportant because the author avoids the term ‘noun’ here, since ʙiʚrāb is used for nouns and verbs as well.
inflection and government in arabic
219
method more attractive or more easily accessible to his pupils. 18 Seen through our modern eyes, the grammar of Pedro de Alcalá was a real novelty, a pioneer work. His transcription system of the Arabic alphabet is the first in Europe, although his knowledge of classical Arabic was evidently limited; there are quite a few inconsistencies while using his own transliteration system. It is also obvious that Pedro de Alcalá did not have any knowledge of Arabic grammatical theory and his Greco-Latin approach is particularly visible in the lacking of insights in the analysis of derivations. As had been observed by Fück [Pedro de Alcalá] “erkennt nicht die Bedeutung des Wurzelbegriffs, so dass dem Leser der arabische Formenbau in der Nominal- wie in der Verbalbildung undurchsichtig bleibt” (1955, 33). Nevertheless, as has been stressed by several scholars at the conferences on missionary linguistics,19 it is easy to point at the shortcomings of these grammars and dictionaries measured by the standards of our own time, but when studied and analyzed in its own historical and cultural context, there is no doubt that there is still a wealth of material to be studied. As observed by Smith Stark “certain preconceptions about pre-modern descriptive work have resulted in its neglect among those in the Western tradition” (2005, 4). Monographs and studies on the description of Arabic by Spanish missionaries are still non-existent. Positive evaluations are scarce when the grammars are concerned, whereas the majority agrees that the lexicographical work of Pedro de Alcalá and others have been of great value. Dannenfeldt’s observation, according to whom “Both of these [Alcalá’s] works are based on solid
18 Missionaries usually emphasised that the language they were learning was ‘easy’ to learn, although others label the language under description as ‘difficult.’ They tried to use the most transparent and less ‘obscure’ paradigms and explanations. The reason to re-write existing grammars was almost always because predecessors were too ‘obscure’. Probably, the grammar of Pedro de Alcalá could be perfectly understandable without the use of Arabic grammatical terminology. The same could be said of the use of Hebrew posodical-grammatical terms by Oyanguren de Santa Inés in his grammar of Tagalog (1742, 208–209), such as milehal (stress on the penultimate syllable, instead of the usual ultimate syllable, in connection with stress assignment), athnach (semicolon or pause) and metheg (one type of the several secondary accents, avoiding the loss of vowels in pronunciation, or a sign, pointing a vowel, which usually would be reduced to schwa but which is to be fully pronounced in this particular place). The terms ’atnach and meteg are both so-called ‘cantillation marks’ in the Hebrew Bible from Masoretic times. Did the pupils of Oyanguren de Santa Inés know Hebrew, or is this pure pedantry or snobbism? 19 The International Conference on Missionary Linguistics took place in Oslo (2003), São Paulo (2004), Hong Kong and Macau (2005), Valladolid (2006), Mérida (Yucatán, 2007) and the sixth will be organized in Évora, Portugal.
220
otto zwartjes
philological methods and are evidences of humanist learning in Spain” (1955, 33),—when compared to Fück’s (1955, 33)—is without any doubt an exception. Although Pedro de Alcalá’s grammar served as the model for the Gramática arábigo-castellana (still unpublished) composed by the Hiernoymite Patricio José de la Torre (1760–1819),20 and although we have some evidence the Maronite Joseph Simon Assemani of Syrian origin (1687–1768)21 quoted from his grammar, Alcalá’s dictionary was particularly widely known and used throughout Europe. Johannes Gabriel Sparvenfeldius possessed probably Alcalá’s catechism, which has been appended to his grammar and his dictionary already in 1706 but in that period it had become already a rare book (Schnurrer 1811, 16).22 If the original work was not longer available, scholars used the original editions or the re-edition from 1776 from Patricio José de la Torre with transcriptions into Arabic characters, which was the base for the Supplément of the Dutch Orientalist Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883) (Monroe 1970, 38). One of the main purposes was to publish the work of Pedro de Alcalá in Arabic script, something that was completely unnecessary according to Pedro de Alcalá. Although we find an entire page with the Arabic alphabet in his grammar, an observation below it tells us “all characters can be substituted by Latin or ‘Castilian’ letters”: Estos son los caracteres y nonbres de las letras arauigas, las quales todas se pueden suplir con nuestras letras Latinas o castellanas, de manera, que para la comun algarauia no ay necessidad de las saber ni conocer todas, mas solamente quarto conuiene saber kha, dil , te, ay, cuyos sones no tenemos en nuestro ABC latino. (Alcalá 1505[1883], 3–4) These are the characters and names of the Arabic letters, which all can be substituted by our Latin or Castilian letters, so that there is no need to learn or to know them all for the common speech, but only four [are necessary], namely the kha, dil , t e, ay, whose sounds we do not have in our Latin ABC.
We have seen that for didactic reasons, Pedro de Alcalá used these mnemonic words, which are not derived from canonical grammatical works of the Arabic tradition. Other grammarians found a different
20
Schnurrer (1811, 88, no. 128). BICRES III, no. 84. Schnurrer (1811, 16) observes that Assemani quotes from his grammar ‘ex grammatical recitat,’ but also adds that he actually used material from Alcalá’s dictionary (‘non Grammaticae sunt, sed Vocabularii,’ ibid.). 22 Ioan. Gabr. Sparvenfeld. 1706. Catalogus Centuriae Librorum Rarissimorum Manuscript.& partim Impressorum, Arabicorum, Persicorum, Turcicorum, Graecorum, Latinorum, &c. Upsala: John Henry Werner. 21
inflection and government in arabic
221
solution. One of the most remarkable solutions can be found in the Fabrica Arabica (1640) of Dominicus Germanus of Silesia (1588–1670). In this case, we have translations of the Latin names of the cases into Arabic. In the following table we see these literal: TABLE 3 THE CASES ACCORDING TO DOMINICUS GERMANUS’ FABRICA ARABIC (1640)23
al-mutasammī al-mutawallid al-mustaʚtˢī al-muštakī al-munādī al-mustaqtˢiʚ
Nominativus Genitivus Dativus Accusativus Vocativus Ablativus23
3. The grammars of Lucas Caballero, Juan de la Encarnación, and Francisco Cañes: ‘Grammars at the crossroads of two systems?’ 3.1
Introduction
After the foundation of a great number of missions in the East, the importance of the Arabic language for preaching the Christian faith continued to increase. Paul V in a papal bull dated 1610 had commanded the various religious orders to teach Oriental languages in their colleges. In the early 16th century, Arabic was taught in Seville at the Colegio trilingüe.24 The Franciscans decided to found colleges in Salamanca, Alcalá, Paris and Toulouse for the teaching of Arabic, Greek and Hebrew (Monroe 1970, 26). According to Monroe, Bernardino González (c. 1665–1735) composed an Arabic dictionary in Seville, which was completed by Franciscans in Jerusalem in 1709 (Monroe ibid.), an unpublished work. José de León began to compile a new dictionary of Arabic and Bernardino González was sent to Damascus in order to complete his work.25 As Monroe 23 From the verbs sammā ‘to denominate,’ walada ‘to give birth,’ ʙaʚtˢā ‘to give,’ šakā ‘to complain,’ nadā ‘to call’ and qatˢtaˢ ‘to cut off, to disjoin,’ the tenth derived form means ‘to deduct,’ which seems to be an approximate translation of ‘auferre.’ 24 In this short account, there will be no space to summarize the study of languages during the Middle Ages in Muslim Spain. 25 Franciscans had already arrived in 1233 in Damascus. Propagating the Christian faith was not permitted by Sultan Malik al-Ašraf, but they took care of Europeans who settled there. After several cases of martyrdom and imprisonment, the Cadi of the city
222
otto zwartjes
observed, ‘the work was the most complete ever to have been composed in Spanish after that of Pedro de Alcalá. [. . .] The work of González and his collaborators was lost until Asín Palacios (1901) came across a copy containing additions up to the year 1727 made by the friars of Damascus’ (Monroe 1970, 27). One of the successors of Bernardino González was Francisco Cañes who settled in Damascus at the Spanish Franciscan College in 1757 (Monroe 1970, 28). Cañes’ grammar of Arabic has been printed in two different editions, a first in 1775 (Madrid, Don Antonio Perez de Soto, and a second in 1776 (Schnurrer 1811, no. 113, BICRES 959 and 971), entitled Gramatica arabigo-española, vulgar y literal. Con un diccionario arábigo-español, en que se ponen las voces mas usuales para una conversación familiar, con el texto de la Doctrina Cristiana en el idioma arabigo. I came across another copy from the same Franciscan tradition, composed by Lucas Caballero and Juan de la Encarnación as we can read in the colophon, which escaped the attention of scholars who have worked in this field. The manuscript has been identified by Magnus and Aare Mörner in his Spanien i svenska arkiv. The title of this manuscript is Compendio de los rudimentos y gramática árabe en que se da notizia de la lengua vernácula y Vulgar y algunas reglas de la literal Iustamente, 1709, and in the colophon 1710 (another author, Juan de la Encarnación, finished the text San Diego, Seville). The work is based on Bernardino González as we can read in the title, and Lucas Caballero, “lector actual Arabo en el Colegio de Damasco” composed (‘recopilado’) this manuscript, which has been donated by Johan Adam Tingstadius (1748–1827),26 bishop of Strängnäs, Sweden, from 1803, to the Rogge library, which has belonged administratively to the Royal Library of Stockholm since 1968. As the titles of the grammars of Cañes and Caballero demonstrate, the language under description is not only classical Arabic, but the urban dialect of Damascus. Apart from Alcalá’s grammar of colloquial Arabic of Granada, European scholars usually did not pay much attention to lower registers, so the linguistic works of these Franciscans work-
granted the privilege of being able to open a public chapel and in 1668 the Franciscans established themselves in a Maronite church, which they left in 1719 when they acquired a new church in the Christian Quarter of Bāb Tūma. The foundation of the college where Arabic was taught dates from this period. 26 Tingstadius was a professor in Oriental languages at Uppsala. He published, for instance in 1770, a treatise entitled Dissertatio philologica de natura et indole linguarum orientalium communi (Uppsala: Johan Edman) and in 1794 his Dictiones arabicae ex carmine Tograi, hebraismum biblicum illustrantes. Uppsala: Johan Edman.
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ing in Damascus are of great importance. However, they were not the only grammarians who described non-Classical registers. Antonio ab Aquila’s grammar published in 1650 is not only a grammar of classical Arabic (“ad grammaticae doctrinalis intelligentiam”) but also colloquial Arabic (“ad vulgaris dumtaxat idiomatic”), probably the reason why he called the grammar “Arabicae linguae novae et methodicae institutiones.” Dominicus Germanus (Germanus of Silesia; 1588–1670)27 composed a dictionary in 1636 with the title Fabrica overo Dittionario della lingua volgare arabica et italiana, copioso di voci e locutioni, con osservare la frase dell’una e dell’altra lingua (Roma. Nella stampa della Sac. Congr. De Propag. Fide) followed three years later by his Fabrica linguae Arabicae cum interpretatione latina et italica, accommodata ad usum linguae uulgaris et scripturalis (Roma. Typis Sac. Congreg. De Prop. Fid.). In 1800 a work has been completed by Franciscus de Dombay (1758– 1810) with the title Grammatica linguae Mauro-Arabicae juxta vernaculi idiomatis usum, accessit vocabularium Latino-Arabicum (Vindobonae: apud Camesina)28 but, according to Schnurrer, this title is misleading; although this grammar describes the common speech of the people in the Maghreb (“Arabicus sermo in Mauritania quo vulgus uti solet”), he observes that all words are ‘good Arabic’ (“non sunt vulgari idiomati propria, sed omnia bene Arabica”) (Schnurrer 1811, 95).29
27 Germanicus was a teacher of Arabic at the mission school St. Peter in Montorio, Rome. He assisted with the preparation of the Arab Bible, he published dictionaries, and commentaries on the Qurʙān. He was teacher and translator at the court of Philip IV of Spain. 28 I have not been able to consult this grammar yet. 29 Although this is not the aim of this paper, I wish to show just a few elements from these sources that are important records of colloquial Damascene Arabic from the beginning of 1700. Particularly the word lists are full of colloquialisms, but also the grammar of Lucas Caballero has many colloquial elements, to mention a few: omission of vowels: muqatla instead of muqātala, the use of the -u- vowel as a prefix for the imperfect tense (64), b- future suffix (p. 24), which is colloquial (in Egypt it is the present tense). However, Caballero is not always consistent, we find both faʚaltu as faʚaltum (2 person pl.m.), the use of -ī instead of -īna for the second person feminine singular in taf ʚalī (= ‘Haztu fem.’) (72). It is remarkable that sometimes we find even hybrid forms, such as antum faʚaltu. However, we find also classical elements, such as the use of the feminine plural in the verbal paradigms, which is not used in colloquial urban speech today. It is also significant that the order of the persons singular in the verbal paradigms is not the traditional one 73v–72r. Cañes has 3 (masc. Sing, 3 fem. Sing, 3. plur. 2 masc. Sing. 2 fem. Sing. 2 plur. 1 sing 1 plur. Instead of 3,3,2,2,1 (sing.), 3, 3, 2, 2, 1. I am grateful to Manfred Woidich for his comments on this footnote.
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otto zwartjes
Grammars of Classical Greek were available throughout Europe, but Spanish priests were engaged in the writing of vernacular Greek too, as we can read in the prologue of Francisco Cañes (1775, s.n.).30 In the following paragraphs we will treat the use of Arabic terminology in both grammars separately. 3.2
Semantic and inflectional vowels and the concept of ʚamal
The questions to be answered now are: which Arabic grammatical terms are used, particularly in the sections dedicated to inflection and government, what did they mean and why did Caballero and Cañes use them? Let’s start with the vowel system, according to the paradigm of Caballero are: TABLE 4A bu ba bi
THE VOWEL SYSTEM ACCORDING TO CABALLERO31 Damma31 Fatha Kesra
O que inclina a V A que inclina a E E que inclina a I
Unlike Pedro de Alcalá, Caballero gives also in an appendix of this Chapter the Arabic technical terms for these vowels when they are used as inflectional endings, accompanied with translations into Spanish: Los Gramaticos a estas mociones dan otros nonbres conbiene a saber que significan, eleuacion, ereccion, y contraccion: al-rafʚ, al-nasb, wa-l-jarr y estas mociones duplicadas llaman tanuín (tanwīn) esto es nunacion que es
30 It must be emphasized that missionary sources, often written in Spanish, are in many cases the only existent sources which can give us information of vernaculars once spoken in early ages of languages of which we only have more detailed information concerning the literary or classical register. Priests understood very well that in China the teaching of Mandarin was not so useful in regions were other dialects were spoken. Grammars of modern Greek circulated since 1638, the Grammatica linguæ græcæ vulgaris was printed by Simon Portius. The first Spanish grammar of modern Greek was composed by Pedro Fuentes, as we can read in the following quotation from the same prologue: “Por lo tocante á la lengua griega ha impreso su gramatica vulgar Fr. Pedro Fuentes observante, que residió en el Seminario de Nicosía en Chipre, y ahora está imprimiendo la gramatica literal.” 31 In their tables of the vowel system, both authors also give the names of the vowels in Arabic script, not reproduced here.
inflection and government in arabic
225
lo mismo que decir addicion de un sonido de nun o n y biene a sonar on, an, en vg. Racholon, Racholan, Racholen, Homo, Hominem, Hominis [. . .] pero esto ueras mas claro en el tratado del nonbre (77 r.). The grammarians give other names to these ‘motions’ [hˢ arakāt], namely the names which signify ‘elevation’, ‘raising’, and ‘contraction’, ar-raf ʚ, an-nasˢb, wa-l-jarr, and these ‘motions’, when duplicated, are called tanwīn, which is ‘nunation’ which is the same as adding the sound of a nūn, or -n, which approximately sounds as on, an, en vg. Racholon, Racholan, Racholen, Man (nom.), man, (acc.), man (gen.), but this you will see more clearly in the chapter about the noun.”
Cañes’ table resembles that of Caballero, although there are some differences. The order of the vowels is different, Spanish translations of the Arabic vowel terms are given, and instead of de verb ‘inclinar’ we find ‘declinar’: TABLE 4B ba bi bu
THE ‘INFLECTIONAL’ VOWELS ACCORDING TO CAÑES (1775, f. 7)
Fatha, Apercion Kesra, Fraccion Domma, Colleccion
A que declina á e, y a clara. Ba, ó Be. E que declina en e, ó i claro. O que declina en o, y u. como Bo, ó Bu.
Also here, we find almost the same observation as above, which demonstrates that the works are closely related to each other and that they probably derived from a common source (or sources): Los gramaticos à las tres mociones dichas les dan otros nombres, es á saber: al Fatha le llaman ‘Nasbo’, esto es ‘ereccion’, al ‘Kesra Charro’, ‘contraccion’, y al ‘Domma Rafo’, ‘elevacion’. Suelen tambien duplicar las dichas mociones de esta suerte ( ) ( ), y entonces les dan el nombre ‘tanuin’, esto es, ‘nunacion’, ò ‘nun’ vocal, que viene á sonar ‘an’, ‘en’, ‘on’. (Cañes 1775, ff. 8–9).
The grammarians give other names to these three above-mentioned ‘motions’, namely: they call the Fatha ‘Nasbo’ which means ‘erection’, they call Kesra ‘Charro’ which means ‘contraction’, and Domma Rafo ‘elevation’. They are used to dublicate the above-mentioned ‘motions’ in this way: ( ) ( ), and they give them the name tanwīn which is ‘nunation’, or vocal nūn which sounds rougly like: an, en, on.
In Chapter 4, both authors deal with the ‘cinco signos’: (1) Secun (‘quietud’), which has according to both the synonym chezm (‘caballero’), or chiasmo (Cañes), (jazm) which Caballero translates as ‘anputacion’ and Cañes as ‘corte’;
226 (2) (3) (4) (5)
otto zwartjes Tex did (‘duplicacion, ó corroboracion’); Maddo (‘extension ó produccion’); Vasalo (‘union, ò conjuncion’); and Hamza (‘punzamiento’).
A chapter dealing with how to read Arabic without vowel signs was appended by Caballero, not present in the grammar of Cañes. Although there are differences, both grammars are from the same tradition and both authors (re-)formulated probably the lost version of Bernardino González, or quoted directly from other sources, such as Agapito à Valle Flemmarum, who almost has the same definitions as Cañes’s, although the vocalizations of the Arabic terms and the order is slightly different: TABLE 4C bu ba bi
THE ‘INFLECTIONAL’ VOWELS ACCORDING TO AGAPITO À VALLE (1687, f. 79V.) 32
Dzhamma, collectio Fathha, aperitio Kesra, fractio
o declinans ad u, & u claru ” a declinans ad e, & a claru ” e declinans ad i, & i claru ”
The ‘Tratado III’ deals with the noun. Here we find sometimes some parallels with the grammar of Pedro de Alcalá, particularly since the term ‘señal’ has been used in both sources, or ‘notificación’ for the article33 and the ‘abitudines’ of Pedro de Alcalá resemble much the ‘señales del nombre’. Since colloquial Arabic nouns are not inflected according to cases, we find in the grammars of Alcalá, Caballero and Cañes equivalents of the Greco-Latin cases for didactic reasons: Los arabes aunque en la lengua vulgar reconocen tres numeros en el nombre, es saber: ‘singular’, ‘dual’, y ‘plural’ no conocen distinction de casos. Y asi el nombre en qualquier caso termina con una misma voz. (Cañes 1775, 59). The Arabs, although they recognize in the colloquial speech three numbers in the noun, being, singular, dual and plural, they do not know the distinction in cases. And that’s why the noun ends with the same sound in whichever case.
32 The vocalization of Martelottus is slightly different: Dzhammon, Phathhon and Kafron. 33 Pedro de Alcalá uses ‘señal de demostración’. See Zwartjes (1992).
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Elsewhere in his grammar, i.e. after the ‘Numeros cardinales’ and ‘Numeros ordinales’ we find a comparable description: Los Arabos en la lengua Vernacular o Vulgar no tienen terminacion de casos en el nombre assi como los Castellanos (16v.). In the vernacular or vulgar speech, the Arabs do not have the ending of cases in the noun as the Castilians have.
The case system according to Caballero is as follows: TABLE 5
THE INFLECTIONAL VOWELS ACCORDING TO CABALLERO (1709, 14r.)
Nominativo Vocatiuo
raf ʚ un
Rajulun
Vir, o vir
nasˢbun
Rajulan
jarr un
Rajulin
Virum o Virum Viri Viro A viro
(this column in Arabic script)
Acusativo Vocatiuo Genitiuo Datiuo Ablatiuo
What did these terms mean in the Arabic grammatical tradition? Before Sībawayhi, no distinctions have been made between the vowels which are used in classical Arabic for the declensional endings, and the other vowels, for instance: there was no disctinction between both vowels ‘i’ in the ‘genitive’ al-kitâb-i. An important novelty of Sībawayhi is that he distinguished the first ‘i’ that is non-declensional, from the final ‘i’ which is ‘declensional’ (Versteegh 1997, 19). When we analyze Arabic terminology in our 18th century grammars, the sections about the particles are even more interesting. Cañes and Caballero use both a metalanguage inherited from the Arabic tradition that had already been developed by Sībawayhi: These endings follow eight courses: accusative (nasˢb), genitive ( jarr), nominative (raf ʚ), apocopate ( jazm), a-vowel ( fathˢ ), i-vowel (kasr), u-vowel (dˢamm), zero-vowel (waqf ). (Translation by Versteegh 1997, 36).
The main distinction is whether a certain vowel is declensional or not. The Arabic terms used by Caballero have all to be related to the Arabic term ʚamal that generally is translated as ‘governance’, or ‘dependence/ dependency’, which resembles the 20th century theory of ‘government and binding’. As explained by Owens:
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otto zwartjes The governor is said to govern the governed in some case or mode form (ʙiʚrāb): For the nouns these forms are: u nominative (raf ʚ); a accusative (nasˢb); i genitive ( jarr); For the verb only the imperfect verb shows mode inflection: u indicative (raf ʚ); a subjunctive (nasˢb); Ø jussive ( jazm).(Owens 1988, 39).
Carter demonstrated in several publications (1991, 1993, 1994)—dealing with different grammatical theories—that the translation of technical terms are in many cases inexact, problematic, anachronistic and can lead to misconceptions.34 Carter argued that the basic meaning of the concept of ʚamal is different, stressing that the interpretation of Weiß: “ʚamal und regere: ‘Es ist nicht recht verständlich’, wie man hier schwanken kann. ʚamala fī kann ja doch gar nicht heißen ‘Gouverneur sein über. [. . .]’. ʚamala fī ist ‘tätig sein, arbeiten’.” The translation ‘governor’ is according to Weiß an example of wishful thinking (‘Wunsch der Vater des Gedankes’), because the concept of governance was already widely used in the Greco-Latin framework. A translation that brings us closer to the original meaning “an etwas arbeiten, auf etwas einwirken” (Weiß 1910, 384). Particles (hˢ urūf )35 can also be defined as ‘governors’, since they can ‘govern’ cases. The subclasses of some particles can be defined in terms of ‘dependency’, i.e. which nominal or verbal ending they ‘govern’. If a particle (hˢ arf ) ‘governs’ a genitive, such particles are called hˢ urūf jarr (Owens 1988, 10), for instance bi (‘by means of ’), or min (‘from’) etc. In both the Compendio delos Rudimentos y Gramatica Araba of Lucas Cauallero, as the Gramatica arabigoespañola, vulgar, y literal of Francisco Cañes we find hispanicised forms of these subclasses of particles.36 At the beginning of the chapter dealing with the parts of speech, both Caballero and Cañes give us the tripartite division of the parts of speech, which is an ‘Arabic’ division, according to Cañes (‘Pero los arabes las
34 The same happened when Romans translated Greek grammar. An illustrative example is the term casus accusativus which is a wrong translation of the Greek term ptosis aitiatike. It is not the “anklagender Fall,” but “das von der Handlung Betroffene, dasjenige, dem etwas gechieht.” (L. Lersch: Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, Bonn 1838– 1841. vol. 2, 186, quoted in Carter 1993, 131). 35 Hˢ arf does not only mean ‘particle,’ since it has in fact much more meanings, such as ‘edge, letter, sound, word.’ See for a detailed overview of the most important meanings the first Appendix of Owens (1990, 245–248). 36 We have not been able to consult a dictionary, which is particularly devoted to the particles, the Diccionario de partículas árabes [s.a.], composed by Mariano Rizzi y Franceschi (18th century; BICRES III, no. 71).
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[partes de la oracion] reducen a tres, que son: verbo, nombre, y particula (hˢ arf ).’ As a matter of fact, the authors follow this tripartite division, but in the second chapter of the 4th treatise, which deals with the particles, the author prefers to follow the Latin model: Capitulo II. De las particulas separadas. Muchos son los generos, que hay de estas particulas, y para evitar confusion, las dividiremos al modo de los latinos, en ‘adverbios’, ‘conjunciones’, ‘preposiciones’, y ‘interjeciones’. (71). “Chapter II. About the separate [= not suffixed] articles. The subcategories of these particles are many, and in order to avoid confusion, we divide them, according to the Latin manner, into adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections.”
In the pages dealing with classical Arabic, a separate chapter following the final chapter in syntax, Francisco Cañes again prefers the Arabic model. In the following quotation he deals with them after the chapter on syntax describing classical Arabic: Aqui es preciso advertir, que asi como el nombre se declina por la variacion de las terminaciones, que tiene en los casos, como adelante se verá; igualmente el verbo en el ‘modsareo’ se conjuga de tres maneras: por variarse su terminacion en las personas. Esta variacion proviene, de que los arabes anteponen al verbo en el ‘modsareo’ dos generos de particulas, que se llaman ‘nasbantes’ y ‘chazmantes’. Se llaman ‘nasbantes’ del verbo ‘nasˢaba’ puso, plantó, fixó, porque en fuerza de ellas el ‘domma’ de la tercera radical del verbo se pierde, y convertido en la mocion ‘fatha’, la fixan, y plantan sobre la dicha radical, sin que padezca mutacion. Las ‘chazmantes’ se llaman asi del verbo ‘jazama’ secó,37 cortó, porque estas particulas le cortan la mocion á la tercera radical; y poniendole el signo ‘secun’, la dexan quiescente, ó liquida. (Cañes 1775, 109–110). Here, it is necessary to observe, that as the noun declines through the variation of its endings which they have in the cases, as we shall see below, so on the same manner the verb in the mudˢāriʚ38 conjugates in three ways: by varying the endings according to persons. This variation results from the fact that the Arabs put before the verb in the mudˢāriʚ two classes of parti-
37
Probably ‘seccionó’, since ‘secar’ means ‘to dry.’ Usually translated as “imperfect,” literally ‘the resembling verb’ (Baalbaki 2004, XIII, 23), because they resemble the nouns, since both share the same declensional vowels (ʙiʚrāb) -u (‘subject’ and ‘indicative mood’; and -a which is ‘direct object’ and ‘subjunctive mood’). The nouns do not have zero endings (‘apocopate’ or jussive mood in the verbal system), whereas the nouns have the -i ending (‘genitive’), which is not present in the verbal paradigm. 38
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otto zwartjes cles, which they call ‘nasbantes’ and ‘chazmantes’ [= which co-occur with the nasˢb (a ending) and those which co-occur with the jazm (Ø ending)]. They are called nasbantes from the verb nasˢaba, to put up, to plant, to fix, because through their force, the domma [dˢamma] of the third radical of the verb is cut off and converted into the fathˢ a [a ending/‘motion’]; they fix this radical and settles down on it, while it does not suffer any change. The chasmantes [those which co-occur with the zero-ending] are called so from the verb jazama, to cut off, to truncate, because these particles cut off the vowel [‘motion’] from the third radical, and put on this the sign sukūn [‘motionless’, ‘vowelless’] and leave them ‘silent’ or ‘liquid’.
In Chapter IV, dealing with the noun, Cañes gives us three classes of particles, ‘charrantes, chazmantes y nasbantes’: Particulas ‘charrantes’ son unas preposiciones, que antepuestas al nombre le colocan en el caso ‘charro’, ó ‘genitivo’ (139) [. . .] Aqui se debe advertir, como en arabe lo mismo es de decir particula ‘nasbante’, que en latin preposicion de acusativo, y asi antecediendo al nombre le colocan en dicho caso, [. . .] Estas particulas á manera de los verbos, admiten afixôs, y rigen los nombres, colocando el sujeto en ‘nasbo’, ó ‘acusativo’, y el predicado en ‘rafeo’, ó ‘nominativo’, de suerte, que se viene hacer una permutacion del nominativo con el acusativo . . . (143) the particles which are ‘charrantes’ are some prepositions, which placed before the noun, put it in the jarr [i] ending, or genitive. Here it must be observed, that as in Arabic it is the same to call them ‘particular nasbante’, as in Latin, prepositions which combine with the accusative, and as such they are placed before the noun, they put it in this so-called case. [. . .] These particles, when combined with verbs, allow affixes, and govern the nouns, placing the subject in nasˢb, or accusative and the predicate in raf ʚ, or nominative, so that there is a permutation from the nominative to the accusative.
Caballero uses the same classification and terminology, although his hispanicised forms are slightly different: ‘particulas charrantes, nassuantes’, and ‘chesmantes’. Although in Cañes’ description, only classical Arabic is commented on, Caballero also dedicates a paragraph on the ‘particulas Chesmantes, ojo, Vulgares’ (particles which correspond with the optative ‘Utinam’ and other Latin forms, such as quare, quia, quoniam, etc.). If we compare the use of Arabic terminology in the works of Caballero and Cañes with those used by Erpenius, we can conclude that the latter did not use Arabic terms so extensively. Worthy of mention are for instance: Fatha, damma, kesra in the first book ‘De elementis . . .’. We find a Latinized form of the term jazm: ‘post gjezman constanter manent’
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(1620, 20), also used as the verb Gjezmare, gjezmant, or in the passive form gjezmatur (47), verbum hamzatum (70). The term motiones is not used as a translation of hˢ arakāt but it for the change a noun undergoes if the feminine ending is added to the masculine form.39 Nunnatio is used as well (141), but the Arabic terminology for inflectional endings as used by the Spanish missionaries is not recorded. 3.3
Possible sources
The use of non-Western metalanguage in itself has its own tradition. Not only Pedro de Alcalá used non-Western terminology, but in Northern Europe we see also that Hebrew grammars used Hebrew terminology in an adapted form.40 Which sources could the Franciscans have used? In the prologue of the grammar, Cañes informs us that he completed an eclectic grammar in agreement with the ‘taste of everyone’ (“que sea del gusto de todos”), using the most useful aspects (“he procurado aprovecharme de lo bueno que en ellas he visto” ibid.) of earlier sources and adding material from his own 16 years long experience: He procurado con el mayor cuidado y desvelo leer, y releer para el ajuste de esta, las gramaticas de Fr. Pedro de Alcalá, de Fr. Felipe Guadañoli, de Tomás Erpenio, de Fr. Antonio de Aguila, de Fr. Agapito de Valle flammarum, de Fr. Francisco Gonzalez, & c. Asimismo me he valido de un considerable numero de manu-scritos, que me han franqueado gustosos algunos aficionados á la lengua arabe. Finalmente he aprovechado lo que me enseñó el estudio, y la experiencia por espacio de diez y seis años, que estube predicando, y confesando en arabe en las misiones del Asia (ibid.). I have taken the greatest care to do my best to read and read over again the grammars of Fr. Pedro de Alcalá, Fr. Philip Guadagnoli, Thomas Erpenius, Fr. Antonio de Aguila, Fr. Agapito de Valle Flammarum, and Fr. Francisco González, and others. Likewise I have used a considerable amount of manuscripts, which some ‘aficionados’ of the Arabic language have passed to me. Finally I have benefited from what study and experience
39
“Motio est nominis Masculini in Foemininum converse; sitque additione terminationis foemininae” (Chapter V). 40 Johannes Reuchlin, who published his Hebrew grammar one year after the publication of Alcalá’s, introduces the verb dagessare: “quando he uel aleph repellunt nun passiue significationis, dagessatur prima ut . . .” (1974 [1506] Liber III, 590). See also Geiger (1871, 129). The presence of Oriental elements in Western grammars is ofcourse not only present when loans are used. Translations and ‘mistranslations’ produced sometimes terms which are not longer recognized as from ‘oriental’ origin. An example is the history and development of the concept of radix (root).
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otto zwartjes have taught me over the period of sixteen years that I spent predicating and confessing in Arabic in the missions of Asia.
To start with the first grammar mentioned, Pedro de Alcalá’s Arte, we can conclude immediately that this grammar has not been the source for the terms used for the inflectional endings. Thomas Erpenius has been apparently used, but we observed that Erpenius reduced the ‘exotic’ grammatical terms in his grammars,41 although he maintained them in his Latin translation of Arabic treatises written by Ibn Ājurrūm and al-Jurjānī, which could have been also the direct sources of Cañes. Ibn Ājurrūm was born in Morocco in 1273–1274 and died in Fez in 1323. He is the author of a grammatical compendium entitled Muqaddima al-Ājurrūmīya Mabādiʙ ʚilm al-ʚArabī where he exposes the inflectional system of Arabic, called ʙiʚrāb. This treatise on syntax has been widely used until the present day and it is one of the later works ‘downstream’ the long tradition starting with Sībawayhi. The Muqaddima was known in Europe since the 16th century.42 This work has been printed for the first time in Europe in 1592 (Medici, Rome). A translation by Peter Kirsten (1577–1640), into Latin appeared in 1610 (Breslae, 1610), followed by a translation of Erpenius (Leidae, 1617). In 1631, another translation appeared by Thomas Obicini (1585–1632).43 The Kitāb al-ʚawāmil al-mi’a n-nahˢwiyya (“Book of the Hundred ‘Regentia’”) of ʚAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (died in ca. 1080) has been translated by Erpenius in 1617 and published together with the Muqaddima: Grammatica Arabica dicta gjarvmia & libellus centum regentium cum versione Latina & comentarijs (Leidae, 1617). As we shall demonstrate below, scholars in Rome, such as Philip Guadagnoli, knew this work. Erpenius used in his translations of these works ‘loans’ from Arabic in his specified grammatical terminology. To mention an example:
41 In this article, we quote from the Rudimenta (1620). For a more complete analysis, the Grammatica Arabica, quinque libris methodice explicata a Thoma Erpenio (Leidae, 1613) and the Grammatica Arabica (Leidae, 1636) have to be taken into account. 42 See his article ‘Ibn Ājurrūm’ (Encylopedia of Islam. New Edition, 3, 697), and Ben Cheneb (1927, 381–382). 43 Thomas Obicini (1585–1632) was abbot of the Franciscan convent at Aleppo between 1613 and 1619 and in 1621 he returned to Rome where he founded the college at the St Peter Convent of Montorio where arabic was taught for the missionaries who were being prepared to spread the faith in the East. He was responsible for the supervision of the type designs of Oriental types at the Propaganda Press.
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partes autem eijus sunt Rafa, Nasba, Chafda and Gjezma, e quibus convenit Nominibus Rafa, nasba and Chafda, non autem Gjezma: verbis vero Rafa, nasba, and Gjezma: non autem Chafda (f. 11)
However, as has been demonstrated by Fück (1955, 68), Erpenius replaced in his own grammars, when possible, Arabic terminology by Latin equivalents, and his Rudimenta could not have been either the source of inspiration of Caballero and Cañes either. Erpenius maintained the Arabic terminology of the vowels: TABLE 6 Nomen
THE VOWEL SYSTEM ACCORDING TO THOMAS ERPENIUS (1636, f. 16).4445
Figura Potestas
Phatha44
Ba
Dhamma
Bu
Kesre
Bi
Nunc a purum & clarum ut in amabam, nunc cum e mixtum, id est η Graecum, ut multi id nunc pronuntiant45 Nunc u purum & clarum, nunc cum o mixtum, id est o obscurum i simplex
Erpenius does not maintain the Arabic terms of the subclasses of the particles, as he rendered them in a Latinized form in his translation of Ibn Ājurrūm, but obviously he attempted to fit them into the Latin model.46 If we compare the translation into Latin of Erpenius with Obicini’s, we can conclude that the latter also used the Arabic terms for inflectional endings.47 Obicini firstly gives the Arabic term, written in the Arabic script, then a translation is given followed by a description or paraphrase with the purpose to explain the Arabic terms: ar-rafʚ as ‘elevatio’, the definition of an-nasˢb is ‘accusativus, quasi patiens positum sub agente’ (without translation), al-xafʚ is rendered as ‘depressio, & amplectitur
44 In the left column the terms are also written in Arabic script, and in the second column the Arabic letter b is given, together with its appropriate vocalisation. 45 “Sometimes a pure and clear a as in amaba, other times mixed with an e i.e. as in Greek η as many pronounce it now,” etc. 46 For instance, we find definitions such as: de syntaxi Particularum: Praepositiones omnes tum separatae regunt genitivum ‘fī baitin . . .,’ instead of the terms ‘nasbantes,’ etc. Nevertheless, in his Rudimenta we still can find verbs as “gjezmare” (1620, f. 47). 47 “Rafaa, & Nasba, & Chafda, & Gezma. At nominibus ex ijs (conueniunt). Rafaa, & Nasba, & Chafda, non autem Gezma, Verbis verò ex eisdem, Rafaa, & Nasba, & Gezma, non autem autem Chafdha” (Obicini 1631, f. 3). Agapito à Valle Flemmarum has almost the same definition (1687, 194).
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genitivum, dativum, & ablativum, quasi obliquus’, and finally, al-jazm as ‘abscisio, idest casus privatio, quasi à dictione cadentium scindat’. This means that Obicini decided to maintain Arabic terminology, and when explained appropriately, the learner could take advantage of these Arabic terms which were developed for describing the Arabic language. And now let’s come back to the concept of āmil fī. In Troupeau (1962), the most important translations in this period is listed: In Kirsten’s and Obicini’s translation we have ‘agens’, whereas the first also uses ‘efficiens’ and the latter uses also ‘regens’. Erpenius uses both ‘regens’ as ‘operans’. As Michael Carter observed, we see until today that the basic meaning has been neglected by many scholars: Anderseits kann man fast an eine Verschwörung glauben, die Grundbedeutung des Terminus amal auch heute noch zu unterdrücken, um den unbegründeten Mythos zu verewigen, der arabische Begriff vom strukturellen Verhältnis zwischen Satzteilen sei identisch mit dem lateinischen, d.h. eine Art ‘Rektion’. Daß die Grundmetapher der lateinischen ‘Rektion’ eine durchaus hierarchische, senkrechte Einordnung der Satzteile voraussetzt, die arabische amal ‘Operation’, aber im Gegenteil eine waagerechte Beziehung schildert, scheint die moderne Sprachwissenschaft nicht anerkennen zu wollen. (Carter 1993, 133).
Carter observed that Weiß was an exception and demonstrated that the translation by Kirsten unfortunately did not have any impact on later translations or interpretations: “Wie eine Stimme in der Wüste verbleibt noch der Aufsatz von J. Weiss. Die wörtliche und systemtreue Übersetzung operans von Kirsten hat sich leider nicht durchgesetzt” (Carter 1993, 134). In the first place we have to add that Franciscus Martelottus and Philip Guadagnoli (1596–1656), both neglected by Troupeau, also deserve our attention in this context, since we find in their grammars of Arabic a very precise analysis and translation of the concept. To start with the latter: the concept of al-irāb is translated as ‘arabicatio’ and amal as ‘efficientia’ or ‘operatio’, and al-awāmil as ‘regentia’: Ratione autem, quo vnu quodque in suo vel Casu vel Modo & quacumque dispositione locatur, quam Constructionem latini dicunt, Arabes interdum ‘al-irāb’, ‘Arabicationem’, proprius autem ‘amalun efficientiam’, seu ‘operationem’ appellant. Nomen autem illud, seu Verbum, seu Particula, eiusmodi operationem exercens, scilicet cuius vi aliquid in tali vel tali dispositione locatur, dicitur, ‘āmilun’ ‘operans’, ‘regens’. Locatum verò ex eius dicitur ‘mamūlun operatum’, ‘rectum’. Exinde dicuntur, ‘al-awāmilu regentia’. Quibus omnibus notis, nihil superest Grammatico. Collegit autem quidam,
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cognomine Giargianius, in libello Regentia omnia, quem propterea nominavit ‘De Centum Regentibus’. Regentia enim, vel sunt ‘lafzˢiyyatun explicita’, vel ‘maʚnawiyyatun implicita’.48 (Guadagnoli 1642, f. 248). However, the system according to which a constituent has to be placed in the appropriate case or mode and on which convenient position has to be placed, this system which the speakers of Latin call ‘Constructio’ [= syntax], is system is called al-ʙiʚrāb by the Arabs which means ‘arabicization’, but they call this more appropriately ʚamalun ‘efficiens’ [an act which produces a certain effect], or ‘operation’ [an act caused by force of an ‘operator’]. When a Noun, a Verb or a Particle produces such effects in this manner, and when by force of this effect something has to be placed in a certain disposition, we call this ʚāmilun [‘producing a certain effect upon something’, ‘to govern’]. The element which has been effected is called maʚmūlun [‘the governed’]. Consequently, al-ʚawāmilu are called regentia [‘governers’]. Although all this is well-known, nothing has been transmitted by ‘The Grammarian’,49 but someone with the name Giargianius has collected in a booklet all the ‘regentia’, which can be subdivided in two subclasses, the lafzˢiyya (‘expressed’) and the maʚnāwiyya (‘abstract’).
As we see, Guadagnoli’s description is not only accurate and complete, since the original Arabic is given and the literarly meaning had been maintained, but he also mentions his source, which is the hundred ‘regentia’ written by al-Jurjānī (‘Giargianius’).50 Do we find traces of these translations of ʚamal other grammars written in Latin of this period? The answer is positive. In chronological order we shall summarize what other grammarians from Rome taught us, starting with one of the earlier grammars that appeared in Rome after the Medici translation of the work of Ibn Ājurrūm, the Institutiones of Franciscus Martelottus. Martelottus not only mentions Erpenius in his prologue (1620, 38),51 but he also deals with methodology. Should the Arabic model with
48 ‘Operators’ can be ‘expressed’ (lafzˢiyy), and ‘abstract’ (maʚnawī). “The first class are the particles or verbs or nouns that are either actually uttered or elided but understood, while the latter are abstract causes that do not involve uttered or restored linguistic elelements.” (Baalbaki 2004, XV, 23–58). This means that elided elements can produce ‘effects.’ 49 We could not identify this ‘Grammarian.’ 50 Also in other paragraphs we see direct translations in the work of Guadagnoli, which remain close to the Arabic original, such as ‘ignoratum,’ for majhūl, usually erroneaously translated as ‘passive,’ opposed to ‘cognitum’ for the ‘active’ (maʚrūf ) (Guadagnoli, 1642, f. 255). 51 “Scripsit autem eleganter admodum de dictionibus hisce, quemadmodum & de litteris eruditissimus Orientalium linguarum in Leidensi Academia professor Thomas Erpenius uniusquam leuasset quoq. nobis huiis secundi libri labores partem” (1620, 38).
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its technical terms be maintained, or should they be abandoned and replaced by Latin terminology? Martelottus decided to follow the traditional method when dealing with the single word classes (“Priora vero hic loci propriè de singulis dictionibus singillatim ordine debito, ac recta methodo explicanda sunt” (1620, 37), but we can infer from his preface, he obviously follows the Arabic model, and he does this explicitly.52 However, Martelottus does not leave the Arabic terminology out of his volume: Ubi omisso Arabicorum grammaticorum ordine Latinis admodum dissono, in rebus pluribus nobiscum, quoad methodum conuenisse comperimus. Caeterum quamvis à praedicta Arabum methodo deflectentes, nostro nos ordine Latinis magis consono procedamus, omnino grammaticalibus vocibus ubique utemur, eorumque ordines, ac procedendi rationes, divissiones, ac series enucleabimus, ut faciliro cunctis ad eosdem perlegendos authores pateat aditus. (Martelottus 1620, 38). Whenever the difference between Arabic grammars and the Latin way of construction was left out of consideration, we discovered that, with respect to the system of the language, Arab had many similarities with ours. After all, to what extent we ourselves may differ from this language system of the Arabs and are differing more and more as well from the Latin way of construction, we should still use in our research the Arab terminology and developing our knowledge we will explain the systems, the methods of construction and concatenation, in order to make it easier for us all to read the same authors.
Martelottus’s methodology is in our eyes extremely modern. It tries to bridge the gap between ‘exo- and endo-grammaticalization.’ An eclectic approach, combining the best elements of both traditions and their corresponding technical terms is the best way to understand the Arabic language. Martelottus also dedicates an entire chapter to inflection (“De ʙiʚrāb, seu Inflexione”), translated as ‘Arabificatio’, or ‘Arabicatio’ (1620, 98). The concept of ʚāmil is translated again as ‘operans’ and the author quotes directly from the Arabic grammatical tradition: ‘ʙiʚrāb’ apud Grãmaticos ‘taġyīru awākhir al-kalām ilā al-ikhtilāf alʚawāmil:’ variatio ultimorum, seu extremitatum dictionum, ob diversitatem operantium (1620, 98).
52 In his grammar we find Arabic terminology extensively, together with the Latinized form, for instance the traditional Arabic classification of the consonants: “Chalchiiton, lahuiiaton, sciagiariiaton, asliiaton, natiiaton, dhalchiiaton, sciaphahiiaton, liniiaton” (1620, 35).
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Variation of the final parts or extremities of the words, caused by the diversity of the operators (‘by the different effects produced by the operators’).
At the end of the 17th century, Agapito à Valle Flemmarum treats the particles in detail in his chapter entitled “De syntaxi Particularum,” and particularly describes the ‘effect’ they have as ‘operators’ on the inflectional system, translating al-hˢ urūf al-ʚāmila as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
“particlae ‘operantes’ in nomen simplex Giarrantes, et in nomen simplex nasbantes, et in summam, et in verbum nasbantes, et ‘operantes’ in verbum Giezmantes” (1687, 268).
Another Franciscan, Antonio ab Aquila, also used Arabic terminology for the particles, although we do not find the same definitions. In his classification of the subclasses, we find a Latin terminology, such as ‘particulae coniunctae’ and ‘particulae separatae,’ with subclasses, such as ‘particula interrogationis, iurandi, status in loco, ad determinationem, optativi, conformandi, negationis, conditionalis’ (1650, Caput XXV, 388 ff.). However, he also uses Arabic terms, such as ‘particula Giàzemeh’ (f. 403). And finally, the question rises wether we find traces of the concept of ʚāmil in the two Spanish grammars. The answer is again positive, as we shall demonstrate. Lucas Caballero gives rules for classical Arabic (‘gramática literal’) where particles have a certain ‘effects’: De las particulas charrantes Despues de las particulas que hemos puesto en el Arabo corresponden a nuestras quatro ultimas partes de la oracion, de las quales particulas, la mayor parte son literales; siguiendo el intento de dar algunas reglas de la grammatica literal, quiero explicar algunos efectos que tienen las particulas puestas o otras que a ellas siguen . . . (Cabellero 1709, f. 7r.; emphasis is mine) After the particles we have put in Arabic, four final parts of speech correspond with ours, whose major part are literary utterances: following our intention to give some rules of literary grammar, I want to explain certain effects these particles have when placed, or other which follow after them.
In the grammar of Cañes, we find exactly the same term, hispanicised as ‘operacion:’
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otto zwartjes . . . quando se les une la particula mā quedan absolutamente privadas de su operacion, y regimen, de suerte que pierden la fuerza que tenian de colocar el sujeto en el caso ‘nasbo’ y se queda en el ‘rafeo’, ó nominativo, como ciertamente que escrivir á Pedro, ‘innamā sayaktubu Butˢrus’ (Cañes 1775, 144; emphasis is mine). . . . when combined with the particle mā they remain absolutely deprived of their ‘operation’ and ‘government’ so that they loose their force which they had before to put the nasˢb (a inflection, or direct object) and it remains in the rafʚ (u ending, or subject) or nominative, as in ‘certainly to write to Peter’ ‘innamā sayaktubu Batˢrus’.
To sum up, we have found the following authors as possible sources of the two Franciscan grammarians of Damascene Arabic: Ibn Ājurrūm and al-Jurjānī (through translations of the Medici edition, Erpenius, Obicini and maybe also Kirsten) as the main Eastern sources. Western sources mentioned by name are Erpenius, Golius (mentioned by Cañes), Agapito à Valle and Guadagnoli. It has to be observed that missionary grammarians in Rome were familiar with some of the most important Arabic authors. The name of Al-Xalīl b. Ahˢmad al Farāhidī (died in 780) who codified and established a system of 15 meters has been mentioned by Guadagnoli. Since the grammars of Caballero and Cañes do not have a final chapter on prosody, they did not deel the need to use this source. Another prominent pioneer, who established the ‘foundations’ of Arabic grammar is of course Sībawayhi, whose work became known in the West through translations of Jahn. It is surprising that we find already in 1620 his name in the grammar of Martelottus, which is evidence for the fact that missionary-grammarians in Rome knew who he was. Dealing with the ‘verba ternaria,’ Martelottus explains that the ‘forma masdari’ is irregular, and in that context he mentions Sībawayhi: In verbis ternarijs, ut iam diximus, forma masdari irregularis est, omnes autem quidem Author Arabicus, nomine Sibauai ad 32. reuocauit, videlicet (1620, 213). In the ternary verbs, as we said before, the masˢdar-form is irregular; indeed, the Arabic author with the name Sībawayhi reduced all these to 32.
The same author, Martelottus, also mentions another Arabic source in his chapter dealing with the ‘Constructio Particularum’ where he divides the ‘particulas operantes’ in five subclasses, in agreement with an Arabic work called Lucerna, or Al-Misˢbāhˢ , the “particulae operantes in nomen simplex giarrãtes, particulae operantes in nomen simplex nesbantes, in verbum nasbantes, in verbum gezmantes,” and the original text in
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Arabic script is given in the same table as well. Although Martelottus does not give the name of the author, we think this work is probably the treatise written by al-Mutaˢ rrizī, entitled Al-Misˢbāhˢ fī ʚilm an-nahˢw. Al-Mutˢarrizī (1144–1213) compiled this treatise which became a textbook in the madrasas of the East. The Misˢbāhˢ itself wa sbased on three small grammatical monographs of al-Jurjānī (Lichtenstädter 1936, 847 and Sellheim (EI [New edition] 7, 773).
4. Conclusion Summarizing, we can conclude that Pedro de Alcalá’s use of Arabic terminology seems to be unsystematic and the reasons why he used them remain unclear, particularly when he uses the Arabic names for the cases. They do not reflect the Arabic inflectional endings and his model was obviously Latin grammar. The use of the term dˢamīr is an exception, since the suffixed pronouns can be used in a different wayattached to verbs, nouns and particles—compared to Latin. Pedro de Alcalá’s mnemonic terms of the vowels stand alone, and we do not find any use of them in other works and in his dictionary we do not find the terms fathˢ a, kasra, and dˢamma. Although we find in Alcalá’s dictionary the translation ‘obrar’ for the Arabic root ʚamala there are no traces of Arabic theory concerning ‘operators’ or ‘government’, related to this term. The earliest translations of al-Jurjānī and Ibn Ājurrūm are without any doubt an important milestone for the development of the study of nonWestern grammatical theory in the West and probably for some of them a real new ‘discovery,’ which can serve as an enrichment of the Western system, as Martelottus postulates. Direct influence of these works can be found in the grammars of Martelottus, Ab Aquila, Agapito and Guadagnoli, and the Franciscans in Damascus continued this tradition. Although Caballero and Cañes were not the pioneers themselves, they were probably the first grammarians who introduced extensively Arabic terminology in the Spanish metalanguage, as we have demonstrated. In Northern Europe, however, we see a different approach. Erpenius did not aim at orientalising Western grammatical terminology, except for the terms for the vowels and some other terms. The concept of ʚāmil has followed its own course in grammatical theory and in the 20th century it was absorbed by anachronistic terms such as ‘government’ and ‘dependency’, as Carter demonstrated. Nevertheless, we have
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demonstrated that the Franciscans were totally aware of the right connotations of ʚāmil although we have to admit that sometimes they use ‘gobierno’ or ‘regimen’ as a synonym for ‘efficiens’ or ‘operans.’ Guadagnoli and Martelottus gave us without any doubt the most detailed analysis, and probably Caballero and Cañes have been inspired by their works. It was surprising that not only works of Ibn Ājurrūm, al-Jurjānī and al-Mutaˢ rrizī are mentioned by name by some of the grammarians working in Rome, but even Sībawayhi is mentioned by name in this relatively early period (1620). Missionary linguistics in Rome, particularly the achievements of scholars and teachers who published grammars in the seventeenth century at the Polyglot Press of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide deserve to be studied more in detail in future. Particularly those authors who tried to combine exo- and endo-grammatical terminology and approaches have been innovative. How the learners of Arabic appreciated this ‘bridging’ approach is another question. Many scholars preferred in their teaching curriculum the more Latin-based grammar of Erpenius and his work was without any doubt a great success during many centuries. However, I agree with Martelottus that there is no reason to postulate that the Arabs differ from our system. We can also say, “we ourselves may differ from this Arabic language system.” While using their own terminology, which has been developed for their own linguistic phenomena, we will make progress in the understanding of not only the language but of the linguistic model as well.
5. References 5.1
Primary sources
Alcalá, Pedro de. [Before 5 Feb. 1505a]. Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arauiga. Salamanca: Juan Varela. ——. [Before 5 Feb. 1505b]. Vocabulista arauigo en letra castellana. Salamanca: Juan Varela. ——. [ca. 1506a]. Arte para ligera mente saber la lengua arauiga emendada y añadida y Segunda mente imprimida. Salamanca: Juan Varela. ——. [ca. 1506b]. Vocabulista arauigo en letra castellana. Salamanca: Juan Varela. [Biblioteca Nacional, R 31638.] Re-edition: Paul de Lagarde. 1883. Petri Hispani de lingua arabica libri duo. Gottingae: In aedibus Dieterichianis Arnoldi Hoyer. Reprint: Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1971. Aquila, Antonio Ab. 1650. Arabicae linguae novae, et methodicae institutiones. Non ad vulgaris dumtaxat Idiomatis; sed etiam ad Grammaticae doctrinalis intelligentiam, per Annotationes in Capitum Appendicibus suffixas, accomodatae. Authore F. Antonio ab Aquila Or. Min. Sancti Francisci strict. Obser. Theologo, atque in Collegio Sancti Petri
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Martis Aurei à Sacra Congregatione de propaganda Fide Arabicae linguae deputato lectore. Opus tum omnibus Arabicae linguae studiosis, tum potissumum Apostolicis Viris, per Asiam & Africam Fidem propagaturis, utile & necessarium. Romae: Typis Sac. Cong. De Prop. Fide. Caballero, Lucas. [Cauallero] 1709. Compendio de los Rudimentos y Gramatica Araba en que se da suficiente notizia de la lengua Vernacula o Vulgar y algunas Reglas de la literal Iustamente P.M.R.F. Bernardino Gonzalez hijo de la Proâ de la Concepzion en España Lector Jubilado en Arabo y Misionero Apostolico del Oriente y recoplada por el Re.do P. Fr. —— Mo Apostolico hijo de la Proa de los Angeles Lector actual Arabo en el colegio de Damasco. Ms. Rogge Library, Handskriftssamlingen, Sweden. Cañes, Francisco. 1775. Gramatica arabigoespañola, vulgar, y literal. Con un diccionario arabigo-español, en que se ponen las voces mas usuales para una conversacion familiar, con el Texto de la Doctrina Cristiana en el idioma arabigo. Madrid: En la Imprenta de Don Antonio Perez de Soto. Dombay, Franciscus de. 1800. Grammatica linguae Mauro-Arabicae juxta vernaculi idiomatic usum, accessit vocabularium Latino-Arabicum. Vindobonae: apud Camesina. Erpenius, Thomas. 1617. Grammatica Arabica dicta Gjarumia, & Libellus centum regentium cum versione latina & commentariis Thomae Erpenii. Leidae: Ex typographia Erpeniana Linguarum Orientalium. ——. 1620. Rudimenta lingvæ arabicae. Accedunt ejusdem Praxis Grammatica; & Consilium de studio Arabico feliciter instituendo. Leidae: Ex Typographia Auctoris. Germanus [of Silesia], Dominicus. 1639. Fabrica linguae Arabicae cum interpretatione Latina & italica, accomodata ad usum linguae vulgaris, & scripturalis. Romae: Typis Sac. Congreg. De Prop. Fide. ——. 1640. Fabrica Arabica copiosioribus impensis atque vberiori structura. Romae. González, Bernardino 2005 [c. 1705]. Intérprete Arábico. Edición y estudio preliminar por Ramón Lourido Díaz. 2 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia/Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación. ——. 2005 [c. 1705]. Epítome de la gramática arábiga. Edición y estudio preliminar por Ramón Lourido Díaz. 2 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia / Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación. Guadagnoli, Philippi. 1642. Breves Arabicae linguae Institutiones. Romae: Ex Typographia Sac. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide. Martelottus (= Martelotti), Franciscus. 1620. Institutiones Linguae Arabicae Tribus Libris distributae. In quibus uberrime quaecumque ad litteras, Dictiones & Orationem attinent, explicantur. Authore P. Francisco Martelotto Martinensi, Sacerdote, Theologo, Clericorum Regularium Minorum. Romae: Excudebat Stepahsnus Paulinus. Nepos, Ferdinandus. 2000.[c. 1468–1485]. Materies. (Ms. See Codoñer). Obicini, Franciscus. 1631. Grammatica Arabica Agrumia appellate. Cum versione Latina ac dilucida expositione. Adm. R.P.F. Thomae Obicini Noniensis, Diae. Nouariau, ord. Minorum Theologi, ac linguarum Orientalium in Collegio S. Petri Montis Aurei, de mandato Sacrae Congregationis Fidei propaganda Magistri. Romae: Typis Sac. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide. Oyanguren de Santa Inés, Melchor. 1738. Arte de la lengua japona. Dividido en quatro libros segun el Arte de Nebrixa, con algunas voces proprias de la escritura, y otras de los lenguages de Ximo, y del Cami, y con algunas perifrasis, y figuras. México: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal. ——. 1742. Tagalysmo elucidado, y reducido (en lo possible) â la Latinidad de Nebrija, con su Syntaxis, Tropos, Prosodia, Passiones, &c. y con la allusion, que en su uso, y composicion tiene con el Dialecto Chinico Mandarin, con las Lenguas Hebrea, y Griega. México: D. Francisco Xavier Sánchez, en la Calle de San Francisco. Reuchlin, Johannes. 1974[1506]. De rudimentis hebraicis libri III. Pforzheim. Reprint: Hildesheim – New York: Georg Olms Verlag.
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Rodrigues, Ioão. (Rodriguez) 1604–1608. Arte da Lingoa de Iapam composta pello Padre —— Portugues da Copanhia de Iesv diuidida em tres Livros. Com Licença do Ordinario, e Svperiores. Nagasaqui: no Collegio de Iapão da Companhia de Iesv Anno. 1604 (-1608 – colofon.) Rodrigves, Ioam. 1620. Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa tirada da Arte Grande da mesma lingoa, pera os que comecam a aprender os primeiros principios della. Pello Padre Ioam Rodrigvez da Companhia de Iesv Portugues do Bispado de Lamego. Diuidida em tres Livros. Com Licenca do Ordinario, & Superiores. Amacao: no Collegio da Madre de Deos da Companhia de Iesv. Roth, Heinrich. 1988[ca. 1662]. Grammatica Linguae Sanscretanae Brachmanum Indiae Orientalis. Facsimile edition: Arnulf Camps & Jean-Claude Muller: The Sanskrit Grammar and Manuscripts of Father Heinrich Roth S.J. (1620–1668). Facsimile edition of Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome, Mss.Or. 171 and 172. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Valle Flemmarum, Agapiti à. 1687. Flores Grammaticales arabici idiomatis collecti ex optimis quibusque Grammaticis nec non pluribus Arabum monumentis, ad quam maximam fieri potuit brevitatem atque ordinem revocati: Studio, & Labore Fr. Agapiti à Valle Flemmarum Ordinis Minorum S. Francisci reformatorum Provinciae Tridentinae, in Semionario Patavino lectoris. Opus omnibus Arabicae Linguae Studiosis perutile, & necessarium. Patavii: Ex Typographia Seminarii Opera Augustini Candiani. Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus. 1985 [1716]. Grammatica Damulica. Quæ Per Varia Paradigmata, Regulas & Necessarium Vocabulorum Apparatum, Viam Brevissimam Monstrat, Qua Lingua Damulica Seu Malabarica, Quæ Inter Indos Orientales in Usu Est, & Hucusque In Europa Incognita Fuit, Facile Disci Possit: In Usum Eorum Qui Hoc Tempore Gentes Illas Ab Idololatria Ad Cultum Veri Dei, Salutemque Æternam Evangelio Christi Perducere Cupiunt . . . Halæ Saxonum: Litteris & Impensis Orphanotrophei. Ed. Burchard Brentjes & Karl Gallus, Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1985. 5.2
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Baalbaki, Ramzi. 2004. Grammarians and Grammatical Theory in the Medieval Arabic Tradition. Aldershot: Ashgate –Variorum. Ben Cheneb, Mohammed 1927. “Ibn Ādjurrūm.” Enzyklopädie des Islām. 2.381–382. Leiden – Leipzig: Brill – Harrassowitz. BICRES (see Niederehe). Carter, Michael G. 1991. “Review Owens 1988.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 111.2: 395–397. ——. 1993. “Probleme bei der Übersetzung von Fachsprache am Beispiel des Arabischen.” In Frank, Armin Paul, Kurt-Jürgen Maaß, Fritz Paul, und Horst Turk, eds. Űbersetzen, Verstehen, Brücken bauen. Geisteswissenschaftliches und literarisches Űbersetzen im internationalen Kulturaustausch. Berlin: Erich Schmidt., 1.130–141. ——. 1994. “Review Owens 1990”. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 114.3: 472– 475. Codoñer, Carmen. 2000. Gramáticas Latinas de transición. Juan de Pastrana, Fernando Nepote. Introducción y edición crítica. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. Corriente, Federico. 1988. El léxico árabe andalusí según P. de Alcalá. (Ordenado por raíces, corregido, anotado y fonémicamente interpretado. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Cowan, William. 1981. “Arabic grammatical terminology in Pedro de Alcalá.” Historiographia Linguistica, 8.2/3:357–363. Dannenfeldt, Karl H. 1955. “The Renaissance Humanists and the Knowledge of Arabic.” Studies in the Renaissance, 2, 96–117.
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Troupeau, G. 1962. “Trois traductions latines de la ‘Muqaddima’ d’Ibn Āğurrūm.” Études d’Orientalisme dédiées á la mémoire de Lévi-Provençal. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1.359–365. Versteegh, Kees. 1997. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought III. The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. London: Routledge. Weiß, Josef. 1910. “Die Arabische Nationalgrammatik und die Lateiner.” Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 64:349–390. Zwartjes, Otto. 1993. “El artículo en las gramáticas pioneras de Nebrija y Alcalá y las gramáticas grecolatinas.” In Kerkhof, Maxim, Hugo de Schepper, Otto Zwartjes, eds. España: ¿Ruptura 1492?. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 261–286. ——. 1994. “Tradición e innovación en las gramáticas pioneras de Antonio de Nebrija y Pedro de Alcalá: la categoría gramatical del pronombre.” In Escavy, R., M. Hernández Terrés, A. Roldán, eds. 1994. Actas del Congreso Internacional de Historiografía Lingüística. Nebrija V-Centenario 1492–1992. Murcia, 1–4 abril 1992. Murcia: El Taller, 3:651–665. ——. 2007. “Agreement asymmetry in Arabic according to Spanish missionary grammarians from Damascus (XVIIIth century).” In Zwartjes, James, Ridruejo, eds., forthcoming. Missionary Linguistics III/Lingüística misionera III. Morphology and Syntax. Selected papers from the IIIrd and IVth International Conferences on Missionary Linguistics, Hong Kong/ Macau/Valladolid, 273–303. ——, and Even Hovdhaugen, eds. 2004. Missionary Linguistics [I]/Lingüística misionera [I]. Selected papers from the First International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, 13–16 March 2003. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——, and Cristina Altman, eds. 2005. Missionary Linguistics II/Lingüística misionera II. Orthography and Phonology. Selected Papers from the Second International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, São Paulo, 10–13 March 2004. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——, Gregory James and Emilio Ridruejo, eds. 2007. Missionary Linguistics III/Lingüística misionera III. Morphology and Syntax. Selected papers from the IIIrd and IVth International Conferences on Missionary Linguistics, Hong Kong/ Macau 12–15 March 2005. Valladolid, 8–11 March 2006. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
LINGUISTICS
THE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS AND RULES OF PAUSE IN ARABIC Salman H. Al-Ani Indiana University, Bloomington
1. Introduction The Arabic term waqf ‘pause’ is a grammatical concept. It is a verbal noun derived from the verb waqafa that could mean ‘to stop,’ ‘to come to a standstill’ or ‘to pause.’ This verb is used both in transitive and intransitive form. The term waqf is from the transitive verb waqafa. Another verbal noun wuqūf ‘standing still’ is derived from the intransitive verb waqafa (Farrāj 2001, 13–14). The term waqf is more commonly used and has a significant point of reference in both linguistic and religious connotations that mean to hold something at a pause or stop. This term waqf and its plural form ’awqāf mean an endowment in Islamic law which signifies the dedication of property or land that cannot be sold. The chain of speech utterances may be divided into spoken group events. This is usually regulated by the phonological, syntactic and semantic rules of the language. Normally words in the chain of the utterances of speech in prepausal forms either end with vowels or consonants. In Arabic vowels at the end of a speech event in prejunctional state are a sign of continuity and consonants signal waqf (Hˢ assān 1973, 270–271). When speaking or reading aloud with the prepausal mode almost all short vowels at the end of words, phrases and sentences will be dropped. This linguistic phenomenon, in Arabic, is referred to as pause forms. Oral reading and recitation have been highly emphasized in the Arab-Islamic tradition. Poets in Arabia in the pre-Islamic period composed their odes to be recited and the members of the poet’s tribe in turn memorized and recited these poems whenever the opportunity availed itself for them to do so. When the Qurʙān was first revealed it emphasized recitation. The very first verse states ‘recite or read aloud, ʙiqraʙ. The tradition of oral reading, in general, is engrained in the hearts and minds of most Muslims and Arabs. The Arabic sources that dealt with this topic were focusing on the rules of waqf in Classical Arabic with special emphasis on the rules of
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recitation in the Qurʙān. This aspect of waqf will not be covered in this paper. The emphasis is on the phenomenon of waqf with the explanation of the basic linguistic features of waqf of Modern Standard Arabic. Previous research on waqf, in western languages, is rather limited. There are four studies that made a basic contribution to waqf or pause. The following is brief account of these studies. 1.1
F.T. Mitchell (1990)
Mitchell wrote that pause “. . . relate(s) first and foremost to words that occur in apocopated form before pause, that is predominantly, final in the phrase and sentence.” He added that: “In discourse, it should not be expected that pause will always neatly correlate with grammatical phrasal divisions nor that the most appropriate divisions are always observed by speakers or readers, but the principle should always be followed that, wherever a pause is made, the preceding word should be pronounced in its pausal form.” He postulated the following rules: (i) a final short vowel, for example those of case, tense and mood is omitted; (ii) the sign of the indefinite, i.e., in nunation (-n) is omitted together with the preceding vowel, in the nominative (-un) and genitive (-in) cases of nouns and adjectives; (iii) accusative (-an) may be replaced by a long fathˢ a (ā); (iv) the feminine singular and unit ending tāʙ marbūtˢah is replaced by /-h/ in all three cases (Mitchell 1990, 99–100). This brief account of waqf by Mitchell covers the basic rules of pause of al-‘arabiyyah. It is intended to aid the learner of Arabic to pronounce and read aloud correctly. He used a short transliterated Arabic passage read aloud by what he called “. . . a speaker trained in the high Classical tradition” to illustrate the pause form rules. The comments and the pause rules almost mirror the traditional statements of the Arab grammarians on waqf (Mitchell 1990, 100–101). 1.2
Clive Holes (2004)
Holes defined waqf as: “pause is defined (rather vaguely) as an audible break in delivery” (Holes 2004, 63). The focus of his analysis is on the spoken Modern Standard Arabic. The illustrative examples he used were taken from Syrian radio broadcast and television news and speeches of a former Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser. He (Holes) said that
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pauses depend on what is said in the spoken Modern Standard Arabic, the audience and the speaker’s intentions. The conditions where prepause occur are: (i) final short vowels that appear in prejunctural position are omitted; (ii) the feminine gender morpheme tāʙ marbūtˢah in certain nouns and adjectives in prepause, together with the /-u, -i, and -a/ are deleted. He added that /-ah/ is pronounced as /-a/; (iii) The inflectional suffixes /-un/ nominative, /-an/ accusative and /-in/ genitive were discussed individually. The /-un/ is omitted in prepause. The nature of the accusative /-an/ depends on its grammatical status. When it is used as an adverbial marker as in kullīyan ‘completely’ the majority of speakers retain it, however few realize it as /-ā/. When /-an/ is used as marker of an object of nouns or an adjective that agrees with one, it is sometimes retained and sometimes omitted. Holes analysis of the inflectional suffix /-in/ is very interesting. He made a distinction of /-in/ when it is used as a marker of a noun in the genitive case and /-in/ as a marker of an attributive adjective in agreement with a genitive head noun. The suffix /-in/ usually is omitted, however, Holes gave some examples where it is retained (Holes 2004, 63–68). 1.3
Muhˢ ammad Farrāj (2004)
The focus of Farrāj’s long Arabic article is on the traditional grammatical concept of waqf. The emphasis of this article was on the rules of waqf in Classical Arabic Grammar and its application for the recitation of the Qurʙān. He stated that there are two basic features of waqf. These are wajh ‘manner’ and mahˢ all ‘place.’ The purpose of mahˢ alli ’l-waqf ‘place of pause’ is to regulate the speech event and leads to improving its division where juncture or pause may occur. The wajh, plural ʙawjuh, provides the speaker or the reader with the guide for waqf so the speech will appear harmonized in its utterances. He added that waqf has a wazˢīfa ‘task’ which serves for clarity of pronunciation and meaning that help in understanding of what is being read or spoken (Farrāj 2004, 12–23). 1.4
Tamām Hˢ assān (1973)
Hˢ assān stated that waqf through its various means by its nature is a mifsˢal, ‘separator’ of speech where it is possible that the chain of speech may broken into spoken groups. Every one of these, when its meaning is complete, is considered a speech event. However, if the speech is not
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complete then the speech event may consist of more than one event (Hˢ assān 1973, 270).
2. The Arabic linguistic analysis of and rules for waqf 2.1
The waqf status of the tāʙ marbūtˢah
One of the most common modes of waqf is applied to words that end with a tāʙ marbūtˢah. This tāʙ marbūtˢah is considered to be a morpheme that primarily marks the feminine endings of nouns and adjectives. However there are some feminine nouns and adjectives that do not always end in tāʙ marbūtˢah. In Arabic script some feminine nouns and adjectives may be written with tāʙ mabsūtˢah. This is the regular tāʙ that appears at the end of words. This is especially true in the script of the Qurʙān. In fact we find sometimes the same word written with tāʙ marbūtˢah and in other contexts it is written with a tāʙ mabsūtˢah. The word rahˢ ma ‘mercy’ for example is written in either tāʙ marbūtˢah or tāʙ mabsūtˢah. There are nouns and adjectives that end in a tāʙ marbūtˢah that have a masculine meaning. Proper names such as Hˢ amzah, Tˢalhˢ ah, and several others are written with tāʙ marbūtˢah. The rules of waqf apply to them as they apply to the feminine nouns and adjectives. Therefore it is not the gender of the word but rather the form of the word that determines the application of the waqf rules. The tāʙ marbūtˢah in nouns and adjectives that appears in prepause form is deleted and replaced by /-h/. This deletion, of course, includes the vowels: /-i/, -/u/ and /-a/ in the definite and /-in/, /-un/ and /-an/ in the indefinite. The deletion takes place in all three cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. With prejunctural, on the other hand, the tāʙ marbūtˢah and the vowels both in the definite and indefinite are retained. This is illustrated with the word madrasah ‘school’ as in the prejunctural forms below:
Indefinite Definite
Nominative
Genitive
Accusative
madrasa-tun ʙal-madrasa-tu
madrasa-tin ʙal-madrasa-ti
madrasa-tan ʙal-madrasa-ta
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The case endings in the indefinite /-tun, -tin, -tan/ and the definite /-tu, -ti, -ta/ all will be deleted in the prepausal forms. The word madrasah ‘school’ and the word ʙal-madrasah ‘the school’ both in definite and indefinite forms will have the same endings in the prepausal forms. The reason is that the /-h/, placed between slashes, is sometimes weakened to the point that one really cannot even hear it. This is especially the case of Modern Standard Arabic, read aloud or spoken by radio and television broadcasters. I have examined and analyzed the speech segments of several announcers and observed both the dropping off of the /-h/ and the retaining of it. In careful delivered speeches especially of religious nature the /-h/ is almost always retained. 2.2
The deletion of final short vowels
The final short vowels, in waqf, are deleted. This deals with al-hˢ arakāti ʙl-ʙiʚrābiyyah, the vowel marks that signal case endings, tense and mood. The following rules apply to nouns and adjectives derived from strong verb roots: (a) The case endings in the definite nouns are indicated by /-u/ in the nominative case, /-i/ in the genitive case, and /-a/ in the accusative case. All of these short vowels that mark the case endings are omitted in waqf. The following sentences illustrate the prejunctural and prepausal forms: Prejunctural forms
Prepausal forms
Meaning
jāʙa-l-walad+u mina-l-walad+i raʙaytu-l-walad+a
jāʙa-l-walad mina-l-walad raʙaytu-l-walad
the boy came from the boy I saw the boy
(b) When the indefinite nouns and adjectives that end in ‘nunation,’ the sound /-n/ pronounced but not written. The case endings in the indefinite nouns and adjectives are indicated by /-un/ in the nominative case, /-in/ in the genitive case and /-an/ in the accusative case. Both nominative and genitive endings are omitted in prepausal forms. However the accusative case maker is changed into an ʙalif /-ā/ that requires a special treatment. The word walad ‘boy’ in the following sentences illustrates both prejunctural and prepausal forms.
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salman h. alani Prejunctural forms
Prepausal forms
Meaning
jāa walad+un min walad+in raaytu walad+an
jāa walad min walad raaytu walad+aa
a boy came from a boy I saw a boy
(c) The indefinite accusative case ending is /-an/. Also certain types of adverbs end in /-an/. This ending is replaced by /-ā/ in prepausal forms as illustrated in the table above. In the case of adverbs some speakers retain the ‘nunation’ while others replaced it with /-ā/. However, in prepausal and words in isolation may be retained but oftentimes it changes to /-ā/ following the normal rules of waqf. The word id an meaning ‘if ’ is written orthographically either with nūn /n/ or with the alif tanwīn. In prepausal form pronounced as /-ā/. (d) Tense and mood in verb-vowel endings are omitted.
2.3
Prejunctural forms
Prepausal forms
Meaning
katab+a yaktub+u lan yaktub+a
katab yaktub lan yktub
he wrote he writes he will not write
Words that end in long vowels
There are two main grammatical categories of words that end in long vowels. These are called in traditional Arabic grammar as the al-manqūs ‘defective’ as in the word al-wādī ‘the valley’ and al-maqsūr ‘shortened’ as in the word al-fatā ‘the youth.’ 1. The rules of waqf on words that end in the long vowel /-ī/ such as al-muh āmī ‘the lawyer’ which is derived from a finally weak verb h amā and its imperfect yah mī ‘to defend’ ends in /yāʙ/. Nouns that are derived from finally weak verbs like h amā of the pattern of al-muh āmī always end /-ī/. This category of words should not be confused with words ending in yā-n-nisbah as in words like lubnāniyyun ‘Lebanese’ or even with words like zabyun ‘deer’ both of these words are written in Arabic script with /yāʙ/, however the source of this /yāʙ/ is not a final radical as the nouns
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derived from finally weak verbs like h amā and its imperfect yah mī ‘to defend’ which ends in /yāʙ/ as a radical (Farrāj, 2001, 71–72). The vowel endings of al-manqūs ‘defective’ are determined by the case endings and whether they are definite or indefinite. When words of the manqūs ‘defective’ are in the accusative case and indefinite they end in /-ā/ in the waqf as qābaltu muh āmyā ‘I met a lawyer’ after the omitting of the ‘nunation.’ When they are definite they end in /-ī/ as in qābaltu l-muh āmī ‘I met the lawyer.’ When the manqūs words are in genitive or nominative case they end in the omitting of the final vowel /-ī/ as in filwād‘in the valley’ and hādā wād ‘this is a valley. However when they are definite the words of the manqūs end in long vowel /-ī/ as in fil-wādī ‘in the valley’ and hādā l- wādī ‘this is the valley. 2. The rules of waqf of words that end in the long vowel /-ā/ such as al-fatā ‘the youth’ and which are primarily derived from finally weak verbs are called in traditional Arabic grammar al-maqsūr ‘the shortened.’ The waqf on these words is always end in an alif /-ā/ in all three case endings and regardless how orthographically they are written with alif maqsūrah or regular alif. What matters here is the pronunciation and not the script.
3. Concluding Remark It is worthwhile to mention that the rules of waqf are not always adhered to by readers and speakers of Modern Standard Arabic. The Arabic language for sometime has been going through processes of change. Some readers and speakers are not using the al-h arakāta-l-i‘rābiyyah ‘case endings.’ The often heard statement that states sakkin taslam ‘use sukūn and you will be safe’ reflects the state of affairs of the on going change of the Arabic language. Therefore the rules of waqf outlined above when considered should be used as guidelines not to be applied in a rigorous and strict manner.
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4.1 Primary source Ibn Yaīš. n.d. Šarh al-mufassa l. Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbī. 4.2 Secondary sources Farrāj, Muhammad. 2001. Al-waqf wa-wazāifuhu inda n-nahwiyyīn wa-l-qurrā. Annals of Arts and Social sciences, Monograph 159 Volume 21. Kuwait: Kuwait University. H assān, Tammām. 1973. Al-luġa al-arabiyya mabnāhā wa-manāhā. Cairo: al-Haya al-Āmma lil-Kitāb. Holes, Clive. 2004. Modern Arabic Structures, Functions and Varieties. Revised edition. Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University press. Mitchell, T.F. 1990. Pronouncing Arabic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
THE EXPLANATION OF HOMONYMY1 IN THE LEXICON OF ARABIC Georges Bohas and Abderrahim Saguer ENS – Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon
1. Introduction: the theoretical framework and earlier analyses This article is a follow-up to our previous paper entitled “Sur un point de vue heuristique concernant l’homonymie dans le lexique de l’arabe.”2 By adopting a heuristic viewpoint, we take into account the fact that we have not yet finished exploring all the matrices of Arabic, and thus proceed by means of successive evaluations and provisional hypotheses.3 Certain points remain to be clarified; nevertheless, the level of explanation we can achieve has become clearer, as well as the explanatory methods that we are able to offer within the framework of the Theory of Matrices and Etymons (TME). Although there are already numerous publications on this subject, it is worth underlining that, within the TME framework, the lexicon is organized on three levels:4 1 / The matrix: a non linearly-ordered combination of a pair of phonetic feature vectors linked to a ‘notional invariant’; for example, {[labial], [coronal]} ‘to strike a blow.’5
1 It is worth defining homonymy in opposition to polysemy. Polysemy is ‘a word which brings together several meanings between which users can recognize a link’ (Nyckees, 1998: 194); the meanings are different but related. ‘Homonymy is distinct from polysemy in that, in the case of homonymy, it seems impossible to re-establish a plausible semantic relationship’ (Nyckees, 1998: 194) between the different meanings, for example: flies ‘certain insects’ and flies ‘the opening at the front of a pair of trousers’ or to sound ‘to make a noise’ and to sound ‘to measure the depth of water’—different non related meanings. 2 Bohas and Saguer (2006). 3 That is: in a not-rigorously demonstrated manner but justified by reasons of internal coherence (see the website www.memo.fr Einstein, Albert); and accepting that you cannot explain everything. 4 See Bohas (1997, 2000), Dat (2002). 5 This is a property of the language that was proved both formally and semantically by Bohas and Darfouf (1993), developed in Bohas (1997), which consists in the fact that
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2 / The etymon: a non linearly-ordered bi-consonantal base made up of two phonemes taken from a given matrix exhibiting both the features of this matrix and its ‘notional invariant’; for example, {b,t} ‘to strike a blow with a sharp object.’ 3 / The radical: an etymon that has developed by diffusion of the final consonant or by incrementation, or that results from the blending of two etymons; the radical includes at least one vowel and vectors the notional invariant; for example: /bvtar/, ‘to cut, to cut the tail’ (Bohas 2000, 9). The radical is the domain in which diverse morphological and Ablaut processes take place (Guerssel and Lowenstamm 1993, Segeral 1995). So far, ten matrices have been accounted for; most of these have already been subjected to in-depth studies (see footnote 14). Matrix 1
{[labial],6 [coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘to strike a blow’
Matrix 2
{[labial], [-voiced] }7 [+continuant]8 Notional invariant: ‘movement of air’
Matrix 3
{[labial], [pharyngeal]}9 Notional invariant: ‘(a) tightening’
Matrix 4
{[coronal], [pharyngeal]} [-dorsal]10 [-voiced]
a binary combination {a, b} is realized in the order a+b and in the order b+a while keeping the same notional invariant. 6 [labial] characterizes sounds produced with a constriction of the lips. For matrices 1, 2, 3, 6 we integrate on-going research which shows that the feature [labial] should not be restricted by [-sonorant] (see Mansouri, 2006). 7 [±voiced] Sounds produced with vibration of the vocal cords are said to be voiced ([+voiced]), whereas other sounds are said to be non-voiced ([-voiced]), see Dell (1973: 56). 8 [±continuant] Sounds with the feature [+continuant] are produced without interrupting the flow of air through the oral cavity, those with the feature [-continuant] are produced with total interruption of the flow of air at the oral cavity, see Halle (1991: 208). 9 [pharyngeal] characterizes segments that the Arabic tradition calls gutturals, that is: ʙ, h, ʚ, hˢ , x, ġ and q. For the problems posed by the characterization of this class, see Kenstowicz (1994: 456ff). 10 [dorsal] characterizes sounds produced with a constriction created with the back of the tongue between the soft palate and the uvula (velar and uvular consonants; rear vowels).
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Notional invariant: ‘low voice, muffled, hoarse noise’ Matrix 5
{[coronal], [dorsal]} Notional invariant: ‘to strike a blow’11
Matrix 6
{[labial], [dorsal]} Notional invariant: ‘curvature’
Matrix 7
{[dorsal], [pharyngeal]} Notional invariant: ‘the cries of animals’
Matrix 8
{[+sonorant12], [+continuant]} [+lateral13] Notional invariant: ‘the tongue’
Matrix 9
{[+nasal], [+continuant]} Notional invariant: ‘the nose’
Matrix 10
{[+nasal], [coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘traction’14
The data on which we have based our study are to be found in the Kazimirski, and have been checked in the Qāmūs and/or the Lisān. When they are based on another source, this is mentioned.
2. Explanatory methods In the paper quoted above, we demonstrated that the homonymy of a radical may be attributed to three causes: A. the fact that it is the result of blending: it manifests the meanings of both the etymons that are its source.
11 See Diab (2005) who brings a modification to the formulation of the notional invariant of this matrix. 12 [±sonorant] Sounds with the feature [+sonorant] are produced with a constriction which does not influence the capacity of the vocal cords to vibrate spontaneously. Those with the feature [-sonorant] have a constriction which reduces the global flow of air and makes voicing more difficult. ‘Thus the natural state for sonorants is [+voiced] and for non sonorants (termed obstruents) is [-voiced],’ see Kenstowicz (1994: 36). 13 [±lateral] A [+lateral] sound is produced by making a constriction with the central part of the tongue while lowering one or both lateral edges so that air escapes around the side(s) of the mouth, see Kenstowicz (1994: 35). 14 For matrices 1 to 6, see Bohas (2000), Dat (2002), for an in-depth study of matrix 6, see Serhane (2003), Bohas and Serhane (2003), for matrix 7, see Bohas and Dat (2005), for matrices 8 and 9, see Bohas (to be published) and for matrix 10, see Saguer (2003).
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B. the fact that its etymon is the realization of several matrices: it manifests the meanings of these matrices. C. the fact that two etymonial analyses are possible, such as [nX]Y and n[XY]. Below, we illustrate each case with an example from Bohas and Saguer (2006). A. Homonymy resulting from blending Let us consider the verb ġaraza, which attests two meanings (hereafter senses): S1 – ‘to prick something with a needle, to drive in, to plunge (a sharp instrument), to plunge a tail into the ground to lay eggs (of locusts)’; S2 – ‘to give but very little milk (of pregnant camel).’ The same semantic load is found in ġārizun; S1 – ‘that drives in, plunges a sharp instrument, a goad into something; that plunges a tail into the ground to lay eggs (of locusts)’; S2 – ‘that gives but little milk (camel)’. Since it is not possible to establish a plausible semantic relationship between the two senses, this is an obvious case of homonymy. And yet we observe the existence of the following words: ġarra15 F. III : to be found in small quantities (of milk of a female); ġirārun : a small quantity, generally, such as a small quantity of milk in a female muġārrun : that has little milk in the udders (camel) Phonetically, the etymonial analysis can only be { ġ,r}, since their radical has no other consonant,16 and it is obvious that they attest sense S2. Moreover, the precise meaning of the verb razza is: ‘to plunge a tail into the ground to lay eggs (of locusts); to stick, drive in and fix firmly one object into another or into the ground.’ Thus it clearly attests sense S1 and is analysed as the etymon {r,z}.17 Therefore, the explanation is that ġaraza includes senses S1 and S2 because it results from blending of the
15 16 17
We use boldface for the segments that make up the etymon. We call these non ambiguous radicals. Non ambiguous radical.
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two etymons {ġ,r} and {r,z}. The way this blending occurs is represented in model A:18 A
Cj
Ci
Ci
Si
Ck Sj
Cj Si More explicitly : ġr ‘lack of milk’ Si
Ci +
Ck19 SJ
x20
rz ‘to drive a sharp object into’ Sj
ġaraz
1920
Henceforth, in similar cases, we shall talk of explanation through blending. B. Homonymy through the realization of several matrices 1) An easy case Let us take the verb mata"a, which means: S1 – ‘to strike somebody with a stick’ S2 – ‘to tighten, stretch out a rope’ The m is [labial], the t is [coronal]: the etymon {m,t} can thus be a realization of matrix 1: {[labial], [coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘to strike a blow’ And for this reason assumes the sense S1 – ‘to strike somebody with a stick.’ But the m is also [nasal] and the etymon {m,t} can also be a realization of matrix 10:
18
See Bohas (1997: 175f and 2000: 49). The obligatory contour principle (OCP) explains the fusion of the two Ci into a single segment. See McCarthy (1986) for the definition and various applied examples referring to Semitic languages of this principle which forbids adjacent identical elements at the same level. Since, OCP has given rise to a multitude of studies the list of which would be superfluous here. 20 We use x to indicate blending. 19
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{[+nasal], [coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘traction’ And for this reason assumes the sense S2 – ‘to tighten, stretch out a rope.’ 2) A more complex case The verb natara attests the following meanings: S1 – ‘to disperse’ F. I : to scatter, disperse, disseminate F. II : to scatter a lot, in large quantities: intensive of F. I F. V : to be scattered, dispersed, to disperse F. VI : to be scattered, dispersed, to disseminate, to spread S2 – ‘actions concerning the nose’ F. I natura : to blow one’s nose F. II : to blow one’s nose F. II : to draw up water through the nostrils F. VIII : to blow one’s nose F. VIII : to draw up water etc. through the nostrils and to expel it through the nostrils S3 – ‘to pull, tear off/out’ F. I : to remove, to take the clothes off the body of somebody, to strip S4 – ‘to strike a blow with a sharp object’21 F. IV : to pierce somebody with a sharp instrument and to make the blood flow The first hypothesis we can formulate is that natara develops the etymon: {n,t} and that for this reason, it is a realization of matrix 9:22 {[+nasal] [+continuant]} Notional invariant: ‘the nose’ The phonetic substance of this matrix comprises, on the one hand, the two nasals, m and n, and, on the other, the various fricatives.
21 We will propose no explanation for this sense; as we said in the introduction, we have not yet explored all the matrices of Arabic, the notional invariant ‘sharp’ is without doubt important but as yet we know nothing of it. 22 See Bohas (to be published) for a detailed study of this matrix.
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The ramifications of the notional invariant are as follows: 1. the nose 1.1. the organ itself and what affects it 1.2. the specification of parts (the top, the sides) 1.3. to be sharp, > protruding, > to precede 2.1. specifications of the organ (big, small . . .) 2.2. animal or human presenting these specifications 3. to lift the nose: movement of pride or contempt 4. the nose and air: to breathe in; to breathe out; to perceive odours, to smell 5. the influence of the nose on the voice: nasal sound; similar animal cries (buzzing-grunting) 6. various liquids (mucus, phlegm) which pass through the nose We may note that, in this organization, senses S2 – ‘to blow one’s nose,’ ‘to draw up water through the nostrils,’ fit into both 6. and 4. But, since n is [+nasal] and t [coronal], {n,t} can also be a realization of matrix 10: {[+nasal], [+coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘traction’ Moreover, other realizations of the {n,t} etymon can be found in: natala [nt]l : ‘to remove the garment or breastplate’ našnaša [nš]nš : ‘to remove (one’s clothes)’ Sense S3 – ‘to pull, tear off/out’ of F. I: ‘to remove, take the clothes off the body of somebody, to strip’ is thus incorporated into this matrix. We can therefore understand why the {n,t} etymon is homonymic: if we take into account the t the feature [coronal], then we see that it realizes matrix 10 ‘traction,’ while if we take into account the feature [+continuant], then we see it realizes matrix 9 ‘the nose.’ In this case we shall speak of ambiguity originating from the fact that an etymon is the realization of several matrices. C. Homonymy due to the possibility of two etymonial analyses Let us pursue the analysis of natara. We have seen that it also attests the sense ‘to disperse, to scatter.’ It is true that we can establish both a phonetic and a semantic relation with: tarra [tr]r : to disperse, disseminate the etymon of which can only be {t,r},23 and with:
23
No ambiguity.
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tāra t[w]r : to be lifted and scatter in the air tartaratun [tr]tr : dispersion, dissemination. farata f[rt] : to be dispersed, disseminated (of a tribe) This leads us to analyse natara by positing {t,r} as etymon and the n as an initial crement. Therefore, the homonymy stems from the fact that in A and B the form is analysed as [nt]r, which may have two matrix links, and in C as n[tr]. We shall say in the latter case that homonymy arises because several etymonial analyses are possible.
3. The two levels of explanation In Bohas and Saguer (2006) we studied cases concerning radicals containing an n. In this paper, we shall extend the study to include the analysis of radicals containing an l. According to previous studies,24 l may have the status of initial crement/prefix25 or of matrix segment. Earlier, Hurwitz (1913, 55–60) had already recognized this prefix status: The preformatives are thus seen to possess a fairly definite, though remote, relationship to each other. The sibilants and gutturals are to be traced to causative stems; the dental t and liquid n to reflexive stems; the liquids m, l, and i are to be connected etymologically with the reflexive n, and the preformative y may be considered to be a denominative stem.
When it has a matrix function, l may form an etymon with the second radical: [lx]y, or the third radical: l[x]y.26 In other words, a radical [lvxy] may present all its possibilities, as can be seen in the table below: Etymon:
{x,y}
{l,x}
{l,y}
Analysis:
l[xy]
[lx]y
l[x]y
Radical:
24
The most recent are those of Saguer (2000, 2002, 2002b). We use ‘prefix’ when l has a semantic-grammatical value and ‘initial crement’ when it does not. 26 This expresses the fact that in this form the etymon is [ly] and x is an inset crement. 25
explanation of homonymy in the lexicon of arabic 3.1
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The explanation through attribution to identified matrices
The verb labaxa demonstrates eight senses: S1 – ‘to be fleshy (of the body)’ S2 – ‘to beat, strike somebody’ S3 – ‘to kill somebody’ S4 – ‘to take a thing from somebody, from the hand of somebody’ S5 – ‘to get something out of somebody using trickery’ S6 – F. III: ‘to slap somebody in the face’ S7 – F. V: ‘to perfume oneself with musk’ S8 – ‘to say something foolish, insulting to somebody’ It should be noted that several senses are polysemically related; in other words, a plausible semantic relation can be established between them, as follows: – S2, S6 and S3 are manifestations of the notional invariant ‘to strike a blow’; ‘to kill’ is related to this concept through the cause>consequence relationship and S6 specifies the mode of action. – S4 and S5 come under the notional invariant: ‘to pull, bring something to oneself.’ Thus five homonymic senses remain: A S1 ‘to be fleshy (of the body)’ B S2+S6+S3 ‘to strike a blow’ S2 – ‘to beat, strike somebody’ S6 – F. III: ‘to slap somebody in the face’ S3 – ‘to kill somebody’ C S4+S5 ‘to pull, bring something to oneself ’ S4 – ‘to take a thing from somebody, from the hand of somebody’ S5 – ‘to get something out of somebody using trickery’ D S7 – F.V: ‘to perfume oneself with musk’ E S8 – ‘to say something foolish, insulting to somebody’ We are going to attribute each of these homonymic senses to a source matrix. Take sense A S1–labaxa: ‘to be fleshy (of the body).’
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It is easily noted that this form is semantically linked to: rabīxun r[bx] : fat, thick and with a soft and loose body habayyaxun h[bx] : young chubby : fat, thick, hard anbaxun [bx] muxabxabat [xb] xb : handsome and plump (camels) This leads us to deduce that labaxa should be analysed as a form incorporating the etymon {b,x} with initial incrementation of an l which has the role of a prefix denoting the sense we have called ‘static,’ following Joüon (1923, 95). This is defined as the appropriation by the subject of the quality or the state X. The Hebrew examples cited by Joüon are: kābed ‘he is heavy,’ qāton: ‘he is small’ (1923, 95). This etymon {b,x} is a realization of the matrix 6 {[labial], [dorsal]} which has ‘curvature’ as its notional invariant. One of the rst manifestations of curvature in the convex form is precisely the concept of fatness:27 fat, plump, robust, that which realizes a swollen form: , as in: bajja -F. VII bājilun fajia hijaffun
: to be plump, to have rounded flanks (of animals fattened by pasture) : fat, replete : to have a fat belly : who has a fat belly, paunch
For sense A, labaxa ’to be fleshy (of the body)’ is analysed as l[bx] and is thus a realization of the matrix {[labial], [dorsal]} which has the notional invariant ‘curvature.’ Let us consider sense B – S2+S6+S3 ‘to strike a blow’; S2 – ‘to beat, strike somebody’; S6 – F. III: ‘to slap somebody in the face’; S3 – ‘to kill somebody.’ It is easy to establish a link between the form and other manifestations of the etymon {l,b} such as: wabala w[bl] : to strike somebody with a stick labana [lb]n : to strike somebody violently, to batter somebody to death with a stick lah aba l[h ]b : to strike somebody with a sabre and for the implied sense: habila h[bl] : to lose one’s son through death
27
See Bohas (2000: 108).
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This enables us to establish that labaxa includes the etymon {l,b}, itself a realization of the matrix {[labial], [coronal]} which has ‘to strike a blow’ as its notional invariant. However, note the existence of the following set: laxxa [lx]x laxaba [lx]b laxama [lx]m
: to slap somebody in the face : to slap somebody in the face : to strike somebody in the face
This enables us to extract the etymon {l,x} connected, once again, to the sense ‘to strike a blow.’ The segment l is analysed as [coronal} and x as [dorsal], so that this etymon is a realization of the matrix {[coronal], [dorsal]}, which leads us to the conclusion that labaxa in the B sense results from blending between two etymons {l,b} and {l,x}, a B type blending (Bohas 2000, 50). For sense C. = S4.+S5. – ‘to pull, bring something to oneself ’: S4. – ‘to take a thing from somebody, from the hand of somebody’; S5. – ‘to get something out of somebody using trickery’ we shall justify an etymonial analysis l[b]x, that is, an etymon {l,x} with an inset crement b. Indeed, a phono-semantic relation can be established with: In the order xl: xalaja xalā (hly) xalxala saxala xalasa
: to pull, attract to oneself : to pull out : to completely strip a bone of its flesh : to take, remove, ravish through trickery : to take away, remove ravish in an instant, unexpectedly, to pull out F. III : to pull something from somebody; to seize; to grab something F. V : to remove, take away F. VI : to reciprocally pull out, and to pull something each from his own side F.VIII : to pull something towards oneself in a hurry (the same meaning as the first item of the list with the addition of celerity). In the order lx : malaxa : to forcibly pull something towards oneself seizing it with one’s teeth or hands F. V. : to pull out, to burst e.g. the eye of a prey (birds of prey) F.VIII : to pull, extricate, pull out (a tooth, an eye); to pull out of the scabbard (a sabre, etc.)
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Therefore the etymon {l,x} carries two homonymic senses: ‘to strike a blow,’ as a realization of the matrix {[coronal], [dorsal]} and ‘to bring something to oneself ’ as a realization of another matrix, which remains to be studied and, we suspect, includes the features: {[+approximant28], [+continuant]} [coronal] with the notional invariant: ‘to bring something to oneself ’ Besides the words above, this matrix manifests itself in: Etymons with l salla salaba salata salaxa sˢalaba sahˢala halaba halata haladˢa lahˢā lahˢaba lahˢata laxasˢa F. II hˢalaʙa hˢalaba hˢalata hˢalama šalahˢa F. II
28
: to pull, extract gently one object from another : to snatch something with force from somebody : to extract, to pull : to skin, to remove the skin from a sheep; to remove one’s clothes and shirt : to pull, to extract the marrow from bones : to peel, to strip bark, skin : to pull out hair, bristles, horsehair : to peel something by removing the skin, bark : to pull, extract, pull out something from its place : to remove the inner bark of a tree, wood : to remove the bark from a piece of wood, to strip it of its bark : to remove the bark from a piece of wood, to peel it : to remove, to extract the purest part : to remove the flesh from the skin of a dead or bled white animal : to take the milk, to milk : to pull out, to remove in flakes : to remove tinea from the skin : to strip, to remove the clothes from somebody
This composition, [+approximant], seems too complex to characterize the class r, l. [coronal] This is due to the fact that, according to Yeou and Maeda (1994), the pharyngeals and uvulars of Arabic are also characterized by the feature [+approximant]. Indeed, the continuation of our studies will enable a discussion of this point. If the gutturals do figure in this matrix, and assuming that it may then be formulated simply as {[+approximant], [+continuant]}, this would constitute proof that the gutturals and r, l are indeed members of the same class: [+approximant].
explanation of homonymy in the lexicon of arabic Etymons with r hˢaraba hˢarasa hˢaradˢa saraqa sarā xaraša xaratˢa xarafa 'araza 'ar'ara
'araqa 'arama 'ariyā qa'ara
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: to strip somebody, to pillage (a caravan, a tribe) : to steal something; in fields, pastures : to take, by milking, all the milk from a camel : to steal : to remove, separate, distance something from somebody : to attract a camel to oneself with a hooked stick : to strip of bark and make even : to pick a piece of fruit from a tree : to pull with force : to move the cork of a bottle to uncork it; to remove, take out the cork; to pull, to pull out, to burst an eye : to strip a bone of the flesh that was on it by eating it : to eat the flesh that sticks to the bone : to be naked, stripped of one’s clothes (cause> consequence relation) : to pull out with the root, from top to bottom and to cause to fall
This abundance of data, the notional domain of which has still to be organized, is nevertheless sufficient to justify the existence of this matrix: [+approximant], [+continuant] [coronal] ‘to bring something to oneself ’ This data also justifies the analysis that posits that in labaxa sense C = S4+S5 ‘to pull, bring something to oneself ’: S4 – ‘to take a thing from somebody, from the hand of somebody’; S5 – ‘to get something out of somebody using trickery’ is a manifestation of this matrix. As to labaxa, D S7 F.V – ‘to perfume oneself with musk’ it is analysed as l[bx] in which the etymon {b,x} is found, as in: baxara [bx]r : to perfume somebody or something with incense baxira : to smell bad : who has unpleasant, fetid breath ʙabxaru baxxa [bx]x : to snore during sleep This etymon is a realization of matrix 2. {[labial], [-voiced]} [+continuant]
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which combines the labials b and f with voiceless fricatives. The ramifications of the notional invariant of the conceptual field are: – movement of air: wind, breath – expulsion of air in man or animal 29 ¤ consequences (various odours) Below we provide some realizations of the matrix with f: { ft} nafata { fh} fahh a fahfah a fahā -F. II fāha/fawah a/ lafaha nafaha { fx} faxxa fāxa/fawaxa/ nafaxa
: to blow (on something) : to hiss (snake); to hiss during sleep : to be hoarse : to season food : to spread one’s perfume; to smell good or bad : to blow (of warm wind) : to spread one’s odour; to blow (of cold wind) : to snore and hiss talking of somebody who sleeps; to spread (of an aroma) : to spread (of an odour); to hiss (wind); to release wind (of a man) : to blow with the mouth; to break wind
Finally, sense: E S8 – ‘to say something foolish, insulting to somebody’. Note that labaxa commences with an l [+lateral] and nishes with a x which is a [+continuant] segment. The analysis is thus l[b]x, of the etymon {l,x}, which is also present in: : to be very talkative and say a lot of rubbish laxiya xatila : to talk a lot and to say only trivialities In this case, this etymon is a realization of matrix 8, exactly like: {l, ġ} laġā : to speak, in general to say futile things, to utter vain, flippant or careless words, to make mistakes in talking, to make an error
29
This sign indicates that a semantic relationship exists, here: cause>consequence.
explanation of homonymy in the lexicon of arabic laġiya F. X
Matrix 8
269
: to make an error talking, to be mistaken : to gather locutions, idioms, or to pay attention to words and locutions (luġāt), particularly of nomadic Arabs, i.e. to draw from them knowledge of Arabic words {[+sonorant], [+continuant]} [+lateral] Notional invariant: ‘tongue’
As we shall often be returning to the organization of the notional field of this matrix, it is worthwhile examining it here:30 The ramifications of the notional invariant include: 0. The tongue and its characteristics 1. The tongue and the physical actions that are its peculiarities 1.1. to make an action of the tongue 1.2. to seize, to pull with the tongue 1.3. to lick 1.3.1. consequence (1): to moisten and stick 1.3.2. consequence (2): to be smooth, polished 1.4. to savour, to taste 2. The tongue as an instrument of language: to speak, to speak in various ways, to be talkative, to malign, to wrestle in words with somebody, to hurt with malevolent words; to speak with authority > to order. 3. The tip of the tongue: pointed, to be sharp, to become a point and thus to prick. Here we have a relationship of the type part/whole: only the tip of the tongue is taken into consideration. Note a possible interference with 2. – he who has a pointed tongue is likely to utter hurtful remarks. We link to 3. the cases in which the pointed characteristic is explicitly given as cause. 4. Tongue of fire: to blaze, to burn, to scorch. Consequently, all the senses expressed by this radical are made explicit in the complex diagram below which constitutes its lexicogenetic tree, and traces its phono-semantic composition, thus accounting for the homonymy :
30
This matrix is studied in detail in Bohas (2006).
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Matrix level M6
M2
M1
M8
M5
{[labial], {[labial], {[coronal], {[+lateral], [+continuant]} [coronal]} [dorsal]} [+continuant]} ‘air> odour’ ‘to strike a blow’ ‘to strike a blow’ ‘the tongue’
{[labial], [dorsal]} ‘curvature’ Etymoniall evel {b,x}1
l[bx]
{b,x}2
{b,l}
{l,x}2
{l,x}1
[lb]x
l[b]x
Radicall evel
labax
Once this tree is exhaustively constructed, the analysis is finished. In the present case, we have managed to link each sense to a matrix. This is not always possible. 3.2
The explanation through attachment to etymons
In other cases, the analysis only enables the etymons to be identified without reaching the matrix level. Consider the verb laata which has the senses: S1 – ‘to hurt, to strike, to injure, to harm somebody (either by shooting an arrow at him, or by looking at him with the bad eye’ S2 – ‘to print on an animal, on the neck, a mark with hot iron, to mark it’ S3 – ‘to hurry, to hasten’ S4 – ‘to delay paying a debt, to put off its payment’ S5 – ‘to go to pasture (livestock)’ Each sense is homonymic in relation to the others, but, in each case, it is possible to establish a phono-semantic relation with other words, enabling us to identify etymons, as we shall demonstrate. For S1 – ‘to hurt, to strike, to injure, to harm somebody (either by shooting an arrow at him or by looking at him with the bad eye.’ Taking into account:
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laata l[]t lahat l[h]t lāta l[w]t
: to touch, attain somebody, e.g. with an arrow : to strike, to attain somebody with an arrow : to strike, to attain somebody with an arrow or by looking at him with the bad eye we may establish that the three verbs all demonstrate the phonetic constant lt and very similar meanings (indeed for laata and lāta, the meaning is identical), enabling the identification of an etymon {l,t}. For S2, compare laata ‘to print on an animal, on the neck, a mark with hot iron, to mark it’ with the elements of the following paradigm: 'alata : to mark (a camel) on the neck with a transversal mark 'alama : to mark, to distinguish by a mark, by some sign 'alaba : to mark something, either by making incisions or by pressure ra'ala F. II : to incise the ear of a beast to mark it This enables us to establish the presence of a phonetic constant l and a semantic constant ‘to mark’, thus identifying the etymon {l,' }. Let us add the form: laxafa : to print a large cautery, to make a large burn on somebody in which lx constitutes either a variant31 of l or a clue to identifying a matrix. For S3, it is worth comparing la'ata—‘to hurry, to hasten’ with: 'atā F. II [' t]w : to hurry somebody, to tell him to hurry 'abata ' [b]t : to throw a horse into the race so as to make it sweat : to go, to advance rapidly and by lengthening the hata'a h[t' ] neck (of camel) 'atawwad ['t]d : rapid, hurried and tiring (voyage) This enables us to identify the phonetic constant ,t and the semantic constant ‘to go rapidly,’ which leads us to deduce that laata should be analysed as an etymon {',t} with the incrementation prefix l bearing the reflexive meaning.32 Here again, note the variant: xāta : to pass rapidly
31 32
We explain this notion the following pages. Which corroborates Hurwitz earlier quoted in subsection 3.
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We may relate S4 – laʚatˢa: ‘to delay paying a debt, to put off its payment’ to: tˢāla tˢ[w]l F. II : to allow one’s debtor an extension tˢalā [tˢl]w : to wait, to be waiting, to defer tˢalla [tˢl]l : to allow an extension, to give respite to one’s debtor latˢatˢ [ltˢ]tˢ : refusal to pay or to recognize what one owes to somebody The phono-semantic constant presented by the above data enables us to identify the etymon {l,tˢ}. Note that S3 and S4 are two contradictory senses: ‘to go rapidly’ and ‘to delay.’ This enantiosemy33 can be explained by the fact that the word is analysed as a blending of two etymons with opposing senses: ltˢ ‘to delay’ and x ʚtˢ ‘to go rapidly’ (D type blending: (Khatef, 2003 and 2004)). This enantiosemy is homonymic, since the two senses have nothing in common. The enantiosemy, which is usually presented as a ‘quirk of Arabic’ is, in fact, trivially predicted by TME (for more examples, see Bahri 2003). Finally, for laʚatˢa S5 – ‘to go to pasture (livestock)’ a semantic link may be established with: : to graze in this or that place; to go to graze freely; ra'ā to put to graze, to take to graze : to leave to graze freely rata'a F. IV 'āra : to go away, to move away (of, amongst others, a horse that goes off grazing here and there) : to graze freely raba'a These forms are obviously related to the etymon {r,' } linked to the sense ‘to go to graze (freely).’ It seems plausible that the etymon lʚ from laʚatˢa S5 ‘to go to pasture (livestock)’ is an allophone of this etymon, r and l being from the same class [+approximant] [coronal]. The definition of the allophones of etymons is set out in Bohas and Dat (2007):
33 We use enantiosemy (i.e. reverse semantics) for words that mean something and its opposite, such as ‘big and small,’ to rent which means both ‘to take temporary possession for the payment of a fee’ and ‘to give temporary possession for the receipt of a fee.’
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Phonetic evolution may provoke a modification of the signifier and bring about the appearance of what we will call etymon allophones, which are phonetic variants of matrix etymons (from the set of a given matrix). Most frequently, the etymon allophones bring into play acoustic factors, which explains the confusion of segments in the communicational process. We posit that if: [b] / {a , _} and [c] / {a , _} where {a,b} is a matrix etymon and [b] and [c] are phonemes with one or several shared phonetic features other than the vector of features demanded by the matrix combination, and that they correspond to two lexical items that are conceptually related, linkable (not necessarily identical), then [b] and [c] are the free variants of the phoneme (belonging to the paradigm defined by the vector of features) that enters into the composition of the matrix etymon. The allophonic forms, which enlarge the logical number of etymons belonging to a binary matrix of features, characterize the etymons, enlarged or not, the articulation of which is weakened34 or loosened in verbal communication; these allophones are, over time, recovered and incorporated into the lexicon of the language. These are free phonetic variants—historical and/or dialectal—of successful (widespread) innovations that co-exist with the source-forms, such as the elements in the following list (from the lexicon of Hebrew). s ¤ s / š /
nātasˢ
: to demolish, to knock over, to knock down, to pull out nātas : to break, to destroy sˢādāh Niph. (hapax) : to be desolated, ravaged śādad Pi. : to break up lumps of soil, to harrow, to level a piece of land šādad : exercise violence, to desolate, to wreck, to destroy, to devastate In all these examples, the existence of the minimal pair engenders no major lexical opposition, the semic difference often resulting from the translation.
This argumentation enables us to consider laʚatˢa S5 ‘to go to pasture (livestock)’ as a realization of the etymon {l,' } allophone of {r,' } given the (obvious) semantic relation and the phonetic relation we have established, but, in our analysis of this word, we have yet to trace it to a clearly identified matrix.
34 ‘The natural tendency of the speaker is to limit effort of his speech and to avoid sharp shifts in the use of speech organs.’ (Lipinski, 1997, 186).
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laʚatˢa, which realizes the etymons: {',tˢ}, {l,tˢ} and {l,' }, is therefore typical of the second level of explanation, namely identification of the etymons. When we go on to study specific cases in the fourth part, we will move from one of the two levels of explanation to the other. In some instances we can link the etymon to a matrix; in others we may only link the radical of a word to an etymon, while in others, we can provide no analysis for the simple reason that, as things stand, identification of the matrices and etymons is not yet complete. The objective we pursue is to fully organize the lexicon into matrices. Is this a chimera, as some do not fear to say? In our eyes, the best answer is provided by Darwin: [. . .] it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.35
4. Case study Within the framework defined above, we shall now analyse some words. 4.1
lahˢ ana
S1 – ‘to become fond of somebody, to fall in love with somebody’ S2 – ‘to speak Arabic badly’ S3 – ‘to speak a particular slang with somebody so as not to be understood by others’ S4 – ‘to understand, to hear a word, an expression (link speak/understand)’ Let us start by studying sense S1 – ‘to become fond of somebody.’ A phonetic and semantic relation can be easily established with: hˢ anna [hˢ n]n : to groan, to make a groan of tenderness (of certain animals e.g. a female camel showing tenderness to her young) nāhˢ a n[w]hˢ : to coo, to groan (of pigeons) hˢ anhˢ ana [hˢ n]hˢ n : to have and to show tenderness, compassion, with emotion and worry
35 Charles Darwin: ‘The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,’ 4th paragraph, quoted in Quiniou (2006); for the full text visit www.gutenberg.org.
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hˢ anā [hˢ n]w
: to have great tenderness for somebody (also used of a mother who through love of her children, does not want to re-marry) hˢ aniba [hˢ n]b and F. II : to feel a sentiment of pity, of compassion for somebody sahˢ ana s[hˢ n] F. III : to treat somebody with goodness The above leads us to deduce that, for this sense, lahˢ ana should be analysed as a form incorporating the etymon [hˢ ,n] through initial incrementation with an l which acts as a prefix marking the middle voice. In the semantic organization of matrices, the starting point is a concrete sense. In this we agree with Hurwitz (1913, 72): It must also be borne in mind that primitive ideas are generally concrete, and that an abstract idea is secondary, in that it is often based on some objective aspect involved in the expression of the abstract idea, as when anger is denoted by ‘a reddening of the face,’ displeasure, by ‘a falling of the countenance’ etc.
The example under study is particularly illuminating. The word hˢ anna which has the abstract sense ‘to be moved,’ ‘to have compassion for somebody,’ ‘to feel great tenderness for somebody’ has the matrix sense ‘to groan, to make a groan of tenderness (of a female camel).’ Exactly like ʙanna ‘to groan’ which comes from the same matrix: Matrix 4 {[coronal] , [pharyngeal]} [-dorsal] [-voiced] Notional invariant: ‘low voice, muffled, hoarse noise’ From the physical groan, as a noise, we pass to why we groan, to what the groan expresses. In hˢ anna, the two senses are maintained, whereas, in lahˢ ana, only the abstract sense appears. We have thus identified the matrix of which lahˢ ana ‘to become fond of somebody’ is a realization. Let us now examine senses S2 and S3 which are clearly linked. S2 – ‘to speak Arabic badly,’ S3 – ‘to speak a particular slang with somebody so as not to be understood by others.’ For these senses, the analysis [lhˢ ]n is used, in other words, the etymon is {l,hˢ}, which is itself a realization of Matrix 8 {[+lateral], [+continuant]} linked to the notional invariant ‘tongue;’ furthermore, we have already seen that ‘to speak’ is one of the developments of the ‘tongue’ notional invariant:
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2. The tongue as an instrument of language (cf. 3.1 above): to speak, to speak in various ways, to be talkative, to malign, to wrestle in words with somebody, to hurt with malevolent words; to speak with authority > to order.36 The same sense is found in: laxxa [lx]x : to be unintelligible, to speak (especially Arabic) in an unintelligible way laxlaxāniyy [lx]lx : who has difficulty speaking or only speaks lecherous language laxiya [lx]y : to be very talkative and say a lot of rubbish laġā [lġ]w : to say futile things, to utter vain, flippant or careless words S4 – ‘to understand, to hear a word, an expression’ that can be found in lahˢ ina with ‘to be intelligent,’ seems to accept the same analysis. The causal relation we assume, i.e. speak > understand > be intelligent is, in fact, explicit in Syriac; in the latter, mlīlā means both ‘who speaks’ and ‘who is intelligent’ or in Greek in which logikós covers two series of meanings: I. ‘which concerns speech’ and II. ‘which concerns reason.’37 Therefore the lexicogenetic tree of the word may be constructed: M8
M4
{[+lateral], [+continuant} ‘tongue’
{[consonantal], [pharyngeal]} ‘muffled voice . . .’
{l,hˢ}
{hˢ,n}
[lhˢ ]n
l[hˢ n] lahˢ an
36 37
See for the organization of the conceptual field above at the end of subsection 3.1. See Bailly (1950).
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277
lasaʚa
Reorganizing the Kazimirski, the following senses can be said to be included: S1 – ‘to head into the interior of the land’ S2 – ‘to prick somebody, to bite (of a scorpion or snake)’ S3 – ‘to hurt somebody with malevolent words, with features of satire’ S4 – ‘to malign somebody’ S5 – F. IV ‘to sow enmity between men’ These five senses can be reduced to two: A ‘to make one’s way into the land’ B in relation with ‘tongue,’ as we shall show. As far as the first (A.) sense (‘to head into the interior of the land’) is concerned, this form is semantically linked to: nasaʚa n[sʚ] : to head into the interior of the land, country tˢasaʚa [tˢs]38 x [sʚ] : to travel, to cross a country, to head into the interior of the land šasaʚa š[sʚ] : to be remote, to be situated at a great distance This fact leads us to deduce that lasaʚa should be analysed as a form incorporating the etymon {s,' } through initial incrementation of a prefix l marking the reflexive meaning, in the same way as the n at the beginning of the form nasaʚa. For the other (B) senses: S2 – ‘to prick somebody, to bite (of a scorpion or snake)’ S3 – ‘to hurt somebody with malevolent words, with features of satire’ S4 – ‘to malign somebody’ S5 – F. IV ‘to sow enmity between men’ The etymon {l,s} that the radical develops is a realization of Matrix 8 organized around the notional field ‘tongue’ as was earlier discussed at the end of subsection 3.1. Of these four senses, S2 – ‘to prick somebody, to bite (of a scorpion or snake)’ is linked to S3., like: lasaba : to prick somebody (said properly of a snake) 38 Tassa: F. II: ‘to head into the interior of the land, country.’ The radical thus results from the blending of the two etymons.
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S3 – ‘to hurt somebody with malevolent words, with features of satire’ is linked to S2 or S3, as is: ladaga : to hurt somebody with one’s tongue, i.e. with a biting remark S4 – ‘to malign somebody’ is linked to S2, like: lasana : to give blows with the tongue, i.e. to malign somebody, to tear him apart S5 – F. IV ‘to sow enmity between men’ is in a cause > consequence relation with S2 and S3. We can therefore show the lexicogenetic tree which, for {l,s}, goes back to the matrix, and which, for the etymon {s,' } remains at the etymonial level: M8
M?
{[+lateral], [+continuant]} ‘tongue’ {l,s}
{s,' }
[ls]
l[s]
‘to head into the land’
lasa
4.3
lasafa and lasifa
This entry covers the following senses: S1 – ‘to fit by placing one next to the other and one over the other (e.g. stones in constructing a wall, in building)’ S2 lasifa – ‘to be dried and stuck to the bones (of skin on a very scrawny body)’ S3 – ‘to wind a strap of sinew around the base of an arrow’ S4 – ‘to shine, to gleam’ These four senses do seem to be in homonymic relation, as it is difficult to see how one could draw some sort of plausible semantic relation between them.
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For S1 – ‘to fit by placing one next to the other and one over the other (e.g. stones in constructing a wall, in building),’ comparison with the words below leads us to identify a common etymon {sˢ,f } ‘to arrange, to organize:’ sˢaffa [sˢf ]f : to arrange in order xasˢafa x[sˢf ] : to fit and join solidly sˢannafa sˢ[n]f : to compose, to make (a work, a book) For S2, we recognize matrix 8 as in item: 1.3.1. consequence (1): to moisten and stick, as in: lasˢsaˢ [lsˢ]sˢ F. VIII : to attach oneself, and to stick strongly lasˢiqa [lsˢ]q : to be stuck to the bones lasˢiqa [lsˢ]q : to be stuck lasˢaġa [lsˢ]ġ : to be dried and stuck to the bones (of skin or a very scrawny body) For S3 – ‘to wind a strap of sinew around the base of an arrow,’ consider: : to wind a solid strap or a flattened sinew around rasˢafa r[sˢf ] the tip of an arrow to make firm the iron that has been fitted 'afasˢa ʚ[ fsˢ] : to wind a ʚifāsˢ around the mouth of a bottle 'asˢaba ʚ[sˢb] : to bandage, to wind a headband, bandage around; to put a dressing on (the head, a member) Examining the above, we may identify the etymon {sˢ,f }, which is itself a realization of Matrix 6, f [labial] and sˢ [dorsal],39 of which the notional invariant is ‘curvature;’ and of which ‘to surround’ and ‘to wind around’ are consequences.40 Finally, lasˢafa in sense S4 – ‘to shine, to gleam’ can be brought into relation with: walafa w[lf ] : to shine time after time with repeated flashes that come in uninterrupted succession (of lightening) jafala : to shine
39 40
Emphatics are characterized by the features [dorsal], [pharyngeal], [coronal]. See Bohas (2000: 115–117).
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The above enables us to identify the etymon lf ‘to shine.’ As to the matrix of which it is apparently a realization, it should contain the feature [+approximant], as in: balaqa F. VIII : to shine, to gleam baraqa : to shine, to gleam, to be shiny lamahˢ a : to shine lamaʚa : to shine ramahˢ a : to shine (of lightening) In any case, as in walafa and lasˢafa, the composition {[+approximant], [labial]}41 connected to the notional invariant ‘to shine’ can be observed. This is a complex matrix that has yet to be studied. Suffice it to say that, in the present state of our knowledge, the etymon has been positively identified, while the matrix has not. We can trace the lexicogenetic tree thus: M8
M?
M6
{[+lateral], {[+approximant] ?} [+continuant]} ‘tongue’ ‘shininess’
{[labial], [dorsal]} ‘curvature’
{l,sˢ}
{l,f }
{sˢ,f }1
{sˢ,f }2
[lsˢ] f
l[sˢ] f
l[sˢf ]
l[sˢf ]
‘to organize’
lasˢaf
4.4
lasaba and lasiba
S1 – ‘to prick somebody (of snake)’ S2 – ‘to give somebody a lash with a whip’ S3 – lasiba ‘to lick; to attach and to stick to something’
41 The same remark as in footnote 28 is appropriate here. If gutturals appear to be a part of this matrix, then they join the class of approximants, otherwise, [approximant] will have to be restricted by the addition of [coronal].
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Take S2 to start with. This form is related both semantically and phonetically to: sabaʙ a [sb]ʙ : to whip somebody with a whip until he bleeds This fact leads us to deduce that lasaba should be analysed as a form incorporating the etymon {s,b} through initial incrementation of the l, which has no semantic value. The etymon {s,b} comes from Matrix 1 {[labial], [coronal]}, the notional invariant of which is ‘to strike a blow,’ with the specification, in this case, of the means ‘with a whip,’ and other specifications in: rabasa : to strike with the hand safaʚa : to strike, to give a blow (especially of birds, when, in fighting, they give each other vigorous blows with their wings) sāfa : to strike somebody with a sabre nasama : to strike the ground with a foot The two other senses come from the matrix {[+lateral], [+continuant]} ‘tongue,’ the first enters the heading: 3. The tip of the tongue: pointed, to be sharp, to become a point, and thus to prick. As in: lasaʚa : to prick somebody, to bite (of scorpion or snake) lasana : to form a point, to give a pointed form, (e.g. to a shoe, etc.) : to prick (of scorpion) salama : to prick somebody, to make a bite (of a snake) F. IV passive : ʙuslima: to be pricked by a snake And the second the heading: 1.3. to lick and 1.3.1 (see the end of subsection 3.1 above) as in: lassa : to lick (a vase, a frying pan, etc.) lasada : to lick (a vase) ladasa : to lick : to lick lahasa Drawing up the lexicogenetic tree is therefore an easy matter:
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georges bohas and abderrahim saguer M8
M1
{[+lateral], [+continuant]} ‘tongue’
{[labial], [coronal]}
{l,s}
{s,b}
[ls]b
l[sb]
‘to strike a blow’
lasaba
4.5
lahˢ afa
Whereas the analysis of lasaba presents no particular difficulty, that of lahˢ afa is formidably complex, which is why we have left it till last. Indeed, this verb attests several senses, as follows: S1 – F. I: ‘to lick something’ F. IV: ‘to pressure somebody, to trouble, to ask with insistence’ S2 – F. I: ‘to envelop somebody in a sheet, a blanket’ F. III: ‘to help, to assist somebody’42 F. IV: ‘to clothe and envelop somebody in a garment’ F. V: ‘to envelop oneself in a sheet, in a cloth, in a piece of material’ F. VIII: ‘to envelop oneself in a piece of material’ S3 – F. I P.: ‘to suffer losses in one’s belongings, flocks, etc.’ 43 F. IV: ‘to do something bad to somebody, to cause him some harm’ S4 – F. IV: ‘to pull out (e.g. somebody’s nail)’ S5 – F. IV: ‘to burn, to have something consumed in fire’44 Let us start with S1. The radical includes l and the fricative hˢ , and can be a realization of Matrix 8: {[+sonorant] , [+continuant]} [+lateral]
42 43 44
This sense is linked to this block, see below. ‘P.’ indicates the passive. Attested in Asās al-balāġa.
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Notional invariant: ‘tongue’ ‘to lick’ coming under the heading 1.3.45 The following forms develop the etymons {l,hˢ} and {l,' }, that are analogous realizations of this matrix: lahˢika [lhˢ ]k : to lick lahˢisa [lhˢ ]s : to lick : to lick la'iqa [lʚ]q la'ā [lʚ]w F. V : to lick The meaning expressed by F. IV that we have placed under sense S1, ‘to pressure somebody, to trouble, to ask with insistence,’ seems to correlate well with the idea of licking, exactly as in French in which ‘coller,’ ‘to stick’ can mean46 ‘to impose one’s presence on somebody’ and ‘collant’ ‘sticky:’ ‘that which one cannot rid oneself of.’ Thus, we have the following chain: lick >stick >insist, the sense that we find in other manifestations of the etymon {l,hˢ}: lahˢhˢ a [lhˢ ]hˢ : to insist on something to somebody, to persist in asking him (for) something hˢafala hˢ [ f ]l F. V : to insist hˢalatˢa [hˢ l]tˢ : to insist, to pressure, to scold somebody, and to swear mahˢala m[hˢ l] F. V : to insist and to pressure somebody For S.2, the emergence of the sense ‘to envelop’ undoubtedly comes from the blending of the two etymons: lf x hˢ f, which can be clearly seen in: laffa : to envelop, to twist, to surround with something hˢ affa : to surround somebody with something, to envelop with something Is it possible to go further and identify the matrix from which these etymons stem? Without doubt, if we take into consideration the following data: laffa : (also means:) to gather, to collect from all sides dˢaffa : to gather, to bring together47 A hypothesis defended by Cantineau (1951), amongst others, is that in protosemitic there was a lateralized emphatic that we shall write dˢl. In Bohas and Janah (2000) it was argued that this dˢl had split in Arabic into
45 46 47
See above subsection 3.1. See the Petit Robert See also: mudˢāf dˢ[y] f : ‘surrounded, attacked, encircled on all sides’.
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two phonemes: d and l. A word bearing one meaning had thus given birth to two words with the same sense (modulo a few nuances). Thus we would have: dlaffa ‘to bring together’
daffa
laffa
‘to gather, to bring together’ ‘to gather, to collect from all sides’
This means that the l of la a is not a ‘true’ l, but lexically a dl and that, as such, it has the feature [pharyngeal] of the emphatics. The pair: laffa : to envelop, to twist, to surround with something h affa : to surround somebody with something, to envelop with something is in fact a dlaffa/h affa pair and the etymons dlf/h f are realizations of Matrix 3: Matrix 3 {[ labial] , [ pharyngeal]} Notional invariant: ‘(a) tightening’ The relation between ‘to envelop,’ ‘to surround’ and ‘to tighten’ is merely one of cause to consequence. The sense expressed by F. III: ‘to help, to assist somebody’ seems to be accounted for in terms of metaphor: to help is ‘to surround somebody with assistance, protection or affection.’ As an argument in favour of this relation, we have the verb h affa that explicitly shows this meaning, since, in the Kazimirski, after ‘to surround’ comes the sense ‘to be constantly around somebody, and to be attentive to serve or protect him.’ S3 constitutes a single semantic block: a : F. I P. : to suffer losses in one’s belongings, flocks, etc. b : F. IV : to do something bad to somebody, to cause him some harm Let us bring lah afa into relation with the forms which manifest the same properties: falla F. IV : to lose one’s flocks falaa : to lose, to reduce to nothing faliya : to be cut, separated from the rest of the body lafaa : to peel, to skin wafala : to peel something by removing the bark We introduce an etymon {l,f }; l is [coronal] and f [labial]. This etymon can thus be a realization of Matrix 1:
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{[labial], [coronal]} Notional invariant: ‘to strike a blow’ ‘Loss, harm’ comes under the heading B.3,48 global consequence, as in: hˢ afata : to destroy, to lose talifa : to perish As for S4 – F. IV: ‘to pull out (e.g. somebody’s nail)’ it is a realization of a Matrix under study: {[+approximant], [+continuant]} [coronal] with the notional invariant: ‘to bring something to oneself.’ This manifests itself in the words quoted earlier in section 3.1. As f and hˢ are both continuants, it seems reasonable to consider the radical as a blending of the two etymons that both realize this matrix: lhˢ x lf, B type blending.49 There remains sense S5 – F. IV: ‘to burn, to have something consumed in fire.’ In this meaning, we can relate lahˢafa to: lafahˢa : to burn, to cause harm through its intensity (of fire, or a very warm wind) fayhˢ : heat caused by a star sahˢafa : to burn, to have something consumed in fire The above relation reveals the etymon { f,hˢ}; the semantic relation with ‘to blow’ remains to be established in order to link it to Matrix 2. As for the residual cases F. II : to let the bottom of one’s garment scrape the ground, to wear it very long so that it trails, by extension: to walk proudly F. IV : to come to the foot of a mountain and lihˢ f: the foot of a mountain At this stage in our research, all that can be noted is that the latter is perhaps to be related to hˢ āffatun: ‘edge, margin, extremity,’ although we cannot establish this with certainty. All these comparisons are of limited interest, but it is worth remembering, as we said at the start, that certain points are still unclear.
48 49
See Bohas (2000: 79). See Bohas (2000: 50).
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Consequently, we shall limit ourselves to those senses that are clear, in order to construct the lexicogenetic tree: M8
M1
{[+lat], [+cont]} {[labial], [coronal]} ‘tongue’ ‘strike a blow’
M3
M7
{[phar], [lab] } ‘tightening’
{[+approx], [+cont]} ‘to bring to oneself ’
{l,h}
{l,f }
{h,f }
{l,h} x {l,f }
[lh ] f
l[h ] f
l[h f ]
[l,h ] x [l,f ]
lah af
5. Conclusion Our method is thus distinct from that of the partisans of the triconsonantal root. For them, it is su cient to identify the three consonants in order to consider the analysis complete, even if semantic incongruities and incompatibilities are evident, and even if this identi cation provides no explanation of phono-semantic links between words, such as homonymy and enantiosemy. What does reassure them, however, is that they can pride themselves on having reached a state of certainty. . . . that the root of maktab = ktb is a certainty! Yet why should the root of istadaytu be dw rather than dy, and, if it is dw, what phonetic motivation is there to be found in istafaltu to justify the passage from w to y in istadaytu? Indeed, this certainty is not as de nitive as they would have us believe. With our approach based on argumentative reasoning, we might make mistakes: one word might, perhaps, be matched up with another on the basis of such and such a property without us having noticed this relation. Given the explanatory results of our approach, which adopts a heuristic point of view, this is a risk we assume. The reader will have noticed that all our research has been carried out taking the lexicon of Arabic as a synchronic whole. As we have often repeated, in the study of the lexicon, it is vain to go back to a previous
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biliteral stage in order to diachronically derive a triliteral stage. In other words, the old debate—biliteral or triliteral—is immaterial. The binary composites (the matrices and the etymons) and the ternary composites are there before our eyes: you only have to open a dictionary to find them. Every radical is, according to the level of explanation, binary or ternary, as the explanation of homonymy demonstrates all too well. Admittedly, no one is obliged to overstep the conception, invented by the Arab grammarians, of the tri- or quadri-consonantal root. However, to restrain oneself to this is to forego the opportunity to provide explanations for the phono-semantic phenomena contained in the lexicon, phenomena that everyone may observe. To work with a theory that posits that the Sun rotates around the Earth enables one to explain a certain number of observable phenomena;50 but to work with a theory that posits that the Earth rotates around the Sun enables one to explain a greater range of phenomena, and fits in better with other knowledge we have of the movement of the stars.
6. References ʙAsās al-balāġa = ʙAbū l-Qāsim Mahˢmūd b. ʚUmar az-Zamaxšarî, ʙAsās al-balāġa, Abdarrahˢīm Mahˢmūd, ed. Bayrūt: Dār atˢ-tiˢ bāʚa wa-n-našr. Bahri, A. 2003. L’énantiosémie en arabe, Doctoral thesis. University Paris 8. Bailly, A. 1950. Dictionnaire grec français. Paris: Hachette. Bohas, Georges. 1997. Matrices, étymons, racines, éléments d’une théorie lexicologique du vocabulaire arabe. Paris: Peeters. ——. 2000. Matrices et étymons, développements de la théorie. Lausanne: Editions du Zèbre. ——. 2006. “De la motivation corporelle de certains signes de la langue arabe et de ses implications.” Cahiers de linguistique analogique, 3, 11–41. ——, and N. Darfouf. 1993. “Contribution à la réorganisation du lexique de l’arabe, les étymons non-ordonnés,” Linguistica Communicatio, 5/1–2, 55–103. ——, and A. Janah. 2000. “Le statut du dˢād dans le lexique de l’arabe et ses implications.” Langues et Littératures du Monde Arabe, 1, 13–28.
50
We find in The Legend of Alexander: ‘For the Sun is the servant of The Lord, which interrupts its course neither day nor night.’ This idea that the stars are in the service of God seems to date back at least to Bardesane (born in 154): ‘Neither the Sun, nor the Moon, nor the other beings which are superior to us in any thing have received power over themselves, they are on the contrary subject to a law and, consequently, they do what they have been ordered and never anything else. The Sun never says ‘I shall not rise at the given hour,’ nor the Moon ‘I will no longer have phases, I will neither wax nor wane,’ . . . All these creatures are servants and remain subject to a law: they are instruments of the wisdom of The Lord, Who is infallible.’ (See Teixidor 1992).
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——, and M. Dat. 2005. “La matrice acoustique {[dorsal], [pharyngal]} en arabe classique et en hébreu biblique, première esquisse.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, LVIII, 125–143. ——, and M. Dat. 2007. Une théorie de l’organisation du lexique des langues sémitiques : matrices et étymons, Lyon: ENS éditions. ——, and A.R. Saguer. 2006. “Sur un point de vue heuristique concernant l’homonymie dans le lexique de l’arabe.” In Edzard, L. & J. Watson (eds), Grammar as a Window onto Arabic Humanism. A Collection of Articles in Honour of Michael G. Carter, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 130–154. ——, and R. Serhane. 2003. “Conséquences de la décomposition du phonème en traits.” In: Angoujard, J.-P. and S. Wauguier-Gravelines (Eds.): Phonologie. Champs et perspectives. Lyon: ENS éditions, 131-155. Cantineau, Jean. 1951. “Le consonantisme du sémitique.” Semitica, IV, 79–94. Dat, M. 2002. Matrices et étymons. Mimophonie lexicale en hébreu biblique. Doctoral thesis, Lyon: Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines. Dell, F. 1973. Les règles et les sons: introduction à la phonologie générative. Paris: Hermann. Diab, S. 2005. La matrice {[coronal], [dorsal]}, Les étymons impliquant le jīm, Masters 2 Research Paper. Lyon: École normale supérieure lettres et sciences humaines. Guerssel, M. and J. Lowenstamm. 1993. The Derivational Morphology of the Classical Arabic Verbal System. ms. UQAM and University Paris VII. Halle, M. 1991. “Phonological Features.” In W. Bright (ed.): Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 207–212. Hurwitz, S. 1913 [1966]. Root-Determinatives in Semitic Speech, a Contribution to Semitic Philology. New York: Columbia University Press. Joüon, P. 1923. Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique. Rome: Institut biblique pontifical. Kazimirski, A. de Biberstein. 1860. Dictionnaire arabe français, Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. Kenstowicz, M. 1994. Phonology in Generative Grammar. Oxford UK : Blackwell. Khatef, L. 2003. Statut de la troisième radicale en arabe: le croisement des étymons, Doctoral thesis. University Paris VIII. ——. 2004. “Le croisement des étymons: organisation formelle et sémantique.” Langues et Littératures du Monde Arabe, 119–138. Lisān = Jamāl ad-Dīn Abū l-Fadl Muhammad b. Mukarram b. Alī b. Ahmad b. Abī l-Qāsim b. H abqa Ibn Manzūr, Lisān al-ʚArab, s.d. Abd Allāh Alī al-Kabīr, Muhammad Ahmad H asab Allāh, Hāšim Muhammad aš-Šādilī, eds. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif. Lipinski, E. 1997. Semitic Languages. Outline of a Comparative Grammar. Leuven: Peeters. Mansouri, W. 2006. La place du trait [sonorant] dans les matrices de l’arabe. Masters 2 Research Paper, Lyon, École normale supérieure lettres et sciences humaines. McCarthy, J.J. 1986. “OCP Effects: Gemination and Antigemination.” Linguistic Inquiry, 17,2. 207–263. Nyckees, V. 1998. La sémantique, Paris: Belin. Qāmūs = Majd ad-Dīn Muhammad b. Yaqūb al-Fayrūzābādī, Al-Qāmūs al-Muhˢ ītˢ. Bayrūt: Muassasat ar-Risāla. Quiniou, Y. 2006. “La mort scientifique de Dieu.” Le nouvel observateur. Hors-série, 38–41. Le Petit Robert, dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française. 1967 [1993]. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert. Saguer, A.R. 2000. “L’incrémentation des préfixes dans le lexique de l’arabe. Le cas du n.” Actes du colloque Journées de linguistique arabe et sémitique, Langues et littératures du monde arabe, 1, 57–82. ——. 2002a. “L’incrémentation des préfixes dans le lexique de l’arabe. Le cas du m.” Langues et littératures du monde arabe, 3, 29–57.
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——. 2002b. Z āhirat al-isbāq fī l-judūr al-arabiyya. Agadir: publications de l’Université Ibn Zuhr. ——. 2003. “La matrice {[+nasal), [coronal)}, «traction» en arabe. Première esquisse.” Langues et littératures du monde arabe, 4, 138–183. Segeral, Ph. 1995. Une théorie généralisée de l’apophonie, Doctoral thesis. University Paris 7. Serhane, R. 2003. Etude de la matrice {[labial], [dorsal]} en arabe, Doctoral thesis. University Paris 8. Teixidor, J. 1992. Bardesane d’Edesse, la première philosophie syriaque. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf. Yeou, M. and S. Maeda. 1994. “Pharyngales et uvulaires arabes sont des approximantes: caractérisation acoustique.” 20ème Journées d’Études sur la Parole, Trégastel, 409–414.
THE PERIPHRASTIC BILINGUAL VERB CONSTRUCTION AS A MARKER OF INTENSE LANGUAGE CONTACT. EVIDENCE FROM GREEK, PORTUGUESE AND MAGHRIBIAN ARABIC Louis Boumans University of Nijmegen
1. Introduction I would like to start this paper with some terminological notes. I use the dichotomy ‘community language’ versus ‘superimposed language’ to refer to the typical unequal social-economic status of the bilingual speaker’s languages. These terms refer to local as well as global power relations and their sociolinguistic consequences. For instance, whether in Portugal, Brazil or the United States, Portuguese speaking people learn English in order to gain access to valuable information and upward social mobility, i.e. education, media and employment. I will use the term ‘socially dominant’ for the language the individual speaker is most exposed to in her daily life. This could be either the community or the superimposed language, depending on the local situation. Thus English is more likely to be socially dominant for a particular Portuguese/English bilingual member of the Portuguese community in the US, while Portuguese will be socially dominant for most bilinguals living in Portugal. The terms ‘matrix language’ and ‘embedded language’ are grammatical notions referring solely to local syntactic units of analysis in bilingual speech. The higher order constituent is the matrix in which lower order constituents are embedded. In mixed sentences higher and lower order constituents are in different languages. In most instances the community language functions as the matrix language and superimposed language elements are embedded. However, the reverse occurs in a minority of cases so the terms should not be confused.1
1 Since the early 1990s, Carol Myers-Scotton has been the most influential promoter of the insertion approach to code-switching and the terms matrix and embedded language.
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The present article deals with verbs from a superimposed language that function as embedded elements in community language discourse. The community language may or may not be socially dominant, and I argue that this makes a difference for the way in which foreign verbs are embedded.
2. The integration of foreign verbs There are three ways in which foreign verbs are integrated in the matrix language, two of which are common. One is the complete morphological integration. Some basic form of the foreign verb, typically the verb stem or the infinitive, is treated as the verb stem of the receiving matrix language, and verbal categories of the latter are expressed by matrix language morphology. Gloss (1) is a Moroccan Arabic/French example showing the French verb stem montr- (from montrer [m ~tre] ‘to show’) with an Arabic prefix and suffixes.2 (1) waš ġadi y-montr.i-w-l-ek . . . Q FUT 3-show-PL-to-2SG ‘Are they going to show you . . .?’ MA3/French (Wernitz 1993, 308)
The insertion of foreign verb stems without overt morphological integration in matrix languages lacking verbal morphology, such as various Austronesian languages (Van Staden 1999) can be considered as a subcategory of the morphological integration strategy, even if the integration is not overtly expressed by ML morphemes.
I concur with the fundamentals of her original Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton 1993), except for the definition of the matrix language. In my view, all syntactic constituents function as a matrix for lower-order constituents, whereas in the MLF model only the Complementizer Phrase functions as a matrix. I refer to earlier work for more details on this approach to code-switching (Boumans 1998, Boumans and Caubet 2000, Boumans 2002). 2 The vowel i is not a proper suffix. Embedded French verbs are modelled on a class of Arabic verbs ending in a vowel. This vowel is subject to a/i ablaut. Cf. Caubet (1993), Boumans (1998), and Boumans and Caubet (2000). 3 The following abbreviations are being used: in the main text: MA Moroccan Arabic; in the glosses to numbered examples: 1,2,3 first, second, third person; ACC accusative; AGR agreement; ART article; AUX auxiliary; DEF definite article; FUT future tense; IMPF imperfective; INF infinitive; M masculine; NEG negation; PASTPART past participle; PL plural; PROGRPART progressive participle; PRT preterit; REL relative clause marker; SG singular.
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The other common strategy is the periphrastic construction. This strategy is equally common in the world’s languages and can also be illustrated with Moroccan Arabic, this time in contact with Dutch: (2) bġa y-dir li-h aanvall-en want 3-do to-3SG attack-INF ‘It [the bird] wanted to attack him.’ MADutch (Jamal, 16, Utrecht 2000)
In his book Bilingual Speech (2000), Muysken presents a typology of verb integration with special attention for the periphrastic type. In the periphrastic construction, he argues, the foreign verb can be a nominalization, an infinitive or an adjunction. In the first case, the nominalized verb is the complement of the ‘helping verb,’ in the case of an infinitive the helping verb must be analysed as an auxiliary. In the adjunction analysis, the foreign verb and the ‘helping verb’ form a kind of verbal compound. Which of these three analyses is most appropriate does not only depend on the language pair involved. As I discussed elsewhere (Boumans 1998; 2000), strategies and grammatical constructions differ among individuals belonging to the same bilingual community. Compare examples (2) and (3). In Jamal’s utterance in (2), the patient participant of the Dutch transitive verb aanvallen ‘to attack’ is expressed as the MA indirect object li-h ‘to-him’. The Patient role is expressed as an indirect object, because the Dutch verb occupies the Direct Object position of the MA transitive verb dar ‘to do’. This is in fact the common construction in the Dutch Moroccan community. Now in Samir’s example in (3), the patient of the transitive verb controleren ‘to supervise’ surfaces as the direct object suffix -hom ‘them’. The construction in (2) can be described as a helping verb plus a verbal noun object, while the one in example (3) is in fact very similar to the monolingual Dutch auxiliary construction. Compare (3) with its Dutch translation in (4). Note that the pronominal direct object of the main verb cliticizes to the finite auxiliary, even if an adjunct constituent (morgen ‘tomorrow’) comes between the two verbs. (3) škun ġadi y-dir-hom controler-en? who FUT 3–do-3PL supervise-INF ‘Who will supervise them?’ MA/Dutch (Samir 20, Nijmegen 1991) (4) wie gaa-t hun (morgen) controler-en who go-2SG 3PL tomorrow supervise-INF ‘Who will supervise them (tomorrow)?’ Dutch translation of (3)
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The variation between speakers, and even between utterances of the same speaker, can be explained by the varying levels of competence in both languages, and by the effect of grammaticalization and conventionalization (Backus 1996). The third, less common strategy for the incorporation of foreign verbs deserves mentioning here for the sake of completeness. This strategy consists in inserting inflected verb forms rather than verb stems. The inflected foreign forms are mapped onto the ML paradigm and express ML verbal categories. A famous case in point is Mednyj Aleut, also known as Copper Island Aleut (Thomason and Kaufman 1988, 233–8). In this variety of Aleut, Russian inflectional patterns in finite verbs replaced Aleut ones while most other grammatical subsystems remained intact. Crucially, the Russian verbal inflections express Aleut tense and aspect categories. Similarly, Igla (1991) reports on a dialect of Romani nowadays spoken in a suburb of Athens in Greece. The speakers of this dialect of Romani moved in from Turkey in the 1920s but no longer speak any Turkish. However there are still approximately 30 verbs of Turkish origin that continue to be inflected with Turkish suffixes while following the Romani verbal paradigm, cf. Table 1. That is, the Turkish inflectional suffixes express Romani inflectional categories. TABLE 1 THE PRESENT TENSE OF TURKISH VERBS AND OF VERBS OF TURKISH AND NON-TURKISH ORIGIN IN AJIA VAVARA ROMANI (FROM IGLA 1991, 52)
present sg 1 sg 2 sg 3 pl 1 pl 2 pl 3
Turkish
Ajia Vavara Romani
‘to write’ yaz-ar-m yaz-ar-sn yaz-ar yaz-ar-z yaz-ar-snz yaz-ar-(lar)
‘to write’ yaz-ar-um yaz-ar-sun yaz-ar yaz-ar-us yaz-ar-sunus yaz-ar-(lar)
‘to bring’ an-av an-es an-el an-as an-en an-en
(5) i thagarni kurta-du len e rom-en ART queen save-PRT REL ART gypsy-ACC.PL ‘(..) the queen saved (them) the gypsies.’ Romani/Turkish (Igla 1991, 53)
This latter strategy is actually very rare in language contact situations. However, it may be more common in the case of two closely related languages or varieties. For instance Malkiel (1986) draws attention to the Spanish conjugation pattern of a number of Portuguese verbs. Also
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non-tensed verb forms such as participles, infinitives and imperatives are quite readily interchangeable between languages, cf. (6). (6) Le estaba poniendo atención qué estaba 3.IO was.3SG put.PROGRPART attention what was.SG recorded record.PASTPAR ‘He was paying attention to what was recorded.’ Spanish/English (Pfaff 1979, 300)
3. Explanations for the distribution of the two common strategies Why do speakers opt for one strategy rather than the other? The two common strategies in particular, morphological integration and periphrastic constructions, allow us to compare the languages and linguistic situations involved. 3.1
Characteristics of the matrix language
When one makes a list of all language contact situations and the attested strategies for the integration of foreign verbs, it becomes clear that genetic or areal typological factors play an important role. In the IndoIranian and Turkic languages, for instance, the periphrastic construction appears in virtually all language contact situations. In connection with this, Muysken (2000, 194) speaks of ‘a large “linguistic area”, in this case, stretching from Sri Lanka to Greece.’ On the other hand, most western European languages seem to prefer the morphological integration strategy. A plausible explanation for the areal bias is that speakers who are accustomed to a certain strategy of incorporating foreign verbs will reuse this strategy in new contact situations. Some examples of this kind of ‘bilingual knowledge’ will be discussed below. Still, the two MA examples cited in (1) and (2) show that the matrix language is not the only factor deciding which incorporation strategy speakers will use. 3.2
Characteristics of the embedded language
One way to explain the difference between MA/French and MA/Dutch code-switching is to look for differences in the superimposed embedded languages. Heath (1989) argues that the phonological shape of the French verbs facilitates their incorporation in Arabic. Bilingual speakers associate the stressed final vowel /e/ of most French infinitives and other
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verb forms with the final /i/ of the prefix conjugation (imperfective) of a class of MA verbs. Dutch infinitives typically end in an unstressed suffix -en that is pronounced as a schwa. It is not obvious whether this makes them phonologically less similar to the MA finite verb in /i/ than French infinitives. Firstly, MA phonology does not allow for the schwa in open syllables. This may lead Moroccan listeners to ignore word-final schwas in Dutch, and interpret the infinitives as consonant-final. Alternatively, however, Moroccans may interpret the Dutch final schwa as a full front or back vowel. Both tendencies can be observed in the speech of Moroccan learners of Dutch. Moreover, the vocalic ending in French verbs cannot be decisive, since Spanish, Italian and English verbs are morphologically integrated in North African varieties of Arabic in the same way as French verbs. Many of these Romance and English infinitives end in a consonant. Arabic/Spanish language contact is still common in the (formerly) Spanish occupied northern parts of Morocco (cf. Heath 1989, Herrero Muñoz-Cobo 1996). Cohen (1912) notes interesting observations on the Jewish dialect of Algiers, where the Spanish (or Lingua Franca) infinitive ending -ar is even extended to embedded French verbs. E.g. refuzarit from French refuser [rıfyze] in (8). Numerous verbs of Italian and English origin are found in Maltese, another variety of Maghribian Arabic (Aquilina 1965 [1987], Camilleri 1994, Mifsud, 1995).4 The stem extension -ja- in Maltese verbs of English origin, as in (10), is a reflection of the Sicilian ~ Italian infinitive suffix -are. (7)
frˢin-arˢ-t ~ frˢin-arˢ.i-t brake- INF-1SG ~ brake- INF.STEM EXTENSION -1SG (Sp. frenar) ‘I braked’ Tetouan Arabic/Spanish (Heath 1989, 184)
(8)
refuz-ar-it refuse-SPANISH INF-1SG (Fr. refuser) ‘I refused’ Jewish Arabic of Algiers/French (Cohen 1912, 432)
(9)
ti-ppartiċipa-w 3-participate-PL (It. partecipare) ‘you (pl) participate’ Maltese/Italian~ Sicilian (Camilleri 1994, 437)
4 As a matter of fact, the type of verb integration illustrated in (1) does not occur in the Middle Eastern varieties of Arabic. Instead the periphrastic construction is more common in that region.
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(10) ni-bbliċċ.ja-ha 1-bleach.STEM EXTENSION-3SG ‘I bleach it’ Maltese/English (Camilleri 1994, 443)
Thus, verb stems from various embedded languages and with diverse phonological characteristics can be morphologically integrated into Moroccan or Maghribian Arabic, and phonology does not seem to be an explanation for the periphrastic construction in the case of MA/Dutch. A second way in which the embedded language might influence the selection of the verb integration strategy is the use of periphrastic verb constructions in the embedded language itself. Following this line of thought, the bilingual MA/Dutch periphrastic construction could be inspired by periphrastic constructions with doen ‘to do’ in standard or non-standard Dutch.5 Again, the comparison with the other language pairs speaks against this hypothesis. Periphrastic constructions with a ‘do’ verb are much more common in English than they are in Dutch, while their abundance in French and Spanish may be similar to that in Dutch.6 Therefore, the occurrence of ‘do’ constructions in monolingual Dutch likewise does not explain why the periphrasis strategy is chosen to insert Dutch verbs in MA matrix clauses. 3.3
Characteristics of the sociolinguistic setting
In the case of the North African language contacts, neither the host language nor the embedded language is the sole factor determining the way in which the loan verbs are integrated in Arabic. For this reason I conjecture that the sociolinguistic setting in the Netherlands, where MA is a minority language, is responsible for the periphrastic construction in MA/Dutch. As a more general hypothesis, I suggest situations in which language contact is more intense, like migration to an urban industrialised society, favour the use of the periphrastic construction.7
5 Jacomine Nortier and Roeland van Hout made this suggestion when we discussed this paper at the SS14 workshop on borrowing in Gent, April 4, 2002, and on earlier occasions. 6 With the exception of certain infrequent constructions, do-periphrasis in Dutch is associated with non-standard regional varieties or child language. Cf. Nuijtens (1962, 154–57), Giesbers (1984), and Cornips (1994). 7 One could argue that the morphological integration of French verbs is found both in North Africa and in the North African diaspora in Francophone Europe and Canada. In this particular case, however, code-switching strategies that were already established in the homeland have simply been maintained in the diaspora.
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In order to shed some light on this issue and to test the ‘intensity of contact’ hypothesis, the following two sections survey verb integration in two additional language pairs for which both integration strategies are attested: Greek/English and Portuguese/English. In both cases the influence of English has been described for immigrant communities in Anglophone countries as well as in the Greek and Portuguese speaking homelands.
4. Greek/English 4.1
Greece
The morphological integration of Italian verbs consists of adding Greek suffixes to the Italian infinitive in -are.8 (11)
ƱưƳƞƲƺ It. posare ‘to pose’ ƴƬƫƵƴƞƲƺ It. schizzare ‘to sketch’ Mainland Greek/Italian (Van Dijk-Wittop Koning 1963)
(12)
fundáro It. fondare ‘to anchor’ barkáro It. barcare ‘to board’ kompletáro It. completare ‘to fill up [cargo]’ Mainland Greek/Italian (Hartley 2001)
According to Swanson the ‘mildly productive verbal suffix -aro’ entered the Greek language in late Byzantine times (1958, 40). The Italian infinitive marker has been generalised to verbs of French and English origin as well: (13)
ƮƵƧvƱưƶƵƞƲƺ Fr. débuter ‘to make one’s debut’ ƭƣƮƴƞƲƺ Fr. lancer ‘to launch’ Mainland Greek/French (Contossopoulos 1978, 42)
(14)
flertaro to flirt stoparo to stop (a machine) sutaro to make a shot (soccer, basketball) Mainland Greek/English (Swanson 1958)
8 The authors on loanwords and codeswitching in Greek make use of different writing and spelling conventions. The spelling of the source publication is retained in the examples cited here.
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/parkaro/ ‘to park’
/manadzaro/ ‘to manage’
/triparo/ ‘to trip’ Mainland Greek/English (Apostolou Panara 1991, 50)
Interestingly, the recycling of a foreign verb marker like the Italian -are to mark verbs from a third language is yet another example of how ‘bilingual experience’ influences the way in which speakers treat words from foreign languages. Note the close parallel with -ar in the Jewish Arabic dialect of Algiers (8), and the -ja stem extension after English verb stems in Maltese (10).9 Most sources on loan verbs in Modern Greek mention only this -ar- extension with complete morphological integration of the foreign word. However, Apostolou Panara, while asserting that “verbs all adapt,” i.e. are morphologically integrated, mentions that ‘in some cases, along with the single lexeme we attest a periphrasis with the Greek verb /kano/ (‘to do, to make’) preceding a noun or a gerund’ (1991, 50), cf. the examples in (16). A few verbs occur exclusively as part of the periphrastic construction (17), whereas the periphrasis is judged ungrammatical in most cases (18). (16)
/flertaro/ besides /kano flert/ ‘to flirt’ /manadzaro/ besides /kano manadzing/ ‘to manage’ /stokaro/ besides /kano stok/ ‘to stock’ Mainland Greek/English (Apostolou Panara 1991, 50)
(17)
/kano kambing/ but not */kambaro/ ‘to camp’ /kano serfing/ but not */serfaro/ ‘to surf ’ Mainland Greek/English (Apostolou Panara 1991, 51)
(18)
/triparo/ but not */kano trip/ ‘to trip’ /parkaro/ but not */kano park/ ‘to park’ Mainland Greek/English (Apostolou Panara, 1991, 51)
It is possible that a closer study of the English vocabulary in Modern Greek would reveal regularities that govern the use of periphrasis. Periphrasis with káno could be associated with particular types of events, for instance habitual or durative activities. The periphrastic construction may be more common with recent English loans, or in the speech
9 In Dutch a similar situation obtains with the French infinitive marker -er [er] (Treffers-Daller 1994), which is sometimes used for English loanwords as well, e.g. formatter-en ‘to format’.
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of speakers who are more exposed to English. kano kambing may be a calque after the French expression faire du camping (cf. káno ski in (24) below, possibly after French faire du ski). The available data do not allow for such conclusions at the moment. Still, I think it is safe to conclude from the literature that in Greece the periphrastic construction occurs as a minor pattern with some verbs only, while morphological integration is the rule. 4.2
Cyprus
Cyprus has been under British rule for more than eighty years, during which English was the language of administration. First, from 1878 on Britain administered the island in agreement with the Ottoman Empire. Then Cyprus was annexed by Britain when the Ottoman Empire enters into World War I on the side of Germany, and subsequently the island became a British Crown colony under the British rule. In 1960 Cyprus gained independence, and (Modern Standard) Greek became the language of administration. The English language remained influential through the tourism industry and the large international community on the island. There are a number of studies dealing specifically with the influence of English on Cypriot Greek. Papapavlou (1997) cites a list of English loan words found in written sources and tape-recorded speech. His list includes 23 verbs in the -aro conjugation. He makes no mention of the periphrastic construction. (19)
flεrdάro ‘to flirt’ rej˘istrάro ‘to register’ riskάro ‘to take a risk’ čarcάro ‘to change’ (money) ‘to check’ (inspect) čakhάro Cypriot Greek/English (Papapavlou 1997)
Similarly, Evripidou, also on the basis of written sources and recorded speech, lists 19 English-origin Cypriot Greek verbs, all of them integrated in the -aro class (2001). Goutsos discusses Greek/English codeswitching among members of a middle-class Cypriot family in Limassol (2001). This study differs from the other ones, as Goutsos does not list English loan words but rather focuses on the discourse functions of language choice in the conversations. He does not comment on integrated verbs of the -aro conjugation. He does cite three instances of the
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periphrastic construction. As in Apostolou Panara’s data, there are two types of construction, one in which the English verb is represented by the infinitive (or verb stem), see (20) and (21), the other with the gerund (22). (20)
éθθa kámno ‘shower’ ‘I will shower’ Cypriot Greek/English (Goutsos 2001, 203)
(21)
ói ðjóti ótan kámnis ‘wash’ ‘no because when you wash’ Cypriot Greek/English (Goutsos 2001, 203)
(22)
. . . lálun tus pu na érti i jajá su ená kámni ‘swimming’ ‘I was saying to them, when your grandma comes, she will swim.’ Cypriot Greek/English (Goutsos 2001, 203)
The periphrastic construction is not a pervasive phenomenon in the speech of Goutsos’ informants, nor is code-switching in general (Goutsos 2001, 216). The examples also show the absence of an established convention on how to insert the English verb into the periphrastic construction. Still it is noticeable that the do-construction is recorded on Cyprus and not in mainland Greece. Goutsos comments: ‘Compared to SMG [Standard Modern Greek], CG [Cypriot Greek] draws more on English resources for borrowing and creates “mixed” compound forms with de-lexicalized verbs’ (2001, 204). Although Apostolou Panara shows that the periphrastic construction does occur in mainland Greek, Goutsos’s comment confirms the impression that it is a marginal phenomenon. If it is indeed true that the periphrasis is more common in Cyprus, it is attractive in the light of the present discussion to explain this difference as resulting from the greater impact of English on the language of the former crown colony. Moreover, Goutsos’s examples stem from a really bilingual setting, whereas the loanwords collected by the other authors stem mostly from written sources that do not presuppose a bilingual readership. 4.3
Mainland Greek in the Diaspora
The oldest study on American Greek mentions just one English-origin verb: mouvaro ‘to move’ (Lontos 1925–26). However, this particular form probably goes back to an Italian form muevere, as Hartley (2001) suggests in his paper on loan words in Greek nautical terminology.
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A much more elaborated study of American Greek is provided by Seaman. He mentions the same form muváro (1972, 165), but it becomes clear that the periphrastic construction with káno ‘to do, make’ is the productive way to incorporate English verbs in his data: ‘In verbal loans from English, /jíno/ seems to be the auxiliary for passives and /káno/ for actives’ (1972, 166). His examples of the passive construction with jíno ‘to be, become’ are ambiguous, as they might also be analysed as cases of a copula plus predicate, and there are only a handful of examples. On the other hand, Seaman cites 47 examples of the periphrastic construction with káno. In 33 cases the embedded English element is unambiguously a verb; 11 cases may involve either a verb or a noun, e.g. control, welcome. Some examples are reproduced below (see also Muysken 2000, 212).10 (23)
káno, ‘cover up’ ‘I cover up’ kánis, ‘brush’ ta δóndja su ‘You (sg) brush your teeth’ ékane, ‘punch’ ‘s/he punched [a meal ticket]’ American Greek (Seaman 1972, 167–68)
Tamis found the same construction in Australia (1986, cited in Muysken 2000, 212). The construction is also known from Canada (24) and Brussels (25). Compared with Seaman’s study, the information on the latter diaspora communities is rather scarce. It is not clear whether in these cases the periphrastic construction is really the productive strategy for incorporating English or French verbs. The Canadian examples cited in (24), involving computer terminology and sports, remind of the use of the periphrastic construction in Greece described by Apostolou Panara. (24)
káno ski káno save [computer] káno print [computer] káno jogging Montreal Greek/English (Muysken 2000, 213, based on Hatzidaki p.c.)
(25)
káno déménager ‘to move house’ Greek/French (Muysken 2000, 213, based on Hatzidaki p.c.)
10 In Table 7.7 on p. 212 of Muysken’s book the words jíno and káno have been reversed.
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Cypriot Greek in London
There are a number of publications (and many unpublished theses) on the language of the Greek Cypriot community in London. Gardner-Chloros (1992) mentions the occurrence of morphologically integrated verbs like tekaro ‘to check’, which is not surprising as these words are found in Cyprus (and Greece) as well. In addition, however, she points out the periphrasis with káno as an innovative construction, occurring with English ‘adjectives, nouns, participles . . .’ (Gardner-Chloros 1992, 127). (26)
kamno use ‘to use’ kamno respect ‘to respect’ kamno developed ‘to develop’ kamno spelling ‘to spell’ Cypriot Greek in London (Gardner-Chloros, 1992, 127)
Zarpetea compares the language use of three generations of London Cypriots (1995). She notices the use of both integrated loan verbs and the periphrastic construction in the first as well as the second-generation immigrants. The periphrastic construction still occurs in the speech of the third generation, young children who use only little Greek: (27)
έκαμα wash τα cups, do you want me to do the plates now mum? ‘I have washed the cups, . . .’ Cypriot Greek/English (Zarpetea 1995, 581)
As a final note on morphologically integrated English verbs in immigrant Greek, I would like to draw the attention to the fact that there is much overlap between the lemmas mentioned in the various sources. This is particularly striking in Zarpetea’s paper. Out of the seven verbs she cites, five also occur in other sources, cf. Table 2. TABLE 2
OVERLAP BETWEEN LOAN VERBS IN ZARPETEA (1995) AND OTHER SOURCES
Zarpetea 1995, 578
other sources
Κανςελλάρω ‘to cancel’
Gardner-Chloros 1992, 126, Papapavlou 1997, 232, Evripidou 2001, 24 Papapavlou 1997, 240, Evripidou 2001, 24 Papapavlou 1997, 240 Apostolou Panara 1991, 50, Papapavlou 1997, 236 Lontos 1925–26, 309, Seaman 1972, 167, Hartley 2001
‘to check’ τσιαρτσιάρω ‘to charge’ παρκάρω ‘to park’ μουβάρω
‘to move’
μπουκκάρω ‘to book’ πακκεττάρω ‘to packet’
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There is no such overlap in the examples cited for the periphrastic construction with kámno (mainland Greek káno).11 This indicates that the morphologically integrated verbs found in London may well have been coined in the more monolingual setting in Cyprus. As noted above, μουβάρω ‘to move’ is probably not even of English origin. This is a further indication that in the Cypriot diaspora, the periphrastic construction replaces morphological integration as the most productive strategy for the incorporation of new English verbs. The chances are that the same development has taken place in the American Greek community studied by Seaman (1972).
5. Portuguese/English I have been able to trace surprisingly few studies on English loan words in Portuguese, whether European or Brazilian. Compared with Greek, there are also few studies on Portuguese speaking communities in Anglophone countries. The picture that arises from the available data is approximately the same as for Greek. 5.1
Portugal
The website of the Instituto Superior Politécnico de Viseu in Portugual hosts a short list of English loanwords in Portuguese, compiled by two students and their English teacher (Queiroz, Rodrigues and McKenny 1999, accessed June 2002). The authors are not explicit about their data sources, except that visitors of the web page are invited to contribute observations. As it concerns a Portuguese project, however, I assume that most of their sources are likewise of Portuguese, rather than Brazilian, origin. Their list of English loan words contains four verbs integrated in the Portuguese conjugation class ending in -ar (28), in addition to the
11 Apostolou-Panara, Goutsos, Gardner-Chloros and Zarpatea cite 14 different English verbs in the periphrastic construction. kámno wash is shared between Goutsos and Zarpatea. kámno use is cited in the papers by Gardner-Chloros and Zarpetea. But these two papers must be based on (partly) the same data. I infer this from the fact that the example very busy ‘I know that you have (are) very busy’ is cited in both (Gardner-Chloros 1992, 128; Zarpatea 1995, 578).
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denominal form stressar (from ‘stress’) and the de-adjectival compactar (‘to compress’ from compact, computer terminology). (28)
draftar ‘to draft’ driblar ‘to dribble’ linchar ‘to lynch’ snifar ‘to sniff [drugs]’ European Portuguese/English (Queiroz et al. 1999)
In addition this list contains six deverbal English nouns denoting activities in the domains of sports and information and communication technology: jogging, kickboxing, surf; scan, upgrade and zap. The web site does not indicate how these words are used in Portuguese. Nicholas Hurst (p.c. 18 Apr 2002) cites examples of periphrastic constructions involving the Portuguese verb fazer ‘to do’ (29). The examples show that there is much variation: as in Greek contexts, the English verb is used in either the citation form (infinitive) or the gerund. Moreover, the indefinite article um may or may not be present. (29)
5.2
fazer zapping fazer um scanning fazer surf fazer um upgrade European Portuguese/English (p.c. Nicholas Hurst 18 Apr 2002)
Brazil
Kennedy (1971) and Harmon (1994) quote a number of English verbs occurring in Brazilian dictionaries and other written sources. All are integrated into the so-called first conjugation class ending in -ar: (30)
chutar ‘to shoot [ball game]’ drenar ‘to drain’ ranquear ‘to rank’ treinar ‘to train’ Brazilian Portuguese/English (Kennedy, 1971)
Harmon does not mention the construction with fazer. Kennedy cites just one example of a somewhat enigmatic periphrastic construction: fazer o footing, translated in English as ‘take a stroll.’
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louis boumans American Portuguese
There is a classical study of the language of Portuguese immigrants in the US by Pap (1949). He gives many examples of morphologically integrated English verbs. These are added to the most frequent en most productive Portuguese conjugation class in -ar, with the necessary phonological adaptations. In some cases the English verb stem is extended with an -e- such that the infinitive ends in -ear. (31)
raid-ear ‘to ride’ canec-ar ‘to connect’ damp-ar ‘to dump’ s(e)leir-ar ‘to slide’ chinj-ar ‘to change’ raiv-ar ‘to drive’ North American Portuguese/English (Pap 1949, 95–100)
While morphological integration of English verbs is the most common pattern, Pap also lists a large number of instances of a periphrastic construction with fazer. The nominalized English verb stem occupies the direct object position. In contrast with the contemporary European examples cited by Hurst, the foreign verb stem is preceded by the Portuguese masculine definite article o. (32)
fazer o boda ‘to bother’ fazer o spoil ‘to spoil’ fazer o save ‘to save’ fazer o find out ‘to find out’ fazer o give up ‘to give up’ North American Portuguese/English (Pap 1949, 105–106)
6. Discussion The data from North African varieties of Arabic in contact with European languages suggest that diaspora communities are more inclined to use the periphrastic alternative for incorporating foreign verbs. The studies on Greek and Portuguese in contact with English do not unambiguously confirm this. Morphological integration as well as periphrastic constructions are reported for all contact situations, whether in the Greek and Portuguese speaking countries or in the respective immigrant communities in Anglophone countries.
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Broadly speaking, however, the literature on Greek and Portuguese does point in the same direction. Integration in the productive conjugation classes, Greek -áro and Portuguese -ar, is predominant in the studies on English loanwords in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Brazil. ‘Do-constructions,’ on the other hand, feature prominently in the studies on migrant communities. A caveat is in order: studies on the influence of English as a foreign language are traditionally oriented toward loan words, i.e. words in isolation, in written sources. These studies tend not to identify foreign verbs in the periphrastic construction as verbs at all, which can easily lead to the suggestion that embedded verbs are either absent or consistently integrated into the morphology of the matrix language. For obvious reasons, studies on bilingualism in migrant communities focus on oral communication. Thanks to the recognition of code-switching as an interesting linguistic phenomenon, the latter studies also pay more attention to the higher degrees of linguistic organisation like clauses and utterances. Hence the emphasis on one verb strategy or the other may be to some extent an artefact of the different research traditions. Still, at least the Greek case supports my hypothesis, in particular the studies by Apostolou Panara on Greece and Seaman on the Greek community in the US. Both authors discuss the different types of verb integration, and designate one as the default strategy: morphological integration in Greece and periphrasis in the US. The studies on the London Cypriots suggest that periphrasis is the most productive strategy there as well. With respect to the sociolinguistic factors in verb integration, I conclude that, all other things being equal, morphological integration is the norm in homeland settings where the matrix language is socially dominant, while the periphrastic construction is found in migrant communities where the embedded language is dominant. The migrant communities concerned here are actually undergoing language shift. Stated in more general terms, the periphrastic construction characterises situations of intense contact with the language of the embedded foreign verb. As mentioned above, other factors may override the sociolinguistic ones, as in the case of matrix languages that opt for the same integration strategy in no matter what sociolinguistic setting.
308 6.1
louis boumans Automatization of superimposed language practices
The next question is why speakers more often revert to periphrasis in situations of more intense contact. I can think of the following explanations: Firstly, automatization of superimposed language practices: In general the degree of integration of foreign words is inversely proportional to the speaker’s knowledge of the embedded language. With increasing practise and competence, the linguistic habits characteristic of that foreign language become entrenched in the speaker’s brain, and can more easily be reproduced. This even results in the ‘disintegration’ of formerly integrated foreign words, a process known as denativization (Haugen 1950). In Morocco, for instance, ‘French-Moroccan Arabic bilinguals now prefer to reborrow the same French terms in shapes closer to the French prototype’ (Heath 1986, 114). Denativization has often been described with respect to phonology of loan words from English, a language whose influence is expanding (cf. Khubchandani 1968, Hasselmo 1969, De Reuse 1994, Van Ness 1994). I would like to stress this point, because it is a commonly held belief that loanwords become, on the contrary, more integrated over time (Nortier and Schatz 1988, Heath 1989). The replacement of morpho-phonological integration by periphrasis as the productive strategy for the integration of foreign verbs fits into the denativization process, since the periphrastic construction entails little or no phonological or morphological adaptation to the matrix language. This type of change could be taking place in for instance Greece or Portugal, where exposure to English is still increasing. Denativization refers to a diachronic change in situations where language contact increases over time. However, the underlying mechanism of automatization of superimposed language practices also explains the differences between immigrant and homeland bilingualism. 6.2
Loss of community language practices
Secondly, attrition or loss of community language practices: the morphological integration of foreign verb requires the application of matrix language morphological procedures. These procedures are typically the same as those used for deriving verbs from nouns or adjectives. The loss or erosion of community language morphology, a common effect of decreased use of the language and incipient shift (Andersen 1982,
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El Aissati 1997), cuts off morphological integration as a strategy for embedding foreign verbs. 6.3
Collocational complements
Thirdly, triggering by collocational complements of the embedded verbs: Many examples of periphrasis with foreign verbs involve a collocation with a foreign direct object noun or other complement, cf. wash and cups in Greek/English example (27) above and diep, gesprek and voeren in the Arabic/Dutch example below. (33)
ma ne-qderˢ š eh n-dir NEG 1-can NEG er 1-do diep-e gesprekk-en voer-en deep-AGR conversation-PL conduct-INF ‘I can’t er carry out deep conversations.’ MA/Dutch, Jamal, 20, Eindhoven 1991 (Boumans 1998, 245)
The periphrasis leaves the original embedded language collocation intact. Therefore the collocation might trigger this construction. The usage of foreign collocations presupposes a higher level of competence in that language and hence more intense exposure to it.
7. Conclusions In nearly all cases, foreign verbs are combined with matrix language inflection in either of two ways: they are morphologically integrated and inflected with ML affixes (if any), or they are embedded in a periphrastic construction with an inflected ML verb. Some MLs, such as Magribian Arabic, Portuguese and Greek, allow for both solutions. A comparison of Magribian, Portuguese and Greek bilingual communities suggests that the periphrastic integration of foreign verbs is favored in situations of more intense contact with the superimposed language.
8. References Andersen, R. 1982. “Determining the Linguistic Attributes of Language Attrition.” In R. Lambert and B. Freed, eds. The Loss of Language Skills. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 83–118. Apostolou Panara, A. 1991. “English Loanwords in Modern Greek: an Overview.” Terminologie et Traduction, 1.91, 45–60.
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Aquilina, J. 1965 (1987). Teach Yourself Maltese. Valetta: Hodder and Stoughton. Backus, A. 1996. Two in One: Bilingual Speech of Turkish Immigrants in the Netherlands. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. ——. 2001. Synchronic Register Variation in Monolingual and Bilingual Turkish (project description). Boumans, L. 1998. The Syntax of Code-switching. Analysing Moroccan Arabic/Dutch Conversations. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. ——. 2000. “Periphrastic Verb Constructions in Moroccan Arabic/Dutch Code-switching.” In A. Fenyvesi and K. Sandor, eds. Language Contact and the Verbal Complex of Dutch and Hungarian. Working Papers of the 1st Bilingual Language Use Theme Meeting. Szeged: University of Szeged, Teacher Training College, 67–84. ——. 2002. “Repetition Phenomena in Insertional Codes-witching.” In A. Rouchdy, ed. Language Contact and Language Conflict Phenomena in Arabic. London: Curzon, 279–316. ——, and Caubet, D. 2000. “Modelling Intrasentential Code-switching: a Comparative study of Algerian Arabic/French in Algeria and Moroccan Arabic/Dutch in the Netherlands.” In J. Owens, ed. Arabic as a Minority Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 113–80. Camilleri, A. 1994. “Language contact between Maltese and English: code-switching and cross-linguistic influence.” In D. Caubet and M. Vanhove, eds. Actes des premières journées internationales de dialectologie arabe de Paris. Paris: INALCO, 431–49. Cohen, M. 1912. Le parler arabe des juifs d’Alger. Paris: H. Champion. Contossopoulos, N.G. 1978. L’influence du français sur le grec: emprunts lexicaux et calques phraséologiques. Athènes: s.n. Cornips, L. 1994. “De hardnekkige vooroordelen over de regionale doen+infinitiefconstructie.” Forum der Letteren, 35.4, 282–94. De Reuse, W. 1994. “English Loanwords in the Native Languages of the Chukotka Peninsula.” Anthropological Linguistics, 36.1, 56–68. El Aissati, A. 1997. Language Loss among Native Speakers of Moroccan Arabic in the Netherlands. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Evripidou, D. 2001. Lexical Borrowing: A Study of English Loanwords in the Greek Cypriot Dialect. Lancaster: Lancaster University. Gardner-Chloros, P. 1992. “The Sociolinguistics of the Greek Cypriot Community in London.” Plurilinguismes, 4, 112–36. Giesbers, H. 1984. “Doe jij even lief spelen? Notities over het perifrastisch doen.” Mededelingen NCDN, 19, 57–76. Goutsos, D. 2001. “A Discourse-analytic Approach to the Use of English in Cypriot Greek Conversations.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11:2, 194–223. Harmon, R.M. 1994. “Aspectos lingüísticos dos empréstimos em português.” Hispania, 77:3, 463–469. Hartley, A.H. 2001. Loanwords in Modern Nautical Greek. (2002). Hasselmo, N. 1969. “On Diversity in American Swedish.” Svenska Landsmål och Svenskt Folkliv, 92, 53–72. Haugen, E. 1950. “The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing.” Language, 26:2, 210–31. Heath, J. 1986. “Hasta la Mujerra! and other Instances of Playful Language Mixing in Morocco.” Mediterranean Language Review, 2, 113–6. ——. 1989. From Code-Switching to Borrowing. A Case Study of Moroccan Arabic. London: Kegan Paul International. Herrero Muñoz-Cobo, B. 1996. El árabe marroquí: aproximación sociolingística. Almería: Universidad de Almería. Igla, B. 1991. “On the Treatment of Foreign Verbs in Romani.” In P. Bakker and M. Cortiade, eds. In the Margin of Romani. Gypsy Languages in Contact. Amsterdam: Inst. ATW, Univ. Amsterdam, 50–5.
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Kennedy, J.H. 1971. “The Influence of English on the Vocabulary of Brazilian Portuguese.” Hispania 54:2, 327. Khubchandani, L.M. 1968. “The Gender of English Loanwords in Sindhi.” In B. Krishnamurti, ed. Studies in Indian Linguistics. (Professor M.B. Emeneau sastipurti volume). Poona: Deccan College, 180–88. Lontos, S.S. 1925–26. “American Greek.” American Speech, I, 307–10. Malkiel, Y. 1986. “A Spanish Conjugational Model Superimposed on Portuguese.” Mediterranean Language Review 2, 51–66. Mifsud, M. 1995. Loan Verbs in Maltese. A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Muysken, P. 2000. Bilingual Speech. A typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, C. 1993. Duelling Languages. Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nortier, J. and Schatz, H. 1988. “Van éénwoordwisseling naar ontlening, een vergelijkend onderzoek.” Forum der Letteren, 29, 161–78. Nuijtens, E.T.G. 1962. De tweetalige mens—een taalsociologisch onderzoek naar het gebruik van dialect en cultuurtaal in Borne. Assen: Van Gorcum. Pap, L. 1949. Portuguese-American Speech. New York: King’s Crown Press. Papapavlou, A. 1997. “The Influence of English and its Dominance in Cyprus: Reality or unfounded fears?” Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 7:2, 218–49. Queiroz, A., Rodrigues, J. and McKenny, J. 1999. Empréstimos da língua inglesa para a portuguesa. English loan words and phrases in Portuguese. Escola Superior de Educação de Viseu. 2002. Seaman, P.D. 1972. Modern Greek and American English in Contact. The Hague: Mouton. Swanson, D. 1958. “English Loanwords in Modern Greek.” Word, 14, 26–46. Tamis, A. 1986. The State of the Modern Greek Language as Spoken in Victoria. Melbourne, University of Melbourne. Thomason, S.G. and Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Treffers-Daller, J. 1994. Mixing Two Languages. French-Dutch contact in a comparative perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Van Dijk-Wittop Koning, A.M. 1963. De continuïteit van het Grieks: onderzoek naar de herkomst van de woordvoorraad van het Nieuwgrieks. Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink. Van Ness, S. 1994. “Die Dimensionen lexicalischer Entlehnungen im Pennsylvaniendeutschen von Ohio (USA).” Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 61.3, 279–97. Van Staden, M. 1999. “Where does Malay end and Tidore begin?” In R.A.C. Dam, ed. Perspectives on the Bird’s Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Proceedings of the conference Leiden, 13–17 October 1997. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 691–716. Wernitz, C.J. 1993. Bedingungen und Voraussetzungen für Sprachwechsel. Eine Untersuchung zum Sprachwechsel bei bilingualen Marokkanern in Frankreich. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Zarpetea, P. 1995. “Code-switching and Lexical Borrowing (loanwords) in the Speech of Three Generations of Greek Cypriots in London (Harringey).” Studies in Greek Linguistics. Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Department of Linguistics. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, 576–87.
FAʚULA, FAʚILA, FAʚALA : DISPERSION ET RÉGULARITÉS SÉMANTIQUES DANS LES TROIS SCHÈMES SIMPLES DU VERBE ARABE Joseph Dichy Université Lumière-Lyon 2
Pour Kees Versteegh Aut cuspis sic vita fluit, dum stare videtur.
1. Introduction1 Les schèmes du verbe augmenté (mazīd) en arabe sont traditionnellement associés à des valeurs sémantiques de base, telles que l’itération, l’intensivité, la causativité et la factitivité, la réflexivité, etc. Si les listes d’exceptions qui accompagnent ces descriptions indiquent que le problème, malgré des avancées significatives, est loin d’être résolu de manière satisfaisante, la question des valeurs sémantiques associables aux trois schèmes simples (mujarrad) ou non-augmentés faʚula, faʚila et faʚala2 semble offrir encore plus de résistance à l’analyse. La description de ces schèmes dans les grammaires arabisantes est, lorsqu’elle existe, bien plus sommaire que pour les verbes augmentés.3 1 Je reprends ici, sous une forme largement revue, le chapitre 3 de mon cours de préparation à l’agrégation d’arabe du Centre national d’enseignement à distance (CNED), 2002 et 2003. Par souci d’explicitation, j’ai présenté quelque peu en détail le cadre conceptuel nécessaire au traitement de cette difficile question, et conservé des définitions ou des indications qui pourront paraître évidentes, mais ne le sont pas nécessairement. Ce travail doit beaucoup au cadre théorique et aux travaux de Jean-Pierre Desclés, ainsi qu’aux séminaires que nous avons animés, et continuons d’animer ensemble, depuis 2001, sur les valeurs associées en contexte aux formes verbales en arabe et en français. Je remercie également les membres de son équipe de recherche, notamment Brahim Djioua, pour de nombreuses et fécondes discussions. 2 La convention qui prévaut dans la tradition linguistique arabe désigne ce que nous appelons les consonnes radicales 1, 2 et 3 (de la racine sémitique) respectivement par f, ʚ et l. 3 Ainsi pour les grammaires en langues occidentales : Neyreneuf et Al-Hakkak (1996, 35–42) signalent “des nuances de sens . . . pour chaque forme dérivée”, mais non pour les verbes simples (id., 28–29). De même, les descriptions consacrées par Blachère et
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Il suffit d’observer qu’ils demeurent désignés dans la tradition arabisante occidentale comme la ‘Forme I’. Cette désignation relève d’une idée générale qui répond, à défaut de décrire les données linguistiques, à une cohérence interne. La ‘Forme I’ est appelée ‘verbe primitif ’ par A. Sylvestre de Sacy, par référence au ‘verbe nu’ mujarrad des grammaires arabes (1831, I : 123). A cette forme primitive, Sylvestre de Sacy associe les grandes divisions sémantiques générales des verbes (id. 121–122) sur lesquelles il fondera ensuite son analyse des formes dérivées (id. 129–143). Mais il n’identifie pas de valeurs sémantiques associées en propre aux schèmes faʚula, faʚila et faʚala, dans lesquelles il ne voit qu’une ‘forme primitive’ ou ‘nue’ (mujarrad) à partir de laquelle les formes dérivées ou ‘augmentées’ (mazīda) sont construites. Si la tradition arabisante a pu ainsi rapporter ces trois schèmes à une seule ‘forme’, c’est sans doute aussi pour une autre raison : ces derniers apparaissent en effet comme instables, tant du point de vue formel, où l’on observe des modifications de la voyelle de la 2e radicale (section 2 ci-dessous), que du point de vue sémantique, où les notions très générales de transitivité, de ‘verbes d’action’ ou ‘d’état’ par lesquelles on a essayé de les caractériser rencontrent un nombre élevé de contre-exemples. C’est ainsi que les trois pages d’indications essentiellement formelles consacrées à cette question par la grammaire d’aš-Šartūnī sont précédées de cet avertissement : “On ne peut établir [la forme des verbes relevant de] ces schèmes (ʙawzān) qu’en ayant recours à des ouvrages lexicographiques (1910, 11). Faut-il donc renoncer ? Il y a de solides raisons de penser que non. Plusieurs essais de mise en ordre et d’analyse ont été tentés. La synthèse la plus récente de ces tentatives est, à ma connaissance, celle de Pierre Larcher (2003, chap. II), qui comporte en outre des propositions originales. Signalons également les analyses incontournables d’André Roman (1983, II : 886–900). D’autres auteurs, au premier rang desquels Marcel Cohen, Paul Joüon, Jean Cantineau et Henri Fleisch ont été utilisés. En outre, un nombre considérable d’observations et d’analyses a été effectué dans les textes des sciences linguistiques arabes médiévales. Je ferai largement usage de ces travaux, sans toutefois les discuter en détail, pour Godefroy-Demombynes (1952, 49–70) aux “formes dérivées” contrastent avec l’absence d’analyse de la “Forme I”. Belot, (1922, 15), Badawi, Carter et Gully (2004, 60) ne signalent pour la forme “primitive” ou “de base” (al-fiʚl al-mujarrad), de manière très prudente, que la transitivité ou son absence en fonction de la voyelle médiane de faʚala, faʚila et faʚula. On trouve en revanche des propositions de description du sens dans Caspari-Uricoecha (1881, 32–33), Wright (1896–98 I : 30), Brockelmann (1948, 35) ou Boormans (1967, 10), ainsi, naturellement, que dans la tradition linguistique arabe (voir la synthèse de Nūr ad-Dīn 2002, 177–186).
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éviter d’allonger indûment cette étude. A l’entêtant problème posé par la dispersion sémantique des verbes de schème simple en arabe j’ai cherché à apporter une solution fondée sur une définition aussi rigoureuse que possible des termes utilisés, ainsi que sur une conception, me semble-t-il, renouvelée de la relation entre sens et forme dans les schèmes (au sens que prend ce terme dans le domaine sémitique) en arabe (Dichy 2003). Les propositions qui suivent s’appuient en outre sur un dépouillement systématique des données lexicales dans le roman de Tawfīq al-Hˢ akīm, Yawmiyyāt nāib fī l-aryāf (abrégé en Yawm.) d’une part, et dans plusieurs dictionnaires arabes de l’autre (notamment Hans Wehr-Cowan 1979 et al-Mujam al-Wāsīt). J’ai fait largement usage de la base de données lexicale DIINAR.1 (“Dictionnaire informatisé de l’arabe, version 1” – Dichy, Braham, Ghazeli et Hassoun 2002 ; Dichy et Hassoun 2005 ; http ://www.elda.org), du concordancier informatisé construit par R. Abbès (2004), ainsi que de la liste indexée de 20.000 verbes réalisée pour les besoins du Bescherelle des Verbes arabes (Ammar et Dichy 1999). Les références à ces dernières sources ne sont pas données, à la différence des textes arabes médiévaux, des travaux arabisants de l’époque moderne ou, au besoin, des dictionnaires ; Yawm est indiqué avec le numéro de la page suivi de la ligne lorsque le sens doit être interprété en fonction du contexte.
2. Les schèmes du verbe non augmenté, aspects formels 2.1
L’alternance vocalique de la voyelle de la 2e radicale
Les trois schèmes de base du verbe simple ont été identifiés dans les sciences médiévales arabes du langage à partir de la voyelle de la deuxième radicale ou voyelle médiane du verbe au paradigme du mādī (ou ‘suffixé’),4 respectivement u, i et a. Les trois familles morphologiques correspondantes sont énumérées sous forme d’exemples (amtila)
4 Les termes d’accompli et inaccompli, d’achevé et d’inachevé ou de perfectif et imperfectif, pourtant reçus, comportent un problème, celui de désigner la forme morphologique par un terme dénotant l’une des valeurs aspectuo-temporelles que cette forme peut prendre en contexte. D’où le choix de désigner ces paradigmes verbaux par leur nom arabe ou par le trait morphologique qui les caractérise. Ainsi, le mādī (traditionnellement ‘accompli’), dans lequel le morphème de personne précède la base du verbe, correspond ici au ‘suffixé’ ; le mudāri (traditionnellement ‘inaccompli’), dans lequel ce morphème précède la base, est désigné du terme de ‘préfixé’ (cf. Moscati, éd. 1964, 131–2 : “préfix-conjugation” vs “suffix-conjugation”).
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par Sībawayhi (m. vers 180/796) dès l’introduction du Kitāb (I : 12), et reprises au cours de ce traité au moyen des conventions faʚala, faʚila et faʚula (désignées comme des ‘formes construites’, ʙabniya) avec des indications morphologiques, syntaxiques et sémantiques (Kitāb IV : 5–67, notamment 38). Je laisse de côté ici la question, qui a été posée, de savoir si la forme à sujet non exprimé (dite ‘passive’) fuʚila ne constituerait pas un schème à part entière.5 Selon la reconstruction du proto-système de la langue arabe, telle qu’elle a été proposée en diachronie (et en tout cas dans l’organisation qui sous-tend le système de la langue), la forme simple du verbe comporte trois schèmes, représentés dans le tableau ci-dessous (voir notamment Cantineau 1950, 77 ; Fleisch 1957 et 1968, 115–119 ; Roman 1983, II : 894) : Mād. ī( suffixé)
Mudāri'( préfixé)
• Schème simple 1
faʚula
yaf ʚulu
• Schème simple 2
faʚila
yaf ʚalu
• Schème simple 3
faʚala
yaf ʚilu
FIGURE 1
LES SCHÈMES POSTULÉS DU VERBE SIMPLE DANS LE PROTO-SYSTÈME DE L’ARABE
Selon Moscati, éd. (1964 : 122), qui se situe dans la perspective des études sémitiques comparées, “l’antiquité de ce schéma vocalique à trois termes en arabe est confirmé par quelques-unes des manifestations les plus anciennes du groupe sémitique du Nord-Ouest, c’est-à-dire, par l’amorite, l’ougaritique, et les gloses de Tell Amarna . . .”6 Dans cette reconstruction, comme le souligne Roman (loc. cit.), les schèmes sont toujours identifia-
5 Voir sur ce point Cantineau (1950) ; Roman (1983 II : 897–900 ; 2005, 33), qui voit dans la première voyelle la marque de la diathèse (subjective ou objective) ; Fleisch (1957 ; 1968, 246 ; 1979) ; Larcher (1996 ; 2003, 26–28). Nūr ad-Dīn (2002, 185–186) signale des traités tardifs, dans lesquels la forme fuʚila est considérée comme un quatrième ‘principe’ (’asˢl), i.e., un quatrième schème du verbe simple, et non une forme de la conjugaison (comme dans , m. en 643/1245, Šarhˢ al-Mulūkī : 30). 6 “The antiquity of this threefold vocalic scheme in Arabic is confirmed by some of the oldest manifestations in North-West Semitic, i.e. Amorite, Ugaritic, and the Tell Amarna glosses. In the prefix-conjugation the variation in the second vowell is at least partly paralleled : u or i corresponding to a, and a to i, while u generally remains” (Moscati, éd. 1964, 122).
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bles en fonction de la voyelle de la deuxième consonne radicale (en gras dans la transcription), et ce, dans chacun des deux grands paradigmes de la conjugaison. Dans l’état de langue arabe tel qu’il nous est parvenu, dès les époques classiques, les trois schèmes simples ci-dessus ne sont plus directement identifiables, comme le rappelle le tableau suivant :
• Schème simple 1 • Schème simple 2
Mādī( suffixé)
Mudāri' (préfixé)
faʚula
yaf ʚulu
faʚila
yaf ʚilu
Sous-catégorie formelle
yaf ʚilu
• Schème simple 3 Sous-catégorie formelle 1 Sous-catégorie formelle 2
yaf ʚalu
faʚala
yaf ʚulu yaf ʚalu
FIGURE 2 LES SCHÈMES DU VERBE SIMPLE ET LEURS SOUS-CATÉGORIES FORMELLES, TELS QU’ILS NOUS SONT PARVENUS
Cette situation continue de permettre l’identification au mādˢī (suffixé) de trois schèmes distingués au moyen de la voyelle qui affecte la 2e radicale, mais non au mudˢāriʚ (préfixé). Lorsque l’on traite d’aspects formels, comme dans la conjugaison ou dans un dictionnaire, il est donc nécessaire de caractériser le verbe par l’alternance vocalique de la voyelle médiane aux deux paradigmes du suffixé et du préfixé, exemple : dˢaraba/yadˢribu ‘frapper’, d’alternance vocalique a/i. (J’écrirai ici, selon une convention reçue : dˢaraba i.) 2.2 Les zones de stabilité ou d’instabilité formelles de l’alternance vocalique Comme le montre la figure 2, le schème simple 1 (alternance u/u) est formellement stable. Dans les schèmes faʚila et faʚala en revanche, on trouve des sous-catégories formelles dans lesquelles la voyelle de la 2e radicale varie. Ces variations sont souvent corrélées à la présence, au sein de la racine, d’une ‘cause de transformation’ (ʚilla) :7 deuxième et
7
Sur le statut épistémologique de cette notion dans la tradition linguistique arabe
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troisième radicales identiques, consonne radicale /w/ ou /y/, ou encore radicale // en première, deuxième ou troisième position. Les relations entre ces ‘causes de transformation’ et les variations observées dans les schèmes du verbe simple ont été, sinon expliquées, du moins largement inventoriées dans les sciences linguistiques arabes médiévales (voir résumé dans aš-Šartūnī, 1910 : 10–14 ; Qabbāwa, 1998 : 85–94). 2.2.1
La sous-catégorie formelle faila/yaf ilu du schème simple 2
La sous-catégorie formelle du schème simple 2 ( faʚila/yaf ʚilu) est corrélée dans la plupart des cas à une racine de première radicale w ou y. Elle ne concerne qu’un petit nombre de verbes. Trois d’entre eux, repris de Sībawayhi (Kitāb IV : 38–39) et régulièrement cités dans les traités linguistiques arabes médiévaux ou par les grammaires, relèvent de racines sans ‘cause de transformation’ : hˢ asiba i ou a ‘croire’, ‘estimer’ ; baʙisa i ou a ‘être misérable’ ; naʚima i ou a ‘être doux, fin’. Ils peuvent être considérés comme négligeables, car ils supportent également une réalisation a de la voyelle médiane du mudˢāriʚ ‘préfixé’.8 2.2.2
La sous-catégorie formelle faala/yaf alu du schème simple 3
Une seule modification de la voyelle médiane est suffisamment régulière. Elle est largement signalée dans les ouvrages arabes médiévaux (cf. par exemple, al-Zajjājī, Jumal, 396–397). Il s’agit de la ‘sous-catégorie formelle 2’ du schème simple 3 ci-dessus ( faʚala/yaf ʚalu) : elle se produit – pour simplifier – si la 2e ou la 3e radicale du verbe est l’une des six ‘consonnes d’arrière’ (hˢ urūf al-hˢ alq), i.e. appartient à l’ensemble {’, h, h, , ġ, x}. Cette règle s’applique selon une gradation, de manière hautement fréquente pour les deux consonnes les plus antérieures (les consonnes glottales ʙ et h), et nettement moins fréquente pour les deux
médiévale, et notamment chez Ibn Jinnī (m. en 393/1002), voir Guillaume 1984. La liste et les combinaisons des ‘causes de transformation’ (il peut y en voir plus d’une dans une racine donnée) ont été présentés sous une forme modélisée dans Dichy (1993) et Ammar et Dichy (1999, 31–34). 8 Voir par exemple Ibn Xālawayh, m. en 370/981, Laysa fī kalām al-ʚarab “Point ne se trouve dans le langage des Arabes . . .” (sous-entendu ‘hormis’, ‘à l’exception de’), chap. 10 ; az-Zajjājī, m. en 337/949, Jumal : 398 (plus cohérent que le précédent). Sur le statut de la “classe hˢ asiba/yahˢ sibu”, notamment chez Ibn Jinnī, m. en 392/1002, cf. Guillaume (1984, 427–433).
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consonnes les moins antérieures (ġ et x) (cf. Ibn Yaʚīš, Šarhˢ al-Mufasˢsaˢ l VII : 153–154, repris in Ammar et Dichy 1999 : 24). 2.2.3
La sous-catégorie formelle faʚala/yaf ʚulu du schème simple 3
La sous-catégorie formelle 1 du schème simple 3 ( faʚala/yaf ʚulu) ne paraît pas, quant à elle, pourvoir être l’objet de corrélations systématiques entre la voyelle de la 2e radicale et des traits phonétiques affectant les consonnes du verbe. On trouve ainsi un nombre non négligeable de verbes dont le préfixé (mudāriʚ) admet les deux voyelles médianes i et u, ainsi : ʚazafa/yaʚzifu et yaʚzufu (ʚan) ‘se détourner (de)’ ; qafala/yaqfilu et yaqfulu ‘revenir (de voyage)’, ‘rentrer’, etc. La présence, dans de tels exemples, des deux réalisations met en défaut toute corrélation entre les traits phonétiques des consonnes radicales et la voyelle médiane dans la langue arabe telle qu’elle nous est parvenue, avec ses normes stabilisées par les travaux des lexicographes et l’autorité des grammairiens.
3. Aspects sémantiques, concepts de base Considérons maintenant les valeurs sémantiques associables aux schèmes simples. Les deux notions qui ont été traditionnellement utilisées constituent un cadre conceptuel dont on verra qu’il ne peut suffire. Il s’agit du trait syntaxique de transitivité (§ 3.1.1) et de la distinction entre verbes d’action et verbes d’état (§ 3.1.2). Ces notions devront être reprises dans un cadre conceptuel élargi (sections 3.2 à 3.4). Les descriptions proposées ci-dessous s’appuieront sur une série d’exemples, choisis pour illustrer la plupart des types de valeurs sémantiques qui caractérisent ces schèmes. 3.1 Les deux principales notions traditionnellement utilisées pour décrire le sens des schèmes simples 3.1.1 Le trait syntaxique de transitivité/intransitivité La première distinction que l’on rencontre dans les grammaires arabisantes comme dans les sciences médiévales arabes du langage est de nature syntaxique. En fonction de la voyelle a, u ou i affectant la deuxième consonne radicale, ces verbes sont dits :
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– pour le schème faʚala, transitifs, bien que comportant un nombre considérable d’intransitifs, – transitifs et intransitifs pour le schème faʚila, et – toujours intransitifs pour les verbes en faʚula.9 Les traits syntaxiques de transitivité ou d’intransitivité sont cruciaux dans la théorie de la rection qui prévaut dans la tradition linguistique arabe médiévale. Leur incidence sur le sens des verbes n’est toutefois pas directe : elle en est plutôt une conséquence qu’une cause. Une autre question que la théorie de la rection laisse dans l’ombre est celle de la transitivité ‘indirecte’, dans laquelle le complément du verbe est un syntagme prépositionnel. La transitivité, envisagée sous ses deux formes, directe et indirecte sera naturellement incluse dans les valeurs sémantiques associées aux verbes des schèmes simples, particulièrement en ce qui concerne le schème faʚala. 3.1.2
La partition traditionnelle entre ‘verbes d’action’ et ‘verbes d’état’
Les arabisants et les sémitisants occidentaux ont généralement fondé leurs analyses des verbes des schèmes simples sur une partition générale en ‘verbes d’action’, ou ‘actifs’, et verbes d’état ou ‘statifs’, les seconds étant nécessairement intransitifs, et les premiers, transitifs ou intransitifs selon les cas. Dans son principe, le schème faʚala aurait ainsi correspondu à des ‘verbes d’action’ (transitifs ou intransitifs), le schème faʚula à des ‘verbes statifs’ toujours intransitifs exprimant un “état permanent ou une qualité inhérente naturelle”, et le schème faʚila à des verbes “généralement intransitifs” indiquant “soit un état ou une condition temporaire, soit une qualité purement accidentelle d’une personne ou d’une chose” (Wright 1896–98 I : § 36–38). Dans cette description, le schème faʚila pose un problème, qui a été traité en recourant à la notion de verbe moyen d’E. Benveniste (section 3.4 ci-dessous). Si la notion de verbe d’état, une fois redéfinie, résiste à l’analyse, celle de ‘verbe d’action’ ne laisse pas, dans l’usage qui en a été fait, d’apparaître comme indifférenciée. Que faire, par exemple de verbes comme zˢanna u ‘croire’, saqatˢa u ‘tomber’, halaka i ‘périr’, wajaba i ‘devoir’, šamala u ‘englober’ ou raʙā a ‘voir’, qui relèvent tous du schème faʚala, réputé cor9 Cf. Sībawayhi (Kitāb IV : 38), ainsi par exemple que az-Zamaxšarī (Mufasˢsaˢ l, 277– 279). L’intransitivité des ‘verbes d’état’ est rappelée notamment par Wright (1896–98, vol. I, § 36–38) ou Fleisch (1957 ; 1979). Pour l’hébreu, voir par ex. Gesenius-KautzschCowley (1910, § 41–43) ou Joüon (1923, § 40–41).
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respondre aux ‘verbes d’action’ ? Et que dire des paires ʙakala u ‘manger’, de schème faʚala vs. šariba a ‘boire’, de schème faʚila, ou raʙā a ‘voir’, vs. samiʚa a ‘entendre’ ? La réponse consistant à poser une catégorie intermédiaire ou ‘moyenne’ (Marcel Cohen 1929 ; Joüon 1930 ; Fleisch 1957), qui concerne au premier chef le schème faʚila tout en incluant des verbes en faʚala, ne résout que très partiellement le problème. Les processus de glissement sémantique entraînant le passage d’un ‘verbe d’action’ à un ‘verbe d’état’, s’ils ont donné lieu à quelques fines observations,10 n’apportent pas non plus de solution de portée générale. Mais le principal problème, comme la section 4.3 l’illustrera, est que l’apparente transparence de la notion de ‘verbe d’action’ aura masqué la complexité des données et la forte dispersion sémantique du schème faʚala. On verra dans la suite de ce travail qu’il n’est de fait pas nécessaire de recourir aux ‘verbes d’action’ pour décrire les verbes en faʚala, malgré l’intérêt que présente par ailleurs cette notion. Passons maintenant à la définition des propriétés fondamentales nécessaires à l’analyse des schèmes simples : l’agentivité (section 3.2), les notions de procès, d’événement, de processus et d’état (sect. 3.3), celle de verbe moyen ou de diathèse interne (sect. 3.4). 3.2 La propriété d’agentivité L’agentivité se définit comme la participation de l’agent au procès dénoté par le verbe, le critère de cette ‘participation’ étant le contrôle (Lyons 1978/90, 3.4 ; Desclés 1994) de l’agent sur ce procès. Il y a en arabe trois degrés d’agentivité :11 l’agentivité pleine dans laquelle l’agent contrôle effectivement le procès ; partielle, dans laquelle il n’exerce qu’un contrôle imparfait, et la non agentivité, dans laquelle il ne jouit d’aucun contrôle (l’agent existe, mais il ne coïncide nullement avec le sujet grammatical). Ces trois degrés s’opposent eux-mêmes à l’agentivité neutralisée, qui correspond à des procès dans lesquels il n’y a aucun agent, ce qui se
10 Cf. par exemple pour l’hébreu, Joüon 1923, § 41, pour l’arabe, Larcher 2003, 27–28. 11 Cf. Roman (1990, 42–43 ; 1999/2005, B-2.3.2). La définition ci-dessus de l’agentivité est en partie différente. Cf. également l’analyse de Fleisch (1968, 116–117), qui pose une bipartition du verbe arabe : “1° le verbe à agent (le sujet étant considéré en tant qu’agent) ; le verbe de qualité (le sujet étant simplement le qualifié)”, et distingue, dans la première catégorie “l’agent pur et simple” de “l’agent intéressé”.
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présente typiquement dans les verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique (§ 4.1.1 ci-dessous). Exemples (verbes de schème simple) :12 (a) verbes d’agentivité neutralisée (valeur sémantique ‘être x’) ou nonagentifs (valeur : ‘devenir x’) : – schème faula : karuma u, ‘être, devenir karīm’ ‘noble-et-généreux’ ; šarufa u ‘devenir’, puis ‘être šarīf , i.e. ‘noble, de premier rang social’ ; saġura u ‘devenir, être saġīr’, ‘petit’ ou : ‘être très jeune’ ; latufa u ‘être, devenir latīf’, ‘subtil’, ‘fin, gracieux’ ; – schème faila : baliha a ‘devenir ou être ablah’, ‘faible d’esprit’, ‘stupide’ ; salia a ‘devenir ou être chauve (asla) ; kariša a ‘être ou devenir ridé, craquelé’ (notamment : peau) ; – schème faala : xadaba i ‘devenir, être vert (plante, herbage, lieu . . .)’ ; xaffa i ‘devenir, être xafīf’, ‘léger’ (antonyme de schème faula : taqula u ‘devenir, être taqīl’, ‘lourd’) ; (b) verbes non-agentifs (le sujet grammatical n’est pas l’agent du procès dont il est le siège) : – schème faila : dasiqa a ‘se remplir (à ras bords)’, ‘déborder’ (bassin . . .) ; marida a ‘tomber malade’ ; qarima a ‘avoir faim de viande’ (par effet de privation) ; – schème faala : sakana u, ‘se calmer’ (mer, vent, bruit . . .) ; waqaa a ‘tomber’ et également : ‘se trouver’ (ville, montagne, lieu . . .) ; halaka i ‘périr’ ; (c) verbes partiellement agentifs : – schème faila : ġadiba a ‘être, se mettre en colère’ ; h azina a ‘être’ ou ‘devenir triste’, ‘éprouver de la tristesse’ ; wamiqa i ‘chérir’ ; ašiqa a ‘être’ ou ‘tomber passionnément amoureux’ ; samia a ‘entendre’ (sens de l’ouïe) ; – schème faala : raā a ‘voir’ (vue) ; šamma u ‘sentir’ (odorat) ; (d) verbes pleinement agentifs : – schème faila : šariba a ‘boire’ ; rakiba a ‘chevaucher, monter (pour se déplacer)’ ; h amida a ‘louer’ (louange),
12
Certains des exemples donnés dans ce travail existent aussi avec des formes correspondant à d’autres schèmes du verbe simple, quelquefois avec le même sens. Ces autres formes ne sont pas reprises ici, malgré l’intérêt qu’eût représenté la discussion.
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– schème faala : daraba i ‘frapper’ ; jalasa i ‘s’asseoir’ ; āda u ‘revenir’ ; dahaba a ‘partir’, ‘aller’ ; tabaxa u (ou a) ‘faire cuire’ ou ‘bouillir’, ‘cuisiner’ ; talaa a ‘monter’ ; akala u ‘manger’ ; qāla u ‘dire’. La sous-catégorie (a) inclut des verbes des trois schèmes et les sous-catégories (b) à (d), des verbes des schèmes faila et faala. Ces exemples, qui anticipent par leur classement sur la suite de l’exposé, montrent que la propriété d’agentivité, malgré l’importance qui est la sienne dans la description sémantique des schèmes simples, ne peut, à elle seule, constituer le principe qui en permettrait le classement. 3.2.1
Agent, patient, sujet grammatical
Il est essentiel, pour bien comprendre la notion d’agentivité, de distinguer les termes d’agent (et corollairement, de patient) du sujet grammatical du verbe. Les formes verbales de l’arabe incluent en effet toujours leur pronom sujet, qui correspond aux morphèmes de personne suffixés au mādī et préfixés au mudāri, et coïncide avec le sujet grammatical du verbe. Ainsi : jāat l-amīra correspond mot-à-mot à : ‘elle est venue la princesse’ (Ammar et Dichy 1999, 12–14). Cette structure est occultée par l’emploi indifférencié, dans la tradition linguistique arabe, de fāil pour l’agent comme pour le sujet grammatical. L’agent ( fāil) est ce qui effectue le procès décrit par le verbe. Dans les verbes décrivant une action, l’agent est l’auteur de celle-ci. Dans les verbes de perception ou de sentiment, par exemple, il est le siège de celui-ci. Dans les verbes décrivant un état, le procès, comme on vient de le voir, ne réfère pas à un agent : le sujet grammatical inclus dans la forme verbale est le siège de cet état, qu’il s’agisse d’une personne comme dans raufa u ‘être, devenir ou se montrer doux, compatissant’ ou d’une chose, comme dans daula u, ‘devenir/être étroit ou petit (quantité)’. Dans les verbes d’agentivité partielle ou entière, l’agent coïncide avec le sujet grammatical. Ce dernier, à la voix dite ‘passive’, coïncide avec le patient (qui ‘subit’ le procès décrit par le verbe), exemple : suiltu ‘j’ai été questionné’. Dans les formes non-agentives, le sujet grammatical ‘subit’ également le procès ou en est le siège, exemples : – saqatat alā l-lardī ‘elle est tombée par terre’ (qu’il s’agisse d’une personne ou d’une chose) ; – darasa r-rasmu ‘la trace (du campement) s’est effacée’ : l’agent est ici le vent du désert. (Ce thème est classique dans la poésie arabe ancienne ;
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cf. la fin du 6e vers de la Muʚallaqa ‘grande ode’ du poète emblématique de l’anté-islam Imruʙ al-Qays : Wa-hal ʚalā rasmin dārisin min muʚawwalī, ‘Sur traces effacées, qui s’en irait pleurant ?’) 3.3 Les propriétés d’événement, de processus et d’état (à partir de Desclés 1994) Le terme général de procès (auquel correspond en anglais celui de situation)13 traduit le fait que le sens du verbe est inscrit dans une durée, c’est-à-dire, dans un intervalle de temps. Cette durée peut être perçue de trois manières, correspondant aux notions aspectuelles d’état, d’événement ou de processus. La définition de ces termes premiers est empruntée directement à J.-P. Desclés.14 À première vue, ces définitions pourraient apparaître comme détournées : les trois termes aspectuels d’événement, de processus ou d’état, qui décrivent des phénomènes affectant des verbes en en contexte sont réutilisés, dans ce travail comme dans ceux dont la publication suivra, pour désigner dans la sémantique des schèmes de l’arabe des primitives incluses dans le sens grammatical associé aux schèmes simples et à certains schèmes augmentés. Mais à y regarder de plus près, s’agissant de valeurs sémantiques primitives, il n’y a rien d’étonnant à ce qu’elles puissent également être observées dans les propriétés lexicales de ‘familles morphologiques’, telles que les schèmes simples et les schèmes augmentés. La mise en lumière de ces observations constitue une première contribution théorique du travail présenté ici à la définition de ces valeurs primitives. Leur confrontation aux données de l’arabe m’a en outre conduit à en proposer des extensions, particulièrement en ce qui concerne les sous-catégories de l’état (§ 3.3.3).
13
Le terme de procès ne se traduit pas directement en anglais. Comrie (1985, 5), Lyons (1978/1990, 3.4) ont recours au terme de ‘situation’ pour recouvrir les états d’une part, les événements et les processus de l’autre. 14 Mais voir aussi Comrie (1976, 1985), Lyons (1978/1990), ou, différemment, la synthèse de Maingueneau (1994). La théorie “des invariants cognitifs du langage et des primitives sémantico-cognitives” de J.-P. Desclés est sous-jacente aux analyses présentées ici, notamment : l’idée que “les primitives sont des opérateurs abstraits déterminés par des propriétés formelles”, l’hypothèse selon laquelle elles sont “ancrées sur la perception et l’action”, ainsi qu’un nombre important de points qui découlent de ces conceptions (Desclés 1990 ; 1994 ; Desclés et Guentchéva à paraître). Le lecteur familier de ces travaux notera enfin que le terme de ‘schème’ est employé ici à la manière des travaux arabisants et sémitisants. On distinguera donc cet usage de celui des “schèmes sémantico-cognitifs” (Desclés, 1990 ; Abraham, 1995 ; Desclés et al., 1998).
faula, faila, faala 3.3.1
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‘Événement’
“L’aspect ‘événement’ [. . .] est l’expression d’une occurrence qui apparaît sur un arrière-fond stable [. . . et] établit une coupure entre l’avant événementiel (‘pas encore’) et l’après événementiel (‘ne plus’)”. La durée de l’événement est donc bornée à gauche par un avant et à droite par un après. Cet après peut coïncider avec un état engendré par l’événement, ou état résultatif (Desclés 1994, 73–75).15 Les exemples ci-dessous (verbe concerné en gras) illustrent quelques propriétés fondamentales de l’aspect événement : – mā kidtu hādā s-sabāh a aršifu finjāna l-qahwa alā maktabī h attā waradat išāra tilifuniyya . . . (Yawm., 123), ‘À peine, ce matin-là, avais-je siroté le café [posé] sur mon bureau, qu’un télégramme téléphoné survint . . .’ (mot-à-mot, ‘lorsque apparut’). La première proposition de cette phrase (mā kidtu . . .aršifu ‘à peine . . . avais-je siroté’) constitue l’arrière-plan sur lequel se détache l’événement h attā waradat ‘lorsque apparut’, événement qui détermine au sein de la situation décrite, un avant et un après. – wasala dayfunā mundu sāa ‘notre invité est arrivé depuis une heure’ : de l’événement ‘est arrivé’ résulte un état, dont la durée englobe le moment de l’énonciation. Le locuteur rapporte l’événement de l’arrivée de l’invité, et exprime par les mêmes mots l’état dans lequel son interlocuteur et lui se trouvent, et qui correspond à l’après du procès : leur invité ‘est là’ depuis une heure. On dira, en simplifiant, que l’événement engendre l’état qui résulte de lui. – ġariqa r-rajulu ‘l’homme s’est noyé’ (ou ‘se noya’) : l’événement décrit par le procès engendre l’état résultatif ‘noyé’, exprimé en arabe par l’adjectif ġarīq, associé à ce verbe. 3.3.2
‘Processus’
“L’aspect ‘processus’ exprime un changement saisi dans son évolution interne. Tout processus exprime nécessairement un changement initial (. . .) qui indique le début du processus”. Le processus peut être décrit 15 Je fais dans ce travail un usage générique (ou hypéronymique) du terme d’état résultatif. Ce dernier inclut ici “l’état résultant”, qui est par ailleurs très utile pour l’analyse des valeurs aspectuo-temporelles en contexte, par exemple pour la description de “l’état-présent, concomitant à l’acte d’énonciation” (Desclés, 1994, 73). Ce choix, limité au présent travail, est dû au fait que les valeurs sémantiques associées aux familles morphologiques constituées par les schèmes ne sont pas sensibles à cette distinction contextuelle.
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comme une succession d’états. Il peut, selon le cas, s’orienter ou non vers un terme explicite, qui correspond alors au dernier état du processus ou état résultatif (Desclés 1994, 75–80). Exemples : – Dans la phrase ci-dessus, le syntagme mā kidtu ʙaršifu finjāna l-qahwa ‘à peine avais-je siroté le café’ exprime un processus dont le terme est spécifié : à un moment donné, qui correspond à l’état final du processus, le breuvage est entièrement bu. La phrase dit mot-à-mot : ‘. . . siroté la tasse de café’ ; la valeur sémantique associée à cette expression dans le lexique de l’arabe implique que le contenu de la tasse a été bu en entier.16 – Dans ġarabati š-šamsu ‘le soleil s’est couché’ ou hal turīdu ʙan tujanninanī ? ‘tu veux me rendre fou (folle) ?’ c’est également dans la valeur lexicale du verbe que le terme du processus (le coucher du soleil, la ‘folie’) est inscrit. – Le sens de ʚamiya a ‘perdre la vue’ comporte un terme, qui correspond dans le lexique à l’adjectif ʙaʚmā ‘aveugle’. Ce verbe décrit, selon le contexte, soit un événement, soit un processus. 3.3.3 ‘État’, types d’états et catégories dérivées ou corrélées “L’aspect ‘état’ exprime la stabilité de la situation référentielle représentée, c’est-à-dire qu’il réfère à une absence de mouvement et de changement”. L’état décrit un procès qui n’est borné ni à gauche (en son commencement) ni à droite (le terme n’est pas spécifié), et ne fait référence à aucun agent (Desclés 1994, 71–73).17 Il y a plusieurs types d’états. Deux d’entre eux, ‘l’état caractéristique’ (§ 3.3.3.a) et ‘l’état résultatif ’ ou ‘état acquis’ (§ 3.3.3.b) intéressent directement les schèmes du verbe simple. Le second, qui est produit par un changement d’état, correspond à un glissement sémantique étroitement corrélé à l’usage des verbes d’état en discours. L’analyse ci-dessous débouche sur l’adjonction, à la valeur sémantique de l’état caractéristique’, de celle de l’acquisition d’état’. Cette dernière 16
Ainsi, le dictionnaire glose l’expression rašifa l-ʙināʙa, mot-à-mot ‘siroter un récipient’ comme “en aspirer le contenu jusqu’au bout” (al-Muʚjam al-Wasītˢ : racine /r-š-f/) ; de même, šariba l-ʙināʙa ‘boire un récipient’ correspond à šariba kulla mā fīhi ‘en boire tout le contenu’ (Ilyās et Nāsˢīf 1995, 164). 17 Comparer avec la définition de Maingueneau (1994, 64) : “Les états . . . n’ont ni début, ni fin, ni milieu, ils ne supposent ni agent ni changement (ex. Luc est paresseux).” À la différence de Comrie (1976, 1985), Lyons (1978/1990), Desclés (1994) et du présent travail, cet auteur n’oppose pas état, événement et processus.
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notion relève de celles, plus générales, d’état résultatif et de changement d’état. L’acquisition d’état constitue en effet la principale valeur sémantique corrélée à l’état caractéristique (§ 3.3.4). 3.3.3.a La notion d’état caractéristique Les données de l’arabe m’ont conduit à proposer une sous-catégorie de la notion générale d’état, celle d’état caractéristique (Dichy 2002/2003). Ce dernier est exprimé par un verbe associé dans le lexique à un adjectif, traditionnellement appelé adjectif ‘assimilé’ ou ‘analogue’ [au participe] (sifa mušabbaha – ci-après § 4.1.2). L’état caractéristique – par opposition à l’état non caractéristique –, décrit une propriété ou un attribut de l’objet, posé, selon le point de vue, comme dominant, intrinsèque, inhérent ou inscrit dans la nature de celui-ci. Cet état peut, comme on le verra au paragraphe suivant, être acquis à l’issue d’un événement ou d’un processus. Le terme d’état caractéristique, dont le contenu sera confronté aux données du schème faula à la section 4.1, est préférable à l’emploi habituel des grammaires arabisantes qui oppose, dans les verbes du schème simple, ‘qualité permanente’ ou ‘durable’ à ‘qualité temporaire’ (par exemple, Wright 1896–98, I : § 36–38). La durée relative d’un état – tout comme celle d’un processus ou d’un événement – correspond en effet à l’une des valeurs aspectuo-temporelles attribuées à une forme verbale donnée en fonction du contexte, et ne doit pas être confondue avec une valeur sémantique morpho-lexicale, associée comme telle à un schème donné. – Ainsi, h azina a ‘être ou devenir triste’ (de schème faila, adjectif correspondant : h azīn) est traditionnellement cité comme exemple de ‘qualité temporaire’ ou ‘transitoire’.18 Il réfère toutefois à une ‘qualité durable’ dans les énoncés suivants : fa-h azina ilā āxiri umrihi ‘Et il fut triste jusqu’à la fin de ses jours’ ; inna lladīna āmanū . . . lā xawfa alayhim wa-lā hum yah zanūn ‘Ceux qui ont eu foi . . . aucune crainte
18
Ce verbe est cité par Caspari-Uricoecha pour illustrer “un état transitoire et passager ou bien une propriété ou une qualité qui n’affecte l’objet du verbe que pendant peu de temps” (1881, 32) ; par Wright, comme illustrant “a temporary state or condition, or a merely accidental quality in persons or things” (1896–98 I : 30) ; par Brockelmann (1948, 35) comme exemple de verbes exprimant “toujours une qualité ou une situation accidentelle ou temporaire” (“Die Form faila steht durchweg für zufällige, vorübergehende . . . Eigenschaften und Zustände”) ; ou Boormans (1967, 10), comme décrivant un “état passager”.
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[à avoir] pour eux, il ne connaîtront [éternellement] aucune tristesse’ – mot-à-mot : ‘et aucunement ne s’attristeront’ (Coran 2 : 62). Hˢ azīn sera donc mieux décrit comme un adjectif d’état non caractéristique. – Inversement, le verbe xaluʚa u ‘mériter le nom de dépravé’, ‘être un dépravé’ (adjectif correspondant : xalīʚ), qui relève du schème faʚula, réputé renvoyer à des verbes de ‘qualité permanente’ ou ‘durable’ est glosé dans le dictionnaire par l’expression taraka l-hˢ ayāʙ wa-rakiba hawāhu, ‘abandonner [toute] honte et se livrer à ses passions’ (al-Muʚjam al-Wasītˢ : racine /x-l-‘/). La qualité de xalīʚ ‘dépravé (notoire)’ n’est donc pas ‘permanente’. Xalī ʚ peut en revanche être d’écrit – indépendamment toute référence à une durée – comme un adjectif d’état caractéristique. Exemples de ces deux sous-catégories de la notion d’état : – verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique : tˢāla u ‘être tˢawīl’ ‘long’ ; hayifa a ‘être ʙahyaf ’, ‘avoir la taille élancée’ ; ʚawira a ‘être ʙaʚwar’, ‘borgne’ ; baxula u ‘être baxīl’, ‘avaricieux’ (au sens de ‘être avare par nature’)19 – verbes associés à un adjectif d’état non caractéristique : farihˢ a a ‘être farihˢ ’, ‘joyeux’ (l’un des contraires de hˢ azina ci-dessus) ; yaʙisa a ‘être yāʙis’ ‘désespéré’ ; ʚatˢiša a ‘être ʚatˢšān’ ‘ayant soif ’, ‘avoir soif ’ ; maridˢa a ‘être marīdˢ’ ‘malade’. . . 3.3.3.b Verbes d’état vs verbes de changement d’état produisant un état résultatif Pour H. Fleisch, cependant : Le verbe de qualité n’est pas un statif. Il signifie ‘acquérir une qualité’, autrement dit : ‘devenir tel’ (d’après la qualité en question) : karuma = ‘devenir
19 Les propriétés de l’agentivité ne relèvent pas d’invariants linguistiques, mais de la représentation du procès véhiculée par le vocabulaire de chaque culture. Ainsi, dans la culture arabe médiévale, on peut, soit (a) se montrer avare envers quelqu’un dans une situation donnée, ou (b) être avare par nature ( fī tˢ-tˢabʚ) : cf. par exemple la préface du Kitāb al-Buxalāʙ ‘Livre des avares’ d’al-Jāhˢizˢ, m. en 255/868 ; semblablement l’avarice est, à l’époque de Molière considérée comme pouvant être inscrite dans le caractère de celui qui, comme Harpagon, est un avaricieux. Le premier cas (a) est exprimé au moyen du verbe pleinement agentif baxila a ʚalā ‘se montrer avare envers qqun’, et le second (b), par le verbe d’agentivité neutralisée baxula u ‘être un avaricieux’ (l’avare est le siège du vice inscrit dans sa nature).
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karīm (généreux)’ ; ou bien, comme conséquence de l’acquisition : ‘avoir une qualité’, soit : ‘être tel’, c’est un résultatif, alors karuma = ‘être karīm’ (généreux) (1968, 117).
Fleisch suit vraisemblablement ici la définition que donne al-Mubarrid de la valeur sémantique des verbes en faʚula : ʙinnamā huwa li-l-hˢ āl allatī yantaqil ilayhā l-fāʚil . . . nahˢwu karuma wazˢarufa wa-šarufa “elle (cette classe de verbes) désigne uniquement l’état dans lequel entre le sujet [du verbe] (mot-à-mot : ‘l’état vers lequel se déplace le sujet’), exemples : karuma, zˢarufa et šarufa” (Muqtadˢab I : 209 – traduction des exemples : ‘devenir’ et donc ‘être noble-et-généreux’, ‘devenir’, puis ‘être raffiné’ et ‘devenir’, puis ‘être prééminent, illustre, noble’).
Ces deux descriptions font de l’état caractéristique une valeur seconde par rapport à la valeur ‘devenir qqch’. Or Sībawayhi décrit les verbes de schème faʚula comme dénotant “les caractères qui peuvent être dans les choses” (al-xisˢāl allatī takūnu fī l-ʙašyāʙ – Kitāb IV : 28). Ces termes ont été par la suite largement repris dans les sciences linguistiques arabes médiévales (cf. par ex. az-Zamaxšarī, Mufasˢsaˢ l : 279). Dans cette conception, la valeur fondamentale des ‘verbes de qualité’ est stative, alors que chez al-Mubarrid et Fleisch, elle correspond au changement d’état. Mais faut-il vraiment opposer ces conceptions ? Est-il possible de décider de la valeur sémantique qui serait ‘première’ par rapport à l’autre ? Considérons les exemples suivants : – Hˢ asuna u ‘être hˢ asan’, ‘beau’, qaduma u ‘être qadīm’, ‘ancien’ ou hayifa a ‘être ʙahyaf ’, ‘qui a la taille élancée’ désignent à la base un état caractéristique. – Šamasa i ou u ‘devenir/être ensoleillé’ (jour) ; ġasaqa i ‘devenir/être noir, obscur’ (nuit) réfèrent fondamentalement à un changement d’état. Il s’agit de verbes signifiant ‘devenir qqch’, décrivant un processus qui aboutit à un état résultatif non caractéristique. – Ġadˢiba a ‘se mettre/être en colère’ ou jāʚa u ‘avoir faim/être affamé (= ayant faim)’ correspondent fondamentalement à des verbes de changement d’état, dans lesquels le ‘nouvel état’ (non caractéristique) qui affecte le sujet grammatical résulte du procès. Les adjectifs correspondants, ġadˢib, ġadˢbān ‘en colère’ et jāʙiʚ, jawʚān ‘ayant faim’ sont des états résultatifs non caractéristiques. – Le verbe ʚawira a ‘devenir/être borgne’ désigne – selon le contexte – soit un changement d’état (‘devenir qqch’) débouchant sur l’état caractéristique ‘être ʙaʚwar’, ‘borgne’, soit cet état caractéristique lui-même (qui peut être résultatif ou non).
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– Un verbe d’état caractéristique – correspondant fondamentalement à un état, comme hˢ asuna u ‘être beau’ ou hayifa a ‘avoir la taille élancée’ ci-dessus – peut aussi être amené par le contexte à désigner le résultat d’un événement ou d’un processus, exemple : hayifa l-ʙāna l-fatā ‘le jeune homme est maintenant ʙahyaf ’, ‘a maintenant une taille élancée’ (l’énoncé présuppose : ‘maintenant qu’il a grandi’). Ces exemples montrent qu’à la question posée (ce qui, de la valeur sémantique stative ou du changement d’état serait ‘premier’ par rapport à l’autre), il n’y a pas de réponse générale, qui demeurerait valable dans tous les cas. La réponse doit au contraire être proposée pour chaque verbe, en fonction de son sens lexical (et des connaissances encyclopédiques associées à celui-ci). C’est ainsi que : – Šamasa i ou u ‘devenir/être ensoleillé’ ou jāʚa u ‘avoir faim’ décrivent d’abord un changement d’état (‘devenir qqch’), et en second lieu, l’état non caractéristique correspondant. – Le sens des verbes d’état caractéristique qaduma u ‘être ancien’ ou jayida a ‘avoir le cou long’ (signe de beauté) est peu compatible avec un contexte dans lequel ces verbes prendraient la valeur ‘devenir tel’ (bien qu’un tel contexte demeure, comme on vient de l’indiquer, possible). – ʚAwira a, qui décrit un état caractéristique, est compatible tant avec la valeur stative ‘être borgne’ qu’avec celle du changement d’état (‘devenir tel’), sans qu’il soit possible de décider de la valeur qui dériverait de l’autre. 3.3.4. L’événement de l’acquisition d’état, cas particulier du changement d’état et de l’état résultatif Mais il convient, pour comprendre la présence dans ces verbes des deux valeurs stative et d’acquisition d’état, d’interroger plus avant la notion d’état résultatif. Ce dernier est engendré par un procès (événement ou processus) correspondant à un changement d’état (Desclés 1994, 71 et suiv. ; Desclés et Guentcheva à paraître, chap. II). Dans les données suivantes, cet état met en jeu des notions dans lesquelles les propriétés de l’état, de l’événement et du processus se trouvent combinées : (a) État résultatif (caractéristique ou non) engendré par un événement : – Le verbe ʙamura u – également réalisé ʙamira a – est glosé dans les dictionnaires comme ‘devenir émir’, notamment par succession (al
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Muʚjam al-Wasītˢ, al-Munjid, Hans Wehr-Cowan 1979). Ce verbe décrit, dans cette acception, l’événement d’un changement d’état, et le nom-adjectif associé ʙamīr, qui désigne l’état caractéristique ‘émir’, ‘prince’, ‘celui qui gouverne un émirat’, correspond à un état résultatif. Mais il peut également, comme nous le verrons au paragraphe suivant, désigner l’état caractéristique correspondant, indépendamment d’un événement ou d’un processus qui l’aurait précédé. – Hˢ azina a ‘être’ ou ‘devenir triste’, ‘s’attrister’ désigne l’état non caractéristique hˢ azīn ‘triste’ ou l’entrée dans cet état. L’événement que constitue cette entrée peut être causé par un autre événement, par exemple l’arrivée d’une mauvaise nouvelle : lammā samiʚa xabara ʙaxīhi, hˢ azina šadīda l-hˢ uzni ‘lorsqu’il entendit les nouvelles de son frère, il tomba dans une profonde tristesse’ (mot-à-mot : ‘il s’attrista d’une intense tristesse’). L’adjectif hˢ azīn, décrit ci-dessus (§ 3.3.3.a) comme un adjectif d’état non caractéristique peut donc en outre correspondre à un état résultatif, hˢ azina relevant, dans ce dernier cas, des verbes de changement d’état. (b) État résultatif (caractéristique ou non) correspondant au dernier état d’un processus : Comme rappelé ci-dessus, un processus correspond à une succession d’états. L’état résultatif peut donc coïncider avec le dernier état du processus qui le produit. Exemples : – ʚazˢuma šaʙnuhu šayʙan fa-šayʙan ‘sa situation sociale est devenue peu à peu (ou ‘devint peu à peu’) de grande importance (ʚazˢīm)’ ; – sawida a ‘devenir ou être ʙaswad’ ‘noir’ ; saġura u ‘devenir ou être (socialement ou quantitativement) sˢaġīr’ ‘petit’ ; – xadira z-zarʚu ‘la récolte a verdi’ ou ‘verdit’ (Munjid, racine /x-dˢ-r/ ; Ilyās et Nāsˢīf 1995, 113). Ces données montrent que la notion d’état résultatif est loin d’aller de soi. Elles appellent deux remarques générales : 3.3.4.a Valeur aspectuo-temporelle du suffixé (mādˢī) et événement engendrant un état exprimé ou non par un adjectif ʚassimilé’ On connaît en français la valeur ‘d’accompli du présent’ que peut prendre le passé composé et qui indique – dans une énonciation qui inclut à la fois le passé composé et le présent de l’énonciateur – “le résultat présent d’un procès accompli antérieurement” (Maingueneau 1994,
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67–68). Desclés (1994, 73) décrit ce résultat comme “un état-présent concomitant à l’acte d’énonciation”. “Comparons par exemple : (1) Alors tu te dépêches ? – Je finis ! (2) Alors tu te dépêches ? – J’ai fini !” (Leeman-Bouix 1994, 61–62). En (1), l’interlocuteur est en train d’achever quelque chose, le verbe conjugué au présent a donc valeur d’inaccompli ; en (2), le passé composé exprime un processus à la fois accompli et achevé (voir, pour cette distinction, Desclés 1994, 76–80). En arabe, la conjugaison au mādˢī (suffixé) comporte également la propriété d’engendrer un état résultatif, exemples : – saʙimtu takālifa l-hˢ ayāti . . . ‘je suis las des fardeaux [dont nous charge] la vie’ (Muʚallaqa ‘grande ode’ du poète préislamique Zuhayr b. ʙAbī Sulmā, 46e vers) : la forme conjuguée au suffixé (mot-à-mot : ‘j’ai été’ ou ‘je fus las . . .’) engendre l’état résultatif ‘être las’. La traduction française : ‘je suis las’ est contrainte d’exprimer cet étatprésent (au sens de Desclés 1994, 73), mais elle ne peut ‘rendre’ par une forme verbale l’événement qui l’engendre. En arabe le mādˢī (suffixé) de saʙimtu englobe ces deux interprétations (cf. l’exemple de wasˢala au § 3.3.1) ; – ʚatˢištu ‘j’ai soif ’ : la forme au suffixé (mot-a-mot : ‘j’eus’ ou ‘j’ai eu soif ’) engendre l’état ‘avoir soif ’ (en traduction : ‘j’ai soif ’ – même commentaire que ci-dessus), qui pourrait être glosé comme : ‘la soif s’est maintenant installée en moi’ (‘ou s’installa désormais en moi’). Il est essentiel, pour comprendre le sens des schèmes associés à la notion d’état, d’observer que ces exemples illustrent la présence en arabe de deux catégories différentes de verbes, selon que l’état résultatif est exprimé ou non par un adjectif associé au verbe par la dérivation morpho-lexicale. L’état résultatif engendré par saʙimtu n’est pas lexicalisé : le cas est donc comparable – mutatis mutandis – à l’usage du passé-simple français. Pour ʚatˢištu, l’état qui résulte du procès correspond à une entrée lexicale (i.e. à un adjectif ‘assimilé’). Ainsi :
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En reprenant les exemples (a) du § 3.3.4, qui décrivent des événements : – L’énoncé ʙamura š-šāʚiru (‘le poète est devenu/devint le prince [régnant]’ ou le ‘poète règne/régna’) peut être glosé comme : ‘la position de prince est maintenant (ou fut désormais) occupée par le poète’. Le sens du verbe amura u est donc bien ‘devenir’, puis ‘être émir’, et non uniquement ‘devenir émir’, comme dans les dictionnaires cités plus haut. – lammā samiʚa xabara ʙaxīhi, hˢ azina šadīda l-hˢ uzni ‘lorsqu’il entendit les nouvelles de son frère, il tomba dans une profonde tristesse’ correspond à : ‘lorsqu’il entendit . . . l’état de tristesse s’installa en lui’. Les exemples donnés en (b), qui portent sur des processus, méritent un mot d’explication : l’achèvement du processus parvenu à son dernier état constitue lui-même un événement (Desclés, 1994, 72, 77–80) : – Dans xadira z-zarʚu ‘la récolte a verdi’ ou ‘verdit’ cet événement correspond au moment où la récolte parvient au degré de mûrissement attendu (l’état de verdeur). – Dans ʚazˢuma šaʙnuhu šayʙan fa-šayʙan ‘sa situation sociale est devenue/devint peu à peu de grande importance’, cet événement est celui de l’achèvement du processus ‘devenir peu à peu’, qui atteint alors son dernier état (celui de ‘grande importance’). Dans tous ces cas, (1°) il y a un avant et un après de l’événement du changement d’état et de l’installation du ‘nouvel état’, et (2°) cet état est désigné dans le lexique par un adjectif ‘assimilé’ (sˢifa mušabbaha). L’évènement pourrait de ce fait être glosé comme ‘atteindre’ ou ‘acquérir l’état x’, dans lequel x correspond à un adjectif ou à un nom-adjectif : ʚatˢšān ‘qui a soif ’ ; ʙamīr ‘émir’ ; hˢ azīn ‘triste’ ; ʙaxdˢar ‘vert’ ; ʚazˢīm ‘de grande importance’. 3.3.4.b Les relations asymétriques ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’ et ‘devenir x’ ‘être x’ La présence dans le lexique d’un adjectif ‘assimilé’ permet de mieux saisir le lien entre ‘être x’ (valeur stative) et ‘devenir x’ (valeur d’acquisition d’état) qui s’établit entre les verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique ou non caractéristique d’une part, et les verbes de changement d’état de l’autre. Ainsi :
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– qadumat al-yawma dawlatuhum ‘leur dynastie est devenue aujourd’hui ancienne’ peut être glosé comme : ‘leur dynastie est devenue étant ancienne’ (ou ‘devint étant ancienne’). Il s’agit d’un exemple de verbe d’état caractéristique (qaduma u ‘être ancien’) dans lequel on observe un glissement sémantique en contexte de la valeur stative (‘être qadīm’ ‘ancien’) à celle d’acquisition d’état (‘être devenu étant qadīm’). C’est la rencontre au sein de l’énoncé du sens lexical ‘être ancien et de la valeur aspectuo-temporelle d’achèvement associée au mādˢī (suffixé) ellemême ‘renforcée’ ici par le marqueur temporel al-yawma ‘aujourd’hui’, qui permet le glissement sémantique ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’ observé. – ġadˢiba r-rajulu’ ‘l’homme est (ou fut) en colère (ġadˢib)’ correspond à : ‘l’état être en colère s’est accompli en lui’. Cet exemple est celui d’un verbe d’acquisition d’état non caractéristique, dans lequel on rencontre un passage de la valeur de changement et d’acquisition d’état (‘devenir en colère’) à la valeur d’état résultatif acquis (‘être en colère’), la seconde étant engendrée par la première. Il peut être glosé comme : ‘être devenu étant ġadˢib (en colère)’. C’est également la rencontre en contexte du sens lexical ‘être en colère’ et de la valeur d’achèvement que prend le mādˢī (suffixé) qui permet l’engendrement de l’état acquis ‘être x’ par la valeur de changement et d’acquisition d’état ‘devenir x’. Il y a donc deux cas généraux de modification sémantique corrélés aux verbes d’état. Les verbes dont la valeur de base est celle de l’état caractéristique connaissent un glissement sémantique ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’ (glissement de l’état au changement et à l’acquisition d’état). Dans les verbes exprimant fondamentalement un changement correspondant à l’acquisition d’un état (caractéristique ou non), l’état acquis est engendré par l’événement qui coïncide avec l’achèvement du processus d’acquisition, ce qui peut être représenté schématiquement comme : ‘devenir x’ ‘être x’ (dans lequel le symbole ‘’ se lit ‘engendre’). 3.3.5 Les deux valeurs sémantiques associées à la notion d’état : l’état caractéristique et l’acquisition d’état L’analyse ci-dessus conduit donc à distinguer, pour les verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique, d’une part l’état caractéristique (‘être x’) et de l’autre l’acquisition d’état (‘devenir x’), qui correspond à un changement d’état. Il leur est associé, respectivement, des adjectifs d’état caractéristique et des adjectifs d’état acquis.
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L’examen des données relatives aux verbes associés à un adjectif d’état non caractéristique permet en outre d’observer que ces verbes relèvent tous du changement d’état : ils appartiennent de ce fait à la catégorie des verbes d’acquisition d’état. A condition de tenir compte des glissements sémantiques décrits plus haut (‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’ et ‘devenir x’ ‘être x’), l’analyse de Fleisch et la conception d’al-Mubarrid citées plus haut (§ 3.3.3.b), qui ne s’applique que partiellement aux verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique, s’applique en revanche pleinement aux verbes associés à un adjectif d’état non caractéristique, que la tradition arabisante appelait ‘état temporaire’. On en a examiné ci-dessus plusieurs exemples. 3.4 Benveniste revisité : la notion de verbe moyen (ou diathèse interne) ; le médio-passif L’autre grande distinction sur la définition de laquelle il convient de revenir est celle de ‘verbe moyen’. On appelle verbe moyen selon la définition d’E. Benveniste, un verbe qui décrit “un procès dont le sujet est le siège” :20 Ici, le sujet est le lieu du procès, même si ce procès, comme c’est le cas pour lat. fuor [‘jouir, avoir profit de’] ou sanskr. manyate [‘éprouver une agitation mentale’], demande un objet ; le sujet est centre en même temps qu’acteur du procès ; il accomplit quelque chose qui s’accomplit en lui, naître, dormir, gésir, imaginer, croître, etc. Il est bien intérieur au procès . . . (1950/1966, 172).
3.4.1
Ambiguïté de cette définition ; les verbes médio-passifs
La formulation ci-dessus pose un double problème : (a) Dans les verbes d’état aussi on pourrait dire que “le sujet est le lieu du procès”, même si l’on voit bien qu’il ne peut en être “l’acteur”. Les verbes d’état, dans lesquels l’agentivité est neutralisée, n’ont pas de diathèse, et ne constituent en aucun cas une sous-catégorie du verbe moyen. Cette
20 A propos de la notion de verbe moyen en arabe classique, outre M. Cohen (1929), Joüon (1930), Cantineau (1950) et Fleisch (1957 ; 1968, 116–117), comparer la description ci-dessus avec P. Larcher (1995, 295–6 ; 2003, 22–26) ou, pour l’arabe dialectal égyptien, de C. Audebert (2002).
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restriction, qui est implicite dans la définition ci-dessus, se déduit également de cette remarque : Il ne s’agit donc nullement de faire coïncider la différence de l’actif au moyen avec celle des verbes d’action et des verbes d’état (Benveniste 1950/1966, 172).
(b) Si le sujet est “acteur du procès” dont il est le siège, s’il “accomplit quelque chose”, cela suppose qu’il jouit d’un certain degré d’agentivité. La propriété d’agentivité est incluse de même dans la notion de diathèse à laquelle Benveniste a recours, notamment lorsqu’il propose en conclusion de l’article cité, de substituer “diathèse interne” (par opposition à la “diathèse externe”) au terme de “verbe moyen” (par opposition au “verbe actif ” ou “externe”). Or le passage cité plus haut donne comme exemples de ce type de verbes naître, gésir et croître, qui sont non agentifs. Pour traiter cette difficulté, il convient d’emprunter au même article (mais non sur ce point à l’analyse) d’E. Benveniste la notion de verbe médio-passif, pour décrire les verbes non agentifs – hors verbes d’état bien entendu – comme namā u ‘croître’, ‘grandir’, waqaʚa a fī ‘se trouver’, ‘être situé à’ ou ‘dans’, madˢā ī ‘passer’ (temps), māta u ‘mourir’, etc.21 3.4.2 Diathèse interne vs diathèse externe et propriétés de transitivité/ intransitivité Le ‘verbe moyen’ s’oppose au verbe ‘actif ’ ou ‘externe’ : De cette confrontation [entre deux types de verbes] se dégage assez clairement le principe d’une distinction proprement linguistique, portant sur la relation entre le sujet et le procès. Dans l’actif, les verbes dénotent un procès qui s’accomplit à partir du sujet et hors de lui.22 Dans le moyen, qui est la diathèse à définir par opposition, le verbe indique un procès dont le sujet est le siège ; le sujet est intérieur au procès” (Benveniste, 1950/1966, 172). L’actif est “une production d’acte, révélant plus clairement encore la position extérieure du sujet relativement au procès ; et le moyen servira à définir le sujet comme intérieur au procès (op. cit. 173).
21
Je fais mienne ici une suggestion de Jean-Pierre Desclés, communication orale. Il est intéressant de noter – à titre de comparaison – que Sībawayhi considérait que la transitivité fait entrer un verbe “dans le chapitre des actions visibles ou audibles” ( fī bāb al-ʙaʚmāl allatī turā wa-tusmaʚ – Kitāb IV : 6). Cette description est reprise dans le commentaire d’al-Sīrāfī (en note de la même page) et dans Ibn Ya‘īš, Šarhˢ al-Mufasˢsaˢ l VII : 157. 22
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Le verbe “actif ” ou “externe” est par définition un verbe transitif : Ainsi se constituent à partir du moyen des actifs [. . .] qui se caractérisent toujours par ceci que le sujet, posé hors du procès, le commande désormais comme acteur, et que le procès, au lieu d’avoir le sujet pour siège, doit prendre un objet pour fin (ibid.).
Rappelons que la transitivité doit s’entendre, en ce qui concerne les données traitées ici, comme directe ou indirecte (i.e. à complément prépositionnel). Exemples de verbes de diathèse externe : hˢ akama šayʙan ‘maîtriser’ qqch. ; ʙamlā ʚalā fulānin šayʙan ‘dicter qqch. à qqun’ ; dafaʚa a ‘pousser, repousser’ ou ‘payer’ ; kataba u ‘écrire’ ; qāla u ‘dire’ . . . Les verbes moyens ou de “diathèse interne”, dans la définition de Benveniste, peuvent être aussi bien intransitifs que transitifs directs ou indirects. Exemples de verbes du schème simple : – verbes moyens intransitifs : baqiya a, ‘rester, demeurer’ lorsque le sujet est humain ; farihˢ a a ‘se réjouir’, ‘éprouver de la joie’ ; – verbes moyens transitifs directs : malla (d’alternance vocalique i/a) ‘être ennuyé par’, ‘éprouver de l’ennui [à cause] de’ ; xašā i ‘craindre’ ; – verbes moyens transitifs indirects : šaʚara u bi-, ‘sentir’, ‘ressentir’ ; raġiba a fī ‘désirer qqch’, et son contraire raġiba a ʚan ‘désirer éviter ou s’épargner qqch’.
4. Valeurs sémantiques de base des schèmes simples Le cadre conceptuel étant posé, considérons maintenant les valeurs sémantiques associées aux trois schèmes faʚula, faʚala et faʚila. 4.1 4.1.1
Les deux valeurs sémantiques du schème faʚula Les faʚula à valeur d’état caractéristique
Les verbes de ce schème sont traditionnellement décrits comme exprimant un état ou une ‘qualité durable’ ou ‘constante’, par opposition aux
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verbes en faila, qui dénoteraient un ‘état temporaire’ ou ‘instable’ (cf. par exemple az-Zamaxšarī, Mufassa l : 230). A cette référence à la durée, j’ai proposé de substituer la notion d’état caractéristique, selon la définition ci-dessus (§ 3.3.3.a). Ces verbes décrivent effet une qualité ou un état posé comme ‘constitutif ’ ou ‘caractéristique’ du sujet grammatical. Wright désignait ce dernier comme correspondant à “une qualité inhérente naturelle” (“a naturally inherent quality” – 1896–98, I : § 36–38), et Sībawayhi, déjà cité, comme “les caractères susceptibles d’affecter les choses”, mot-à-mot “ qui peuvent être dans les choses” (al-xisāl allatī takūnu fī l-ašyā – Kitāb IV : 28). Dans les faula à valeur d’état caractéristique, le procès ‘état’ est, comme on l’a vu, d’agentivité neutralisée. Ces verbes sont, comme il est attendu, intransitifs.23 Exemples (hors glissement sémantique de type ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’) : qabuh a u ‘être qabīh ’ ‘laid’ (valeur physique ou morale) ; h asuba u ‘être h asīb’ ‘noble, de haute naissance’ ; h aluma u ‘être h alīm’ ‘clément’ ; sabuh a u ‘être sabīh ’ ‘brillant, radieux’ (visage) ou ‘beau, joli’ (garçon, personne) ; katufa u ‘être katīf ’ ‘épais, dense’. Faula est le schème simple le plus stable d’un point de vue formel. Nous avons vu (figures 1 et 2) que la voyelle de sa deuxième consonne radicale demeurait inchangée au paradigme du préfixé (mudāri). Ce schème est aussi le plus stable sémantiquement. Sa valeur de base, l’état caractéristique, est toutefois l’objet d’un glissement de sens qui lui est étroitement corrélé, le changement et l’acquisition d’état (§ 3.3.3.b et 3.3.4 ci-dessus). 4.1.2
Les faula à valeur d’acquisition d’état caractéristique
Ce glissement sémantique, très fréquent, est illustré par l’exemple : ġayra anna hādihi l-jamāa . . . d. a'ufa h udūruhā l-alaniyy . . . mundu an . . . ‘Mais la présence publique de ce rassemblement . . . s’est affaiblie (mot-à-mot, ‘est faible’) . . . depuis que . . .’ (Majallat an-Nahār, 2 juillet 2006, 13, col. 1).
23 Cf. Sībawayhi : “Il n’existe pas dans le langage des Arabes de verbe transitif en faula” (laysa fī l-kalām faultuhu mutaaddiyan – Kitāb IV : 38).
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Des exemples similaires ont été vus aux § 3.3.4. a et b. Le contexte indique clairement un début du procès (‘depuis que . . .’) : le verbe daufa u (adjectif d’état caractéristique : daīf ‘faible’) ne réfère donc pas à un état. La forme conjuguée au mādī exprime ici un événement, qui coïncide avec l’achèvement du processus décrit par le verbe (l’affaiblissement) : ce processus a atteint son ‘dernier état’, ce qui détermine un avant et un après. Cet après correspond à un état résultatif que l’on peut décrire comme un état acquis : cette ‘présence publique’ est ‘devenue faible’ ou ‘est désormais faible’. On observe, à travers les usages illustrés par cet exemple et ceux qui ont été analysés plus haut, que la valeur sémantique ‘être x’ incluse dans celle de l’état caractéristique se trouve très souvent réalisée en contexte comme un changement d’état (‘devenir x’). Ce changement a, à son tour, la propriété d’engendrer un état résultatif. Un tel phénomène n’est nullement propre à l’arabe. On peut comparer, au moins partiellement, avec les exemples suivants, qui sont empruntés au français : – Ah ! Maintenant, tu es beau ! (dit une maman à son fils, qui revenait en traînant les pieds de chez le coiffeur). – Lucie est désormais notre ancêtre. Dans les deux cas, les prédicats ‘être beau’ et ‘être notre ancêtre’ paraissent incompatibles avec un contexte qui leur assignerait un commencement ou un terme. Or les marqueurs temporels ‘maintenant’ et ‘désormais’ présents dans ces exemples assignent aux procès un début, ce qui a pour effet d’opérer une translation des prédicats verbaux ci-dessus de la catégorie de l’état vers celle du changement et de l’acquisition d’état. C’est comme si l’on disait : ‘tu es devenu beau’ (maintenant que tu as les cheveux coupés) et ‘Lucie est devenue l’ancêtre de l’humanité’ (depuis sa découverte et les recherches qui ont suivi). Le dictionnaire de Hans Wehr-Cowan (1979) traite le plus souvent – mais pas systématiquement – le glissement sémantique de l’état caractéristique vers l’acquisition d’état comme relevant des propriétés lexicales des verbes concernés, exemples : (a) glissement sémantique traité comme inclus dans le sens du verbe : daufa u ‘to be or become weak’ ; katura u ‘to be . . . numerous’ – suivi de : ‘to increase, augment’ ; saġura u ‘to be or become small’ (1er sens de ce verbe) ;
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(b) glissement sémantique non pris en compte dans le sens du verbe : hˢ asuna u ‘to be handsome’, ‘beautiful’ ; qabuhˢ a u ‘to be ugly’ ; zˢarufu u ‘to be charming’ (. . .) ‘witty’ ; sˢaġura u (2e ‘sens’ de ce verbe) : ‘to be young’ ; qaduma u ‘to be old, ancient’. Si ce dictionnaire semble hésiter, c’est que la question de savoir si ce glissement sémantique est assez fréquent pour être inclus dans le sens lexical du verbe n’est pas toujours facile à trancher. Les traductions proposées dans Wehr-Cowan proviennent vraisemblablement des usages attestés dans les fiches des auteurs. Ces données montrent en tout état de cause que, pour un verbe donné du schème faʚula, les deux cas présentés plus haut (§ 3.3.4.b) se rencontrent. Voyons de quelle manière : 4.1.2a Le glissement sémantique ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’ Dans les verbes en faʚula dont le sens est fondamentalement celui de l’état caractéristique, comme dans hˢ asuba u ‘être hˢ asīb’ ‘noble, de haute naissance’, un contexte d’acquisition de cet état est presque toujours possible. Cette valeur doit alors être considérée comme sémantiquement seconde, qu’elle soit inscrite dans le lexique ou qu’elle soit limitée à un énoncé donné. Le glissement sémantique observé correspond alors au schéma : ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’, exemples : – hˢ asuba l-ʙāna jāruna ‘notre voisin maintenant est devenu un noble’ (énoncé ironique) ; – karuma r-rajulu ‘l’homme s’est montré noble-et-généreux’. Dans ces deux énoncés, la présence d’un adjectif d’état caractéristique associé par les structures morpho-lexicales de la langue aux verbes en faʚula suggère une valeur attributive : ‘notre voisin a acquis le titre de hˢ asīb’, i.e. de ‘noble de haute naissance’ (d’où l’ironie) ; ‘l’homme a mérité le nom de karīm’, ‘noble-et-généreux’. 4.1.2.b L’engendrement de l’état acquis par l’événement ou le processus du changement d’état (‘devenir x’ ‘être x’) Dans les faʚula dont le sens de base est celui de l’acquisition d’un état, comme dans baduʚa u ‘devenir incomparable, sans pareil’ (al-Muʚjam al-Wasītˢ et al-Munjid, racine /b-d-‘/), le contexte associe au verbe un état acquis, qui est engendré, soit au terme du processus de changement d’état (l’état acquis correspond alors au dernier état du processus), soit par un événement. Exemple :
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– baduʚa ibn sīna bi-ʚilmihi xayran wa-šarran ‘Avicenne fut incomparable par sa science, en bien comme en mal’. Du vivant du philosophemédecin, l’état acquis eût pris une valeur d’état-présent dont la durée inclut le moment de l’énonciation (Desclés, 1994, 73), la traduction étant alors ‘Avicenne s’est révélé . . .’ ou ‘se révèle . . .’ Comme dans les exemples du paragraphe précédent, le verbe en faʚula peut être interprété comme prenant une valeur attributive dont le prédicat est l’adjectif d’état caractéristique correspondant : ‘Avicenne mérita le nom de badīʚ, incomparable et admirable’. Ces exemples réalisent le schéma : ‘devenir x’ ‘être x’ (dans lequel ‘’ se lit ‘engendre’). 4.1.3
Schème faʚula et adjectifs ‘assimilés’ et/ou participes
Si l’on écarte le glissement sémantique ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’, le sens des verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique exclut les participes actif (ʙism al-fāʚil) et passif (ʙism al-maf ʚūl). Les valeurs aspectuo-temporelles de base des participes sont – en fonction du contexte – celles de l’achèvement (qui peut engendrer un état résultatif ) ou du progressif (dont le terme peut, ou non, être spécifié).24 Ces valeurs ne sont pas compatibles avec celles de l’état caractéristique, dont la durée n’est pas bornée et qui ne comporte aucune progression. En outre, le participe passif qui ne peut, quant à lui, être dérivé que d’un verbe transitif, est donc en quelque sorte doublement exclu. Les adjectifs ‘assimilés’ ou ‘analogues’ [au participe] (sˢifa mušabbaha) qui sont associés aux verbes en faʚula ainsi qu’aux verbes d’état caractéristique ou non relevant d’autres schèmes ‘compensent’ en quelque sorte l’absence de participes. Comparer par exemple les phrases nominales : – hum kuramāʙ ‘ils sont généreux’ ; dans cette phrase, karīm, plur. kuramāʙ, est l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ associé au verbe d’état caractéristique karuma u ; – (a) hum tˢālibūn ‘ils sont en train de demander/ils ont demandé’ ou (b) hum matˢlūbūn ‘ils sont demandés’ ; tˢālib et matˢlūb sont les 24 Pour les deux valeurs de base des participes (d’achèvement et progressive), comparer avec Roman (1990, 39–40). Pour une analyse développée de la valeur sémantique des participes en contexte et notamment du progressif à terme spécifié ou non, voir Dichy (2002/2003, § 5.2.2). En ce qui concerne la relation morphologique entre certains schèmes et l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ ou le participe actif, comparer la discussion menée ici avec Larcher (2003, 25–26).
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participes actif et passif de talaba u ‘demander’, qui ne relève pas des verbes d’état. Cette division entre d’une part les verbes décrivant un état et dotés d’un ‘adjectif assimilé’ et de l’autre les verbes auxquels sont associés des participes, rencontre toutefois un problème. Au chapitre consacré à l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ (sifa mušabbaha), az-Zamaxšarī (Mufassa l : 230) associe à celui-ci la ‘valeur sémantique d’immutabilité’ manā t-tubūt (qui renvoie à ce qui est tâbit ‘immuable’, ‘établi’ en quelque sorte hors énonciation du temps). Il oppose cette dernière à la ‘valeur d’occurrence dans le temps’ manā l-h udūt, valeur qu’il associe aux participes. Or il n’illustre pas ces derniers par des verbes décrivant des événements ou des processus (comme je l’ai fait ci-dessus avec talaba u ‘demander’), mais par des verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique. Le premier exemple donné est celui de h āsin, qui correspond à un participe actif de h asuna u ‘être beau’ (adjectif d’état caractéristique h asan). Az-Zamaxšarī souligne la ‘valeur d’occurrence dans le temps’ manā h udūt de la forme h āsin en insérant celle-ci dans les phrases : – huwa h āsin al-āna ou ġadan, mot-à-mot : ‘il est en train de devenir/il est devenu beau maintenant’, ou ‘il le deviendra demain’. – Les exemples suivants sont : kārim, participe actif de karuma u ‘être noble et généreux’, tāil, participe actif de tāla u ‘être ou devenir long’ et dāiq, participe actif du verbe d’état caractéristique dāqa i ‘être ou devenir étroit’ (adjectif d’état caractéristique dayyiq), pour lequel az-Zamaxšarī cite le verset : wa-dāiqun bihi sadruka, ‘alors que tu es angoissé par cela’, mot-à-mot, ‘ta poitrine étant oppressée (rendue étroite) par cela’ (Coran 11 : 12). Ibn Ya‘īš commente, dans ce verset, le choix du participe actif dāiq au lieu de l’adjectif dayyiq en indiquant que le premier réfère à “une étroitesse (i.e. à une oppression) [correspondant à] un accident [se produisant] dans le présent et non à un [caractère] immuable” (dīq ārid fī l-h āl ġayr tābit – Šarh al-Mufassa l VI : 83). Si les verbes associés à des adjectifs d’état caractéristique peuvent être compatibles avec le sens des participes actifs, c’est en raison : (a) soit du glissement de sens qui permet à ces verbes, lorsque leur sens premier est celui de verbes d’état, de prendre celui de l’acquisition d’état (glissement ‘être x’ o ‘devenir x’),
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(b) soit du fait que ces verbes réfèrent, fondamentalement, à l’acquisition d’un état caractéristique, c’est-à-dire, à un processus ou un événement engendrant un état résultatif (schéma ‘devenir x’ ‘être x’). Les quatre exemples cités par az-Zamaxšarī relèvent de ces deux cas. Si hˢ asuna ‘être beau’ relève de la première catégorie, on a vu qu’al-Mubarrid, cité au § 3.3.3.b, considérait karuma comme ayant une valeur d’acquisition d’état, et que le dictionnaire de Hans Wehr-Cowan oscillait entre la valeur de base à attribuer à chaque verbe. La valeur attributive se distribue, comme on l’a vu, sur les verbes relevant tant de (a) que de (b). Il apparaît clairement, en conséquence, que l’on ne peut réduire les valeurs sémantiques du schème faʚula au seul sens de ‘verbe d’état’ : il s’y ajoute l’acquisition d’état. 4.1.4 Deux conséquences de l’agentivité neutralisée ou de la non agentivité des faʚula L’agentivité neutralisée des verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique, et la non agentivité des verbes dénotant l’acquisition d’un état caractéristique entraînent également l’impossibilité pour ceux-ci de l’impératif : ce dernier n’est possible que si un certain degré de contrôle exercé par l’agent sur le procès est envisageable (c’est pourquoi les verbes pouvoir et devoir n’ont pas d’impératif en français). En outre, l’agentivité neutralisée est incompatible avec la transitivité. Il s’ensuit que la conjugaison des verbes correspondants exclut toutes les formes du passif (ce dernier n’étant possible qu’avec des verbes transitifs, dans le cadre de contraintes sémantiques précises).25 Le schème faʚula est relativement peu fréquent dans les textes, notamment en arabe littéraire moderne. On lui préfère sans doute les constructions adjectivales correspondantes. Cela ne signifie nullement que ce schème soit sorti de l’usage ou en voie de disparition, comme le montre l’exemple de dˢaʚufa ci-dessus, emprunté à la presse actuelle. On trouve également assez souvent dans la prose contemporaine des emplois de construction impersonnelle, à la faveur, pour ainsi dire, de l’agentivité neutralisée : lā yahˢ sunu ʙan . . ., ‘il ne convient pas que . . .’ [Yawm., 79, 18] ; yajduru, ‘il convient’, suivi de ʙan ou d’une forme infinitive . . .
25
Les critères qui permettent, interdisent ou restreignent l’apparition de l’impératif ou du passif en arabe ont été présentés dans Ammar et Dichy (1999, 19–20).
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joseph dichy Les valeurs sémantiques de base du schème faʚila
Le deuxième schème du verbe simple est d’alternance vocalique i/a. Comme on l’a vu au § 2.2.1, une variante en i/i porte sur un petit nombre de verbes : sur 15 ou 16 verbes inventoriés par les traités de morphologie arabe médiévale, huit sont attestés en arabe moderne par le dictionnaire de Hans Wehr (cf. liste dans Ammar et Dichy 1999, 24). Cette variante, qui affecte essentiellement des verbes de 1re consonne radicale w ou y est purement formelle, et n’entraîne pas de différence de valeur sémantique avec le schème faila dont elle relève. Exemples : warita i ‘hériter’ ; waliya i ‘suivre’ ou ‘succéder à’. On rencontre dans les verbes du schème faila tous les degrés d’agentivité (pleine ou partielle) ou l’absence de cette propriété (non agentivité, agentivité neutralisée), ainsi que les différentes formes de transitivité ou de son contraire. D’où la partition des sens associables à ce schème qui a été observée par les auteurs qui se sont attachés à le caractériser.26 La valeur la plus générale est celle de verbes moyens ou de diathèse interne (au sens ‘revisité’ présenté plus haut), ce schème comportant en outre un nombre limité de verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique. Il y a quatre grandes catégories sémantiques de verbes en faila, distinguées principalement au moyen des propriétés d’agentivité et de transitivité. 4.2.1 Les faila associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique (verbes d’état ou d’acquisition d’état) Un certain nombre de verbes d’alternance vocalique i/a (schème faila) relève des verbes associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique. Ces derniers incluent tous les traits présentés plus haut à propos du schème faula, et comportent comme eux les deux grandes valeurs sémantiques étroitement corrélées ‘être x’ et ‘devenir x’. Les verbes en faila relevant de cette sous-catégorie sont intransitifs, d’agentivité neutralisée (valeur ‘être x’) ou non agentifs (médio-passifs, de valeur ‘devenir x’), et ne peuvent avoir de participe actif que dans les conditions, rarement réalisées, présentées plus haut (§ 4.1.3). Ils décrivent pour la plupart un état caractéristique qui correspond : 26 Outre M. Cohen (1929) et Joüon (1930), voir notamment : Fleisch (1979, 220 suiv.) ; Ammar et Dichy (1999, 23–24).
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– soit à une particularité physique ou psychique (défaut ou qualité)27 affectant un sujet humain ou un animal, domestique ou appartenant à un troupeau, – soit une particularité, souvent – mais pas nécessairement – connotée négativement, affectant une entité concrète ou abstraite. L’adjectif ‘assimilé’ est le plus souvent du schème ʙaf ʚal, fém. faʚlāʙ. Une série limitée de verbes de cette sous-catégorie relève de racines à 2e radicale w ou y. J’en ai dénombré 71, dont 18 de 2e consonne y dans Ilyās et Nāsˢīf (1995). Ces verbes ont pour particularité de ne pas appliquer les règles de transformation phonologiques habituelles.28 Exemples : (a) Verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique décrivant une qualité ou un défaut le plus souvent physique (humain ou animal) : jayida yajyadu ‘avoir le cou long’ (signe de beauté) – adj. ʙajyad, fém. jaydāʙ ; ʙawiza yaʚwazu ‘être’ ou ‘tomber dans le besoin’ (adj. ʙaʚwaz) ; layisa yalyasu ‘être’ ou ‘se montrer courageux’, ‘tenir sa position (dans un combat)’ – adj. ʙalyas ; rawiʚa yawaʚu ‘être’ ou ‘se montrer admirable (humain)’ pour son intelligence, sa beauté, son courage, etc. (adj. ʙarwaʚ) ; ʚawira yaʚwaru ‘être’ ou ‘devenir borgne’ (adj. ʙaʚwar) ; qawida a ‘avoir le dos et le cou allongés’ (cheval . . .). (b) Verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique décrivant une particularité affectant une entité non animée concrète ou abstraite : ʚawisˢa yaʚwasˢu ‘être’ ou ‘devenir difficile, incompréhensible, abscons’ (affaire, explication) – adj. ʙaʚwasˢ et ʚawīsˢ ; ʚawija yaʚwaju ‘être’ ou ‘devenir tordu, incurvé, tortueux’ (adj. ʙaʚwaj, fém. ʚawjāʙ) ; ġayisa yaġyasu ‘être’ ou ‘devenir doux, souple’ (adj. ʙaġyas) ; qawira yaqwaru ‘être vaste (maison)’ – adj. ʙaqwar. Un nombre également limité, mais plus important, de verbes en faʚila associés à un adjectif d’état caractéristique relève de racines sans transformation, exemples : 27 Voir notamment : Sībawayhi, Kitāb IV : 17 ; az-Zamaxšarī, Mufasˢsaˢ l : 278. La synthèse ci-dessus provient de mon propre examen des données. 28 Rappelons que dans xāfa, yaxāfu ‘craindre’, d’alternance vocalique i/a, la 2e consonne radicale w est l’objet de transformations en fonction de la voyelle qui la suit et la précède immédiatement, à la différence des verbes de 2e radicale w ou y dont on trouve ici des exemples.
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(c) Verbes décrivant une qualité ou un défaut chez un humain ou un animal : baliha a ‘devenir faible d’esprit’ ou ‘être stupide, idiot’ (adj. ʙablah, fém. balhāʙ) ; ramida a ‘devenir, puis ‘être chassieux (œil)’ ou (mot-à-mot) ‘devenir ayant’, puis ‘avoir l’œil chassieux (humain)’ – adj. ʙarmad ; darida a ‘perdre ses dents’, ‘devenir’ ou ‘être édenté’ (adj. ʙadrad) ; sˢawifa a (mot-à-mot) ‘devenir ayant’, puis ‘avoir beaucoup de laine’, ‘être laineux’ (ovin ou caprin) – adj. ʙasˢwaf. (d) Verbes décrivant une particularité affectant une entité concrète ou abstraite : xadˢira a ‘verdir’, puis ‘être vert’ (adj. ʙaxdˢar ‘vert’) ; sawida a ‘noircir’, puis ‘être noir’ (adj. ʙaswad ‘noir’) ; xaliqa a ‘s’user’, puis ‘être usé’ (vêtement) – adj. ʙaxlaq ; sawisa a ‘se gâter’, ‘être rongé par des vers’ (viande, nourriture) – adj. ʙaswas. (e) Verbes de cette sous-catégorie dont l’adjectif n’est pas de schème ʙaf ʚal : yasira yaysaru ‘devenir’ puis ‘être facile’ (adj. yasir et yasīr). La valeur sémantique de base des verbes présentés en (c), (d) et (e) est celle de l’acquisition d’état, à la différence des verbes des sous-catégories (a) et (b). Dans leur sens de base, les premiers sont donc non agentifs, et correspondent à des verbes médio-passifs. 4.2.2
Autres verbes médio-passifs et non agentifs en faʚila
D’autres verbes du même schème sont non agentifs et intransitifs. Ils correspondent, non à des verbes à diathèse interne ou moyens, comme dans les deux paragraphes suivants, mais à des verbes médio-passifs. Exemples : – verbes de sujet grammatical non-humain : rasila a ‘être longue et pendre’ (chevelure) ; rawiya a ‘être irrigué, arrosé’ (terre) ; xadˢiba a ‘verdir’ (arbre, jardin, terre) ; – verbes de sujet grammatical humain : ġariqa a ‘se noyer’ (au sens propre), ‘mourir noyé’ – adj. ‘assimilé’ ġarīq ; maridˢa a, ‘être ou tomber malade’, adjectif ‘assimilé’ : marīdˢ.
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Tous les verbes de cette catégorie ne sont pas associés, dans les dictionnaires, à un adjectif ‘assimilé’. Dans le cas des deux derniers exemples ci-dessus, il est à noter que le participe actif est attesté, mais avec une différence de sens du plus grand intérêt pour la distinction entre les valeurs sémantiques du participe actif et celles de l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ (cidessus, § 4.1.3) : Le Munjid al-luġa l-arabiyya l-muāsira (2000) donne l’exemple de anqaztu ġāriqan ‘j’ai sauvé un noyé’ (racine /ġ-r-q/), et Roman : lā takul hādā t-taāma fa-innaka māridun in akaltahu ‘Ne mange pas de cette nourriture, car tu seras malade si tu en manges’ (1999, 71, d’après le Lisān al-arab, XIIIe s., racine /m-r-dˢ/). Comparons ces emplois. Les deux adjectifs ‘assimilés’ ġarīq et marīd correspondent à des états résultatifs engendrés par l’événement ou coïncidant avec la dernière étape du processus décrit par le verbe (Desclés 1994) : le processus ‘se noyer’ a pour dernière étape ( !) ‘être mort noyé’, décrit par l’adjectif ġarīq, de même que ‘tomber malade’ entraîne l’état décrit par l’adj. marīd. Par contraste, les participes actifs correspondants ġāriq et mārid ont une valeur de progressif à terme spécifié (Dichy 2002/2003, 34, 36, 60) : – le procès de ‘noyade’ n’a pas atteint son terme dans l’exemple du Munjid (le sauvetage a pu avoir lieu) ; – le terme (ou l’achèvement) du procès ‘tomber malade’ est projeté dans le futur dans l’exemple du Lisān cité par A. Roman. Ce dictionnaire glose, significativement māridun à la suite de la phrase ci-dessus par ay tamradu ‘c’est-à-dire : tu seras malade’. Il est significatif – ce qu’atteste notamment l’exemple du Munjid al-luġa l-arabiyya l-muāsira – que ces dérivations restent vivantes en arabe contemporain, même si leur fréquence est faible. 4.2.3 Les verbes de schème faila à diathèse interne (ou moyens) et d’agentivité partielle Un nombre beaucoup plus important de verbes du schème faila correspond à des verbes à diathèse interne, ou verbes moyens : le procès affecte le sujet, que le verbe soit transitif ou non (ainsi : ‘rire de qqun’ ou ‘rire’). Ces verbes sont transitifs indirects ou intransitifs et d’agentivité partielle
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(l’agent, n’étant pas autonome par rapport au procès, ne conserve qu’un contrôle limité sur celui-ci). Ils peuvent soit admettre un participe actif, mais non un adjectif ‘assimilé’, soit être associés dans le lexique à un adjectif ‘assimilé’, et n’admettre de participe actif que dans les constructions vues au paragraphe précédent et en 4.1.3. Exemples : (a) Verbes admettant un participe actif, mais non un adjectif ‘assimilé’ : – verbes intransitifs : baqiya a ‘rester, demeurer’ qq part (agent humain) [Yawm., 12, 12] ; nāma a ‘dormir’ ; dˢahˢ ika a ‘rire’ (en ‘emploi absolu’, différent de : ‘rire de . . .’, ‘se moquer de . . .’) ; – verbes transitifs directs ou indirects : dahˢ ika a min ou ʚalā ‘rire de’, ‘se moquer de’ qqun ; nasiya a ‘oublier qqch’ ; samiʚa a ‘entendre qqch’ ; saʙima a ‘s’ennuyer de . . .’ (qqch) [Yawm., 50, 10] ; hˢ asiba a ʙanna . . . ‘penser, croire, estimer que . . .’ ; ʚalima a ʙanna . . . ‘savoir que’ ou ‘apprendre que . . .’ ʚalima a bi-, ‘avoir connaissance de . . .’ . (b) Verbes associés dans le lexique à un adjectif ‘assimilé’, mais n’admettant de participe actif que dans les constructions liées à ‘l’occurrence d’un procès’ (hˢ udūt) – § 4.1.3 : – verbes intransitifs : ʚatˢiša a ‘avoir soif ’ (adj. ʚatˢšān) ; taʚiba a ‘éprouver de la fatigue’, ‘être fatigué’ (adj. taʚib) ; xafira a ‘éprouver un fort sentiment de timidité’, ‘être très timide’, notamment pour une jeune fille (adj. xafir);29 salima a ‘être sain et sauf ’, ‘échapper’ (à un mal ou à un danger’) – adj. salīm, mais également sālim ;30 – verbes transitifs directs ou indirects : hˢ afiya a bi- ‘accueillir très chaleureusement’ qqun (adj. hˢ afiyy) ; ġadˢiba a ʚalā ‘être, se mettre en colère contre qqun’ (adj. ġadˢib). Dans les exemples que l’on vient de voir, la catégorie morphologique de l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ ne correspond pas à un état caractéristique, mais
29 Il existe un second adjectif ‘assimilé’, mixfar ‘grande timide’ : associé à ce dernier, xafirat ‘être une grande timide’ relève des verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique, dans lesquels l’agentivité est neutralisée. 30 Dans des cas tels que sālim l’adjectif ‘assimilé’ est dit, dans la grammaire arabe traditionnelle, prendre la forme (sˢīġa) du participe actif. Autres exemples : yā’is ‘désespéré’, bā’is ‘misérable’, māhir ‘adroit’, ‘habile’ (artisan) . . .
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plutôt à l’état résultatif produit pas le procès (événement ou processus) : le verbe salima produit ainsi salīm ‘sain et sauf ’, mais également sālim min . . . ‘sauf de . . .’ (mal ou danger). Dans un verbe exprimant un processus, comme dans ġadˢiba ‘se mettre en colère’, l’adjectif ġadˢib décrit le dernier état de ce processus ; si ġadˢiba se trouve, dans un contexte donné, décrire un événement, l’adjectif décrit l’état résultatif engendré par cet événement. Ces verbes permettent de préciser la notion d’agentivité partielle. Dans les exemples ci-dessus, le contrôle limité du procès par l’agent peut surtout être glosé négativement :31 refuser de ‘rester’ quelque part, voire d’être ‘sain et sauf d’un danger’ (et agir pour sortir de ce lieu ou de cette situation) ; combattre ou surmonter un sentiment ou une émotion (‘rire, ‘ennui’, ‘timidité’, ‘chaleur humaine’ ou ‘colère’ envers quelqu’un), une sensation (‘sommeil’, fait ‘d’entendre’, ‘soif ’, ‘fatigue’), un ‘mouvement de la pensée’ ou ‘processus cognitif ’ (‘croire’, ‘oublier’, ‘savoir’), etc. On notera enfin que la relation entre le verbe et, soit un participe actif, soit un adjectif ‘assimilé’, est lexicalisée (et non compositionnelle, comme elle l’était sans doute aux plus anciennes époques de la langue arabe) : on doit recourir aux connaissances lexicales pour la construire, et non aux seules connaissances grammaticales ou à une déduction à partir du sens du verbe. 4.2.4 Les verbes du schème faʚila à diathèse interne, transitifs et d’agentivité entière L’autre grande partie des verbes du schème faʚila est constituée de verbes également moyens (ou à diathèse interne), d’agentivité entière et de régime syntaxique transitif direct ou indirect. Dans cette configuration, le procès comporte un agent autonome contrôlant effectivement (du fait de l’agentivité entière) l’événement ou le processus décrit par le verbe et un ‘patient’ (du fait de la transitivité). Il englobe en outre d’une manière ou d’une autre l’agent ou se déroule au moins partiellement en lui (diathèse
31 Cf. Roman (1990, 42–43), qui décrit l’agentivité partielle comme une agentivité réactive.
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interne). Ces verbes ont un participe actif, et n’admettent pas d’adjectif ‘assimilé’. Exemples : šariba a, ‘boire’ ; radiya a bi- ‘être satisfait de . . .’ ; lah iqa, ‘suivre, poursuivre qqun’, lah iqa bi-, ‘suivre qqun’ au sens de ‘le rejoindre’ [Yawm., 66, 21] ; rakiba a, ‘monter, chevaucher’ ; watiqa i bi-, ‘faire confiance à (qqun)’. 4.3
Les valeurs sémantiques de faʚala et leur dispersion
Le troisième schème de la forme simple du verbe est faala. Il comporte comme on l’a vu une alternance vocalique de base ( faala i) et deux variantes résultant de divers conditionnements phonétiques ( faala u et faala a). On pourrait poser que ce schème comprend majoritairement des verbes relevant de la catégorie des verbes ‘actifs’ ou ‘externes’ qui s’oppose structurellement à celle des verbes moyens, au sens donné à ces termes dans l’article de Benveniste cité plus haut (section 3.4). Ce trait serait alors ce qui distingue faala des schèmes faila et faula. Or il existe un nombre très élevé de verbes ne répondant pas à cette définition ‘de principe’. Nous avons vu que ce schème connaissait une importante dispersion sur le plan formel : l’ordonnance systématique du tableau des schèmes de base du verbe simple (fig. 1) est principalement rompue dans le tableau des schèmes du verbe simple et de leurs sous-catégories (fig. 2) par les trois alternances vocaliques possibles du schème faala. Les exemples ci-dessous montrent en outre que cette dispersion se vérifie également du point de vue sémantique. Considérons d’abord les catégories émanant des propriétés d’agentivité et de transitivité : – Verbes pleinement agentifs et transitifs (directs ou indirects) : amana u bi- ‘avoir foi en’ ou ‘dans’ ; qāla u ‘dire’ ; saala a ‘interroger’, ‘questionner’ ; sāh a i bi- ‘crier’ vers, en direction de, contre qqun, ‘le héler’ ; āda u ilā ‘revenir à’. – Verbes pleinement agentifs et transitifs indirects, auxquels est associé un adjectif exprimant un état résultatif, ou état acquis : latafa u bi- ‘se montrer gentil, prévenant envers qqun’ (adjectif ‘assimilé’, exprimant un état résultatif : latīf – cf. Coran 42 : 19) ; daxala u fī ‘entrer dans’ un clan ou une tribu, ‘se placer sous sa protection’ (adj. exprimant un état résultatif : daxīl) ;
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– Verbes pleinement agentifs et intransitifs : makata u ‘rester, demeurer (sujet humain)’ ; jalasa i ‘s’asseoir’ ; haraa a ‘se précipiter’ (tête baissée) ; sakata u ‘se taire’ (après avoir parlé) ; samata u ‘se taire’, ‘garder le silence’. – Verbes d’agentivité partielle transitifs (directs ou indirects) : raā a ‘voir’ ; fāza bi- ‘gagner, obtenir qqch’ ; šaara u bi- ‘sentir’, ‘ressentir’ qqch. – Verbes d’agentivité partielle intransitifs : zahara a ‘apparaître (intentionnellement)’ lorsque l’agent est humain32 [Yawm., 32, 22] ; warada i, ‘apparaître’ intentionnellement, ‘arriver’ (avec un agent humain). – Verbes non agentifs intransitifs : – madā i ‘passer, se passer’ (laps de temps, événements ou processus dont on prend en compte la durée) [Yawm., 32, 16] ; badā u ‘paraître’ (avec un sujet non humain) [Yawm., 32, 17] ; h āna i ‘se produire accidentellement’ [Yawm., 61, 15] ; ġaraba u ‘se coucher’ (soleil) ; māta u ‘mourir’. – Verbes non agentifs transitifs (directs ou indirects) : waqa a alā ‘tomber sur’ [Yawm., 32, 17] ; h awā i ‘contenir, inclure, comprendre’. – Verbes d’agentivité neutralisée ou non-agentifs et intransitifs, associés à un adjectif ‘assimilé’ décrivant un état caractéristique (verbes d’acquisition d’état) : – dāqa i ‘être ou devenir étroit’ (adjectif d’état caractéristique : dayyiq) ; jāda u ‘être ou devenir excellent (adj. jayyid) ; xaffa i ‘être ou devenir léger’ (adj. xafīf ) ; šadda u ‘être ou devenir intense, dur ou violent’ (adj. šadīd) ; samala u ‘devenir ou être rigide ou sec’ (adj. sāmil et samīl). Reprenons cette analyse en classant les verbes de schème faala selon les grandes catégories présentées plus haut. On a :
32 L’agentivité est susceptible de varier selon que le sujet grammatical réfère à un humain (āqil) agissant intentionnellement ou non, ou à un non humain (ġayr āqil). Avec un sujet grammatical non humain, ou humain, mais dépourvu, dans le contexte, d’intentionnalité, zahara ou warada sont des verbes non agentifs. Un autre exemple (du schème faila cette fois) est dans Yawm. (16, 15) : fa zafira n-nawmu bi-jufūnī, ‘le sommeil triompha de mes paupières’. Dans cette phrase, le verbe zafira perd le trait d’agentivité qu’il aurait avec un sujet grammatical humain, et devient non agentif (le sommeil ne disposant d’aucun contrôle sur le procès, dont il n’est d’ailleurs pas l’agent). En revanche, waqaa ‘tomber’ demeure non agentif, que le sujet soit humain [Yawm. 16, 12] ou non humain [Yawm. 16, 20 et 32, 17].
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(a) Verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique ou d’acquisition d’état caractéristique – repris en partie des exemples ci-dessus : dāqa i ‘être ou devenir étroit’ (adjectif d’état caractéristique : dayyiq) ; lāna i ‘être ou devenir souple’ (sens physique), ou ‘tendre’ (sens psychologique affectant un sujet humain) (adj. layyin) ; jāda u ‘être ou devenir excellent’ (adj. jayyid) ; sāda u ‘être ou devenir le chef ’ (adj. sayyid) ; xaffa i ‘être ou devenir léger’ (adj. xafīf ) ; qalla i ‘être ou devenir peu nombreux’ (adj. qalīl) ; šadda i et u ‘être ou devenir intense, dur ou violent’ (adj. šadīd) ; samala u ‘devenir ou être rigide ou sec’ (adj. sāmil et samīl) ; fasada u et i ‘se corrompre’, ‘pourrir’, i.e. pour une viande, de la nourriture ou les mœurs d’une personne, etc. : ‘devenir’, puis ‘être corrompu’ (adj. fāsid, fasīd). (b) Verbes à diathèse interne ou moyens – repris des exemples ci-dessus : – Verbes associés dans le lexique à un adjectif ‘assimilé’ exprimant un état résultatif : latafa u bi- ‘se montrer gentil, prévenant envers qqun’ (adj. latīf ) ; daxala u fī ‘entrer dans’ un clan ou une tribu, ‘se placer sous sa protection’ (adj. daxīl) ; – Verbes sans adjectif ‘assimilé’ : amana u bi- ‘avoir foi en’ ou ‘dans’ ; makata u ‘rester, demeurer’ (agent humain) ; jalasa i ‘s’asseoir’ ; haraa a ‘se précipiter’ ; raā a ‘voir’ ; āda u ilā ‘revenir à’ ; fāza bi-, ‘gagner, obtenir qqch’ ; zahara a ‘apparaître’, ‘se manifester’ intentionnellement (agent humain) [Yawm., 32, 22] ; warada i ‘apparaître’ intentionnellement, ‘arriver’ (agent humain). (c) Verbes médio-passifs – repris des exemples ci-dessus : madā i ‘passer, se passer” (laps de temps, événement ou processus dont on prend en compte la durée) [Yawm., 32, 16] ; badā u ‘paraître’ (avec un sujet non humain) [Yawm., 32, 17] ; h āna i ‘se produire accidentellement’ (événement) [Yawm., 61, 15] ; ġaraba u ‘se coucher’ (soleil) ; māta u ‘mourir’ ; saqata a ‘tomber’, ‘chuter’ ; h awā i ‘contenir, inclure, comprendre’. (d) Verbes à diathèse externe (transitifs) : qatala u ‘tuer’ ; daraba i ‘frapper’ ; h asaba i ‘compter’ (des objets) ; madda u ‘tendre’, ‘étendre’ ; sah ara a ‘charmer, ‘ensorceler’ ; sajana u ‘emprisonner’ ; xadaa a ‘tromper, duper, leurrer’ ; fasala i ‘séparer, diviser’ ; qataa a ‘couper’ ; fatah a a ‘ouvrir’ ; bāa i ‘vendre’ ; qāla u ‘dire’ ; saala a ‘interroger’, ‘questionner’ ; talaba u min an . . . ‘de-
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mander à qqun de . . .’ ; sˢāhˢ a i bi- ‘crier’ vers, en direction de qqun, ‘le héler’ [Yawm., 61, 11].33 4.3.1 Les corrélats formels de la présence de verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique dans le schème faʚala Les verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique (état caractéristique ou acquis) du schème faʚala, – dont on aurait attendu la présence parmi les faʚula –, sont associés à des corrélats formels. Ils relèvent : – soit des verbes ‘concaves’ (ʙajwaf, i.e. de 2e consonne radicale w ou y), pour lesquelles la réalisation de l’alternance vocalique u/u ne semble attestée que dans le cas de tˢāla/yatˢūlu – adj. tˢawīl – (bien que l’on puisse également voir dans cette forme un verbe en a/u) ; – soit des verbes ‘redoublés’ (mudˢaʚʚaf, de 2e et 3e consonnes radicales identiques), pour lesquels il n’existe qu’un tout petit nombre de verbes en faʚula, qui sont signalés comme des exceptions par Sībawayhi.34 Deux verbes ‘redoublés’ en u/u sont attestés en arabe contemporain (Hans Wehr-Cowan 1979) : šarra (1e pers. šarurtu) u ‘se monter’ ou ‘être mauvais, malfaisant’ (adj. šarīr) et labba (1e pers. labubtu) u ‘se montrer’ ou ‘être intelligent’ (adj. labīb – autre alternance vocalique : i/a). Ces deux verbes sont en outre donnés par le dictionnaire d’al-Fayrūz ʙĀbādī, dans la glose de hˢ abba (1e pers. hˢ abubtu) u ʙilā ‘devenir un proche [qui reçoit des marques d’amitié] de’ qqun (adj. hˢ abīb), comme étant, avec ce verbe, les seuls membres de cette classe formelle.35
33 Les verbes de parole du schème simple sont en arabe des verbes à diathèse externe. Le passage à une diathèse interne se fait au moyen de schèmes augmentés incluant ce que Roman (1990 ; 1999/2005) appelle le morphème-écho t – voir Ammar et Dichy (1999, 27–28) ; Dichy (2002/2003, § 4.2). Exemples : saʙla a ‘interroger’ [schème simple, verbe à diathèse externe] vs sāʙala ʚan ‘interroger, questionner (qqun) sur’, puis tasāʙala ʚan ‘s’interroger sur’ [schème augmenté incluant le morphème-écho, verbe à diathèse interne] ; qāla u ‘dire’ [schème simple, verbe de diathèse externe] vs qawwala ‘attribuer (des paroles)’ à qqun, puis taqawwala ‘prétendre, alléguer’ (au profit, dans l’intérêt, en faveur de soi-même) [schème augmenté incluant le morphème-écho, verbe de diathèse interne]. 34 Sībawayhi indique qu’il “n’y a presque pas de verbes en faʚula” de 2e et troisième radicale identiques (ou ‘redoublés’, mina t-tadˢʚīf – Kitāb IV : 36–37). Ibn Xālawayh (Laysa . . . : 27), signale l’absence de verbes ‘redoublés’ en faʚula, à l’exception des deux cas de labba u (déjà cité par Sībawayhi, loc. cit.) et ʚazza u ‘avoir peu de lait’ (dit d’une chèvre). 35 Malgré l’indication citée, on trouve dans le dictionnaire d’al-Fayrūz ʙĀbādī trois autres verbes : ʚazza (3e pers. fém. sing. ʚazuzat) u ‘voir (pour une chèvre) son lait diminuer’, ‘avoir peu de lait’ (adj. ʚazūz), ainsi que damma (1e pers. damumtu) u ‘devenir’ ou ‘être très laid, repoussant’ (adj. damīm), et fakka (1e pers. fakuktu) u, ‘se montrer’ ou ‘être
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Toutefois, il ne s’agit pas d’une règle opérant dans les deux sens : tous les verbes ‘concaves’ ou ‘redoublés’ de schème faʚala ne relèvent pas, il s’en faut de beaucoup des verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique. Les exemples de sˢamala u ‘devenir ou être rigide ou sec’ et de fasada i et u – voir § 4.3, exemples (a) – montrent qu’il existe également un certain nombre de faʚala à adjectif d’état caractéristique qui ne relèvent d’aucune des deux catégories formelles que l’on vient d’indiquer. Leur sens de base est toutefois celui de l’acquisition d’un état caractéristique plutôt que celui de verbes d’état. 4.3.2 Un glissement sémantique partiellement responsable de la présence de verbes à diathèse interne et de verbes médio-passifs dans le schème faʚala Les verbes à diathèse externe sont agentifs et transitifs : le procès verbal ‘affecte’ un objet externe à l’agent. Un glissement sémantique très répandu et observable dans plusieurs langues peut toutefois modifier la diathèse de ces verbes, qui devient alors interne. Deux cas se présentent, selon que la valeur sémantique résultant de ce glissement est agentive ou non. Dans le premier, le sens produit est celui d’un verbe ‘moyen’ ou a diathèse interne : le verbe est agentif et le procès affecte l’agent. Dans le second, le sens produit par le glissement est médio-passif : le procès, qui est non agentif, affecte le sujet grammatical du verbe (l’agent existe, mais il n’est pas désigné). Comparons les données de plusieurs langues : – Verbes agentifs à diathèse interne, à partir de verbes à diathèse externe : – En français, le sens de base du verbe transitif plonger est celui d’un procès à diathèse externe dans lequel un agent plonge un objet dans un liquide, ex. : Pierre plongea sa chemise dans l’eau de la lessive. Ce verbe a pour pendant une forme pronominale exprimant une diathèse interne, se plonger, dont le sens est métaphorique, ex. : se plonger dans un livre (mais non *dans la piscine). En arabe, les sens de plonger et se plonger sont associés au verbe ġatˢasa i. Joüon donne un exemple similaire en hébreu : tˢaval ‘tremper’ et ‘se tremper’ (1923, 95). La différence est dans la présence en français d’une marque morphosyntaxique, celle des verbes pronominaux. stupide’ ou ‘faible’, ces deux derniers verbes pouvant également être d’alternance i/a. Cf. aussi Ibn Xālawayh, Laysa . . . : 73 (note de l’auteur).
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Observons toutefois qu’en français, de manière en partie similaire à taval en hébreu et ġatasa en arabe, il existe, outre les deux sens que l’on vient de voir, une forme intransitive ‘moyenne’ plonger, de sens physique, sans marque morphosyntaxique associée.36 Tous ces exemples ont en commun d’être lexicalisés (la relation forme-sens ne résulte par d’un phénomène de dérivation compositionnel, mais est inscrite dans le lexique). – Le verbe à diathèse externe daraba i ‘frapper’, ‘battre’ – en anglais, ‘to hit’, ‘to beat’ – est cité dans tous les ouvrages, en langue arabe ou en langues occidentales, pour illustrer sens du schème faala, l’exemple mille fois reproduit étant : daraba zaydun amran ‘Zayd a frappé Amr’. Il comporte toutefois un sens dans lequel le procès exprimé par le verbe ne rencontre pas d’objet externe à l’agent, mais affecte ce dernier (le verbe est donc à diathèse interne), comme dans l’expression figée daraba fī l-ardi ‘parcourir la terre’ (ou une contrée, une région . . .). Un glissement sémantique analogue se produit en français dans les expressions battre les chemins (sens propre), ou battre la campagne (sens figuré). – Verbes médio-passifs (et donc non agentifs), à partir de verbes à diathèse externe : – Dans axada qalbuhu yadribu fī sadrihi ‘son cœur se mit à battre dans sa poitrine’, le verbe daraba prend une valeur non agentive ; le procès affecte le sujet grammatical. Il est significatif que le même glissement sémantique est observable en français avec battre et en anglais avec to beat dans les expressions correspondantes. – Le verbe à diathèse externe šaqqa u ‘fendre’, ‘briser’ (en anglais ‘to break’) prend également le sens de ‘éclore’ (bouton de fleur . . .), c’est-à-dire, ‘fendre sa gaine’, ou, pour une dent ‘pousser’. Ces deux sens sont associés, respectivement, aux ‘formes infinitives’ (masdar) šaqq et šuqūq. Comme dans tous les exemples ci-dessus, le sens médio-passif ou à diathèse interne dérive du sens transitif et à diathèse externe : il s’agit d’un phénomène de polysémie, inscrit dans le lexique. 36 Toutefois, à la différence des exemples empruntés à l’arabe et à l’hébreu, le sens physique de plonger – intransitif et ‘moyen’ – cité ici comporte en français un ajout sémantique (idée de ‘plongeon’), les données attachées à ce verbe étant relativement complexes. On a, par exemple, soit : plonger dans la piscine de son jardin, soit plonger les mains dans l’eau froide du bain, mais on ne peut plonger (= ‘faire un plongeon’) dans son bain . . .
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4.3.3 Les faala à diathèse interne ou médio-passifs ne correspondant ni à un corrélat formel ni à un glissement sémantique Il existe par ailleurs au sein du schème faala des verbes dont le sens est – ou en tout cas paraît être – originellement celui de procès à diathèse interne ou médio-passifs, et qui ne relèvent pas formellement des verbes ‘concaves’ ou ‘redoublés’. Exemples : – faala à diathèse interne : dahaba a ‘partir’, ‘aller’, ‘s’en aller’ (agent humain) ; mašā i ‘marcher’ ; daxala u ‘entrer’ (agent humain) ; akala u ‘manger’ (alors que šariba a ‘boire’ est, comme attendu, de schème faila) ; lamasa a ‘toucher’ et raā a ‘voir’ (mais samia a ‘entendre’ relève de faila) . . . – faala médio-passifs : zahaqa a ‘périr’, ‘s’évanouir, disparaître’ ; waqaa a ‘tomber’ ou ‘se trouver’, ‘être situé’ (pour un lieu, une ville, etc.) ; dahaba a ‘s’en aller’ (sujet grammatical non humain) ; fasada u et i ‘se corrompre’, ‘pourrir’ (adj. fāsid, fasīd). 4.3.4
Dispersion et régularité dans le schème faʚala
Les exemples ci-dessus montrent qu’on trouve parmi les verbes en faala toutes les catégories et propriétés sémantiques associées aux deux autres schèmes. À la dispersion formelle présentée au début de ce travail semble donc répondre une dispersion sémantique équivalente, dont on constate à l’examen qu’elle ne semble pas pouvoir être réduite à des corrélats formels ou à des glissements sémantiques. Une grande régularité sémantique peut toutefois être observée : les verbes à diathèse externe apparaissent exclusivement dans le schème faala. Cette zone de stabilité est, selon toute vraisemblance, rendue possible par l’orientation particulière du glissement sémantique qui permet à un verbe à diathèse externe de devenir un verbe à diathèse interne ou un verbe médio-passif lorsque le procès verbal ‘revient’ sur l’agent ou sur le sujet grammatical, ou, selon la formule de Benveniste, quand le sujet devient “intérieur au procès” (1950/1966), exemples : – wadaa a ‘poser’, ‘déposer’ est un verbe à diathèse externe : l’agent effectue l’action d’imprimer à un objet le mouvement correspondant. Le même verbe prend le sens à diathèse interne de ‘accoucher’, qui peut être soit intransitif, soit transitif (Coran 3 : 36 et 46 : 15). L’agent devient, dans ce cas, le lieu du procès. De même, dans h amala i, le
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sens à diathèse externe ‘porter’ (un objet . . .) devient, avec une diathèse interne : ‘porter [un enfant]’, ‘devenir’ ou ‘être enceinte’. – Le verbe wasˢala i ‘joindre’, ‘unir’ une chose à une autre (avec la prép. bi-) est, dans son sens premier, à diathèse externe ; il est transitif à un double objet (de manière, respectivement, directe et indirecte). Au sens de ‘être uni’ à quelqu’un par un lien de parenté, d’amitié . . . et de ‘fréquenter assidûment’ quelqu’un, l’agent est en même temps l’un des deux objets du procès : le verbe est alors à diathèse interne et transitif (à un seul objet). Ces exemples, qui s’ajoutent à ceux qui ont été présentés au § 4.3.2, illustrent un processus qui opère dans un sens, le sujet grammatical ou l’agent devenant le lieu du procès (comme dans wadˢaʚa et hˢ amala) ou l’objet de celui-ci (comme dans wasˢala). On peut en revanche formuler l’hypothèse que le glissement sémantique de la diathèse interne vers la diathèse externe n’est pas possible, compte-tenu des données de l’arabe : une fois le sujet ‘impliqué’ dans le procès, le verbe conserve cette propriété sémantique. Le passage de la diathèse interne (exemple : jalasa i ‘s’asseoir’) à une diathèse externe s’opère en construisant un autre verbe, de même racine, mais de schème différent, ainsi : ʙajlasa ‘faire asseoir’ (schème IV, ʙaf ʚala, de valeur causative-factitive). Le passage d’un verbe d’état caractéristique à un verbe à diathèse interne se produit également en changeant de schème, ainsi : latˢufa u ‘être ou devenir gentil’ ou ‘subtil’ est de schème faʚula ; latˢafa u ‘traiter quelqu’un avec gentillesse’, de schème faʚala, est à diathèse interne, la gentillesse affectant l’agent. Ces données d’observation permettent donc de formuler une hypothèse de portée descriptive.
5. Structure de la relation entre sens et forme dans les schèmes simples La dispersion de la relation entre sens et forme dans les schèmes du verbe simple n’est donc pas irréductible. Les raisons de cette dispersion ne sont pas, me semble-t-il, à chercher dans la ‘détérioration’ d’un ‘schéma originel’ ou d’un ‘proto-schéma’ qui entrerait en cohérence avec celui des relations formelles entre les deux paradigmes de la conjugaison objet de la figure 1. S’il paraît raisonnable de partir d’un proto-schéma
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présentant sur le mode hypothétique la relation entre sens et forme des schèmes du verbe simple dans son principe, il est essentiel de ne pas s’arrêter à cette hypothèse. Celle-ci est fondée sur l’idée que la relation sens forme dans les schèmes serait essentiellement, voire originellement, de nature bijective. Or je montrerai plus loin que ce n’est guère le cas. 5.1 Le ‘proto-schéma’, à reconsidérer, des relation entre sens et forme dans les schèmes simples Le principe de ce proto-schéma associerait, de manière exclusive, la valeur sémantique des verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique au schème faʚula, celle des verbes à diathèse interne ou médio-passifs à faʚila, et celle des verbes à diathèse externe à faʚala : Schème
Sens grammatical
faʚula
Verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique (état ou acquisition d’état)
faʚila
Verbes à diathèse interne ou médio-passifs
faʚala
Verbes à diathèse externe
FIGURE 3 LES RELATIONS ENTRE SENS ET FORME DANS LE VERBE SIMPLE, CONSIDÉRÉES DE MANIÈRE HYPOTHÉTIQUE DANS LEUR ‘PRINCIPE’
Toutes les relations ci-dessus sont bijectives (ce qui est représenté par une flèche à deux têtes ). Il est peu vraisemblable qu’un tel système ait jamais existé en l’état, car, en sus d’inéluctables transformations morphophonologiques, des glissements sémantiques d’une catégorie à l’autre et divers effets de figement se sont nécessairement fait jour dès les toutes premières époques de la langue. Un tel glissement est déjà perceptible, dans la figure 3, dans le fait que les verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique peuvent se réaliser comme des verbes d’acquisition d’état, qui sont médio-passifs. Or les verbes en faʚila peuvent également correspondre à des médio-passifs. C’est donc plus à une reconstruction hypothétique du principe qui gouverne ces relations qu’à une reconstitution diachronique que ce schéma nous convie. Ce principe est à reconsidérer de deux points de vue : il masque l’arbre conceptuel des notions qui le sous-tendent (§ 5.2) ; il est mis en défaut par les grandes lignes de glissements sémantiques ou de modifications formelles observables dans les schèmes simples (§ 5.3).
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L’arbre conceptuel des notions incluses dans cette structure
Conceptuellement, les grandes notions qui nous ont permis d’étudier les sens grammaticaux des schèmes simples ne sont pas à mettre sur le même plan : comme on l’a vu plus haut, les verbes à diathèse interne (ou moyens) et médio-passifs d’un côté, et les verbes à diathèse externe de l’autre sont dans une relation d’opposition. Or, les uns et les autres peuvent correspondre à un événement ou à un processus, mais non à un état – opposition fondamentale que masquait la distinction couramment répandue entre ‘verbes d’action’ et ‘verbes d’état’. L’ensemble constitué par les verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique s’oppose d’une part aux verbes médio-passifs – qui incluent les verbes d’acquisition d’état caractéristique ou non –, et aux verbes et à diathèse interne ou externe de l’autre. L’agentivité enfin opère elle même une partition entre les verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique, dans lesquels cette propriété est neutralisée, et les verbes médio-passifs, qui sont non-agentifs. Par contraste, les verbes à diathèse interne ou externe sont, selon le cas, entièrement ou partiellement agentifs. Ces oppositions sont résumées dans l’arbre conceptuel suivant : notion aspectuelle d’état (agentivité neutralisée)
Verbes à valeur d’état caractéristique
FIGURE 4
notions aspectuelles d’événement ou de processus non agentivité
Verbes médio-passifs ( y compris d’acquisition d’état)
agentivité entière ou partielle diathèse interne
diathèse externe
Verbes à diathèse interne
Verbes à diathèse externe
LES VALEURS SÉMANTIQUES DE BASE DES VERBES DE SCHÈME SIMPLE, ARBRE CONCEPTUEL
Conventions : Les propriétés sémantiques sont en caractères gras ; les catégories sémantiques des verbes du schème simple sont en italiques. On notera qu’en raison de phénomènes de polysémie, un même verbe peut appartenir à des catégories sémantiques différentes : les propriétés ci-dessus peuvent donc correspondre soit à des catégories lexicales, soit à des occurrences en contexte.
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5.3 Glissements sémantiques à l’œuvre dans la relation sens-forme dans les schèmes simples Si l’on part de l’aspect formel des schèmes, on observe que : (a) tous les verbes en faʚula correspondent à un verbe à adjectif d’état caractéristique (valeurs d’état caractéristique ou d’acquisition de celui-ci) ; (b) presque tous les verbes en faʚila relèvent de l’une ou l’autre des valeurs du verbe à diathèse interne ou du médio-passif. Ce schème inclut par ailleurs un sous-ensemble, réduit en nombre, de verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique ; (c) les verbes en faʚala, cependant, n’appartiennent que partiellement aux verbes à diathèse externe. Si l’on part au contraire du sens grammatical, on observe que : (d) tous les verbes à diathèse externe sont inclus dans le schème faʚala ; (e) les verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique sont en contrepartie représentés dans les trois schèmes ; (f) les verbes moyens et médio-passifs sont répartis entre les schèmes faʚila et faʚala (dans le schème faʚula, les verbes d’acquisition d’état sont médio-passifs). Les deux relations (a) et (d) sont de la forme ‘tous les . . . sont . . .’ ; la relation (b) est du type ‘presque tous les . . . sont . . .’. Ce qui précède peut être représenté par la figure suivante : Schème faʚula faʚila faʚala FIGURE 5
Sens grammatical • Verbes à adjectif d’état caractéristique (état ou acquisition d’état) • Verbes à diathèse interne ou médio-passifs • Verbes à diathèse externe LES RELATIONS ENTRE SENS ET FORME DANS LE VERBE SIMPLE
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Conventions : – Les flèches dont le trait est doublé ( ) indiquent une relation mettant en jeu la totalité des éléments de l’ensemble considéré. La convention se lit : pour tout schème ou sens grammatical situé au début de la flèche, le sens ou le schème est celui qui est indiqué par la pointe de la flèche (cf. section 4.1). – La flèche interrompue de trait doublé ( ) indique une relation mettant en jeu la quasi totalité des éléments de l’ensemble considéré, avec toutefois un ensemble d’exceptions clairement identifiable. La flèche – il n’y en a qu’une – se lit : pour presque tout schème situé au début de la flèche, le sens grammatical est celui qui est indiqué par la pointe de la flèche (voir section 4.2). – Les flèches en pointillés ( ) indiquent une relation qui ne concerne qu’un nombre réduit et fermé de verbes, dans l’inventaire duquel apparaissent des contraintes morphologiques, comme par exemple dans les verbes d’état caractéristique du schème faʚala (§ 4.2.1 et 4.3.1). – La flèche en trait plein ( ) signale une relation entre sens grammatical et schème qui concerne un nombre important et en tout état de cause ouvert de verbes. Ces verbes sont produits par un processus identifiable de glissement sémantique (§ 4.3.2 et 4.3.3).
6. Le décrochage partiel entre sens et forme : une relation non bijective Le décrochage partiel entre sens et forme illustré ci-dessus est dû au jeu de deux types de contraintes : formelles (incluses dans les flèches transversales en pointillé) et sémantiques (flèche transversale en trait plein). Pour comprendre la structure générale à laquelle on est confronté, il faut tenir compte du fait que la relation entre les schèmes et leur sens grammatical n’obéit par à une relation bijective. On rencontre en effet, soit des relations schème sens grammatical, comme dans faʚula et faʚila, soit une relation schème sens grammatical, comme dans faʚala, mais non la relation bijective (à deux sens) schème sens grammatical, comme le laisserait croire une conception naïve du langage. Un tel décrochage est fréquent dans les langues : on le rencontre, typiquement, dans la relation entre les actes de langage (Searle) et leurs
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réalisations dans une langue donnée. En reconnaissance, il est également très fréquent dans les valeurs aspectuo-temporelles associées en contexte à une forme verbale : une même forme supportant plusieurs interprétations, c’est la mise en rapport de celle-ci avec divers indices contextuels qui permet au processus de compréhension d’opérer (Desclés et al. 1998 ; Desclés et Guentchéva, à paraître). Le repérage d’indices est particulièrement important dans le processus de lecture en arabe, l’écriture courante étant dépourvue des signes diacritiques secondaires dits de “vocalisation”. Dans la constitution du lexique arabe, la relation entre les sens grammaticaux associés à un schème donné et les sens lexicaux qui s’adjoignent à un nom ou à un verbe est soumise à l’effet du “principe de figement lexical” (PFL), qui soumet le sens grammatical des schèmes, dès le niveau du mot, à des écarts sémantiques (Dichy 2003, 204–208). Dans le verbe simple, des glissements sémantiques tels que ceux qui s’instaurent entre les valeurs de verbe d’état (‘être x’) et d’acquisition d’état (‘devenir x’) ou celui qui permet à certains verbes à diathèse externe de prendre une valeur de diathèse interne, soumettent les relations entre le sens grammatical des schèmes et leur forme à de fortes pressions. Le ‘protoschéma’ de ces relations (figure 3) persiste toutefois dans le schéma des relations observables (figure 5), mais avec des connexions entre sens et forme qui, n’étant pas bijectives, s’inscrivent dans la structure générale des rapports entre le sens et la forme que l’on observe dans le processus de compréhension du langage humain.
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neur d’Anouar Louca et André Roman. Damas : Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 269–287. Wehr, Hans, John M. Cowan (ed). 1979. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (ArabicEnglish), edited by J. M. Cowan, 4th edition. Wiesbaden : O. Harrassowtiz. Wright, W. 1896–98. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Réimpr. Beyrouth : Librairie du Liban, 1974.
FEATURING AS A DISAMBIGUATION TOOL IN ARABIC NLP Everhard Ditters University of Nijmegen
1. Introduction Featuring is the affixation of, general as well as language dependent, ‘second-level’ labels (such as gender1 or ±animate) to ‘first-level’ nonterminals (such as noun, verb or particle) in a formal description of the syntax and semantics of a specific natural language. Such a formal grammar may serve as input for the automated processing of the natural language (NLP) concerned: Modern Standard Arabic. About 98% of Modern Standard Arabic texts, whether in printed or electronic form, are represented in a non-vocalized shorthand form. The analysis of this kind of data, automated or otherwise, has to cope with an exponential combinatorial ambiguity unless: – one considers the units of linguistic description beyond word level such as constituent, sentence, paragraph or even text-level; – one combines this description with an adequate, coherent, consistent, and as exhaustive as possible, featuring system for analysis purposes. Therefore, our objective is: the design of a featuring system as a tool for the disambiguation2 of undesired analysis results in the automated processing of Arabic text data.3
1 Feature names and feature values are represented in the text in Italics. We use two types of features: inherent and inherited features. The former represents the intrinsic semantic value of the entry concerned. The latter follows as modifier the entry it modifies according to language dependent concord and agreement rules. 2 We use the term ‘disambiguation’ for attempts to obtain a single and most probable syntactically and semantically correct analysis of input data in an automated processing environment. 3 Language phenomena such as homonymy, polysemy and even antinomy should also be controlled by means of adequate featuring.
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A comprehensive inventory of general or universal linguistic features is not (yet) available for Modern Standard Arabic. This is mainly due to the complexity of the description of semantic features. Usually, linguistic theories and descriptive language models tend to become language independent. However, we prefer—while exploiting current, language independent linguistic theories and descriptive models—to describe the features that are specific for the language under consideration. If the ‘linguistic model chosen for the description’ may have some impact on the organization of the featuring system, it remains possible to use heuristics and to refine the formal description any time we consider it worthwhile in order to avoid undesired ambiguities. So we are free to insert or to combine features such as agreement and concord,4 in order to account for regularities, relationships and dependencies occurring between different constituents, or between different elements within a constituent. Considering Modern Standard Arabic language description, we distinguish three layers of featuring: a morphological, a syntactic and a semantic layer. They describe the form, the function and the meaning of elements used in a, agreed upon by convention and expandable by language evolution, system of information interchange, tailored to the needs of users of any natural language system. This tri-partition roughly coincides with traditional classifications into orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, stylistics, discourse, and even semantics.5 A description of the Arabic phonemes for analysis purposes does not require a differentiation in terms of their production characteristics. A listing of phonemes (26 consonants, three glides [semi-consonants or semi-vowels],6 and three vowels [in a short and long variety]), together with a number of graphemic alternatives, constitutes the basis for our phonemic description of Modern Standard Arabic.
4 We distinguish between concord and agreement and reserve the latter to describe regular patterns in relationship between an explicit agent and its predicate in a verbal sentence (Sv) involving gender (Ditters 1992, 169, n. 13; Kihm 2006, 14–15; cf. also: Bahloul 2006, 43–48). We use the term concord for feature-value sharing within the noun phrase (NP) between the head and its modifiers, as well as in the nominal sentence (Sn) for the marked relation between the topic and comment, involving, if applicable, definiteness, gender, number, and case. 5 We are definitely not trying to introduce a formalized dynamic description of the Arabic concept of the world. We rather follow a static semantic approach using finite enumeration of pertinent (static) semantic features. See also subsection 4 below. 6 For coherency within our description, we adopt Sībawayhi’s inventory of 29 Arabic consonants (Hārūn 1982, 4, 431).
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The introduction of a feature such as verbtype may well account for alternative realizations of the finite forms of so-called ‘weak’ verbs. A feature like complement structure7 controls the number (argument-1 [arg-1], [arg-2], [arg-3] etc.) as well as the format (noun phrase (NP), prepositional phrase (PP), complement clause (CCL) etc.) of possible complements of a lexical verbal entry. By means of predicate-subject and predicate-object matching features we are in a position to considerably refine our formal description and to distinguish, for example, between ordinary and metaphorical language use. However, for the disambiguation of analysis results our main task at this moment remains: to draft a general pattern for nominal and verbal featuring; and to compose a basic set of (semantic) features and feature-clusters embedded in an adequate description of verbal complement structure. A remark about ‘the linguistic model chosen for the description’ may be useful. We still opt for a Phrase Structure Grammar (psg) model based on immediate constituency (ic), but enlarged with a second level of description to account for prevailing relationships and dependencies within a Modern Standard Arabic sentence.8 We even foresee the introduction of a third level of description, grouping together pertinent semantic features with information about their characteristic form of realization at syntax level. Inspired by Saad’s (1982) syntactic-semantic study of the Classical Arabic verb in Case Grammar (cg) terms, we will use a number of Fillmore’s (1968) cg ideas as well as later developments for the sub-categorization and patterning of verbs in Modern Standard Arabic.9 Finally some words about the processing environment. We use the agfl-system,10 a parser generator for research and applications in 7 To be elaborated upon later at syntax level when speaking about: tri-, bi-, mono-, and intransitive verbs or the reduction to a one-argument realization used to uniquely emphasize the semantic load of the verbal entry ; and at the semantic level while speaking about: semantic feature hierarchy; the minimal and the maximal realization of complement structure; compulsory and optional complement structure realization; case roles; and verb sub-categorization. 8 For other applications such as information retrieval (IR) or text-summarizing (TS), we use a Dependency Grammar (DG) approach since it appears to express more adequately semantic properties in terms of nodes and relations between nodes (Ditters and Koster 2004). 9 Only recently we decided to include al-Saffār (1979) in our research for his semantico-syntactic features in Case-Grammar terms. 10 For more information about the AGFL formalism, now in its 2.4th Windows version, see Koster (1991) and www.cs.ru.nl/agfl. For more information about the formal description of Arabic, see Ditters 1992; 2003a; 2003b; and forthcoming.
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nlp. The acronym refers to Affix Grammars over Finite Lattices.11 The parsers generated by the system are top-down recursive backup parsers (Koster 1974, Meijer 1986), based on non-deterministic concepts and the unification-principle (Nederhoff 1993). The agfl-formalism is part of the family of two-level grammars: a context-free grammar is augmented with set-valued features for expressing agreement between syntactic categories. The formalism is, in principle, suited for describing morphological and syntactic structure, as well as finite semantics in terms of ±animate, ±concrete, ±human, ±volition and many others. We discuss feature-sets at morphologic (§ 2), syntactic (§ 3), and semantic level (§ 4). We end with a conclusion (§ 5) and a list of references used (§ 6).12
2. Morphology Strictly speaking, morphology relates to the formal description of the individual Arabic parts of speech: verb, noun and particle, and, if needed or useful, of their differentiation into a further sub-categorization.13 In a broader sense, morphology also comprises feature names and values such as: aspect, case, definiteness, derivation, gender, number, person, tense, voice, and many other features used at syntax level. Morphology, finally, has to account for punctuation marks and other textual ‘noise’, normally more conveniently stored in the lexicon module. Literary Arabic has been described as a predominantly root and pattern language type.14 Moreover, vowel-pattern variation combined
11 Here, the term affix, a variable with a finite set of values, has to be taken in its formal and not in its linguistic sense. 12 Within the morphological, syntactic and semantic sections, we use the traditional Arabic language parts-of-speech (POS) differentiation into noun, verb and particle as headings for the subsections. In these subsections we only discuss the, for us, relevant features. 13 Cf. Sībawayhi’s tri-partition (Hārūn 1982, 1:12) and the subdivision of POS into 7 classes by alSāqī (1977, 214). 14 Cohen (1970, 49 ff.) has been one of the first to describe, for automated Arabic language processing, a frame of mostly three, sometimes four and rarely five, consonants or semi-consonants filled with a combination of vowels (including the absence of a vowel at a certain slot) expressing semantic differentiations to the global meaning of the consonantal root combination. Elements of a small subset of the phoneme inventory are used to produce other derivates of the base frame, whether of the category ‘verb,’ ‘noun’ or ‘adjective,’ with their own specific variation on the global meaning of the consonantal root combination.
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with the insertion of a finite set of auxiliary phonemes triggers a more or less ‘regular’, more or less ‘predictable’ change in the semantic load of the base root meaning. The Arabic phoneme inventory has extensively been described elsewhere.15 As far as the consonants are concerned, the description comprises a cluster of features referring to their way and place of production, as well as to their marking for velarization and degree of voicing. As far as the vowels are concerned, they have been described by their place and the openness of that place, set out against the position of the tongue in their production process. For analysis purposes, we have the Arabic grapheme inventory with variant scriptures for alternatives occurring in initial, median, end or independent position. In order to account for fully, partially or nonvocalized Arabic input data, the listing of the Arabic vowel graphemes will include an empty vowel realization. 2.1
Verbs
Assigning morphological features and feature values to verbs, we account for: the realization of finite verb occurrences on the basis of number and place of the root consonants (radical, r1,16 r2, r3, and less frequent: r4 and r5); the realization of the vowel (a, i, u) of the second consonant (C2) of the base (Stem I) verb realization in perfect and mood aspect (vowperf, vowimperf ); and the realization of prefixed or infixed vowels (vow or sukūn). Morphological features, attached to elements of a finite verb realization at syntactic level (see also § 3.1 below), affect values concerning: aspect, tense,17 voice, person, gender and number. For the description of a finite 15
Cf. Fleisch mainly used three, sometimes four, features to define the elements of the consonantal system, which ends up in a 28 u 4 matrix (1961, 1:56–65) or a 16 u 5 matrix (1968, 19); Versteegh (2001, 20) used a 9 u 6 matrix; Saad (1982, 6) used a 7 u 9 matrix for the consonants and a 4 u 2 matrix for the vowels. See also the phoneme featuring of Bohas and Saguer (2007, 255 ff.) in this volume. 16 A listing of the Arabic phonemic (consonant and vowel) system is given in the lexical module(s). For analysis purposes, a single description of the r1 suffices. For generation purposes, features describing occurrence incompatibilities between an r1, r2 and r3 (r4, r5) should be provided for. 17 As Badawi et al. (2004, 362 ff.) do, we distinguish between a perfect and a nonperfect (mood) value of the feature aspect of the verb. In combination with modal and temporal verbs and/or adverbials a complete range of temporal and aspectual differentiations (±tenses) can be described (see on aspect and tense also Eisele 2006, 195–201; Bahloul 2006, 506; and Reese 2006, 50–53).
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verb form of the so-called ‘weak’ verbs with alternative realizations in its conjugation, a variable verbtype accounts for alternative verb realizations. To account for the differentiation in base and derived stems we use the feature derivation. With that we can list, in the form of a context-free metagrammar, the following feature names or ‘non-terminal affixes’ (in capital letters) with their finite-set of values or ‘terminal affixes’ (in lower case), connected to a finite verb form:18 ASPECT MOOD TENSE VOICE PERSON GENDER NUMBER VERBTYPE
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
DERIVATION DERIVED RADICALS R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 VOW VOWPAT VOWIMPERF VOWPERF
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
perfect; MOOD. indicative; subjunctive; jussive; imperative.19 temporal; modal. active; passive. first; second; third. feminine; masculine. singular; dual; plural. r1r2r3; r2=r3; r1=w; r1=y; r2=a; r2=w; r2=y; r3=w; r3=y; r1=w, r3=y; r2=w, r3=y; r1=hamza; r2=hamza; r3=hamza. base; DERIVED. ii ; iii ; iv ; v; vi; vii; viii; ix; x. three; four; five. alphabet. R1. R1. R1. R1. vowel; sukūn. VOW. VOW. VOW.
18 We will use the following conventions for the formal description of features and the finite-set of values at the second level of description which closely follow the AGFL convention: – feature names are written in upper case; – feature values are written in lower case; – the rewrite symbol is a double colon ‘::’; – a single left-hand entry is rewritten in one ore more feature names and/or feature values at the right-hand side; – alternative realizations at right-hand side are separated by a ‘semicolon’; – options in the right-hand side are separated by a ‘vertical bar’; – a rule will be closed by a period ‘.’. 19 The archaic energetic-1 and energetic-2 finite verb forms are not accounted for in our formal description of Modern Standard Arabic.
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Nouns
Features, at the morphological level assigned to elements of the category noun, concern variables such as: person, gender and number.20 For the description of nominal plural building, it is worthwhile to differentiate between an external and internal formation. Besides person, gender and number, the feature case is a pertinent part of the declension system, in Modern Standard Arabic closely connected with the ‘type’ of declension. For the description of a differentiation in base and derived stems for deverbal nouns (active and passive participles, infinitives, nouns of time, place, doing an action once, or referring to instruments used in an occurrence), we use the feature derivation. By means of morphological base rules, we describe the subset denominatives of the category noun, such as: individuality nouns, multitude nouns, vessel nouns, relation nouns, abstract quality nouns and diminutives.21 The feature variable determination with values as definite, indefinite or morphologically ‘neutral’ is another inherent or inherited (at syntax level) characteristic of elements of the category noun. Elements of the sub-classes demonstratives, personal pronouns, proper nouns, and relative pronouns are inherently definite. Elements of the sub-classes indefinite and interrogative pronouns definitely possess an inherent indefinite value. As far as the ‘definite article’ is concerned, we follow Wright’s interpretation of the Arabic grammatical tradition in describing this article on the basis of its deictic and not of its generic value as a sub-class of the demonstratives.22 Furthermore, elements of the sub-classes adjectives, common nouns, elatives, numerals, and quantifiers may, or may not, receive a definite or an indefinite value depending on their function and occurrence in phrases at syntax level. So we list the following morphological feature rules for a noun: CASE DECLENSION
:: nominative; NOMINATIVE.23 :: invariable; diptote; triptote.
20 Since identical looking feature values are attached to distinct non-terminal names (different category labels), we can reuse these feature names without any risk for undesired ambiguities. 21 Cf. Wright 1974, 1:109–177. 22 Cf. Wright 1974, 1:264–270. See also Fleisch 1961, 1:339–347. 23 The AGFL formalism allows for the use of logical markers such as ‘+’, ‘-’, and others in combination with feature names and values.
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2.3
:: individuality; multitude; vessel; relation; quality; diminutive. :: base; DERIVED. :: ii; iii; iv; v; vi; vii; viii; ix; x. :: definite; indefinite. :: actpart; paspart; infinitive; time; place; once; instrument. :: feminine; masculine. :: genitive; accusative. :: singular; dual; PLURAL. :: first; second; third. :: external; internal.
Particles
According to the traditional description24 of particles we may distinguish between: adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions.25 A formal description should include: PARTICLE TYPE
2.3.1
:: ADVERB; CONJUNCTION; INTERJECTION ; PREPOSITION.
Adverbs
A for us still useful sub-categorization of adverbs, at morphological level, is that in invariable, as far as case marking is concerned, and bound and free forms, as far as the orthographic representation is concerned. ADVERB
2.3.2
:: bound; free; invariable.
Conjunctions
As far as the coordinating particles are concerned, a distinction should be made in cumulative and selective particles because of the importance of number value in concord and agreement phenomena at syntax level. We then divide the selective particles into: alternative, consecutive, explicative, exclusive, inclusive, restrictive, and successive elements.26 This sub-categorization will be extensively used at the next higher level of description. 24
Cf. Wright, 1974, 1:282–296. CF. Badawi et al. 2004, 174–219; Cantarino, 1974–5, 2:253 ff.; El-Ayoubi et al. 2003, 1:2, 275–460. 26 Cf. Ditters 1992, 222–228. 25
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For the conditional particles we prepare their application at syntax level with a differentiation as to the nature of the condition in: possible, real and unreal. CONJUNCTION COORDINATING SELECTIVE CONDITIONAL
2.3.3
:: COORDINATING; CONDITIONAL. :: cumulative; SELECTIVE. :: alternative; consecutive; exclusive; explicative; inclusive; restrictive; successive. :: possible; real; unreal.
Interjections
Elements of this sub-section of particles, rather close to discourse and formalized language use, can, as far the morphological level is concerned, be divided into vocatives and exclamations.27 However, we also have to decide whether or not ‘proverbs’ and ‘frozen expressions’ should be lodged among the interjections and labeled as adverbs or adverbials at syntax level. In any case we also like to mention here the category of formulaic greetings.28 INTERJECTION
2.3.4
:: vocative; exclamation; f-expressions; proverbs; greetings.
Prepositions
The standard differentiation of prepositions at this level is into a primary and a secondary group. The secondary group consists of an open set of noun-derived entries, marked for their function by means of a definite accusative case value and, at syntax level, engaged in a ‘construct state’-like link with the prepositional complement, itself marked with genitive case value (NPgen). The primary group comprises a finite-set of non-derived entries, some of which are, in their orthographic representation, directly bound to the prepositional complement while others are unbound.29 PREPOSITION PRIMARY
:: PRIMARY; secondary. :: bound; unbound.
27 A still poorly described domain of ‘frozen’ or ‘set’ expressions like: greetings, insults, proverbs and similar insertions should be included here. Cf. Bergman 2007, 136–137. 28 Cf. Elzeiny 2007, 202–207. 29 Cf. El-Ayoubi et al., 2003, I:2:574–592.
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At syntax level, elements of the earlier mentioned word categories and sub-classes are assembled into constituents, labeled: verb phrase (vp), noun phrase (np), and particle phrase, sub-categorized according to the element realizing the compulsory head function.30 These phrases realize specific compulsory and optional functions within the two main units of linguistic description at sentence level: the nominal (sn) and the verbal (sv) sentence.31 It may be clear, that the combinatorial behavior of elements within a constituent, and that of constituents at sentence level, comprising mutual relationships and dependencies, is controlled by features and feature-condition rules. In Modern Standard Arabic text data one distinguishes within the nominal sentence (sn) the compulsory topic and comment functions (Figure 1a). In a verbal sentence (sv) we are dealing with an compulsory predicate function and several optional complements (Figure 1b). Optional sentence adverbials can occur in both sentence types. A np with a nominative case value for the head (npnom) always32 realizes the topic function.33 The comment function is realized by: a np34 with nominative case value for the head (npnom); an adjp with nominative case value for the head (adjpnom); a vp; a pp; or an adverb phrase (advp). A vp always fills in a sv the predicate slot. Sentence adverbials (sadv) are realized by: a np with accusative case value of the head (npacc); a pp; an advp; a cp; or a ccl.35
30 As mentioned in § 1, a particle phrase could be subdivided into a prepositional phrase (PP), an adverbial phrase (ADVP), an interjectional phrase (IP), and (to remain consistent) a conjunctive phrase (CP), or a complement clause (CCL). 31 Distinct concord and agreement phenomena mark a productive syntactic (and semantic) distinction between a nominal and a verbal sentence type in MSA. Discourse sensitive emphasis on the topic agent should be maintained, side by side with the possibility of emphasizing the action performance of, sometimes, the same agent in typical VSO-oriented approaches. Cf. Ditters 2001, 31–37. 32 The optional occurrence of a particle, like ʙinna with an emphasizing semantic load and governing its complement by an accusative case value, only represents an alternative realization within the base structure. 33 An alternative topic realization is a CCL (complement clause), introduced by the emphatic particle ʙinna, governing the head of the following NP in the accusative case. 34 A sub-class of the nouns is constituted by different subsets of adjectives. We should add the adjective phrase (ADJP) with a nominalized adjective in head position as possible alternative for a head or modifier function in the sentence. 35 For detailed structural descriptions of phrases in MSA, see Ditters 1992, chapters III and IV, and for a formal description of sentence structures see Ditters forthcoming.
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In Figure 1a are listed the function slots within the sn, as well as the categories able to fill these slots. One may easily see how many different realizations of a nominal sentence are accounted for in this diagram where alternatives are represented within square brackets and optional elements within parentheses. FIGURE 1A
SLOTS AND FILLERS WITHIN THE SN Sn
Slots
TOPIC
COMMENT
(Sadv)36
Fillers
[NPnom]37 [NPacc]38
[ADJPnom] [ADVP] [CCL] [NPnom] [PCCL] [PP] [VP]
[ADVP] [CCL]39 [NPacc] [PP]
Figure 2
In Figure 1b are listed the function slots within the sv, as well as the categories able to fill these slots. One may easily see how many different realizations of a verbal sentence are accounted for in this diagram By means of variables as predicate-subject match (psmatch) and topiccomment match (tcmatch) we describe regular patterns in concord and agreement between the elements involved in a sv or sn, checking at the same time the matching of a verb-argument-1 relation as well as the compatibility of the elements involved in a topic-comment occurrence. In the same way we control the occurrence of other argument realizations of a verbal entry by means of a predicate-object match (pomatch).
36 The AGFL-formalism allows for free sequence variation at any level of description (this means for us: at function and category level) of entries within the formal description and processing. Therefore we do not need to list all mathematically possible realizations. 37 An alternative realization in the form of a CCL filler in a topic slot, as recorded from Classical Arabic data (Qurʙān 2:184): ʙan tasˢūmū (topic) xayrun la-kum (comment), is, for its poor frequency in modern text data, not accounted for in our formal description of the Sn. 38 We include this alternative realization to account for an absolute negator-head combination in topic position (see below § 3.2). 39 In our formal description of Modern Standard Arabic we also include under the variable name CCL the protasis (the condition posed) in conditional and hypothetical sentences.
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SLOTS AND FILLERS WITHIN THE SV Sv
Slots
PREDICATE
(Sadv)
Fillers
VP
[ADVP] [CCL] [NPacc] [PP]
Figure 3
3.1
Verb Phrase
At an early stage in the Arabic grammatical tradition, regular patterns in syntactic behavior and the meaning of the elements involved in verbal constructions brought grammarians to a general description of the verbal complement structure40 and the grouping together of verbs.41 Briefly summarizing this tradition we can say, that a finite-verb realization (marked for perfect aspect, indicative, imperative mood or their alternatives)42 functions as the compulsory head of a vp. In a minimum vp configuration, an implicit agent provides values for gender, number and person of the verbal head. Particles may precede the head realizing optional pre-modifying (prem) functions such as a modal, aspectual or temporal modifier, or carrying a negation value (neg). In a maximum vp configuration, an explicit agent, objects (compl) as well as other optional adverbial (adv pom) or peripheral (phr pom) modifiers may follow the head. The general structure of a vp is presented in Figure 2, where alternatives are included in square brackets and optional elements in parentheses:
40
Within the grammatical tradition grammarians spoke about: mutaaddin (transitive) and ġayr mutaaddin (intransitive), further differentiated into and complemented with: maf ūl bi-hi (direct object), maf ūl mutlaq (absolute object), maf ūl fī-hi (object of time or place), maf ūl la-hu or li-ajli-hi (object of cause or reason), maf ūl maʚa-hu (concomitative object), hāl (circumstantial object), tamyīz (object of specification). Cf. Sībawayhi’s al-Kitāb. Hārūn, 1:34–54, 297–310, 367–384; see also Fleisch 1968, 177–185. 41 We mention briefly: incomplete verbs (al-af āl an-nāqisa), the verbs of hope (af āl ar-rağā), the verbs of beginning (af āl aš-šurū), the verbs of the heart (af āl al-qulūb), the verbs of praise and blame (af ‘āl al-madh wa-d -d amm), the verbs of approximation (af ‘āl al-muqāraba), and the verbs of esteem (af ‘āl at-tafdīl). Cf. a.o.: Ayoub 1980; Cuvalay 1994, 1996; see also Wright, 2:47–52. 42 The negation of the perfect aspect by means of the particle lam followed by a finite verb form in the jussive or the negation particle lan governing a finite verb form in the subjunctive.
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GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE VP43 VP
Slots
(PREM)
(NEG)
Fillers
[ASP] [NEG PART] [MOD] [TMP]
HEAD
(COMPL)
VERB
[ADJPacc] [CCL] [NPnom] [NPacc] [PP] [VP]
(ADV POM) (PHR POM) ADVP [NPacc] [PP]
[ADJPacc] [NPacc] [PCCL] [PP] [VP]
An active or passive voice value of the verbal head, in combination with the variable transitivity44 (with values as intransitive or transitive), affects the realization of a verbal complement structure, not only in the number of compulsory or optional arguments, but also in the form of these arguments as fixed in the lexically given DNA-structure of the verbal entry concerned. With the term ‘form’ we here refer to the argument realization by means of a np with nominative case (npnom) for an explicit agent, a np with accusative case (npacc) for direct object(s) or its equivalent,45 and any subject or object attribute,46 a complement clause (ccl), a co-referential vp for verbal extension,47 a pp as prepositional object or its equivalent.48 Each finite verb occurrence in MSA, intransitive and transitive alike, has in its complement structure a slot for an implicit agent or argument1 realization in the form of a suffixed pronoun (in past tense) or a discontinuous pre- and suffixed pronoun combination (in present tense).
43
Ditters 1992, 286 ff. We prefer the term ‘transitivity,’ with the values: intransitive, transitive, bi-transitive and tri-transitive to the term ‘valency’ or valence since the latter is less apt to determine non-optional core meanings. 45 A complement clause (CCL) introduced by the particle ʙan or ʙanna. 46 In de form of an NPacc or an indefinite adjective phrase marked for accusative case value (ADJPindef,acc). 47 With the variable name verbal-extension we describe, in our formal grammar, the occurrence of co-referential verb clusters, sometimes called ‘auxiliaries,’ such as: incomplete verbs (kāna or laysa, ‘to be(come)’ or ‘not to be’); inceptive verbs (badaʙa, ‘to begin’ and the like); continuity verbs (istamarra, ‘to continue’ and the like); anticipation verbs (kāda, ‘to be on the point’ and the like). Cf. Haak 2006, Badawi et al. 2004, 422 ff. 48 A prepositional complement clause (PCCL) introduced by a preposition followed by the particle ʙan or ʙanna. 44
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Combined with an explicit agent in the form of a npnom, the finite verb realization immobilizes into a 3rd person singular realization liable to vary in gender value. For monotransitive verbs with a direct object in the form of a npacc, in arg-2 position, this argument will assume the arg-1 position in case of a passive voice value of the verbal head. The same holds for bitransitive or tritransitive verbs: the first npacc direct object will assume the arg-1 position in case of passive voice realization. We may summarize the verbal complement structure in Modern Standard Arabic in two tables. The first matches the features form, function, and transitivity against the number of possible completive arguments. Together with the semantic load of the verbal entry concerned, we have the actors for the predicate-subject (psmatch) and the predicate object matching (pomatch). TABLE 1
VERBAL COMPLEMENT STRUCTURE (COMPLETIVE) arg-1
arg-2
function agent v-extension transitivity intrans/trans intrans/trans form [NPnom] [VPi]
arg-3
arg-4
arg-5
object-1 object- 2 monotrans bitrans [NPacc] [ADJPindef,acc] [PPprep] [NPacc] [CCLʙan/ʙanna/ʙinna] [PPprep] [PCCLprep, ʙan/ʙanna]
arg-6
object-3 indirect object tritrans intrans/trans [NPacc] [PPprep] [ADJPindef,acc]
The following table (Table 2) presents, in a general way, slots and possible filler for (mainly circumstantial) elements occurring within the complement structure of a lexically given verbal entry. As far as the featuring is concerned, it is gradually being introduced in the form of subscripts to the phrasal heads at syntax level. TABLE 2
VERBAL COMPLEMENT STRUCTURE (CIRCUMSTANTIAL) arg-7
arg-8
arg-9
arg-10
arg-11
function situation absolute source goal time form [NPacc] [NPacc] [PPmin/ʚan] [PPprep] [NPacc,time] [CCLwa] [PPprep,time]
arg-12
arg-13
arg-14
place instrument result [NPacc,place] [PPprep] [NPacc] [PPprep,place] [PPprep]
For the description of predicate-subject and predicate-object relations in MSA (psmatch and pomatch), we have so far exploited the Arabic grammatical tradition. Coming to Modern Standard Arabic, we like to
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adopt, in the next section (§ 3.1), Saad’s work (1982, 20–26) in a ‘Case Grammar’ perspective for Classical Arabic. Some of the features linked with a lexical verbal entry are listed below: AGREEMENT [PSMATCH [POMATCH TRANSITIVITY MONOTRANS BITRANS TRITRANS
3.2
:: :: :: ::
+human; –human. ]49 ] intransitive; MONOTRANS; BITRANS; TRITRANS. :: acc; prep. :: acc2; accprep; prep2. :: acc3; acc2prep; accprep2; prep3.
Noun Phrase
We distinguish within the np one compulsory and several optional functions. Only a noun (or a nominalized adjective) can realize the compulsory head function. Among the optional functions we mention: negator (neg), a mutually exclusive predeterminer (predet) and postdeterminer (postdet), postmodifier (pom), and, for some head realizations, a complement (compl).50 In the following general structure of the np (Figure 3), optional functions are included in parentheses and mutually exclusive functions in square brackets. 51 Relationships and dependencies within the np are specified and controlled by features and feature-condition rules. In a neg-head combination it is the negative particle lā that imposes the unique occurrence of an indefinite common noun in head-position provided with a definite version of the accusative case value. Personal pronouns and proper nouns, interrogative and indefinite pronouns (of the subset-type: man and mā) in head-position, are inherently marked as definite and indefinite respectively, thus they may only occur with an optional pom.
49
These rules will be discussed later. For example: a masˢdar in head function with a subjective complement in the slot for postdeterminer (NPgen) and an objective complement in the slot for COMPL (NPacc), both realizations in the form of a suffixed pronoun thus realizing a postdet and a compl function: hˢubb-ī-hā = love-mine-her ‘my love for her.’ 51 In Figure 3 we have included neg among the reciprocally exclusive function realizations. However, here we underline the incompatibility of a predet and a postdet in a np. Cfr. the examples in Cantarino 1974, I:114; 1975, II:220–222), Badawi et al., 2004, 464–466. El-Ayoubi et al. (2001–2003, I:1–2) do not mention a neg; neither in the ‘Vorfeld der Nominalgruppe,’ nor in the ‘Nachfeld der Nominalgruppe.’ 50
382
everhard ditters FIGURE 3
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE NP52 NP
Slots
([NEG])
Fillers [NEG PARTlā]
([PREDET]) HEAD [ART]
NOUN
([POSTDET]) [NPgen]
(POM) (COMPL) [NP] [ADJP] [PP] [REL CL]
[PP] [NPacc]
Only (de)verbal nouns (those marked with acc, or acc2 for transitivity) as well as some nominalized adjectives in head-position may occur with a compl.53 Other relationships and dependencies concerning definiteness, person, gender, number, and case, will be discussed below. 3.2.1
Definiteness
Elements of the noun subsets proper nouns and personal pronouns have the value definite for definiteness with consequences for post-modifying elements at constituent and sentence level. Elements of the noun-subsets indefinite pronouns and interrogative pronouns have the value indefinite. Common nouns, (de)verbal nouns, and nominalized adjectives receive their value for definiteness by the occurrence of a predet or a postdet modifier. 3.2.2
Person
Only elements of the noun subset personal pronouns vary in their value for person ranging from first, second to third, while varying in number and case feature values. All elements of other noun subsets bear the fixed value third for the feature person. 3.2.3
Gender
Occurrences of the subsets proper nouns, personal pronouns, and common nouns possess a lexically given value for the feature gender, whether this
52
Ditters 1992, 163 ff. For a more detailed discussion about adjectives in the context of the ellipsis of the head of an NP and of nominalized adjectives see Ditters (forthcoming). 53
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is marked morphologically by a default null-value, by one of the feminine markers or not. Elements of the subsets indefinite and interrogative pronouns bear the default gender value masculine, but may, in retrospective and supported by the unification-principle of the agflformalism, receive an inherited feminine value provided by the context in which they occur beyond sentence level. At syntax level we may have to deal with the interference of semantic feature values such as ±animate, ±concrete, ±human, ±volition etc., here mainly related to as: concord and agreement phenomena. 3.2.4
Number
The singular and plural realization of elements of the subsets ‘proper nouns’, ‘personal pronouns’, and ‘common nouns’ are given lexically. A dual number value realization is normally the result of the application of a grammar-rule except for the personal pronouns. Only infinitives or masˢdars always have a singular number value. Apparent evidence to the contrary is caused by the exploitation of masˢdars for the creation of an abstract lexicon. 3.2.5
Case
Case is a syntax dependent application feature. Its values (nom, gen, and acc) are related to the function the element concerned has at phrasal or higher levels of linguistic description. A null-value for case, any other ambiguity concerning diptotic np-head occurrences, and gender issues for a first person realization have to be disambiguated beyond phrasal and sentence levels of description. 3.2.6
Trash
Earlier we mentioned feature-clusters. In some of them np’s are involved (concord, agreement, ps-match, po-match, and tc-match). In this section we discuss the occurrence of a noun in the head-position of a phrase at syntax level. Feature values of such a noun should be capable to match with elements occurring within the same constituent or with feature values of heads of other constituents within a given context. Summarizing some conclusions at this point, we list the following formal rules connected with a lexical noun entry at syntax level:
384
everhard ditters [AGREEMENT [CONCORD [PSMATCH [POMATCH [TCMATCH CASE DEFINITENESS HEADREALIZATION
3.3
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
+human; –human].54 full; partial.] ] ] ] accusative; genitive; nominative; null. definite; indefinite. demonstrative; personal; proper; relative; indefinite; interrogative; adjective; common; elative; numeral; quantifier; verbal.
Particle Phrase
As far as the occurrence of particles at syntax level is concerned: earlier we distinguished between an adverb phrase (advp), a prepositional phrase (pp), an interjectional phrase (ip), and a conjunctive phrase (cp). 3.3.1
Adverb Phrase
At the morphological level, we sub-categorized the adverbs into: invariable, as far as case marking is concerned, and bound or free forms, as far as the orthographic representation is concerned. One feature of the bound forms involves the temporal aspect of a verb realization itself marked by a non-perfect or mood tense (sa, directly linked to a finite verb form, then suggests a future temporal aspect).55 The interrogative ʙa affects the whole of a succeeding verbal or nominal sentence. The affirmative la mainly occurs, in Modern Standard Arabic, as a premodifier to the particle qad in an advp. At syntax level, the bound and free forms are further differentiated into, among others, time, degree and manner adverbials, attached to verbs and adjectives as well. Finally, we have to distinguish between adverbs as head of an advp, on the one hand, and other realizations of an adverbial function at phrasal or sentence level such as pp, a npacc or a pccl at the other. Formally, an adverb phrase (advp) can be described as a, at syntax level occurring, constituent that, in its minimal configuration, has an adverb in the compulsory head function. Optional functions in an advp can be labeled as a pre- or postmodifier of the head. A premodifier may, for example, figure as a discontinuous negative particle to adverbials as
54
These rules will be discussed later. The so-called TMA (tense, mood and aspect) auxiliary particles have been discussed by Kinberg (2001). See also Eisele 2006. 55
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qattu ‘never’ or faqat ‘no more’,56 or in the form of a preposition with an head as in min qablu ‘previously.’ An optional postmodifier can be realized by a PP.57 FIGURE 4
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE ADVP 58 ADVP
Slots
(PREM)
HEAD
(POM)
Fillers
[PART] [PREP]
[ADV] [NPacc]
[PART]
For the adverb we suggest the following combination of feature names with corresponding values:59 ADVERB
ARGUMENTATION CONCLUSIVE CONFIRMATION DISCOURSE FOCUS FREQUENCE LOCAL MEASURE MODALITY TEMPORAL SEQUENCE SUFFIXED
3.3.2
:: ARGUMENTATION; CONFIRMATION; DISCOURSE ; FOCUS; FREQUENCE; interrogative; LOCAL; MEASURE; MODALITY; SEQUENCE; TEMPORAL. :: evaluative; comparative; CONCLUSIVE. :: positive; negative. :: certain; affirmative; limitative. :: greetings; wishes; emphasis. :: specifying; inclusive; exclusive; cumulative. :: number; repetition; iteration; coinciding. :: position; dimension; direction. :: degree; quantity. :: expression; noun; adjective; nisbe. :: past; neutral; future; SUFFIXED; relative. :: coinciding; preceding; succeeding. :: ʙidin; dāka; pronoun.
Prepositional Phrase
Within a prepositional phrase we distinguish two compulsory functions: a prepositional complement (pcompl) and a linker (plink) that connects that complement to the next higher level of linguistic description. The complement function can be realized by: an adverb phrase 56
Cf. El-Ayoubi et al. 2003, I:2, 275–460, and 406. Badawi et al. 2004, 161–174. In the discussion about the NP we already mentioned the use of an accusative NP (NPacc) for adverbial purposes. 58 Ditters 1992, 210 ff. 59 Cf. El-Ayoubi et al. 2004, I:2, 284 ff., and Wright 1974, I:282 ff. 57
386
everhard ditters
(advp); a complement clause (ccl) introduced by the particle ʙan or ʙanna (cclʙan|ʙanna); a noun phrase with genitive case value (npgen); or a verb phrase with a head marked for subjunctive mood (vpsubj). The prepositional linker function is usually realized by an element of the particle-subset of prepositions. However, there are also expanded constructions in which a preposition, followed by an infinitive or abstract noun, realizes the header function,60 and prepositional clusters in which an infinitive, marked with an indefinite accusative case value (npacc) and followed by a preposition realizes the linker function.61 FIGURE 5
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE PP62 PP
Slots
HEADER
Fillers
[PREP] [EXPAND-P] [P-CLUSTER]
COMPL [ADVP] [CCLʙan|ʙanna] [NPgen] [VPsubj]63
A good basis for a discussion about semantic features in the next section certainly is the sub-categorization of prepositions into: time, place, and ideal (or manner) features (Wright, 1974: II:129). With corpus based evidence, forwarded by Cantarino (1974, II: 262 ff.) and El-Ayoubi et al. (2004, I, 2:466 ff.) we are able to further differentiate this subcategorization of prepositions into features values:64 PREP IDEAL
COINCIDING HYPOTHETIC PLACE TIME 60
:: IDEAL; PLACE; TIME. :: adversative; benefactive; causal; COINCIDING; comparative; content; discourse; explicative; final; HYPOTHETIC; instrumental; measure; modal; partitive; possessive; specification; substitution. :: comitative; simultaneous. :: concessive; conditional. :: destination; direction; local; partitive; position. :: direction; partitive; temporal.
Cf. El-Ayoubi et al. 2004, I:2,574. Cf. El-Ayoubi et al. 2004, I:2,584 ff. 62 Ditters 1992, 213 ff. 63 Not to confuse with the inflectional phrase as in the Government and Binding approach (cf. Fassi Fehri 1993, 16 ff.). 64 See also Badawi et al. 2004, 167 ff. 61
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3.3.3 Interjectional phrase or clauses Earlier (§ 2.3.3) we differentiated the interjectional phrase (ip) into: vocatives; exclamations;65 frozen expressions, proverbs and greetings. Two of them, vocatives and exclamations, lend themselves easily for a general structure description (see Figure 6). Other optional ip’s ( f-expressions, proverbs, greetings, and insults) may provisionally receive, in our formal description of Modern Standard Arabic, the label of a phrasal or sentence adverbial since the syntactic structure of such an insertion can easily be described by means of the basic general syntactic patterns we already suggested. However, the semantic value of their occurrence in a given context has still to be evaluated and described.66 FIGURE 6
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE IP IP
Slots
(PREM)
I-HEAD
(I-COMPL)
(TAIL)
Fillers
[PART]
[INTERJ] [NPacc] [Sv]
[NPnom] [NPacc] [PPʙilā|bi|ʚalā] [PPli] [Sadv]
[PART]
A few comments may make this scheme more transparent. The line of slots tells us about the compulsory function of an ip head (i-head) with an optional tail in case of a discontinuous realization like wā-āh, be it for Modern Standard Arabic a bit archaic, as in wāzaydāh ‘Woe upon Zayd!’ (Badawi et al., 2004:37). It further mentions the optional occurrence of a premodifier (prem) or a complement (i-compl) of the i-head. In the filler-section alternative realizations are listed, also comprising a possible sv-sadv combination as man yaqtul yuqtal ‘Who kills will die killed.’ For this reason we included the term clause in the heading of this subsection.
65 66
Cf. Firanescu 2007, 79–81. Cf. Bergman 2007, II:136–137.
388 3.3.4
everhard ditters Conjunctive phrase (cp) or Clause (ccl)
Following the Wright tradition, at the morphological level, we made a distinction between a separable and an inseparable occurrence of conjunctions, as well as between connective and conditional conjunctive particles (Wright, 1974, I:290–294). At syntax level, however, we also prefer to distinguish between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. 3.3.4.1 Coordination The compulsory head-function in the cp is realized by an element of the subset coordinators of the conjunctions. An example of an optional premodifier would be the ‘narrative connector’ wa preceeding the adversative coordinator lākin ‘but’ (Badawi et al., 2004:555). The compulsory complement function may be realized by a variety of alternatives (Figure 7). FIGURE 7
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE CP CP
Slots
(PREM)
C-HEAD67
COMPL
Fillers
[PART]
CONJ
[NP] [VP] [ADJP] [ADVP] [Sn] [Sv]
3.3.4.2 Subordination The compulsory head function in a complement clause is realized by an element of the subset subordinators, which may contain a null value, for example, in caseof the occurrence of a purposive li followed by a verb with a subjunctive mood value. In our formal grammar of Modern Standard Arabic, the compulsory complement function may vary between a sn and a sv.
67 The conjunctive head may be empty is case of asyndetic coordination (Badawi et al. 2004, 539 ff.
featuring as a disambiguation tool in arabic nlp FIGURE 8
389
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE CCL CCL
Slots
(PREM)
HEAD
COMPL
Fillers
[PREP]68 [PART]
SUB
[Sn] [Sv]
The variables and features we like to retain for the conjunctive phrase or clause are: CONJUNCTION COORDINATING SELECTIVE SUBORDINATING SINGLE-CLAUSE DOUBLE-CLAUSE CONDITIONAL
:: COORDINATING ; SUBORDINATING. :: cumulative; SELECTIVE. :: adversative; alternative; consecutive; disjunctive; exclusive; explicative; inclusive; restrictive; successive. :: circumstantial; consequential; SINGLECLAUSE; DOUBLE-CLAUSE. :: comparative; complemental; purposive; locative; temporal. :: CONDITIONAL; temporal. :: possible; real; unreal.
4. Semantics We discussed so far feature variables with distinct values at the morphological and syntactic level of description, variables such as: aspect, tense, definiteness, gender, number, person, and case. Moreover, with featureclusters such as concord and agreement (involving: ±human, person, gender, and number), we are able to describe regularities between a predicate and an explicit agent (ps-match), between a predicate and possibly realized complements (po-match) in a sv, as well as between topic and comment realizations (tc-match) in a sn. As far as our semantic level of description is concerned, we earlier insisted to remain, in this paper, within the limits of ‘static’ semantics as used in almost all other applications of NLP.69 Table 3 summarizes our 68
In that case we can speak of a prepositional complement clause (PCCL). We refer to the general domains of machine translation and information retrieval, still using the basics on static semantics of Yngve (1966). See also Koster (2004). 69
390
everhard ditters TABLE 3 Levels morphology syntax semantics0
semantics1 semantics 2
Features morphological morpho-syntactic syntactical syntactico-semantic semantical0 static-semantical semantical1 dynamic-semantical semantical2 etc.
working space ending at level-zero (semantics0) of ‘static’ semantics. The description of features at the levels listed in the squared box remains to be done. Thus, a comprehensive assignment of semantic features to all lexical entries, which can occur as head element of one of the different phrasal constituents, does not (yet) exist for automated analysis purposes of Modern Standard Arabic. That may not be necessary when a heuristic feature assignment for a ps-match, a po-match or a tc-match could already meet our disambiguation objectives. The more or less detailed sub-categorization of features for headers in an advp and a pp (§ 3.3.1–2) is a good example of our hypothesis. This feature sub-categorization supplies such an advp with a specific semantic load in the context of its occurrence. For the header of a pp, this sub-categorization presupposes a matching with some corresponding feature values of the head realization of the prepositional complement for a grammatically and semantically correct analysis result. Therefore: if the head-element of a prepositional complement shares the maximum number of pertinent features with the prepositional header, alternative analysis results should and could be discarded.70 If a noun like bustān possesses a feature hinting at ‘an open-air outdoors location’ we could easily match the local feature values of the header and the prepositional
70 The fine-tuning of this matching occurs in the cyclic process of testing the description on new text data. Moreover, this matching produces optimal results when unification provides contextual information. A sequence as min tahˢtihi remains ambiguous as long as the anaphor hi is not disambiguated in context.
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complement and interpret the sequence fī ʙl-bustāni ‘in the garden’ as an attributive or adverbial adjunct with local value. As a matter of fact, we also have to provide individual lexical elements of verb and noun categories with a minimum set of pertinent feature names and feature values. 4.1
Verbs
In our formal description of Modern Standard Arabic for automated analysis purposes, individual lexical verbal elements have to provide information about: – compulsory and optional completives and circumstantials within the complement structure of a given verbal entry (transitivity); – the combination of a verbal entry with elements of other word categories to denote a particular meaning of such a verbal entry (collocation);71 – minimum qualifications for possible implied or explicit agents and completives (in terms of case-roles and syntactic realization). 4.1.1
Transitivity
Within the framework of the diinar-project72 verbal entries have been compiled according to the number and the syntactic realization of their arguments. In this way the verbal lexicon is first split up in intransitive and transitive verbs. The transitive verbs are then further divided into: mono-, bi- or tri-transitive verbs. Finally, these verbal entries can be divided into sub-categories governing a direct object(s) (npacc or ccl), and/or a prepositional object (pp or pccl). A further differentiation concerns the lexical realization of the preposition (ppli, ppmin, ppʚan etc.). What is still missing in this approach is the semantic dimension as, for instance, Levin (1993) did for English.73 She compiled 49 verb classes with sub-categories. The members of each sub-class share the general meaning of the class as well as a number of syntactic characteristics. So, the members of the sub-class 10.2 of banish verbs (Levin 1993, 123):74 71
Cf. Hoogland 1993; El-Gemei 2006, 434–439. Information about the DIINAR lexical database can be found at: http://catalog. elra.info. Information about DIINAR-MBC can be found at: http://sites.unin-lyon2.fr/ langues_promodiinar/accueil.htm. 73 See also Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1996. 74 These members are: banish, deport, evacuate, expel, extradite, recall, and remove. 72
392
everhard ditters ‘relate to the removal of an entity, typically a person from a location. The location argument is expressed in a prepositional phrase headed by the preposition from. [. . . .] Unlike the remove verbs, these verbs allow to phrases as well as from phrases, though not simultaneously.’
The application of such an approach for the description of verbal entries in Modern Standard Arabic is given in Table 4 where square brackets point to mutually exclusive arguments and parentheses to optional occurrences:75 TABLE 4 arg-4 manner
arg-3.2 destination
arg-3.1 source
arg-2 object
arg-1 agent
(PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi)
[(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)]
[(PPʚan|min,loc|pos76)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)]
(NPnom,+human)77 (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human)
" # $ % $ % $# &' ( ) * ( +) ,- . / 0 ) ( 12 ) 12 3 4' + 56 7 8 9
(PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi) (PPbi)
[(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)] [(PPʙilā|li,loc|pos)]
[(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)] [(PPʚan|min,loc|pos)]
NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human78 NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human| PPbi,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human NPacc,+human
(NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human) (NPnom,+human)
8 : ; 4 <
: = &: = + > =
75
entry
A vertical bar ‘|’ here denotes alternatives in subscript variables and features. The feature alternatives loc and pos comprise a physical location as well as a social function. 77 An optional explicit agent has the same feature values as the implied agent 78 The object of this entry is typically realized by the collective nouns ‘army,’ ‘troops’ or alternatives. 76
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393
Collocation
At this point we question the way of featuring specific verbal head-advp, verbal head-np, and verbal head-pp combinations resulting in a, for the combination, specific semantic value. The problem is that the matching of the individual feature values of the elements involved does not necessarily point to the semantic value of the combination. A ‘cheap’ solution will be to list this kind of combinations ‘as they are’ in the lexicon. 4.1.3
Case-roles and realization
According to Abdul-Raof (2006, 343), the use of case-roles may adequately describe “deep structure relations between noun phrases and the verb.” If this quote is equivalent to: ‘feature matching between the heads of a np and a vp (occurring as comment in a sn), or between the heads of a vp and np’s (occurring as dependent or independent np’s, and realizing a completive and/or a circumstantial function in a sv)’, we like to explore the potentiality of Case Grammar for our purposes. Winograd (1983, 311 ff.; 623–624) describes the evolution of a caserole based description of semantic relations within syntactic structures, and lists some 65 case roles. For Arabic, we refer to Abdul-Raof (2006) and LeTourneau (2006) on Case Roles and Case Theory respectively, but we will exploit Saad’s monograph (1982) for further featuring in a CG framework. With 12 roles Saad easily represented our 14 columns in Table 1 and 2 in case grammar (CG) terms, as is shown in Table 5a and 5b below.79 In the columns 5 (range) and 12 (comitative), we recognize the circumstantials: ʙal-maf ʚūl ʙal-mutˢlaq (cognate object) and ʙal-maf ʚūl maʚahu (accompanying object): TABLE 5A
CASE ROLES IN MSA
arguments
1
2
3
4
5
6
case role
agent
instrument
patient/ object80
target
range
source
abbreviation
A
I
PO
Ta
R
S
79 The row ‘abbreviation’ has been inserted to introduce names of variables within a representation of the complement structure of verbal complement structure in case frame terms. 80 We prefer to differentiate between a +human object (= patient) and a –human object.
394
everhard ditters
TABLE 5A (cont.) arguments
1
2
3
4
verb class
agentives
agentives
agentives; verbs of a mental, physiological, emotional state or process
agentives; verbs of a mental, physiological, emotional state or process
features
+animate81
-animate
form
NPnom
NPacc|PP |PCL82
NPnom|NPacc
NPnom|NPacc |PCL
TABLE 5B
case role abbreviation verb class
8
9
10
goal G verbs of change, experience, transformation, action in motion or time
place P
time Ti
manner M
local; position
time
manner; degree
PP
NPacc|PP
NPacc|PP
PP
6 verbs of change, transformation, experience, action in motion or time
NPacc
AJDPnom| NPnom|PP
CASE ROLES IN MSA
7
features form
5
11
12
beneficiary comitative B C
PP
NPacc|PP
With a paragraph on co-referential case roles, Abdul-Raof (2006, 345) gives a hint for the fine-tuning of verbal sub-categorization in Modern Standard Arabic. He lists five cases wherein the role of Agent is co-referential with the role of Object (= Saad’s patient), Source, Goal, Experiencer (= Saad’s patient), and Beneficiary respectively.83 The verbal entries of Table 4 share an optional explicit subject84 (Agent) in the form of a np, marked for a syntactic nominative case value and a semantic +human value (npnom,+human). Moreover, they share 81 Saad’s (1982, p. 20) suggestion for an alternative realization form (–animate) to describe astronomical bodies and semi-autonomous machines, gets a more elegant foundation in Dichy (2005). 82 A vertical bar ‘|’ here denotes alternatives at form level. 83 The co-referentiability between an Agent and more than a single other case role remains to be studied. 84 An implicit subject of a finite verb form is always present or is neutralized and overruled by an explicit agent.
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an compulsory direct object (Patient) in the form of a np, syntactically marked for accusative case value and semantically as +human (npacc,+human). Above that, they share two optional, mutually exclusive local circumstantials, expressing the origin (Source) and the destination (Goal) of the action being or been performed (ppʚan|min,loc|pos or ppʙilā,loc|pos). Sometimes there is even mention of an optional circumstantial in the form of a ppbi, marking the manner (Manner) in which the action is performed (bi ’lquwa ‘by force’). Finally, one could witness the occurrence of an optional circumstantial in the form of an advp or pp marking the moment (Time) of the action performed (advptime or pptime). Such a description can be represented by means of a frame with a line for the lexical entry concerned, abbreviations for the cases with realization forms between curled brackets ({}), while parentheses (()) and square brackets ([]) denote optional occurrence and mutual exclusion respectively. A vertical bar ‘|’ separates alternative realization forms. For our example of the sub-class of banish verbs, this results in the following case frame for the members of this sub-category: [__ A({NPnom,+human}), P{NPacc,+human}, [(S{PPʚan|min,loc|pos})], [(G{PPʙilā,loc|pos})], (M{PPbi}), (I{PPbi}), (Ti{ADVBtime|PPtime})]
During the analysis process of Arabic text data, a lexical verbal entry will be recognized as far as its consonantal root and stem is concerned, while the information about verbtype, derivation, aspect, tense, voice, person, gender, and number are being stored. In the meantime, information about the case frame of the verbal entry will be loaded from the lexicon and matched against the string(s) following the finite verb form. The next step in our description seems to comprise the drafting of case frames for the Arabic equivalents of members of the other subclasses of the class of remove verbs. This predicts a cyclic process of the drafting and testing of case frames for the Arabic equivalents of the members of all the other 48 classes Levin (1993) listed for English. We like to retain the following case roles in the description of the complement structure of verbal entries for agent and object matching with different kinds of completives and circumstantials: agent (a), instrument (i), patient (po), target (ta), range (r), source (s), goal (g), place (p), time (ti), manner (m), beneficiary (b), and comitative (c). We like to retain the idea of pairing case roles by co-referencing, as Abdul-Raof (2006, 345) gives with: Ai=Oi,85 Ai=Si, Ai=Gi, Ai=Ei, and 85
Abdul-Roaf only lists 8 case roles and does not employ the term ‘Patient.’ Therefore
396
everhard ditters
Ai=Bi. It certainly may refine the description of elements of different verb classes and the complementstructure of verbal entries. ACTORS MONO BENEFICIARY PAIRS [TRIADES
4.2
:: MONO; PAIRS; TRIADES. :: agent; instrument; object; patient; target; range; source; goal: place; time; manner; BENEFICIARY; comitative. :: client; recipient. :: A=PO; A=S; A=G; A=E; A=B. :: ].
Nouns
At the end of the introduction we stated that the formalism for automated processing is suited for describing morphological and syntactic structure, as well as finite semantics in terms of ±animate, ±concrete, ±human, ±volition and many other. At the morphological and syntactic level we already discussed a number of features attached to elements of the category noun. Besides that, the differentiation of relevant prepositional features in time, place, and ideal presupposes a matching with corresponding features attached to the head of a prepositional complement, in casu a noun. The question is: how to make an inventory of the minimum number of required semantic noun features, and how to set up the organization of this inventory. A frequently used approach consists in the drafting of a conceptual semantic tree. Hartmann (1974, 169) used Moravcsik’s (1970) conceptual tree starting with the node ±countable for her Transformational Generative Grammar of Arabic. Muhtaseb (1988, 65 ff.) developed (far too) detailed conceptual trees describing the subject and action hierarchy for his Natural Language Understanding System (NALUS). More recently, Dichy (2005) proposed a conceptual tree of three layers starting with ±concrete, using two other basic features: ±animate and ±human. This tree generates the lexical categories: person, animal, perceptible entity, and idea or non-physical experience. By a transfer of some features, characteristic for +animate and +human entities, to –animate and –human entities by assignment of specific values as ±intention, +volition, or +motion, Dichy also generates the derived categories:
it is not yet clear how to harmonize his co-referential pairs Agent = Object (Ai=POi) and Agent = Experiencer (Ai=Ei) with the set of 12 case roles of Saad.
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pseudo-animated perceptible entity, collectivity, and pseudoanimated perceptible entity. We like to retain the following base set of semantic features (BASEF) for elements of the category noun: ±concrete, ±animate, and ±human. For the moment, we also like to incorporate Dichy’s sub-features: ±intention, ±motion, and ±volition. Moreover, for elements of the category noun we have to include features required in the matching with features of elements of the categories verb and particle. In § 4.1 we saw that those features are required for predicate-subject (psmatch) and predicate-object (pomatch) matching. In this subsection they are required in the topiccomment (tcmatch) matching. In the following section these features are needed in a preposition-complement ( pcmatch) matching. In conclusion, the ±human value of a noun plays a role in agreement86 and concord87 phenomena involving, in the Sv, the elements of the predicate-explicit agent ( psmatch) matching or the elements of the predicatepatient/object ( pomatch)88 matching, and, in the sn, the elements of the topic-comment (tcmatch)89 matching. Below we list our features rules for elements of the category noun, easily expandable with other variables and values: BASEF SUBF
4.3
:: ±concrete; ±animate; ±human; place; time. :: ±intention; ±motion; ±volition.
Particles
Concerning the vocatives we would like to discriminate at the semantic level between occurrences related to +human and +animate, and –human entities. We prefer to further differentiate the exclamations into subcategories expressing: agreement, commands, dissent, enthusiasm, sorrow, surprise, presentations, and quantitatives. For our purposes it is meaningful to divide the group of adverbs by means of a variable advtype into elements expressing: manner, place, 86
If an explicit agent (arg-1) is marked for +human, there is full gender matching between predicate and subject, otherwise (if –human), there is partial gender matching, i.e. the verbal entry matches gender values with a subject marked for singular or dual number, but it receives feminine gender value with plural subjects. 87 A NPnom,+human in the topic position of a Sn triggers full gender and number matching with elements, liable for such a matching, in comment position. 88 In the case of a NPacc patient or object of a finite verb form marked for passive voice. 89 In the case of a ADJPnom, NPnom or VP occurrence in comment position.
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time, quantity, affirmation, negation, or interrogation.90 Another variable may function as a basket for elements expressing: restriction, doubt, wish, or exclamation.91 The semantic feature exclamation also may occur as one of the values of the variable inttype of the interjections. Other values are: attention, confirmation, support, and sociality. Values for the variable preptype and conjtype can be borrowed from their differentiation at syntax level. The preptype features play a role in the preposition-complement ( pcmatch) matching. INTYPE VOCATIVE EXCLAMATION ADVTYPE DECLARATIVE QUES CONJTYPE PREPTYPE
:: VOCATIVE; EXCLAMATION; f-expressions; proverbs; greetings; insults. :: +human ; +animate,-human. :: agreement; commands; dissent; enthusiasm; presentations; quantitative; sorrow; surprise; warning; wishes. :: DECLARATIVE; QUES; manner; place; quantity; time. :: affirmation; negation. :: doubt; exclamation; interrogation; restriction; wish. :: ±cumulative. :: instrument; measure; place; time.
5. Conclusion We discussed variables and values of features of importance for the disambiguation of analysis results from the automated processing of contemporary Arabic text data. We considered three levels of description. Morphological feature variables and values serve as input for the syntax level. Feature variables and values from the semantic level help to refine the description of language structure at syntax level to arrive at a single, most probable, syntactically as well as semantically correct, analysis result. At syntax level we presented structural descriptions of sentence types and basic sentence phrasal constituents in Modern Standard Arabic. The general complement structure including optional and compulsory
90 We are here dealing with the interrogative adverbs hal and ʙa marking Yes-No questions. 91 A number of refinements to this description has been effectuated on the basis of El-Ayoubi et al. 2003, 275–460.
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completives and circumstantials of a verbal entry were summarized in the form of tables. At the semantic level we suggested a description of Arabic verbal entries on the basis of the number and the syntactic realization of their arguments as well as a correspondence in meaning à la Levin (1993) for English. Arabic equivalents of banish verbs served as an example. Then we started to translate the accumulated information into Case Grammar terms using Saad’s (1983) twelve cases for the description of the role of arguments within the possible complement structure of a verbal entry. We started to complete the description with information about type of verb classes, realization form and final semantic features values of the complements. This exercise resulted in the presentation of a case frame for the Arabic banish verbs. In the next parts of this semantic section we discussed a base set of semantic features for elements of the noun and particle categories to be used together with case frames for Arabic verbal entries (sv), as well as for topics complemented by comment realizations (sn). A draft for predicate-explicit agent, predicate-object, topic-comment, and prepositioncomplement matching has been presented. What remains to be done is: – to test the structural descriptions of sentence types and phrasal constituents against new contemporary Arabic text data; – to apply Levin’s (1993) concept for verb categorization to the Arabic verbal lexicon; – to test the results from this application against new contemporary Arabic text data; – to translate the corrected results from that application into a refinement of the minimum set of semantic features for elements of the noun and verb categories; – to fill in the gaps and to expand the slots in figure 9.
400
everhard ditters FIGURE 9 concrete + animated + human + adult + male +
determinated + Ahmad
man
Fayruz
woman
6. References Abdul-Raof, Hussein. 2006. “Case Roles.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 343–347. Ayoub, Georgine. 1980. “ ʙAf ʚālu l-qulūb en arabe standard: Éléments pour une analyse.” In Bohas, Georges, ed. Études Arabes: Analyses Théories. 1980, 1, 1–54. Badawi, Elsaid, Michael Carter and Adrian Gully. 2004. Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar. London and New York: Routledge. Bahloul, Maher. 2006. “Agreement.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 43–48. ——. 2006. “Copula.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 506–511. Bergman, Elizabeth. 2007. “Frozen Expressions.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 2, 136–137. Bohas, Georges and Abderrahim Saguer. 2007. “The Explanation of Homonymy in the Lexicon of Arabic.” In Ditters, Everhard and Harald Motzki, eds. Approaches to Arabic Linguistics Presented to Kees Versteegh on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 255–289. Cohen, David. 1970. “Essai d’une analyse automatique de l’arabe.” In Cohen, David, ed. Études de linguistique sémitique et arabe. The Hague: Mouton, 49–78. Cuvalay, Martine. 1994. “Auxiliary Verbs in Arabic.” In Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen, and Lone Schack Rasmussen, eds. Function and Expression in Functional Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 265–283. Cuvalay-Haak, Martine. 1996. The Arabic Verb: A Functional Grammar Approach to Verbal Expression in Classical and Modern Arabic. PhD-thesis. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Dichy, Joseph. 2005. “Spécificateurs engendrés par les traits [±animé], [±humain], [±concret] et structures d’arguments en arabe et en français.” In Béjoint, Henri and François Maniez, eds. De la mésure dans les termes. Hommage à Philippe Thoiron. Travaux CRTT, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 151–181. Ditters, Everhard. 1992. A Formal Approach to Arabic Syntax: the Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase. PhD thesis Nijmegen University. Nijmegen: Luxor. ——. 2001. “A Formal Grammar for the Description of Sentence Structure in Modern Standard Arabic.” In Kaufman, Morgan, ed. Workshop Proceedings: Arabic Language Processing: Status and Prospects, CRNS—Université des Sciences Sociales Toulouse, France, 31–37. ——. 2003a. “Non-coinciding Phrasal Heads.” In Chu, Hsing-Wei, José Ferrer, Tran Nguyen, and Yuongquan Yu, eds. Proceedings of the Joint International Conference
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on Computer, Communication and Control Technologies (CCCT’03) and the 9th International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS’03). Orlando, Florida, USA: International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, 51–56. ——. 2003b. “An AGFL for the Description of Non-coinciding Phrasal Heads.” In Callaos, Nagib, William Lesso, Belkis Sanchez, and Elizabeth Hansen, eds. Proceedings of the 7th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. Orlando, USA: International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, 107–112. ——. 2006. “Computational Linguistics.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 455–465. —— and Jan Hoogland. 2006. “Corpus Linguistics.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 195–201. —— and Cornelis Koster. 2004. “Transducing Arabic Phrases into Head-Modifier (HM) Pairs for Arabic Information Retrieval.” In Nikkhou, Maktab, ed. Proceedings of the NEMLAR 2004 International Conference on Arabic Language Resources and Tools, Cairo, Egypt: Magnet Creative Communications, 148–154. Eisele, John C. 2006. “Aspect.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 455–465. El-Gemei, Dalal Mahmoud. 2006. “Collocation.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 434–439. Elzeiny, Nagwa. 2007. “Greetings.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 2, 202–207. Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1993. Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers. Fillmore, Charles. 1968. “The Case for Case.” In Bach, Emmon and Robert Harms, eds. Universals in Linguistic Theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. 1–88. Firanescu, Daniela. 2007. “Exclamations.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 2, 79–81. Fleisch, Henri. 1961. Traité de philologie arabe, vol. 1: Préliminaires, phonétique, morphologie nominale. Imprimerie Catholique: Beyrouth, 56–65. ——. 1968. L’arabe classique : Esquisse d’une structure linguistique. Recherches publiés sous la direction de l’Institut de Lettres Orientales de Beyrouth, deuxième série: Langue et Littérature Arabes, volume 5. Beyrouth: Dar El-Machreq. Haak, Martine. 2006. “Auxiliary.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, pp. 216–221. Hartmann, Regina. 1974. Untersuchungen zur Syntax der Arabischen Schriftsprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Hoogland, Jan. 1993. “Collocation in Arabic (MSA) and the treatment of collocations in Arabic dictionaries.” In Dévényi, Kinga, Tamás Iványi, and Avihai Shivtiel, eds. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Arabic Lexicology and Lexicography. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University and Csoma de Kőrös Society, 75–93. Kinberg, Naphtali. 2001. Studies in the Linguistic Structure of Classical Arabic. Kinberg, Leah and Kees Versteegh, eds. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Khim, Alain. 2006. “Adjective Phrase.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 14. Koster, Cornelis. 1974. “A Technique for Parsing Ambiguous Grammars.” In Siefkes, D., ed. GI-4 Jahrestagung, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 26 (1975). Springer, 233–246. ——. 1991. “Affix Grammars for Natural Languages.” In H. Alblas and B. Melichar, eds. Springer LNCS 545. Heidelberg, 469–484. ——. 2004. “Head-Modifier Frames for Information Retrieval.” In Proceedings CICLing2004. Springer LNCS 2945, 420–432. LeTourneau, Mark S. 2006. “Case Theory.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. EALL, vol. 1, 347–353. Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1996. Unaccusativity at the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 26. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meijer, Hans.1986. Programmar: A Translator Generator. PhD-thesis, Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen.
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Moravcsik, Julius. 1970. “Subcategorization and Abstract Terms.” Foundations of Language 1970 (6), 473–487. Nederhoff, Mark-Jan. 1993. “A New Top-down Parsing Algorithm for Left-recursive DCGs.” In Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming, 5th International Symposium, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Tallinn, Estonia: Springer, Volume 715, 108–122. Saad, George Nehmeh. 1981. Transivity, Causation and Passivization: A semantic-syntactic study of the verb in classical Arabic. Library of Arabic Linguistics. Monograph No. 4. London: Keagan Paul International. Al-Saffār, Abdul Emīr Dhāhir. 1979. A Semantico-Syntactic Study of Classical Arabic in Case-Grammar Terms. PhD SOAS. London: University of London. alSāqī, Fādil. 1977. Aqsāmu l-kalāmi l-arabī min h aytu š-šakl wa-l-wazīfa. al-Qāhira: Maktabatu l-Xānjī. Sībawayhi. al-Kitāb. Hārūn = Abū Bišr Amr b. Utmān Sībawayhi. al-Kitāb. 5 vols. Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn, ed. 1977. Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya al-Āmma li-l-Kitāb. Versteegh, Kees. 2001. The Arabic Language. 2nd revised ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ——, Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Manfred Woidich and Andrzej Zaborski, eds. 2006. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Volume I, A-Ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——, eds. 2007. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Volume II, Eg-Lan. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Winograd, Terry. 1983. Language as a Cognitive Process. Volume I: Syntax. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Yngve, Victor. 1966. “A framework for syntactic translation.” In David G. Hays, ed. Readings in Automatic Language Processing. New York: American Elsevier, 189–198.
ARABIC ON THE MEDIA: HYBRIDITY AND STYLES* Mushira Eid University of Utah
1. Introduction The purpose of media programming is to inform and to entertain. Some programs can be classified as informative, others as entertainment, and others as both. The language used on these programs is expected to reflect these discourse functions. In a diglossic situation, such as that found in the Arabic speech communities, the choice involves two (at times more) relatively distinct varieties, or linguistic codes, of a language: the ‘high’ (standard variety) for information and the ‘low’ (local dialect) for entertainment. In Arabic these correspond to fusˢhˢ ā and ʚāmmiyya, respectively. Programs classified as being both (information and entertainment) raise a question as to what form of Arabic is, or should be, used. These programs, like the broadcasting media in general, represent ‘hybrid’ contexts that mix, and at times merge, the public and the private, the formal and the informal. They serve as bridges, or ‘in-between’ spaces, where linguistic differences and cultural identities are negotiated in the production of a program or a performance. The relationship between language and the media is particularly interesting in the Arabic context due to the diglossic nature of its speech communities. Two major forms of Arabic characterize these communities: one is the spoken everyday language of communication (ʚāmmiyya ‘vernacular/colloquial/dialect’), which is also written in certain contexts,1 the other a literary variety which is the medium of written communica-
* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Center for the Advanced Study of Language (CASL), University of Maryland, College Park, June 1, 2006. 1 Personal letters, for example, may be written in dialectal Arabic. In Egypt, certain literary genres are also written in Egyptian Arabic including plays, poetry, and a few biographies (Awad 1965; El Assal 2002–2003). There is also one novel written in Egyptian (Musharrafa n.d.). The practice of including some form of dialect in literature mixed with fusˢhˢ ā is a relatively common practice, particularly when it involves dialogue (Cachia 1990, 59–75, chapter four “The use of colloquial in modern Arabic literature”; Eid 2002).
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tion and is also spoken in some formal contexts ( fusˢhˢ ā “lit: eloquent, literary”/standard). The two varieties differ in linguistic form, manner of acquisition, function or use, and social meaning/value. The definition of ‘diglossia’ as it was first presented by Ferguson (1959) is given in (1). 1. Diglossia is “a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation” (Ferguson 1959, Word 15:336). The definition in (1) presupposes a relationship based on ‘separation,’ both linguistic and cultural, of the two varieties fusˢhˢ ā and dialect. It also reflects the ‘official’ discourse and predominant attitudes toward them. Because of its being the language of divinity and heritage in Islam, the fusˢhˢ ā is considered the language of ‘high culture’ and ‘prestige’ whereas the dialects are local, highly divergent, and often not mutually intelligible, at least at the outset. Fusˢhˢ ā is also considered a unifying force, the pan-Arab ‘national’ language, in the words of Shawqi Daif (2001) luġat šuʚūb al-ʙumma jamīcan “the language of all the peoples of the [Arab] nation,” whereas the dialects represent the “daily language of a single people . . . understood only by its people” hence ‘divisive.’ (Quoted in Boussofara-Omar 2006, 108; see also Haeri 2003 for further discussion.) Social, political, educational, and technological changes in the 20th century have brought about change in the relationship between the two varieties, particularly in their contexts of use, their market value, and their social meaning. Accessibility to fusˢhˢ ā increased, for example, due to changes in the educational system. In Egypt the availability of free public education through high school and higher education increased the number of people who can use both varieties. Contexts in which fusˢhˢ ā is used increased as well, the broadcasting media as a ‘spoken’ context for fusˢhˢ ā being one.2 As a result, the media serves as a liberating force: by providing contexts that are not restricted to one variety, the 2 The media are often criticized for allowing the dialects to creep into domains originally reserved for fusˢhˢ ā. Such intrusions will eventually “dismantle the ties that bond the peoples of the ʙumma [Arab nation]” (Shawqi Daif 2001, cited in Boussofara-Omar (2006) op. cit.). The broadcasting media, however, are not a domain “originally reserved
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media allows users of Arabic access to many forms of Arabic, dialectal and fusˢhˢ ā. This position contradicts the predominant discourse, as represented, for example, in the quotes from Shawqi Daif, that argues for the separation of the two in order to maintain the ‘purity’ of the fusˢhˢ ā against intrusions from dialect (but see footnote 2). The media, particularly the broadcasting media, has a unique role to play in negotiating the relationship between the two varieties. Because of its dual role, to inform and entertain, the media serves as a bridge between the public and the private, the local and the global. It represents different forms of discourse: formal (speeches, lectures, news broadcasts) and informal (conversations, story-telling, joking) and creates in-between spaces that serve as excellent sites for the negotiation of identities. It does so by bringing public content into the privacy of the home and taking private content to the public view to audiences that are local and, when aired over satellite channels, global as well. For the Arabic broadcasting media there is in addition a pan-Arab audience that needs to be addressed. Some channels focus on that pan-Arab audience, e.g. al-Jazeera. Others, e.g. the Egyptian Satellite Channel (ESC) and the Lebanese Broadcasting Channel (LBC), focus more on local audiences. The varieties of Arabic heard over these channels naturally reflect the intended audience. In this paper I start from the position that the broadcasting media (henceforth just media) represent ‘hybrid’ contexts, which for Arabic means contexts that allow both fusˢhˢ ā and dialect. I focus on the interview as a genre whose purpose is to inform and to entertain and whose context is appropriate for either or both varieties of Arabic.3 I examine two interviews aired over the Egyptian Satellite Channel. I show that the language that emerges in these interviews is a mix, identifiable at times as fusˢhˢ ā and at times as ʚāmmiyya (here Egyptian) but more often as an ‘in-between’ variety, a ‘hybrid’ form of Arabic. Three major styles are identified, corresponding roughly to Labov’s reading, careful, and casual styles. The styles vary depending on degree of formality and interaction, topics, and participants (their perceptions of themselves, projections of
for fusˢhˢ ā.” The statement must therefore be applicable to Arabic in the written media, e.g. newspapers. 3 Eid (2004) shows that interviews and panel discussions from al-Jazeera are at times conducted completely in fusˢhˢ ā, but they may include dialectal features depending on speaker, topic, and degree of interaction. The programs analyzed, however, were limited to different forms of political discourse.
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identities, and perceived purpose of communication). For Arabic, they also involve the alternating use of features of fusˢhˢ ā and dialect. I discuss characteristics of each style in relation to the nature and source of the hybridity. In concluding the article I briefly discuss ‘hybridity’ in relation to ‘code-switching’ and argue that they are different constructs. 1.1
Correspondences between fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian Arabic
Table 1 illustrates four types of correspondences between fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian Arabic (henceforth, Egyptian) to be used in the subsequent analysis of speech styles: phonological, syntactic, morphological, and lexical. TABLE 1
SOME CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN FUSˢHˢĀ AND EGYPTIAN ARABIC
Phonological q~ t ~ t ~ s t ~ s d ~ d ~ z d ~ z d ~ d ~ z d ~ z diphthong~long vowel ay ~ ē aw ~ ō Syntactic Relative markers Demonstratives Negatives Complementizer Morphological Passive (u-i/u-a ~ it-) Verbs: Stem IV I af al faal
Fusˢhˢ ā
Egyptian
Gloss
qalb
alb
heart
aktar tawra axad kadālik du hr du lm
aktar sawra axad kazālik duhr zulm
bayt xawf
bēt xōf
house fear
alladi, allati, . . . hāda, hādihi, . . . laysa/lā/lam/lan an
illi da, di, . . . miš, ma-š in/Ø
who, whom . . . this, . . . not that
kutiba yuktab ajab
it-katab y-it-kitib N/A; rare agab
was written to be written became to please, like
anf lianna indi kalima kitāb fannān
manaxīr ašān andi kilma kitāb fannān
aksar *tawra axaz *kadālik zuhr *dulm
asbah
more, most revolution he took also, likewise noon injustice
Lexical Phonologically-related Unspecified
nose because I have word book artist
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On the phonological level, three major correspondences between fush ā and Egyptian are illustrated: (1) uvular stop /q/ vs. glottal stop / /; (2) the interdental fricatives / t d z/, which at times correspond to the stops / t d d/, at other times to the sibilants / s z z /; and (3) the diphthongs /ay aw/ corresponding to the long vowels /ē ō/.4 Correspondences in (1) and (3) apply across the board and therefore need no comment: if a fush ā lexical item has features in (1) or (3), the corresponding Egyptian item has the corresponding feature in (1) or (3).5 The interdental fricatives series, however, require some comment. The fush ā fricatives correspond in some words to the stops (aktar ~ aktar ‘more’), in others to the sibilants (ulm ~ zulm ‘injustice’). At times both options are possible. For aktar there is a third alternative aksar, but not for du lm since *dulm is not an actual word. This distribution is problematic for the classification of lexical items, a problem to be addressed briefly in discussing hybridity. On the syntactic level, four features are chosen for analysis: relative clause markers, demonstratives, negatives, and complementizers. They all serve as functional heads of their respective clauses with clearly divergent forms in the two varieties. Except for complementizers, they have also been studied extensively in the literature of Arabic code-switching (e.g. Bassiouney 2006, Boussofara-Omar 2006b, and Eid 1982, 1988.) On the morphological level, two verb forms have been selected for this study: passives and Stem IV verbs. Fush ā and Egyptian passive verbs are formed by different morphological processes. In fush ā the passive is marked derivationally by the vowel melody /u-i/ in the first and second syllable, respectively, (e.g. kataba ‘wrote’ ~ kutiba ‘was written’). In Egyptian it is marked inflectionally by the prefix it- (e.g. katab ‘wrote’ ~ itkatab ‘was written’). Stem IV verbs, formed on the pattern /a-CCVC/ like aqbal ‘approach’ or agab ‘like,’ are rare in Egyptian. They are sometimes replaced by verbs from different roots, e.g. gih ‘to come’ instead of aqbal, but more often they are replaced by Stem I (CVCVC) of the same verb, e.g. agab instead of agab.
4 Following the transcription requirements for this volume, long vowels are represented as single segments /ā ē ī ō ū/. For reasons that have to do with syllable weight and identification of ‘minimal word,’ to be explained below, these should be understood as sequences of two identical vowels /aa ee ii uu oo/. 5 The opposite, however, is not true. Not all words with sibilants, for example, in Egyptian have a corresponding interdental fricative in fush ā; some words may have a sibilant in both, e.g., fush ā: samā ‘sky’ and Egyptian sama.
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Finally, lexical differences between the two varieties come from different sources. The examples in Table 1 illustrate two of such areas. Some differences are the result of word usage, the association of a meaning with two different lexical items, one considered fusˢhˢ ā usage and the other Egyptian as, for example, ʙanf and manaxīr ‘nose.’ Other differences are phonologically-related as, for example, the difference between ʚindi and ʚandi ‘I have.’ Because fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian are varieties of the same language, it is expected that an overwhelming majority of lexical items would be shared. Table 1 provides examples of words that are identical in both varieties, e.g. kitāb ‘book’ and fannān ‘artist.’ I refer to such words as ‘ambiguous’ or ‘unspecified’ to mean non-distinct, or not specified, as to language variety. I use the term ‘both’ for words that include features from both varieties, i.e. hybrid forms. 1.2
Hybridity
A hybrid is something that is mixed, and hybridity is simply the mixture. The term has its origin in biology.6 In linguistics it refers to a word parts of which come from two different languages. The term has become central to major theoretical discussions among the discourses of race, post-colonialism, identity, multiculturalism, and globalization. In theories of cultural studies, it is understood as recognition of two identities or a ‘mixture’ of identities but also as a refutation of ‘assimilation’ into a dominant culture. Bakhtin, for example, defines hybridity [hybridization] as a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation, or by some other factor (1981, 358). The term has also been used in relation to ‘mixed’ language varieties that result from code-switching among bilinguals (Hinnenkamp 2003). In Arabic hybrid or intermediate forms, as they are sometimes called, include features from both varieties fusˢhˢ ā and dialect and, therefore, they cannot be clearly identified as belonging to one or the other.7 Table 2 illustrates Arabic hybrid forms with examples selected from the
6 It comes from the Latin: hybrida, a term used to classify the offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar. 7 See Schulz (1981, 87–89) for a discussion of hybridity versus mistakes.
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interviews. In the following section, I also illustrate this with sample texts from the interviews. Here and in all other examples italics indicates Egyptian Arabic, bold indicates fush ā, and unmarked typescript indicates material that is unspecified as to Arabic variety, hence ambiguous or shared material. The first example in Table 2 is a hybrid, because it includes the Egyptian present tense marker, the prefix ba-, attached to a fush ā verb form marked by the vowel melody /a-a/ of the Stem. The second example includes the fush ā person marker prefix /yu-/, marked by the /u/ vowel rather than the Egyptian /i/, and the fush ā mood marker, the final /-u/, but it also includes the sibilant /s/ of Egyptian, instead of the fush ā /t/. TABLE 2 Hybrid
Fush ā
1. bataammala-taammal 2. yu-massil-u yu-mattil-u 3.a. salāt ta talāta 3.b. talāsa 3.c. ? salāsa
HYBRID FORMS
Egyptian
Impermissible Gloss hybrids
b-[]a-tammil *bataammil I contemplate yi-massil, *yimattil *yi-massil-u he represents talāta *talāsa/salāta three *talāta/talāta ? salāsa
The variation in correspondences between fush ā /t/ and Egyptian stops and sibilants creates lexical possibilities for hybridity and ambiguity. The last example in Table 2, with the different pronunciations of the word for ‘three’, illustrates this point. The hybrid forms (3a–b) allow the mixture, or co-occurrence, of fush ā /t/ only with sibilants (e.g. talāsa). Combinations with Egyptian stops are impermissible hybrids (*talāta). This suggests that the sibilants themselves can be analyzed as ‘in-between spaces’ or ambiguous segments: at times they correspond to fush ā /s/ as in the many shared words with sibilants (e.g. sitta ‘six’), at other times they correspond to fush ā /t/ as in the example (2) in Table 2. Moreover, at times they correspond to Egyptian /t/ as in the last examples in (3). The impermissibility of hybrids involving either the sibilants or the interdental fricatives with the stops, as in /*talāsa/ or /*ta lāta/, suggests that sibilants and interdental fricatives may be considered members of the same category or group, since they can substitute for each other. This distribution also raises a question as to the identification of sibilant pronunciation, particularly in forms where the only Egyptian correspondence to the interdental fricatives is the sibilant. Are the examples
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(3a–b) in Table 2 hybrids, as I classified them, or are they simply alternative pronunciations for the interdental fricative? It is an open question with arguments for both alternatives. The modus operandi adopted in earlier research contextualized the decision (Eid 1982, 1988). In lexical items where speakers have all three choices (t, t, and s), the sibilant pronunciation is counted as fusˢhˢ ā since the speaker has an alternative, namely /t/ pronunciation, should she or he have opted for Egyptian. Likewise, in lexical items where Egyptian /t/ pronunciation is not available, sibilant pronunciation of fusˢhˢ ā interdental fricatives counts as Egyptian for similar reasons.8 The above discussion of hybrid forms illustrates the concept through lexical items. In this article I consider hybridity to be a global feature of text or discourse. It applies to forms of language that look more like a ‘collage,’ created out of two or more linguistic codes where the borders between language varieties are blurred or no longer distinct.
2. Styles Speech styles are forms of verbal self-expression and interaction. A style is based on a speaker’s choice of linguistic form, discourse strategies, and modes of interaction. Styles vary depending on degree of formality, medium (spoken or written), and context or situation (conversation in a coffee shop, for example, versus a lecture, speech, or an academic presentation). For Arabic, styles may also vary depending on language variety as well as the degree and nature of the mix between fusˢhˢ ā and dialect features. Three styles are identified in each interview : reading, formal, and casual styles. While they correspond to Labov’s classification of speech styles, they are not identical to it. The difference lies in the formal and casual styles, where for Labov ‘casual’ is conversational and emerges in relaxed situations when the participants become more comfortable with each other and forget the context of the interview.9 For Arabic the styles 8 Alternatively, sibilant pronunciation may be considered ‘ambiguous,’ or shared by both varieties. The high frequency of sibilant pronunciation in fusˢhˢ ā contexts, e.g. reading, speeches, and recitation of literary texts, supports this view. This pronunciation is not permitted in recitations of the Qur’an, however. 9 Labov has a fourth style D: word lists, which is relevant as an elicitation technique but not applicable to natural conversations as represented in these programs.
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also correspond to the relative distribution of linguistic features from fusˢhˢ ā and āmmiyya. In this section I illustrate the three styles and provide a characterization of each based on a quantitative analysis of fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian features in them, as described in Table 1. Eight segments are selected to illustrate the three styles, four segments from each of the two interview programs. The interviewees in these programs are Yehia Haqqi and Anis Mansour. Both are represented by three segments illustrating formal and casual styles. The reading style is represented by two other speakers, one from each interview. 2.1
Styles illustrated
The reading style can be easily identified. It occurs when an individual is seen reading from a script, as in the Haqqi interview, or heard narrating, for example through the use of voice-over, as in the Mansour interview (see section 3). Segment 1 and 2 from the Mansour and Haqqi programs, respectively, illustrate the reading style. Segment 1 with the voice-over is pre-recorded in the studio. No evidence can be found of any Egyptian features, with the exception of the substitution of Egyptian /g/ for fusˢhˢ ā /j/, as in the word az-zawgat-u for az-zawjat-u ‘the wife.’ This substitution has become so common in Egypt that it is considered an accepted fusˢhˢ ā pronunciation in almost all readings except those of the Koran and other religious texts. Otherwise, segment 1 can be considered pure fusˢhˢ ā, or as pure as it can get. Naturally, this ignores the issue of lexical items and particles, or function words, that are ambiguous or unspecified for variety: galāla ‘majesty,’ sˢahˢ āfa ‘journalism,’ fī ‘in,’ and, ’in ‘if.’ Case markers are pronounced, for example, and vowel patterns are those of fusˢhˢ ā, e.g. al- for the definite article not il- as in asˢ-sˢahˢ āfa. SEGMENT 1: Sanā Mansour (interviewer) as-sahāfa hiya z-zawgat-u at-tāniya fi hayāt-i l-kātib-i l-kabīr anīs mansūr—’in gāz-a hāđa t-ta'bīr. bada"at 'alāqat-u anīs mansūr bi sāhibat-i l-galāla as-sahāfa fi 'ām-i alf-in wa tisimiat-in wa sabat-in wa arbaīn. wa kānat al-bidāya fi garīdat-i “l-asās.” Journalism is the second wife in the life of the distinguished writer Anis Mansour, if such an expression is permitted. Anis Mansour’s relationship with her royal highness [journalism] began in 1947. The beginning was in the newspaper “al-asās.”
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Segment 2 read by Fouad Duwara in the Haqqi program has a few more ambiguous lexical items; more importantly, however, is the Egyptian pronunciation of the years 1962 and 1970. This is common in readings, for example, of the news and on-the-air commentaries as is the case of this reader, who is also reading on-the-air. Otherwise, fusˢhˢ ā is maintained throughout in vowel patterns, e.g. hˢ āwal not Egyptian hˢ āwil, and other pronunciation differences. SEGMENT 2: Narrator (Fouad Duwara in Haqqi interview) wa fi ibrīl 'ām alf w tusumiyya itnēn wi sittīn 'uyyin-a yehya haqqi ra"īs-an li-tahrīr-i magallat “al-magalla” wa zalla yatawalla mas"ūliyataha hatta December alf w tusʚumiyya w sabʚīn wa hāwala tawāl tilka s-sanawāt an yuhāfiz-a li l-magalla ala ši'āraha alladi t-taxadathu li nafsihā mundu inšāihā wa huwa sigil it-taqāfat-i r-rafīa. And in April 1962 Yehya Haqqi was appointed editor-in-chief of alMagalla journal. He continued to be responsible for it until December 1970. He tried during all those years to preserve for the journal the motto it had adopted for itself since it was established, and that is [to be] a record of high culture.
Segments 3–5 are samples from Haqqi’s speech. The first, segment 3, has all the characteristics of a reading style, although Haqqi was not reading. The segment has all the features characteristic of fusˢhˢ ā including case markers, vowel patterns, etc. and no features of Egyptian. It also includes only a few words (6 total) unspecified for variety ( fann ‘art,’ sirāʚ ‘struggle,’ maʚa ‘with,’ zaman ‘time,’ ʚābir ‘transient,’ and xālid ‘immortal’). SEGMENT 3: Haqqi (on art) al-fann 'indī mawqif-un drāmiyy. "aqūl-u "anna l-fann sirā maa z-zaman, "annahu yurīd-u "an yatasayyada l-ābir li yuqayyidah, sirā'-un maa l-mawt. wa ma'a dālik hīnamā [indamā] taqif "amāma lawha taš'ur "anna hāda l-ābir hāda l-xālid alladī xalladtahu innamā huwa ābir. Art for me [is] a dramatic moment. I say that art [is] a struggle with time, that it wants to capture the transient to preserve it, a struggle with death. And despite this when [when] you stand in front of a painting you feel that this transient, this immortal that you immortalized, is only transient.
Segment 4 differs from segment 3 in that it has some evidence of Egyptian Arabic features from syntax, morphology, lexicon, and pronunciation patterns: the relative marker illi, the tense/aspect prefix ba-, the
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negative ma-š in malhāš, the word šwayyit, and the pattern in baladna, not baladina the expected fusˢhˢ ā pronunciation. The segment also includes a relatively large number of words unspecified for variety (27), almost equal to those specified for fusˢhˢ ā (26), and a minimal (6) specified for Egyptian. This segment also includes the hybrid form /bataammal/, reflecting and perhaps also constructing the Egyptian and day-to-day context of the discourse. 10 SEGMENT 4. Haqqi (his hobby) min ʙasman il-hadāya allati niltuha hādihi s-sūra wa hiya min rasm akbar musawwirī s-sīn fī dālika l-waqt. il-huwāya l-wahīda ʙilli xaragt bīha huwāyat gami šwayyit isyān ma-lhā-š ʙayy qīma kbīra lākin li kull asāya makāna fi qalbi. wi bataʙammal kayfa ʙaxtār ʙihdā hādihi l-usa. wa hunā akūnu fi hāla min al-istihzā qalīlan wa urīdu an atamid ala šay fa axtār asan min ašgār-i misr min ašgār il-fallahīn fi baladna. One of the most precious gifts that I received is this picture and it is a painting of one the best painters of China at that time. The only hobby that I came out with is the hobby of collecting some canes that don’t have any value but each cane has a place in my heart. And I contemplate how to choose one of these canes. And here I am being a little sarcastic and I want to depend on something so I choose a cane from the trees of Egypt from the trees of the peasants in our country.
Finally, segment 5 of the Haqqi sample includes more instances of lexical items marked for Egyptian (14) by comparison to previous segments. The number is still the lowest by comparison to that of lexical items marked for the predominant fusˢhˢ ā (36 instances) and those unspecified for variety (25 instances). Segment 5 is interesting from another perspective: it is the only segment of the three from Haqqi that actually has one or more sentences predominantly in Egyptian as, for example, the last sentence. Finally, this segment also illustrates variation in the use of fusˢhˢ ā interdental fricatives versus Egyptian sibilants through the alternation muwadˢdˢaf ~ muwazˢzaˢ f ‘employee.’ I have counted the form with the sibilant /z/ as Egyptian since the alternative with the stop pronunciation (*muwadˢdˢaf ) does not exist.
10 The hybrid form bataammal in this segment and yumassilu in segment 5 are excluded from the count in each case for the obvious reason: each has features of both varieties.
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SEGMENT 5: Haqqi (on government employees) fi hādihi l-fatra istatana an nungiz bada l-amāl. rubbamā lā yahiqq-u lī an adkurha lākin lā bas min an aqūl . . . fa kānat tagriba ġarība giddan xusūsan fi l-muwazzafīn bi n-nisba li hādihi l-wazārāt at-taqāfiyya. anta bayna namatayn min al-muwazzafīn: muwazˢzaˢ f idāri lākin sifr fi l-fann wa muwazzaf fannān lākin sifr fi l-idāra. timsiku min hina yigri min hina wa ilā āxirih. fa kāna l-amal asīr giddan. al-husūl ala muwazˢzaˢ f yumassilu xayra at -t arafayn an yakūna fannānan wa fi l-waqt nafsu yistahˢ mil innu yuʙʚud ala maktab wi yira waraa wi yiʚraf yiktib gawāb kwayyis. During this period we were able to accomplish some goals. Maybe I don’t have the right to mention them but it’s ok that I say . . . so it was a very strange experience especially in the employees of these ministries of culture. You are between two types of employees: an employee [who is] administrator but zero in art and an employee [who is] an artist but zero in administration. You catch him from here, he runs from there and so on. So work was very difficult: the finding of an employee who is good at both, to be an artist and at the same time tolerates to sit at the desk and read a paper and know how to write a letter well.
The speech samples from Haqqi demonstrate that in this speech style features from Egyptian are consistently much lower in frequency than those from fusˢhˢ ā as well as those unspecified for variety. One sample (segment 3) has no features of Egyptian and includes almost all the characteristics of a reading style. What, one might ask, would explain such differences? Topic is a very likely explanation. In segment 4 with the most fusˢhˢ ā, Haqqi speaks about ‘art’ and what it means to him: a topic that lends itself to fusˢhˢ ā but more importantly, a topic he has written and lectured about throughout his long career.11 In segments 5 and 6 the topic shifts to relatively more personal topics and situations: his hobbies and his experiences as a government official, respectively. The style shifts accordingly. The last segment includes the most dialectal features, perhaps because it is also the one most related to everyday events and behaviors as a result of his comments on government employees. This is not to say that it is necessary that Egyptian be used in this case. Other segments in the program show Haqqi not resorting to Egyptian under similar circumstances. In fact, these two segments are the only ones in his speech sample that include any features of Egyptian. 11 In an earlier segment Haqqi talks about the short story and the essay, stressing that the purpose of the former is to entertain the reader (ʙimtāʚ ‘giving pleasure to’) and the latter is to inform (ʙiʚlām) the reader.
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Haqqi’s style can be said to conform to the discourse on diglossia by relating Arabic variety to topic: fusˢhˢ ā for the abstract, informative, and literary, but Egyptian for everyday situations. Haqqi’s speech sample shows that fusˢhˢ ā can be used successfully and appropriately in descriptions and narrations about everyday situations, although it would be odd to use it in actual day-to-day interactions. A different style is represented in segments 6–8 from the Anis Mansour interview. Segment 6 consists of a question from the interviewer, Sanaa Mansour, followed by A. Mansour’s answer. The question addresses the issue of opposition to a mainstream position: What happens when one goes against the tide by taking an unpopular or oppositional stand. Mansour’s answer includes more instances of lexical items unspecified for variety (28) than instances of either Egyptian (14) or fusˢhˢ ā (15). This segment also shows an almost equal distribution of Egyptian and fusˢhˢ ā lexical items. SEGMENT 6: A. Mansour (Swimming against the tide) Question 1. SM: bi-yʙūlu “lā yaksab katīran man yasbah didd it-tayyār.” hadritak kisibt il-kitīr walla dayman bi-tisbahˢ didd it-tayyār. “They say: He does not gain much who swims against the tide.” Have you [sir] gained much or were you always swimming against the tide? Answer 1. AM: da yatawaqqaf ala ʙanni tayyār. ahyānan min al-maslaha l-āma ʙaw il-wata niyya annaki tasbahi didd it-tayyār ʙiza kān it-tayyār ʙinhilāl ʙaw fasād, tafāha, adam axz il-ašyā bi giddiyya. hunā yusbih min al-wāgib ala l-kātib ʙinnu yasbah didd it-tayyār, ʙinnu yiʚmil tayyār muādi liʙannu wagbu ʙinnu yuslih aw yartafi bi n-nās. fa da yatawaqqaf ala ʙanhi tayyār illi fīh xōf aw mahazīr ʙinnu yusbah didd-u. This depends on which tide. Sometimes it is for the public or national welfare that you swim against the tide, if the tide immorality or corruption, triviality, not taking matters seriously. Here it becomes the duty of the writer that he swim against the tide, that he create a counter tide because it is his duty that he reform or uplift the people up. So this depends on which tide is fearful to swim against.
In segment 7, which is a follow-up on the question above, there is a clear shift in style for both interviewer and interviewee. Sanaa Mansour’s question here is an excellent example of what I call ‘collage.’ It consists of 9 words of which 4 are Egyptian, 3 are unspecified for variety, and 2
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are specified for fusˢhˢ ā.12 She receives a one-word answer in Egyptian, which she follows up with a question in clearly marked Egyptian syntax, indicated by the WH-question word ēh ‘what,’ and unmarked lexical items: kān and in-natīga. Her question generates another collaged response from A. Mansour, a response that is predominantly Egyptian (16), minimally fusˢhˢ ā (2), with unmarked items in between (7). SEGMENT 7: Mansour (Swimming against the tide, continued) Q2. SM: gatlak fatarāt katīra fi hˢ ayātak ʙinnak sabaht didd it-tayyār. “Did you have many times in your life that you swam against the tide?” A2–AM: kitīr “A lot.” Q3–SM: kān in-natīga ēh “What was the result?” A3–AM: wala hˢ āga. w-adīni ʙāʚid ʙuddāmik ʙahu. w-ixtalaft kasīran w ittafaʙt iktīr lākin madām inti muqtania ʙaw ʙamīna f daʚawātik ʙaw fi bi wighit nazˢarik mayhimmikīš hˢ āga ʙaw mayhimminīš hˢ āga. “Nothing, and here I am sitting in front of you. I have disagreed often and agreed often but as long as you are convinced and honest in your mission or in your point of view, you don’t care for anything or I don’t care for anything.”
The last segment 8 from Mansour is also predominantly Egyptian (35 instances), minimally fusˢhˢ ā (4), with unmarked items (20) in between. Had it not been for the last sentence which includes a sentence, or part thereof, in fusˢhˢ ā, this whole segment could have been considered Egyptian. The unmarked lexical items, although a majority, have little impact on the reader in terms of identification of variety. The syntax, phonology, and lexicon of Egyptian predominate, and the identification as Egyptian goes unchallenged. SEGMENT 8. Anis Mansour (More about Kamel El Shenawi, ʙad ēh kan zˢarīf “How nice he was!”) giddan yaʚni maʚrafš ʙaʙullik nukatuh. kan yiʙūl ʚala Sawla H igāzi allāh yirhˢ amha ʙinnaha min ʙadabha š-šidīd ʙablima tiftahˢ id-durg tixabbatˢ ʚalēh il-ʙawwil. masalan kan ʚandi ʚarabiyya zˢuġayyara kida baby Ford w-ana miš
12 The fusˢhˢ ā in her first question (segment 6) is the result of a quoted proverbial statement.
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sawwāʙ kwayyis yaʚni fa kān yiʙūl ʙēh ʙin il-ʚarabiyyāt il-karro timši gamb minni tiʚmil “voo” [li d-daragā di] yaʚni fa kull ʙaʚdāt Kamel El Shenawi marahˢ wi xiffit damm w maʙālib wi taġyīr fi k-kalām lākinnu ʙabb w ʙaxx w ʙumm w niʚma sˢ-sˢadīq wa laysa lahu nazīr fi hˢ ayatna sˢ-sˢahˢafiyya. Very much [meaning] I don’t know. I tell you his jokes. He used to say about Salwa Higazi, God have mercy on her, that because of her politeness she would knock on the drawer first before opening it up. For example, I used to have a small car, a Baby Ford, and I’m not a good driver [meaning] so he used to say that ‘karro’ carts would go beside me and sound “voom.” [laughter] to this extent [meaning]. So all his get-togethers were fun, humor, tricks, and play with words but he was a father, a brother, a mother and the best of friends and there is no one like him in our journalistic life.
Unlike the two previous segments, fusˢhˢ ā here comes at the end as a sequence, a sentence or part thereof, and is not intermingled with the earlier narrative. It serves as a conclusion to Mansour’s narrative on Kamel El Shenawi and his recollection of his sense of humor. The conclusion, that there is no one like him, is what Mansour asserts and wants the audience to remember. The code-switch, or style shift, to fusˢhˢ ā helps him accomplish this goal. Mansour relies on his knowledge of code differences to set the conclusion apart from previous narration, thereby signaling the conclusion and highlighting its content. The switch, or shift, is therefore meaningful at this particular moment and within the context of the text. This, one might argue, represents the basic difference between hybridity and code-switching. Hybridity creates a speech sample that resembles a collage of elements from one code or another. In that sense it’s a global feature of a text. Code-switching as a conversational and stylistic strategy is meaningful in a specific context within a text; in this sense it’s local within a text. The three segments 6 through 8 from Mansour, like those from Haqqi, show an increasing shift towards Egyptian, which may also be related to topic. The shift in topic here is not as strong as it was in the Haqqi samples. The difference between segment 6 and 7, for example, is not so much in the topic as it is in locus. Segment 6 addresses the issue of swimming against the tide on a general, more conceptual level whereas the question in 7 shifts the locus to the person, to Mansour himself and his experiences in swimming against the tide. The shift to the personal tends to be accompanied by an increasing shift towards Egyptian. Likewise, the last segment (8) is located in the personal: reminiscing about a friend and sharing jokes he used to tell with the audience to demonstrate his sense of humor. Both are discourse functions most appropriately conducted in Egyptian.
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On the basis of these samples, two conversational styles are identified: one is fusˢhˢ ā-based, the other Egyptian-based. The two styles incorporate features from both varieties and include a significantly large number of lexical items that are ambiguous or unspecified for language variety.13 The texts produced are often like a collage in which the borders separating one variety from the other are often blurred making the product look more like a hybrid text or discourse rather than one where the boundaries are maintained and the switch from one to the other variety is clear. The speech samples from Mansour fall into the first category, those from Haqqi into the second. The analysis in this section identified three styles and illustrates some of their linguistic and discourse features. In the next section I present a frequency-based quantitative analysis of speech samples from Haqqi and Mansour to identify overall characteristics of the two styles they represent. 2.2 Quantitative Analysis The quantitative analysis is based on speech samples of approximately the first 10-minutes from each speaker, Haqqi and Mansour. The results are presented in Table 3. The overall totals at the bottom of the table show clear differences between the speakers’ styles. Haqqi’s is clearly fusˢhˢ ā-based (80%) and Mansour’s Egyptian-based (74%). Although the two speakers have clear preferences for different varieties of Arabic, they prefer one to the other by about the same degree: a ratio for Haqqi of 80% fusˢhˢ ā to 20% Egyptian and for Mansour 74% Egyptian to 26% fusˢhˢ ā. Table 3 also provides a breakdown of the distribution of fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian features according to the selected phonological, syntactic, and morphological features. The figures from Haqqi’s speech show a bias towards fusˢhˢ ā in all areas, but particularly in the syntactic and morphological features with 96% and 100%, respectively. The highest percentage of Egyptian features in his speech sample comes from phonology (28%). Of the four phonological variables used in the analysis, the alternation between fusˢhˢ ā interdental fricatives and Egyptian stops and sibilants is the most significant; it is responsible for 85% of the Egyptian phono-
13 Since Schmidt (1974) very few studies, if any, have addressed the role of the lexicon in Arabic mixed varieties and problems in the identification of lexical items by variety.
arabic on the media: hybridity and styles TABLE 3
STYLES—HAQQI AND MANSOUR Fusˢhāˢ
Phonological q~ t ~ t ~ s d / d ~ d / d ~ z/z diphthong ~ long vowel TOTALS Syntactic Relative markers Demonstratives Negatives Complementizer TOTALS Morphological Passive (u-i, u-a ~ it-) Stem IV: a-fal pattern TOTALS OVERALL TOTALS
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Haqqi Egyptian
Mansour Fusˢhāˢ Egyptian
70 4 29 20 123 72%
4 20 21 3 48 28%
20 3 2 2 27 19%
61 16 30 10 117 81%
9 12 6 20 47 96%
1 0 1 0 2 4%
0 4 10 5 19 25%
10 15 20 13 58 75%
13 13 26 100%
0 0 0 0%
9 7 16 52%
6 9 15 48%
196 80%
50 20%
62 26%
181 74%
logical features in Haqqi’s speech. In addition there is a strong difference in the distribution of the voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives by comparison to their corresponding Egyptian pronunciation (stops and sibilants). Compare the 29 instances of the fusˢhˢ ā voiced fricatives to the 21 instances of Egyptian pronunciation and the 4 instances of fusˢhˢ ā voiceless fricatives to the 20 instances of their corresponding Egyptian pronunciation. A very different picture emerges from the analysis of Mansour’s style. While Egyptian is clearly the dominant variety for him, based on the distribution of features in all three components (phonology, syntax, and morphology), the contribution from fusˢhˢ ā is not as minimal as was the distribution of features from Egyptian, the less dominant variety, in the Haqqi sample. This is most striking in the morphology, for example, where the distribution of fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian features in Mansour’s sample is almost evenly split (52% to 48%, respectively); in Haqqi’s sample morphological features of the less dominant (Egyptian) variety
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STYLES—PERCENTAGES OF MIX HAQQI MANSOUR
100 80 60 40 20 0 Egyptian
Fusˢhāˢ
Egyptian
Fusˢhāˢ
Pronology
28
72
81
19
Syntax
4
96
75
25
Morphology
0
100
48
52
Haqqi
Mansour
are nonexistent. Likewise, the distribution of syntactic features in Mansour’s style shows relatively more contribution form the less dominant ( fusˢhˢ ā) with 25%; in Haqqi’s the less dominant (Egyptian) contributes only 4% of the syntactic features. The phonology in Mansour’s style is consistently Egyptian-dominant at 81%, stronger than the phonology of Haqqi’s dominant variety at 72%. The strongest contribution from the non-dominant fusˢhˢ ā in Mansour’s sample comes from the /q ~ ʙ/ alternation, with fusˢhˢ ā /q/ representing 25% of all instances of this variable. In Haqqi’s style the Egyptian sibilant pronunciation of the interdental fricative accounted for 85% of all Egyptian pronunciation features. A graphic representation of these distributions is provided in Figure 1. The focus of the discussion so far has been on linguistic features (of phonology, morphology, and syntax) that are different in the two varieties, hence serve to distinguish one from the other allowing speakers to identify a word, a speech segment, or part thereof, as belonging to one or the other variety. There is naturally a significant amount of overlap in the three components. This overlap, or shared features, is typically ignored in discussions of Arabic mixed varieties since similarity can be assumed in the analysis of same language varieties. The lexicon is an area perhaps ignored most in analyses of mixed Arabic varieties, partly because of assumed similarity and partly because
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of difficulties speakers encounter in categorizing lexical items according to variety. Schmidt, for example, argues that speakers of Arabic are often unable to classify lexical items as belonging to one or the other variety, fusˢhˢ ā or Egyptian, and that the difficulty may be explained on the basis of topic or semantic fields (1974, 60–76). When speakers were asked to provide fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian equivalents in four semantic fields (body parts, foods, arts, and politics), they had more difficulty with the last two than they did with the first two. Results of this type can have more than one interpretation. They can be taken to show a complex, integrated, interconnected system whereby some areas of the lexicon such as arts and politics are shared and others distinct—evidence for complementarity typical of subparts of a whole. They can also be interpreted as pointing to areas of deficiency, or incompleteness, in one or the other language system and used to argue for the superiority of one or the other variety. Regardless of interpretation, these subsystems of Arabic are interconnected in ways that are yet to be discovered and satisfactorily explained. To get a sense of the distribution of lexical items by variety and the impact the lexicon may have on identification of a base variety, I have analyzed the lexical items in the 10-minute speech samples of Haqqi and Mansour based on the presence or absence of clearly marked features of either variety. The absence of such features makes the lexical item unspecified for variety, or ambiguous. As explained earlier, hybrid words would have features from both.14 Table 4 provides the overall distribution of lexical items from the 10-minutes speech samples of Haqqi and Mansour according to the three categories: fusˢhˢ ā, Egyptian, and unspecified. The category ‘unspecified’ refers to words (content morphemes) and particles (grammatical morphemes)15 that cannot be distinguished as to variety and can therefore be considered as ambiguous or shared items. The results support the idea of a dominant variety underlying diglossicbased stylistic variation. Haqqi’s lexicon is predominantly fusˢhˢ ā (74%) with a smaller 23% of his lexical items unspecified, leaving a minimal 3% marked as Egyptian. Mansour’s lexicon is unexpectedly only 45% marked as Egyptian; but he has an almost equal amount (41%) unspecified and
14 The analysis of hybrid words in the speech samples of Haqqi and Mansour has not been completed. 15 I adopt McCarthy’s and Prince’s (1990) definition of a minimal word in Arabic as consisting of at least two moras.
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THE LEXICON—PERCENTAGE OF MIX Haqqi
Egyptian Fusˢhāˢ Unspecified TOTAL
25 (3%) 683 (74%) 214 (23%) 922 (100%)
Mansour 391 119 354 867
(45%) (14%) (41%) (100%)
smaller but sizeable percentage (14%) marked as fusˢhˢ ā. The major difference between the two styles is the proportion of the lexicon allotted to the predominant variety by comparison to the unspecified lexical items and to those marked for the non-dominant variety. In Mansour’s style the discrepancy between the dominant and non-dominant variety is not as marked, partly because the contribution from the unspecified component of the lexicon is stronger than it is in Haqqi’s style (41% to 23%, respectively). And while the proportion of lexical items from the dominant and non-dominant is higher in both styles, the difference is much larger in Haqqi’s sample than it is in Mansour’s, 74% to 3% in the former and 45% to 14% in the latter. A graphic representation of these results is provided in Figure 2. The graphic view in Figure 2 suggests a relatively more balanced distribution in Mansour’s style than in Haqqi’s. The graph representing Haqqi’s style looks as though one component is suppressed (Egyptian), another is allowed some presence (the unspecified), but the third is asserted as an overpowering presence ( fusˢhˢ ā). In Mansour’s there is not one single category that is overpowering, but there is one ( fusˢhˢ ā) less represented than the others—an unequal participant perhaps. The graphic view also suggests that the linguistic boundaries are more clearly defined in Haqqi’s style than they are in Mansour’s. For Haqqi the domain is no doubt fusˢhˢ ā; Egyptian may “creep in” only slightly, if necessary. For Mansour, the domain is more inclusive. The ambiguous, or unspecified, lexicon serves to mediate the difference between the two varieties. It creates a shared, or an in-between space, consistent with the two distinct codes. In doing so, it contributes to this linguistic collage by allowing smooth transitions from one code to the other, thereby blurring the distinction between the two. Hybrid forms, I would add, serve a similar purpose: they can be heard and interpreted as one, the other, or both varieties. The result is a style that does not sound too ‘colloquial’ (dialectal) or too ‘literate’ ( fusˢhˢ ā)—a balancing act that allows each speaker to accommodate the situation
arabic on the media: hybridity and styles FIGURE 2
423
THE LEXICON—PERCENTAGE OF MIX
80 60 40 20 0 Haqqi
Mansour
Egyptian
3
45
Fusˢhaˢ
74
14
Both
23
41
and create personas and identities that are sufficiently separate yet similar enough to be still viewed as one. The question remains as to why these two speakers, both highly educated, intellectuals and writers, would choose styles so different from each other in what appears to be very similar context: one conforming to a great extent to the predominant (official) discourse of separation ( fusˢhˢ ā for public, formal contexts) and the other nonconforming through its extensive use of Egyptian. The answer to this question requires a more detailed analysis of the interviews themselves including contexts and topics of conversation as well as speakers’ purpose in communication.
3. The Interviews An interview is a conversation or discussion between two participants with the purpose of gathering information by the interviewer about an individual, an institution, a topic, or some other issue. Since the interviewee agrees to participate, s/he is expected by the interviewer to be forthcoming and cooperative in this conversation. The interviewer, having initiated the event, is likely to have his/her agenda as well. Both have something to gain from participation in the event, thus a motive for a successful performance. An interview may be private or public and formal or informal, depending on the purpose of the interview. Participants are expected to
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follow certain rules, usually set ahead of time, regarding procedure and at times topic as well. An interview on radio or television is in addition a public performance intended to create the semblance of a conversation whose purpose is to convey information to the audiences and to entertain them as well. The ultimate success or failure of such an interview depends on how the performance is staged and how participants interact. In this section I describe the two interviews selected for this study in terms of three components that define an interview: set-up, information, and interaction. I relate these aspects of the interviews to the styles identified above and to speakers’ linguistic choices and purpose in communication. 3.1
The interviews compared
The two interviews are similar in set-up and type of information solicited and conveyed. They differ primarily in forms of interaction and interviewees’ purpose in conversation, more specifically in the identities, or persona, they negotiate and attempt to construct through the interview. The interviewees, Yehya Haqqi and Anis Mansour, are both famous men of letters, very much involved in the literary and cultural scenes of their time. Yehya Haqqi (1905–1992) is a literary critic, essayist and short story writer. He had tremendous influence on several generations of modern Arab writers and is considered one of the fathers of modern Arab culture. Many of his works have been translated into several foreign languages and are being taught in many academic institutions, especially his masterpiece Qindīl ʙUmm Hashim “The Lantern of Umm Hashim.” Anis Mansour is a journalist, an essayist, and a story writer. He is known for his daily column in al-Ahram mawāqif “Positions/Opinions” and has written numerous books including his famous hˢ awla l-ʚālam fi 200 yawm “Around the world in 200 days.” Both interviews are incomplete, with the early part missing from each. The amount of recorded time available from them, however, is comparable: approximately the last 30–35 minutes of each program. 3.1.1
Set-up
Both interviews take place on-location outside the studio in the homes of the interviewees. In the Mansour program, the interview is conducted outdoors by the swimming pool with the interviewer and interviewee seated across a small table. In the Haqqi program, the interview takes
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place inside his home. Some scenes are shot in his study, others in his living room, around the dining room table, or in the entry hall. 3.1.2
Format
The Mansour interview adopts a question-answer format and is hosted by Sanaaʚ Mansour, an experienced interviewer and host of numerous programs on the ESC including “Good Morning, Egypt.”16 In the Mansour program she performs the interviewer role, asking the questions and directing the flow of conversation through topic introduction, follow-up, commentary, and interruption where necessary. From this perspective, the format of this interview is the ‘conventional’ interviewer-interviewee. But it actually is far from being so, as will be shown below. In the Haqqi program there is no ‘interviewer’ on the screen. The questions are not aired, only responses and comments. The program also includes other participants: Haqqi’s daughter Nuha, his French wife, and two of his colleagues, Fouad Duwara and Mohammad Rumeish; the former is a critic and the latter a writer, as per information projected on the screen. Both are friends and colleagues who had worked with Haqqi during his term as editor of al-Magalla. Despite the difference in format (one-to-one vs. multiple participation), one participant in each program performs the role of commentator and topic introducer. In the Mansour program this role is performed by the interviewer, Sanaaʚ Mansour, and in the Haqqi program by his colleague, Fouad Duwara. In performing these roles they read short segments, thus illustrating the non-conversational reading style. 3.1.3
Textuality
Both programs rely on the visual, for entertainment and for reinforcement of information. Images related to the topics under discussion are often projected on the screen during the conversations. In the Haqqi program, for example, close ups of paintings appear as Haqqi talks about gifts he received during his visit to China as director of an Egyptian film festival and about the significance of animals in Chinese art as illustrated in the paintings. Likewise, pictures of the movie stars Fatin 16
To my knowledge, interviewer and interviewee are not related despite the same last name.
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Hamama and Omar Sharif are projected on the screen as Haqqi talks about Fatin Hamama’s popularity among Muslims in China. Pictures of Yehya Haqqi himself, sometimes a younger Haqqi, also appear on the screen showing him standing by a car in Paris, for example, as Rumeish narrates a story about Haqqi’s trip to Paris to undergo a surgery. In the Mansour interview, pictures of his books are projected on the screen when a specific book is mentioned as happened with h awla l-ālam fi 200 yawm (“Around the World in 200 Days”); likewise images of newspaper articles or quotes appear on the screen when mentioned in the conversation. Each segment begins with scenes illustrating the topic to be discussed with the interviewer’s voice-over introducing the segment. To introduce the last segment on the intellectuals and the cafés they frequented, for example, scenes of Cairo streets with various shops were shown during the introduction. Later in this segment, scenes of the Brazilian coffee shop, A. Mansour’s favorite, were shown when the interviewer mentioned it in her questions. Pictures of Kamel El Shenawi, Taha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and Abbas al-Aqqad also appear at different points during the program as their names are mentioned. This interweaving of materials from different text types—visual, musical, written—makes both interviews multi-textual. It serves to create a ‘collage’ bringing into the main text of the interview other sub-texts and sub-effects that contribute to the ‘voice’ or ‘voices’ represented in each interview and ultimately influence the ‘style’ speakers choose to adopt when speaking in their voice and the voices of others. 3.1.4
Topics
Both interviews can be described as ‘reminiscences,’ reflections on the lives and times of these two professionals. Consequently the topics in both interviews revolve around the ‘personal’ and the ‘professional.’ In the 35 minutes available from the Mansour interview the discussion is divided into four distinct segments. The first segment is ‘personal’ dealing with his views on such matters as having children and the negative stance he has taken towards women. The second revolves around his life experiences as a journalist/writer, including reflections on his relationship with leading intellectuals of his time (Kamel El Shenawi, Taha Hussein, Abbas al-Aqqad, and Tawfiq al-Hakim). The third is focused on his hectic (perhaps antagonistic) relationship with Abbas al-Aqqad, and the fourth on cafés frequented by various intellectuals including himself, a phenomenon the interviewer refers to as taqāfat aš-šāri (“Street Culture”).
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Likewise, in the 32 minutes available from the Haqqi program, the topics are focused on three areas: Haqqi’s artistic interests and his views on literature and art (which for him transcend the literary and include fine arts and music), his work as editor in chief of al-Magalla and as government official in the Ministry of Culture, and his daily routines and personal life as father and husband. These areas and the specific topics they include are not as clearly bounded in the Haqqi program as they are in the Mansour interview. Segments dealing with the personal and private are interspersed with those dealing with the professional and public. The sequencing in the first part of the program, for example, illustrates this point. It starts with Haqqi talking about the short story and the essay, the former being an art form very much like a painting. Fouad Duawar follows commenting on Haqqi’s contribution to the performing and fine arts. Haqqi follows to talk about what art means to him. The topic then shifts to the personal through Nuha, Haqqi’s daughter, who talks about him as a speaker and a writer. Haqqi follows to talk about subject matter and description in his work with comments on the richness of the Arabic language, meaning fusˢhˢ ā. A switch to the personal follows again from his daughter and then his wife, and so on. The segments flow one into the other and are not typically introduced with a reading segment, for example, as is the case in the Mansour program. This difference in topic organization and shift can be attributed to production decisions on program set-up and format. But it has implications for the interviews and the speech styles chosen by the speakers. It may, for example, have reduced, even eliminated, the on-screen interaction among the participants allowing, for example, Haqqi and Duwara to maintain their predominant fusˢhˢ ā style.17 The one-to-one set up in the Mansour program allows for interaction and forms of discourse, such as interruptions and corrections, that generate spontaneous speech, which in turn triggers the more casual, conversational style which for Arabic is dialect-based. 3.1.5
Voice
A major difference between the two interviews involves the issue of voice: who speaks about what and in whose voice. Despite the difference in set up noted above, the two interviews are multi-voiced, but in
17 Duwara is included here although his speech style, other than reading, is not discussed in this article.
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different ways. We hear Haqqi and Mansour speak in their voice, both physically and metaphorically. They speak primarily in the ‘I,’ not the ‘we,’ since neither is there to represent a group or organizational identity. Mansour tends to represent others more so than Haqqi. When he speaks in the name of the young generation of writers of his time, for example, he speaks in the ‘we.’ Haqqi brings in other fusˢhˢ ā voices by remembering lines of classical Arabic poetry, for example, and reciting them for the audience on the screen. The one-to-one set up in the Mansour interview makes him the only speaker, the interviewer being the other. Through these two speakers, we hear other voices as well. The interviewer Sanaaʚ Mansour speaks in her own voice when, for example, she expresses an opinion, makes a comment, or asks a question. But she also brings into the interview Mansour’s voice from the past by quoting his public pronouncements and published views, at times challenging and questioning them, at other times allowing him to elaborate and narrate. In so doing, she merges the past and the present thereby adding to the multi-textual ‘collage’ of this program a time-based dimension. Although Anis Mansour speaks in his voice, he brings in the voices of others through his narration. In the story-telling segments of the interview, for example, he quotes and reports the speech of others; we hear them but only through Mansour’s voice and his perspective. Through the multi-person set up in the Haqqi program, we hear and see four other people, in addition to Haqqi, speak about his life and his accomplishments. Haqqi’s comments, however, are limited to Haqqi the professional: his views on the arts and his track record as an editor and government official. This public ‘persona’ is reinforced by his two colleagues, who provide their perspectives on Haqqi as a public figure, a colleague, and a friend in the profession. Projections of Haqqi’s ‘private’ persona are left to his wife and daughter. As a result, the program as a whole maintains the boundaries between the two personas: they remain mostly separate as they come in different voices. Perhaps because of this separation, segments dealing with the personal/private in this interview are interspersed with those dealing with the professional/public allowing the two to merge into one unified whole through program production. 3.2
Projections of Identities
Although the identities projected in these interviews fall into the general categories of the personal and the professional, the persona created
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by the main figure in each of these programs are very different. This difference is communicated through the speakers’ voice, i.e., the language that expresses the persona. The style differentiation described above can be viewed as representations of speakers’ voices. In this section I discuss in relatively more detail the persona being created in the interviews, relating it to topic, speakers’ voices, and the interview as a whole. The Haqqi interview maintains the boundaries between the personal and the professional and, perhaps as a result, between fusˢhˢ ā and Egyptian. The set-up and production of the program helps maintain the boundaries by assigning participants in the program different roles in the construction of Haqqi’s overall Persona. Haqqi himself addresses only the professional, either as his own choice or as that of the producer; his fusˢhˢ ā-based speech style reflects this choice. Others interviewed in the program speak to the personal as, for example, his daughter Nuha, or to both the personal and professional as does his colleague Meleish; their styles vary accordingly and appear to be closer to Mansour’s than they are to Haqqi’s. The focus on the professional with Haqqi allows him to express his views on literature, art, and literary criticism and to reflect on his accomplishments in the public sphere as an intellectual, a government official, and editor of a literary journal. He expresses his views on the short story, for example, as an art form whose primary purpose is to entertain, or give pleasure to, the reader (ʙimtāʚ al-qāriʙ) as opposed to the essay whose purpose is to inform (iʚlām). The voice we hear is Haqqi’s throughout: his views on art, broadly defined to include literature, fine arts, and performance arts, recollections of his three years administrative experiences as Director of the Arts Department in the Ministry of Culture, and his role as editor of al-Magalla. His voice is complemented, and at times reinforced, by other participants. Haqqi’s reflections on his role as editor of al-Magalla (that he made lots of friends through this job) are picked up in both Rumeish and Duwara’s comments. They talk, for example, about Haqqi as being dedicated to his work and supportive of other writers. Rumeish recalls his first meeting with Haqqi to submit for publication his first short story, while Duwara comments on Haqqi’s dedication as a journal editor and his travels to solicit manuscripts for the journal. On the personal, or private, domain Haqqi briefly mentions his hobby of collecting canes from all over the world. He describes, and shows the audience, a few of his favorite canes and explains how his choice is often determined by his mood. His conclusion to this segment
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relates the practice of using canes to the public domain, explaining how it used to be a practice among ministers and politicians but is now a thing of the past. All other aspects of his private persona are left for others to project. His daugther, Nuha, speaks of Haqqi as a father and a professional, merging the two identities a little. She gives the audience a glimpse of Haqqi the writer and the public speaker through her eyes as his daugther. She describes his eloquence as a speaker and the ease with which words “come out of his mouth” when he speaks; but apparently they don’t come as easy when he writes. Nuha describes how more difficult and time-consuming writing is for him, comparing the writing process to a complicated child birth (wilāda mutaʚassira). She projects him as a kind and nurturing father, describing their promenades in Maʚadi, where he would urge her to observe the beauty in nature and to listen to the birds, and their walks in Paris, where they would frequent art museums. She contrasts his perspective of himself versus her perspective of him. While Haqqi says he is old at 80, she sees him as a young man (šāb) still, more knowledgeable than anyone in her generation. A more detailed description of his private life is left to his French wife to construct for the audience. She speaks in French with a voice over in Arabic, thus adding one more voice to the many voices in the program. His wife describes their life together, their walks in Maʚadi and in Paris, their visits to museums, and his eating habits (eats very little). As these life events are narrated, we see the two of them at times sitting at the dinner table, other times in their living room or in his study, and at times joined by their daughter. His colleague Rumeish provides a combined personal-professional account, for example, in his narration of how Haqqi cancelled plans for surgery in Paris to return via Libya to be with the Egyptian people during the 1967 war. In the Haqqi program, then, the boundaries between personal and professional identities are maintained as a result of participants’ (assigned) roles in this overall construction of Haqqi’s identities. This allows Haqqi to speak in his fusˢhˢ ā-based style and maintain the public image he has created for himself throughout his career, a supporter of the fusˢhˢ ā and its heritage. From this perspective the Mansour interview is very different. The Mansour program, unlike Haqqi’s, does not separate the professional and the personal. The boundaries between them are fuzzy, or blurred, making the two identities appear merged into one entity, a collage of the personal and the professional created primarily by Mansour himself with the help of the interviewer. Since this program is set up
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with Anis Mansour as the only speaker, it becomes his responsibility to create this ‘hybrid’ persona, the merger of the personal and the professional. This Mansour does through a speech style in which the boundaries between the two varieties of Arabic are no longer maintained. The interviewer Sanaaʚ Mansour brings up for discussion positions Anis Mansour has taken in public on certain issues. While these topics all belong to the public and therefore professional domain, almost all are handled on a personal level as narrative rather than as intellectual debates on a more abstract level. The segment discussed earlier on swimming against the tide is one example. Most of the questions are handled on a concrete, personal experience level allowing Mansour to engage in the narration of events in his voice but often reporting the voices of other participants in past events. In the Mansour interview, the personal is also public. In the first segment, for example, the interviewer brings up Mansour’s views on children, marriage, and women. Most, if not all, these views come as quotations from, or paraphrases of, Mansour’s published articles, books, or other public pronouncements. In the discussion regarding his negative views on women, the conversation at some point centers around his wife. Despite his opposition to marriage and his negative views on women, Mansour is in fact married and his wife is a public figure. The interviewer wonders if his wife is then different from all other women? Likewise in the discussion related to children, Mansour explains that although he is opposed to having children (and gives his reasons based partly on the professional), he does love children: all children in his family have pictures with Mansour carrying them on his shoulder. Here the professional justifies the personal and vice versa. The justification he strongly voices in concluding this segment is based on the professional and is expressed with a switch to clearly marked fusˢhˢ ā syntax and morphology of the embedded that-clause: yihimmini "an "akūna mufakkiran ʙaw kātiban ʙaw "adīban giddan “It’s very important for me that I be a thinker or a writer or a man of letters.” This is the public persona he projects of himself, but always together with the personal. Differences in the interview set-up and the specific topics covered in the interviews are partly responsible for the overall persona created of the main figures. The bulk of the responsibility however lies with the individuals being interviewed. The persona projected by Mansour is clearly multi-voiced. He plays many roles and speaks in many voices. He plays his own person as a writer, an intellectual, and a family person. But he also plays the roles of others in his narratives: Salwa Hegazi, Kamel
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Elshenawi, El-Aqqad, etc. In his narratives he assumes their roles by quoting them, for example, directly or indirectly, by telling their jokes to illustrate their sense of humor, and by reporting on their accomplishments and modes of interaction as well. Throughout the interview his voice is concrete, personalized, with a clear sense of humor. As a result, he engages in different forms of discourse, e.g. telling jokes, narration, and argumentation/persuasion, and takes on different personas, e.g. the story-teller, the writer, the friend. He projects himself as a person who values a sense of humor, friendship, nurturing, and being there for others; these are the values he likes in others and praises them for having such values. Haqqi, on the other hand, plays one role: the professional, hence public, role of the intellectual, writer-artist, and administrator. He speaks in one voice, that of this public persona. This single voice is clearly reflected in his fusˢhˢ ā-based choice and the discourse of explication and narration. The personal he leaves to others, to his daughter and his wife who complement this professional persona with the personal, Haqqi the man: father, partner, and friend. On some level, then, the two interviews turn out to be similar in topic, voice, textuality, and overall informal setting. But they are actually very different in terms of the roles played by the major figures. The overall purpose in both programs is the creation of a public and private persona for each interviewee. In so doing, the programs inform the audiences about these individuals and entertain them as well. Entertainment comes partly through the ‘collage’ effect created during the interview—a collage that extends to the language itself as reflected in the diversity of speech styles and the many voices, images, and persona presented in the programs, but not necessarily created by the two major figures. While Haqqi plays one role and speaks in one voice, for example, the program itself is multi-voiced. Likewise, while the Mansour program creates boundaries separating its segments and topics, the speakers manage to cross these boundaries merging the personal and the professional through their conversational interaction and stylistic choices.
4. Conclusion: Hybrid people and hybrid contexts produce hybrid language The analysis presented in this article suggests that the media provides a hybrid context whose purpose is to inform and entertain. Using the
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interview as a genre that lends itself to this type of hybridity, I have argued that the language used in this context is also a hybrid produced by hybrid speakers, the degree of hybridity (mixture) being dependent on a number of variables including purpose in communication, projections of identity, and the extent to which a speaker is comfortable with this hybridity. The language variety produced in such contexts is like a collage of features drawn from three linguistic spaces in Arabic: one unspecified for variety, one specified for fusˢhˢ ā, and one specified for Egyptian. This form of the language, like hybrids in general, can be viewed as being neither fusˢhˢ ā nor Egyptian, since it does not conform to either, or as both, since it includes features of both. I leave this question open, for who is to say what, for example, a culturally-hybrid, bilingual person would be? Is an Arab-American, for example, neither Arab nor American, or is she/he both Arab and American? In concluding this article I return instead to elaborate on the view of hybridity as a global feature of text and code-switching as a local feature (meaningful on a local level). It is hard, if not impossible, to predict when or why a person would switch from one language, or variety of a language, to another. A quick glance at the sample texts included in section 2 provides enough evidence to support this point. The discussion of these texts also shows that sometimes the best one can do is identify areas (content, topics, criteria) where people tend to move from one code to another more extensively than other times. The end result is a performance where language variety matches program goal as set by the satellite channel, speaker’s purpose, topic, and intended audiences. At other times, however, it was possible to identify a reason, stylistic or otherwise, for the movement form one variety to another (e.g. Mansour’s segment 8). I have used the terms ‘hybridity’ and ‘code-switching’ to capture this difference. Others have used ‘code-mixing’ instead of ‘hybridity’ leaving the latter to be inclusive of both (Hinnenkamp 2003). Either way two levels or types of analysis are acknowledged: local analysis that focuses on the specific motives for alternations, providing a rationale of local relevance, and a global analysis that focuses on motives that can be found in categories such as identity and group membership, providing a rationale of global relevance to the speakers involved. I have used ‘hybridity’ in relation to global analysis to capture this cultural connection and relevance to speaker. I hope to show in future research that for Arabic, and possibly other alternations across codes of the same language,
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the product may be better analyzed in terms of hybridity understood, as suggested in this article, as a collage with fuzzy boundaries across subspaces.
5. References ʚAwadˢ, Luwīs. 1965. Mudakkirāt tālib bita (Memoirs of a Student on a Study Abroad Mission). Cairo: Muʙassasat Rūz al-Yūsuf. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Texas: University of Texas Press. Bassiouney, Reem. 2006. Functions of Code Switching in Egypt. Evidence from monologues. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. Boussofara-Omar, Naima. 2006a. “Diglossia.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 629–637. ——. 2006b. “Neither Third Language nor ‘Middle Varieties’ but Arabic Diglossic Switching.” Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik/Journal of Arabic Linguistics 45:55–80. ——. 2004. “Diglossia as ‘Zones of Contact’ in the Media.” Al-Arabiyya 37:101–130. Cachia, Pierre. 1990. An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Eid, Mushira. 1982. “The Non-Randomness of Diglossic Variation.” Glossa. 16:1. 54–84. ——. 1988. “Principles for Switching Between Standard and Egyptian Arabic.” Al-Arabiyya 21, 51–80. ——. 1992. “Directionality in Arabic-English Code-Switching.” In Aleya Rouchdy, ed., The Arabic Language in America: A Sociolinguistic Study of a Growing Bilingual Community. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 50–71. ——. 2002. “Language is a Choice: Variation in Egyptian Women’s Written Discourse.” In Aleya Rouchdy, ed., Language Contact and Language Conflict in Arabic. New York and London: Routledge Curzon, 203–232. ——. 2004. “Media Performances as Discourse Events.” Arabic Media and Public Appearance Forum, Center for the Advanced Study of Language (CASL), University of Maryland, College Park, June 8–10, 2004. Haeri, Niloofar. 2003. Sacred Language. Ordinary People. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. “Mixed Language Varieties of Migrant Adolescents and the Discourse of Hybridity.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24:1&2. Mejdell, Gunvor. 2006. “Code-Switching.” In Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 414–421. Mušarrafa, Musˢtaˢ fā. n.d. Qantara alladī kafar. Cairo: Muassasat Tˢ ibāʚat al-ʙalwān al-muttahˢida. Schmidt, Richard. 1974. Sociostylistic Variation in Spoken Egyptian Arabic: A re-examination of the concept of diglossia. Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University. Schulz, David. 1981. Diglossia and Variation in Formal Spoken Arabic in Egypt. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Versteegh, Kees et al., eds. 2006. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.
THE USE OF MORPHOLOGICAL PATTERNS IN ARABIC GRAMMARS OF TURKIC Robert Ermers1 ’s-Hertogenbosch
1. Introduction The use of meaningful (mor)phonological patterns2 (wazn, bunyat, pl. ʙawzān, ʙabniyat) is very common in Arabic linguistic thinking. In this contribution we examine the way these patterns were used in Arabic grammars of Turkic, especially in the works of ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān al-Andalusī (d. 745/1345) and Mahˢmūd al-Kāšġarī (11th century).
2. Patterns in the Arabic linguistic tradition In the Arabic grammatical tradition, each word is analyzed in terms of a root that contains a certain number of base radicals. Most roots contain three radicals, but there are also roots with two-, four or even five. For example the verb karuma ‘he was kind’ is built upon the three radicals k-r-m. In lexicographical works k-r-m is often placed in the same three-radical cluster as, say, r-k-m and m-k-r. A much later development is the alphabetical order in which k-r-m follows, e.g., k-r-ʚ, which starts with Ibn Fāris (d. 390/1000) (cf. Wild 1965, 66). Within a given entry the radical patterns are further ordered according to the vowels they contain. In order to make the vowels stand out more, the Arab scholars use the paradigmatical root /f-ʚ-l/ (cf. Wright 1986), which in our example karuma yields faʚula. In this case faʚula is considered the wazn. In the lexicographical sequence the pattern faʚula follows faʚala. For Arabic words this system based on abstract patterns makes much sense. Verbs that have the same pattern usually possess similar qualities, e.g. transitivity ; verbs of the type faʚula are among other things usually intransitive and
1 2
[email protected], P.O. Box 2176, 5202 CD, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. For the sake of brevity here referred to as morphological patterns.
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most of them describe a state of mind or a quality (cf. e.g. Wright 1986, I, 30, see also Versteegh 1992). Verbs with the same verbal pattern have similar predictable morphological derivations, such as the formation of the verbal noun masˢdar. For verbs of the type faʚula one possible form of the masˢdar is faʚālat e.g. karāmat ‘kindness.’ In regard to nouns of the same pattern the forming of the plural is predictable in the same way, the pattern fāʚilat may have the plural form fawāʚil, e.g. qāʚidat—pl. qawāʚid ‘base’. Fārābī (d. 350/961) writes in his Dīwān al-ʙAdab that plural forms, derived from a pattern which usually yields such plurals, are not included as entries (I:87). Also more or less predictable is the fact that the pattern faʚālat may refer to abstract nouns which are not usually pluralized (similar examples in Irtišāf I 73–97). In this respect the grammarians also indicate augmented radicals in Arabic patterns, e.g. ʙaf ʚala, iftaʚala, istaf ʚala, in which ʙ-, -t-, and -st- are augmented radicals which add a specific meaning to the root. Another obvious motive for collecting words in the same pattern, is that this is handy when writing poetry. Words with the same pattern can easily be used in rhyme schemes (cf. also Wild 1965, 66). The use of morphological patterns thus appears to have two basic objectives. The first is to determine which consonants in a given word are basic and which are augmented, or more precisely: to determine which ones are the basic radicals in a given word. This is for instance important in establishing a word’s etymology. In the second place the pattern is used for illustrating paradigmatic patterns, such as verbal conjugation, the building of regular plural forms and some types of declension, in which consonants (e.g. /w/ in /-uwna/ [m pl] and ʙalif /"/ in /-a"t/ āt [f pl] are assigned special meanings (cf. Versteegh 1985). The scope of this article is limited to the first objective. For Turkic the general advantage of bringing together words with similar patterns is evident too, but the morph(ono)logical arguments do not apply. In Turkic languages meaningful elements usually have the form of suffixes to a given stem, never infixes or prefixes, e.g. kas ‘cut!,’ kas-dī ‘he cut’ (3sg pt), kas-iš-dī ‘they cut together,’ and qul ‘slave’— qul-lar ‘slaves,’ qul-juq ‘little slave,’ qul-juq-lar ‘little slaves,’ etc. From a given vowel sequence or consonant pattern no predictions as to plural and verbal conjugations can be made and the same is true for words that bear certain suffixes.3 In Arabic grammars of Turkic languages, some authors make reference to morphological patterns too. 3
If we disregard the consonant assimilation and vowel harmony, that is.
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 437 3. Two Arabic treatises on Turkic In the Arabic linguistic tradition the meaningful patterns are the basis for the arrangement of lexicographical dictionaries. One important work in this respect is Fārābī’s (d. 350/961) lexicographical work Dīwān al-Adab (cf. Wild 1965, Haywood 1965). The pattern is also used in Arabic grammars of Turkic. Especially, the Dīwān Luġāt at-Turk (henceforth Dīwān) compiled by the 11th century scholar Mahmūd al-Kāšġarī is set up in the same way as Fārābī’s work (cf. Ermers 1999a, 19). On top of the division in patterns, Kāšġarī, like Fārābī, uses a primary categorization of eight chapters (each of which is named Kitāb ‘book’), the final two (i.e. 7 and 8) being additions to Fārābī’s division. This superdivision reflects a primary interest in a morphological and perhaps an orthographical arrangement. One item that is reflected in the headings is the position of the glides, the socalled ‘weak’ consonants, and other non-regular consonants, such as hamza (). The division of Dīwān is as follows: 1. Kitāb al-Hamz (29–160): words with initial hamza, 2. Kitāb as-Sālim (160–406): words having all sound consonants, 3. Kitāb al-Mudāaf (406–445): words containing a geminate consonant or two identical consonants, 4. Kitāb al-Mitāl (445–493): words having an initial weak consonant, i.e. y or w, 5. Kitāb D awāt at-talāta (493–535): words having a medial weak consonant, i.e. y, w or alif, 6. Kitāb D awāt al-arbaa (535–599): words having a final weak consonant, 7. Kitāb al-Ġunna (599–622): words containing [ŋ] or [nč], 8. Kitāb al-Jam bayn as-sākinayn (622–638): words containing clusters of consonantal sounds that do not exist in Arabic, e.g. sirtlā- ‘climb’ (635), tīd- ‘turn down’ (633:15). In this last chapter of his book Kāšġarī must have had in mind the cluster /-ydt-/ in /tiydtiy/ ‘he turned down,’ which includes the suffix -tī for 3sg past tense, which is the way Turkic verbs are given throughout Dīwān. Each chapter is further subdivided in separate sections on nouns and verbs respectively. The more than 6700 entries are further collected in minor paragraphs, often under a heading that contains a given morphological pattern (cf. Dankoff and Kelly 1982–5, Auezova 2005). Kāšġarī in
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total lists some 109 main patterns, some of which contain subdivisions, in total 143 patterns (see scheme 4 in appendix). The number of patterns in Fārābī’s Dīwān al-ʙAdab is much higher, about 1677. Another scholar who deserves mention in this respect is ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān al-ʙAndalusī (d. 1345), who in his Kitāb al-ʙIdrāk li-Lisān al-ʙAtrāk lists a large number of meaningful morphological patterns according to which in his view Turkic words are being construed. He mentions 91 nominal patterns and 44 verbal ones (ʙIdrāk 101:10–104:16), a total of 135. One reason which makes it interesting to have a close look at ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān’s views on Turkic is that they can easily be compared to those on Arabic through his oeuvre on Arabic grammar and Qurʙanic exegesis. One of his most prominent works on grammar is Irtišāf adˢ-Dˢ arab min Lisān al-ʚArab, whose setup bears a strong resemblance with ʙIdrāk. In Irtišāf (I:20–72) there is a similar, but much more lengthy and elaborate section on morphological patterns.
4. The application of morphological patterns In his classification of verbal and nominal roots (ʙasˢl) in ʙIdrāk, ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān differentiates between theoretically possible patterns (qisma ʚaqliyya) and those that are actually used (masmūʚ).4 In ʙIdrāk (101:13) ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān writes that for biradical nouns there are 12 theoretically possible forms, all of which are used. These are the following: (1) faʚ like san ‘you’, (2) fiʚ like kim ‘who,’ (3) fuʚ like yuz ‘face,’ (4) faʚu, (5) faʚa, (6) faʚi, (7) fuʚu, (8) fiʚi, (9) fuʚa, (10) fiʚa, (11) fiʚu, (12) fuʚi. Obviously these can be divided into four groups of three sequences of vowel patterns each, while after some reshuffling a more transparent sequence results: CVC CaCV CuCV CiCV SCHEME 1
(1) faʚ (5) faʚa (9) fuʚa (10) fiʚa
(2) fiʚ (6) faʚi (12) fuʚi (8) fiʚi
(3) fuʚ (4) faʚu (7) fuʚu (11) fiʚu
PATTERNS OF BI-RADICAL NOUNS IN ʙIDRĀK
4 Wild (1965, 37) mentions a similar distinction in Kitāb al-ʚAyn between mustaʚmal ‘used’ and muhmal ‘not used,’ litt. ‘neglected.’
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 439 It is difficult to tell whether Abū H ayyān has a preference for a certain sequence of the vowels. The regular sequence, though is a, u, i, since in Arabic grammar a is considered ‘lighter’ than u and i. The first three items are listed in the sequence a-i-u, but Abū H ayyān refrains from holding on to this from the second set onwards. For nouns5 the following patterns are given: CVC
(1) faʚl, ‘back’
(3) fuʚl, kurt ‘tree’
(2) fiʚl, sirt ‘back’
(in Arabic CVCVC V analysis CVCVCVC)
(7) faʚalā, (9) faʚalū, (8) faʚalī
(16) fuʚulū, (17) fuʚalū
(18) fiʚalū
CVCVC
(19) faʚal, (21) faʚul, (20) faʚil
(22) fuʚal, (23) fuʚul
(25) fiʚal, (26) fiʚul, (24) fiʚil
(in Arabic CVCC V analysis: CVCCVC)
(4) faʚlā, (6) faʚlū, (5) faʚlī
(13) fuʚlā, (14) fuʚlū, (15) fuʚlī
(10) fiʚlā, (12) fiʚlū, (11) fiʚlī
"ard
SCHEME 2
PATTERNS OF TRI-RADICAL NOUNS IN ʙIDRĀK
In scheme 1 and 2 Abū H ayyān describes nouns, the verbs being dealt with at the end of the section (103:13). Note that in the second listing (cf. scheme 2) Abū H ayyān is more consequent in holding to the sequence a-i-u, which seems to evolve, than in the first. Further, it seems that some of the patterns are incomplete, for example, the nominal pattern fuʚ-: there is no form fuʚilū* which completes the set (16, 17). Likewise, there is only one nominal triradical pattern that starts with fiʚ . . . ū (18), where one would expect three, the other two being fiʚulū* and fiʚalū*. In the third place, there is no noun that is formed according the pattern fuʚil* (22,23). In sum, only four patterns appear to be lacking from this overview. Nevertheless, it is easy to invent more patterns which would fit in this triradical scheme, e.g. fuʚalā*, fuʚalī* and fuʚalū*.
5
Between parentheses the original sequence in ʙIdrāk.
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For verbs ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān gives the following patterns: Number of radicals
fa-
fu-
fi-
Uni-radical CV
(2) fa
(3) fu
(1) fi
(5) faʚ (8) faʚa (13) faʚi
(4) fuʚ (12) fuʚa (7) fuʚu, (11) fuʚi
(6) fiʚ (10) fiʚa (9) fiʚi
(14) faʚl (17) faʚal (19) faʚil (18) faʚul (24) faʚla (27) faʚli (32) faʚala
(16) fuʚl (22) fuʚal (20) fuʚul
(15) fiʚl (23) fiʚal (21) fiʚil
(26) fuʚla (28) fuʚli (31) fuʚila
(25) fiʚla
(35) faʚlal (34) faʚlil (33) faʚlul (39) faʚlula (40) faʚlala (41) faʚalla (42) faʚilla
(37) fuʚlal (36) fuʚlul
(38) fiʚlil
Bi-radical CVC CVCV Tri-radical CVCC CVCVC CVCCV CVCVCV Tetra-radical CVCCVC CVCCVCV CVCVCCV Penta-radical CVCVCCVC CVCCVCCV CVCCVCVC
(43) fuʚlila (44) fuʚalla (45) fuʚulla
(47) faʚallal (48) faʚlalla (50) faʚlulal
SCHEME 3
(29) fiʚala (30) fiʚila
(46) fiʚilla
(49) fiʚlilla
PATTERNS OF TURKIC VERBS IN ʙIDRĀK
Note that there are no long vowels in the verbs.
5. Primary and augmented radicals The rules are, at least so it seems, not applied systematically. In the first place augmented radicals are not reflected in the pattern and conversely, radicals are presented in such a way that one thinks that they are considered augments. ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān dedicates a large section to augmented radicals (ʙIdrāk 111:17–116:13), in which he incidentally investigates the etymology of some compounds (ʙIdrāk 103:12), but the augmenta-
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 441 tion is not reflected in patterns in the way this is regularly done in the Arabic linguistic tradition. The nouns and verbs he cites as belonging to a given pattern are not analysed further in terms of basic radicals. For example, "usurmaq ‘fart’ could be analysed as fuul-maq*, since it is an obvious derivative of the verbal stem "usur-. The same holds for the noun ta ġarjuq ‘sack,’ for which the pattern faal-juq* could be posited (Idrāk 103:2,5). Instead the former is attributed the pattern fuullal, and the latter faallul, the regular way of dealing with hexa- and heptaradical words, but neither of which gives any clues as to the status the radicals of the respective suffixes possess. Abū H ayyān’s formulates his goal in arranging words according to patterns as follows: “It is necessary to study the structures of each of them, so that the primary radical (al-h arf al-aslī) may be distinguished from the augmented (zāid). Only then can the primary radical be compared with the primary radical and the augmented radical with the augmented radical,” (Idrāk 104:15, translation Ermers 1999b). In our introduction we already briefly touched upon the importance of being able to differentiate between original radicals and augmented ones, e.g. in af ala, iftaala, istafala, mafalat. The augmented radicals are called h urūf al-maānī ‘particles of meaning’ (cf. Versteegh 1995, 120). One would expect the Turkic augmented radicals in a similar way to be indicated in the pattern, e.g. faal-dir* causative, faal-il* passive, faal-in* reflexive form. Kāšġarī takes a similar position in his Dīwān. Much in the same way Abū H ayyān does in Idrāk he discusses in a separate section the augmented radicals for nouns and verbs (Dīwān 13–16). In the nouns he deals with the glides and hamza only, e.g. taġār ‘bag,’ "adġir ‘stallion,’ along with -n, as in bazġān /bazġa"n/ ‘hammer,’ in which the added meaning of the consonant alif /"/ is not obvious. The augments in the verbs are dealt with in more detail. Kāšġarī mentions as many as eleven augmented consonants, i.e. 1. alif, 2. t, 3. r, 4. s, 5. š, 6. q, 7. k, 8. l, 9. n, 10. lā (lām-alif), 11. y, all of which are added ‘because of [certain] meanings’ ( fa-kull wāh idin minhā tuzād li-maānī, Dīwān 14:2). Here we suffice with a few examples, e.g. t in its causative meaning ‘for the transitivity of the verb’ (li-t-tadiyat al-fil, 14:5) in "ari-t-tī ‘he dried,’ which ‘basic form’ is (asluhu) "arī-dī ‘it dried up.’ Another example is s, which, according to Kāšġarī, expresses “the meaning of wishing to carry out that action/verb” (manā at-tammanī li-iqāmat dālik al-fil, 14:10 ), e.g. suv "ij-a-sa-dī ‘he wished to drink ("ij-) water (suv).’ The -s- is also used when the action of the verb is not actual (wa-lam yakun wuqū dālika
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al-fiʚl minhu hˢ aqīqatan), e.g. "ul mankā kul-um-sin-dī ([ʙuriya ʙannahu] yadˢhˢ aku ʙilayya) ‘[it seemed as if] he smiled at me’ (in which kul- means ‘laugh’ and kul-um-sin ‘smile’). Even though patterns play a crucial role in Dīwān, only very occasionally the augmented radicals are made visible, to the extent that even the ones dealt with in this section of the work are never referred to. The most obvious example of a suffix that is visible, is -dī, the 3sg past tense suffix that Kāšġarī adds to verbs, e.g. faʚal-dī (Dīwān 305). The use of this form is most likely a calque from the Arabic grammatical tradition, where it is the form that is most unmarked (like karuma, lit. ‘he was kind’), and one could therefore argue that /-diy/ is not really considered an augment—in any case it is not mentioned in his listing (Dīwān 13–5).6 A more interesting example is the pattern fiʚinlī (see no. 13 in scheme 4, in appendix, Dīwān 82), which contains nouns like, e.g. ʙitindī ‘what is being pushed,’ and ʙaqindī (suv) ‘running (water).’ Based on this pattern—if we first disregard a in ʙaq-—f- stands for ’, and -ʚ- for t/q, the stems are reconstructed as ʙit- ‘push’ and ʙaq- ‘run (of water)’ respectively, both of which are common in Turkic, with a suffix -ndī. But in regard to the augments itself more can be said. pattern Turkic 1 Turkic 2
f ʙ ʙ
i i a
ʚ t q
i i i
n n n
l d d
i i i
y y y
All examples Kāšġarī supplies in this subsection end in -indī, which in spite of the categorization as triradical, suggests that in his view /-l-/, which then on a metalevel stands for -d-, is part of a triradical root and that only -n- and -ī are augments. If /-l-/ is nevertheless considered a literal part of the augment, he still has to explain under which phonological circumstances /-nlī-/ is realised as -ndī. In Arabic grammar, the phonological changes in consonants are typically explained by means of qalb, the exchange of one consonant for another, based on a set of rules, rather than insertion of meaningful consonants. In any case, a pattern of the type fiʚndī* would have been a more logical choice. The patterns falʚal /fal1ʚal2/ and fanʚal (Dīwān 611) occur in one heading under a section of tetraradical nouns in the book of Nasal Words. This heading introduces nouns like taŋuj /tankuj/ ‘something’ which 6 Perhaps for this reason ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān does not include -dī in his references to Turkic verbs; he applies the patterns to the stem only, e.g. fuʚ for "ub ‘kiss!,’ faʚl for tˢart for ‘weigh!.’
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 443 rises in the air’ (EDT7 [520] teŋüç), and qujŋār /qujnka"r/ ‘ram.’ In these nouns ŋ, which in both words is represented by /-nk-/, counts for two consonants, e.g.:8 pattern 1 pattern 2 Turkic
f f t
a a a
k
l1 n n
a a u
l2 l j
Other arguments for this reasoning are in the first place the fact that according to the morphological pattern the augment is /-n-/—/-k-/ being perhaps more basic—even though Kāšġarī does not specify to which one of both patterns the nouns in fact belong. In the second place nouns like taŋik /tankik/ ‘air’ and saŋak /sank1ak2/ ‘cup’ and suŋuk / sunk1uk2/ ‘bone’ (Dīwān 604) are considered to have a doubled consonant—if we take into consideration the directly preceding heading. On a phonological level this suggests that /-k-/ is considered a separate consonant, whereas from a morphological point of view it is probably regarded as more basic than /-n-/. All this points to the assumption that n and k are regarded as separate consonants. In spite of this, nouns that are quite comparable to those above, like taŋut (Dīwān 603) /tankut/ ‘name of a Turkic tribe’ and suŋqur /sunkqur/ ‘falcon,’ kaŋaš /kankaš/ ‘advice’ are assigned a triradical pattern of the type faal, faul, fail. pattern Turkic
f t
a a
nk
u u
l t
In those instances /--/ corresponds with the cluster /-nk-/; this nevertheless appears to be a more general morphology for words with ŋ. In Dīwān there are a few instances in which the problem is the other way around: augments are made explicit when there is no apparent need for it. The preceding case of fanal may represent such an instance, since there is no apparent augmented meaning. A speculation along these lines is that, perhaps Kāšġarī in fact was in doubt as to which pattern to use here, so he wrote down both. Other examples are the pattern falandī that is applied to such nouns as udrundī ‘selected’ and afdindī
7 EDT, here and henceforth, refers to: Etymological Dictionary of Pre-ThirteenthCentury Turkish (Clauson 1972). 8 Clauson in EDT apparently supposes that, in view of the number of radicals, /-n-/ alone must stand for ŋ, while—in his view—a superfluous /-k-/ (for g) is added, which results in the erroneous form teŋgüç.
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‘collected’ (Dīwān 84). If we for both nouns take /-l-/ in fal-andī as the final consonant of the stem, which seems to be the case, it follows that the paradigmal suffix or augment must have the form -ndī. The projected stems then must be udr-* and afd-* respectively.9 Here we have a similar problem as in regard to the pattern fiinlī, which we discussed earlier. If instead Kāšġarī considered /-l-/ as the first consonant of the suffix, one would have expected him to propose the pattern fa-dandī*, because otherwise the occurrence of -d- and -r- on the position of /-l-/ is not accounted for. Kāšġarī’s discussion of the few internal augments in nouns he gives is interesting too. Here the augments are placed between the radicals of the stem, e.g. fawal for yuwlij ‘lambswool’ (Dīwān 456), fayal for nouns like qaymaj ‘lambswool’ (Dīwān 522), both of which are considered triradical. In these cases /w/ and /y/ respectively again, are presented as augments, quite comparable to /y/ in fuayl, a regular Arabic pattern for diminutives, e.g. fulays ‘small coin’ (< fils). But the meaning of the inserted glides here is quite unclear. If the comparison to fuayl would hold, this suggests that these would be etymologically related to forms like yulij* and qamaj*, which could not be found. In view of the fact that the augment in these instances does not seem to carry a particular meaning, one could argue that the pattern faalal, or perhaps faalil would have served as well, and the question remains why Kāšġarī did not apply them here instead of proposing the insertion of augments. There seems to have been a general degree of confusion as to the applicability of morphological patterns in other works as well. Talmon (1997, 172) in this respect notes that an authoritative source like al-Xalīl (d. 791/175?) in his Kitāb al-Ayn is not very consequent in the use of patterns either: ‘muatfāt, which according to one view takes the pattern (wazn) of mufalāt, and according to another mufalat.’ A similar example, still according to Talmon, is andawat, which belongs to two patterns: fanalat and faallwat. Some consonants, especially hamza, alif, wāw, yā and nūn are sometimes referred to as basic (aslī) and others as non-aslī. In Irtišāf we came across a similar discrepancy, sanbitat ‘a period of time’ is assigned the pattern falatat, but Abū H ayyān acknowledges that others apply fanalat instead: ‘it is said that its pattern is . . .’
9
Only in the first case this agrees with EDT [70] üdür-, whereas for the second Clauson suggests evdin- ‘pluck’ [7].
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 445 (wa-qīla waznuhā), obviously depending on how /-n-/ is interpreted. In another instance here too the arbitrariness in assigning the patterns is obvious (Irtišāf I:33). For example, firsan is attributed the pattern fiʚlan (Irtišāf I:33), even though /-n/ cannot be considered an augmented consonant. In this way, the use of the pattern does not give any clues for determining which consonant is augmented. In Fārābī’s Dīwān al-ʙAdab similar examples are found, e.g. ʙanbajān ‘be great’ which follows the pattern ʙafʚalān (Dīwān al-ʙAdab I:280). In this example the form with -ān obviously is not a derivative from based on a form (ʙanbaj), without the suffix. Based on this brief survey we may conclude that Kāšġarī’s approach is not very exceptional.
6. Other lacunae in the system Earlier we mentioned that Kāšġarī uses some 109 headings in which he mentions patterns, sometimes more than one. The total numbers of patterns he refers to is 146. Not surprisingly, in Dīwān the same pattern recurs several times through the work. Within the different chapters the same patterns almost inevitably recur. To mention only a few, ʙaf ʚāl (see no. 4 in scheme 4 in the appendix) is the same as 14; 2 is identical with 29 and 51; 5 with 32 and 60, more examples of similar patterns in scheme 5 in the appendix). Let us examine two occurrences of the same pattern. The pattern ʙafʚāl (see no. 4) refers to "arqār ‘mountain sheep’ (Dīwān 71), but it also refers to a noun like "arġāġ ‘fishing hook’ (see no. 14, Dīwān 83). In book I, Kitāb al-Hamz, there is no apparent reason for giving any pattern with initial hamza /ʙ-/. The chapter heading itself suggests that the initial hamza /ʙ-/ is basic and thus should be represented by /f-/. The only reason for quoting hamza could be that it is augmented, i.e. when it is not a basic consonant. Yet seven (i.e. the items 3, 4, 11, 12, 14, 17 and 23—see appendix scheme 4) out of the 24 morphological patterns begin with ʙ-, e.g. (3) ʙaf ʚal, (4) ʙafʚāl, ʙuf ʚāl, ʙif ʚāl, (11) ʙafāʚūl, etc. where one would have expected f- instead. Let us study two examples in more detail: A. "arqār 1. Book I, words with initial hamza, 2. nouns 3. vocalization of middle radical (i.e. q), 4. Section on ʙaf ʚāl (and other patterns) with a vowel on the middle radical, 5. R.
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B. "arġāġ 1. Book I, words with initial hamza, 2. tetraradical nouns, 3. pattern ʙaf āl, 4. a double sequence of the same radical within one root (i.e. ġ). B is explicitly placed under the heading of tetraradical words; it then follows that A is considered triradical. Apart from being explicitly quoted in the pattern, the initial hamza in A is also the only reasonable candidate for being considered an augment, which is in contradiction with the main chapter heading. It is difficult to speculate on the reasoning Kāšġarī follows here that would account for these two instances of analysis. There is also a small number of words that have a double entry in the work in different places. One is kušīkā ‘light shadow’ (EDT 753). Apparently Kāšġarī has interpreted the pattern of this word in different ways: A. 1. Book II ‘regular words,’ 2. Nouns, 3. Words with added glide between the second () and third radical (l), 4. The pattern faālā and the like, 5. (nouns with) K (Dīwān 225:8; Auezova 2005, no. 2606) B. 1. Book V ‘words with a middle weak consonant,’ 2. [Nouns], 3. Sections on difficult (?) words, 4. The pattern faālū and the like (871), 5. (nouns with) K (Dīwān 521:12; Auezova 2005, no. 5500) If we apply the patterns faālā /faʚa"la"/ (1) and faālū /faʚa"luw/ (2) to kušīkā /kušiyka"/, in which /f-/ stands for /k/, /-ʚ-/ for /-š-/, etc., the following scheme emerges:10 pattern 1 pattern 2 Turkic
f f k
a a u
ʚ ʚ š
a a i
'' '' y
l l k
a u a
'' w ''
The application of either pattern suggests that -y- is not basic, but inserted as an augment between -š- and -k-. The goal here is of course obvious: lengthening of /i/, but -y- is still not accounted for as a meaningful augment. B is placed in the main division, the Book of words with a glide as a middle radical out of these.11 If -y- is not considered a meaningful augment, it must be an instance of prosodic lenghtening. This same Book starts, as expected, with nouns like tāh tāh /ta"h/, but they 10 We will discuss below the fact that the vowels of the schemes do not correspond at all with those in the Turkic, and that /-"-/ is apparently realized as y, and /-w/ as ". 11 If we correctly interpret dawāt at-talātat, cf. Dīwān al-Adab I 76,80.
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 447 are to our surprise considered ‘biradical’ (t unāiyya). In other words: the ʙalif is, in spite of the heading, not considered a basic radical, but apparently a mere instrument for indicating lengthening. This suspicion is reinforced by Kāšġarī’s following remark elsewhere ‘the lenghtening consonants may be elided when they are pronounced quickly; in that case one says tah tah’ (wa-h urūf al-līn suqita min inda surat an-nutq bihā, fa-yuqālu tah tah, Dīwān 439:12). Thus the status of the glide still remains, at least in these words, uncertain. Finally there is the status of the vowels within the pattern. ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān is both in Idrāk and Irtišāf quite accurate in his selection of matching verbs and nouns to a given pattern, and the same holds for Fārābī in his Dīwān al-Adab. Whenever Kāšġarī presents a given pattern in a heading, he nevertheless lists almost everywhere words which follow an entirely different vowel pattern. To give but a few examples: faāl is applied to yiġāj ‘tree’ which in fact follows fiāl, yipār ‘musk’ in fact fiāl, yulār ‘rein’ in fact fuāl (see item 60 in the scheme below; Dīwān 456:3). These instances are often covered with subtitles like fī h arakātihi literally ‘in the vowels’ (also 84:11) after the given pattern. In this way, patterns containing /a"/ (indicating ā) are also often applied to words with ū / uw/ or ī /iy/, e.g. faāl for yanūt ‘response,’ which in fact has the pattern faūl (Dīwān 456:3). It seems that Kāšġarī throughout his work uses the patterns for indicating the mere position of the vowels and glides rather than as a precise pattern. In some instances Kāšġarī’s presentation is in contradiction with the regular practice. When Kāšġarī introduces the pattern faal (cf. Scheme 4, no. 76), explicitly described as ‘with the first and second consonant vocalized’ (muh arraka al-fā wa-l-ayn), and further specified as ‘from the weak words which contain a w’ (dawāt al-wāw) (Dīwān 507:6). However, w is not mentioned at all; Kāšġarī exclusively lists nouns of the type (CāC), such as qāb /qa"b/ ‘pot,’ tāz /ta"z/ ‘bald’ (Dīwān 509:6). It is unclear how Kāšġarī applies this pattern here, since alif ("), which must be the second or middle consonant, cannot carry a vowel; it can only be preceded by /a/.
7. The glides The status of the glides is an important issue in morphological patterns. The patterns were a great aid to the Arab grammarians for determining the status of the glides. In Arabic grammatical theory the glides, i.e.
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/"/ ( ʙalif), /w/ and /y/, are considered consonants. For example, bābun ‘door’ is derived from a projected form /ba1wa2bun/* of which the underlying pattern is /fa1ʚa2lun/, by replacement of /w/ by /”/, which results in /b1a”a2bun/*, and a subsequent elision of /a2/: /ba1”bun/. Even though glides are used as instruments for indicating lengthening of the preceding vowels, they are not considered vowels themselves. In this way, ʙalif (/"/), whose only function is expressing lengthening of /a/, is a consonant as well. The glides, like a number of other consonants (e.g. /"/, /n/, /t/, etc.), can be inserted or prefixed as augments. For example, the verbal form qātala ‘he battled’ is, according to the Arabic grammatical tradition, derived from qatala ‘he killed’ by inserting an ʙalif /"/ according to the pattern /fa"ʚala/, rather than by lengthening /a/ (cf. Bohas 1982, 168). This does not mean that the concept of lengthening does not exist. In a practical sense the concept of ‘long vowel’ does exist in Arabic grammatical theory, but in the analysis a sharp distinction is made between meaningful augments on the one hand, i.e. the insertion of phonemes, and prosodic lengthening, i.e. lengthening for non-phonemical reasons (ʙišbāʚ) on the other. Or, in other words, the analysis of a given word is based on the question whether a given long vowel is the result of either ziyādat (meaningful addition, or insertion) or of ʙišbāʚ (prosodic lengthening). If we think further along the lines of Arabic linguistic reasoning, there is hardly a plausible reason to give for reflecting prosodic lengthening in orthography. This is especially true for lexicography. Prosodic lengthening typically occurs when the word is put in a context, not in isolation and it is made explicit in poetry, not in regular prose. The question of how to interpret lengthened vowels is also an issue in our source material on Turkic languages. ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān starts his exposé on this problem with the uniradical nouns sˢū ‘water,’ which he writes as /sˢuw/, and yā /ya"/ ‘bow,’ jī /jiy/, ‘moist (?).’ His almost casual remark that the semiconsonants (hˢ urūf al-liyn wa-l-madd) [w], ["] and [y] form no part of the root (ʙasˢl, 101, 12), but rather arise from lengthening of the vowels (nawāšiʙ ʚan išbāʚ al-hˢ arakāt) now gains importance. In the case of sˢū, yā and jī, ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān says, not fū /fuw/ or yā /fa"/ is intended, but rather fu+ and fa+, respectively (in which we use + for prosodic lengthening). In this respect qisˢā (qisˢa") ‘short’ too must be ranged under the pattern fiʚa+. In spite of all this, the author still produces the patterns faʚlā for words like barjā ‘all,’ faʚalī for tˢarazī ‘scales’ (see the patterns 4–18 in the listing given above). In these patterns the glides, which, according to the author, here serve to indicate prosodic
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 449 lengthening, might as well be mistakenly regarded as a meaningful part of the pattern. It seems that ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān clearly was in doubt as to how to reflect the morphological patterns. The same ambivalence towards long vowels and their morphological classification is found in Kāšġarī’s Dīwān. Kāšġarī says that in general it is possible to delete the glides (Dīwān, 516:6) as in Arabic, in the way zin ‘decorate!’ is formed by eliding /y/ from the form /ziyn/*. The reason he says so, no doubt is the fact that in Uygur script vowels are indicated by means of the glides, without the possibility, as in the Arabic script, to distinguish between long and short vowels (see Ermers 1999a, 130). In regard of the previous one is inclined to think that vowel length is unlikely to be considered a phoneme in Kāšġarī’s lexicon. This is not the case. Kāšġarī takes either the long form or the short as an entry. In some instances he gives the other as a dialectal exception to the general rule. In other words, he deals with the short and long forms in separate paradigmal forms. A nice illustration is the pair "aj- ‘open’ (Dīwān 92:4) and "aj- ‘be hungry’ (Dīwān 95:17). Each of them has a separate entry in the chapter on the biradical verbs—where /ʙ/ counts as the first consonant— but only "aj- be hungry is dealt with in the subdivision (lit.) ‘Insufficient’ (al-manqūsˢ). A similar example is "ūz, which has a number of meanings, e.g. ‘fat; deaf; self; valley; heart’ (Dīwān 35:1), "ūz ‘fat’ (Dīwān 30:6) and the verbs "ūz- ‘cut’ (Dīwān 93:1), and "ūz- ‘pass first’ (Dīwān 96:11), which is also listed under the subheading al-manqūsˢ. In the case of "it/"īt ‘push/ bless’ (Dīwān 95:10), which occur under the same pattern, lengthening may have been used to indicate a different pronunciation altogether, e.g. ét- (cf. EDT 36). Even though of one and the same entry more than one version does occur throughout the work, from the separate treatment it is evident that for Kāšġarī length is a phoneme. One could even make the assumption that the fact that length can be made explicit in Arabic script gave Kāšġarī the opportunity to arrange his lexicon in a different way than he could have in the Uygur script.
8. Summary In this article we made a brief inventory of the way Arabic grammarians applied morphological patterns to Turkic words. In Arabic linguistic thinking, the patterns are a convenient instrument for indicating which consonants in a word are basic and which are not. Non-basic
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consonants are usually attributed a special meaning, such as, e.g., causativity or diminutive, which is added to the root. Furthermore, based on the pattern words that contain glides, such as bābun can easily be reconstructed in terms of regular patterns (*/bawabun/). An additional motivation for lexicographical interests appears to have been bringing together words with the same or a similar pattern. This comes in handy for writing poetry, since words with the same pattern can be used in the same rhyme scheme. Surprisingly, the two sources we examined, Diwān Luġāt at-Turk (11th century) and Kitāb al-’Idrāk li-Lisān al-ʙAtrāk (14th century) hardly use Turkic meaningful consonants and suffixes in combination with the patterns, even though the authors are clearly aware of them. This appears to be a general feature of lexicographical works: the patterns seem to be applied more or less arbitrarily. In Dīwān Kāšġarī goes one step further, in that he roughly indicates the position of the vowels in a given pattern by means of /a/, while at the same time in those instances he deals with words with u, ū and i, ī.
9. Appendix 9.1 An overview of the morphological patterns in Dīwān Luġāt at-Turk Scheme 4 below contains the patterns mentioned in the chapter and section headings in Dīwān. Sometimes more than one morphological pattern is mentioned (e.g. in 1, 2, 4, 9, 28, etc.). The roman numerals refer to the number of radicals mentioned in the closest preceding heading.
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 451 Book I, Kitāb al-Hamz (29–160): words with initial hamza Nouns (Dīwān 33) III (1) fal, ful, fil, (2) faal, faul, fail, (3) ʙafal, (4) ʙafāl, ʙufāl, ʙifāl, (5) faāl, faūl, (6) falī, falā, (7) falī, (8) fuul, (9) fainlā, (10) faālū, fuālū, fiālū, (11) ʙafāūl, (12) ʙaf alān, (13) fiinlī IV (14) ʙaf āl, (15) faūl, (16) faallā, (17) ʙafālil, (18) falūlī, (19) falandī, (20) fuūlīn, V (21) faalal, (22) faalān, (23) ʙafalal, (24) fuālil, (25) faālil (Dīwān 91) Verbs (26) faal (Dīwān 97), (27) falal-dī Book II, Kitāb as-Sālim (160–406): words having all sound consonants Nouns (Dīwān 172) (28) fal, ful, fil, (29) faal, faul, fail, (30) fāil, (31) fāūl, (32) faāl, faūl, faīl, (33) falā, falū, falī, (34) falān, fulān, filān, (35) faālā, (36) faālān, faīlān, (37) faanlī, (38) fululī, (39) falal, falāl, fulal, V? (40) faālil, V? (41) faalal, faallū, (42) fululī, (43) fulundī, (44) faalal, (45) faallān, VI (46) falalāl, (47) faalalal Verbs (Dīwān 305) III (48) faal-dī IV (49) falal-dī V (50) faalal-dī Book III, Kitāb al-Mudāaf (406–445): words containing a geminate or two identical consonants Nouns III (51) faal IV (52) falāl V (53) faalal Verbs III (54) faal-dī (Dīwān 415) IV (55) falan-dī Book IV, Kitāb al-Mitāl (445–493): words with an initial weak consonant, y or w Nouns III? (56) fal, ful, fil (Dīwān 447), (57) faal, faul, fail, (58) falal, (59) fawal, (60) faāl, (61) falā, (62) faālī, (63) falān, (64) faīlān, (65) faanlā IV (66) falal, falāl, (67) faālil, (68) faallū V (69) faalal, (70) faalān, (71) falalin (Dīwān 468) Verbs (72) faal-dī (Dīwān 473) IV (73) falal-dī V (74) faalal-dī (Dīwān 491) Book V, Kitāb D awāt at-Talāta (493–535): words with a medial weak consonant, i.e. y, w or alif Nouns (75) fal, ful, fil (Dīwān 494), (76) faal, (77) fāil, (78) faāl, (79) falā, (80) faālū, (81) falān, (82) fayal, (83) faālil V (84) faalal (Dīwān 523) Verbs (85) faal-dī (Dīwān 526), (86) falal-dī (Dīwān 529) Book VI, Kitāb D awāt al-ʙArbaa (535–599): words having a final weak consonant Nouns (87) faal, faul, fail (Dīwān 540), (88) fāil, (89) faāl, (90) falā, (91) falāl VI (92) faūlalī, (93) faallāl (Dīwān 552) Verbs III (94) faal-dī (Dīwān 565) IV (95) falal-dī, (96) faālā-dī, faūlā-dī, faīlā-dī V (97) faalā-dī, V (98) falalā-dī (Dīwān 597)
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Book VII, Kitāb al-Ġunna (599–622): words containing [ŋ] or [nč] Nouns (99) faʚal, faʚul, faʚil (Dīwān 602) (100) faʚāl; (101) faʚlā, (102) faʚālū IV (103) faʚlal, fanʚal, (104) faʚlalū, IV (105) faʚanlāl (Dīwān 613) Verbs (106) faʚal-dī (Dīwān 615) IV (107) faʚlal-dī, (108) faʚlāl-dī, (109) faʚīlā-dī (Dīwān 619) Book VIII, Kitāb al-Jamʚ bayn as-sākinayn (622–638): words containing clusters of consonantal sounds, does not refer to morphological patterns.
SCHEME 4
MORPHOLOGICAL PATTERNS EXPLICITLY MENTIONED IN DĪWĀN
The patterns mentioned above recur in different places throughout the work. The scheme below indicates which patterns are repeated: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 18 16 17 14 19 15 20 SCHEME 5
pattern ʙafʚāl faʚal faʚāl faʚālā faʚālil faʚālū faʚalʚal faʚalʚal-dī faʚalʚān faʚal-dī faʚallū fāʚil faʚl, fuʚl, fiʚl faʚlā faʚlān faʚlandī faʚlal faʚlāl faʚlaldī fuʚlulī
occurs in items no. in scheme 4 4, 14 2, 29, 51, 57, 76, 87, 99 5, 32, 60, 78, 89, 100 35, 96 ww 40, 67, 83 10, 80, 102 21, 41, 44, 53, 69, 84 50, 74 22, 70 48, 54, 72, 85, 94, 106 41, 68 30, 77, 88 1, 28, 56, 75 6, 33, 61, 79, 90, 101 34, 63, 81 19 (noun), 55 (verb) 35, 58, 66, 103 39, 52, 66, 91, 108 (verb) 27, 49, 73, 86, 95, 107 38, 42
DOUBLE OCCURRENCES OF MORPHOLOGICAL PATTERNS IN IN DĪWĀN
morphological patterns in arabic grammars of turkic 453 10. References 10.1 Primary sources al-Andalusī, Abū H ayyān, Muhammad b. Yūsuf. Irtišāf adˢ-Dˢ arab min Lisān al-ʚArab. (3 vol.) Musta fā Ahmad an-Nammās, ed. 1984–1987–1989. (I: Cairo: Matbaat an-Našr ad-D ahabī; II/III: Cairo: Mat baa al-Madanī). —— Kitāb al-Idrāk li-Lisān al-Atrāk. Amet Caferoğlu, ed. 1931. Istanbul: Evkaf Matbaası. al-Fārābī, Abū Ibrāhīm Ishāq b. Ibrāhīm. Dīwān al-Adab. Ahmad Muxtār Umar, ed. 1974–78 (4 vol.) Cairo: al-Haya al-Āmma. al-Kāšġarī, Mahmūd b. al-H usayn b. Muhammad. Diwān Luġāt at-Turk. Facsimile edition of the MS; Ankara: Turkish Ministry of Culture. 1990. al-Xalīl = Abū Abd ar-Rahmān al-Xalīl b. Ahmad al-Farāhidī. Kitāb al-ʚAyn. al-Maxzūmī and as-Sāmarrāī, ed. Beirut: al-Alamī. 10.2 Secondary sources Auezova, Zifa. M. 2005. Diwan Lughat at-Turk. Translated (into Russian), with introduction by Z.-A. Auezova; indices by R. Ermers. Almaty: Daik Press. Bohas, Georges. 1982. Contribution à l’étude de la méthode des grammairiens arabes en morphologie et en phonologie d’après grammairiens ‘tardifs.’ Thèse Université de Paris III (1979). Clauson, Gerard. 1972. EDT = An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish. Oxford. Dankoff, Robert and Kelly, James. 1982–5. Compendium of the Turkic Dialects. Translation of Mahˢ mud al-Kāšġarī’s Dīwān Luġāt at-Turk. 3 Vol.: I (1982); II (1984); III (1985) indices to Vol. I and II. Harvard: University Press. Ermers, Robert. 1999a. Arabic Grammars of Turkic. The Arabic Linguistic Model Applied to Foreign Languages. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 1999b. Translation of ʙAbū Hˢ ayyān al-’Andalusī’s Kitāb al-’Idrāk li-Lisān al-ʙAtrāk. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Haywood, John 1965. Arabic Lexicography. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The Foundations of Grammar: An introduction to medieval Arabic grammatical theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins Talmon, Rafael. 1997. Arabic Grammar in its Formative Age. Kitāb al-ʚAyn and its attribution to H˭ alīl b. Ahˢ mad. Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill. Versteegh, Kees. 1985. “The development of argumentation in Arabic grammar: The declension of the dual and the plural.” Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar, ed. by Hartmut Bobzin and Kees Versteegh, 152–173. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. ——. 1992. “Grammar and rhetoric: Jurjānī on the verbs of admiration.” Studies in Semitic Linguistics in honor of Joshua Blau, M. Bar-Asher et al., eds. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 113–133. ——. 1995. The explanation of Linguistic Causes. Az-Zajjājī’s theory of grammar. Introduction, translation, commentary. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wild, Stefan. 1965. Das Kitāb al-Ain und die arabische Lexikographie. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wright, William. 1986. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Translated from the German of Caspari. Cambridge: University Press. (2 vols) (First edited in 1859/1862).
LEXICAL GAPS IN ARABIC LEXICOGRAPHY WITH EVIDENCE FROM ARABIC DICTIONARIES Jan Hoogland Nijmegen University
1. Introduction Between 1997 and 2003 we compiled with a dedicated group of specialists at the Arabic department of the University of Nijmegen a twin set of Arabic-Dutch and Dutch-Arabic dictionaries. Kees Versteegh, Manfred Woidich, and myself were the responsible editors.1 It may be clear, that the compilation of these dictionaries not only resulted in their publication, but also in the gathering of a lot of valuable experience leading to some striking conclusions. One of these was the observation that, in the Dutch-Arabic volume, many source (Dutch) language units could not be paired with an equivalent in Arabic, since they appeared to be non-existent in Arabic. As a matter of fact, almost 25% of all Dutch entries (words or expressions) could only be translated by means of paraphrases. Paraphrased descriptions are, in most cases, explanations and not direct equivalents of the source language word or expression. From this observation the question did arise: do these ‘untranslatable’ units represent lexical gaps in Arabic? In other words: do they represent concepts without any lexicographically acceptable one-to-one translation in Arabic? It goes without saying that all dictionary compilers also benefit from the work of others. Also the authors of the Nijmegen dictionary referred to a large number of existing monolingual, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries in order to single out adequate equivalents for the Dutch entries selected to occur in the dictionary. Too often we concluded that the other dictionaries also contained paraphrased descriptions or definitions instead of one-to-one translations.
1 The whole process of compiling has been described on the project site (www.let. ru.nl/wba).
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Upon this observation we came to the following hypothesis: when a certain entry is translated into Arabic by means of a paraphrased description or definition while all, or almost all, bilingual dictionaries, included in this enquiry, translate the same entry in the form of a description or definition, it is justified to conclude, that the entry concerned does not have a one-to-one equivalent in Arabic, and that we, therefore, are dealing with a lexical gap in Arabic. In order to verify this hypothesis, a large sample of entries from the Dutch-Arabic dictionary, with one-to-one source equivalents in various other dictionaries, was gathered to compare their translations into Arabic. The source language units can be divided in simple words (lexical units), compound words and expressions. Compounds in Dutch are simply written together as one word and consequently have to be entered as independent lemmas in the dictionary. This article limits a comparison of translations for simple words from various bilingual dictionaries, since it turned out difficult to find unambiguous translations in English, French or German for Dutch compounds. The lack of those translations as a starting point for a comparison of Arabic translations would result in data that would be difficult to compare with each other.
2. Definition of description As stated in the introduction, descriptions are, in most cases, not direct equivalents of the word or expression in the source language, but explanations, i.e. expressions of more than one word which provide the dictionary user with an explanation in the target language. Since a description is a combination that is not lexicalized, it is not entered in the database as an expression in the target language. Descriptions represent a unidirectional translation relation, i.e. they are not included in the reversion process to produce the reverse part of the dictionary. Assuming the description describes a concept that represents a lexical gap in the target language, it is obvious this concept could not be entered in the reverse part of the dictionary as an entry. First of all, a sample of 25 Dutch simple words translated with descriptions was gathered. These words were chosen randomly from the underlying database. These words can be found in Table 1 below.
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In order to be able to look up these words in English-Arabic, FrenchArabic and German-Arabic dictionaries it was necessary to obtain translations of the Dutch words from the sample in these languages. The table below shows these 25 Dutch words with translations in three western languages. Some Dutch words which were candidates to be included in the sample, turned out to be untranslatable in one or more western languages. The absence of an obvious translational equivalent in one of these languages of course would cause problems in using that language as source language for the comparison of Arabic translations. For this reason, some randomly selected Dutch words, translated with descriptions in the Nijmegen Dutch-Arabic dictionary were not included in the sample. TABLE 1
ENGLISH, FRENCH AND GERMAN TRANSLATIONS OF THE SAMPLE
Dutch
English
French
bestek francofiel frankeren freak fresco gletsjer glibberen
cutlery francophile to frank freak fresco glacier slither
couvert francophile affranchir fana fresque glacier glisser
gniffelen
snigger
logé
guest
logement lommerd loods loops lotgenoot ouderwets
lodging (house) pawnshop pilot in heat/season partner (in misfortune / adversity) old-fashioned
ouvreuse ouwel
usherette wafer
German
Besteck frankophil frankieren Freak Fresco Gletscher glitschen, schlittern, rutschen rire sous cape, rire schmunzeln, in tout bas, rire dans sich hinein lächeln sa barbe hôte Gast, Logiergast, Logierbesuch auberge Gasthaus mont-de-piété Leihaus, Leihamt pilote, lamaneur Lotse en chaleur, en rut brünstig compagnon, Leidensgenosse, compagne Schicksalsgenosse d’infortune vieux jeu, démodé, altmodisch passé de mode, désuet, suranné, archaïque, périmé ouvreuse Platzanweiserin pain ( m. ) azyme, Oblate d’autel, hostie non consacrée
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TABLE 1 (CONT.) Dutch
English
French
German
ribbel rif riposteren roe rog trampoline transcriberen traumatisch
rib, cord reef riposte rod ray trampoline transcribe traumatic
côte récif riposter verge raie trampoline transcrire traumatique
Rippe Riff ripostieren Rute Rochen Trampoline transkribieren traumatisch
If the assumption that the concepts behind these words represent lexical gaps in Arabic is correct, at least a part of these words have to be translated with descriptions in other dictionaries too, if they were included in these dictionaries at all. So in order to investigate this, the translations of these words were checked in a number of dictionaries. For this comparison the following dictionaries were consulted: • • • • • • •
Al Mawrid English-Arabic Oxford, Doniach English-Arabic El Mounged English-Arabic Al-Kamel Al-Kabir French-Arabic Al Manhal French-Arabic Schregle German-Arabic Van Mol Dutch-Arabic
However, before presenting the results of this comparison of the seven dictionaries mentioned, it seems useful to present the Arabic translations from the Nijmegen dictionaries here first. Obviously, these should not be part of the comparison, since the lack of translational equivalents for these words in the Nijmegen Dutch-Arabic dictionary were the starting point for the comparison. Inclusion of these translations would distort the results of the comparison. Tables 3a and 3b below contain the Arabic translations of the Dutch words from the seven dictionaries introduced above.
lexical gaps in arabic: evidence from dictionaries TABLE 2
459
ARABIC TRANSLATIONS FROM THE NIJMEGEN DUTCH-ARABIC DICTIONARY
DU_LU
Eng_LU
bestek francofiel frankeren freak fresco gletsjer glibberen gniffelen logé logement lommerd loods loops lotgenoot ouderwets ouvreuse ouwel ribbel rif riposteren roe rog trampoline
cutlery francophile to frank freak fresco glacier slither snigger guest lodging (house) pawn shop pilot (nautic) in heat/season partner (in misfortune/adversity old-fashioned usherette wafer rib, cord reef riposte rod ray trampoline
transcriberen traumatisch
transcribe traumatic
DA_Nijmegen
I@ # ? @ A' B C@ DEF ,H J LK M1 : J 6 N .K O ! P "2 P Q @ RS O> T ! UV W
>K K5 X 1Y 5 Z K _ 1 ` (3[ \ ]) 3[
4 a b @ & ! A h g Id c ! e 5 = f g
a) eL Q (BL ij[ kL l m n 6
P op[ q b 1 +K O ! W 1 !, Jrs: ( W 1 ! Aa @, m @, 1 t 4b $(J[ E ) 1 j5 6 ha1W va q! {w 1 C (xn j @ y z C ]) JrLS !
| ) }~ 1 HWK 1 w- >" k - V 5 q! J ( Jc 9B " ) - } -4 j q! ' K O " qjn: W 1 } J K5n ! # + > = 1 # &>
Jc 7 1 Jc LK : = Jc ! 5 " A S T !
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ARABIC TRANSLATIONS FROM 3 OF THE 7 OTHER DICTIONARIES
DU_LU
Eng_LU
bestek
cutlery
francofiel
francophile
frankeren
to frank
freak
freak
fresco
fresco
gletsjer
glacier
glibberen
slither
gniffelen
snigger
logé logement
guest lodging (house)
lommerd
pawn shop
EA_Mawrid
EA_Oxford
EA_Mounged
:qjE >>>>>( o H4>>a ! J>"@ q>>! qjE >>>>>>( A>>'B!@ qjE ( o IE>>W@
3@nZ I@# H qjE >>>>>E >b1j@
@# JLM1: . >b >! + .O! DLM1: n! JLM1: J6 N
>>>>M16 (nX#) "2 A>>>5a 1X# q>! &>>:'# (>sW#) +(-#) (J!B{ @#) >>>>>a1 }@ >>>>>>a1>" }# >>>>>s:a 1X# n" H>>(;6! a1 > A> &>>{ .s_' UV>>W – – J &>>>{ 1>>>a
>>>6 -= ?1j %{)\1Y5 J!>(1! -> ->X v>( >o! (7 @# }-\ &>>>>{ }" +d9 Rd_ 6:X 1>>>= s$ 1>>= s$ 1>>>= s$ &>>>>> A4>>>>>a ->On! &>>{ A>>w A4>>= A>>w A4>>>>a JsO>>E ew =1>>Z ew fg) hpa :s: fg hg #1> I-) hOQ (Id! e5= !T! h>>p ->>>>>>T:" (¡4>T (¢
mn:") +a4< – – :£ q!3¤!:# ]) JW@1:! J61¥ ij" ]) JW@1:! J61¥ ;! 1 ! (¦[§ ij" ¨ 1X©!@ (¦[§ ¨ 1X©!@ .T! :qb1 I>=b- +O! I«b- + qb1! qjb1>>>>> eL>>>>>>> }E +" ! 19¬) @# (qb+" ! 1>9ª q>b-
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TABLE 3A (CONT.) DU_LU
Eng_LU
EA_Mawrid
EA_Oxford
EA_Mounged
loods
pilot (nautic)
]) q: W1! ] Jrs: W1! (61! @# n9 r®# @# rLC +¯! (B°! n9) -['
loops
in heat/ season
lotgenoot
partner (in misfortune/ adversity)
±Lb² :¤ ³=# r' ´\ Jµ }L¶
>W1! Jrs:>>>>>> +¯>! >>6 @# >>>>>nL ->>>d' n®# n9
>>6 .>¥- m@ : (J>>>>>dE)
ouderwets
oldfashioned
ouvreuse
usherette
ouwel
wafer
ribbel rif
rib, cord reef
riposteren
riposte
roe
rod
rog
ray
trampoline
trampoline
–
(J[·) i9@ ] i[¥: –
w1 AL' w12 q! (e!)
:2 ¸x( +" º JL~ (-#) »9
¼ -½ ¹6 W1! :+L¾ @- W1Á T6 ¿{ ! À
-r vb' rL (¢
yz! ]) q! -@! J99- }"1 }W1 H ¦6 ï | Ä~1 ] (ŧ ) J!{ 6- PQ Pp! (ÆÇ) :1O[ L¶ J>a1V>> £W -È É( (Js=>X1!) C ( £19 n' Xa 3a P>a1>>( Ê>>
J:2¯. ->>p &>>>{ J>a[ ' .a 5' qjn:>>>>>> hÌ 1Í Dn:W 1>>>>O[ h=- J5n! wÎ) Dd!* }>>>>>>d h"«w Ï 1YÐ [ qjd!1>>>>>>> ['º L{ 4: a (w[Ñ
–
q!4 L{ &:' .b8! J a12) @# aw +" (Ja1= |[) ¸x() W1Á >>>>>T6 rL>>>>> @vb>' }W1 }"1 | –
m6 -È É( J: C ( 3a P>a1>>>( ->p &>>{ J>a[ >5' .>>>>>a>T qjn:>>>>>W 1>>>O>" [ wÎ) Dd!* 4: a h"«w Ï 1YÐ (w[Ñ ['º L{
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TABLE 3A (CONT.) DU_LU
Eng_LU
transcriberen
transcribe
traumatisch
traumatic
EA_Mawrid
EA_Oxford
EA_Mounged
q! ÒW q! + ra À
qY@ 3fW# + ra }E ) 1Ó @# ÔÕÖ ! J"T À
É! (Ja
>1>X >>Q-
+ = Ê>>>M J4! J">TE q>! @# &>>>>
ka1>>W Ja{ J"E
+× }K@ ÊM J"T ÔÕØ C Ja{
–
>Q- >1>X
TABLE 3B
ARABIC TRANSLATIONS FROM THE REMAINING 4 OTHER DICTIONARIES
DU_LU
Eng_LU
bestek
francofiel frankeren freak fresco
gletsjer
glibberen
FA_Kamil FA_Manhal GA_Schregle DA_Mol
q!) oC Hw J ! qj JEW@ J ! JE>>W@ JE>>>@ qÙ@ D(@ qj(@ J @ (¢
J26@ francophile M1: . .O! J>>>>>6 N Aa DLM1: n! >>>>>M1: J>s>>>>>>M1: to frank H>>(- P6 %{ U¯ PQ@ U>>¯ J(- Ú- q!) Ô(- &>>>{ P"2 (AO! J(- &>>{ £V freak P! R>O>T! .5>T! – fresco @# 1Y>>>>5Z 1>a>>>>5Z ko¶ %{ Û = ->X v>(- v>(- ->X 16 -> o! -$ Jso! Ja-$ Ü) Ý à® Há-) âã L$ 1ã glacier Þ' .§ß*! Ò âã J°! ] }a ] J(@ [d9 JL 3[\ (JL[ A2rC A2rC ]@ 1` (JL[ J°! L$ slither äw A4< Aw äw A4< Aw – A,4Á ä4Á cutlery
J ! JE>>W@ qj(@ – – – –
1>>= s$
–
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TABLE 3B (CONT.) DU_LU gniffelen logé logement lommerd
loods loops lotgenoot
ouderwets
ouvreuse
ouwel ribbel
rif
Eng_LU snigger
FA_Kamil FA_Manhal GA_Schregle DA_Mol
>>>6 h>>Q hg vZ å1>( Js: eLQ '>! e>sQ
3 v"
–
esQ eLQ vs a lodging 34>= mn6 34>>= v! mn6 34< (house) }¯ pawn shop qb1>> is" 7(ª hr" eL ij" – 7¼!) I«b1 hr" qb1 +" ! eL o:"@ qbJµ@ Ô ! (1 : pilot a }~- W1! W1! }~>W1! >W1! (nautic) rs:( +L in heat/ – .2) +o, ¦ .a – season (: .¥- (s ) s partner (in – >>>6 ha1>>W
>n( a As6- qY19 misfortune 15 >b / adversity)
>>a1>>>W >>>" >>>>6 oldq! 4 »9 w1> q! w1> &>>{ AL' fashioned AL' w12 va va 1T! ¦ aw +" A>>>s' hT!) ±- w1> (Jæ9 L " usherette :{ ! JrL! É!{) * Jã – – yz! ] É!{ ê yzC ç:Lè@ éj( @# -p¶ W1Á -p¶ W-
(v($ q§ !# ¿{ ! À
wafer 1j6 4 ï }~19 m>9– JLg JL"ë (ia>>>>>l) rib, cord PQ ì2W PQ – – = w@1 @# í« .=$) (vX q! w-~ reef eL- J: 1È) J: J>E # .>W J>dW É( :1È ì2W £19 ¦[§ (1O[ ( %{ Ja1È C guest
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TABLE 3B (CONT.) DU_LU riposteren
roe rog
trampoline transcriberen traumatisch
Eng_LU
FA_Kamil FA_Manhal GA_Schregle DA_Mol
- J{1>>l - Í £@$ – H>9 H>_b &>{ - (J{Ð@) >p! H>_" J:2¯ Jr" (eL~ w-[C .jp9) ¼Ö rod – (" £îa ' ray L h=-@ – qjn:>>>>>W 1Í Dn:W s 1>>O>" ?x(# R$) (. . . Ja1Í K 4: ! – trampoline kn! transcribe ï- ð1X ï- ð1X òd ! ñ
ñ
traumatic >Q- >1>X
>1X ò>>>d ! >"
>"
>>Qriposte
–
>5'
–
–
Ê>>>M
>>Q-
So, in order to verify if the concepts behind these Dutch words do represent lexical gaps in Arabic, it is useful to compare and to evaluate the translations presented in these other dictionaries that provided the same units with a description, if the word in question is included in the other dictionary at all. For all translations obtained from the 7 dictionaries mentioned above, information was entered if the dictionary in question has included the Dutch word or its English / French / German equivalent as an entry, and if so, if this translation is a description. For this an evaluation system was devised. All translations are evaluated with a code from the following code system: 0= 1= 2= 3= 4= 5=
entry not included entry is included, translation is an equivalent (not a description) entry is included, translation is description entry is included, translation is a neologism entry is included, translation is a hyperonym entry is included, translation is inaccurate or translation belongs to a different or more specific meaning
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6 = entry is included, translation consists of a neologism and a description Some remarks need to be made in relation to these values. For the sake of clarity examples for each of these 6 categories will be presented. These examples are taken from Table 3 a and 3b above. Value 0 is obvious. If a word is not included in a dictionary, the value for this word is 0. For example: ‘glibberen’ (to slither) is not included as an entry in D-A Van Mol, nor in G-A Schregle. All other values (1–6) imply that the word occurs as an entry in the source language of the dictionary heading the column. Value 1 implies the translation is a translation equivalent. For example: ‘glibberen’ / ‘to slither’ is included and its translation seems to be a real equivalent in E-A Oxford (ew ó1Á), E-A Mounged (ew A4< Aw), and F-A Kamil (A,4Á ä4Á äw A4< Aw). Value 2 refers to a description. For example: ‘glibberen’ / ‘to slither’ is included, and its translation is a description in E-A Mawrid (& JL¶á ). This applies, first of all, to the real explanations which can be found, for example, in Oxford English-Arabic at ‘bestek’ / ‘cutlery’ ( ox H4a ! IáW@ A'B!@ DEF( q!) or ‘logement’ / ‘lodging’ (ij" ]) JW@1:! J61¥ q 1X©!@ (¦[§ ). However, one might as well define as descriptions those combinations of two words that are not frequent. If we look at the translations for ‘francofiel’ / ‘francophile’ for example, we find the translation M1: . in both F-A Al Kamel and F-A Al Manhal. This is a combination of words that is not lexicalized, and therefore should not be entered in the database as an expression. Value 3 refers to a neologism. For example: ‘lommerd’ / ‘pawnshop’ is translated with a neologism in F-A Kamel (qb1 ij"). Some dictionaries offer the user made up words in case of a lexical gap in Arabic. In Al Manhal French-Arabic these neologisms are marked with an asterisk
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and an explanation comes with the neologism. See the examples of value 6 below. Value 4 represents a hyperonym translation, i.e. the word in the target language is actually the translation of a hyperonym of the source language word. For example: ‘transcriberen’ / ‘to transcribe’ is translated as + = ÊM }K@ in several dictionaries. These translations do not express the fact that ‘to transcribe’ means decoding from one system and encoding in another system. Therefore these translations express a more general meaning and not the specific meaning of the source language word. Value 5 as an evaluation means that the translation can be inaccurate or wrong, or that it refers to a different, more specific meaning of the source language word. For example: ‘rif ’ / ‘reef is included, but its translation is inaccurate in G-A Schregle (Jô# .W). Value 6, finally, is a combination of 2 and 3, since it consists of a neologism, with a description (mostly between brackets) added to it. For example: ‘gletsjer’ / ‘glacier’ is included, but its translation consists of a neologism and a description in F-A Manhal ([d9 Ò âã à® Há- âã JL[ A2rC ] J(@) and F-A Kamil (3[\ ] }a Þ' .§ß*! Ü) Ý JL[ A2rC ]@ JL). Before presenting all evaluations in a table, it is useful to introduce the concept ‘translation profile’. This profile is a compilation of al the evaluations, indicating the number of dictionaries in which a translation was found, followed by an enumeration of all the evaluations. This profile gives a quick indication of the number and types of translations found in the various dictionaries. For example ‘3:223’ means a word was found in three dictionaries, and in two of these dictionaries the word was translated with a description (code 2), and in one with a neologism (code 3). Below is a table containing columns with the Dutch words, the English translations and 7 columns for all 7 sample dictionaries, and a final evaluating column containing the translation profile of the concept.
3. Interpretation of Table 4
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The translation profiles of the words should indicate if these words represent concepts that can be considered lexical gaps in Arabic. The higher the number of dictionaries in which these words were included, and the higher the number of description translations or neologism translations, the higher is the probability that the concept represents a lexical gap in Arabic. So, profiles containing value 2 (description) and value 6 (neologism + description) are the clearest indications. Seven Dutch words have been included in all 7 dictionaries. These words are: ‘bestek’ / ‘cutlery’, ‘gletsjer’ / ‘glacier’, ‘logement’ / ‘lodging’, ‘loods’ / ‘pilot’, ‘ouderwets’ / ‘old-fashioned’, ‘rif ’ / ‘reef ’, and ‘transcriberen’ / ‘transcribe’. A more thorough look at the translation profiles of these words is useful in order to determine if the coding system seems reliable. 1. The word ‘ bestek’ / ‘cutlery’ has the following profile 7: 2222222. It seems justified to conclude this word/concept indeed represents a lexical gap in Arabic since there is unanimity among all dictionaries in this, and probably no other dictionary or other reference work will mention an Arabic word for this concept. Obviously, we do not have to go very deep into Arab or Islamic culture to conclude tat this lexical gap can be explained by the fact that in the Arab world people were and are still used to eat with their hands. 2. The word ‘ouderwets’ / ‘old-fashioned’ has the same profile: 7: 2222222. So, obviously this concept also represents a lexical gap in Arabic. 3. The word ‘loods’ / ‘pilot’ has the following profile: 7: 1111222. The Dutch word ‘loods’, as a person, is monoseme and can only mean ‘a pilot in shipping’, and certainly not ‘airplane pilot’ or any other type of guide. The translation W1! is correct but requires a specific context in order to distinguish this specific meaning from other more general meanings of the word W1!. 4. The word ‘transcriberen’ / ‘transcribe’ has the following profile: 7: 2222444. As indicated above, there are presented description translations and hyperonym translations. 5. The word ‘rif ’ / ‘reef ’ has the following profile 7: 2255666. Three dictionaries have the word J: as a neologism, in all cases followed or preceded by a description. However, this word was not found with this meaning in the text corpus or on the internet. 6. The word ‘gletsjer’ / ‘glacier’ has the following profile: 7: 1116666.
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Dutch_LU
Engl_Tr
bestek francofiel frankeren freak fresco gletsjer glibberen gniffelen loge logement
cutlery francophile to frank freak fresco glacier slither snigger guest lodging (house) pawnshop pilot (nautic) in heat/ season partner (in misfortune /adversity) oldfashioned usherette wafer rib, cord reef riposte rod ray trampoline transcribe
lommerd loods loops lotgenoot ouderwets ouvreuse ouwel ribbel rif riposteren roe rog trampoline
transcriberen traumatisch traumatic
EVALUATION OF THE TRANSLATIONS IN 7 DICTIONARIES E_A_ E_A_ E_A_ F_A_ F_A_ G_A_ D_A_ Transl. Mawr Oxf Moun Kamel Manh Schreg Mol Profile 2 2 2 2 2 6 2 2 4 2
2 2 2 0 2 1 1 2 0 2
2 2 2 0 2 1 1 2 0 2
2 2 2 4 2 6 1 2 4 1
2 2 2 4 2 6 1 2 4 1
2 2 2 0 2 6 0 2 2 4
2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 4 1
7: 2222222 6: 222222 6: 222222 3: 244 6: 222222 7: 1116666 5: 11112 6: 222222 5: 24444 7: 2224445
6 2
2 2
6 2
3 1
2 1
2 1
0 1
6: 222366 7: 1111222
2
2
2
0
2
2
0
5: 22222
0
0
0
0
2
2
4
3: 224
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
7: 2222222
2 2 4 6 2 4 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 6
2 2 0 2 2 1 1 6
6 5 4 6 2 0 1 3
6 2 2 6 2 1 1 0
0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3
0 0 0 5 0 4 0 0
5: 22266 6: 222245 4: 2244 7: 2255666 5: 22222 6: 111444 5: 11111 5: 23366
2
2
2
4
4
2
4
7: 2222444
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
6:111111
The equivalent L$ 1` which is mentioned in three dictionaries seems to have become a lexicalized expression during the last years. As for the neologisms presented by the other four dictionaries, the fact that four dictionary compilers have added descriptions to these neologisms illustrates that they are not completely at ease about the understandability of the neologisms they present. 7. The word ‘logement’ / ‘lodging’ has the following profile 7: 2224445. This profile seems to justify the conclusion that this word is a
lexical gaps in arabic: evidence from dictionaries
469
‘problem word’. Indeed, it can easily be translated with a hyperonym, since it is a certain type of accommodation for staying overnight. The Dutch Van Dale dictionary defines a ‘logement’ as a place to stay, a home where one can obtain a temporary stay (and food) against payment (presently less in rank or appreciation than a hotel). Neither is lodging the same as a hotel. So translations with mn6 or 34< should be evaluated as hyperonym translations. Another way of looking at the profiles is the following: There are nine Dutch words that were translated with a description in all dictionaries in which they were included: ‘bestek’ / ‘cutlery’ ‘ouderwets’ / ‘old fashioned’ ‘francofiel’/ ‘francophile’ ‘frankeren’/ ‘to frank’ ‘fresco’/ ‘fresco’ ‘gniffelen’ / ‘to snigger’ ‘loops’ / ‘in heat’ ‘ouvreuse’ / ‘usherette’ ‘riposteren’ / ‘riposte’
7: 2222222 7: 2222222 6: 222222 6: 222222 6: 222222 6: 222222 5: 22222 5: 22266 5: 22266
These are the words of which the translation profile consists of code 2 and 6 only. It seems reasonable to sustain that words found in four or more dictionaries (out of seven) and being translated with descriptions (possibly in combination with a neologism) in all those dictionaries indeed do represent a lexical gap in Arabic. So the concepts expressed by the words ‘bestek’ / ‘cutlery’, ‘ouderwets’ / ‘old-fashioned’, ‘francofiel’ / ‘francophile’, ‘frankeren’ / ‘to frank’, ‘fresco’ / ‘fresco’, ‘gniffelen’ / ‘to snigger’, ‘loops’ / ‘in heat’, ‘ouvreuse’ / ‘usherette’ and ‘riposteren’ / ‘to riposte’ can be considered lexical gaps in Arabic. There are five Dutch words that were translated with a description in most dictionaries in which they were included: ‘lommerd’ / ‘pawn shop’ ‘lotgenoot’ / ‘partner in misfortune’ ‘ouwel’ / ‘wafer’ ‘rif ’ / ‘reef ’
6: 222366 3: 224 6: 222245 7: 2255666
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‘trampoline’ / ‘trampoline’
5: 23366
Since most of the translations are descriptions, and the others should be qualified as inadequate translations (neologisms, hyperonyms or inaccurate), we may assume that these concepts also represent lexical gaps in Arabic. As a matter of fact, this system for encoding types of translations and combining them in a translation profile seems to be a useful method for comparing dictionaries and identifying lexical gaps in Arabic. When we take a closer look at the Dutch words meeting with lexical gaps in Arabic, it turns out, not surprisingly, that they can be categorized as follows: – the source unit expresses a typical Dutch or non-Arabic concept causing a lexical gap in Arabic: ‘fresco’ / ‘fresco’, ‘ouvreuse’ / ‘usherette’, ‘transcriberen’ / ‘to transcribe’; – the source unit expresses a technical concept, too rarely used inside the Arab world in order to enter a dictionary and to receive a general translation, thus this concept represents a lexical gap in Arabic: ‘frankeren’ / ‘to frank’, ‘trampoline’ / ‘trampoline’. – the source unit is related to a non-Islamic religious concept, for example: ‘ouwel’ / ‘wafer’, coming from Catholicism within Christianity.
4. Conclusion 4.1
Conclusion concerning the identification of lexical gaps in Arabic
By comparing the Arabic translations of twenty-five Dutch words, we concluded that nine were translated with descriptions in all the dictionaries in which they were included. This justifies the conclusion that these words can be considered to represent a lexical gap in Arabic. Five words were translated with descriptions in most of the dictionaries in which they were included, which also indicates they should be considered to represent lexical gaps in Arabic. Therefore, the hypothesis formulated at the beginning of this contribution may be considered to be confirmed by this conclusion.
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Conclusions concerning lexicography in general
As a result of the comparison described above, some conclusions concerning the lexicography of Arabic can be drawn as well. The first conclusion concerns the use of Arabic neologisms in dictionaries. During the stage of comparing the descriptions in various dictionaries, it was noticed that in some dictionaries newly coined words, which should be considered neologisms in Arabic, were presented as translations. However, when neologisms are introduced in a bilingual dictionary as a translation equivalent for an unknown foreign language word, there is no context in the user’s mother tongue. As a matter of fact the dictionary user will only run into such a neologism by looking up a foreign word in a foreign language-Arabic dictionary. When the user is confronted with a neologism without any further explanation, he/she will probably remain in confusion about the meaning of the foreign language word as well as to the meaning of the Arabic neologism. Some dictionaries provide neologisms with an additional explanation or description. This will help the user both to understand the meanings of the foreign language word and the neologism in his own language. If the same dictionary is used by foreigners who use the dictionary to produce Arabic, and these foreigners use the neologisms presented, there is again the risk of the Arab receiver of the message who will not understand the meaning of the neologism. To conclude, the following question presents itself: why do dictionary compilers decide to ‘invent’ new words as translation equivalents for foreign words / concepts? Is this related to a certain way of language purism in order to prevent the use of loan words? Do they realize that the dictionary users still will be left in confusion? The result of this policy will be the occurrence of ghost words, i.e. words that do only occur in dictionaries and not in authentic texts. A second conclusion concerns the occurrence of inaccurate translations in the dictionaries. As indicated in Table 4, some inaccurate translations have been met during the process of comparing the translations. Inaccurate translations are represented by value 5 in the table. Fortunately, the total number of translations, qualified as inaccurate, is rather limited, since value 5 occurred only three times on a total of 142 translations in Table 4. No dictionary is free of inaccuracies, and no one knows this better than the present author who was involved in compiling the Dutch-
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Arabic dictionaries. Some descriptions in the Nijmegen Dutch-Arabic dictionary could have been replaced with real translational equivalents. As stated before, some Dutch words in the sample turned out to be translatable with equivalents in at least some of the dictionaries. This implies first of all that the concepts behind them certainly do not represent lexical gaps in Arabic. And secondly, these words should not have been translated with descriptions in the Nijmegen Dutch-Arabic dictionary. This, in a certain way, can also be considered a series of inaccuracies in the said dictionary. Would the authors involved in translating these specific words have consulted all the dictionaries available, this might have led to the insertion of a translational equivalent in stead of a description. Not only would this have enriched the Dutch-Arabic part, but also the reverse part, since translational equivalent relations are bidirectional and consequently would have been entered in the ArabicDutch part as well. Some dictionary makers rely heavily on their colleagues or predecessors. Some similarities between certain pairs of dictionaries in the comparison above, however, are striking. If we, for instance, look at the translations for ‘logement’ / ‘lodging’, ‘lommerd’ / ‘pawn shop’, ‘loods’ / ‘pilot’, ‘loops’ / ‘in heat’, ‘ouvreuse’ / ‘usherette’, ‘ouwel’ / ‘wafer’, ‘riposteren’ / ‘to riposte’, in the dictionaries E-A Oxford and E-A Mounged, we find a number of literally identical translations. This is so obvious, that one may conclude, that the compiler of the most recent one of the two dictionaries (Mounged English-Arabic) depended heavily on his predecessor (Oxford English-Arabic), without mentioning this in the introduction of his dictionary, and even without entering the Oxford dictionary in the list of sources consulted. The possibility that both of the dictionaries were based on a common third ancestor requires further research.
5. References Ba‘labakkī, Munīr. 1981. Al Mawrid: A modern English-Arabic dictionary. Beirut: Dār al-ʚIlm li-l-Malāyīn. Doniach, Nakdimon. 1972. The Oxford English-Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoogland, Jan, Kees Versteegh, and Manfred Woidich, eds. 2003. Woordenboek ArabischNederlands Nederlands-Arabisch. 2 Vols. Amsterdam: Bulaaq. Idriss, Souheil. 1996. Al Manhal Dictionnaire Français-Arabe. Beirut: Dar Al Adab. Mol, Mark van. 2001. Leerwoordenboek Nederlands-Arabisch. Amsterdam: Bulaaq.
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Reda, Youssof M. 1996. Al-Kamel Al-Kabir plus, dictionnaire du français classique et contemporain, français-arabe. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Schregle, Götz. 1977. Deutsch-Arabisches Wörterbuch. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Theodory, Constantin. 1996. Al-Mounged English-Arabic. Beirut: Librairie Orientale.
MASˢDAR FORMATION Joost Kremers University of Cologne
1. Introduction Arabic morphology includes a nominal form, traditionally called masˢdar, whose meaning and form is related to that of a verb. The form relation, although clearly visible, is complex, the meaning relation is straightforward: the masˢdar is a complex event nominal, in terms of Grimshaw (1990), and names the action expressed by the verb, retaining the verb’s argument and event structure.1 The masˢdar has been analyzed among others by Fassi Fehri (1993) and Kremers (2003), who both base themselves on Abney’s (1987) analysis of English gerunds. These analyses are purely syntactic, however. Neither discusses how the morphology of these forms functions, the tacit assumption being that the masˢdar form is derived by some postlexical process that does not play a role in syntax. Ackema and Neeleman (2004) discuss so-called mixed categories, such as English gerunds, in the framework of their theory on word formation and morphological structure. They argue that the peculiar syntactic properties of such structures follow from the way in which they are formed morphologically. Arabic masˢdars share the peculiar syntactic properties of other mixed categories, but Ackema and Neeleman’s analysis does not provide any direct insight into the reason why this should be so. Their analysis crucially depends on the concatenative nature of morphology in the languages that they discuss, and since masˢdar formation in Arabic uses non-concatenative morphology, the analysis at first sight does not carry
1 The same nominal forms can also have non-event meanings, making them result or simplex event nominals, in Grimshaw’s terms. These lack the argument and event structure of the corresponding verb, and have no systematic meaning relation to it. See Fassi Fehri (1993) and Kremers (2003) for some discussion. Traditionally, these nouns are not called masˢdars.
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over straightforwardly. As I show in this paper, however, nothing needs to be changed about Ackema and Neeleman’s analysis if we adopt a prosodic model for Arabic morphology, along the lines of McCarthy and Prince (1990b, 1996).
2. Abney’s analysis of English gerunds In his influential PhD dissertation, Abney (1987) presents an analysis of the English gerund that tries to account for the fact that the gerund can be used in at least three different constructions: (1) a. John’s singing of the Marseillaise b. John’s singing the Marseillaise c. John singing the Marseillaise
In all three constructions in (1), the gerund singing is an event nominal, in the sense that it retains the argument and event structure of the underlying verb to sing (Grimshaw 1990). In other words, all three phrases describe an event, and the subject and object of the event are obligatorily expressed.2 Abney observes (as others have done before him) that there is a decreasing degree of nominality in the structures (1a–c): (1a), the so-called Ing-of construction, is the most nominal, in that it expresses both the subject and the object with nominal means: the Saxon genitive ’s and the dummy preposition/case marker of, respectively. (1b), the Poss-ing construction, is more nominal, in that the object is marked with accusative case, rather than with of. Yet, the subject is still marked with the Saxon genitive. Lastly, (1c), the so-called Acc-ing construction, marks the object with accusative, and the subject as well. This is therefore the most verbal of the three constructions, in that there is no nominal marking present anymore. Crucially, the fourth logical possibility, the subject being marked with accusative and the object with of, does not occur: (2) *John singing of the Marseillaise
2 If one or both of the arguments are not expressed, e.g. in John’s singing, the gerund is no longer a complex event nominal, but rather a simplex event or result nominal, which, as Grimshaw (1990) shows, have markedly different properties.
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This fact can be accounted for if we assume, as Abney does, that gerunds start out as V projections, and change into an N projection somewhere along the way. Until the point where the change takes place, arguments can be licensed through case, but after the change, only nominal licensing mechanisms (’s and of ) are available. Once the change has taken place, it cannot be undone, which accounts for the impossibility of (2). The analysis is supported by the observation that (1b–c) allow adverbs but no adjectives, while (1a), the purely nominal gerund type, allows adjectives but no adverbs: (3) a. John’s constant/*constantly singing of the Marseillaise b. John’s *constant/constantly singing the Marseillaise c. John *constant/constantly singing the Marseillaise
The analysis that Abney proposes assumes that there is an affix -ing, which attaches to a verbal category, changing it into its corresponding nominal category. It can attach at three levels: at V, creating an N, at VP, creating an NP, and at IP, creating its corresponding nominal projection DP. Crucially, -ing is not a head, i.e., it does not project a syntactic phrase of its own. It just attaches to a projection, changing its category. The tree structures that Abney proposes are the following: (4) Ing-of:
DP John’s
D’ D
NP N
-ing
PP V sing
of the Marsaillaise
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(5) Poss-ing: DP John’s
D’ D
NP -ing
VP PP
V
the Marsaillaise
sing
(6) Acc-ing: DP -ing
IP I’
John I
VP V sing
DP the Marsaillaise
There is of course one unattractive aspect to these structures: it is not clear how the verb stem sing and the suffix -ing combine to form the gerund singing. In fact, it is not at all clear what it really means for an affix to attach to an XP.3
3. Ackema and Neeleman’s treatment of mixed categories Ackema and Neeleman (2004) retain the idea that what is different about the different gerund structures is the level at which the nominalizing 3 Abney notices this problem himself. In order to solve it, he argues for an elaboration of X’ theory, which basically makes a distinction between below X0 and above X0 syntax which is not altogether convincing.
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affix attaches in syntax. However, they place this idea in the context of a much broader theory on word formation, which enables them to show what exactly it means for an affix to attach to different levels of projection. Before we look at how they deal with gerunds, it is necessary to discuss some of the aspects of their theory. 3.1
Short outline of the theory
Ackema and Neeleman argue for a view of the language faculty that is inspired by Jackendoff (1997, 2002). In this view, the language faculty contains three generative systems, one for syntax, one for semantics and one for phonology. The output of these generative systems are linked to each other by mapping rules. In this model of the language faculty, a lexical item is not just a conglomerate of the semantic, syntactic and phonological properties of a word. Rather, the three types of features are essentially separate, functioning in separate components of the language faculty, linked through mapping rules. A word such as ‘tree’ has the syntactic representation N[+count,sg], which is used in the syntactic module, and it has the phonological representation /ti:/, which features in the phonological module. If we then abbreviate the semantic concept as tree, we can represent the lexical item ‘tree’ as in (7), where the double arrows indicate two-way mapping relations: (7) tree N[+count,sg] /ti:/
Affixes function the same way: they have, apart from a semantic representation, which does not concern us here, a morphosyntactic one, which Ackema and Neeleman represent in small caps, as affix, and a morphophonological one, which they represent with slashes, as /affix/. The point is that what is traditionally seen as a single affix actually consists of three separate elements, linked by mapping principles. There are different types of mapping principles. Ackema and Neeleman argue that there are (at least) three general mapping principles, of which two concern us here.4 The first is Linear Correspondence:
4 The third mapping principle is Quantitative Correspondence which states that no element in the morphosyntax is spelled out more than once.
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(8) Linear Correspondence If X is structurally external to Y, then F(X) is linearly external to F(Y).5
Linear Correspondence states that a morphosyntactic representation such as [[root sf1] sf2], in which sf1 is first attached to root, and sf2 then to the complex [root sf1], is mapped onto a morphophonological representation in which the order of the two suffixes is retained, i.e., / root–sf1–sf2/. It can in principle not be mapped onto a structure in which both suffixes have switched places: */root–sf2–sf1/. The second general mapping principle is Input Correspondence: (9) Input Correspondence If an affix selects (a category headed by) X, then F(affix) takes F(X) as its host.
Input Correspondence states that if an affix in morphosyntax attaches to an element X of a specific category, or to a projection of X, then the morphophonological form to which affix is mapped must attach to the morphophonological element associated with X. In other words, the phonological form of a nominal affix cannot attach to a phonological form that is associated with a syntactic V head; it must attach to something that is associated with an N head. Note that both Input and Linear Correspondence only apply when F(affix) has an overt phonological form. When F(affix) is empty (i.e. / /), they do not apply (or apply vacuously). Since both principles regulate the distribution of phonological material, it stands to reason that they do not apply when there is no phonological material to distribute. Apart from these general mapping principles, there are also lexical mapping principles, as in (7). Note that not only words, but also affixes can be described with lexical mapping rules. For example, the English agentive suffix er is normally mapped onto the phonological form //: to write writer. This fact is recorded in the lexical entry for the affix:
5 The notation F(X) refers to the phonological structure onto which the syntactic structure X is mapped. It is equivalent to the slash notation /x/ that Ackema and Neeleman use, but in my opinion less confusing. I define it as in (i): (i) a. D(X): the subtree that has X as root b. F(X): the phonological material onto which D(X) is mapped.
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(10) agentive noun er[N,sg] /ә/
There are, however, specific cases in which er receives an idiosyncratic mapping. One example is the case of the verb to type, of which the agentive noun is typist, not *typer. In other words, we can say that there is an idiosyncratic mapping rule of the form in (11): (11) [[type] er] /taip/ /ist/
This rule says that a syntactic structure of the form [[type] er] is mapped onto a phonological structure /taip/ /ist/. Note that mentioning the phonological form of the stem in the rule is in fact redundant: there is no reason to assume that the lexical entry for type cannot provide its phonological form in (11). Therefore, I adopt a slightly different notation for such idiosyncratic mapping rules. Instead of (11), I will write the following: (12) er/type /–ist/
(12) expresses that er, when attached to type, is mapped onto /-ist/. 6 Affixes are well-known to have selectional restrictions. For example, the English agentive suffix -er must attach to a word (i.e., it cannot attach to a phrase), and moreover, this word must be a verb. The point that Ackema and Neeleman make is that these selectional restrictions are in fact of non-uniform nature, and must therefore lie in different modules of the grammar. By representing a suffix such as -er as is done in (10), it becomes possible to express this point: Ackema and Neeleman state that the syntactic affix er has the requirement that it must attach to something of category V, while the phonological affix /ә/ has the requirement that it must attach to something that is a (phonological) word.
6
Note that I use a hyphen here in the affix /-ist /. In Ackema and Neeleman's original formulation, this is not necessary, because the mapping rule explicitly mentions the stem and with that, the position of the affix with respect to the stem. In my reformulation, some way is needed to indicate that the affix is actually a suffix. Note also that although I use a double arrow in (14), this is not meant to indicate that this is a one-to-one mapping; the phonological form /-ist / does not always signal an agentive noun, cf. words such as communist, guitarist. Here, Ackema and Neeleman’s formulation may seem to have an advantage, since their equivalence is one-to one. As explained in footnote 30, however, this is not the case in every kind of idiosyncratic mapping rule that we need.
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This analysis means that er does not require that it be attached to a head; instead, it can attach to any projection of category V.7 In this way, Ackema and Neeleman account for the existence of agentive nouns such as in (13): (13) spring-in-’t-veldje jump-in-the-field.dim ‘little madcap’
The phrase spring-in-’t-veld is a VP, containing an intransitive verb and a locative PP. In order to derive its meaning as an agentive noun, Ackema and Neeleman assume that the Dutch er suffix is present in the syntactic structure, and that it is idiosyncratically mapped onto / /:8 (14) [[spring [in ’t veld]] er] /spriŋ/ /int/ /vlt/ / / That is, there is a mapping rule of the form: (15) er/VP / /
In (14), the suffix er attaches to the VP [spring [in ’t veld]]; being a syntactic suffix, er does not require a V head, it only requires a structure of category V. However, mapping er onto /ә/ would violate Input Correspondence, which requires that F(er) take F(V) as its host, even when it attaches to VP. As mentioned above, Ackema and Neeleman argue that the alternative mapping onto / / voids Input Correspondence. Therefore, (14) is possible. 3.2
English gerunds
Having discussed the essentials of Ackema and Neeleman’s theory, we can now look at their analysis of English gerunds. First, Ackema and Neeleman assume that the actual nominalizing affix in gerunds is not -ing. The reason for this is that -ing does not just derive nominal categories, it also derives the (verbal) present participle, which indicates that it is probably best categorized as a non-finite verb suffix. Therefore, there must be another affix in the structure that is responsible for the nomi-
7 That is not to say that the attachment is completely free. Some requirements do apply. Since er saturates the external argument of the verb it attaches to, it cannot attach to a VP of which the external theta role has already been assigned. 8 I have ignored the diminutive suffix -je here. Although it is attached to the noun veld phonologically, morphosyntactically, it attaches to the entire structure. (It is not the field that is small, but the madcap.) See Ackema and Neeleman (2004) for details.
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nalization. Because no such overt affix exists, Ackema and Neeleman assume that its phonological form is null.9 As in Abney’s analysis, the nominalizing affix is attached to different levels of projection. Note that if the affix had an overt phonological form, the syntactic structure could not be mapped onto a phonological structure without violating either Input Correspondence or Linear Correspondence. Suppose, for example, that the affix attaches to VP, creating a Poss-ing construction:10 (16) Poss-ing: DP John
D’ D
NP VP
AFFIX
Adv constantly
VP V-ing singing
DP the Marsaillaise
Note that the nominalizing affix is assumed to be a suffix in (16). It attaches to a projection of category V. If its corresponding F(affix) were overt, Input Correspondence would require it to attach to the /word/ that the head of this projection is mapped onto, i.e., singing. That, however, would violate Linear Correspondence: in the syntactic structure affix is external to the VP, and therefore Linear Correspondence requires its phonological form to be external to F(VP). However, in a phonological realization such as /John’s/ /singing/ /affix/ /the Marseillaise/, this would not be the case: the Marseillaise here follows the /affix/, meaning that the /affix/ is internal to F(VP).11
9
The same conclusion is reached by Yoon (1996). Ackema and Neeleman do not specify to which levels of projection the affix attaches in English, they only do this for Dutch nominal infinitives. I simply assume that English behaves the same. Note, by the way, that Ackema and Neeleman only discuss Ing-of and Poss-ing, not Acc-ing. I assume the reason for this is that Acc-ing is more likely a participial structure than a nominal one, as argued also by Reuland (1983). 11 Note that this situation would obtain if we were to assume that -ing is the nominalizing affix. 10
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A realization with the /affix/ after the object DP would comply with Linear Correspondence, but would violate Input Correspondence, because the /affix/ can no longer attach to /singing/.12 However, on the assumption that the /affix/ has no overt form, neither Input Correspondence nor Linear Correspondence applies (or they apply vacuously), and hence no mapping principle is violated.13
4. Arabic masˢdars 4.1
The data
Let us now turn to the Arabic masˢdar. First, as observed by Fassi Fehri (1993) and Kremers (2003), Arabic masˢdars are typical mixed categories. They can assign (overt) accusative to their objects, as in (17a), but the object can also be licensed through a preposition, as in (17b): (17) a. ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen ‘the man’s criticizing the project annoyed me’ b. ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen ‘the man’s criticizing of the project annoyed me’
-l-mašrūʚ-a the-project-acc li -l-mašrūʚ-i to the-project-gen
I will refer to constructions of the type in (17a) as masˢdar + acc, and to constructions of the type in (17b) as masˢdar+li. Note that in both cases, the subject of the masˢdar is marked with genitive case, making the structures equivalent to the Poss-ing and Ing-of constructions, respectively. Furthermore, (17a) allows an adverbial expression, while (17b) allows an adjective:
12 Note, by the way, that it is really immaterial whether we assume that the affix adjoins to the left or the right of the VP. We would run into the same problems with the adverbial constantly. 13 The analysis makes a strong prediction: if the nominalizing suffix is overt, a deverbal noun cannot assign accusative to its object if this object follows the verb. Ackema and Neeleman show facts from Norwegian and Quechua that suggest that this prediction is borne out.
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(18) a. ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen bi-stimrārin -l-mašrūʚ-a with persistence the-project-acc ‘the man’s persistently criticizing the project annoyed me’ b. ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i -l-mustamirr-u annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen the-persistent li -l-mašrūʚ-i to the-project-gen ‘the man’s persistent criticizing of the project annoyed me’
In contrast, masˢdar + acc cannot be modified by an adjective:14 (19) *ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i -l-mustamirr-u annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen the-persistent -l-mašrūʚ-a the-project-acc ‘the man’s constant criticizing the project annoyed me’
Fassi Fehri (1993) analyzes masˢdars much along the lines of Abney (1987). He argues that there is an (abstract) masˢdar affix that can attach at the V level or at the VP level, turning the verbal projection into an N or an NP. In Kremers (2003), I present a somewhat different analysis. Instead of having an affix attach to a verbal projection at different levels, I argue that during the derivation, a nominal functional category can take a verbal category as its complement. This analysis is based on the idea that there are certain parallels in the nominal and the verbal projection lines. Essentially, I argue that at any point in the verbal projection line, a verbal functional head can be replaced by its nominal counterpart, thus deriving the mixed nature of the construction. However, as remarked above, neither of these approaches takes into account the morphology of masˢdar forms. Within Ackema and Neeleman’s framework, however, we can do better: it becomes possible to see how masˢdar formation works given the syntactic analysis. Before we go into that question, I will first discuss the morphology of masˢdars.
14 Somewhat unexpectedly, however, masˢdar+li can be modified by adverbial phrases: (i) ʙaqlaqa-nī -ntiqād-u -r-rajul-i bi -istimrārin li -l-mašrūʚ-i annoyed-me criticizing-nom the-man-gen with the-persistence tothe-project-gen ‘the man’s constantly criticizing of the project annoyed me’ As suggested in Kremers (2003), this may be due to the fact that the adverbial in (i) is a PP.
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Arabic lexical items generally have a root and a stem. The root is a sequence of (usually) three consonants,15 and is not in itself pronounceable. From a root, stems can be derived by applying prosodic morphemes (McCarthy and Prince 1996). A stem thus formed is a pronounceable form, and is the basis for further conjugation and derivation, by means of pre- and suffixes or by additional prosodic morphological processes (McCarthy and Prince 1990b). The original analysis holds that stems are derived by applying CVtemplates to a root. For example, the perfective stem of the base verb is formed by applying the template CVCVCV to a root (McCarthy 1981). More recently, however, it has been argued that this approach cannot account for certain facts. In particular, it allows templates that do not occur (McCarthy and Prince 1990a, 1990b). Therefore, a newer approach is developed, in which templates are expressed in prosodic terms.16 The perfective stem of the base verb is then expressed as a prosodic template of the form σμσμ, i.e., a structure of two short syllables.17 It is important to note that a root consists of just three consonants, and unlike much derivational morphology in Arabic does not have any prosodic specification. That is, the root does not specify in which positions in the syllable the consonants appear. For example, the initial consonant can appear in the onset (20a) or in the coda (20b): (20) root: /ktb/ a. ka.ta.b ‘to write’ b. ʙak.ta.b ‘to dictate’
15 There are some quadriliteral roots, and there are categories that can be considered biliteral roots. These will not be discussed here. 16 “Prosodic” here refers to the prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk 1980, Truckenbrodt in press), i.e. the hierarchy of prosodic constituents that constitute a phrase, i.e. Utterance > intonational phrase > phonological phrase > prosodic word > foot > syllable > mora. For the present discussion, only syllables (σ) and moræ (μ) are relevant. A syllable consists of an onset (the initial consonants) and a rhyme (the vowel and any final consonants). The onset is extramoraic, the rhyme contains either one mora or two, for light and heavy syllables respectively. A light syllable is represented as σμ, i.e. a syllable of a single mora, while a heavy syllable is represented as σμμ. In Arabic, the first mora of a syllable is always associated with a vowel. The second mora can be associated with a consonant or with the same vowel as the first mora, when this vowel spreads (i.e. when it is long). 17 The third syllable in a form such as kataba ‘he wrote’ is not part of the template. Stems in Arabic always have a final extrametrical consonant (McCarthy and Prince 1990a), and it is usually the third root consonant which fills this position. This consonant normally resyllabifies when an ending is added, in this case the -a of the third person masculine singular.
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The same goes for the second consonant, although it rarely happens in the verbal system that it appears in a coda. In the nominal system, this is not uncommon, however: (21) root: /f ʚl/ a. fa.ʚa.l ‘to do’ b. fiʚ.l ‘action, act’
Note that (21) shows that a root does not even specify whether two consonants appear in the same syllable or not. This is solely specified by the prosodic template of the particular stem formed from the root in question. Table 1 lists the perfective stem and masˢdar forms of triliteral verbs.18 TABLE 1
ARABIC MASˢDARS
Stem
perfective stem
masˢdar
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV
KaTaB KaTTaB KāTaB ʙaKTaB taKaTTaB taKāTaB inKaTaB iKtaTaB iKTaBB istaKTaB iKTāTaB iKTawTaB iKTawwaB iKTanBaB iKTanBay
(irregular) taKTīB muKāTaBa(t) ʙiKTāB taKaTTuB taKāTuB inKiTāB iKtiTāB iKTiBāB istiKTāB iKTīTāB iKTiwTāB iKTiwwāB iKTinBāB iKTinBāy
18 As discussed by Wright (1981), Classical Arabic had alternative masˢdar forms for most verb stems. Nonetheless, the forms in Table 1 are the standard forms, which is why I confine myself to them here.
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In this table, the capitalized consonants KTB belong to the root, any other non-capitalized consonants are stem affixes. Looking at Table 1, one quickly notices that one particular vowel pattern dominates the masˢdar forms: /i–ā/, although on some occasions (when the corresponding verb stem has a long vowel, such as in III and XI), the /i/ is also long, yielding /ī–ā/. Some more analysis is possible, though. McCarthy and Prince (1990a) argue that the last vowel in a verbal form is always short in finite forms and often long in non-finite forms (masˢdars, but also passive participles of stem I, and some deverbal instrumental nouns). They therefore analyze vowel quantity of the final vowel as a template suffix indicating (non-)finiteness. With that modification, the masˢdar is no longer marked by /i–ā/ or /ī–ā/, but simply by /i–a/, with vowel length determined by other factors. We can therefore say that the Arabic masˢdar contains two morphemes: a nominalizer with the form /i–a/, and a nonfinite suffix -σμμ. This template suffix, -σμ for finite forms and -σμμ for non-finite forms, combines with a base stem template, which is monosyllabic.19 So the stem I template for finite forms exists of the stem base σμ- plus the finite suffix -σμ. The stem II template is formed from the stem base σ μμ- plus the finite suffix. In addition to these morphemes, stems can also have a prefix, such as the ta- in stems V and VI, n- in stem VII and st- in stem X, etc.20 We can now analyze a form such as /infiʚāl/, the masˢdar of stem VII of the root /fʚl/, as containing four distinct morphemes: the consonantal root, the stem VII marker, the non-finite marker and the nominalizer: (22) root: /f ʚl/ stem VII: (n)σμ nominalizer: /i–a/ non-finite: -σμμ
Putting these together requires that we analyze phonological structure as consisting of several layers, or autosegmental tiers (Leben 1973). The ‘basic’ tier is the segmental tier, which contains the segments (phonemes)
19 Although it may contain a detransitivizing prefix /n-/ or /t-/, as in stems VII and VIII, which consists of an extrametrical consonant that resyllabifies into a coda position. 20 The stem VIII infix -t- is analyzed as a prefix as well, after which a metathesis rule swaps the initial consonant and the prefix.
masˢdar formation
489
of the utterance. For Arabic, we need to assume an additional syllabic tier. The root morpheme in (22) maps onto the segmental tier, as does the nominalizer. The non-finiteness morpheme maps onto the syllabic tier. The stem VII marker is mixed: it maps onto the syllabic tier, but at the same time fills a slot in the segmental tier. When all four morphemes of (22) are put together, we obtain the following representation: (23) (σ)
n
f
σ
σ
μ
μ μ
i
a
(σ)
l
The top row in (23) represents the syllabic tier: the first two syllables are given by the stem VII marker. The first syllable is extrametrical (it is later syllabified by the insertion of an epenthetic /i/), and its coda position is filled by the /n/. The third syllable is the non-finiteness suffix, which is heavy (i.e. has two moræ), as indicated. The final syllable is again extrametrical, and is added by default, since every Arabic stem ends in an extrametrical syllable. The bottom row represents the segmental tier. Crucial is of course the question how the various slots in both tiers are associated with each other. The initial /n/ is straight-forward: the stem VII marker specifies that it is associated with the first (extrametrical) syllable. Just as straightforward is the final root consonant /l/. Because a stem must end in an extrametrical syllable, the third consonant must always take this position. The remaining segments, /f/ and // of the root, and /a/ and /i/ of the nominalizer, are associated through the principle of Left-to-Right Association (Leben 1973). The root consonants fill the coda positions of the second and third syllable, and the vowels of the nominalizer fill the peaks. Because the third syllable has an additional mora, and because there is no segmental material anymore to fill it, the vowel /a/ spreads to the second mora, which results in a long vowel. Most of the masˢdar forms can, mutatis mutandis, be analyzed in this manner: for the masˢdar forms of stems IV and VII–XV, all that needs to change in (23) is the stem template.21 As is clear from Table 1, however,
21 Note that the masdar of stem IX /iKTaBB/ is formed on the base of the underlying form /iKTaBaB/. The gemination of the third root consonant is the result of deletion of the /a/, a common process in this context.
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things are different for the remaining forms: they appear to be quite idiosyncratic. In spite of the apparent complexity, however, we can show that they all make use of the same stem template that the corresponding verb forms use. Where they differ from other masˢdars is the form of the nominalizer and the non-finite morpheme, which is sometimes absent. Let us look at the various forms. First, masˢdars V and VI have an idiosyncratic nominalizer, that takes the form /a–u/ rather than /i–a/. They also lack the non-finite morpheme σμμ, since the forms are not */taKaTTūB/ and */taKāTūB/. Here, we can either say that they have an idiosyncratic non-finite marker -σμ, or that the lack of a second syllable in the template causes not just the stem affix but the entire verbal stem template to be used as a basis for the masˢdar. Either way, we obtain the same result: (24) stem V/VI:
σμ σμμ -σμ t
nominalizer: /a–u/
I will assume that the nominalizer does not associate with the prefixed syllable in the stem template. Therefore, the /a/ of the nominalizer associates with the second (heavy) syllable of the stem template, and the /u/ with the third. Presumably, the /a/ of the first, prefixed, syllable is a copy of the /a/ of the second syllable.22 Stem II masˢdars can be dealt with in a similar way. On the face of it, the stem II masˢdar does not seem to be formed on the template of the stem II verb, as it contains a prefix /ta–/ which the verbal template lacks, and its vowel pattern is /a–i/, not /i–a/, as the default nominalizer specifies. Furthermore, it does not show gemination of the second consonant, which seems typical for the verbal template. However, McCarthy and Prince (1990b) observe that Arabic phonology does not distinguish between CVV and CVC syllables: all that counts is their prosodic status as heavy syllables. The templates of stems II and III (and likewise stems V and VI) are therefore identical: their first syllable is σμμ, without any specification how the heaviness of the
22 One fact that supports this assumption is that Classical Arabic had an alternative masˢdar form for stem V verbs, namely /tiKiTTāB/. On the assumption that the vowel in the prefix is a copy of the vowel in the next syllable, this form is completely regular: it contains the masˢdar morpheme /i–a/ and the non-finite suffix μμ, as indicated by the fact that the final vowel is long.
masˢdar formation
491
syllable is obtained. An additional gemination rule operates on stem II and V verbs, but not on stem III and VI. Suppose now that we say that the gemination rule does not apply in stem II masˢdars (unlike stem V masˢdars), and that the nominalizer of stem II is idiosyncratic. We then obtain the following: (25) stem II: σμμ nominalizer: /ta–i/ non-finite: -σμμ
Here, the stem II template is not specific to the masˢdar, it is the same template that forms finite verb forms of stem II. In order to see how these morphemes yield the masˢdar form /taktīb/, let us see how they are associated with the template. First, we add the non-finite suffix to the stem base, and associate the nominalizer with the resulting template: (26)
t
σ
σ
μ μ
μ
a
i
μ
The first syllable here has two moræ because this is specified in the stem II template, and the second syllable has two moræ because it is the nonfinite suffix. The vowel /i/ cannot be associated with the second mora of the first syllable because Arabic does not allow two vowels in a single syllable.23 When the root is intercalated into the template, the second mora of the first syllable can be associated with the first root consonant. The second root consonant can be associated with the onset of the second syllable, and, as usual, the last consonant is associated with a (newly created) extrametrical syllable. At the same time, the /i/ associated with the first mora spreads to the second, creating a long vowel: (27) σ
σ
μ μ
μ μ
t a k
t
i
(σ)
b
23 Long vowels and diphthongs are either the result of lengthening or because the second mora is filled by a semi-consonant, not because two vowels end up in one syllable.
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In this way, we can derive the stem II masˢdar by just assuming an idiosyncratic nominalizer, in the same way that we have analyzed stem V and VI masˢdars.24 The stem III masˢdar is quite idiosyncratic as well. Its form is /muKāTaBa(t)/, where the final /-a(t)/ is the regular feminine ending. This masˢdar is a so-called masˢdar mīmīy or m-masˢdar. The m-masˢdar is an alternative masˢdar formation found in Classical Arabic, in which the feminine form of the passive participle is used as masˢdar. This masˢdar formation has mostly disappeared, but in stem III, it is the dominant one.25 I will not go into the details of participle formation in Arabic (see McCarthy 1981 for some discussion), but like masˢdar formation, it is templatic, with an /m-/ prefix that marks the participial form and a vowel pattern that indicates voice. Summarizing, we can say that there is a regular nominalizer /i–a/, which applies in the majority of cases. This affix is combined with a nonfinite suffix – μμ. Stems II, V, and VI have an idiosyncratic nominalizer, and stem III has an idiosyncratic masˢdar formation. Stems V and VI lack the non-finite suffix, and instead get a default μ as second syllable. Lastly, stem I masˢdars are all idiosyncratic. In the next section, I will discuss the syntactic and phonological processes that underlie the masˢdar formation in more detail, and discuss the mapping rules needed to account for them. 4.3
The masdar affix
As we have seen, the syntactic properties of masˢdars are essentially identical to those of gerunds. Therefore, the starting point for the analysis should be that the syntactic structure of masˢdars is the same as well: there is a syntactic masdar affix that attaches to V or to a projection of V. If masdar attaches to V, we obtain the equivalent of the English Ing-of construction: masˢdar+li. Mapping of such a structure to phonology
24 Note that the /ta–/ element in the masˢdar morpheme is not a prefix, contrary to the /t–/ element in stem V and VI forms. If it were, a form /taKaTTīB/ would result. Instead, it must be part of the nominalizer. 25 Classical Arabic had three other stem III masˢdars, /KiTāB/, /KīTāB/ and /KiTTāB/, but none of these were as common as the m-masˢdar.
masˢdar formation
493
is unproblematic in any event, as we have seen above, because V and masˢdar are sisters in the tree. Input and Linear Correspondence are easily satisfied. However, Linear Correspondence is only apparently satisfied. As we will see, there is no way in which masˢdar in a masˢdar+acc construction can adhere to Linear Correspondence. We must therefore assume that masˢdar is not subject to it at all, so that even in masˢdar+li constructions, adherence to Linear Correspondence is only apparent. (28) shows the tree of a masˢdar + acc construction. masˢdar attaches to VP, which yields a structure in which the object can be assigned accusative case: (28)
DP D
NP MASˢDAR
VP Subj
V’ V
Obj
However, on the assumption that masˢdar is subject to Linear Correspondence, the mapping to phonology would violate at least one mapping principle. The reasoning is identical to the one discussed in section 3.2 for the English gerund constructions. masˢdar attaches to the VP, so Input Correspondence requires that /masˢdar/ attaches to /v/. Doing so would violate Linear Correspondence, however: masˢdar is external to the VP, but having /masˢdar/ attach to /v/ leaves it internal to it, as it then occupies a position between /subject/ and /v/. The analysis that made this configuration unproblematic for English, saying that the nominalizing /affix/ is phonologically null, is not available for Arabic. As we have seen above, the Arabic masˢdar formation uses an overt nominalizing morpheme. Another possible solution that easily comes to mind is to adjust the structural relations in the tree in such a way that masˢdar and its intended host V are adjacent, so that / masˢdar/ can attach to /v/ without violating Linear Correspondence. Such structural rearrangement obviously implies movement. As argued in many works (e.g., Ritter 1991, Kremers 2003), in possessive constructions in Arabic and Hebrew (of which (28) is one, because the
494
joost kremers
subject is assigned genitive case), N moves to D. If we apply this movement to (28), the V head26 and masˢdar would end up adjacent. Such an analysis might seem attractive at first sight, because the order in masˢdar constructions is always NSO. Therefore, the V head must move to a higher position: the tree in (28) could not derive the correct order. Moving V to a position adjacent to mas d ˢ ar in (28) would enable Linear Correspondence to be adhered to while at the same time deriving the correct word order. There are some problems with this analysis, however. First, there is no real consensus that N-to-D movement really takes place: Borer (1999) argues against it, for example. Furthermore, even if one assumes that it can take place, N does not always move to D in the Arabic noun phrase. If there is no genitive-marked DP in the noun phrase, N-to-D movement presumably does not take place. Therefore, it cannot be guaranteed that /masˢdar/ and /v/ will always, under any conceivable construction, end up adjacent. The root of these problems, however, is the tacit assumption that masˢdar is a prefix.27 The phonological shape of the masˢdar affix, however, suggests that this assumption is incorrect: as discussed above, much of Arabic morphology consists of prosodic templates that map onto a prosodic tier in phonology (see, e.g. McCarthy 1981). The masˢdar affix is such a prosodic template, as we have seen in section 4.2. It is neither a prefix nor a suffix, and hence does not appear before or after the verbal root. Rather, one would say it appears simultaneous with it. At first sight, this seems a problematic conclusion. masˢdar is attached to a syntactic structure, and syntactic structures are at some point linearized. The common assumption is that linearization is total: it applies to every terminal element in the tree. That is, the linear structure that results from a syntactic tree contains all the terminal elements in that tree, and for any pair of distinct elements x,y, a linear order is defined, either x>y or x
26
Of course, there is no N head in (28), so we would have to assume that V moves
to D. 27 Note that the entire solution would be impossible if /masˢdar/ were a suffix: the object would then always end up between /v/ and /masˢdar/, no matter where V moves to.
masˢdar formation
495
However, as mentioned above, Ackema and Neeleman assume that Linear and Input Correspondence do not apply when a syntactic element maps onto / / in phonology. That is, the mapping principles are sensitive to the phonological form of the elements they apply to. It should be no surprise, then, that given the prosodic nature of the masˢdar affix, it is also not subject to Linear Correspondence. More precisely, the masˢdar morpheme maps onto the prosodic tier, and therefore does not (and in fact cannot) require linearization with respect to the material on the segmental tier. However, it does require association with material on the segmental tier. This is obtained through Input Correspondence: because masˢdar attaches to the VP, F(masˢdar) must attach to F(V), which is the root morpheme. Since the root morpheme consists of segmental material, the required association is obtained. Having said that, let us look at how masˢdar formation takes place in detail. In section 4.2, I have argued, following McCarthy and Prince (1990b), that the morphosyntactic process of masˢdar formation involves two morphemes: a nominalizer, which I will indicate with noml, and a non-finite suffix n-fin. Above in this section, on the other hand, I have assumed a masˢdar affix that must be able to attach to a structure in phrasal syntax, in order to derive the Arabic equivalent of Poss-ing constructions. The question we must ask, then, is what is the relation between masˢdar on the one hand, and noml and n-fin on the other. Obviously, noml and n-fin in some way make up masˢdar. I propose the following structure: (29) NOML NOML
N-FIN
This is a morphological structure, which is then inserted into the syntactic structure at the position of the masˢdar affix:
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joost kremers
(30)
DP NP
D
VP
masˢdar noml noml
Subj n-fin
V’ Obj
V V
vii
root
I assume that the V head is composed of the root and the verb stem marker, here stem VII. The masˢdar affix, as indicated, is composed of the nominalizer and the non-finiteness suffix. When the tree in (30) is mapped onto phonology, Input Correspondence will make sure that F(masˢdar) is properly associated with F(V). The formation of the masˢdar form /infiʚāl/ will then proceed as described above. Note that whether a syntactic element is subject to Linear Correspondence is not a function of its morphological form alone. F(V) itself consists of autosegmental morphemes, but cannot be exempt from Linear Correspondence: the entire masˢdar form consist of autosegmental morphemes, and at least one of them must be subject to Linear Correspondence, otherwise the form could not be linearized with respect to the other terminal elements in the structure. The natural assumption is that the root, which is not a syntactic affix, unlike all the other morphemes, is this element. Note that the root is a phonological affix, because it cannot form a stem of its own. Syntactically, however, it is not, because it does not require adjunction to a structure of a specific category. This syntactic difference between the root and the other elements is presumably the result of a semantic difference: the root is a lexical item (in the traditional sense of the word) and as such member of an open semantic class. All the other morphemes are functional or derivational, and part of closed semantic classes. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that members of open classes must always be mapped onto the segmental tier in some way, and are thus always subject to Linear Correspondence. The
masˢdar formation
497
result of this assumption is that the masˢdar form is linearized according to the position that the head V takes in the syntactic structure.28 Stem V/VI and stem II masˢdars differ very little from regular masˢdars. All that is required is to assume the following idiosyncratic mapping rules: (31) stem V: stem II:
noml/V n-fin/V noml/II
/u–a/ – μ /ta–i/
That is, noml in the context of a stem V template is mapped onto /u–a/, and n-fin onto - μ.29 Furthermore, when attached to a stem II template, noml is mapped onto /ta–i/ rather than the default /i–a/. The system can also account for the stem III masˢdar. Recall that this masˢdar is a so-called m-masˢdar, i.e., it is not formed with some genuine masˢdar affix. Rather, a more or less suppletive strategy is used, which employs the feminine passive participle. Let us say that there is an idiosyncratic mapping rule of the following form:30
28 Note that this means that V must move, because masˢdar constructions have the order NSO. At first sight, it might be tempting to argue that the NSO order is derived by spelling out the masˢdar in the position of masˢdar, but this would not work for masˢdars that license their objects with the preposition li: the analysis states that in such masˢdars the masˢdar affix attaches to V rather than VP, which would predict a surface order of SNO for such constructions. The actual surface structure is NSO, however, the same as for masˢdars that assign accusative. 29 The stem V rules obviously also apply to stem VI, and, although not discussed here, to the second quadriliteral stem as well. The rule may in fact refer not to the stem templates but to some other property: as McCarthy and Prince (1990b) discuss, these three verb stems share properties with each other that are not found in other verb stems, indicating that they form a class of their own. Presumably, the mapping rules refer to this class. 30 I mentioned in footnote 6 that Ackema and Neeleman’s formulation of idiosyncratic mapping rules cannot be read as a one-to-one mapping in all cases. (32) is one such case. Ackema and Neeleman’s rules differ in that they mention the phonological form of the host as well as of the affix. But doing that in (32) would still not establish that a form consisting of F(prt.pass.f)+F(III) is equivalent to a stem III masˢdar, as it could (obviously) also be a feminine passive participle of a stem III verb. Note that this is indicative of a general asymmetry between syntax and phonology : a syntactic structure is always mapped onto one particular phonological structure, but a phonological structure may have more than one syntactic equivalent. In other words: phonological structures can be ambiguous.
498 (32) [noml noml n-fin]/III
joost kremers F(prt.pass.f)
I will not go into the formation of the participle here. What is relevant is the fact that an idiosyncratic mapping rule of the form in can exists. Rather than specifying the phonological material that the syntactic structure under consideration is mapped onto, the rule specifies a different (morpho)syntactic form whose phonological mapping must be applied.
5. Conclusions Ackema and Neeleman’s (2004) theory on word formation can give a straightforward account of so-called mixed categories in languages where morphology is concatenative. Non-concatenative morphology, such as that of Arabic masˢdars, at first sight does not yield to an analysis in terms of Ackema and Neeleman. If, however, we adopt the common analysis of non-concatenative morphology in terms of autosegmental tiers, we find a natural way to exclude the masˢdar morpheme from Linear Correspondence, which is the greatest obstacle to the application of Ackema and Neeleman’s analysis to masˢdars: Linear Correspondence only applies within an autosegmental tier in phonology. At the same time, Input Correspondence still applies to the masˢdar morpheme, accounting for the fact that it takes the verb as its host, and not some random root in the rest of the structure.
6. References Abney, Steven. 1987. The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. PhD thesis, MIT: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Ackema, Peter and Ad Neeleman. 2004. Beyond Morphology: Interface conditions on word formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, Hagit. 1999. “Deconstructing the construct”. In Kyle Johnson and Ian Roberts, eds. Beyond Principles and Parameters. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 43–90. Eid, Mushira and John McCarthy, eds. 1990. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1993. Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Grimshaw, Jane.1990. Argument Structure. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The Architecture of the Language Faculty. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.
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——. 2002. Foundations of Language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kayne, Richard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. Kremers, Joost. 2003. The Noun Phrase in Arabic: A minimalist approach, PhD thesis, University of Nijmegen. LOT Dissertation Series 79. Leben, William. 1973. Suprasegmental Phonology. PhD thesis, MIT. McCarthy, John. 1981. “A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology.” Linguistic Inquiry 12(3). 373–418. McCarthy, John and Alan Prince. 1990a. “Foot and word in prosodic morphology: the Arabic broken plural.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8. 209–283. ——. 1990b. “Prosodic morphology and templatic morphology.” In Eid and McCarthy, eds. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1–54. ——. 1996. “Prosodic morphology 1986.” Ms. University of Massachusetts, Rutgers University. Reuland, Eric. 1983. “Governing –ing.” Linguistic Inquiry 14(1). 101–136. Ritter, Elizabeth. 1991. “Two functional categories in noun phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew.” In Susan Rothstein, ed. Perspectives on phrase structure: Heads and licensing. San Diego: Academic Press. 37–62. Selkirk, Elizabeth. 1980. “The role of prosodic categories in English word stress.” Linguistic Inquiry 11(3). 563–605. Truckenbrodt, Hubert. In press. “The syntax-phonology interface.” In Paul de Lacy, ed. Cambridge Handbook of Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, William. 1981. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Yoon, James. 1996. “Nominal gerund phrases in English as phrasal zero derivations.” Linguistics 34. 329–356.
MÉTHODOLOGIE LINGUISTIQUE : ORGANISATION DE LA LANGUE ARABE ORGANISATION GÉNÉRALE DES LANGUES André Roman Lyon
1. Introduction Archimède (~ 287–~ 212), ayant établi la théorie du levier, aurait demandé « pour soulever le monde » un « point d’appui ». L’on peut voir dans le « levier » le symbole des méthodologies. Dans le « point d’appui », le symbole de leur premier point d’application.1 Un exemple admirable, célèbre, de cette double démarche est donné par René Descartes dans son Discours de la méthode (18–19 ; 29 ; 32) : « Je crus que j’aurais assez des quatre [préceptes] suivants [. . .] « Le premier était de ne recevoir jamais aucune chose pour vraie, que je ne la connusse évidemment être telle [. . .] « Le second, de diviser chacune des difficultés que j’examinerais, en autant de parcelles qu’il se pourrait, et qu’il serait requis pour les mieux résoudre. « Le troisième, de conduire par ordre mes pensées, en commençant par les objets les plus simples et les plus aisés à connaître, pour monter peu à peu, comme par degrés, jusques à la connaissance des plus composés ; et supposant même de l’ordre entre ceux qui ne se précèdent point naturellement les uns les autres. « Et le dernier, de faire partout des dénombrements si entiers, et des revues si générales, que je fusse assuré de ne rien omettre. Ces longues chaînes de raisons, toutes simples et faciles, dont les géomètres ont coutume de se servir, pour parvenir à leurs plus difficiles démonstrations, m’avaient donné occasion de m’imaginer que toutes les choses, qui peuvent tomber sous la connaissance des hommes, s’entre-suivent en même façon, et que, pourvu seulement qu’on s’abstienne d’en recevoir aucune pour vraie qui ne le soit, et qu’on garde toujours l’ordre qu’il faut
1
Le symbole est la peinture d’une métaphore.
502
andré roman pour les déduire les unes des autres, il n’y en peut avoir de si éloignées auxquelles enfin on ne parvienne, ni de si cachées qu’on ne découvre. Et je ne fus pas beaucoup en peine de chercher par lesquelles il était besoin de commencer : car je savais déjà que c’était par les plus simples et les plus aisées à connaître. Au contraire [des sceptiques] tout mon dessein ne tendait qu’à m’assurer, et rejeter la terre mouvante et le sable, pour trouver le roc ou l’argile. Et remarquant que cette vérité : je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus extravagantes suppositions des sceptiques n’étaient pas capables de l’ébranler, je jugeai que je pouvais la recevoir, sans scrupule, pour le premier principe de la philosophie que je cherchais.
Ce problème du « premier point » de l’application d’une méthodologie, Ferdinand de Saussure l’évoque dans une question, « Unde exoriar », « D’où commencer ? » (2002, 281). Sa question n’est pas, semble-t-il, une citation. La langue latine, dans laquelle il la formule, est la langue de la première voie qui s’est ouverte à l’Europe, la voie romaine.2 La langue latine est la langue de la culture européenne. 1.1 Une langue et l’homme Voici le linguiste devant une langue et devant l’homme. Il peut commencer son étude par l’homme car l’homme est, dans le monde, le seul animal qui parle. La capacité propre à l’homme, à l’homme seul, qui fait de lui un homo loquens, un h ayawān nātiq,3 est, selon toute vraisemblance, reflétée par les langues que l’homme parle.4 Si cela est, – ou bien la capacité de parole de l’homme, cette capacité constitutive de l’homme, étant reconnue, la constitution générale de la langue, qui est une actualisation de cette capacité, pourra être reconnue dans cette capacité ; – ou bien la constitution générale de la langue étant reconnue, la constitution de l’homme, qui en est le créateur, pourra être saisie dans la langue.
2
Voir R. Brague, 1992. Al-Maydānī cite dans son Majma al-Amtāl 2 : 291, n°3958, l’adage : « mā l-insānu law lā l-lisānu illā sūratun mumatta latun aw bahīmatun muhmalat ». 4 Il ne s’agit pas ici des capacités physiologiques de l’homme, ses capacités auditives, articulatoires, car celles-ci ne portent que sur les sons que l’homme doit entendre, doit produire comme il parle, et non pas sur la « grammaire » de la langue. 3
méthodologie linguistique : organisation de la langue
503
Faut-il commencer par l’homme ? Faut-il commencer par la langue ? Traditionnellement les savants qui se sont intéressés aux langues ont étudié les langues et non pas l’homme. Ou, exceptionnellement, quand ils se sont intéressés à l’homme, c’est pour affirmer que la langue a été donnée à l’homme par Dieu, ou, comme Noam Chomsky, pour avancer, axiomatiquement, que la langue est innée dans l’homme. 1.2
Méthodologie
L’exemple de Descartes incite à rechercher d’abord une méthodologie. La première esquisse de la méthodologie requise peut se résumer dans les deux opérations suivantes : – classer ; – définir. « Classer », c’est-à-dire constituer en un ensemble des entités réunies sur quelque trait commun, reconnu, un trait propre, présent ici, absent là, qui les différencie, les oppose aux autres entités. Les « plantes ». Parmi les plantes, les « arbres ». Parmi les arbres, le « palmier » . . . Les « fruits des arbres ». Les « fruits rouges », la « fraise », la « framboise », la « groseille » . . .5 « Définir », c’est-à-dire établir, dans un ensemble donné par un classement, une certaine identité de chacun de ses éléments. « La plante »est un « végétal ». L’« arbre » est une plante d’une certaine hauteur . . . « Classer »est une opération humaine, immédiate, constante. « Définir » est tout autant une opération humaine, immédiate, constante. La casuistique est une manifestation, universelle, éclatante, de mise en œuvre, voulue objective, de ces deux opérations.6 Le « jugement de valeur », si commun, est une autre mise en œuvre, subjective, de ces
5 Les langues « négro-africaines » ont un système de classes nominales qui « repose sur une répartition des êtres et des objets et, postérieurement sans doute, des abstractions en un certain nombre de catégories », in Les langues du monde, 2, 740–741. 6 On a soutenu avec vraisemblance que la tradition grammaticale arabe avait emprunté à la casuistique le cadre général de sa démarche (Carter 1972, particulièrement). Versteegh (1980, 11–14 ; 1993, 33–36) a replacé cette hypothèse dans une perspective plus assurée.
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deux opérations. « Classer » et « définir » apparaissent comme des opérations binaires, simples.7 Tous les chercheurs ont classé. Exemples de classement des grammairiens, les parties du discours : le « verbe » ; l’« adverbe » . . . ou, dans le discours, la « phrase » . . . Et ils ont défini.8 Comme tous les hommes, toujours. Mais, à la différence de l’homme naïf, le chercheur, doit « définir » en attribuant à chaque élément d’un ensemble donné une identité établie de telle sorte que cet élément puisse être, constamment, reconnu par une différence raisonnée, irréductible, persistante, qui l’oppose régulièrement à ce qui n’est pas lui. Et le chercheur, à la différence de l’homme naïf, doit réviser ses classements au fur et à mesure du progrès de ses définitions. L’identité du dernier classement auquel il aboutira ne pourra être que la même identité des éléments qu’il a identifiés, qui le composent. Ce faisant, le chercheur doit inscrire l’objet de sa recherche dans le temps, car rien sur terre n’a d’existence hors du temps. Il lui faut donc ne pas méconnaître l’histoire de l’objet de sa recherche.
2. Sībawayhi Les définitions données par Sībawayhi (al-Kitāb, I : 12) des trois parties du discours sont brèves : 9 [La particule] est [dans la langue] pour un sens qui n’existe ni par le nom, ni par le verbe. Le nom, c’est “homme”, “cheval”.10 Le verbe, ce sont les
7 Schuler (1990, 252) a pu présenter la démarche générale de la plaidoirie d’une cause, de sa première « position » à sa dernière « position déprécatoire », sur un algorithme exactement binaire. 8 Voir infra les définitions des parties du discours données par Sībawayhi dans son Kitāb. De même al-Fārābī, « l’un des plus éminents et des plus célèbres philosophes musulmans [. . .] surnommé le “second maître”, le premier étant Aristote [. . .] », mort à Damas, en 339/950, dans son ʙIhˢ sāˢ ʙ al-ʚulūm, p. 5. Le nom hˢ add, singulier de hˢ udūd, signifie communément « limite » et « manière ». Il a, chez Sībawayhi, où il est un terme de méthodologie, gardé son sens de « manière » (Troupeau, 1976, s.v. hˢ add). C’est, semble-t-il, dans le Kitāb al-hˢ udūd du grammairien et philosophe muʚtazilite ar-Rummānī, mort en 394/994, qu’il a pris, suivant sa pente, le sens de « définition ». Semblablement, le terme orismos, « définition », employé par Aristote, est à rapprocher de horos, « bord ». 9 Voir sur la définition des parties du discours Versteegh (1995, 22–42). 10 Certains manuscrits du Kitāb, la « somme » de la tradition grammaticale arabe naissante, livre imparfaitement édité, ajoutent « mur » hˢ āʙitˢ).
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schèmes dérivés de l’expression phonique des événements liés aux noms et qui sont construits pour ce qui est passé, ce qui sera, ce qui est encore. 11 fa l-kalimu : ismun wa-filun wa-harfun jāa li-manan laysa bi-smin wa-lā fil fa-l-ismu : rajulun wa-farasun. wa-ammā l-filu fa-amti latun uxidat min lafzi ahdāti l-asmāi wa-buniyat li-mā madā wa-li-mā yakūnu walam yaqa wa-mā huwa kāinun lam yanqati.
La seule partie du discours à recevoir dans ce court paragraphe une définition est le verbe. Le verbe se conjugue. Sa conjugaison offrait une prise à Sībawayhi. Mais, remarquablement, ce que Sībawayhi dit ici du verbe, il ne le déduit pas du verbe. L’expression du temps qu’il prête au verbe, est l’expression du déroulement du temps qu’il constate dans le monde. Du nom, il s’est borné à donner deux exemples. De fait, dans la langue arabe de son temps, le nom n’est pas construit. Il n’est saisissable que par sa relation à ce qu’il nomme. Il faut donc, pour le reconnaître, regarder dans le monde l’entité qu’il nomme.12 Au demeurant, les grammairiens arabes, avant même Sībawayhi, avaient classé, faussement, le relatif h aytu, « là où », parmi les noms. L’inclusion dans l’ensemble des noms d’un élément qui n’est pas un nom, rendait impossible la définition du nom. Il fallait sortir h aytu de l’ensemble des noms, recomposer le premier ensemble, encore mal assuré, des noms. De la particule, qui ne lui apparaît pas construite non plus, Sībawayhi relève qu’elle assure, complémentairement, les tâches sémantiques, référentielles, que le verbe et le nom n’assurent pas.13 Ces tâches sont les tâches de relation et de localisation, que l’expérience immédiate montre comme étant nécessaires. Ce texte, qui sera exactement repris, perpétuellement, apparaît comme une image du monde : « ce qui est », le « nom » ; « ce qui est dans
11
La constatation que les modus n’existent que dans ou par les res. Un autre grand grammairien, Ibn Fāris, mort à Rayy en 395/1004, a, dans son livre, as-Sāh ibi fī fiqh al-luġa wa-sunan al-arab fī kalāmi-hā, reproché à Sībawayhi, p. 85, d’avoir, pour le nom, donné non pas une « définition » mais des « exemples » (tamtīl). Lui-même a retenu, comme étant plausible, la définition suivante : « Le nom est ce qui est implanté sur le nommé comme on le mentionne et qui lui reste attaché. », « dukira lī an badi ahli l-arabiyyati anna l-isma mā kāna mustaqirran alā l-musammā waqta dikri-ka iyyā-hu wa-lāziman la-hu wa-hādā qarīb ». Mais cette définition n’est rien d’autre que la reconnaissance du fait que le nom est rapporté immédiatement au nommé, c’est-à-dire sans le truchement du système de la langue. 13 En fait plusieurs particules sont analysables ; exemple la négation, /law/, du mode réel, faite de la négation /lā/ et du morphème /w/ (< /u/) du mode réel ; voir A. Roman 1998. 12
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le temps », le « verbe » ; avec, entre l’un et l’autre, le « lien », indispensable, verbalisé par la « particule » qui les situe, qui est différente, par son rôle, du « verbe » et du « nom ». Ici, la tradition grammaticale arabe a choisi, semble-t-il, d’observer dans la langue le monde, non pas l’homme donc et non plus, tout d’abord, la langue. Or la langue ne peut refléter l’immense complexité du monde.14 Cette porte du monde qui ouvrirait sur la langue est une fausse porte.15 Quant à la quatrième unité fondamentale de la langue que composeraient ensemble le nom, le verbe, la particule, cette unité qui serait leur finalité dans la langue, cette unité, la « phrase », les grammairiens non arabes en ont présumé l’existence. Ils ont échoué à la définir. 16 Les grammairiens arabes, eux, ne se sont pas attachés à cette unité incertaine.
3. Discussion S’il faut commencer l’étude des langues sémitiques par un ensemble taillé dans ces langues, pourquoi ne pas commencer par un ensemble, caractéristique de ces langues, l’ensemble des suites ordonnées de trois consonnes sur lesquelles les unités de nomination de ces langues apparaissent construites, le plus souvent.
14 Les systèmes « matériels » qui composent le monde, d’une part, sont ouverts, à la différences des systèmes linguistiques ; d’autre part, la combinatoire qui structure les système linguistiques est binaire – voir infra –, tandis que les combinatoires multiples qui structurent les systèmes matériels sont n-aires, avec « n » supérieur à « 2 ». 15 La proposition de Thom, rapportée dans Petitot, Entrevue avec René Thom, est, senz’altro, plus pittoresque. « J.P. : “Votre hypothèse est [. . .] que les actions archétypales comme capturer, prendre, couper, lier etc. sont devenues par ritualisation les matrices de toutes les structures syntaxiques” – R.T. : “Oui. Elles ont capturé les structures plus complexes. La meilleure preuve c’est qu’il n’existe pas de verbes de valence supérieure à quatre. C’est la règle des phrases de Gibbs” ». Ce passage ici repris de P.M. Lavorel 1980 : I, 475). 16 G. Mounin, 1960, a recensé, semble-t-il, toutes les définitions de la phrase. Aucune n’est opératoire. G. Kleiber, 2003, qui réfute le nouveau découpage du discours en clauses et en périodes, concède qu’« on a tout à gagner à tenir compte de la dimension mémorielle introduite par Berrendonner, qui était totalement absente des analyses traditionnelles et dont la nouveauté consiste à montrer que “les relations de discours n’articulent pas deux segments textuels, mais un segment textuel et une information en mémoire discursive” ». Mais comment voir une pièce de la langue dans cette « dimension mémorielle » ou dans la « période » définie hypothétiquement comme une « unité ergonomique » (A. Berrendonner, conférence, Lyon, 23.10.2003) ?
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Ainsi, pour reprendre l’exemple de toutes les grammaires, la même séquence, k–t–b, se retrouve dans : /katb–u–n/, « écrire (nominatif) » ; /kitb–a–t–u–n/, « temps d’écriture, écriture (d’un manuscrit) (nominatif) » ; /ʙaktub–u/, « J’écris (mode réel) » ; /kātib–u-n/, « écrivant (nominatif) » ;17 /maktab–u–n/, « objet d’écriture, bureau (nominatif) ». Cette séquence de trois consonnes, la tradition grammaticale arabe l’a nommée, tardivement, ʙasˢl, « souche ».18 Mais ce nom prometteur restera lettre morte faute d’une hypothèse sur le rôle de la séquence qu’il nomme, faute de l’hypothèse d’un plan général, 19 faute de la prise en compte du temps. Après la tradition arabe, la tradition orientaliste a vu dans cette séquence la « racine » de ces formes toutefois sans prendre en considération ni son rôle, ni l’organisation de la langue qu’elle implique. En conséquence elle posera la question du nombre des consonnes composant ces séquences non pas dans le cadre d’une organisation globale reconstruite mais uniquement en diachronie, à la recherche donc d’un nombre primitif et non pas d’un nombre déterminé systématiquement ou, sinon, référentiellement : elle cherchera à établir si les racines primitives ont compté deux consonnes ou trois consonnes. Ainsi la tradition orientaliste a, dans son étude de la « racine », pris le temps en compte mais non pas l’hypothèse d’une systématique générale. Les deux traditions, arabe et non arabe, accepteront donc des racines de deux consonnes, de trois consonnes, de quatre consonnes et même, parfois, de cinq consonnes. Ce faisant, elles auront empêché la recherche d’une organisation de la nomination. En effet, une telle irrégularité des signifiants de racines autrement comparables exclut la régularité essentielle à tout plan d’ensemble.
17
Sens secondaires : « secrétaire, écrivain ». Dans le Kitāb, ʙasˢl désigne le principe (d’une loi de la langue), l’état primitif d’un hˢ arf (i.e. d’un son de la langue) hors de tout conditionnement ou encore d’un schème qui est donc non anomal. Dans le Sˢāhˢ ibī (29), le ʙasˢl englobe ce qui traite de la constitution de la langue (mawdˢūʚ al-luġa), de sa materia prima (ʙawwaliyya), de sa construction (manšaʙ) puis des règles suivies par les Arabes dans leurs communications (rusūm al-ʚArab fī muxātˢabāti-hā), des ressources multiformes de l’éloquence (iftinān) qui sont à leur disposition sur les deux modes réel (tahˢ qīq) et figuré (majāz). 19 Ibn Fāris est original par sa proposition, qui semble être sans autre exemple dans la tradition grammaticale arabe, d’une saisie totalisante de la langue. La langue est, dans le Sˢāhˢ ibī, présentée, d’entrée de jeu, d’une part, dans son plan général et, d’autre part, dans sa double relation à un Dieu créateur et à la créature humaine que ce Dieu a doué d’une parole qui est la matrice de sa pensée. 18
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Dans toutes les langues du monde, les racines apparaissent comme les séquences de phonèmes ou, sinon, de syllabes,20 qui chaînent les unités de nomination des entités et des expériences que l’homme a inventées dans le monde : /katb/, /kitb–a–t/, /ʙaktub–u/, /kātib/, /maktab/ . . . Les racines qui regroupent les entités, les expériences, reconnues par l’homme comme des unités parentes, sont la première nomination de ces entités, de ces expériences. Les racines sont leur premier établissement dans les langues. Le premier rôle des racines est de leur donner dans les langues une forme et une dimension telles que les langues puissent les manier. Le nombre des éléments qui composent les racines doit répondre à cette exigence de maniabilité. Les racines, condition de leur maniabilité, ne compteront que quelques éléments. C’est là une première réduction, très forte, imposée par les langues à la nomination du monde. Une deuxième réduction nécessaire est réalisée par l’abstraction qui aboutit à donner, en effaçant leurs différences, à des entités diverses un même « nom commun », à des expériences diverses un même « verbe commun ». Les racines, porteuses de ces sens abstraits, c’est là leur deuxième rôle, devront compter, chacune, assez d’éléments pour satisfaire aux besoins de nomination des entités et des expériences que l’homme veut nommer. Dans les langues sémitiques, les racines des « noms communs » et des « verbes communs » comptent, régulièrement, trois consonnes parce que la combinatoire de trois consonnes est la première combinatoire à même de produire en nombre suffisant les arrangements qui seront leurs signifiants.21
20 Les langues sémitiques sont les seules à avoir construit leurs systèmes de nomination sur des racines de consonnes. Les langues à tons les ont construits sur des racines de voyelles. Les autres langues, sur des racines de syllabes. Les systèmes de nomination des langues sémitiques et des langues à tons vont se réorganisant sur des racines de syllabes. 21 Manifestement, les racines produites par la combinatoire de deux seules consonnes sont en nombre insuffisant. Les racines produites par la combinatoire de trois consonnes sont, par contre, en nombre plus que suffisant. Ce sont donc ces racines que la langue arabe a utilisées, régulièrement, dans son système de nomination. Jamais elle n’a utilisé dans son système de nomination de racines de deux consonnes. Les racines de quatre consonnes, secondaires, C1C :2C3C4, ont été inventées dans les formes du verbe à racines de trois consonnes et à modalité d’itération ; le signifiant de cette modalité était la longueur de la deuxième consonne, « C :2 » ; cette consonne longue a été réinterprétée
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Ce nombre « trois », suffisant, est un nombre très bas. Il est donc satisfaisant.22 La tradition arabe et la tradition non arabe ne poseront pas non plus la question du statut des autres consonnes qui flanquent ces racines. La reconnaissance par elles de /ʙ/, dans /ʙaktub-u/, comme étant la première personne du verbe ne touche que le signifié de cette unité de nomination. De même l’identification par elles du tanwīn /n/ comme un « article indéfini » dans les autres formes citées. Quant à l’identification de /t/ dans /kitb-a-t-u-n/ comme un « suffixe », de /m/ dans /maktab-u-n/, comme un « préfixe », elle est encore plus imprécise : ces deux consonnes, /t/ et /m/, sont, pour elles, des zawāʙid, des « éléments ajoutés », des formans dans des wazn, des « schèmes », fiʚlat pour /kitbat/, maf ʚal, pour /maktab/. Mais ces wazn, ces schèmes, ne sont que les mimes des formes qu’ils prétendent analyser.23
4. Élaboration en schémes 4.1
Schéme 1
Il est incontestable : – que les racines de la langue arabe sont, généralement, des racines de trois consonnes ; – que les unités de nomination construites sur ces racines reçoivent, généralement, dans les phrases, une voyelle désinentielle, brève, qui est soit le signifiant d’un mode, dans les seuls verbes, soit le signifiant
comme une consonne double ; cette consonne double a, par dissimilation d’abord, donné naissance à deux consonnes différentes ; exemple : /faqqaʚa/ > /farqaʚa/, « craquer qqc. ». Naissance d’un nouveau paradigme. Quant aux racines de cinq consonnes, ce sont des chimères. Voir Roman, 2005, le chapitre « Une brève histoire de la langue arabe ». 22 Il est remarquable qu’une morphologie de l’arabe toute construite sur des racines de deux seules consonnes est possible. Mais elle ne suffirait pas aux besoins de la nomination. Au demeurant la nomination sémitique, par racines de consonnes, a succédé à une nomination par racines de syllabes, déjà nombreuses ; voir A. Roman, op. cit., loc. cit. 23 En réalité, ces wazn, ces « schèmes » sont produits en trompe-l’œil par le sous-système syllabique de la langue. En effet, ses deux seules syllabes, “CV” et “CVC”, produisent mécaniquement des séquences régulières ; mais chacune de ces séquences n’est le plus souvent que la figure d’un sens global, la figure d’une unité de nomination construite sur une racine syllabique, c’est-à-dire sur un « radical ».
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d’un cas dans les autres unités de nomination (la voyelle /u/ dans chacun des exemples donnés) ; – que jamais une consonne n’a un signifié modal ou casuel. Ces constatations suggèrent un premier schéma de la langue arabe : SCHÉMA I
DE LA LANGUE ARABE24 CCC – V
4.2
Les schémes II et III
Hypothétiquement une langue peut être définie comme l’interconnexion de deux systèmes interdépendants : un système de nomination produisant des unités de nomination, et un système de communication, sa syntaxe, dans le cadre duquel ses unités de nomination entrent en relation pour dire une expérience. Dans le premier schéma présenté comme l’esquisse d’une organisation générale probable, « √CCC » représente, évidemment, le système de nomination ; « V », le système de communication : SCHÉMA II
CCC systeme de nomination
DE LA LANGUE ARABE –
V systeme de communication
La raison de cette répartition des tâches entre les consonnes, seules à pouvoir entrer dans les racines de la langue, et les voyelles, seules à signifier les cas et les modes, se découvre dans la structuration du système syllabique de la langue : en arabe classique, tout arrangement de consonnes et de voyelles qui, dans le cadre d’une syllabe, ne serait ni « CV », ni « CVC », constitue une syllabe a-systématique produite par une contrainte phonétique ou par une pause syntaxique ; un tel système syllabique, Σ, détermine, dans le fonctionnement de la langue la disjonction du sous-ensemble des phonèmes consonnes, {C}, et du sous-ensemble des phonèmes voyelles, {V} ; en effet deux séquences de syllabes « CV » et « CVC » ne peuvent composer les signifiants de deux unités de nomination qui, elles-mêmes, constituant une paire légitime, s’opposeraient, en bonne règle, par l’opposition simple d’une consonne
24
« » est pour « racine » ; « C », pour « consonne » ; « V », pour voyelle ».
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et d’une voyelle ; ce que montre sommairement le colonage ci-dessous de deux séquences différentes : CV C.CV CV.C VC
dont l’opposition {C vs V} est non pas simple mais double.25 Cette disjonction, dès lors que les consonnes et les voyelles peuvent être utilisées indépendamment les unes des autres, permet effectivement l’attribution systématique de tâches différentes aux consonnes et aux voyelles. C’est ainsi que s’est trouvée constituée la structure fondamentale de la langue arabe, des langues sémitiques.26 Cette raison « syllabique » trouvée, la régularité de son effet implique la régularité du plan général qui a été supposé. SCHÉMA III Σ = {CV, CVC}
DE LA LANGUE ARABE {C}
Système de nomination
{V} = ø Système de communication
5. Système de nomination 5.1
Le temps
Dans l’ensemble des unités du système de nomination, quel élément choisir qui serait susceptible de l’ordonner ? Le temps, sans doute. En effet, le temps est essentiel aux expériences. En conséquence il est essentiel aux langues. C’est grâce à sa saisie et à sa mémoire du temps,
25 En français, différemment, les paires {« aorte » vs « porte »}, {« poète » vs « porte »} opposent une voyelle à une consonne ; en français, consonnes et voyelles peuvent occuper, dans les formes, les mêmes positions. 26 Inévitablement, les consonnes et les voyelles, disjointes par le sous-système syllabique, sont conjointes dans les syllabes mais les racines sélectionnent dans les syllabes les consonnes qui sont radicales.
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que l’homme a pu créer ses langues. Heureusement, le temps peut être saisi, naïvement, comme une donnée floue sans doute mais linéaire et simple. L’espace, l’autre coordonnée du monde, est toujours réalisé dans des entités multidimensionnelles, souvent irrégulières, que leur complexité a mises, d’emblée, hors de portée des ressources dont les langues disposent même si telle ou telle forme, telle ou telle silhouette, peut être abstraite en un type : les dimensions trop nombreuses de l’espace débordent les possibilités des langues.27 Les langues se sont donc constituées, avec la materia prima de la voix, dans une première classification, élaborée sur l’opposition référentielle : [+ temps]
vs
[– temps]
Elles ont, en conséquence, produit, nécessairement, leurs unités de nomination, – soit comme des unités inscrites dans un déroulement apparent du temps, dont le temps est l’une des composantes, leurs modus – exemple : /kātib/, « écrivant » ; – soit, contre la réalité du monde, comme des unités étrangères au temps, leurs res – exemple : /šayx/, « cheikh ». 5.2
Le temps et la racine
Selon toute vraisemblance, le système de nomination se sera construit, sur les deux fondements reconnus : le temps et la racine. En arabe, aucune unité de nomination, res ou modus, ne peut commencer par deux consonnes implosives. Le « patron » syllabique impose leur séparation par une voyelle :
27 Le « nom commun » n’a pas été détaché de l’espace. Il était concret. Ou, plutôt, son caractère concret, ainsi désigné, par hypallage, est apparu quand l’homme a inventé des entités abstraites, des entités détachées de l’espace et par là-même du temps, à partir donc, chaque fois, d’un modus. Mais ce modus réifié, ce nouveau nom, reconnu comme le nom d’une entité n’occupant aucun espace, ce nouveau venu, désigné comme un nom « abstrait », par la même hypallage, n’a pas été signifié comme tel par un nouveau morphème : la langue, pour le discriminer n’a inventé aucun morphème dénotant la présence ou l’absence de l’espace dans les entités nommées par ces noms. Aussi la première langue aura-t-elle été vocale, le geste étant une écriture sur un espace suggéré, sur une donnée, donc, non prise en compte par la systématique de la langue.
méthodologie linguistique : organisation de la langue */CC . . . /
>
513
/CVC . . . /28
La première voyelle des res communes construites sur trois consonnes radicales, cette première voyelle que le système syllabique impose, semble avoir été le signifiant de l’animéité. Exemples : /kal b/, « chien »
vs
/mil hˢ /, « sel »
Nulle voyelle entre les deuxièmes et troisièmes consonnes radicales. Le genre et le nombre, qui sont les autres déterminants propres aux res, sont, systématiquement suffixés. Exemples : /kal b-a-t/, « chienne »
vs
/kal b-ā-t/, « chiennes »
La première voyelle des modus communs également construits sur des racines de trois consonnes, cette même voyelle imposée, était, est restée irrégulièrement, le signifiant de la diathèse, subjective ou objective. Paradigmatiquement, les modus ne pouvaient se distinguer des res que par la présence d’une voyelle entre les deuxième et troisième consonnes radicales. C’est effectivement cette voyelle qui les a distinguées des res. Exemple : /kalab/, « rage »
vs
/kal b/, « chien »
Cette voyelle, la hˢ arakat al-ʚayn de la tradition grammaticale arabe, est, dans /kalab/, le signifiant de la présence du temps. Elle est le premier signifiant du temps. Un temps non précisé. /kalab/ est, dans la tradition grammaticale arabe, un masˢdar. Le terme masˢdar, « source, origine », a été choisi parce que certains grammairiens, les grammairiens d’al-Basˢra, les premiers semble-t-il, ont fait de cette forme, hors plan, la forme mère du verbe.29 28 Ibn Fāris, asˢ-Sˢāhˢ ibī, p. 38–39 : « ʙinna l ʚarab-a [. . .] lā t-ajmaʚu bayna sākin-ay-ni wa lā t-abtadiʙu bi sākin-i-n ». 29 Voir Ibn al-ʙAnbārī, Al-ʙInsˢāf fī masāʙili l-xilāf bayna n-nahˢwiyyīna l-basˢriyyīna wa l-kūfiyyīn vol. I, chapitre XXVIII ; al-Fārābī, op. cit., p. 6. ; Fleisch, 1979 : 149 ; 1995.
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andré roman La tradition n’a donc pas défini le masˢdar en lui-même. Il apparaît ici comme un modus infinitif.
L’opposition du modus infinitif, /kalab/, à la res animée, /kal b/, est un exemple de la relation biunivoque, générale, « », qui s’effectue, dans le système de nomination de chaque langue, comme une opposition, « vs », entre deux paradigmes ; exemple : 2 1 /katab + t – a/ « Tu as écrit »
vs vs
1 2 /t – a + ktub(u)/ « Tu écris »
vs vs
/katab + t – i/ « Tu as écrit (femme) »
ou entre deux schèmes ; exemple : /katab + t – a/ « Tu as écrit (homme) »
Dans le système de nomination, cette relation biunivoque reste une, car, étant elle-même « opposition », elle ne peut générer, par opposition, aucune autre relation, différente, qui serait univoque. 5.3
Des racines d’une seule consonne
Les racines de trois consonnes ne sont pas les seules racines des langues sémitiques. En effet, à côté des unités de nomination commune, qui sont des images différenciées du monde, et sont donc très nombreuses, il existe d’autres unités de nomination non plus commune mais générale ou banale qui sont des images indifférenciées du monde, peu nombreuses donc.30 Le grand nombre des unités de nomination commune a imposé leur construction sur des racines de trois consonnes. Le petit nombre des unités de nomination générale ou banale a permis leur construction sur des racines d’une seule consonne. Les res banales sont : – la première et la deuxième personne, réemployées, tour à tour, dans chacune de leurs occurrences ; exemples : /ʙ/, « je », de racine √ʙ, la
30
« Banal », « qui se met à la disposition de tout le monde », Littré.
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racine de la « première personne » ; /ka/, « te, de toi », de racine √k, la racine de la « deuxième personne » ; – les res montrées, réemployées semblablement, tour à tour ; exemple : / tī/, « celle-ci », de racine √t, la racine des res d’ostension ; – les res représentées, réemployées semblablement, tour à tour ; exemple : /hu/, « lui, le, de lui », de proto-racine *√c, la racine des res de représentation.31 Les res générales sont : – les res vagues, exemple : /mā/, « quoi ? », de racine √m, la racine de la res générale ; √t, racine du temps général, homophone de la racine √t des res d’ostension ;32 √n, racine du lieu général.33 Les modus de racines monoconsonantiques sont : – le modus /f/, avatar de l’ancienne racine, √p, du modus général ;34 – le modus /s/, également réalisé /ʙ/, « faire », avatars de l’ancienne racine *√c ;35 – le modus /yy/, « être », de proto-racine *√c ;36 – le modus d’« assertion », de proto-racine *√m ;37 31 La proto-consonne */c/, occlusive medio-palatale sourde, se transformera en perdant, par lénition, son occlusion : */c/ > */ç/ > /š/ > /s-/ > /h/ > /-ʙ/ ; ou, sa sourdité : */c/ > */ / > /y-/ ∕ /-yy/. Seules les consonnes qui sont affectées d’un tiret sont encore employées dans la langue arabe historique en tant que pièces de son système. La branche sourde est terminée par l’occlusive glottale /’/ qui a remplacé, à contre-courant, la constrictive /h/ dont elle est issue. En effet /’/ est moins différente que /h/ des voyelles devant lesquelles, généralement, elle se trouve. Quant à /yy/, c’est la même consonne vocalique /y/, mais elle a été allongée pour assurer sa défense contre les conditionnements des voyelles car elle est toujours, en fin de forme, en position intervocalique ; /y/, différemment, est toujours en début de forme. 32 L’homophonie de certaines racines monoconsonantiques est annulée par leurs distributions différentes. 33 À la différence de /m/, dans /m-aktab/, de /t/, dans /kitba-t/ (chacun de ces deux morphèmes appartient à la forme dans laquelle il se trouve), /n/, est une autre unité de nomination en fonction d’expansion annective de /maktab/. Unité de nomination non spécifiée, /n/ est la tête du paradigme des expansions annectives, spécifiées, de la langue arabe ; /maktab-u-n/ signifie, littéralement, « bureau d’un lieu indéterminé » > « un bureau » ; d’où l’identification traditionnelle de /n/ comme un « article indéfini » ; d’où son nom traditionnel, tanwīn, c’est-à-dire « nounation », « présence de /n/ ». 34 Exemple dans /kayfa/, « Comment ? ». Ce modus général, concurrencé par les deux modus « être » et « faire » était sans emploi ; il a été créé par le jeu des oppositions binaires constitutif de la langue. Il n’existe que dans /kayfa/. 35 Exemples dans les verbes de paradigmes /ʙ + af ʚala/ et /(ʙi)s + taf ʚala/ : /ʙ + ašhadta/, « Tu as fait que qqn témoigne » ; /(ʙi)s + tašhadta/, « Tu as fait que toi-même sois témoin ». 36 Exemple : /m + aktab – i + yy/, « bureaucratique » ; littéralement : « être bureau ». 37 Exemple : */ʙallāh - u + m/ > /ʙallāh + u/, « Allāh. »
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– le modus d’« invocation », de proto-racine √ʙ;38 – le modus d’« exclamation », de proto-racine √ʙ.39 La combinatoire des consonnes dans le cadre des racines de trois consonnes est doublée par une combinatoire de racines. Exemples : /ʙ - a - ktub – u/, « J’écris », construit sur les deux racines √ʙ et √k-t-b ; /kitb–a–t/, « temps d’écriture », construit sur les deux racines √k-t-b et √t ;40 /m – a – ktab/, « objet d’écriture, bureau », construit sur les deux racines √m et √k-t-b ; /m – a – ktab i – yy/, « bureaucratique », construit sur les trois racines √m, √k-t-b et *√c > /yy/. Ainsi le système de nomination exploitait deux combinatoires : – une combinatoire de consonnes radicales ; – une combinatoire de racines associant : soit une racine monoconsonantique à une autre racine monoconsonantique ; soit une ou deux ou trois racines monoconsonantiques à une racine triconsonantique. 5.4
Unités non construites sur des racines
Face aux unités de nomination construites sur des racines, la langue a produit des unités non construites sur des racines. Ces pièces de la « machinerie » de la langue, ses « modalités », sont dans le système de nomination les partenaires des racines. Elles jouent par rapport à elles un rôle de « déterminants ». À la différence des racines, les modalités sont les images linguistiques d’entités du monde qui peuvent être appréhendées, naïvement, non pas comme des entités communes mais comme des entités universelles, le temps, la vie . . . 41 38
Exemple : /ʙa + šayx-u/, « Ô Cheikh ! » Exemple : */ʙallāh - a + ʙ/ > /ʙallāh + a/, « Allāh ! » 40 Exemples dans le verset II :280 : /fa nazˢirat-u-n ʙilā maysarat-i-n/, « Alors attendre le temps [qu’il faudra] jusqu’à ce que [le débiteur] soit dans une aisance [suffisante] ». 41 Naïvement, une entité peut être perçue comme universelle si elle est apparaît toujours présente. Sa présence constante implique sa présence partout. L’universalité ainsi 39
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Les modalités de temps sont employées particulièrement dans les conjugaisons. La modalité de vie a été employée comme une modalité d’« animéité », mâle, femelle . . . 42
6. Les res, les modus et le temps Les langues détachent les res du temps. Elles rattachent les modus au temps, or les res n’existent pas hors du temps, et les modus n’existent que dans ou par les res. Les langues ne peuvent donc garder les res hors du temps et elles ne peuvent davantage garder les modus hors des res. Il faut donc que, dans le discours, elles accouplent les res et les modus. Le premier couple {res – modus} construit le noyau de chaque phrase structurée.43 Ses deux composantes sont ainsi reliées, l’une à l’autre, ipso facto, par une relation intrinsèque, biunivoque, égalitaire : « ». À cette relation biunivoque, égalitaire, de « déclaration » du lien, indissociable, entre deux unités de nomination,44 s’opposent, éventuellement, deux relations univoques, les deux seules relations à même d’entrer en opposition avec elle : – l’une égalitaire, la « coordination », « + » ; – l’autre non égalitaire, la « subordination », « ».
entendue lie le temps et l’espace, indissociablement. Et elle n’implique avec l’espace et le temps que la vie, qui naît du temps, qui est avec le mouvement dans l’espace l’autre mesure du temps. Le temps et la vie . . . sont signifiés par des modalités ; l’espace n’est jamais dénoté que par des « noms ». 42 Les modalités aspectuelles spécifient différemment non pas la relation des modus au temps mais, par hypallage, le déroulement intrinsèque des modus. 43 Les modalités aspectuelles spécifient différemment non pas la relation des modus au temps mais, par hypallage, le déroulement intrinsèque des modus. 44 Les phrases non structurées sont les onomatopées, unités unaires étrangères à l’organisation de la langue. Les langues animales sont unaires.
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andré roman SCHÉMA IV
DES RELATIONS BINAIRES
[BIUNIVOQUE]
[UNIVOQUE]
[HIÉRARCHISÉE]
[NON HIÉRARCHISÉE]
DÉCLARATION
SUBORDINATION COORDINATION +
Les trois relations ainsi définies, dès lors qu’elles sont les seules relations possibles, sont communes à toutes les langues. Dès lors qu’elles sont communes à toutes les langues, le système qu’elles constituent est universel. Ainsi le système de communication s’est établi pour toutes les phrases de toutes les langues du monde sur le plan suivant : PLAN UNIVERSEL DE LA PHRASE {x (+ e . . . ) }
{y
(+ e . . . ) }
noyau + extensions extensions
{e’ (+... )}
{e’ (+... )}
+ extensions
{x’ (+ e . . . ) } . . . . . .
{y . . .
(+ e . . . ) } . . .
Dans ce plan, les unités de nomination « x » et « y » sont, in præsentia ou in absentia, les deux éléments structurellement nécessaires du noyau de la phrase, ses éléments fondamentaux. La relation biunivoque, « », qui les solidarise, les constitue en une structure unique : un « duo » de deux « voix ». Dans ce plan, « x’ », « y’ »..., « e », « e’ » . . . sont des unités de nomination éventuellement appelées par le locuteur, selon son besoin ; ce sont des extensions, des compléments sans aucune nécessité structurelle. Un tel système est simple.
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Sa simplicité tient au très petit nombre des oppositions en jeu, deux seulement. Sa simplicité tient aussi au caractère abstrait des trois relations nées de ces oppositions. Commun à toutes les langues, ce système est différent dans chaque langue, superficiellement, par les morphèmes spécificateurs propres à son système de communication. Le recours à ces morphèmes est rendu nécessaire par le caractère abstrait des trois relations en jeu. Et c’est ce même caractère abstrait qui le rend possible. Les morphèmes spécificateurs propres à la relation égalitaire, biunivoque, de « déclaration », sont principalement : – La diathèse subjective ou objective ; – Le mode réel ou potentiel ou irréel ;45 – Les modaux affirmatif, négatif, interrogatif, impératif . . . Les morphèmes propres aux relations univoques sont : – les morphèmes définisseurs de la relation univoque, égalitaire, « + », qui sont les « coordonnants » ; – les morphèmes définisseurs de la relation univoque, non égalitaire, « », qui sont les « subordonnants », la modalité exceptive. Ainsi les morphèmes qui spécifient la relation biunivoque et ceux qui spécifient les relation univoques sont complémentaires.
7. L’organisation de la langue arabe Ont été constatées : – dans le système de nomination, – la présence d’une structure radicale dans les unités fléchies ; l’absence de structure radicale dans les unités amorphes ; – la présence du temps dans les modus ; l’absence du temps dans les res ;46
45
La tradition grammaticale arabe n’a pas reconnu les modalités de mode. Cette opposition, fondamentale, {res vs modus} n’est plus vivante dans les langues historiques. 46
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– la relation, biunivoque, d’opposition, entre les paradigmes euxmêmes et les schèmes qui les composent ; – dans le système de communication, – les relations biunivoque, de déclaration ; univoques, de coordination, de subordination. Ces quatre oppositions, binaires, retracées d’abord, dans la langue arabe primitive révèlent un plan de la langue arabe exactement binaire.47 ARBRE DE L’ORGANISATION GÉNÉRALE PRIMITIVE DE LA LANGUE ARABE [SIGNIFIANTS]
[SIGNIFIÉS]
[NOMINATION]
[COMMUNICATION]
[TEMPS] +
[RACINES] phonèmes modus aspects res
animéité
syllabes
8. La structuration binaire de la langue La reconstruction présentée de la systématique de la langue arabe ne saurait surprendre. C’est à cette même reconstruction qu’aboutirait une étude qui commencerait, non plus par l’observation de la langue, mais par l’observation de l’homme. En effet, la parole de l’homme est convenue, nécessairement : il ne saurait parler au hasard. Si la convention qui règle sa parole était brute, c’est-à-dire amorphe, chaque entité, chaque expérience du monde, serait dite, immédiatement, absolument, par une onomatopée.48 47 La relation biunivoque, , est d’« opposition » dans le système de nomination ; elle est de « déclaration » dans le système de communication. 48 « Ouille ! », s’il faut un exemple, ne peut que « crier » une douleur de l’instant. « Ouille ! » ne peut « crier » le souvenir d’une douleur passée, la crainte d’une douleur future.
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Les limites, l’imprécision, d’une telle langue sont manifestes. Une telle langue ne peut être la langue de l’homo sapiens, faber. La convention qui règle sa parole n’est donc pas amorphe mais structurée. La première structuration qui existe est la structuration binaire ; au deçà, c’est-à-dire hors structuration, le son proféré est unaire ; il est réalisé comme une onomatopée ; au-delà de la structuration binaire la structuration n-aire (avec n supérieur à 2) était et reste inaccessible à l’homme sans autre recours que son corps. L’homme a forcément structuré ses langues binairement, dès lors que la structuration binaire est la première de toutes les structurations possibles et qu’elle est la seule qu’il puisse maîtriser.
9. Conclusion La systématique de ses langues a été imposée à l’homme par sa capacité de combinatoire binaire, son langage naturel, sa première langue commune, la première langue de ses conventions.49 Le plan primitif de l’organisation générale des langues humaines naturelles, née de la capacité binaire de l’homme, ne peut être différent du plan général de la langue arabe.
49 Les langues se sont constituées, par « pas de deux », chaque « signifiant » proposé par le système des sons trouvant, éventuellement, son « signifié ». Exemples de pas de deux : √C1V1C2øC3 est le schéma des res ; √C1V1C2V2C3 est le schéma des modus ; √C1uC2C2R3 est objectif ; √C1aC2V2C3 est subjectif ; “V2” = /u/, si le sujet n’est que le lieu du modus ; “V2” = /a/, si le sujet produit le modus par son action ; “V2” = /i/, si le sujet produit le modus par sa réaction ; si le sujet produit le modus par son action, la transitivité ainsi réalisée est soit afficiente, alors “V1” = /a/ ; soit déficiente, alors “V1” = /ā/ . . . Jeux d’opposition qui produisent les différences nécessaires mais aussi jeux analogiques qui produisent les paradigmes nécessaires et, parmi eux particulièrement, les jeux iconiques qui mêlent les analogies abstraites et les analogies concrètes ; exemple : l’aspect achevé est signifié par l’ordre {√C - CCC} des racines ; l’aspect inachevé par l’ordre inverse, {√CCC - √C}.
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[SIGNIFIANTS]
[SIGNIFIÉS]
[NOMINATION]
[COMMUNICATION]
[TIME] +
[RACINES] phonèmes modus tenses syllabes
res
animéité
aspects
L’organisation primordiale retrouvée par la démarche qui commence dans l’étude de la langue et par la démarche qui commence dans l’observation de l’homo loquens est l’organisation binaire, simple et puissante. La capacité de combinatoire binaire est le seuil de l’hominisation.
10. Références Brague, Rémi. 1992. Europe, la voie romaine. Paris : Criterion. Carter, Mike G. 1972. “Les origines de la grammaire arabe,” Revue des études islamiques, 40, 69–97. Descartes, René. (1596–1650). 1987. Discours de la méthode, texte et commentaire par Étienne Gilson. Paris : Vrin. al-Fārābī (m. 339/950). 1350/1931. ʙIhˢ sāˢ ʙ al-ʚulūm, édition établie et préfacée par Utmān Muhammad Amīn. Le Caire. Fleisch, Henri. 1961. Traité de philologie arabe, Vol. 1 : Préliminaires, phonétique, morphologie nominale; 1979, vol. 2 : Pronoms, morphologie verbale, particules. Beyrouth : Dar El-Machreq. Ibn al-Anbārī (513/1119–577/1181). s.d. Al-ʙInsˢāf fī masāʙil al-xilāf bayna n-nahˢwiyyīna l-basˢriyyīna wa-l-kūfiyyīn (publié avec le Kitāb al-Intisˢāf min al-ʙInsˢāf de son éditeur Muhammad Muhyī d-Dīn Abd al-H amīd), 2 vols. Ibn Fāris (m. 395/1004). 1382/1963. asˢ-Sˢāhˢ ibi fī fiqh al-luġa wa-sunan al-ʚarab fī kalāmihā, éd. Musta fā Šuwaymī. Beyrouth: Badrān. Kleiber, Georges. 2003. “Faut-il dire adieu à la phrase ?”. L’Information grammaticale, 98. 17–22. Lavorel, Pierre Marie. 1980. Aspects de la performance linguistique – Contribution neurolinguistique et psycholinguistique à l’analyse des systèmes langagiers, Thèse d’État. Lyon : Université lyon II.
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al-Maydānī Ahˢmad (m. 518/1124). s.d. Majma al-amtāl, éd. Muhˢammad Muhˢyī d-Dīn ʚAbd al-Hˢ amīd (2 vols.). Damas-Beyrouth : Manšūrāt Dār an-Nasr. Meillet, Antoine et Cohen, Marcel. éd. 1952. Les langues du monde, nouvelle édition, CNRS, 2 vols. Paris : Atlas. Mounin, Georges. 1960. “Définitions récentes du langage.” Diogène 31, 99–112. Roman, André. 1998. “Les particules ‘décomposées’ ou la reconnaissance des composantes des morphèmes de négation de la langue arabe .” In D. Leeman et A. Boone, eds. Du percevoir au dire. Hommage à André Joly, Paris : L’Harmattan, 87–96. ——. 2005. La création lexicale. 2e éd. Lyon-Kaslik : Presses Universitaires de LyonPresses Universitaires de Kaslik. Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913). 2002. Écrits de linguistique générale, texte établi par S. Bouquet et R. Engler. Paris : Gallimard. Schuler, Bernard. 1990. “Rhetorica.” Rhetorica, 8, 229–254, University of California Press. Sībawayhi (m. circa 180/786). 1385–1397/1966–1977. Kitāb, 5 vols. Abd as-Salām Muhˢammad Hārūn, ed. Cairo. Troupeau, Gérard. 1976. Lexique-Index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi. Paris : Klincksieck. Versteegh, Kees. 1977. Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden : E.J. Brill. ——. 1980. “The Origin of the term qiyās in the Arabic grammar.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik, 4–80, 7–30. ——. 1993. Arabic Grammar and Qurānic Exegesis in Early Islam. Leiden : E. J. Brill. ——. 1995. The Explanation of Linguistic Causes : Az-Zajjājī’s theory of grammar Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
DIALECTS
HOW TO BE KOOL IN ARABIC WRITING: LINGUISTIC OBSERVATIONS FROM THE SIDE LINE Gert Borg Nijmegen University
1. Introduction Students of Arabic—certainly those of a former generation—have often been led astray by a fatal fallacy: the Arabic language they study, in its grammar and syntax, shines out as a neat structure of blissful regularity. They learn by heart a set of rules with a high rate of predictability, that govern the language that was used to convey Arab thought and creativity for 15 or 16 centuries. One might say that just like ‘the Orient’ is the dream of the Orientalists, Arabic seems to be the dream of the Arabists. But most Arabists are confronted with the harsh reality of the linguistic situation in the Arab world during their first visit: a reality called diglossia. It is bitter in a way to have to learn a second Arabic language in order to be able to survive in everyday situations. The actual situation of the foreign learner in the Arab world is not very helpful either: if he or she gives the impression of being able to speak some Arabic, the addressee may well decide to speak a higher variety of the language out of politeness and respect, or start rattling in vernacular assuming that for a foreigner to speak MSA would imply even more strongly that he or she has an easy command of “lower” language levels. As a result the linguistic confrontation between native speaker and foreign language learner in the Arab world is hardly ever a natural process. Nevertheless the gifted and dedicated learner of Arabic can achieve astonishing results in mastering this complicated linguistic situation. Diglossia of course has some consequences for the teaching process of the Arabic language; fundamental choices have to be made. Do we teach Modern Standard Arabic, one of the modern dialects or some kind of mix between the two? Must this mix be presented synchronically or should it be taught diachronically, in this case leaving open the question with which variety of Arabic to begin.
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The choices and options become aggravated by growing pressures to make university programs more time efficient and productive. And—as if this were not enough—traditional academic ambitions aim at a wider study of history of the Arab world, of culture and of religion as well, apart from the obvious purpose, that students of Arabic Studies are expected to know their way around in Arabic and in the present day Arab world. Although we usually “consume” Arabic in written form, we soon come to realize, that the linguistic reality of the Arab world is by no means as static as the written material suggests: among Arabs new needs and concepts emerge, new answers and solutions to the diglossic situation are implicitly or explicitly formulated and this momentum—shaped by the mobility and flexibility of actual people—is unfolding in a typically linguistic way: anarchy. It is obvious, that something static as a language course, a grammar or even recently collected audiovisual material cannot possibly follow the volatile dynamics of this process.
2. ʙIhˢ nā, sˢawt jīl bi-hˢ āluh In this contribution I will discuss a single phenomenon that represents the present stage (August 2005) of this flexibility and anarchy in written Arabic in Egypt: the monthly “ ʙIhˢ nā, sˢawt jīl bi-hˢ āluh” is a glossy magazine in its first year. It is printed and distributed in Cairo where it sells for LE 5 (= around € 0.75). The names of the main editors are Šādī Šarīf al-Jazīrī, Jīhān Mahˢmūd and Šarīf al-Alfī. The number of contributing editors (muhˢ arrirūn) is 13. It is not easy to identify the intended readership, but on the basis of the various contributions and the goods advertised in it (mobile phones, cars, beer, traveling and leisure) one might assume roughly that the readers would be between 18 to 30 year olds, well to do and with a wide range of interests from pop music, sex and vintage cars to (anti-American) politics, recent Egyptian history and backgrounds of hot news items in Egypt and abroad. The general character of this magazine can be qualified as: critical easy to read cultural
open minded fairly independent humorous and satirical
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The political sympathy of the editors lies apparently with the Kifāya popular movement in Egypt. The most significant feature of this magazine is its use of two language levels in various ways: contributions in MSA, others in Egyptian colloquial (ʚāmmiyya) and some with a mixed use of language. I conducted a basic round of questioning about the opinion of the reading public and the following image emerged: it is immensely popular, also in circles that are not intended, like 14 year old school girls and their mothers, who appreciate the “easy reading” of this magazine. Some readers however regret the use of colloquial which—in their opinion— hampers children in learning “real Arabic”, but they enjoy the reading nonetheless. In a lecture at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute the Egyptian linguist Madīhˢa Doss emphasized, that the editors of this magazine use Egyptian colloquial, not because they do not know how to write MSA/ fush ā—they actually seem to publish in MSA elsewhere—but that they choose to use colloquial according to the character of this particular magazine. To illustrate the use of modern colloquial in Egypt and to give an impression of the purposes for which it is used I selected one issue of this magazine to be discussed here: nr. 8, published in August 2005. 2.1
Fragment 11
Let us first have a look at a contribution that is purely in MSA. It is the beginning of a contribution entitled: šahr al-irhāb al-aswad2 . . . “black month of terror”, about the terrorist attacks in London and the murder of the Egyptian Ambassador in Iraq: (yawm al-irhāb al-aswad) kāna hādā huwa l-unwān ar-raīsī li-jarīdat al-ahrām as-sādira sabāh yawm al-juma [blank] yūliyū wa-kānat al-jarīda bi-hādā al-unwān tušīru ilā l-ah dāt al-irhābiyya llatī waqaat fī l-yawm as-sābiq, h aytu kānat iddat infijārāt qad waqaat fī qalb al-āsima al-barītāniyya london mūdiya bi-h ayāt al-ašarāt wa-kāna tanzīm al-qāida fī bilād al-rāfidīn qad alana an qatl as-safīr al-misrī fī l-irāq īhāb šarīf . . . ,
1 By the nature of this contribution many quotes are from texts in which it is not always clear whether the Arabic should be understood as MSA or āmmiyya. Therefore the transliteration may sometimes be inconsistent. 2 Cf. pp. 10–11. All loose page numbers refer to this specific issue of Ih nā.
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Up to this point the choice of language and register may have been dictated by the source that is quoted, al-Ahrām, but after this the article continues: illā anna al-irhābiyyīn lam yaktafū bi-hādā al-yawm li-l-qiyām bi-hajamātihimi llatī stamarrat tiwāl šahr yūliyū mustahdifah (sic: hā) amākin mutafarriqa min al-ālam. Fa-qad istayqaza al-misriyyūn sabāh yawm as-sabt 23 yūliyū amalan fī l-istimtā bi-ajāzāt at-tawra qabla an yufājaū bi-anna bosla at-tafjīrāt al-irhābīya qadi ttajahat ilā madīna šarm aš-šayx al-misriyya . . . (the author turns to the recent terrorist attacks in Egypt).
In his own words the editor continues the language and register as set by the caption, referring to the terrorist attack in Sharm el-Sheikh. The remaining part of this article is more of the same, a language register that I would qualify as just above the level of average Media Arabic. The level even rises a little towards “classical” in a context in which the editor compares these erring groups of Muslims ( firaq islāmiyya dālla) with the Xawārij, quoting extensively from H adīt and Qurān. The choice of language in this contribution is quite predictable: – commentary on news item o Media Arabic or higher – religious/historic context o Classical Arabic 2.2
Fragment 2
The Ih nā-editor al-Alfī conducts an interview with an elderly man who is fishing from the kūbrī ag-gāmia. The photographer he has with him is named Huseyn. ajāba h usayn fī taraddud “la, miš hanistannā li-h adde mā samaka titla”. ibtasam ar-rajul wa-māl li-yaftah šantatah wa-axraj minhā samaka ka-annahā muidda xissī san li-t-taswīr wa-šabakahā fī xuttā f as-sinnāra wa-rāh yahuzzuhā h attā tazhar ka-annahā “sāh iya wa-btilab” amām al-kāmīrā (Huseyn refuses to wait to shoot his photographs because of the failing light:) “No, we’re not going to wait till a fish ‘pops up’. ” The man smiles and turns to his bag, producing a fish as if prepared for the photo, hooks it to the rod again and starts shaking it till it looks like it’s alive, playing for the camera”
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saaltuh “dī nōhā ēh yā ustād h asan?”. “ anūm”. “ anūm?”. “ anūūm . . bil-mīm”. “ amūm?”. “ anūūūūm”. “ anūūm . . . ah” . . . (the interviewer asking about the kind of fish: a very realistic conversation indeed).
2.3
Fragment 3
A truly remarkable article is “wijha nazar”,3 “point of view”, a contribution physically surrounded on its page by a quotation from the Qurān: “rabbanā lā tu’āxidnā ’in nasīnā aw axta’nā . . .” (Q. 2/286). The title of this contribution is yā rabb . . . anta ārif (O Lord, You are aware . . . ) qāla llāh: “wa-idā saalaka ibādī annī fa-innī qarībun ujību dawata d-dāi idā daānī (= Q. 2/186) yā rabb anta qarīb minnī, lēh ana baīd annak? yā rabb anta ārif kulle h āga, wa-ārif (q)adde ēh ana muhtāglak wa-ārif (q)adde ēh gahlī wa-dufī byixallīnī abad annak wa-amil h āgāt tzaallak aw mamalš al-h āgāt ellī turdīk aw amilhā bass miš bi-t-tarī(q) a ellī turdīk. Ana ārif ana (q)adde ēh wih iš maāk, wa-ārif enna l-h āgāt wi-niam ellī anta addēthālī akbar min ayye h āga a(q)dir amilhā alašānak, lēh ba(q)ā l-wāhid byistashal ennuh yamil (q)alle h āga wahuwa fākir ennuh kedah xalās amal kull al-matlūb? . . . lēh al-dunyā dalma kedah quddām al-wāh id wa-lēh al-h ayāt saba? Ana miš ārif wa-mah adš ārif lēh kulle h āga btih sa l fī l-dunyā btih sa l kedah lēh . . . “I feel guilty about all my wrongdoings in the light of your benevolence, o Lord, and I don’t understand the world anymore . . . ”
This text is very personal in tone, it is a monologue with God, almost like a prayer and it is in āmmiyya throughout, except verbal forms like “turdīk”. What we have here is a religiously inspired text, in the context of Qurānic Arabic, but written for a purpose that is—apparently—best served in colloquial. 2.4
Fragment 4
H ukkām lā yahābūna amrīkā, an article about world leaders who defy the US and its politics,4 is also mainly in MSA and Media Arabic. Typical markers for this second type of Arabic are for instance passages like:
3 4
Cf. p. 18. Cf. pp. 25–26.
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gert borg tumma dahab5 Castro ilā qatar li-tazīz al-alāqāt bayna l-baladayn xāssa tan wa-anna l-alāqāti llatī tarbut qatar bi-l-wilāyāt al-muttah ida watīqa. tumma dahab ilā sūriyā wa-wasafa ziyāratahu li-dimašq bi-annahā muhimma wa-annahu yaqif ilā jānib sūriyā . . . . . . .etc. . . . then Castro travelled to Qatar to strengthen the relations between the two nations, especially because Qatar’s relations with the US are solid. Then he went to Syria and described his visit to Damascus as important and (stated) that he stood next to Syria . . .
The type of language corresponds neatly to the subject of this contribution. 2.5
Fragment 5
Announced as “a grain of seriousness” (h abba jadd) we find another contribution in MSA on the daring subject of the role of sex in matrimonial relations: mā hiya h udūd al-alāqa l-h amīma bayna l-azwāj? 6 (what are the boundaries of the intimate relationship between married partners?). With captions like an-nazar ilā awrat az-zawja (looking at your naked wife), h urriyyat al-wad al-jasadī atnā al-jimā (freedom of body positions during intercourse), it does not shy away from daring subjects. The whole article is written in MSA except for some anonymous reactions by boys (ray aš-šabāb) and girls (ammā l-fatayāt fa-tah addatna ka-t-tālī). These reactions follow separate patterns: – in the boys’ section the introductory remarks are in MSA, which gradually turns into āmmiyya. Finally the boys are cited in full āmmiyya: wa-alā l-raġmi mimmā qad yazunn al-bad min annahum lā yatahaddatūn fī tilka l-mawādī . . . . ad-dukūr arabū an rayihim bi-bagāh a7 wa-kaannanā gēnā lahum a-ag-garh . qāla ahaduhum: ih nā makbūtīn8 wa-madġūtīn min (!) al-mugtama . . . . although some expected them not to talk about such subjects, the men expressed their view with impudence as if we were touching a sore point. One of them said: we are oppressed by society . . .
5 The use of the verb dahaba is extremely rare in Media Arabic: compare the Nijmegen Arabic corpus by Jan Hoogland. 6 Cf. pp. 28–29. 7 A typical masdar for āmmiyya, not found in classical and MSA dictionaries, but in Badawi-Hinds. 8 A typical āmmiyya word.
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– the girls’ section is less predictable: wa-ih dā l-fatayāt qālat fī tamallul: wa-hā-yifīd bi-ēh marifat rayī fī al-awdā ag-ginsīya . . . “what’s the use of knowing my opinion about sexual positions!” wa-law āyiz tifham nafsiyyat al-banāt āmila izzāy fī l-mawdū dah šūf fīlm “woman on top” fa-huwa yah kī qissa t fatāt rūmānsiyya tazawwajat bi-šābb wasīm (if you want to know how woman’s psychology works in this matter, than look at the film “woman on top”; it tells the romantic story of a girl that married a handsome boy . . . ) Then the story of the film is being told in MSA.
2.6
Fragment 6
A constant mix between MSA and colloquial is a contribution by Yumnā Bassiouni, called al-istiāna bi-mumatti līn kūmbārs min ajl az-ziyārāt ar-rasmiyya,9 “calling in extra representatives at official visits for help”, a hilarious story about the hiring of extra patients to accommodate the official opening of a hospital wing for children on the 4th floor of the ʙAbū Rīš Academic Hospital. The first line of this story is indicative for its mixed character: wa-alašān uakkid annahu miš mugarrad kalām, hunāka mitālān h adatā muakka ran yuakkidān alā mawdū al-istiāna . . . “to make sure that it’s not only a rumour, here you have two examples that occurred recently, confirming the topic of calling in . . . ”. From a linguistic point of view the use of āmmiyya in this article is interesting: a remarkable colloquial factor is the use of āmmiyya conjunctions instead of MSA ones: apparently this contributes to the fluent style of writing: . . . h attā az-zar (!) byitšāl alašān yith att fī makān ziyāra rasmiyya tānya (for li . . . ) . . . wa-lākin inn al-mawdū yawsal (for lākinna) . . . wa-alašān uakkid . . . (for li . . .) . . . - zayye mā binšūf fī t-tilifizyōn—(for kamā) . . . kullu deh wa-l-umūr mā zālat tabdū tabīiyya li-l-ġāya . . . (for hādā wa-)
9
Cf. p. 31.
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The āmmiyya can also be used to indicate direct speech without using quotation marks. Doing this makes the scene lively and realistic, because we can hardly do anything else than picturing the usual “hanger around” in such buildings, all the more so because typically the floor that is said to be still closed is the floor that was meant to be inaugurated from the beginning: . . . fī d-dōr ar-rābi ellī lissa muftatah īnuh . . . “on the fourth floor that they didn’t open yet”. 2.7
Fragment 7
Ih nā apparently did some investigative research into the behavior of female singers on the various MTV-like channels and the impact it has on the audience in an article with the title “man tufaddil min al-muġanniyāt?”, “Which of these singers do you like most?”.10 Some youths give their commentary in which the choice of language seems significant for emphasizing the point of view. A conservative 23 year old boy says: masxara al-aġānī nātija an sū ahwāl al-mujtama wa-laysat al-sabab fīhā wa-l-nās mudnibūn h aytu annahum hum yušajjiūn tilka al-aġānī . . . “the cause of those ridiculous songs is the deterioration of society, not the other way around; people have to blame themselves because they are encouraging these songs . . . ”
A 25 year old girl sounds a bit more committed: al-fīdiyō klīb baā isfāf wa-axjal min mušāhadat qanawāt al-aġānī amām wāldī “video-clips are just pulp; I feel embarrassed to watch them when my father is around”
This 24 year old girl is very dismissive: āhirāt hādā az-zamān asbah na yulinna an anfusihinna fī t-tilifizyōn fī šakl fīdiyō klīb “the whores of this age have come to express themselves through the video-clip”
And this 27 year old girl sounds critical: law nrakkaz alā urūbitnā mumkin namil h āgāt original bass al-Arab (ih nā yanī) dāyīn “if we concentrate on our Arab identity we could come up with something original, but the Arabs—that means we—are lost”
10
Cf. pp. 32–33.
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A 36 year old male: būsī samīr law mā amalitš kedah māh adš hayišufhā “if Busi Samir wouldn’t act that way, nobody would notice her”
The background of the speakers shifts from: – – – – –
conservative and intellectual to sympathetic but dismissive conservative and denouncing conservative and nationalistic realistic
and with these attitudes the language variety shifts correspondingly from: – – – – –
MSA to popular (āmmiyya) MSA “street wise” (āmmiyya) popular (āmmiyya)
2.8
Fragment 8
Walid ʚIrfa’s contribution is a review of Paulo Coelho’s book “The Zahir”, which was popular at the time. The language level chosen for this article is close to Classical Arabic. 2.9
Fragment 9
A special page is reserved for reviews of DVD’s. These are all in MSA. The writer, Marwān Qadrī, also comments on the Broadcast and Television Festival in July 2005.11 On this subject his criticism is harsh: wa-ka-āda kull al-qāimīn alayhi (sc. al-mahrajān) fašal al-mahrajān fašalan darīan min h aytu t-tanzīm wa-l-iftitāh wa-l-xitām . . . “as usual with all organizers the festival failed completely in organization and during opening and closing sessions”. Only once Qadrī deviates slightly from MSA: muzam ad-duyūf wa-l-muštarikīn laysū . . . , “most guests and participants were (plural) not . . . ”, but this is far from abnormal in Media Arabic. When
11
Cf. pp. 36–37.
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the author voices his indignation about the unavoidable baladī/fellāh ī dancer performing at these occasions he shifts to āmmiyya: lā ġinā anhā fī ayyi htifāl h attā wa-law kāna tahūr ibn al-jīrān wa-lladī yabluġ min al-umr 7 sanawāt. Lēh .. lēh al-raqsa l-fallāh ī? H arām alēkū zihiqnā gaddadū, huwa intū miš btitfarragū alā ayye stirādāt aw h aflāt xitām aw iftitāh fī ayye h itta barra masr. Kulluh kūm wa-l-wufūd aw bi-manā asah h ruasā al-wufūd kūm tānī . . . “there is no avoiding her at any festive occasion, even if it be the neighbors son circumcision who’s only seven years. Why . . . why this peasant dancer? Shame on you, we’re fed up with it, find something new(?), it’s because you haven’t seen any festivities of openings or closures anywhere outside Egypt. All that is one thing, but these delegations or more specifically the delegation leaders are another!”.
2.10
Fragment 10
In an article with the title bāsbōr axdar mā yiswāš12 (“a green passport isn’t worth anything”) Yumnā Bassiouni complains about the “first class” treatment visitors to Egypt receive from the authorities if they carry foreign passports. As witnesses to this practice she cites a few personal stories, parts of which are in āmmiyya. One account is by Mohamed Sami (22) who traveled in Egypt in the winter season with a relative of his who carries an American passport:13 yaīš ibn xālatī fī amrīkā wa-nādiran mā yatī ilā misr . . . . . wa-kunnā rājiīna min xarga14 bi-l-layl mutaaxxir(!) jiddan . . . wa-awqafanā addābit wa-kāna šākik(!) fīnā li-anna ibn xālatī kān lābis šōrt fī izz al-bard! wa-awdaha muhammad anna ad-dābit šakka fī annahum mutaātīn h āga muxaddara muxalliyāhum miš h āssīn bi-nafsihim wa-lābsīn kedah, xāssa tan wa-anna lukna qarībih fī l-arabī miš salīma wa-sammam addābit annahum yatl aū alā al-qism. al-h āga l-wah īda ellī anqadatnā annanā gibnā li-d-dābit gawāz safar ibn xālatī al-amrīkī wa-hadadnāhu annanā hanaštakīh fī s-sifāra l-amrīkīya an al-bahdala ellī h asalit/hasalat la-nā wa-bi-t-tālī muāmalat ad-dābit itġayyarat tamāman wa-tadar kitīr alašān mā namilūš mašākil! . . . yanī ibn xālatī lammā kān byistamal al-bāsbōr al-masrī maa dalika d-dābit , mā laāš ġēr sū muāmla wa-awwal mā azhar bāsbōruh al-agnabī kān lahu al-ihtirām aš-šadīd wa-l-adab fī l-muāmala “my cousin lives in the US and rarely comes to Egypt . . . we were returning from Kharga very late at night . . . and a policeman stopped us and
12 13 14
Cf. p. 41. Passages in colloquial are in italics. Written is xurūga which seems improbable.
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suspected us because my cousin was wearing shorts in this extreme cold! Mohamed made it clear that the policeman was wondering whether they had taken some drug that left them not feeling themselves while they were dressed that way, especially because the accent of his relative in Arabic was not ok. The policeman decided that they had to go to the police post. The only thing that saved us was that we handed the policeman my cousins foreign passport and we threatened him that we would complain about him at the American Embassy about the illtreatment that we encountered. All of a sudden the policeman’s behavior changed completely and he apologized deeply so that we wouldn’t cause him any problems! So when my cousin used his Egyptian passport (in dealing) with that policeman, he encountered maltreatment and as soon as he waved his foreign passport he was treated with deep respect and decency.”
In this passage the story changes rapidly from account to direct speech and the language changes accordingly. 2.11
Fragment 11
In the first lines of the contribution “tanfīsah”15 (reassurance?) we find a remarkable blend of MSA and āmmiyya: Kun Anta. Qālū “iraf nafsak” dah ahamm šē wa-asab šē’ wa-aktar al-nās lā yarifūn!! Ammā dī h āga ġarība kulle mā innī abuss fī bitāqatī arif ana mīn wa-šahādat at-taxarrug wa-šahādat ag-gēš wa-al-bāsbūr . . . “Be yourself. They say: Know yourself. That is the most important and the most difficult thing, while most people don’t!! That is something strange: every time I look at my ID I know who I am . . . , my degree, my army card and my passport . . . ”
But then the āmmīya takes over almost completely: Huwa deh ana wa-lā deh elli itfarad alayyā ennī akūnuh . . . Amil ellī inta āyizuh . . . āyiz arabiyya bi-rīmūt bitrušš mayyah (unzur namūdaj 2)16 āyiz tilab mazīkā! Yāllā nirūh šāri muh ammad alī bukra mumkin yigibak gītār wallā darabūkah . . . āyiz tiqrā!?—wa-llāhi fikra miš battā la—indinā maktabāt fīhā kull al-mawdūāt ellī titxayyilhā, mamakš fulūs?! inzil sūq17 al-ezbekīya fa (!) al-ataba . . . “That is me and not the one who imposed on me that it is me . . . Do whatever you want . . . You want a car with remote control that sprays water (see
15 16 17
Cf. p. 42. Referring to a photograph. The text reads sūr, but that seems improbable.
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In this fragment MSA is used for the general introductory remarks; the more subjective fictitious monologue is in colloquial. 2.12
Fragments 12–16
A few remaining articles about (muscle) cars, sporting exercises, quality food, gadgets and the unavoidable horoscope are all completely in MSA.20 2.13
Fragments 17 and 18
In a magazine that is so obviously playing with the possibilities that language levels offer it is only natural that the reader would find contributions about language itself. In this issue of ʙIhˢ nā we find two, both under the common and significant title “Arābīk slāng”.21 We find two lists of “say” and “don’t say” items (“qul” and “lā taqul”), here represented as opposites: Say matˢar silsila gurnāl bartˢamān fingān
Don’t say22 natˢar sinsila gurnān batˢramān23 fingāl
Say dˢafar muhandisīn bāsbōr isbāniyā dalwaq/ʙtī
Don’t say dˢāfa/ir (?) muhandizīn bāzbōr izbāniyā dawaq/ʙtī
And under the heading “qāmūs ʙIhˢ nā” (ʙIhˢ nā’s dictionary) we find a quasi-classical explanation of the word “sakalānsun” (sic): kalima taxdum jamīʚ al-aġrādˢ ʚalā hˢasb al-maʚnā l-murād: yumkin istixdāmuhā bi-maʚnā kullih fī t-tamām “kulluh fī s-sakalāns”, wa-yumkin al-ʙišāra li-l-bōy frīnd aw al-gīrl frīnd ʚalā ʙannahum “as-sakalāns”.
18
“Example” refers to a photograph accompanying the text. Mark the ‘calque’ for ʚazaf. 20 Cf. pp. 44–50. 21 Cf. p. 6. 22 These lists seem to be provocative to me; “please go ahead and say gurnān!” 23 Badawi-Hinds mentions both but apparently prefers batˢramān, a glass or plastic jar with a lid, a jam jar. 19
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kamā yumkin al-qawl bi-ʙanna šaxsˢ (mā fī t-tarāwa?) bi-ʙannahu fī “s-sakalāns”. s-sakalāns tustaxdam fī l-qahˢāwī li-tasmiyat al-kōktēlāt: qahwa ʚalā šāy—zabādī bi-l-fawākih . . . ʙlx. fī l-matˢāʚim, as-sakalāns tušīr ʙilā sāndwitšāt al-fūl bi-t ˢ-tˢaʚmīya bi-l-baydˢ aw sandwitšāt as-samak bi-ggambarī bi-s-sabītˢ (?) bi-tˢ-tˢahˢīna wa-llatī tuʚraf aydˢan bi-sandwitšāt “al-fiyāgrā”. sakalāns tamsˢīr li-kalima “aksalāns” . . . “an all purpose word depending on the intended meaning: it can be used as a generic term: it’s all sakalāns. It can refer to your boy friend or girl-friend: they are sakalāns. One can also say that someone . . . (?) is in sakalāns. sakalāns is being used in coffee shops to indicate cocktails: coffee on tea, cream on fruit etc. In restaurants sakalāns refers to bean sandwiches with taˢ ʚmīya and egg or fish sandwiches with shrimps with ? with taˢ hˢīna that are also known as viagra sandwiches. sakalāns is an egyptianisation of the word “excellence”.
A wonderful play of words and styles.
3. When is ʚāmmiyya being used in this magazine? The use of āmmiyya seems neither inconsistent nor indiscriminate in this magazine; I will try to clarify the preference of the contributors for using āmmiyya in its various contexts: 1. āmmiyya is used for representing direct speech and to add a realistic flavor – “la, miš hanistannā li-h adde mā samaka titla” (fragment 2) – also for fictitious direct speech: āyiz tiqrā!?—wa-llāhi fikra miš battā la—(fragment 11) 2. for adressing the reader – zayy mā binšūf fī t-tilifizyōn (fragment 6) 3. for contexts with humorous, hilarious or ironical purposes – fī d-dōr ar-rābi ellī lissa muftatah īnuh (fragment 6) – h attā z-zar byitšāl alašān yith att fī makān ziyāra rasmīya tānya (fragment 6) 4. for intimate and personal expression – fragment 3: the prayer 5. for clarifying the social status or political point of view of the speaking individual – the interviews in fragment 7
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6. for emotive contexts, like anger or indignation – the way indignation that is expressed about the baladi dancer in fragment 9 – fragment 5: ʙihˢ nā makbūtīn wa-madˢġūtˢīn min al-mugtamaʚ
4. Orthography It is obvious that for an Arabic periodical in most Arabic speaking countries to use written ʚāmmiyya is like walking a minefield: it will be frowned upon by the conservative cultural and intellectual elite and the periodical might very well be unable to penetrate a wider Arab market although in the case of Egyptian colloquial this risk is limited. It opens however a thrilling space of new and unexplored opportunities. It has to be said though that this experiment faces some practical problems, one of which is orthography. For Classical and Modern Standard Arabic the orthography is fairly straightforward. Even in written Media Arabic the orthographical problems are mainly confined to transliteration of loan words and foreign names. But for written colloquial the situation is completely different: the Arabic graphemes do obviously not cover the ʚāmmiyya stock of phonemes and no consistent convention has been developed yet. If this trend of writing colloquial will persist, it would mean, that new orthographical standards will emerge. It will be hard to continue the standard of oneto-one equivalents as in written CA and MSA. For written colloquial the orthography “of the future” might well be less stable and predictable. In a few instances we can already get an impression of some of the difficulties: do we spell as we speak or spell as the conventional spelling of MSA tells us to spell: for example the ʚ (ʚayn) is clearly disappearing from the urban Cairene dialect. As a consequence ʙIhˢ nā writes byaʙrifūʙ for the MSA yaʚrifūna. To do this on the cover even seems to be meant as an elegant provocation, because the same phenomenon (ʙ for ʚ) cannot be witnessed in the remaining articles except for the article that the cover announces: istiftāʙ ʙihˢ nā: 95% min aš-šabāb byaʙrifūʙ (with final ʙalif ) man būsī samīr . . . “inquiry by ʙIhˢ nā: 95% of the kids know who Busi Samir is” (fragment 7). In other issues of ʙIhˢ nā, not quoted here, I noticed a tendency to represent stressed vowels by lengthening them, using matres lectionis, which may be confusing for the unaccustomed eye.
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Furthermore we find inconsistencies for instance in prepositions with the first person suffix: liyā, ʚalayyā, but biyyah. The conjunctions “wa” and “fa” are increasingly represented and therefore considered as separate words, not only in advertisement, but also within running contexts like these: kull an-nās kānit ʚārfa masˢlahˢtī ʙaktar minnī: māmā wa bābā, al-mudarrisīn, . . . “everyone knew better than me what was in my interest: ma and pa, the teachers, . . . ” (from fragment 11); ʙinzil sūq al-ezbekīya fa al-ʚataba . . . “go to the Ezbekiya market or ʚAtaba” (fragment 11).
5. Conclusions for teaching For the present and coming generations of students of Arabic it might be important to become acquainted with the notions and fashions of their own generation in the Arab world. For them to learn about differences and similarities will probably contribute to motivation and mutual understanding. These notions and fashions are for a large part expressed in language. The present state of the Arabic language and its day-to day developments cannot however be covered by course books and vocabularies because these cannot possibly keep up with the tempo of modern urban life, the media or the internet. The pace of changes in the Arab world as reflected in the quick development of the written Arabic language confronts us, teachers of the Arabic language and culture, with the question whether we can still convey the concept of the written Arabic as a continuum; or should we actually split the current language acquisition curricula into the categories “classical” and “modern”? The implications of options like these are far reaching. There is at least one practical consideration: teachers of modern Arabic can hardly do without regularly being in touch with the Arab world in order to adequately follow the linguistic developments in the Arab world. This can be achieved either by following the (satellite) media or—better still—by regular visits to Arab countries to witness the fast developments firsthand.
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gert borg 6. References
Hinds-Badawi: Hinds, Martin and El-Said Badawi. 1986. A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic English. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. ʙIhˢ nā, sˢawt jīl bi-hˢ āluh. 2005. August issue. Nijmegen Arabic Corpus: a collection of MSA texts from the written media compiled by Everhard Ditters and Jan Hoogland.
“HELLO, I SAY, AND WELCOME! WHERE FROM, THESE RIDING MEN?” ARABIC POPULAR POETRY AND POLITICAL SATIRE: A STUDY IN INTERTEXTUALITY FROM JORDAN1 Clive Holes University of Oxford
1. Introduction In Arab literary studies, popular poetry, that is, poetry composed in a non-standard form of the language, remains a relatively unexplored reservoir of creative activity. There has been a tendency for native and western critics alike to ignore it, or at best pigeonhole it as ‘folklore,’ devoid of literary value, and written in a ‘debased’ form of the language. One of the few great Arab writers to stand out against the prevailing opinion was the 14th century historian, sociologist and polymath Ibn Xaldūn, a writer who in this, as in so much else, was sui generis. His words are worth quoting, since he puts his finger squarely on the main reasons for the prejudice against popular poetry (ignorance) which applies with as much force today as it did six centuries ago: Most contemporary scholars, philologists in particular, disapprove of these types (of poems) when they hear them, and refuse to consider them poetry when they are recited. They believe that their (literary) taste recoils from them, because they are (linguistically) incorrect and lack vowel endings. This, however, is merely the result of the loss of the habit (of using vowel endings) in the dialect of the (Arabs). If these (philologists) possessed the same (speech) habit, taste and natural (feeling) would prove to them that these poems are eloquent, provided that their (own) natural dispositions and point of view are not distorted. Vowel endings have
1 The present paper is based on data gathered in the course of a field-based investigation into the practice of Bedouin poetry in Jordan and Sinai, involving the collection of poetry composed over the last 50 years, and particularly over the last 20, direct from the poets themselves. The fieldwork was carried out by Dr Said Salman Abu Athera, a Bedouin originally from Beersheva but now resident in Jordan, and the translation, glossing and annotating of the poems was done by me. Our book Yā Kundālīzza Rāys! Politics and Popular Poetry In the Contemporary Arab World is to be published by Brill in 2007.
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clive holes nothing to do with eloquence. Eloquence is the conformity of speech to what one wants to express and the requirements of a given situation, regardless of whether the u-ending indicates the subject and the a-ending the object, or vice versa. (Ibn Xaldūn, tr. Rosenthal 1958, 3:414–5).
With the beginnings of western interest in Arabic literature, from the mid-19th century until the early decades of the 20th, there was a good deal of academic effort devoted to collecting examples of Arabic popular poetry, but with a mainly philological rather than ethnographic or literary inspiration (e.g. Wallin 1851; 1852; Socin 1900–1; Landberg 1901; Meissner 1903, though Musil 1928 is an exception). In recent years there has been a fresh burst of interest, particularly in the contemporary Bedouin poetic tradition (Sowayan 1985; Abu-Lughod 1986; Ingham 1986; Bailey 1991; and Kurpershoek’s monumental five-volume study of the Bedouin poetry of Najd, 1993–2005). These later studies have focused on the practice and social functions of poetry, and on its ethnographic value as both the product and record of Bedouin societies and modes of thought that are now rapidly passing into history. There is evidence to suggest, however, that the tradition of popular poetry in today’s Bedouin society is far from dead; on the contrary, it seems to be transforming itself into a voice of socio-political commentary and criticism which transcends purely local tribal concerns and addresses regional and even international issues. During the 20th century, Arabic popular poetry was first deployed by urban poets, in the absence of any other public forum for protest, as a potent political weapon, the two prime examples being Mahˢmūd Bayram at-Tūnisī’s barbs against Egypt’s British colonists during the early part of the century (Booth 1990), which led to his expulsion from Egypt, and his heir, Ahˢmad Fuʙād Nigm’s coruscating attacks on Anwar Sadat and the policy of economic and cultural infitāhˢ pursued by the Egyptian government during the 1970s (Abdul-Malek 1990), a campaign which landed him in prison on several occasions. Popular Bedouin poetry, on the other hand, has until relatively recently been little concerned with politics and society outside those of the tribal dῑra; only with post-Second World War political independence, and a perceived encroachment of the state on the concerns of their communities have Bedouin poets gone down the same path as their urban counterparts and turned their poetry into an instrument for expressing communal popular protest. But what is meant, in the early 21st century, by the term ‘Bedouin’ in the phrase Bedouin popular poetry, since virtually no one now leads the
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Bedouin life of nomadism? As a statement that today refers to membership in a genealogy-based social structure, rather than to a way of life, ihˢ na badu, or more frequently ihˢ na ʚarab, is still a proud boast. Individuals whose families may have been settled for many generations continue to use this phrase to identify themselves, however far their life-style has deviated from the Bedouin stereotype of yesteryear. In countries like Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the concentric circles of family ties, clan membership and tribal affiliation into which self-proclaimed Bedouin are born continue to exercise a strong pull on their imagination and provide the backdrop against which their social relationships are conducted and political attitudes forged, even in large cities.2 Contemporary Bedouin poetry is composed in a stylised form of the poet’s spoken dialect, but this does not mean that it is a purely oral form, or that the poet has had any formal training. Poets come in all shapes and sizes, and not from any particular class or background: he (or she, as there are some skilled female poets) can be a tribal elder, a supermarket owner, a smuggler, or a doorman;3 what counts is a gift for composing, honed through years of listening to other poets. The oldest generation of poets now in their 70s and 80s are almost without exception illiterate, and use a vocabulary and forms of poetic diction now difficult for younger generations to understand.4 Nowadays, however, many of those who would describe themselves as Bedouin poets, like the one discussed here, are literate in Modern Standard Arabic, but, for a variety of audience- and topic-related reasons, some of which I will discuss below, choose to compose in dialect, and use a vocabulary closer to that of everyday speech. Written versions of their poems not infrequently appear in newspapers and are published in locally and cheaply produced dгwāns.
2 In Egypt, in the mouths of the settled farmers and town-dwellers of the Nile valley, ʚarab is a term of opprobrium, signifying backwardness and stupidity; but for the Sinai Bedouin, resentful of the power over their lives which the settled population of Egypt now exercises, these farmers and town-dwellers are contemptuously referred to as banī firʚōn ‘the sons of the Pharaoh’, an insult that alludes to their supposed slave origin and habit of subservience. 3 Poetry was collected from poets fitting all these descriptions in the course of the present project. 4 A good example is the poetry of the illiterate ʚUnēz ʙAbū Sālim at-Turbānī of southern Sinai, considered by many the premier Bedouin poet of the region, who spent many years in Egyptian prisons for smuggling offences, and died in his 80s in 2000.
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clive holes 2. Ghassān Surūr aš-Šbaylāt ( ʙAbū Surūr’)
One of the Jordanian poets from whom we have collected a large number of unpublished poems, though many of them have circulated by word of mouth and on cassette, is Ghassān Surūr aš-Šbaylāt (ʙAbū Surūr’). Ghassān was born in az-Zarqāʙ, north Jordan, in 1954, the son of the paramount sheikh of the al-ʙUwaysāt section (ʚašгra) of the Banī Hˢ asan, a north Jordanian tribe. He now lives in a large house in al-Mafraq. He describes his social background with the tongue-in-cheek epithet ladu: an abbreviation of lā filhˢ wa lā badu ‘neither cultivator nor nomad,’ a term used to describe people historically of Bedouin origin who are now fully settled. Ghassān was the eldest son in his family, with seven brothers. When his father died, he was around 14 years old. His father left him virtually nothing (‘300 JD’), having sold off or squandered almost all the family wealth. As a result, Ghassān was forced to leave school immediately and find work to support his siblings and mother. At that time, in the late 1960s, the Iraqi army still had units in Jordan following the 1967 war with Israel. This presented opportunities for smuggling. At that time the Iraqi army was using Russian weapons and ammunition, but the Bedouin in Iraq still carried British weapons from the days of British influence before the revolution of 1958, just as the Bedouin of Jordan still did. When Iraqi units rotated home, the young Ghassān would sell them British weapons and ammunition, which they smuggled across the border and sold on at a profit to Iraqi Bedouin—there were no border checks on troop movements. This ammunition and weapons smuggling subsequently broadened into a more extensive illicit trade—cigarettes and other goods—and extended also to Syria, which was a much nearer border. By the early 80s, as a young man, Ghassān had begun to travel regularly to West Germany and the countries of the eastern bloc, from where he brought back cars and other goods to sell in Jordan. Eventually, the profits from this enabled him to buy land and start businesses, including supermarkets. He is now, at around 50 years of age, a relatively wealthy man. That is the bare bones of Ghassān’s journey from childhood rags to adult riches. He is at pains to point out that none of what he owns and has achieved was through family influence, but rather through thirty years of his own efforts and honesty with business partners: what he has achieved has been, as he put it, bi sˢ-sˢadāga wa lā bi l-garāba (‘through friendship and not through family ties’).
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Ghassān is a complex character. Despite his lack of formal education he has read quite widely, and is in the habit of quoting Plato in his conversation. It became obvious from talking to him that he has a thorough knowledge of the history of the Levant. He also, despite (or perhaps because of the means by which he acquired) his wealth, has a well-developed social conscience. This is strongly reflected in his poetry, most of which was composed during the 1980s when he was struggling to make a living and continually coming up against economic and social barriers. His constant poetic targets are: the economic inequalities of the Jordan of this period; the incompetence, hypocrisy, cupidity, corruption and arbitrary powers of government ministers and officials; the nepotism and snobbery endemic in Jordan at all levels; and perhaps most emphatically, the loss of the sense of honor and dignity which, in his view, no longer underpins the fabric of Jordanian society in the way it once did. All of these he had to battle against to achieve what he has. The satirical poem presented here, as well as many others, could not be published in Jordan, and the poet ran into serious problems with the intelligence services at the time when his poetry first began to circulate informally some twenty years ago. How did, and does, Ghassān’s poetry circulate? Most often a finished poem or poems would be recited in a gathering in the poet’s majlis, and recorded there on a cassette. This would be copied and distributed to local shops and sold for a very low price. Bus drivers would often play such cassettes to their passengers. The fax machine, when it became common in the 1980s, was another means of circulation of the poem in written form. The latest method is via text messaging on mobile phones. Although Ghassān still composes poetry, he has turned away from the provocative and often personal attacks of the 1980s, and stays behind what he describes as al-xutˢūtˢ al-hˢ amrā (‘the red lines’) that must not be crossed—in particular anything that could be construed as critical of the Hashemite royal family. His mission remains, however, to speak up for the ‘little people’ of Jordanian society, in particular the Bedouin, whose voice and concerns can rarely be heard above what he describes in another poem (al-Jarāʙid ‘the Newspapers’) as the sycophantic blather of the government-controlled media. Ghassān commented thus on the poem presented below: A famous Jordanian song, popular in the 1960s, was yā marhˢ abā, yā halā, minēn ar-rakb, minēn? The song praised the heroes of our nation and encouraged manliness (rugˇūla), gallantry (šahāma), self-respect (karāma) and freedom (hˢ urriyya). But people’s ideas have changed, as have their dealings with each other. People have become so preoccupied by earning
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3. Rashīd al-Kīlānī in Abdūh Mūsā’s musical setting The words of the original song (Ghawānmah 2002, 150–1) are by Rashīd al-Kīlānī. A famous Jordanian gypsy singer and rebec player of the time, ʚAbdūh Mūsā (1927–1977), made them famous by putting them to music. Mūsā was well known for his popular nationalistic songs praising the army, national heroes, and the Hashemite dynasty, as well as sentimental ditties for religious occasions. Ghassān takes many of the original lines of ʚAbdūh Mūsā’s song and, while preserving the original meter and rhyme scheme, alters the words to provide a series of poetic snapshots of the state of Jordan in the early 1980s. The effect of inserting such material into the structure of the song, whilst at the same time preserving much of the original bombastic phraseology, is pungently satirical and bathetic. The impact of Ghassān’s poem on a local audience depends precisely on the fact that Mūsā’s song from an earlier, more confident period of Jordanian history was so well known to ordinary Jordanians from its frequent airing in the local media. Rashīd al-Kīlānī’s original words are as follows: 5 1
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yā marh abā, yā halā, mnēn ar-rakb, min wēn? 6 agbal alēnā d-dih ā yā zēna gbālah h innā dār7 al-idā, tallāba li d-dēn
Hello, I say, and welcome! Now where from, these riding men? The morning’s come upon us, see how beautifully, again! Against the foe8 we’re ruthless; our debts we ne’er disclaim,
5 Each verse of the poem is divided into two hemistiches, all the opening hemistiches as a group, and all the closing hemistiches as a group, being metrically identical, and each group having a different rhyme, -īn (or -ēn) for the opening hemistiches and -lah for the closing ones. This is a common arrangement. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to imitate in an English translation, so I have rendered the poem into English rhyming couplets, with fourteen syllables to each hemistich, and tried to be as faithful as possible to the meaning and tone of the original. 6 A standard Bedouin greeting. 7 dāir pl dār ruthless, remorseless. 8 Lit ‘aggression’ < CLA adā.
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wa l-gˇōr mā yigbalah illa r-radī xālah xōd il-maārik linā min yōmnā salfīn9 wa l-hāšmī di llanā wa r-rūh fadwā lah
For only he accepts abuse whose menfolk have no shame. The fray we enter swaggering, our heads we hold up high, The Hashemites provide our shade10—for them we live or die! wa t -t ār kārin11 lina, yā t ārnā Revenge is second nature; for each wrong we take back two, bi t ārēn yā ġāsbin h agganā lā budd mā From any who usurps our rights, we wrest them back nnālah anew! nizh af ala llī baġā wa xān al- We march against oppressors who break their word and creed, ahd wa d-dīn wa ndūs ala llī taġā wi nigˇzīh We stamp upon the tyrant’s head, and punish his misdeeds! b af ālah So salute our homeland brave h ayyhum nišāmā l-watan, hearts! So salute them, Hussein’s h ayyhum gˇunūd ih sēn pride! They’re the ones who wear rab il-kafāfī l-h umur wa red head-cloths, head-ropes l-ugul mayyālah slanting to the side! O wife who grieves in widow’s yā mgana12 bi n-nayā13 kaffī weeds, weep not, nor solace dumū il-ēn seek, Weep no more tears of sorrow, kaffī dumū il-asā a l-xadd no tears trickling down your sayyālah cheek. Our gallant lads have come to gˇō kī n-nišāmā, lafū,14 wi tbašširī yā zēn you, they’re here, be of good cheer!
9 salf pl salfīn brave, swaggering. Cf. Musil 1928, 561 salf a strong gust of wind, Classical Arabic salif vainglorious, boastful. 10 I.e. protect us. 11 kār pl. kiyār custom, habit. Cf. Bailey 1991, 451. 12 mgana woman wearing a guna = woman’s black head covering reaching down to her behind. 13 nayā sadness, dejection. < Classical Arabic n-w-. Cf. nāa bi l-h iml to groan under a burden. 14 lafa (yilfi) come, arrive.
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u mudarraātin šuhub nīrān gattālah 10
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madāfi mwallafa, tirmī ala l-gˇālēn16 saly17 l-qanābil raad u burūg šaālah wa nsūr gˇu wwā s-samā mitlaf a bi l-ġēn18 tixwī 20 ala l-mitadī lil l-mōt šayyālah
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aswad sabāh al-idā yōmin alēhum šēn u ġubār yimī da īf il-galb an h ālah min kull dabbābtin ummāt gˇanzīrēn tuhdur hadīr il-bah ar, a l-gōm22 sayyālah
Like eagles riding camels, like fierce lions, those cavaliers! They wield machine guns, double-clipped, the metal glinting blue, And armoured cars, their colour grey, death-dealing bullets spew! Their guns co-ordinated, and they let fly to each side, A thunderous volley of shellfire, it lights up the countryside. And vultures19 hover in the sky, wrapped round by cotton clouds, They plunge down on the enemy, and bring him his death shroud! They plunge down on the enemy, their claws as sharp as nails, And none who dares to challenge them has lived to tell the tale.21 Black morn for the aggressor, the day him ill befell! By dust his weak heart blinded, his fate he could not tell! There comes from every battle tank, twin caterpillar-tracked, A roar deep as the ocean’s, ’gainst the foe they launch attacks!
saff cartridge magazine or clip of a firearm. ˇgā l pl. gˇīlān side, direction. saly blazing volley (of shots, cannon fire). Sc. ġēm clouds. The change to ġēn is a poetic licence to maintain the rhyme. I.e. fighter pilots. xawa to plunge, dive. Lit: None tasted safety that went in their direction. Normal Bedouin term for enemy.
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u fhūd bēn il-h ufar tuhgˇum ala rigˇlēn gannāsa li l-idā w inmūr gˇawwālah h ayyhum nišāmā l-watan, gˇu nūd ih sēn rabi il-kafāfī l-h umur wi l-ugul mayyālah
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And darting ’tween the battle lines23 two-legged cheetahs growl, And hunt down the aggressor, just like panthers on the prowl. So salute our homeland brave hearts! So salute them, Hussein’s pride! They’re the ones who wear red head-cloths, head-ropes slanting to the side!
4. Text comparison In his version, Ghassān takes the sentimental nationalism of Mūsā’s refrain: h ayyhum nišāmā l-watan, h ayyhum gˇu nūd ih sēn rab il-kafāfī l-h umur wa l-ugul mayyālah
So salute our homeland brave hearts! So salute them, Hussein’s pride! They’re the ones who wear red head-cloths, head-ropes slanting to the side!
(line 6 of the original, repeated in line 16) and transforms it into a variable refrain of his own in which he in turn ridicules Jordan’s political leaders: h ayyhum išyūx il-arab il taksītuh24 bi antīnēn rab it-takāsī l-h umur wa d-daym bi igālah
So salute our Arab leaders, on their cars two aerials fixed! They’re the ones who drive red limos, head-ropes full of despots’ tricks!
(line 5 in Ghassān’s version). 23
Lit: ditches, i.e. defensive trenches. taksī (in construct phrase and when suffixed taksīt-) pl. takāsī car, limousine (as well as ‘taxi’). 24
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its well-paid but incompetent officials: u h ayy wizārat il-ġilā il alh agatnā bi d-dēn! rab it-tawābig h agˇar u amwāl sayyālah
And salute the High Price Ministry that’s saddled us with debts! They’re the ones in stone-built condos, with their liquid cash assets!
(line 13 in Ghassān’s version) returning more wistfully at the end to Mūsā’s subject, the army: u yōm id-dīgāt wēn rāh in-nišāmā Where did they go, now times are wēn? hard, those brave heart lads with pride? rabi il-kafāfī l-h umur wi l-ugul The ones who wear red head-cloths, mayyālah . . .? head-ropes slanting to the side . . .? (line 19 in Ghassān’s version) The confident vainglory of ʚAbdūh Mūsā’s opening lines, in which he brags about the pride, dignity and valour of King Hussein’s Bedouin troops, becomes in Ghassān’s poem an abject confessional put in the mouths of ordinary Jordanians who have learnt to accept incompetence and oppression and to keep their mouths shut and look out for themselves. Compare the original: yā marh abā, yā halā, mnēn il-rakb, min wēn? agbal alēnā d-dih ā yā zīnat gbālah! h innā dār al-idā, tallāba li d-dēn wa l-gˇōr mā yigbalah illa r-radī xālah xōd il-maārik linā min yōmnā salfīn wa l-hāšmī dillanā wa r-rūh fadwā lah
Hello, I say, and welcome! Now where from, these riding men? The morning’s come upon us, see how beautifully, again! Against the foe we’re ruthless; our debts we ne’er disclaim, For only he accepts abuse whose menfolk have no shame. The fray we enter swaggering, our heads we hold up high, The Hashemites provide our shade —for them we live or die!
arabic popular poetry and political satire wa t- t ār kārin lina, yā t ārnā bi t ārēn yā ġāsbin h agganā lā budd mā nnālah
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Revenge is second nature; for each wrong we take back two, From any who usurps our rights, we wrest them back anew!
(lines 1–4) with Ghassān’s: yā marh abā, yā halā, mnēn il-balā min wēn? agbal alēnā l-ġilā yā mabša igbālah! 25 h innā gˇh ūš id-duwal w il nartadī bi l-bēn26 wa l-kull rādī l-gˇōr h attā š-šaham xālah27 wa l-amr tanfīdah linā u min dōrnā xanīn wa l-girš sār ar-rabb wa r-rūh fadwā lah wa s-samt kārin linā wa a l-h agg mā niīn wa l-h agg min il-murāsil28 wallah mā nnālah
Hello, I say, and welcome! But now where’s this scourge come from? Price rises came upon us, and they’ve hit us like a bomb! We act like world-class donkeys, with our cruel fate content, Each one of us accepts abuse, even those of high descent. We do as we are ordered to; it’s not our place to ask, Money rules our lives; our souls are mortgaged to that task. Keeping quiet’s second nature; we don’t stick up for people’s rights, Our rights we beg from minions, then give back without a fight.
(lines 1–4) The symbolic widow of lines 7–8 of the original, weeping for a husband killed in battle, and comforted by the arrival of the army of the nišāmā (‘gallant lads’) of the army:
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< yā mā abšā igbālah lit: how awful its coming! = w illi nartadi bi l-bēn those who are content with adversity. 27 Ironically echoing the sentiment of the popular Bedouin saying dawwir li wildik xāl ‘find a maternal uncle for your son’, i.e. find a brave man and marry his sister because the bravery will run in the family. Nowadays, the poet is saying, the once noble, independent Bedouin are ordered about by moral pygmies, and money has become the yardstick of a person’s worth. 28 murāsil servant, messenger-boy. 26
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gˇō kī n-nišāmā, lafū, wi tbašširī yā zēn igbān fōg il-higˇin, w usūd xayyālah
Our gallant lads have come to you, they’re here, be of good cheer! Like eagles riding camels, like fierce lions, those cavaliers!
is told in Ghassān’s version (line 7) to cry even more, as there is no longer any comforting presence to reassure her: rāh ū n-nišāmā u madaw, lā tafrah ī yā zēn bāū syūf il-h arb u mā dall xayyālah
Our gallant lads have gone for good, there’s nothing left to cheer, They sold their swords off long ago; their cavalry disappeared.
Instead of the exultant heroism of: madāfi mwallafa, tirmī ala l-gˇālēn saly l-qanābil raad u burūg šaālah
Their guns are at the ready, and they let fly to each side, A thunderous volley of shellfire, it lights up the countryside.
(line 10 of the original) the widow, and all other ordinary Jordanians can expect no protection at all; on the contrary, they have become the targets of (economic) attack: awāmrah әmh add a rah yirmī ala l-gˇālēn saly l-awāmir raad u šaġlāt gattālah
He’s got his orders ready, and he lets fly to each side, A thunderous volley of memos, death-dealing stuff inside!
(line 9 of Ghassān’s version) the ‘orders’ in this case being those of the Prime-Minister Mudˢar Badrān to raise the price of the basic necessities of life beyond the point where they can afford them. The original song concludes (lines 8–15) with a stirring picture of the derring-do of the Jordanian army and air force; the corresponding lines in Ghassān’s poem depict a sleazy world of fawning senators selling off the national patrimony, accepting bribes, lining their own pockets, and hanging around night-clubs and brothels (Ghassān’s lines 11–17):
arabic popular poetry and political satire il-wiskī lah wi l-ūzī lah wa li h sābah ha-l-giršēn wa š-šaab әb h amdullah mā yišba nxālah29 fawwad arād ī l-arab li s-sār luh šahrēn li l mā yinirif ammah u lā yinirif xālah u h ayy wizārat il-ġilā il alh agatnā bi d-dēn! rab it-tawābig h agˇar u amwāl sayyālah dinā yāxūk30 u sinā31 wēn il-harība wēn? u h ālitnā b hal-balad wallah miš h ālah wisilnā dār il-h adīd min šēxәnā wa l-ēn32 illī ala abwāb id-danāāt33 inmūr gˇawwālah lā yiġurrak kubr iš-šanab wa l-fard maa mištēn bi d-dabdaba34 yibdā u bi l-madh yinhī magālah iyh ūttū lah gˇu wwā z-zarf h ukkāmnā giršēn u min agˇal hal-giršēn yanh ar lak iyālah
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He’s got his whisky, young roast lamb, he’s got our money too, The people feed on wheat-chaff and just thank the Lord they do. He gave away our tribal lands to folk just two months here, To people with no lineage, no pedigree that’s clear. And salute the High Price Ministry that’s saddled us with debts! They’re the ones in stone-built condos, with their liquid cash assets! We’re lost, my brother, wandering . . . oh where is our escape? By God, the nation’s state is dire: no order here, no shape. To blame? Our sheikhs an senators; the mess we’re in is foul: They spend their time in sleazy dives, like panthers on the prowl. Don’t be fooled by big moustaches, guns with double cartridge clips, What they write begins with weasel words and ends with flattering quips. Our rulers slip them money, in brown envelopes it’s brought, They’d kill their kids to get one, slit their throats without a thought.
Ghassān then rubs it in by concluding his message with a variation of the opening lines: 29
nxāla poor quality wheat left after sieving. A so-called ‘bi-polar’ address form, also common in Eastern Arabian dialects. See Yassin 1977. 31 sā to wander, go aimlessly from one place to another. sinā u dinā we’re wandering lost. Cf Classical Arabic sāa to scatter (people, things). 32 I.e. a member of the magˇlis il-ayān ‘the Senate’, all appointed by the King. 33 I.e. brothels and drinking dens. 34 dabda b to talk meaninglessly or ambiguously, utter weasel words. 30
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yā marh abā yā halā! imnēn il-ġilā min wēn? agbal alēnā l-balā, yā mabša igbālah!
So—Hello, I say, and welcome! But now where’s this price rise from? A scourge is come upon us, and it’s hit us like a bomb!
(line 18) and a prediction of even worse to come from an incompetent government: win xilsat il-arkāt, yallah is-salāmah itxallūn il-wāh id min id-dill h āltah h ālah
But when the battle’s over, and the situation’s calm, You lot will mess things up again; you’ll do us yet more harm!
(line 20) Ghassān’s poem is four lines longer than the original, and the formal correspondences of the original lines to those of Ghassān’s version (i.e. where Ghassān’s lines mimic the diction of the originals) are as follows: Rashīd al-Kīlānī’s lines 1–4 5 6–8 9 — 10 11–14 — 15 — 1 6, 16 —
correspond to Ghassān’s lines 1–4 — 5–7 — 8 9 — 10–14 15 16–17 18 (reprise of 1) 19 20
This is Ghassān’s complete (1982) text: 1
yā marh abā, yā halā, mnēn ilbalā min wēn?
Hello, I say, and welcome! But now where’s this scourge come from?
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agbal alēnā l-ġilā yā mabša igbālah! h innā gˇh ūš id-duwal w il nartadī bi l-bēn wa l-kull rādī l-gˇōr h attā š-šaham xālah wa l-amr tanfīdah linā u min dōrnā xanīn wa l-girš sār ar-rabb wa r-rūh fadwā lah wa s-samt kārin linā wa a l-h agg mā niīn wa l-h agg min il-murāsil wallah mā nnālah h ayyhum išyūx il-arab il taksītuh bi antīnēn rab it-takāsī l-h umur wa d-daym bi igālah
Price rises came upon us, and they’ve hit us like a bomb! We act like world-class donkeys, with our cruel fate content, Each one of us accepts abuse, even those of high descent. We do as we are ordered to; it’s not our place to ask, Money rules our lives; our souls are mortgaged to that task. Keeping quiet’s second nature; we don’t stick up for people’s rights, Our rights we beg from minions, then give back without a fight. So salute our Arab leaders, on their cars two aerials fixed! They’re the ones who drive red limos, head-ropes full of despots’ tricks! yā mgana bi n-nayā zīdī dumū O wife who grieves in widow’s il-ēn weeds, weep on, the future’s bleak, zīdī dumū il-asā a l-xadd Weep yet more tears of sorrow, sayyālah let them trickle down your cheek. rāh ū n-nišāmā u madaw, lā Our gallant lads have gone for tafrah ī yā zēn good, there’s nothing left to cheer, bāū syūf il-h arb u mā dall They sold their swords off long xayyālah ago; their horsemen disappeared. kull nadil h ākim bihum h ukm Now any numb-skull scoundrel il-anīd iš-šēn treats them like his abject tools, Makes porters out of highborn u xallā wgˇūh il-balad bi s-sūg attālah men who once this country ruled.35
35 The reference is to Mudˢar Badrān, the Jordanian Prime-Minister of the time. There is also a whiff here of a sense of lèse-majesté: Jordanians of pure Bedouin descent regard the Badrān family, which has its roots in urban Syria, with disdain.
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9 awāmrah mh add a rah yirmī ala l-gˇālēn saly l-awāmir raad u šaġlāt gattālah 10 sawwā tnakit il-kāz36 bi h dūd dīnārēn wa a h sāb gˇū in-nās titkāt ar amwālah 11 il-wiskī lah wi l-ūzī lah wa li h sābah hal-giršēn wa š-šaab әb h amdullah mā yišba nxālah 12 fawwad arādī l-arab li s-sār luh šahrēn li l mā yinirif ammah u lā yinirif xālah 13 u h ayy wizārat il-ġilā il alh agatnā bi d-dēn!
He’s got his orders ready, and he lets fly to each side, A thunderous volley of memos, death-dealing stuff inside! A jerry-can of kerosene put up to two JD,37 To make his stacks of cash pile up, the people go hungry. He’s got his whisky, young roast lamb, he’s got our money too, The people feed on wheat-chaff and just thank the Lord they do. He gave away our tribal lands to folk just two months here, To people with no lineage, no pedigree that’s clear. And salute the High Price Ministry that’s saddled us with debts! rab it-tawābig h agˇar u amwāl They’re the ones in stone-built sayyālah condos, with their liquid cash assets! 14 di nā yāxūk u sinā wēn ilWe’re lost, my brother, harība wēn? wandering . . . oh where is our escape? u h ālitnā b hal-balad wallah By God, the nation’s state is dire: miš h ālah no order here, no shape. 15 wisilnā dār il-h adīd min šēxәnā To blame? Our sheikhs and wa l-ēn senators; the mess we’re in is foul: illī ala abwāb id-danāāt inmūr They spend their time in sleazy gˇawwālah dives, like panthers on the prowl. 16 lā yiġurrak kubr iš-šanab wa Don’t be fooled by big l-fard maa mištēn moustaches, guns with double cartridge clips, bi d-dabdaba yibdā u bi l-madh What they write begins with yinhī magālah weasel words and ends with flattering quips. 36 37
A twenty-litre jerry can of kerosene, used for cooking on primus stoves. I.e. (in 1982) very expensive.
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17 iyh ūttū lah gˇu wwā z-zarf h ukkāmnā giršēn u min agˇal hal-giršēn yanh ar lak iyālah
Our rulers slip them money, in brown envelopes it’s brought, They’d kill their kids to get one, slit their throats without a thought. 18 yā marh abā yā halā! imnēn So—Hello, I say, and welcome! But il-ġilā min wēn? now where’s this price rise from? agbal alēnā l-balā, yā mabša A scourge is come upon us, and igbālah! it’s hit us like a bomb! 19 u yōm id-dīgāt wēn rāh Where did they go, now times in-nišāmā wēn? are hard, those brave heart lads with pride? rabi il-kafāfī l-h umur wi l-ugul The ones who wear red headmayyālah, cloths, head-ropes slanting to the side . . . ? 20 win xilsat il-arkāt, yallah isBut when the battle’s over, and salāmah the situation’s calm, itxallūn il-wāh id min id-dill You lot will mess things up again; h āltah h ālah you’ll do us yet more harm! Thus where the original song was a jingoistic, bombastic romp, in Ghassān’s hands it is transformed into a mordant diatribe against the Badrān’s government’s economic mismanagement, its cavalier treatment of ordinary Jordanians, and the corruption and cupidity of its officials. It is precisely the parodying of the diction of the original that gives the poem its punch as a piece of political satire. The relationship of language level, poetic form and subject matter is worth pondering. Historically, Bedouin popular poetry was concerned solely with the local tribal milieu: with vaunting the merits of one’s tribe over those of a neighbour, with praising heroic warriors and generous shaikhs, with ridiculing enemies, against a backdrop of descriptions of desert flora and fauna and the movement of the tribes in constant search for water and good pasture. In this, as has often been observed, Bedouin popular poetry is the direct descendant of the old pre-Islamic poetry, and is similarly restrictive in matters of meter and rhyme. For all these topoi, the only possible linguistic vehicle was the vernacular, both because it was the only form of Arabic the poets and their audience knew, but also because of the organic nexus between locale, subject matter and language. But now that the traditional subject matter for the exercise of poetic talent has all but disappeared, this ancient poetic
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tradition has shown its protean nature: it continues to be used, even by Bedouin poets who are literate, to serve many of the same functions, though now on a much broader social and political canvas. If one wants to emote—to praise, to damn, to ridicule, to gloat, to cajole, to bewail, to love—how much more effective is the vernacular because of its infinitely greater allusiveness, colour, concreteness and idiomaticity for the ordinary person, compared with the sanitised and institutionalised blandness of the modern standard language. As I write this article, I have to hand the latest in a long-running series of poems written since 2003 by a south Jordanian Bedouin poet, Muh ammad al-Fanāti l al-H ajāyā on the American-British invasion of Iraq, some of which have been published in local newspapers and magazines. The poems recycle standard Bedouin poetic tropes, such as ‘the journey’ (similar to the Classical rah īl), whereby a rider, after first having had the noble qualities of his camel38 described by the poet, is sent with a message (the poem) to kinsmen encamped far away; or ‘the ascent’ whereby the poet climbs to the top of a nearby hill (rigˇm), there to wrestle with the cauldron of his emotions (higˇs, hūgˇās, hawāgˇīs) and finally be seized by poetic inspiration to write his poem39 . . . except that in these poems, it is leading international politicians who are thus depicted! For example, the poem Fadas wa Fadūs40 opens with George Bush making an ‘ascent’ in his home state of Texas to ponder on his woes during the 2004 Iraq insurgency:41 ašraft rigˇmin fī maġārīb taksās rigˇmin tawīl min al-bašar ġēr mānūs
Ah climbed atop a Texas peak, out west in our proud nation, A peak so hah no folks live there, to fahnd some isolation.
38 Nowadays, it is quite common for the poet, without a trace of irony, to describe the qualities of a modern ‘steed’—a Toyota Landcruiser, for instance—in terms similar to the ways a fine riding camel would once have been described: its strong chassis, its smooth gear-change, its fine performance, etc. See, e.g., Kurpershoek 1999:110–114 for examples from Najd. We recorded similar descriptions of cars in Bedouin poetry from Sinai. 39 Kurpershoek 1999:31–34. 40 These pet names are often given by the Jordanian Bedouin to dogs (rather like ‘Rex’ and ‘Rover’ in English). In the poem they are insultingly applied to the ‘pet’ rulers of unnamed Gulf States who, in the poet’s view, treacherously provided bases for the Americans at the time of their invasion of Iraq. 41 And speaking in a Texas accent, which I have tried to imitate in my translation!
arabic popular poetry and political satire u dˢarabt min hammī xmāsī bi l-asdās u hˢ assēt fī rāsī kamā tˢarg nāgūs u gadˢēt wagtī bēn higˇsin u hūgˇās wi l-galb tūgad bih kamā nār fānūs
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Ah brooded deep upon mah woes, Ah felt at mah wits’ end, when— Ah heard a bell toll in mah head— what did that bell portend, then? My worries crowded in on me, my state it was concernin’, Mah heart aflame as if it were a lantern’s oil-wick burnin’!
Another character who has had poems put in his mouth by this poet is Saddam Hussein, in prison in Iraq, but still—poetically—shaking a defiant fist a the Americans. And to George Galloway, founder and sole representative of the UK’s ‘Respect’ political party, he has dedicated a typical piece of Bedouin madhˢ , praising Galloway’s opposition to Tony Blair and what the poet sees as his dogged, unpopular but heroic support for the Iraqi people. Popular poetic commentary on contemporary events such as has been exemplified in this paper is nothing new: it’s just that the focus has broadened. Before the birth of the nation state in the Arab World, and even in the period since, Bedouin tribal poetry was one of the main means by which partisan communal sentiments could be articulated. A good example of this was a dispute between the H uwētā t, a Jordanian tribe, and the Banī Atiyya of Saudi Arabia, which rumbled on into the late 1980s in the form of an extended poetic debate of claim and counterclaim. The dispute centred on Tubayq, an area in the far southeast of Jordan which the Jordanian government ceded to the Saudis in 1964 in return for a stretch of Red Sea coastline which would enable Jordan to improve its naval facilities away from the prying eyes of the Israelis. Initially, this exchange of land and redrawing of the border caused no problems, and the H uwētā t on the Jordanian side continued to drive their animals to seasonal pastures on the Saudi side, exactly as they had always done. They incidentally benefited from the fact that many goods were cheaper in Saudi Arabia, and border controls were lax or non-existent. A number of events, however, changed all this. During the Jordanian civil war of 1970, Russian machine guns became easily available, and enterprising H uwētā t began a lucrative smuggling operation into Saudi Arabia. Drugs were also smuggled in. This led to a clampdown by the Saudis, and the blacklisting of many H uwētā t. Then, after the shocking siege of the grand mosque in Mecca by Islamic fundamentalists in 1979, the Saudis put even stricter border controls in place. One measure
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was the digging of a ditch, 3m wide by 3m deep along the border with Jordan in Tubayq. No camel or car could cross it except at designated control points situated far apart. H uwētā t who had been used to driving their animals 10 miles to pasture were now faced with driving them 100 miles to find the nearest border post and 100 miles back again. Customs controls became much stricter. A system of registration documents was introduced for the family members who moved with the migrating flocks. There were cases of H uwētā t mothers who had given birth while in Saudi Arabia being detained there because, when they tried to return to Jordan, the number of family members did not correspond with the number on the registration document. There were intimate body searches of all females at the border checkpoints. This was bad enough for the socially conservative Bedouin, but it also closed off the last avenue for smuggling. On the other hand, the Jordanian borders remained open to Saudis without let or hindrance, a fact that caused huge resentment. This unequal treatment, coupled with what was perceived by the Jordanian Bedouin as the central government’s lack of economic help to the people of the south, was one of the factors that precipitated rioting in Maan and Al-Jafr in 1989. A well-known H uwētī poet, Barrāk Dāġish Abū Tāyih, wrote several emotional poems about the dispute that the Banī Ati yya, on the Saudi side of the border, did not like. Banī Ati yya poets replied with poems which were recorded and passed back to the H uwētā t. The initial skirmish might have ended there. However, it was followed by a long and insulting poem from a young H uwētī poet, Nadā Tūmān Abū Tāyih. The poetic tit-for-tat then escalated, with ten poems by Banī Atiyya poets in reply, releasing much pent-up personal vituperation. This caused an outraged reaction among the H uwētā t, who had always regarded the Banī Atiyya as inferior to themselves. Seventy years ago, the result would undoubtedly have been a tribal war; on this occasion, the dispute was finally defused in 1990 by mediation, and the signing of an agreement that neither side would write any more poems on the subject of Tubayq. The key point here is that poetry was, and is, regarded by the Bedouin as a suitable vehicle for airing important issues of the moment, rather than a letter to the provincial governor, still less lobbying a remote and seemingly uncaring central government.
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5. References Abdel-Malek, Kamal. 1990. A Study of the Vernacular Poetry of Ahˢ mad Fu᾽ād Nigm. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Abu Athera, Said Salman and Holes, Clive. Forthcoming 2007. Yā Kundālīzza Rāys! Politics and Popular Poetry in the Contemporary Arab World. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bailey, Clinton. 1991. Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev. Oxford: OUP. Booth, Marilyn. 1990. Bayram al-Tunisi’s Egypt: Social Criticism and Narrative Strategies. Exeter: Ithaca. Ghawānmah, M. ʚAbdūh Mūsā: Rāʙidan wa-Mubdiʚan, Amman, Dār al-Kindī, 2002. Ibn Khaldūn, tr. Rosenthal, Franz. 1958. The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ingham, Bruce. 1986. Bedouin of Northern Arabia: Traditions of the Āl-Dˢ hafīr. London: Kegan Paul International. Kurpershoek, P. Marcel. 1994. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia I: The Poetry of al-Dindān. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 1995. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia II: The Story of a Desert Knight. The Legend of Šlēwīhˢ and other ῾Utayba heroes. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 1999. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia III: Bedouin Poets of the Dawāsir Tribe. Between Nomadism and Settlement in Southern Najd. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 2002. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia IV : A Saudi Tribal History. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ——. 2005. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia V : Voices from the Desert. Glossary, Indices, and List of Recordings. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Landberg, Carlo le Comte de. 1901. Études sur les dialectes de l’arabie méridionale. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Meissner, Bruno. 1903. “Neuarabische Gedichte aus dem Iraq.” Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin VI. 57–125. Musil, Alois. 1928. The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouin. New York: American Geographical Society. Socin, Albert. 1900–1. Diwan aus Centralarabien. Leipzig: Teubner. Sowayan, Saad Abdallah. 1985. Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia. Berkeley: University of California. Wallin, Georg August. 1851. “Probe aus einer Anthologie neuarabischer Gesänge in der Wüste gesammelt.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 5. 1–23. ——. 1852. “Probe aus einer Anthologie neuarabischer Gesänge in der Wüste gesammelt.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 6. 190–218, 369–378. Yassin, M.A. 1977. “Bi-polar terms in Kuwaiti Arabic.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 40. 297–330.
NOTES ON THE DIALECTS OF THE LĒGĀT AND H AMĀD AH OF SOUTHERN SINAI Rudolf de Jong ACLC, University of Amsterdam
1. Introduction The subject of this contribution1 is the dialect of the Lēgāt (or Ulayqāt), a bedouin tribe who live in the western central part of southern Sinai (see map below).2 In addition, notes on the dialect of the H amāda h have been included. Some texts recorded among the Lēgāt—with additional information in footnotes—may serve for further illustration. The H amāda h are only few, and are often regarded as a clan (or ‘family’) of the Lēgāt, although various sources claim that they were present in Sinai before the Lēgāt.3 We shall see that there are some notable differences between these two varieties of speech.
1 With great pleasure I dedicate this contribution to Kees Versteegh. My dedication is with deep respect for his stature in our field of Arabic Studies, with gratitude for the inspiring thoughts he has shared with our community and with fond memories of the (too few) occasions I had the honor to work with him. 2 The material used for this article was collected in the framework of my own research into the bedouin dialects of southern Sinai. This project is funded and supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (abbreviated in Dutch as NWO) and the Amsterdam Center for Linguistics and Communication (ACLC) at the University of Amsterdam. I am sincerely grateful to both organizations, as I am thankful also to Manfred Woidich for his advice and support during my researches. I am no less grateful to my desert guide—and now dear friend—Id Abuw Silīm (al-Atraš at-Turbāniy), who has been my ‘ally’ in this project and without whose contributions this research would not have been possible. 3 Murray (1935, 291), for instance, writes that the H amādah “[. . .] are now only about twelve tents strong, and live mostly near Serabit el-Khadim and Bir Nasb, where they are reckoned as part of the Aleiqat.” For the location of Sarābīt al-Xādim, see Google Earth at (appr.) 29° 00’ 05’’ N–33° 28’ 01’’E. At -Tayyib (1997, 480–481) mentions that the H amādah ‘joined’ the Lēgāt under the Lēgiy šēx at that time (A.D. 1914) Mdaxxal Slēmān of the Lēgiy clan named Awlād Silmiy. Von Oppenheim (1943, 162, 164) writes that the H amādah were ‘angegliedert’ to the Olēkāt (in his transcription). On the webpage http://members.nova.org/~lroeder/alegat.htm (authored by Larry Roeder), under “History of Hamada”, it is reported that the H amādah “[. . .] probably [joined the Alegat] shortly after the capture of Nuweiba. We do know that from then until the 1880’s this was a sub-tribe (or section) of the Alegat. Then in 1880 internal
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Reported to have arrived in Sinai at some time in the fourteenth century,4 the Lēgāt today number around 1,000,5 and are found predominantly in an area named ar-Ramlah, near where Jabal Sarābīt al-Xādim6 stands, situated just south-west of the Tīh escarpment, and north of Wādiy Fērān and in and to the east of the town of Abuw Znēmah.7 Also farther north, to the south of Rās Sadr and in Wādiy Ġarandal (not far north of H ammām Farawn) families of the Lēgāt are said to reside, as well as farther south, near the town of at-Tūr.8
Approximate distribution of bedouin tribes in southern Sinai 9
politics forced a split when the Hamada requested permission to live under the protection of the Muzeina. By 1935, they had become integrated enough in Muzeina affairs to be considered an integral part of that tribe.” 4 See Bailey 1985, 48. For more information on subdivisions of this tribe, their šēxs, history, territories, etc., see at -Tayyib 1997, Part 2, 475–489. 5 Such numbers are of course approximations. 6 Sarābīt al-Xādim, some 40 kilometres east of Abuw Znēmah (on maps usually spelled as Abu Zinima), is famous as the site of turquoise mines operated since early pharaonic times, and the temple of Hathor, which is the only pharaonic temple built outside Egypt proper. See also the webpage about the Sinai at http://www.arcl.ed.ac.uk/ arcx/remot esense/sinai/. 7 Also in Wādiy Isla. The Lēgāt are reported to form an alliance in Sinai with the H amādah and Mzēnah, see At -Tayyib (1993, 705) and Bailey (1991, 5). At- Tayyib (1993, 706) reports that their territory stretches from ar-Ramlah to Wādiy Ġarandal. One of my own Lēgiy informants mentioned these areas too, but said their dīrah stretches up until the area named ar-Ryēnih, north of Rās Sadr. For a map locating their (there transcribed as Alēgāt) dīrah, see Bailey (1991, 4). 8 Wādiy ás Sahaw, mántigit Mbajjmah, Bīr anNasb and Wādiy Lihyān were mentioned to me by a Lēgiy informant as parts of the H amādiy dīrah. 9 Abbreviations: Ah = Ah aywāt, Tr = Tarābīn, H w = H wētāt, Db = Dbūr (see remark below), Ty = Tayāhah, Lg = Lēgāt, Bd = Badārah, Jr = Jarājrah (see remark below),
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah 1.1
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General
In the course of the ongoing research into the dialects of southern Sinai, a picture has been emerging in which dialects of southern Sinai appear to constitute—to an as yet undefined degree—a homogeneous group. This group is typologically related to the dialects of group II in the north of Sinai: that of the Agāylah, and—even more clearly so—that of the Samānah.10 As a group, the dialects in the south stand separate from the dialects of group I, or the Negev-type of dialect (to which the dialects of the Ah aywāt and Tarābīn belong, and also those of the Tayāhah and Jarājrah).11 The southern group also shows important differences with the dialect of the Mzēnah, who live in the eastern part of southern Sinai and its southern tip.12 We shall see that of the two dialects treated here, H amādi y appears to have the most in common with this southern Sinaitic group, while Lēgiy occupies a position typologically somewhat nearer to group I.13
2. Phonology 2.1
Consonants
As bedouin dialects spoken in southern Sinai, the phoneme inventories of Lēgiy and H amādi y do not hold many surprises. As far as consonantal phonemes are concerned, all three interdentals /t/ , /d/ and /d/ (the latter as a reflex for both *d and *d) are present. A voiced and unaffricated /g/ reflects Classical Arabic *q and a voiced affricate /j/ reflects *j
H m = H amāda h, Sw = Sawālh ah, Gr = Garāršah, AS = Awlād Saīd, Mz = Mzēnah, Jb = Jbāliyyah, BW = Baniy Wāsil. I have met Jarājrah in the area (named Malbad, see Google Earth 29° 29’ 29.50’’ N., 33° 05’ 36.50’’ E.) as marked on this map. Murray (1935, 263) also refers to the ‘Jarajira’ as ‘a family of the Aleiqat.’ A tribe also indicated on this map are the Dbūr, whose presence was mentioned to me by sources in the field. They are said to be related to the Masāīd, who live in and around the village of Jilbānah in the northwest of Sinai. 10 As described in De Jong (2000, chapter 2). 11 Being based on research in progress, this conclusion is tentative. 12 For a preliminary report on research into the dialect of the Mzēnah, see De Jong, “The Dialect of the Mzēnih of Southern Sinai” (to appear in Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí (EDNA) 8 in honor of Peter Behnstedt). 13 As described in Blanc (1970) and De Jong (2000). Murray (1935, 263 ff.), writes that the Lēgāt “[. . .] are said to talk like the Terabin.”
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(while the fricative allophone [] appears to be as current as in e.g. the dialect of the Mzēnah in the southeast of Sinai). There are also exceptions to the interdental reflexes of Classical Arabic interdentals: e.g. (z for *d) bizr ‘seed’ and aza ~ iza ‘if ’ (compare Classical Arabic *idā). In the loan masalan ‘for instance’, s reflects *t. Although z as a phoneme is rare (and marginal as such) in Sinai bedouin dialects—the current reflex for both *d and *d being the interdental emphatic d— it is regular in lexemes (loaned from Modern Standard Arabic or Cairene Arabic) like zabbat, yzabbit ‘arrange; do properly’, bāz, ybūz ‘go bad (of food)’ (from the Turkish root boz-mak). Also, like in many southern Sinaitic dialects (though not all), a minimal pair such as bētk ‘your (m. sg) house’—bētk ‘your (f. sg.) house’ yields the two (unaffricated) phonemes (heavily velarized) /k/ and (otherwise neutral) /k/.14 Another feature of Lēgiy and H amādi y is its regular progressive assimilation of initial h of suffixes to preceding voiceless consonants, e.g. fattte # (< fatt + ha)15 ‘he shredded it (f. sg.)’ (said of bread, when one prepares fattah), maslah ātta (< maslah āt + ha) ‘her affairs’, arīssa (< arīs + ha) ‘her groom’, dabah h a ‘he slaughtered her’, māsikka ‘having taken hold of her’ and a very current (in both varieties, as well as in many other dialects of Sinai) reciprocal assimilation of + h in e.g. mih h a (< mi + ha) ‘with her’. 2.2
Vowels
As for vowels, phonemic opposition of short vowels /i/ and /u/ is as limited as it is in other bedouin dialects of Sinai, but the minimal pair Xidr ‘male given name’—xudr ‘green (c. pl.)’ will isolate these vowels as separate phonemes in Lēgiy and H amādi y. Finding a minimal pair to isolate /a/ as a phoneme is not a problem in Sinai; for Lēgiy a pair like xašš ‘he entered’—xušš ‘enter!’ works like in any other Sinai bedouin dialect. Long vowel phonemes are /ā/, /ī/ and /ū/, and additional (unconditionally monophthongized diphthongs *ay and *aw) /ē/ and /ō/. Result-
14 The opposition is about as widely used in Lēgiy as it is in other dialects of southern Sinai. In H amādi y, however, the suffix -kiy is also used instead of -k for the 2nd p. f. sg., while V(C)–uk (CC-uk) is regular for the 2nd. p. m. sg. in both H amādiy and Lēgiy. 15 The spelling here with triple t is for the sake of morphological transparency. The pronunciation is, however, not noticeably different from doubled t (IPA [(t)]). See also fn 90.
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ing monophthongs ē and ō tend to be realized lower when they are preceded by some of the back spirants (notably x, ġ and h and ), or by certain (primary or secondary) emphatics: da f ‘guest’, and also xat ‘thread’. ġar ‘must, and I have also heard Farān ‘(Wādiy) Fērān’ and less (but still) lowering in nussē n ‘two halves’ and masta rēnih ‘ruler’; other than’, h ōl (in which /ō/ is near, or just above IPA [ :]) ‘year’, but also quite low /ō/ in ōrdin ‘get (f. pl.) water’. When h preceedes, however, there is no noticeable lowering, as in hēl ‘cardamon’ and also IPA [o] in Abuw lHōl ‘Blue Hole’.16 In some cases a diphthong will remain unchanged, as in e.g. (loan from English) dayf ‘dive’, lay (~ lī) ‘to me’, aw ‘or’, law ‘if ’ (loan from Modern Standard Arabic), or when ‘Systemzwang’ is operative, as in mawjūd ‘present’, in the imperative form awuw ‘watch out (m. pl.)’ and also in the f. sg. form h awlίy (m. sg. ah awal) ‘cross-eyed’, where retention of the diphthong prevents a (near) homophonic clash with h ōlī΄ ‘my year’. 2.2.1 Raising the short vowel a Short a is raised in a variety of positions preceding primary stress. In the cases cited below, such raising is concluded to be optional, since it does not occur always. Raising of a tends to be towards [u] when it precedes Cū, or when followed by w, and towards [i] in otherwise neutral environments. Lēgiy ilúh (~ alúh) ‘on him’ (notice the short base,17 but in H amādi y more regularly ilēh), dibáht ‘I slaughtered’ and in sandhi also i- žámb ‘on the side’. Short a preceding stressed ā: gibāyil ‘tribes’, šimāl ‘north’ and šibān ‘hungry’, kislān ‘lazy’. Short a preceding stressed ī: kitīr ‘much’, biīd ‘far’, digīg ‘flour’, ijīn ‘dough’. Although such raising is predominant, forms with unraised a also appear, e.g. tarīgah ‘method’, kabīr ‘large’, and even more regularly so when h , precedes a, as in h adīd ‘iron’, arīs ‘groom’, xarīf ‘autumn’.
16 Abuw lHōl, lit. ‘The Sphinx,’ but here as a folk etymology for ‘The Blue Hole,’ which is a popular dive site about 12 km north of D ahab. 17 This must have developed in analogy to such variation as luh (~ much less frequent) lēh ‘to him’. Comparable forms (aláh and alíh) were also recorded in the dialect of the Tarābīn of the north and that of the Rmēlāt (respectively), see De Jong (2000, 181).
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Short a preceding stressed ū: žunūb (~ žanūb) ‘south’, isSuʚūdiyyih ‘Saudi Arabia’, guʚūd ‘camel that has not yet cut its canine teeth’,18 lugūhˢ ‘impregnated (of a she-camel)’ and ubˢūy (~ abˢūy) ‘my father’. Absence of such raising was also recorded, as in šaʚūr ‘emperor fish’.19 Such raising appears to be less regular when hˢ precedes, as in hˢ amūlih ‘animal led to a party to be slaughtered for those present’,20 ʚarūs ‘bride’, ġazūz ‘pole’. The gahawah-vowel (see below) a preceding ū in an open syllable remains unaffected, e.g. maxarˢūm ‘pierced’, maʚarūf ‘known’, mahˢ atˢūtˢ ‘placed’. Preceding stressed ē: ʚilēukˢ ‘on you’, fidēt ‘I sacrificed’ and middēt ‘I stretched’, xiššēt ‘I entered’, istinnēt ‘I waited’. Raising towards [u] preceding w: in muwāwīl ‘poems’, ruwyānah ‘well-watered’, suwwēt ‘I did’. In some cases comparable raising has led to morphological restructuring.21 Examples are širίbt ‘I drank’, nisīt ‘I forgot’, ligīt ‘I found’. Notice that in such cases underlying |a| no longer has a surface form a.22 Not only when preceding primary stress, but also when preceding secondary stress (and following primary stress), a may be raised in certain positions. Examples are (ʚLēgiy): ánwikal ‘he was eaten’, áttifag ‘he agreed’, ájjimal ‘the camel’ and álmutˢar ‘the rain’. Raising of a in these previous four examples is optional, but raising of a has become steady (i.e. it has become morphologically restructured, although it has remained underlying |a|) in open syllables of imperfect forms such as (underlying |a| underlined) yínbisˢitˢ ‘he rejoices’, yíttifig ‘he agrees’.23 2.2.2
Final –ah and *-ā ( ʙ)
The fem. morpheme tends to be raised, and not only in pause. The height of raising is from [e] to [i] (e.g. sˢġayyrih # ‘small’, madrasih # ‘school’, míʚirfih # ‘acquaintance’, hˢ ājih # ‘thing’, zibdih # ‘butter’) provided such
18
See gaʚūd, Bailey (2004, 457) (glossary). See (spelled shaour) webpage http://www.saudi-fisheries.comArabic/fish_ product_2.htm 20 In other dialects hˢ amūlah is used in the meaning of ‘clan’, see Blanc (1970, 114). 21 a no longer appears at the surface as a, but as i. This i, however, is not dropped in open unstressed syllables (e.g. širibt, not šribt for ‘I drank’, the latter of which can be heard e.g. in the dialect of alʚArīš, see De Jong (2000, 515)), and is therefore to be regarded as still ‘underlying’ |a|, see also following fn. 22 In Negev dialect, on the other hand, the |a| ‘reappears’ as a in closed syllables, e.g. šarbit ‘she drank’, cf. Blanc (1970, 134). 23 In closed syllables however, underlying |a| does indeed reappear as a, e.g. yinbásˢtuˢ w ‘they rejoice’, yittáfgin ‘they (f.) agree’. Notice that in the dialect of alʚArīš, this vowel i is also underlyingly |i|, which may be concluded from its elision in a form like yíniwkil ‘it is eaten’ and (not yínwikil), see De Jong (2000, 521). 19
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raising is not inhibited by phonetic factors, such as preceding emphatics (e.g. h ētah #, šajarah # ‘tree’, H amāda h # ‘name of the tribe/clan’) or (some) X (e.g. sārh ah # ‘taking out to graze’, ladġah ‘sting, bite’, but notice raising in tisih # ‘nine’. Extreme raising of final *-ā (ʙ) may be heard in the f. sg. *falā pattern for colors and bodily deficiencies, e.g. arjíy ‘limping’, h awlíy ‘cross-eyed’, ġabšíy ‘dark-colored’, (a gahawah-form) šah abíy ‘light-colored’. When velarized consonants precede, raising remains absent (and often a glottal catch will be audible): bēdā ‘white’, h amrā ‘red’, safrā ‘yellow’, zargā ‘blue, black’, xadr ā ‘green’ and also tarmā ‘having a gap in one’s teeth’. Other cases of raising of -ā () include: salāt iší ‘evening prayer’, šti ‘summer’, bētti ‘her house’, ilíf i diy ‘this viper’ (although líf iy was also recorded), ngatti h h i ‘we cut it (f. sg.) to pieces’ and also ji ‘he came’. Although the final glottal catch presumably originated as a pausal feature, it may often be heard in (especially lento forms in) sandhi as well, keeping such endings separate from forms ending in tā marbūtah. However, when a directly precedes in open syllable, and/or velarization is effective, such raising tends to remain absent, e.g. sáma ‘sky’, álġada ‘the lunch’, dá wa ‘he returned home before sunset’, máša ‘he went’, fáda ‘he sacrificed’, but also biyšūffa ‘he sees her’, (a gahawahform) taxarizha24 ‘you stitch it (f. sg.)’.
3. Stress and phonotactics As for ordering of rules, the rules for elision stress and anaptyxis are executed in that same order, i.e. like in other bedouin dialects of Sinai. 3.1
Stress
A sequence CaCaC is usually stressed CaCáC in Lēgiy, while H amādi y much more regularly stresses CáCaC. The article is often stressed in both dialects, as in álCaCaC (e.g. áljimal ‘the camel’, álmutar ‘the rain’, állah am ‘the meat’, áššaar ‘the hair’), but is in a limited number of cases unstressed in H amādi y alCáCaC, e.g. alfárah ‘the wedding ceremony’, ilġánam ‘the goats’, ilbásal ‘the onions’. Comparable stress patterns occur
24 Raising of final ā in the pronominal suffix -hā in neutral environments appears to occur at random; I have not been able to discover a pattern.
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in the perfect forms of verbal measures VII (or n-1) and VIII (or 1-t): they tend to be stressed inCáCac and iCtáCaC in H amādi y, but ánCaCaC and áCtaCaC in Lēgiy, while both varieties stress yínCiCiC and yíCtiCiC. Examples are (Lēgiy) ánkabas, yínkibis ‘be jinxed’, ástawa, yístiwiy ‘become ripe/cooked’ (H amādi y) inbásat, yínbisit ‘rejoice’ and ittáfag, yíttifig ‘agree’.25 3.2
The gahawah-syndrome
As has already become apparent in several examples cited above, the gahawah-syndrome has left its traces in Lēgiy and H amādi y as well. Some additional examples are gáhawah ‘coffee’, áh awal ‘cross-eyed’, táh alib ‘she milks’, yáġazlin ‘they (f.) spin’. Notice that when suffixed, the fem. suffix -ah in gahawah-forms becomes -at, irrespective of whether the suffix is vowel-initial or consonant-initial, e.g. gahawatī ‘my coffee’, gahawathin ‘their (f.) coffee’.26 3.3
Stress in gahawah-forms
In verb forms, the gahawah-vowel a has a tendency to ‘behave’ like an ordinary anaptyctic, in the sense that it remains unstressed, where it would otherwise receive stress, (gahawah-vowels underlined) e.g. táh ar tuw ‘you (m. pl.) plough’ and yáġa zlin ‘they (f. pl.) spin’;27 compare these to forms like (anaptyctic high vowel underlined) túgu duw ‘you (m. pl.) sit’ and contrast with stress in e.g. saáltuw ‘you (m. pl.) asked’. 3.4 Elision and anaptyxis Generally, elision of high short vowels i and u (except those that are underlying |a|) takes place like elsewhere in Sinai.28
25 Notice that group II (i.e. the dialects of the Samānah and Agāylah) dialects in the north have stress patterns inCáCaC, yinCíCiC. On the intermediate position between groups I and II in the north of the stress-type inCáCaC, yínCiCiC, see De Jong (2004, 159). 26 See remarks below. 27 Comparable forms with vowel-initial suffixes were heard in group I, see De Jong (2000, 105). 28 See De Jong (2000, chapters I–III, §§ 2.4).
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4. Morphology As bedouin dialects do, Lēgiy and H amādi y too differentiate between the masculine and feminine in plural forms of verbs and nouns. 4.1 4.1.1
Nominal morphology Pronominals
The personal pronominal for the 3rd person masc. pl. in Lēgiy and H amādi y is hum m a, while hū in Lēgiy and huwwa in H amādi y tend to be used for the 3rd person masc. sg.29 The suffixed form of the 3rd p. masc. sg. is -u(h) in both dialects. The 3rd p. m. pl. pron. suffix is usually -huw in Lēgiy, but -hum in H amādi y. Both dialects have hinna and -hin for the f. pl. The 2nd person masc. pl. is often intum in H amādi y, but intuw in Lēgiy, the latter of which is also heard in southern Sinai dialects farther east. Similarly, the suffixed pronominal directly elicited in H amādi y was -kum, while I only heard -kuw in Lēgiy, the latter of which is also heard in dialects farther to the east. Both dialects have intin and -kin for the f. pl. The 2nd p. sg. suffixes -k and -k, which are typical for many southern Sinai dialects,30 are also present in H amādi y and Lēgiy. Like almost all dialects of Sinai, Lēgiy and H amādi y have stressed 1st p. c. sg. suffixes -nī (obj.) and -ī (poss.).31 4.1.2
The article
The vowel of the article tends to vary. The article is il- or al-, which appears to be mainly dependant on the vowel in the first syllable of the following nominal. If this syllable contains (surface) a, the article tends to be al, assamm ‘the poison’, assaddah ‘the dam’, assa frā ‘the yellow’, attamr ‘the dates’, alamaliyyah ‘the affair’, almayyah ‘the water’, alh alāl ‘the small cattle’ and also aládra h ‘the corn’.
29 Some central and eastern dialects of southern Sinai have huwwa for the m. pl., while hū is used for the masc. sg. 30 See De Jong (2004, 163–164). 31 See Blanc (1970, 130–131), De Jong (2000, 675, map 38) and ibid. (2004, 163, with remark *** on 164–165).
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In other cases, the article il- is much more likely to be used (though al- occurs in such positions as well), e.g. ilwild ‘the boys’, issin ‘the goatskin (used for churning butter)’, iddims ‘the stone’, ilkibdah ‘the liver’, iddinya ‘the world’. In stressed positions (i.e. in Lēgiy), the article is almost invariably al- (or assimilated allomorphs with initial a-), e.g. ássa h an ‘the bowl’, áljimal ‘the camel’, ássalag ‘the hunting dog’, álh atab ‘the firewood’ and ádd a h a ‘the morning’, but íššti (~ mašti) ‘the winter’. Apart from assimilating to ‘sunletters’, l of the article will also often assimilate to j, e.g. ájjimal ‘the camel’, ajjawālig ‘the carpets’, ijjihhāl ‘the youngsters’. 4.1.3
T in construct state
The fem. morpheme T (-ah) becomes -at, when aC directly precedes, e.g.: ragabatha ‘her neck’, ragabatī ‘my neck’, and (gahawah-form) gahawatha ‘her coffee’,32 gahawatī ‘my coffee’ and also sanatēn ‘two years’. Examples in sandhi are: h arakat sātēn ‘something like two hours’, maslah at alh urmah ‘the affair of the woman’. Otherwise, T becomes -it, whose high vowel is dropped in open syllables, e.g.: (in closed syllables) jurrithe ‘her traces’, rīh ítuk ‘your smell’, nāgitkin ‘your (f. pl.) she-camel’, ʚilbítk ‘your (f. sg.) pack/can’, wijitha ‘her pain (i.e. the pain she causes)’ and arabiyyíthum ‘their (m. pl.) car’. In sandhi: šwayyit rizz ‘a bit of rice’, rih lit ġats ‘a diving trip’, aklit ixdā r ‘a vegetable dish’ Instances with dropped i (often anaptyctics—here underlined—are inserted to eliminate a resulting cluster) ilibtī ‘my pack/can’, arabīytuk33 ‘your car’, and in sandhi šúġu l t almayyah ‘of (gen. exponent) the water’. rīht ilbirdigān ‘the smell of the orange’, gibīlt iliLēgāt ‘the tribe of the ʚLēgāt’. 4.2 Verbal morphology A notable feature of verbal morphology is the vowel harmony in preformatives of the imperfect forms, which is common in many Sinai dia-
32 In this respect, Lēgiy differs from dialects of the Negev, where one will hear (also) gahawat(ī+ί), but gahawithin, see Blanc (1970, 142). Other dialects in Sinai show yet other ways of treatment of T in gahawah-forms, see De Jong (2000, various chapters, §§ 3.1.10.3). Treatment of T in Lēgiy is much like what was described for Smēniy (i.e. the dialect of the Samānah) of group II in the north, see De Jong (2000, 279–280). 33 Notice that the form is not arabiyyítk! Contrast with the form arabiyyíthum listed above.
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lects, but in our dialects discussed here the first p. c. singular is included in this rule (so that in measure 1 of regular verbs the 1st p. c. sg becomes homophonic with the m. sg. imperative form), e.g. iktib ‘I write’, udr ub ‘I hit’ and ašrab ‘I drink’, but also ugūm ‘I rise’, išīl ‘I carry’, anām ‘I sleep’ and ījiy ‘I come’.34 Another characteristic of bedouin dialects in the south of Sinai (including Mzēniy), though not of all, is the apocopation of 2nd p. masc. sg. forms of tertiae infirmae verbs. This occurs in all measures (indicated in Roman numbers here), e.g. in Lēgiy: (I) timš ‘you go’, (I) talg ‘you find’, (II) tsaww ‘you make/do’, (III) tlāg ‘you find’, (IV) tit ‘you give’, (V) taašš ‘you have dinner’, (VI) talāg ‘you meet (with)’,35 (VIII) tištir ‘you buy’ and also (with shortened base vowel) tij (~ tījiy) ‘you come’. In a similar fashion, masc. imperatives of tertiae yā verbs are usually apocopated, as in the examples ijr ‘run’, ans ‘forget’, saww ‘do/make!’, it ‘give!’ etc. Also when suffixes are appended, the apocopated forms are used, e.g. ansuh ‘forget him!’, sawwha ‘make it (f. sg.)!’, ituh-yyāh ‘give it to him!’ and itwarrh-iyyāh ‘you show her to him’.36
5. Typological positioning of Lēgiy and H amādi y inside Sinai Lēgiy may not very convincingly be part of the group I or Negev dialecttype (as illustrated below in a comparison with the group I dialect of the Tarābīn around Rās Sadr, who are the northern neighbours of the Lēgāt), but it is still nearer to group I than H amādi y.37 In this respect the
34 Forms like atlub and aktib (like in dialects of northern Sinai, see De Jong (2000, § 3.2.1.2 of chapters 1–V)) were also recorded, but the forms with vowel harmony in the 1st p. c. sg. turn out to be much more regular than I had previously noticed (contrast De Jong (2004, 166), where only atlub and aktib are listed). 35 Another feature typical of many southern Sinai dialects is the reduction of initial tt- (> t-, sometimes erroneously referred to as a haplological drop of ta-) in ta- initial measures (V and VI). 36 The origin of such apocopation may lie in a reasoning by analogy (extrapolation leading to paradigmatic levelling within the verb system): if forms like e.g. imperfect túgudiy and tíkitbiy (or imperative úgudiy and íkitbiy) are fem. forms for the 2nd person singular, and the forms tugud and tiktib are used for the 2nd p. sg. masculine, then dropping the -iy ending from a 2nd p. f. sg. forms like e.g. titiy will yield the form for the 2nd p. masc. sg.: tit. 37 Largely illustrating Murray’s remark (1935, 263 f, see fn. 13 above). The dialect of the Tarābīn of Rās Sadr (not very different from other varieties of Turˢbˢāniy) is taken here as representative for group I (or Negev-type) dialects. For the latter type, see Blanc (1970) and De Jong (2000, chapter 1).
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following dialectal features—for the greater part in recapitulation—may be considered (this list is not exhaustive):3839 Lēgiy and H amādiy*
Turbāniy
Phonology phoneme */k/ allophones of /j/ diphthongs *ay, *aw
/k/ and /k/38 [d] ~ often [] /ē/ and /ō/
raising of a preceding ē (extreme) raising *-ā () velariz. in pl. of katīr
middēt íššti, álaši ktar (no velarization)
only /k/ [d], rarely [] phon. conditioned ay and aw maddēt ášštiy, álašiy ktār (velarized)
Stress
CaCáC (Lg) CáCaC (~ few CaCáC) (H m) álCaCaC (Lg) alCáCaC ~ álCaCaC (H m)
Parts of Speech Article and relative al-/-il & alliy / illiy pronoun Demonstratives: singular m. (hā)da, f. (hā)diy coll., plural dill (ih) (~ hādil)(Lg) dill (ih) (~ hādōl ) (H m) Negated pronoun 3. sg. māhū, māhī (~ māha) Pronoun suffix 3. m. sg -uh 3. m. pl. -huw (Lg), -hum (H m) 2 m. sg. C-uk 2 f. sg. V(C)-kiy, CC-ik39 Suffixed prepositions muh ilúh (Lg), ilēh (H m) fīh, f ī uk Verb impf. 1st p. c. sg. iktib, udrub, ašrab, ugūm, uxušš, etc. Apocopated impf. 2 m. sg. timš, talg, tlāg tit, taġadd, etc.
38
CaCáC álCaCaC
only al- & alliy m. hāda, f. hēdi y hōdal / hād ōl mūhū, mīhī (~ mīha) -ah /-ih -hum C-ak invariable -kiy maáh aláh fah, fak aktib, adrub, ašrab, agūm, axušš, etc. timšiy, talga, tlāgiy, titiy, taġadda, etc.
But this phonemic opposition is not as widely used in Lg. This is not entirely certain; my H amādiy informant produced bētk ‘your (f. sg.) house’, but also naxal átkiy ‘your (f. sg.) date palm’. 39
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah Verb ‘to come’ perf. 3.m. (sg.) impf. 3.m. Suffixed prepositions: Vowel impf. ‘to eat’, ‘to take’ Vowel perf. 3rd p. f. pl. impf. -m in 2nd m. pl. perfect Interrogatives ‘when?’ ‘who?’ Adverb ‘here’ Selected lexicon ‘mother’ ‘baking sheet’
ži (pl.) žum ~žuw
(sg.) ja (pl.) jaw
yīžiy, yīžuw muh ilúh (Lg)
yjiy, yjuw maʚáh ʚaláh
yākul, yāxud (H m) yākil, yāxid (Lg) katabin, gālin, yašrabin katabtuw (Lg), katabtum40~-tuw (H m)
yākil, yāxid kataban, gāl an yašraban katabtuw
imtēn mīn
matá (~ wagtēš) min
nihā(-niy)
hniy
um m šāz
am m sˢāj
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* Where not specified, the listed form is heard in both dialects.40
6. Conclusion The comparison drawn above shows a number of differences between Lēgiy/H amādi y and Turbā niy. Notwithstanding the characteristics shared only by H amādi y and Turbā niy, however, ʚLēgiy still appears to be typologically nearer to Turbā niy than H amādi y. 7. References atˢ-Tˢayyib, Muhˢammad Sulaymān. 1997. Mawsūat al-qabā’il al-arabiyya, Part 2, Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʚArabī. Bailey, Clinton. 1974. “Bedouin Weddings in Sinai and the Negev.” Folklore Research Center Studies, vol. 4, Jerusalem Magness Press, 105–132. ——. 1985. “Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 28, 20–49. ——. 2004. A Culture of Desert Survival. Bedouin Proverbs from Sinai and the Negev. New Haven: Yale University Press.
40 Verb forms with final -m were only recorded during direct elicitation. Such forms also occur in group II of the north, see De Jong (2000, 298–299).
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Behnstedt, Peter. 1979. “Die nordmittelägyptischen bukara-Dialekte.” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 3, 62–95. Blanc, Haim. 1970. “The Arabic Dialect of the Negev Bedouins.” Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Proceedings, vol. 4, 112–150. de Jong, Rudolf. 2000. A Grammar of the Bedouin Dialects of the Northern Sinai Littoral. Bridging the Linguistic Gap between the Eastern and Western Arab World. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ——. 2004, “Characteristics of Bedouin Dialects in Southern Sinai.” Approaches to Arabic Dialects. A Collection of articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Martine Haak, Rudolf de Jong, Kees Versteegh, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 151–175. Hava, J.G. 1982. Al-Farāid ad-durriyyah, Arabic-English Dictionary (fifth edition). Beirut: Dar el-Mashreq. Lavie, Smadar. 1990. The Poetics of Military Occupation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marx, Emanuel. 1999. “Oases in South Sinai.” Human Ecology 27, 341–357. New York: Kluwer Academic. Murray, George W. 1935. Sons of Ishmael—a Study of the Egyptian Bedouin. London: Routledge. Oppenheim, Max Freiherr von. 1943. Die Beduinen, Band II: Die Beduinenstämme in Palästina, Transjordanien, Sinai, H edjāz. Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz. Stewart, Frank Henderson. 1990. Texts in Sinai Bedouin Law, part 2 (Texts are in Arabic). Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Täckholm, Vivi. 1974. Student’s Flora of Egypt. 2nd ed., Beirut: Cairo University (Cooperative Printing Company).
8. Texts The speaker is a member of the Lēgāt, who was 38 years old at the time of recording. He was born in Sarābīt alXādim (about 40 km east of Abuw Znēmah) in the area called ar-Ramlah, where he had lived until his 29th. He has had no school training. (S) = Speaker of Lēgiy, (R) = interviewer. 8.1
Hunting rabbits
8.1.1 Transcript 1. (R) hatkallimni fi sayd ilarānib? 2. (S) a:ywah. alarānib dilleh41 . . . fi nnahār bitnām. fi nnahār . . . bitnām mā btartaʚ.42 3. ibtarta ġar hī billēl . . . ugb almaġarib . . . ibtusrub. iza nāymah fi h ajár, fi šajarah . . .
41 dill (-ih) is the c. pl. demonstrative pronoun for near deixis. Notice the absence of velarization. 42 The single negation mā + verb form is regular.
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah
579
ibtusrub hī fi llēl bitdawwr almaāš. 4. idda ll43 hī sārbeh, iw sārh ah . . . rr45 b išwayyeh . . . l assu bih . . . . la:44 lfajir. alfajir xalās giddām aššamš la dd u 5. bitdawwir lēhe . . . šajarah . . . bitdawwir lēhe jibál, bitdawwir lēh-ayyi h ājeh, iw bitgōtir fīha bitnām. 6. iygūl luk46 “alarnab nāymeh.” alarnab ádd a h a, w issu bih . . . tulgutha . . . iw hī nāymeh. 7. ibyalguw jurritte, yalguw jurritta ind áššijar da ind áššijar da ind áššijar da. 8. iw biygōtiruw mi jurritte . . . lam biyrawwh uw ind . . . manāmha. 8.1.2
Translation
1. (R) Are you going talk to me about hunting rabbits? 2. (S) Yes. These rabbits . . . they sleep during the day. They sleep during the day and they don’t graze. 3. They only graze at night . . . after sunset. They run out, if they sleep in the rocks, into the bushes . . . They run out at night to look for food. 4. They keep running . . . grazing till the morning, (all the time) until daybreak. Daybreak, (after that it’s) over, just before the sun rises . . . 5. It looks for a bush . . . it looks for a mountain, it looks for anything, and goes (in) there to sleep. 6. He’ll tell you “the rabbits are asleep”. The rabbits in the forenoon, which is the morning . . . you seize them . . . while they are asleep. 7. They find their tracks, they find its tracks near this bush, near that bush. 8. And they follow its tracks . . . until they come to . . . its sleeping place. 8.2.1
Transcript
9. fīh . . . nās ibyulgutha . . . b īduh. iw fīh nās biyšannin alēhe. biyšannin alēha yaniy bitkūn imúh47 asāh . . . igsayyreh. 10. šibrēn kídiy . . . hāda yōm šāffa48 nāymah fi šajarah, iyšannin alēha w yuxbutha b ilasāh . . . 11. iw linnha49 tābbah fīhe.[. . .] iw fīh nās . . . induh salág. 12. ássalag hāda
43
dd a l: assimilation of initial t to follwing d in tdall. Such prosodic lengthening of the vowel is often used to indicate the long duration of time. 45 dd rr, see fn 43. u 46 The suffixed preposition l: (sg.) 3.m. luh, 3.f. lēha, 2.m. luk, 2.f. lēkiy (~ seldom lik), 1.c. lay ~ l and (pl.) 3.m. lēhum , 3.f. lēhin, 2.m. lēukum, 2.f. lēkin, 1.c. lēna. 47 The suffixed preposition m(i): (sg.) muh, mih h a, muk, mik (~ frequent mikiy, i.e. like in group I), m and pl. mih h um , mih h in, mikum , mikin, mina. 48 šāffa: šāfha one of many examples of assimilation of h to a preceding voiceless consonant. 49 The particle linn or lann is often used to present “a sudden or unexpected turn in a narration,” see Blanc (1970, 145). 44
580
rudolf de jong
. . . biynaggizhe . . . biynaggizh-ássalag, 13. w imarabbīh . . . ind ássalag i mna . . . biyda lliy . . . ássalag yizġatti . . . lamma yulgutha. 14. mā yākilha lamma yjībha la sāh buh. iygūm sāh buh dābíh h e. hāda larnab. (R) aywah . . . 15. (S) iw fīh nās biyšannin alēha tašnīn bi lasāh biyirmīha. 16. iw fīh nās ibyulgutha. imúh abātuh, imúh bantuh muh h ājah lōm šāffa fi šajarah, ramāha alēha w lagatha. hāda larnab. 8.2.2
Translation
9. There are people who seize her with the hand, and there are people who take aim at it. They take aim at it, that is, they’ll have a small stick with them. 10. Of two spans of the hand (in length) . . . this (person) when he sees it asleep in a bush, he creaps up on it and hits it with the stick. . . . 11. And lo it (i.e. the stick) hits it (i.e. the rabbit). And there are people who have a hunting dog. 12. This hunting dog will make it jump around. The hunting dog makes it jump around. 13. And he has taught it . . . with the hunting dog . . . the hunting dog keeps following it closely . . . until it grabs it. 14. He won’t eat it until it has brought it to its master. His master then slaughters it, this rabbit. 15. And there are people who take good aim at it with the stick, which he throws. And there are people who seize it. 16. He’ll have his cloak with him, (or) his jacket with him, or something, (and) when he sees it in the bush, he throws it at it and seizes it. This is (what they do with) the rabbit. 8.3.1
Transcript
17. (R) iw fīh bardu h . . . biysawwuw faxx? (S) ā biysawwuw. alfaxx da grayyib, alfaxx da grayyib byistagduw50 alúh nnās miš zamān. 18. igrayyib byistagduw a lfaxx. yibnūh,51 w iyh uttu w fīh . . . iyh uttu w fīh giširit52 birdagāneh, iyh uttu w fīh ayyi h ājah lfaxx. 19. iw hī btījiy a 53 rīhtuh . . . hāda byibnūh ġar ugb almaġarib. yōm álġanam tidw iy, w alh alāl dáwa xalās . . . mā fīš h alāl, ibyibnūh. 20. mā byibnūh fi nnahār.
50
A measure X (or ista-1) verb of the root q-d-y: istagda, yistagdiy (ala) ‘take up as a new habit by following an example’. 51 yibnūh lit. ‘they build it’, here ‘they set it (i.e. the trap)’. 52 giširit: a bukara-form of gišrit. 53 da wa, yidwiy ‘go home in the evening’, see Stewart (1990, 214) (glossary). In Turbāniy this verb is measure IV, e.g. albanāt midiwyāt ‘the girls are going home (just before sunset)’. The root d-w-y is probably related to CA d-w- ‘light’; using the last day light to go home.
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah
581
iw tāniy h ājeh byibnūh fi lgēd . . . wagt assiyyāl yōm assiyyāl, fīh barám iw h āl, 21. ibyibnūh kamān fi irg54 assiyyāleh. fīh barám biytīh hī bitrawwi ādiy55 fi lgēd, fi ššahar assabah w iššhūr issittah w iššhūr dillah lgēd. 22. fīh barám biytīh fi ssiyyāl, talgha56 tamalliy fi ssiyyāl alarānib bitrawwih . . . 8.3.2
Translation
17. (R) And are there . . . (people) who make a trap? (S) Yes, they do. This trap is (a) recent (thing), this trap is something recent, which people have imitated, not people of the old days. People have started copying the (method of hunting with a) trap. They set it, and they place in it . . . they place the peel of an orange in it, they put anything in the trap. 19. And it (the rabbit) is attracted to its smell. This (person) sets it only after sunset. When the small cattle come back home. And when it has come back home . . . that’s it . . . there is no small cattle (left roaming around), (then) they set it. 20. They don’t set it during the daytime. And besides this they set it in summer . . . the time when the acacias bloom, when the acacias have fruit57 and stuff. 21. They also set it next to the acacia tree. There is fruit that falls down. It comes normally in summer, the month of July, the months of June and those of summer. 22. There is fruit that falls from the acacias, (so) you’ll find rabbits going to the acacias all the time. 8.3.3
Transcript
23. ibyibnuw lēha fa . . . alfaxx f-assiyyālah diy, iw kamān fi ssiyyāl dā k, fi ttalah58 diy byibnuw lēhin. 24. iw yulugtūha f- alfaxx . . . yulgutha min ragabatta min . . . min ríjilha min h ājeh. 25. assu bih yōm yījiy l alfaxx iw lannha malgūtah. 26. iw fīh nās ibyugud . . . igrayyib lēha . . . fi llēl . . . yasma xabit alfaxx. 27. yōm yútulguh byasmauh (R) aywah . . . (S)
54 fi irg, litt. ‘in the root (of)’ has been grammaticalized as a preposition meaning ‘next to’ (presumably ‘next to’ some ‘standing’ object), also e.g. fi irg alh ētah ‘next to the wall’. 55 Assimilation of bitrawwih + ādiy. 56 talgha: apocopated 2nd p. m. sg. imperfect of the verb ligiy, yalga ‘find’, followed by suffix -ha. 57 Lane (1863, part 1, 195): ‘[. . .] the fruit of the talh [or acacia gummifera, which is of the trees called idāh] [. . .]’ 58 talah (with t!) is a water course between two mountain peaks, and can be used as a pass between mountains.
582
rudolf de jong
ibyáarf alfaxx sādha . . . ibyúlgutuh . . . fi llēl 28. iw fīh nās ibyibnīh . . . iw biygōtir iblād biīdeh . . . zayy xamsah kīluh ašarah kīluh ssu bh ibyījiy luh. 29. yōm yījiy luh linnuh, linnuh59 lāgitha. hāda larnab. 30. amma lġazāl hāda, mā kull annās ibtugnus luh, alġizlān dillah mā biytīh in fi l . . . fi lwātiy, ġar fi jjbāl, fi jjbāl albiīdeh . . . 31. (R) ġar tatla fōg . . . (S) ġar tugnus lēhin fi lijbāl albiīdeh . . . alġazāl. 32. w alġazāl law arwáh uk60 . . . ibyunguz min induh. 33 law arwah rīh ítuk . . . yaniy jīt a rrīh w arwah , xalās biygōtir min induk. hāda lġazāl. 34. alliy hū álbadan w alh ājāt dillah kulluh. hāda . . . hāda wēn ilinsān ibyúlugtuh. 8.3.4
Translation
23. They set a trap for it in (under) this acacia, and also in those (other) acacias, in this watercourse they set (traps) for them. 24. and they catch it in the trap. . . . they catch it by its neck . . . by its leg . . . by something. 25. In the morning, when he comes to the trap, there it is, caught. 26. And there are people who sit (and wait) . . . near it . . . at night . . . he’ll hear the snapping of the trap. 27. When it releases he’ll hear it . . . (R) Yes . . . (S) and he knows that the trap caught it . . . (and) he seizes it . . . at night 28. and there are people who set it . . . and they go away to a far place61 . . . like five kilometres, ten kilometres (and) in the morning he comes (back) to it. 29. When he comes to it, lo, lo, it has caught it. That is the rabbits. 30. As far as these gazelles are concerned, not all people hunt them. These gazelles don’t come down to the lower areas, (they stay) only in the mountains . . . 31. (R) You have to go up . . . (S) You have to hunt them in the far mountains . . . Gazelles. 32. And gazelles, when they smell you, they jump away from where they are. 33. When they smell your scent. . . . that is, if you come down with the wind and he smells (you), that’s it, he gets away from you. These are the gazelles, 34. which are the ibex and all these things. This . . . this is where a person catches them.
59 60 61
See fn. 49. The (superscript) anaptyctic vowel is voiceless. blād lit. ‘land’, here ‘place’.
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah 8.4
583
Snakes
8.4.1 Transcript 62 35. (R) fīh bardu h, ārif fi ddūd? (S) iddūd allafāiy? (R) aywah . . . (S) allafāiy dilleh . . . hāda l . . . ayyi insān ibyuktilhe. 36. hādiy ygūl luk almāzyeh, in kalátuk bidduk,63 ir kān64 daktūr walla bidduk, aza f-albarr kamān mā h āwalāuk daktūr ir kān insān h āwiy. 37. fīh nās f-álarab . . . biykūn h āwiy. [. . .] fīh hwāytuh xabit, iw fīh ihwāytuh lah s, alliy hāda biyrudd assamm. 38. hāda ddūd, alliy hī lagrab . . . assa frā diym m dēl . . . iw fīh lífiy . . . alliy hā . . . hū tti bān. hāda la . . . hāda lam kalátuk ġār kān insān h āwiy walla daktūr. 39. fīh nās katīr mātuw minha. imn alamaliyyah diy. (R) mi ssamm . . . (S) mi ssamm, hāda ssamm . . . 40. (R) tab w ilh āwiy biysawwiy ēh? (S) alh āwiy biyrudd issamm . . . biyrudd assamm . . . 41. (R) kēf biysawwiy? (S) alh āwiy byaxabítuk xabit . . . yaxabítuk . . . talat xabtāt . . . ib rīguh . . . (R) ib rīguh . . . (S) hāda biyruddd assamm. lamma trawwh addaktūr, aw mumkin kamān mā . . . mā trawwh addaktūr ihwāytuh jiyydeh, bitkaffiy xalās. 42. hāda b innisbah la . . . la lagarab65 w alífiy w atti bān . . . w alh ājāt dillah.
8.4.2
Translation
35. (R) Are there also . . . do you know about creepy crawlies? (S) Vipers? (R) Yes. . . . (S) Yes, these vipers . . . these . . . anyone will kill them. 36. This one will say to you “the advantage, if it bites you, you need, by necessity a doctor or you need, if it is in the desert, and there is also no doctor around (you), a hˢāwiy person.” 37. There are people among the bedouins . . . who are hˢāwiy. Hitting is part of his hˢāwiy-activity, and licking is part of his hˢāwiy-activity, which brings back (i.e. out of the body) the poison. 38. This is the creepy crawly, which is the scorpion, this yellow one with a tail . . . and there is the viper . . . which is the snake. This one, when it bites you, you need a hˢāwiy or a doctor. 39. There are many people who died from it, from this business. (R) from the poison . . . (S)
62 dūd (n.u. -ih, pl. dīdān) is used for any crawling animal, like snakes, scorpions, and lizzards. 63 bidd, rather than widd (as in group I), is used to express ‘want’ or ‘need’. Here it us used to express necessity from the perspective of the speaker, like English ‘should’, as in ‘he should see a doctor’, see De Jong (2000, 239). 64 The context calls for words like ġayr kān. In the recording I hear what has been transcribed above, but perhaps it should read (strongly reduced) ġer kān. 65 ag arab—a bukara form for agrab.
584
rudolf de jong
From the poison, this poison. 40. (R) Okay, and what does the hˢāwiy do? (S) The hˢāwiy brings back the poison, he brings back the poison . . . 41. (R) how does he do it? (S) The hˢāwiy gives you a good slapping. He slaps you three times . . . with his saliva. . . . (R) With his saliva. (S) This brings back the poison until you get to the doctor, and it’s also possible that you don’t (have to) go to the doctor. If his hˢāwiy-work is good, that’s enough, that’s it. 42. This in reference to the scorpion and the viper and the snake . . . and these things. 8.5 8.5.1
Falling in love Transcript
43. (S) álwalad . . . álwalad biygūm . . . aza sārih . . . biyšūf albint . . . 44. (R) bišūfha wēn? (S) biyšūfha fi masrah h a w hī sārh ah b ġanamhe. 45. ájabatuh . . . iw h āl . . . biygūm . . . biyxarrf um m uh, hū mā biyxarrf ubūh, biyxarrf um m uh. 46. ummu h bitxarrf ubūh. bitgūl “álwalad . . . rāyid bint iflān . . . imn álarab iliflāniyyah”. . . . 47. biygūm ubūh . . . biyrawwih l ubū ha . . . iw . . . biyrawwih l ubūha w biyxarrfuh. 48. w um m uh . . . bitrawwih l um m albint, iw bitxarrifhe. gāl abuw lbint “māhī maxatūbeh . . . iw binjawwizkuw . . .” hāda fīh kalām tāniy. 49. gāl abuw lbint “maxatūbeh66 . . .” hāda fīh kalām. gāl abuw lbint “kamān āyizha walad ammha . . .” hāda fīh kalām tāniy. 50. iw fīh nās biyšūffa . . . min tanabāh.67 tanabāh alliy induh biyšūf bint ibtíijbuh . . . biyxarrf um m uh. 51. biygūl “ana āyz ilbint liflān diy.” 52. bitrawwih l um m ha w bitxarrifha w tasalha w itgūl hī “lbint maxatūbah walla bint assā ibnūt” walla kidiy walla kidiy . . . 53. bitxarrifha. baadēn ubūh . . . biyrawwih l arrijjāl . . . abuw lbint . . . iw biyxarrfuh. 54. biyxarrfuh gāl hū biyjawwízuk “xalās albint māhī maxatūbah,” iygūl luk “xalās.” 55. iza lbint isġayyrih biygūl luk “xalluk ugub sanah”. “xalluk ugub xamis t-ušhur, xalluk ugub sanatēn . . .” 56. biygūm byadbah alēhe . . . biyjīb šātuh gāl luh “xalluk ugub sanah, sanatēn . . . albint isġayyrih.” 57. biygūm biyjīb šātuh w yadbah h a. dabah h -atūh algasalah. 58. min yōm atūh lgasalah xalās irif hādiy h úrumtuh, ib sinnt Allā h w rasūl-atūh . . . gásalatuh . . .
66
maxatūbah, gahawah-form of maxtūbah. tinīb, tanaba ‘member of the same encampment’, see Stewart (1990, 273–274, glossary). 67
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah
585
8.5.2 Translation 43. (S) The boy . . . the boy then goes . . . when he is out herding . . . he sees the girl . . . 44. (R) Where does he see her? (S) He sees her in her herding place where she is herding her goats. 45. If he likes her. . . . and in case. . . . he then goes . . . and speaks to his mother. He doesn’t speak to his father, he speaks to his mother. 46. His mother speaks to his father. She says “The boy wants (to marry) so-and-so’s daughter . . . from so-and-so’s family . . .” 47. His father then goes to her father . . . and . . . he goes to her father and speaks to him. 48. And his mother . . . goes to the girl’s mother, and speaks to her. If the father of the girl says ‘she is not engaged . . . and we will marry her into your family . . .” (then) there’s more talk. 49. If the father of the girl says “She’s engaged” . . . (then) there is a talk. If the girl’s father says “Her cousin also wants (to marry) her,” (then) there’s more talk. 50. And there are people who see her, of their neighbours . . . one of his neighbours that he has sees a girl that he likes . . . 51. he’ll (then) speak to his mother. He’ll say “I want (to marry) so-and-so’s daughter.” 52. She goes to her mother and speaks to her and asks her and she says “the girl is engaged or she is still an unbetrothed virgin or thus or thus...” 53. After that his father speaks to her . . . he goes to the man . . . the girl’s father, and he speaks to him. 54. He speaks to him. If he says that he’ll marry the girl you, she is not engaged, he’ll say to you ‘okay’. 55. If the girl is young, he says to you “wait (until) after one year,” “wait (until) after five months,” “wait (until) after two years.” 56. He then slaughters for her. He gets his sheep, if he says to him “wait (until) after one year, two years . . . the girl is (still too) young.” 57. He then brings his sheep and slaughters it. When he has slaughtered it, then they have betrothed her.68 58. From the moment they have given him his twig, that’s it, he knows that this (girl) is (going to be) his wife, in the tradition of God and His Prophet69 they have given him . . . his twig.
68 atūh gasalah, lit. ‘they have given him a twig’. The twig is given to the groom in betrothal ceremonies, who is then māxid gasalatha ‘holding her twig’, i.e. she has been betrothed to him, see Bailey (1974). 69 The phrase b sinnt Al l āh w rasūluh ‘in the tradition of God and His Prophet’ may often be heard in addition—used almost as an excuse in pre-emption—to the description of traditions, of which the islamic origin is doubtful (or non-existent).
586 8.6.1
rudolf de jong Transcript
59. iw h āl . . . gām xallāha w ugub sanatēn . . . zabbat70 álh atab, iw jāb idda bāyih , iw jāb ibyūt áššaar. 60. iw azam annās, iw gāl lēhuw “lfarah indī . . inšā Allā h jjimah jjāyah jjimah lliy dōrha, iw banna lbyūt . . . yōm alximīs . . . assu bih . 61. iw sawwa. . . . atta h āwiy. iw juw annās ād kull wāh id ib h amūltuh.71 kull wāh id ib šātuh . . . kull wāh id ib h amūltuh w h úrumtuh muh. 62. yōm alfárah ind iflān [linna] imrawwh īn nah da ruh, kull wāh id ib h amūltuh. iw rawwah uw, iw ugub salāt alasir kamān . . . dabih . 63. dabah iw saww-álaša. iw fīh nās bitsawwalfitīr . . alfarāšīh 72 . . . arrjāl w alih ra yyim biysawwin. 64. iw gassam . . . kurr rijjāl 73 firšāh ah iw h iggtuh láh amatuh fīha . . . gassam alēhuw . . . kullhuw. 65. iw ugm a74 ġābat iššamš baadēn . . . ugub salāt iší . . . h awalāha . . . gām at iddah h iyyih.75 66. fīh nās bitsawwiy dah h iyyih, iw fīh nās bissawwiy marbūah.76 67. almarbūah lliy hī arrafāh iy.77 w iddah h iyyah-lliy hī . . . alxumus. iddah h iyyah kull wāh id biygūl min induh . . . 8.6.2
Translation
59. And then the situation is . . . he leaves her be,78 and after two years . . . he arranges the firewood, and brings animals for slaughter, and brings tents. 60 And he invites people, and says to them “the wedding party is at my house, God willing, coming Friday, Friday next week” and he has set up the tents on Thursday . . . in the morning . . . 61. And
70 Although z as a phoneme is rare (and marginal as such) in Sinai bedouin dialects (the current reflex for both *d and *d is interdental emphatic d ), it is regular in lexemes (loaned from MSA or Cairene Arabic) like zabbat , yzabbit ‘arrange; do properly’ (Stewart (1990, 285–286, glossary) transcribes z), n(i)zām ‘system’ and z(u)rūf ‘circumstances’, see De Jong (2000, 60). 71 Although h amūlah is listed by Blanc (1970, 114) in the meaning of ‘clan’, in dialects of other tribes it means ‘animal led to a festive occasion to be slaughtered as a present for the host’. 72 farāšīh , sg. firšāh ah ‘large flat (and thin) round bread baked on the sāj. 73 kurr rijjāl: assimilation of kull rijjāl ‘every man’. 74 ugm a: assimilated ugb + ma. 75 dah iyyah ‘a type of bedouin dance’, see Bailey (1991, 436, glossary). During dah iyyah, men stand in a line, while women dance in a line opposite to them. 76 In a marbūah older men stand in a square facing each other. 77 It was later explained to me that the rafāh iy is a dance unlike marbūah: during rafāh iy, in which younger people take part, the boys will sing their rhyme, while the girls dance in front of them (one at a time, often while holding a stick), which is much more in line with the meaning associated with the root r-f-h , ‘greet (new spouses)’ in Hava (1982). 78 The verbal perfect forms used by the speaker have here been translated into imperfect forms.
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he has prepared the food (to be served before the wedding ceremony), and the people have come, everyone with his slaughter animal, everyone with his sheep. Everyone has his slaughter animal and his wife with him. 62. On the day of the wedding ceremony with so-and-so we go over (to him) and bring him over. Everyone (goes) with his slaughter animal and goes, and also after afternoon prayer . . . (there is) slaughtering. 63. He slaughters and prepares dinner. And there are people who make flat (unleavened) bread . . . farāšīh . . . the men and women make them. 64. And he distributes . . . (to) every man a flat bread and his portion in which there is his meat. . . . he distributes it to them . . . all of them. 65. And after the sun has set, after that . . . after the evening prayer . . . round about it (i.e. that time) . . . the dancing starts. 66. There are people who do a dah iyyah, and there are people who do marbūah. 67. The marbūah is the same as the rafāh iy. And the dah iyyya is . . . the clapping of hands. (during) The dah iyya everyone says his own lines (of poetry) . . . 8.7.1 Transcript 68. hāda xams t-infār ašarah . . . xamistāšar nafár biysawwuw, w arraggāsah h urmah wih dih . . . ibturgus alēhuw. hāda b innisbah l addah h iyyeh. 69. w almarbūah hādiy . . . mā . . . biyrawbuw fīh ġa¨¯r annās . . . ijjihhāl79 . . . alliy hinna lbanāt . . . ibyúrugsin . . . w ilwild. 70. ijjihhāl hādil biysawwin . . . almarbūah. 71. assāmir da biysawwūh ġa¨¯r aššiyyāb. annās alkibir hādil byúsumruw. ibyúsumruw a jāl . . . ismuh sāmir. 72. amma ddah h iyyah hādiy . . . biysawwūha . . . kitīr . . . fi Sīna nihā biysawwūha wājdah ddah iyyah. 73. yōm alfar[h awāt], iw yōm azzawāyir, iw yōm alīd . . . biysawwuw ddah h iyyah. hāda hī . . . 8.7.2 Translation 68. This, five, ten . . . fifteen persons do this, and the dancer is one woman . . . who dances before them. This as far as the dahˢiyyah is concerned. 69. And this marbūʚah . . . only young people take part in the marbūʚah . . . which is the girls . . . who dance . . . and the boys. 70. These youngsters take part . . . in the marbūʚah. 71. In the sāmir only older people take part. These old people take part in the sāmir. They do a sāmir on the fringe (of the main festivities) . . . it is called sāmir. 72. As far as this dahˢiyyah is concerned . . . they do it . . . a lot . . . Here in Sinai they do it a lot . . . the dahˢiyyah. 73. When there are weddings, and when there 79
jāhil lit. ‘ignorant’ is commonly used in Sinai for ‘young’ or ‘child’.
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are visits (to sheikhs tombs), and when there is the feast . . . they do a dahiyyah. That’s it . . . 8.8.1
Transcript
74. (R) w alarūs . . . w al . . . (S) ilurūs fi lbēt (R) fi lbēt . . . 75. (S) āywah . . . alurūs . . . itsawwiy zzaffih humma , iw jābūha b ilarabiyyāt iw waddūha . . . albēt. 76. alurūs hadiy btugud saba t-iyyām, iw hī fi lbēt. 77. mā btatla minnuh wala biyhiddūh bēt alfárah . . . mabniy . . . 78. sabi t-iyyām mn ajjimeh . . . l ajjimeh. 79. iw hī gādih80 larūs . . . batnuh . . . iw irīssa indaha. l(a:) jjimah jjāyih. 80. ajjimah jjāyih ssawwiy sibū, dabah luh šāh šātēn . . . 81. kamān h idi r alliy āyiz yah da r,81 w alliy māhū āyiz māhū āyiz . . . 82. iw ugub kidiy ādiy[t] waddāha dāruh. aza dāruh . . . šāhlih . . . waddāha-yyāha. māhī šāhleh dāruh, iw h āl . . . 83. bitrawwih ind ummh a. ibtasrah ib ġanamha. 84. lam biysawwiy dāruh, iw h āl . . . iw hādiy h úrumtuh induh. 85. hāda b innisbah l ijjawāzeh zayy kidiy. 8.8.2
Translation
74. (R) And the bride and the groom. (S) And the bride is at home (R) At home . . . 75. (S) Yes . . . the bride, they organise a wedding procession. And they have brought her with cars and brought her over to the house (tent). 76. The bride spends seven days (while she is) in the tent. 77. She does not go out of it (i.e. the tent), nor do they take it down the wedding tent . . . stands (lit. is built) 78. For seven days from Friday till Friday. 79. And she sits inside it, the bride . . . while her groom is with her. (all the time) until the next Friday. 80. The next Friday you celebrate the week’s feast, he slaughters one or two sheep (for himself) . . . 81. And also whoever wants to attend is present, and whoever does not want, does not want . . . 82. And after that he then takes her to his house. If his house is . . . ready, he takes her to it. If it is not ready his house, 83. then the situation is. . . . she goes to her mother. She takes her cattle out to graze. . . . 84. When he prepares his house, then the situation is . . . and this is then his wife with him. 85. This is with reference to the wedding, like this.
80 ā in gādah is quite high; ā—when in neutral environments—in the CāCiC pattern of the active participle tends to be realized near IPA [:]. 81 yah dar ‘he is present’, notice the absence of the gahawah-syndrome here.
dialects of the lēgāt and h amād ah
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8.9.1 Transcript 86. (R) bardu h alarūs ibtušrud? (S) ha? (R) fīh nās biygūluw inn alarūs ibtušrud . . . (S) ibtušrud. iza māh rāyídtuh . . . ibtušurud innuh. 87. itgūl “mān āyíztuh” tgōtir, tudxul ibyūt biīd . . . an um m ha w ubūha tgōtir baīd . . . 88. itgūl “mānī āyíztuh.” biyjībūha luh tāniy w biy . . . asil min yōm māhī āyiztuh tušrud . . . marra h marrtēn talātih xalās lāzim iytallighe . . . xalās māhī āyiztuh. 89. hādiy larūs. hāda mitjaww . . . māxidha ġasib . . . hāda lāzim iytalligha . . . 90. āyiztuh, ibtugud imn awwil lā tušrud wala h ājeh. 91. min yōm āyizt álwalad da xalās. hāda larīs . . . biysawwiy bētuh, aza ind um m uh, aza ind arbānuh, aza ind nasābtuh . . . taba aššrūt. 92. išrūt ind awwil ma jawwazūh. aza gāluw “la lāzim tuskun indina . . .” xalās, biysawwiy bētuh induhuw. 8.9.2
Translation
86. Does the bride flee as well?82 (S) What? (R) There are people who say that the bride flees . . . (S) She flees. If she doesn’t want him . . . she flees from him. 87. She says “I don’t want him,” she goes away and enters houses83 far away . . . from her mother and her father, she goes far away . . . 88. She says “I don’t want him”. They bring her back to hem again and he . . . because when she does not want him she flees . . . Once, twice, three times, and that’s it, he has to divorce her . . . That’s it, she doesn’t want him. 89. This is the bride. This one (man) married . . . has taken her by force . . . this (person) must divorce her . . . 90. If she wants him, she’ll sit with him from the start and won’t flee or anything. 91. When she wants the boy, that’s it. This groom . . . sets up his house, be it with his mother, be it with his clan, be it with his kin (of father’s side) . . . according to the stipulations. 92. Conditions (that were agreed on) from the moment they married him (to her). If they say “No, she has to live with us . . .” then that’s it, he sets up his house with them.
82 With some tribes it was customary for the bride to flee from her groom, see Murray (1935, 182–183). 83 The verb daxal, yudxul here actually means ‘to enter a house to seek refuge’ (i.e. as a daxīl).
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8.10
Agriculture
8.10.1
Transcript
93. (R) bardu h . . . annās ibyazrauw battī x? (S) ibyazrauw battī x . . . 94. wagt álmatar fīh nās ibyazrauw battī x . . . á-lmatar. (R) kēf biysawwiy? (S) biysawwiy saddeh . . . imsawwayih min zamān . . . 95. ibyah aritta á-jjimal . . . yōm álmatar biytīx . . . iw biynaggitha . . . 96. (R) b ilijmāl, b iljamal, fīh fard? (S) aywah byah aritta . . . hāda l algamih . . . 97. (R) iw fīh fard walla bitgūluw ēh? (S) aywah, farid . . . farid . . . (R) iw alēha būg? (S) aywah, marbūtah f-áljimal . . . iw māsikka . . . arrijjāl mín-wara. 98. hāda . . ibyah arit l algamih . . . hāda . . . h ittih l algamih , iw xalla h ittih l al . . . l albattī x. 99. albattī x da . . . nággatuh b ilfās. 100. bizruh fi jambuh, iw yah afir ingár a tūl b ilfās iw hū biynaggit. 101. albattī x hāda indma tili ādiy byatla á-lmatar. min yōm assaddih ruwyānih byatla. ibyunšur . . . 102. biytašabbak fi baadu h biysīr battī x wājid . . . bass anniswān mā tījīh wala h add . . . 103. min yōm ibyúbudruh biygōtruw annuh [ba] a jāl. ibyínkibis 104. in ánkabas bāz84 albattī x. hāda . . . l albattī x. 105. w algamh hāda . . . ibyatla yōm rabbna biyrīd. 106. algamh hāda lliy binsawwiy minnuh l . . . addagīg w alh āl da, hāda hū. w attibin . . . alliy hū biyjībūh l ajjmāl . . . 8.10.2 Translation 93. (R) Do people also grow watermellons? (S) They grow watermellons . . . 94. At times of rain, there are people who grow watermellons . . . on rain (water). (R) How does he do (it)? (S) He makes a dam . . . It was made long time ago . . . 95. He ploughs it with the (plough drawn by a) camel . . . When the rain falls . . . and he sows it. . . . 96. (R) With camels, with the camel, is there a plough? (S) Yes, he ploughs it . . . this wheat . . . 97. (R) And is there a plough, or what do you call it? (S) Yes, a plough . . . (R) And with a (large trumpet-shaped) funnel on it? (S) Yes, tied to the camel . . . and holding it . . . is the man at the back end. 98. This (man) ploughs for (sowing) the wheat, a piece (of land) for the wheat, and he leaves a piece (of land) for the . . . for the watermellons. 99. These watermellons, he sows them with the hoe. 100. He keeps his seed by his side, and he digs holes with the hoe while he sows.85 101. These water-
84 85
bāz, ybūz ‘go bad’ is a loan from Egyptian; therefore z. Lit. ‘let drip’, here in the meaning of ‘dropping one or two seeds in a hole at a time’.
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mellons, when it comes up normally, it grows on rain (water). When the dam86 is well-watered it comes up and spreads out 102. It becomes intertwined, and the watermellons become plentiful. But the women don’t come there . . . not one. 103. From the moment he sows it, they go away from it (and stay) on the side. (if not) It is jinxed. 104. If it is jinxed the watermellons will go bad. This . . . is with reference to the watermellons. 105. And this wheat . . . comes up when our Lord wills it. 106. This wheat is what we make flour from and this situation, that’s how it is. And the straw . . . which they take (as fodder) to the camels . . . 8.11.1
Transcript
107. (R) bardu h indukuw írh iy? (S) ha? (R) walla bitgūluw ēš, írh iy walla rh āh? (S) arrh āh . . . [. . .] arrh āh lliy hī btath an algamih . . . hāda-smáha87 rh āh h ajár . . . 108. (R) aywah. w alh urmah alliy btath an? (S) aywah lh urmah btath an, iw fīh irjāl ibyath anuw. 109. (R) aywah, biysawwuw ēš? (S) biysawwuw fīh nās ibyath anuw . . . aládra h. aládra h hādiy biysawwuw minha . . . biysawwuw minha . . . libbih. 110. (R) ismuh ēš? iládra h? (S) aládra h88 hādiy biysawwuw minha libbih. allibbah hādiy biysawwūha mn aládra h . . . ibyath anūha a rh āh. 8.11.2
Translation
107. (R) Do you also have hand mills? (S) What? (R) Or what do you say? írh iy or rh āh? (S) hand mill . . . The hand mill which grinds the wheat . . . this is called the stone hand mill . . . 108. (R) Yes. And it is the woman who does the grinding? (S) Yes, the woman does the grinding, and there are men who grind (as well). 109. (R) Yes, what do they do? (S) They do, there are people who grind . . . the sorghum. This sorghum from which they make . . . they make libbah89 from it. 110. (R) What is it called? iládra h? (S) From this corn they make the libbah. This libbah they make it form the corn . . . they grind it on a hand mill.
86
Interestingly, saddah here means the ‘area covered by water’, rather than the ‘barrier blocking the water’ or ‘dam’ itself. 87 ismáha (with Cairene type of stress) instead of ísimha. 88 In group I dialects the form is more typically dra (ʙ) (or with velarization marked in the interdental, dr a(ʙ)) and with article áddr a , see De Jong (2000, 82). For a remark on d as a reflex for *d, see De Jong (2000, 332–333). 89 Stewart (1990, 245, glossary) lists libbih as ‘a small round of bread’. A libbah, often in other dialects referred to as gurs, is what men typically prepare themselves when they are travelling, and women are not present. It is baked in glowing embers in clean sand.
592 8.12.1
rudolf de jong Transcript
111. ašān lā makán wala h ājah byath an . . . w ájjimal kamān, aza induh jimál walla . . . jamalēn walla burān, 112. aza mā fīš h urmah fādy ih... int ibtath an . . . biddišš90 . . . biddišš. biddišš . . . yaniy aládra h . . . itxallha miš dagīg . . . itxallha majrūših jariš. 113. hāda l alburān . . . l azzamil . . . itašššin.91 hāda kull yōm . . . lāzim tujuruš lēhin . . . imn aládra h diy. 114. algamih hāda . . . hāda byath aninnuh duġriy a rh āh . . . dagīg . . . dagīg hāda zuwwādeh. 115. itdibb almazwad . . . alh āl hāda . . . addagīg imn algamih . aládra h hādiy . . . l alburān biyjiršūha. 116. [kull yōm] hāda lh āl šuġlitta btath an algamih , w ibtath an aládra h, iw kulluh. wi . . . w attibin hāda . . . l ijjmāl a tūl. mā biyath anūh walla h ājih bass ibyidirsūh daris . . . ibyídirsuw lgamih minnuh . . . iw biywaddūh a ljā[l] . . . 117. (R) iw byidirsūh b ēh? fīh lōh ah kidiy walla . . . (S) aywah . . . (R) ismuh ēh? (S) fīh nās ibyídirsuh bi l . . . b ájjimal . . . biysawwiy luh madrās, ibyídirsuh. 118. iw fīh nās halh īn ibyidirsūh b álmakan. (R) ārif kilmit ilhōjal?92 (S) alhōjal . . . (R) bitgūl yaniy alhōjal? (S) aywah . . . [. . .] alhōjal hāda biysawwuw minnuh, ibyídirsuw minnuh b ájjimal. iw ġa¨¯r insān ārif iysawwīh . . . 8.12.2 Translation 111. Because there were no machines or anything, he grinds . . . and also the camels, if he (a man) has a camel or . . . two camels or (more) camels. 112. If there is not a woman free (to do it) for them . . . you grind . . ., you grind coarsely, you grind coarsely. You grind coarsely . . . that is, the sorghum . . . you do not turn it into flour . . . but you turn it into coarsely ground corn. 113. This is for the camels . . . for the camels . . . to feed them (at dinner time). This (you do) every day . . . you have to coarsely grind (some) of this corn for them (i.e. the camels). 114. This wheat . . . this they (f.) grind normally on the hand mill . . . flour . . . flour, this is (for) provisions. 115. You fill the sack . . . (in) this case . . . with flour from wheat. This corn is for the camels, they grind it coarsely . . . 116. [Every day] This
90
ddišš, assimilated dd < td in tdišš; dašš, ydišš ‘grind corn coarsely’, see Stewart (1990, 211, glossary). 91 tašššin: an apocopated 2nd. p. m. sg. form (tašš) of measure 2 verb ašša, yaššiy ‘feed dinner’, with initial h- of the suffix -hin (camels are usually referred to in the f. pl.) assimilated to the preceding voiceless consonant. The spelling here with triple š is for reasons of morphological transparency. The pronunciation is, however, not audibly different from doubled š (IPA [( :)]). 92 hōjal: a threshing board with sharp stones in its underside, on which the man stands while it is being pulled by a camel.
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is how it goes (lit. its situation), you grind the wheat, and you grind the corn, and everything. And this straw . . . goes (lit. is) straight to the camels. They don’t grind it or anything, they only thresh it properly. They thresh the wheat from it . . . and they put it aside . . . 117. (R) And with what do they thresh? Is there like a (wooden) board, or . . . (S) Yes . . . (R) What is it callled? (S) There are people who thresh it with . . . with camels. . . . he’ll make (for himself) a threshing floor. 118. And there are people nowadays who thresh it with machines. (R) Do you know the word hōjal? (S) the hōjal. . . . (R) Do you call it a hōjal? (S) Yes . . . [. . .] This hōjal (people) do with it, they thresh with it with camels. And one has to know (how) to do it . . .
CLASSICAL AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC ARCHAISMS Alan S. Kaye† California State University, Fullerton*
1. Introduction This essay1 argues that modern spoken Arabic dialects sometimes retain very archaic Semitic features. In fact, they may even preserve Proto-Semitic forms that have been lost in Classical Arabic—another indication that Classical Arabic is not to be regarded as their ancestral proto-language (see Kaye 1976 for fuller explication of this idea). Rather, there were other Arabic dialects spoken alongside Classical Arabic all throughout history that served as the ancestral inputting ones to the contemporary picture of Arabic dialects. The orthographic representation of Hebrew lō ‘no’ as 2 may best be interpreted as evidence for the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic *laʙ ‘no’. No matter what vowel preceded the glottal stop, I do not think any Semitist can deny that the Proto-Semitic word ended in a glottal stop.3 Final
* Shortly after Alan’s untimely death we received the proofs of his article. In deep respect we insert his paper in this volume as it was at his passing on in appreciation for what he contributed to our common field of interest (the editors). 1 This was originally presented to the joint session of the 216th meeting of the American Oriental Society and the 34th annual North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics on March 17th, 2006, in Seattle. I am thankful for the stimulating discussion by the audience participants. I also wish to express my gratitude to Vit Bubenik, Gideon Goldenberg, Wolfhart Heinrichs, Bob Hoberman, Jonathan Owens, Adrian Măcelaru, Gary A. Rendsburg, Judith Rosenhouse, Aaron D. Rubin, Avi Shivtiel, Laurence J. (Tawfiq) Surfas, Rainer Voigt, and Bill Young for useful comments on a preliminary version. 2 According to Koehler and Baumgartner (1958, 466) and (1998, 466), this spelling occurs 466 times in the Old Testament, while the plene spelling occurs only 35 times. Gary A. Rendsburg [p. c.] notes that the plene spelling occurs especially in Jeremiah, and that there are more instances of the interrogative and presentative /hallōʙ/ spelled plene than there are defectiva. 3 Let me comment on the notion of a pho(a)ethematic glottal stop, which occurs in some Arabic dialects in final position; e.g., /mišaʙ/ ‘he went’. These are clearly innovations within Arabic (noted by the medieval Arab grammarians as well) and are paralleled by similar occurrences in Neo-Aramaic dialects (thanks to Bob Hoberman, p. c.). Neo-Aramaic /laʙ/h/ is paralleled by Israeli Hebrew /loʙ/ and, in many ways, by the English voiceless unreleased bilabial stop in yep and nope.
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graphemic aleph in Biblical Hebrew4 /q r / ‘he read’ presents evidence for an earlier */q r / or perhaps an even earlier */q ra/ < */qara/ (cf. /q rū ‘they read’), which is equivalent to Classical Arabic /qaraa/.5 Similarly, the Hebrew form points to an earlier *lō < earlier */la/6 = colloquial Arabic la, la, or laa (Hinds and Badawi 1986, 775). The Biblical Hebrew variant spellings (Koehler and Baumgartner 1998, 474) and (Koehler and Baumgartner 1998, 475) prove that the glottal stop was no longer pronounced. Still, the ubiquitous spelling with the glottal stop must be accounted for. Moroccan Arabic (so too Algerian Arabic) even has lla ‘no’ and lla7 ‘no way!; absolutely not!’ (Sobelman and Harrell 1963, 130 for the former alternant) demonstrating that 4
Hebrew refers to Biblical Hebrew unless otherwise noted. The problem of stress is not a relevant consideration here and its discussion is thus left unmarked. Let me take up the matter of the Hebrew final graphemic glottal stop. Could this merely be an orthographic convention to distinguish two common words: ‘no, not’ and ‘to him’, originally spelled (= Classical Arabic ), making it homographic to ‘to her’, and later spelled ? The answer is clearly in the negative, since the Proto-Semitic form contained a glottal stop. 6 Cf. Proto-Semitic raš ‘head’ > Classical Arabic ras ¤ colloquial Arabic rās = Hebrew rōš and Proto-Semitic *kas = colloquial Arabic kās = Hebrew kōs (spelled with aleph), although Gideon Goldenberg remarks that Anton Spitaler thought the glottal stop in the last example was a hypercorrection—a theory that I find farfetched. Bob Hoberman [p. c.] also notes the Hebrew verbs yōmar ‘he will say’ and yōkal ‘he will eat’, etc., that are spelled with aleph but where its phonetic realization as a glottal stop disappeared. Let me hasten to add that when it comes to a glottal stop, it is important to point out that Hebrew /yirε/ ‘he will see’ retains it, whereas Classical Arabic /yarā/ ‘he will see’ does not. Cf. Israeli Hebrew /lo/ ‘absolutely not!’. Although it is conceivable that the glottal stop might go back to Proto-Hebrew times, it is much more likely that the latter form is evidence of history repeating itself. Although the final glottal stop in this word may originally be due to sound symbolism (cf. English yep and nope that are marked for informal register, corresponding to more formal yes and no), the fact remains that it is Proto-Semitic. Proto-Hebrew glottal stop in final position disappeared only to surface again in Israeli Hebrew (see below) as a result of a linguistic cycle to give the root structure more than a mono-consonantal base—as a kind of ‘Systemzwang’. This is parallel to Modern English ask < Old English aks, which is also once again the form (aks) in several modern English dialects. Concerning the Israeli Hebrew development, Judith Rosenhouse [p. c.] notes that it seems to be a recent phenomenon and appears to be restricted to young adults, especially females, and seems to indicate abruptness or vehemence, particularly as an answer to a yes-no question in order to stop someone’s nagging. When I suggested that this might be a result of colloquial Arabic influence on Israeli Hebrew, she replied that this was not possible, since it was used by native speakers of Hebrew who do not have direct contact with Arabic speakers. Still, I pose the following question in rebuttal: does one have to have direct contact to have influence? Bob Hoberman [p. c.] notes that the final glottal stop in Israeli Hebrew is older than Rosenhouse thinks and it is not restricted to just “young adults” and “females,” and is not mainly confined to nagging. Arabic full investigation of this is, in my view, a desideratum. 7 The form with the geminated l actually gives a tri-consonantal body to this root: ll. 5
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Arabic dialects do not like to tolerate a mono-consonantal root. The first cited Moroccan form at least points to a bi-consonantal or geminated root with double /l/, although such roots are also not characteristic of Semitic languages in that C1C1C2 roots are unknown. Before continuing the discussion of the importance of the ʙaleph in the Hebrew word for ‘no, not’, it is necessary to point out that Classical Arabic, although usually very conservative in matters of phonology, is sometimes innovative. I will now discuss two significant innovations. First, many contemporary spoken Arabic dialects preserve the ProtoSemitic imperfect vowel preformative (the so-called taltalah) */i/ rather than */a/ = Classical Arabic /a/. Colloquial Arabic /yifqid/ corresponds do Akkadian /ipqid/, Aramaic /nepqud/, Hebrew /yipqod/, Geʚez / yәfqad/, and Classical Arabic /yafqid/ (Proto-Semitic fqd = ‘to seek’). Most Semitic languages and most modern Arabic dialects have /i/ or a vowel clearly originating from it, as opposed to Classical Arabic /a/. Although Moscati et al. (1964) postulate the vowel */a/ as Proto-Semitic, they also remark (1964, 143): “Some scholars, however, regard the vowel i of the prefix as primary, alongside a.” I believe there is much more evidence in favor of Proto-Semitic */i/ than */a/. Second, the Classical Arabic voiced alveo-palatal affricate ( jīm) ± is clearly secondary deriving from Proto-Semitic */g/. Although I reconstruct a voiced lamino-palatal fricative */ž/ for Proto-Colloquial Arabic, the entire story of the development in Arabic dialects is not germane to this investigation (see Kaye 1972 for the details). Looking at the cognate Semitic languages, Ugaritic l (variant spelling lʙ,8 syllabically spelled la-a indicating lā) does not support the colloquial Arabic archaic forms with glottal stop, but matches up exactly with Akkadian lā and Classical Arabic lā. Aramaic, Old South Arabian and Geʚez lend further support to the earlier glottal stop with their graphemic ʙalephs, although the Geʚez ʙallā is problematic from a comparative Semitic point of view. (Hebrew does have a negative ʙal for negative imperatives with cognates in Ugaritic, Phoenician, Biblical Aramaic, Geʚez, and possibly Akkadian ul ).9 Thus, any notion that colloquial Arabic laʙ(ʙ) might be secondary is, I believe, an erroneous perspective due
8 The Ugaritic spelling with a glottal stop is erroneous, although Koehler and Baumgartner (1998, 466) cite it. Gideon Goldenberg [p. c.] informs me that the spelling with ʙaleph was originally postulated by G.R. Driver; however, others thought that this was a verb meaning ‘to be weakened’ or ‘gleaming’. 9 See Koehler and Baumgartner (1998, 45).
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to the graphemic evidence from the ancient Semitic languages. Rather, Classical Arabic lā (which might represent /la/ since the grapheme for the hamza is late—see further below) should be viewed as the later development < Proto-Semitic */la/. When the final glottal stop disappeared in this Classical Arabic word, the previous vowel was lengthened as a result of compensatory lengthening. It should be noted that this form without the final glottal stop breaks with root bi-consonantalism or tri-consonantalism in favor of mono-consonantalism—a very rare, if not impossible, situation in the classical and modern Semitic languages, especially for words (prepositions and other function words, such as b- ‘in’ or l‘to; for’, are mono-consonantal, although the latter mono-consonantal form is certainly related to the bi-consonantal root l in Hebrew and the tri-consonantal ly in Classical Arabic (Koehler and Baumgartner 1998, 48).10 Moreover, it is not impossible that in the very early stages of Classical Arabic could have represented /la/, but that the hamza was not written on top of the alif.11 This spelling represents the scripta defectiva, much in the way the hamza of Modern Standard Arabic is often omitted in /uktub/ ‘write! (masc. sg.)’ as it should be in /waktub/ ‘and write! (masc. sg.)’. This hamzatu lwasl should, strictly speaking, be written in word-initial position, at least in some varieties of Modern Standard Arabic.12 I can only speculate that the Akkadian graphemes might also represent an earlier pronunciation in a pre-Akkadian dialect or in early Akkadian with a final glottal stop before the general loss (in East Semitic as a whole) of the pharyngeals and laryngeals. Since one is confronted with the fact that Proto-Hebrew *-a > (as in /q r / ‘he read’ discussed above), one may be forced to hypothesize that the Proto-Semitic word for ‘no’ has a long ā, thus yielding a long ō via the Canaanite vowel shift. It is important to point out that *qara ‘he read’ (previously discussed) does not yield qarō or the like; thus the inputting original forms had to be different because of the very different
10 There are other prepositions in the Semitic languages which clearly have bi-consonantal roots, such as Hebrew m- ‘from’ < *min (Koehler and Baumgartner 1998, 535) usually assimilated to the former form, and Hebrew al ‘on’ < ly. 11 Jonathan Owens notes [p. c.] that the hamza was a “post-hoc addition to Arabic orthography, which is why the orthographic rules relating to it are so complicated.” 12 Gideon Goldenberg [p. c.] comments that in early Modern Standard Arabic (e.g., Būlāq Press, Cairo), fully vocalized Modern Standard Arabic was printed with the hamza sign on the alif only when the glottal stop is phonemic, such as in urīdu ‘I want’. He maintains: “The rule to write the hamza where the glottal stop is a positional alternant was adopted by the Egyptian Ministry of Education, then became rather popular.”
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outputs of the development. Bob Hoberman [p. c.] suggests that /a/ > /ō/ “was only in closed syllables where the // was the syllable coda.” The relative chronologies of the various sound changes are also important factors to consider affecting vowel quantity. 2 Biblical Hebrew13 and Comparative Semitic Evidence for Proto-Hebrew 14 */ʙ/ in Final Position Proving Proto-Hebrew */lōʙ/ < Proto-Semitic */laʙ/ ‘no’ 1. /b /15
‘enter; come’ Classical Arabic /bāa/, Akkadian /bāu/, Ugaritic */bw/, Phoenician /b/, Old South Arabian /bh/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 111) 2. /b r / ‘create’ Old South Arabian /br/ ‘build’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 146–47) Classical Arabic /baraa/ is not in Koehler and Baumgartner (1998). Wehr (1974, 49) lists it (‘create’). 3. /gεbε/ ‘ditch’ = Akkadian /gubbu/ < */gubu/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 163) 4. dr /der ōn/ ‘abhorrence’ = Classical Arabic /daraa/ ‘repel (evil)’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 217) 5. /dεšε/ ‘grass’ Akkadian /dišu/ ‘spring’, Biblical Aramaic /ditā/, Syriac /tāðā/ (according to Carl Brockelmann via Rainer Voigt [p. c.], /teðā/ ~ /taðā/), Classical Arabic /θadiya/ ‘be moist’, Old South Arabian /dθ/ ‘season of grass; spring’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 220)
13 The Biblical Hebrew data in Section 2.0 of this essay have been taken from Koehler and Baumgartner (1998), an updated and revised version of Koehler and Baumgartner (1958). These 40 roots offer the evidence from other Semitic languages of roots ending in ʙaleph, corresponding to Proto-Semitic */la/ ‘no, not’. 14 It makes little difference whether this happened in Proto-Hebrew or a pre-Hebrew dialect. 15 It is important to point out that the ʙaleph is pronounced in various conjugated forms of tertiae-ʙaleph roots; e.g., /b ū/ ‘they entered’, /y bōū/ ‘they will enter’.
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6. /hū/
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
‘he’ Classical Arabic /huwa/ but Bedouin Arabic /hū/. Cf. the // in Geez /wәәtū/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 226). /hī/ ‘she’ works the same as /hū/. Cf. Geez /yәәtī/. Koehler and Baumgartner (1998) do not cite Bedouin Arabic */hī/, but it probably exists (Koehler and Baumgartner 226). Koehler and Baumgartner (226) reconstruct Proto-Ethiopian Semitic */hūatu/ ‘he’ and */hīati/ ‘she’. Gideon Goldenberg [p. c.] notes that Qumranic Hebrew /hūa/ ‘he’ and /hīa/ ‘she’ parallel the Classical Arabic forms with /-a/. hb /nεhb / ‘hide oneself ’ Classical Arabic /xabaa/ ‘hide’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 270) /h g / ‘shame; confusion’ Classical Arabic /xajaa/ ‘look ashamed’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 275) /h t / ‘miss the mark’ Classical Arabic /xati a/ ‘make a mistake; sin’ Wehr (1974, 245) Koehler and Baumgartner (1998) cite Classical Arabic /xati ya/. Ugaritic /xt /, Biblical Aramaic /xăt /, Old South Arabian /xt/, Geez xt (Koehler and Baumgartner 288) ‘fall ill’ /h l / Classical Arabic /xalaa/, Old South Arabian /hl/ ‘fall ill’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 298). Gary A. Rendsburg [p. c.] notes that this root is a “by-form” of /hly/ ‘become weak’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 300) = Middle Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic /hl/. /hεm (h)/ ‘sweat; butter’ Ugaritic /xmt/; Jewish Aramaic /xεmăθ ()/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 308) /y re/ ‘fear’ Ugaritic /yr/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 399); Avi Shivtiel [p. c.] adds Classical Arabic waraʙa ‘to repel’, listed in Lane Vol. 8 (1893, 2933). /k l / ‘restrain; keep from’
classical and colloquial arabic archaisms
14. /kisse/
15. /kεsε/
16. /l bo/
17. /y s /
18. /l bī/
19. /m le/
20. /m s /
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Classical Arabic /kalaa/, Egyptian Aramaic, Jewish Aramaic, Syriac, Geez kl (Koehler and Baumgartner 436) ‘seat’ Akkadian /kussū/, Ugaritic /ks/, Phoenician /ks/, Aramaic /k rse/, Syriac /kursyā/ with plene written /u/, Classical Arabic /kursī/ < */kursi/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 446) ‘headdress of the moongod at the time of the full moon; full moon’ Akkadian /kusēu/, Phoenician /ks/, Syriac /kāsā/ ~ /kasā/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 446) ‘East of Jordan’ (Gary A. Rendsburg [p. c.] translates ‘entrance; on the way to’.) Assyrian /labu/, Egyptian /rзbw/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 470) ‘go out’ Phoenician, Ugaritic /ys/, Old South Arabian /wz/, Geez ws ~ wd (Koehler and Baumgartner 393) ‘lion’ Akkadian */labu/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 472 state that they follow Benno Landsberger), Ugaritic /lbt/, Old South Arabian /lb(t)/. Avi Shivtiel [p. c.] adds Classical Arabic /labwa/ ‘lioness’, not in Koehler and Baumgartner, but listed in Wehr (1974, 857). Vit Bubenik [p. c.] alerts me to the alternant /labua/ ‘lioness’ (Madina 1973, 591). The Proto-Semitic root is lb. The form with the semivowel is secondary. ‘be full’ Classical Arabic /malaa/ ‘fill’; /malia/ ‘be full’, Old Aramaic, Biblical Aramaic, Ugaritic /ml/, Akkadian /malū/, (Koehler and Baumgartner 523); Geez /mala/, not in Koehler and Baumgartner, added courtesy of Aaron D. Rubin, [p. c.]. ‘meet; find’ Classical Arabic /antā/ < /amtā/, Jewish Aramaic /mәs /, Biblical Aramaic /mәt /, Syriac /mәtā/ ~ /mәtay/, Old South Arabian /mz/, Geez ms (Koehler and Baumgartner 553)
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21. /m r /
‘feed’ Classical Arabic /maria/ ‘agree with (of food)’, Ugaritic / mr/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 563) 22. /mass / ‘Masu’ = /masu/ ‘name of a North Arabian tribe’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 570) 23. /n / ‘half done’ Classical Arabic /nāa/ ‘be raw, uncooked (especially of meat)’ (Wehr 1974, 1014) (Koehler and Baumgartner 570) 24. nb denominative of /n ī/ ‘prophet’ Classical Arabic /nubūa/ ‘prophecy’, /tanabbaa/ (Form V) ‘to prophecy’ (Wehr 1974, 937) (Koehler and Baumgartner 586) 25. nd ‘drive (cattle); detach, remove from’ Geez nd ‘drive cattle’ 26. /n š / ‘lift up’ Classical Arabic /našaa/, Phoenician, Moabite, Ugaritic /nš/, Old South Arabian /nš/, Geez ns (Koehler and Baumgartner 638) Biblical Hebrew /nәšīīm/ ‘clouds; damp; fog’, Classical Arabic /naš/ ‘hovering clouds’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 638) 27. /n š / ‘lay claim; lend’ Middle Hebrew nšy, Classical Arabic /nasaa/ ‘grant credit’ (Wehr 1974, 959) (Koehler and Baumgartner 638) 28. /s l (h)/ participle /mәsull īm/ ‘be paid’ pointing to sl Classical Arabic /salaa/ ‘pay promptly’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 658) 29. /pεlε/ ‘miracle’ Classical Arabic /fal/ ‘good omen’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 759) 30. /pεrε/ ‘zebra’16 Classical Araic /fara/ ‘wild ass; onager’ (Wehr 1974, 701). The Akkadian cognate is purīmu. (Koehler and Baumgartner 775). Vit Bubenik [p. c.] states that Akkadian parū ‘mule’ is closer phonologically than is purīmu.
16 Although Koehler and Baumgartner (1998, 775) translate ‘zebra’, this is erroneous for ‘onager’ (thanks to Wolfhart Heinrichs and Gary A. Rendsburg for this correction).
classical and colloquial arabic archaisms 31. /s b /
32. /s me/
33. qy
34. qn
35. /q r /
36. /r p /
37. /ś ne/
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‘army’ Akkadian /sabāu/, Old South Arabian /db/, Geez / sb/. Loanword in Egyptian /dbi/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 790) ‘be thirsty’ Classical Arabic /zamia/ (Wehr 1974, 583) (Koehler and Baumgartner /zamiya/ seem to be erroneous.) Ugaritic /zm/, Akkadian /samāu/, Old South Arabian /zm/, Geez sm (Koehler and Baumgartner 806) /q (h)/, impf. /y qī/ ‘vomit’ Classical Arabic /qāa/, Geez qy ‘vomit’, Akkadian /qā u/ [sic] for /qāu/ ‘excrete’ (Egyptian qз ‘vomit’) (Koehler and Baumgartner 836–37) (also Koehler and Baumgartner 1958, 836–37) /qinne/ ‘be envious of ’ Classical Arabic /qanaa/ ‘become intensely red’, /qāni/ ‘blood-red, deep-red’ (Wehr 1974, 791) (Koehler and Baumgartner 842–43) ‘read’ Classical Arabic /qaraa/ ‘read’, Ugaritic /qr/ ‘read’ Koehler and Baumgartner (851) relate Classical Arabic ‘read’ with /qr/ II ‘encounter, befall’ and not with /qr/ I ‘call, recite’ > ‘read’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 849). In my opinion, this view is erroneous. Their theory is also expressed in Koehler and Baumgartner (1958, 849). They further note that Biblical Hebrew qry = / q r (h)/ ‘encounter’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 1958, 853) = Classical Arabic /qaraa/ ‘to go about’ (not in Wehr 1974) and Classical Arabic /qarā/ ‘receive as guest’ (Wehr /qarā, yaqrī/ ‘receive hospitably; entertain’ (1974, 761) ‘heal’ Classical Arabic /rafaa/ ‘mend; darn’, Old South Arabian /rf/ ‘repair’, Geez rf ‘stitch together’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 903) ‘hate’ Classical Arabic /šanaa/ ‘hate’ (Wehr 1974, 487)
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(Koehler and Baumgartner /šaniya/ for Classical Arabic appears to be erroneous). Ugaritic /šn/, Old South Arabian /śn/ (Koehler and Baumgartner 925) 38. /šәb / ‘Sheba’ Classical Arabic /saba/, ‘Sheba’ Akkadian /sabe/ ‘mankind’ (?), Old South Arabian /sb/ ‘Sheba’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 939) 39. /š w/ ‘a bad thing’ Classical Arabic /sāa/ ‘be evil; bad’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 951) 40. /t / ‘room’ Akkadian /tāu/ ‘room; guard chamber’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 1015)
3. Conclusion The basic thesis of this work is to affirm that Classical Arabic should stop being referred to as the preserver of all, or nearly all, original ProtoSemitic phenomena. This paper suggests that certain Classical Arabic forms are indeed secondary, as e.g., /lā/ ‘no’ discussed above. Consider also Classical Arabic qalb ‘heart’ < * lbb ‘heart’. The latter root is also fully preserved in Classical Arabic lubb ‘heart’ = Hebrew leb and Akkadian libbu < Proto-Semitic *libbu (= Proto Afro-Asiatic */lib-/ ~ */lub-/ (Orel and Stolbova 1995, 362). Moreover, Egyptian ʙib supports Proto-Semitic *libbu, while the vocalism in Classical Arabic lubb can be explained as the result of regressive labial assimilation. Thus, Classical Arabic q- in qalb is a remnant of a prefix of some kind or root determinative17 used in an old Arabic dialect or an earlier Semitic language antedating Classical Arabic (cf. Classical Arabic qadˢima or qadˢama ‘to gnaw; compress the lips’ (Wehr 1974, 544 < dˢamma ‘bring together’ further suggestive of q- as a root determinative of some kind). Additional comparisons along the lines of the present investigation of Classical Arabic and colloquial Arabic dialects with other Semitic languages will undoubtedly further
17 Harsusi /helbēb/ and Mehri /hewbēb/ have /h-/ before the root /lb/ ‘heart’, which is apparently lost in Soqotri /elbeb/ and Sheri /ūb/. Mokilko (East Chadic) /ulbo/ ‘heart’ looks as though it displays */q/ > //, as occurs in many eastern Arabic dialects.
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demonstrate that spoken Arabic dialects occasionally preserve more original forms than does Classical Arabic.
4. References Hinds, Martin and El-Said Badawi. 1986. Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic-English. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Kaye, Alan S. 1972. “Arabic /žiim/: Arabic Synchronic and Diachronic Study.” Linguistics 79, pp. 31–72. ——. 1976. Chadian and Sudanese Colloquial Arabic in the Light of Comparative Arabic Dialectology. The Hague: Mouton and Co. Koehler, Ludwig and Walter Baumgartner. 1958. Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros. Leiden: E.J. Brill. (Abbreviated Koehler and Baumgartner 1958.) ——. 1998. A Bilingual Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. Leiden: Brill. (Abbreviated Koehler and Baumgartner 1998.) Lane, Edward William. 1893. An Arabic-English Lexicon. London: Williams and Norgate. (Reprinted 1968, Beirut: Librairie du Liban.) Madina, Maan Z. 1973. Arabic-English Dictionary of the Modern Literary Language. New York: Pocket Books. Moscati, Sabatino, Anton Spitaler, Edward Ullendorff, Wolfram von Soden, eds. 1964. An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (Porta Linguarum Orientalism). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Orel, Vladimir E. and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Sobelman, Harvey and Richard S. Harrell, eds. 1963. Arabic Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Wehr, Hans. 1974. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. 3rd ed. by J. Milton Cowan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Spoken Language Services.
DO THEY SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE? LANGUAGE USE IN JUBA LOCAL COURTS Catherine Miller IREMAM-CNRS of Aix en Provence, France
1. Introduction 1.1 Language Description and Language Uses: the unavoidable discrepency K. Versteegh’s book (1984) on Pidginization and Creolization in Arabic was one of the first attempts to link two previously separated domains, Arabic studies and Pidgin/Creole studies. The controversy that followed publication of his book contributed to diffusion of information about the main contemporary Arabic based Pidgin-Creole varieties of the South Sudanese basin, namely Ki-Nubi and Juba Arabic (and former Turku). No serious Arabicist can now ignore the three above mentioned names, and a number of publications have been devoted to the description of these varieties. To recall but a few: B. Heine (1982), X. Luffin (2005), U. Mahmud (1979), C. Miller (1984, 1992), J. Owens (1991, 1997), M. Tosco (1993, 1995), R. Watson (1984), I. Wellens (2005), E. Yokwe (1995). Most of these studies provide a systemic description of Ki-Nubi or Juba Arabic, and compare them with other Pidgin-Creole languages, with other Arabic vernaculars, or with local African languages in order to establish their specificity and autonomy and to postulate hypotheses about their genesis and development. Although still considered as the ‘orphan of the orphans’ (Owens 2001), marginalized in both the Creole Studies and the Arabic studies, Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi start to be rather well described, even if many more need to be done. One of the impacts of all these studies is the acknowledgement that Ki-Nubi and Juba-Arabic are indeed autonomous and specific varieties that cannot be confused with any other Arabic vernaculars. They are identified through their specific name; as it is well known, to name something is to provide it with a specific identification. An interesting development of this linguistic achievement is the fact that, since Ki-Nubi and Juba Arabic have been identified as ‘specific’
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languages, the local speakers (Nubi people from Uganda or Kenya and all Sudanese Southerners) are expected to speak what the linguists have described as Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi. This is what is happening for example in the case of language tests applied to asylum seekers in a number of European countries. If somebody claims to be a Southern Sudanese but speaks an Arabic variety close to Northern Sudanese colloquial varieties instead of the Juba Arabic described by the linguists, he cannot be a ‘true’ Southerner. Asked to provide some counter-expertises, I realized that the way of speaking of these ‘doubtful Southerners’ was sometimes rather similar to some cases I recorded long ago in some local courts of Juba, with well-attested Southerners! In many contexts, most Sudanese Southerners constantly shift from a more ‘Creole’ level of Juba Arabic (or basilectal level) to a level more influenced by Northern Sudanese Colloquial Arabic (mesolectal level). The coexistence of different levels of Juba Arabic was first highlighted by U. Mahmud (1979), who applied the Creolistic concepts of continuum and basilectal and mesolectal varieties to describe the variation found in the verbal system. I dedicated a number of papers to emphasize the degree of variation and diversity included under the generic label of Juba Arabic (Miller 1984, 1987, 1989). In the continuum approach, each pole (basilectal/mesolectal) is characterized by a number of specific features (isoglosses), while the intermediate levels of the continuum are characterized by different degrees of occurrence and melting of the various features. It appears, however, that it is extremely difficult to draw an implicational scale that will be characterized by a regular acquisition of dialectal features along the continuum scale. In fact, each speaker tends to have its own way of mixing the various features, some focusing more on phonological features, others on lexicon or morphological features. I myself, insisted on the fact that the evolution of Juba Arabic was far from linear, and was not automatically leading to a process of decreolization. Different trends of change and restructuration were simultaneously recorded in a city like Juba and different influences were operating on the daily language; one leading towards a rapprochement to Khartoum Arabic, the other toward what I have called a process of vernacularization (Miller 1987). This diversity and variability of Juba-Arabic raise the following questions: where are the boundaries of Juba Arabic? On which criteria can we decide that a person speaks or does not speak Juba Arabic? Are the
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speakers conscious that they are mixing different features and variables in their speech? Do the speakers and auditors have the same perception than an outsider linguist? 1.2
Language Uses in Juba Local Courts
In order to illustrate the diversity prevailing under the generic label of Juba-Arabic, I choose to present complete samples of interaction, instead of short extracts given as examples. These samples were recorded in 1981 and 1984 in two local Courts of Juba, the capital-city of Southern Sudan. Local courts were of particular interest because very different kinds of people were coming to present and defend their cases. Taking into account that more than twenty years have passed since the mid 1980s, and that almost nothing is known about the present linguistic reality of Juba, such samples could be considered as a kind of linguistic testimony of what speaking Juba Arabic meant in the 1980s. The term ‘local court’ and its Arabic equivalent makāma ʙahliyya ~ makama ahliya was applied to Southern Sudanese A and B Courts at the levels of the village, the district or the city. Various languages were used in these local Courts. – Outside Juba, the A Court was the village’s Court headed by the village’s chief, assisted by two or three elders. The language of communication was, most of the time, the local African vernacular (Bari, Kakwa, Zande, Moro, etc.). The B Court was the district Court headed by the paramount Chief assisted by the village chiefs. It dealt with matters not solved in the A Court. In multilingual districts of Equatoria, such as Yei B Court, the languages spoken were local vernaculars (Kakwa, Moro, Madi, Avokaya), Juba Arabic, Bangala (the local variety of Lingala) and a few English. – In Juba, the only A court was the Garawiyya, located in the center of Juba, near the main market, and dealing with low-level criminal cases (robbery, neighbors’ quarrels, etc.) involving any person living in Juba, whatever his ethnic affiliation and period of stay. The court was headed by an appointed local judge (Ramadan, 49 y. old) and two assistants. The main language of communication was Arabic (Juba Arabic up to Northern Sudanese Arabic (NSA). A few speakers used an African vernacular and were assisted by a translator. The summary of the case was always pronounced in Arabic but written in English. The Kator B court was the Bari local court (the Bari being the main local group of the Juba-Rejaf area), located in Kator district. It was
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dealing with personal status cases involving at least one Bari participant. The President of Kator B court was a Bari (Stephen, a retired policeman), assisted by two or three Bari elders. The language of communication was mainly Juba Arabic, Bari and a few English. The localization and specialization of each court influenced the language use. In Juba, the Garawiyya court was far more exposed to the influence of NSA than the Kator B court. In the Garawiyya, only 4 speakers, not resident in Juba, spoke in their native vernaculars, while 35 speakers spoke only in Arabic (with 16 speaking a more mesolectal variety and five speaking NSA). In Kator, 10 speakers spoke mainly in Bari against 24 in Arabic (with none speaking NSA and 14 more or less mesolectal): FIGURE 1 Courts
LANGUAGE USES IN KATOR AND GARAWIYYA LOCAL COURTS
Speakers* Non-AR Vernaculars Juba Arabic
Kator B Garawiyya
34 39
Total
73
10 Bari 3 Bari 1 Dinka 14
NSA
English
24 30
– 5
– –
54
5
0
* Number of speakers does not include the Judges
The above figure classifies each speaker according to the use of one dominant language (English, NSA, JA and Non Arabic Vernaculars). In fact, the delimitation between each language was not that clear-cut and there were many cases of language mixing, as will be evident in the Corpus presented in 5. Appendices, the texts: 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.
2. Presentation and Brief Analyse of the Corpus The samples presented in the Appendix are taken from three cases, considered to be representative of three types of speaker. The participants involved in Case 1, belong to the important Nilotic Dinka-speaking group, a non-local Juba ethnic group. Not well-educated, they speak Juba-Arabic as a second language. In Case 2, the participants belong to a small ethnic group from Western Southern Sudan (Bay from Bahr al Ghazal Region), are educated, work in the police or the army, and speak a level of Arabic very much influenced by NSA and WSA (Western
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Sudanic Arabic). In Case 3, speakers are all Bari Juba citizens and speak Bari or a vernacularized Juba Arabic, very much influenced by Bari features. In both courts, the procedure was rather similar. The case starts with an oath (on the Bible, the Qurʙān, or a spear according to the participant’s religion),—see (s.9) in Case 1 and (s.14) in Case 2. Then the plaintiff tells his/her story; after some questions, the judge summarizes the story and asks the defendant to present his/her own version. Additional questions follow; sometimes, additional testimonies are required. After listening to all parties, the Court deliberates and announces its verdict. While most cases took between 30 to 40 minutes in Juba, they could take hours in the villages. Cases tended to be shorter in the Garawiyya than in Kator. Speakers are presented as follow: J.= Judge S. = Court’s Secretary. T. = Translator, P. = Plaintiff, D. = Defendant and W. = Witness. Elements in italic are considered to be ‘average basilectal’ Juba Arabic. Elements in bold are considered to be more ‘mesolectal.’ Underlined elements are borrowings from the local languages, mainly Bari. Plain words are English borrowings. Many elements are common to both basilectal and mesolectal Juba Arabic. They have been put in both italic and bold, but the distinction between more basilectal or more mesolectal remains very fluid. The transcription of the Bari sentences have been done in 1987 by a Bari student, who followed the standard Bari written system used in Equatoria. Mesolectal features taken into consideration include a) phonological features (consonants , x, , t, d, s, , h, long vowels and geminates), b) morphological features (object suffix pronouns, definite article, plural and gender affixes, TMA and person verbal affixes) c) lexical items. It must be noted that the insertion of mesolectal features lead often to mix forms, which are neither Northern Sudanese Arabic (NSA), nor Creole Juba-Arabic. African vernacular features taken into consideration include: a) phonological features (p, ŋ, ň, , ε, ", θ, j strong palatalization and affrication); b) lexical items and idiomatic expressions. Syntactic features will not be discussed here.
The brief analysis that follows intends to higlight the individual level as well as main examples of mixing with focus on mesolectal insertion. But
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readers are invited to go to Appendix 1, 2 and 3 in order to evaluate the degree of mixing within each individual speech. 2.1 Text 1, The Dinka Case, Garawiyya Juba, 1981. (Transcript in Appendix 1) Summary: A Dinka woman coming from a village accuses a Dinka man living in Juba to have rob her a sac of sorghum when she came down from the ferry. She speaks only Dinka and her speech is translated by another Dinka from Juba. The case started the day before but was postponed in order to look for an additional witness who could prove the identity of the defendant. The woman affirms that he is called Maluk while the defendant claims to be called Deng. At the beginning of the second audience, the secretary summarizes the facts (s.1) and then the Judge is looking for the witness (s.2 to s.9) who finally arrives and supports the plaintiff against the defendant that he knows since 1975 (s.10 to s.20); the later is finally recognized culprit by the Court (s.21). This case illustrates a type of language use rather common in the Garawiyya Court, that I will define as a formal basilectal non vernacularized type of Juba-Arabic. This type of speech is very common among non L1 speakers of JA (rural people, older generation) in formal situations and lead to many mix forms. Although it contains most of JA basilectal features (such as verbal invariable forms), it is characterized by numerous instances of phonological variation (s/; k/x; j/z; a/ā, etc.) and by the frequent dropping of the verb’s final epenthetic vowel (kelem vs. JA kelemu ‘speak’, gal vs. JA gale ‘say’, baaref vs. JA bi-arifu ‘know’, etc.). A number of lexical items are taken from NSA like der ‘want’ (NSA dāyir/ JA aoju), bet ‘house’ (NSA bēt/JA jua), particle aw ‘or’ (JA wela), etc. Some ‘old’ terms inherited from the Ottoman military language remain like dosoman ‘troubles, fight’ (cf. s.8) and appear to be part of the court vocabulary. One notes the irregular insertion of a number of mesolectal morphological features borrowed from NSA such as definite article al(l/el) ‘the’, verbal suffixes and prefixes as well as affix pronouns. In Case 1, all speakers speak this formal non vernacularized JA, with various degree of mesolectal insertions. The two Dinka participants (the translator and the witness) use independent personal pronouns and invariable verbal stems like Translator (T.) in sentence (s.3) nina má dεr māθi ‘we don’t want to go’ or sentence
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(s.5) yaú ána kélem le θede ‘I talked to him like this’. The pronunciation shows the influence of the Dinka Mother Tongue, particularly concerning the realization of the phonemes // /s/ and /z/ realized as [θ] (a frequent pronunciation among Nilotic speakers) like in θenú ‘what’ (JA senu /NSA enū); θol ‘somebody’ (NSA zōl/ JA jol), etc. Vernacular influence is also noticeable in the realization of the vowels, with a tendency to realize /e/ like an open [ε] and /o/ like an open [ ]: kň (s.3), le (s.5), blīs (s.12), baārf (s.13), nugasr (s.12), bθ and θka (s.16), etc. The Dinka witness (W) realizes a number of inflected verbal forms and affix pronouns: (s.12)
nugasr (JA ana bigeseru/NSA aga ar)’to limit, shorten’, (s.20) axūk (JA aku btak) ‘your brother’, gutta lek (JA ana gale le-ita) ‘I told you’, negabel (JA. ana bigabalu/NSA agābil) ‘I meet’, nesalem (JA ana biwodi salam to/NSA asallam) ‘I great’, neddu (JA ana wodi leo/NSA naddū) ‘I gave him’). It may be noted that 1st sg. imperfective form is n- + verb (similar to WSA) and not a- + verb (= NSA).
The secretary (S) has a JA pronunciation: (s.1) asrin ‘twenty’ (NSA arīn), asan ‘because’ (NSA aān), jól ‘person’ (NSA zōl) but izebu ‘he brings’ (JA jibu/ NSA ijib). The Judge displays many instances of phonological variation: z/j (s.2) winú zól el-bārefu jól da (with dominance of [j] cf. (s.4); x/k (s.6) axu ‘brother’, (s.15) kemsa ‘five’, (s.17) inta bikutu ‘you put’; /s (s.4) a∫an/ asan ‘because’, (s.17) musu ‘isn’t it’. He keeps many invariable verbal forms: cf. (s.4) nina il ‘we take’, (s.8) nina balasu ‘we stop’, (s.21) inta bigul sehi ‘you say right’, etc. and many independent personal and possessive pronouns: (s.9) el-mahkāma nadi eta “the Court calls you;” (s.15) inta baarfo aglaK bitao “you know his behavior?” (s.21) weled btak suker winu “where is your small boy?” The mesolectal variables include the 2nd sg. personal pronoun inta ‘you’ (JA ita), pl. deictic del ‘this’ (JA de), definite article l (JA de) and a number of conjugated verbal forms: (s.9) twori ‘you show’, (s.21) kizibta ‘you lied’, sarεkta ‘you stole’, etc. The conjugation of verbs leads to some cases of malapropism such as (s.9) nasaltak “we ask you” with the coexistence of n- 1st pers. imperfective and -t 1st or 2nd pers. perfective. Another mix form is the verb gul in (s.4) bas iji wóri gūl “he just come to tell that” (JA bas bija wori gale/ NSA iji igūl or iji iworri innu). The insertion of mesolectal features increases at the end of the case (s.22), when the Judge is enouncing his verdict and is using a number of ‘technical terms’ such as tazāwir ‘falsification’, jiza ‘faults/penalty’.
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Note however that the Judge always alternates basilectal and mesolectal realizations like the alternation sarεkta/ita sereG in (s.22). A number of mix JA/NSA realizations recorded in Case 1, were almost permanent in the Judges’ speech of the Garawiyya and appear also in Case 2. They seem to indicate that, indeed, this type of mix level was considered as the appropriate level in the Garawiyya Court. 2.2 Texte 2, The Bay Case, Garawiyya Juba, 1981. (Transcript in Appendix 2) Summary: a young Bay police-lady (Hawa) from Bahr al Ghazal accuses two Bay guys to have tried to attack her the night before. She recalls that she was going back to her home when the two young men started to insult her and beat her. Fortunately she was able to call for help and a soldier came to rescue her and, after many events, managed to bring the two boys to the police office. The two defendants contest the lady’s version and claim to be victims of a confusion, i.e. the soldier took them instead of the real culprit. The lady and the two boys agree that they never met before, in spite of the fact that they all belong to the same small tribe (Bay). The two Judges argue between them concerning the importance of this common ethnic background. The soldier is called as a witness and makes a very long testimony, which supports the policewoman’s story. After many discussions and controversies, the two boys are recognized culprits and have to pay a fine of 36 Sudanese pounds. This case illustrates a more mesolectal level, mastered by the persons who have been educated in Arabic and particularly those coming from the region of Bahr al-Ghazal. However, each speaker has his specificity, and while the young lady is the most influenced by colloquial features, the men alternate between basilectal and mesolectal features and create many mix forms. A number of lexemes appear to be shared by all the participants such as der (JA auju) ‘want’, bet (JA jua) ‘house’, gul (JA gale) ‘say’, fat (JA futu) ‘pass’, darab (JA dugu) ‘heat’, suf/uf (JA ainu) ‘see’, le-raet-ma (JA lakadi) ‘until’, etc.. At the level of the verbal system, one notes many occurrences of participial forms such as jay ‘coming’, gaad ‘staying’, ā el ‘working’ and the frequent use of TMA auxiliaries/verbal particles like kan, bikun, gam/gum, gaad, lisa, biga/baga, ja, aoz. Hawa (s.15 and s.17), the young policewoman speaks a level very close to NSA or rather to Western Sudanese Arabic (WSA). She pronounces many long vowels, as well as velar fricative /x/ and sibilant // but she realizes few pharyngeal and emphatic consonants: i.e. (s.15) saa ‘watch’
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(NSA saa), saba ‘morning’ NSA abā), talāta ‘I came’ (NSA talat) but end of (s.17) sa'a fekka “the watch dropped.” She conjugates almost all verbal forms: cf. (s.15) jit, saketta, zitta, hum zādu and (s.17) gumta, wageftu, gulta, tetfahim, netfahim, ma∫et, etc. Object pronouns and possessive pronouns are systematically suffixed: (s.15) garas-ni fi-sulb-i “he pinched me in my buttocks;” (s.17) dagga∫-ni, axwān-i, masak-ni, xa∫m-ak, bedugg-әk, etc. She uses a number of TMA auxiliaries, like gam and ja to mark inchoative: (s.15) ana gumta zitta katwa btay (s.17) da tawāli masaknī ja garasni waled de ja gam darabni bunya
“I accelerated my walk” “He immediately sized me and start to beat me” “The boys started to beat me strongly.”
Hawa masters the morphological rules of NSA and shows very few occurrences of malapropism or mix form. Gender and plural agreement however remains irregular: (s.15) ana jay “I came-masc.,” ana mā∫ya “I went-fem.;” (s.17) arabiya aba yagif “the car (f.) refused (masc.) to stop (masc.),” awlād der iyamal mayi mu∫ākel “boys (pl.) want (sg.) hemakes with me problems”/ “the boys want to make me problems.” Defendant 1 (John Gabriel, s.28, s.30, s.34) starts answering both Judges with mesolectal features: (s.7)
J2 sógol btāk ? “Your work”
D1: mā ∫ā el/ tāleb “Not working/student”
(s. 24) samētu “I heard-it” (s.28) ana kunt jay min hay kәmεr∫yal li-l-bεT “I was coming from district Commercial to the house.”
Then he alternates between few inflected verbal forms and many invariable verbal forms as well as between affixed and independent pronouns: (s.30): ú ma bōlis gaadīn isuggū zōl de / uman fāt giddām/ ana ja wara/ nama ana wosol mōbil/ /he and police stay-pl they-drive person this/ they pass (sg.) in front/ I came (inv.) behind/ when I arrive (inv.) Mobil/
“He and the police officer were driving this person, they passed in front, I was coming behind when I arrived at the Mobil Station.” (s. 38) bass darab bitoman ana ja katal /only fight of-them I came (inv.) kill (inv.)/ “I just came to stop their fight.”
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Defendant 2 (William Peter, s.45, s.47, s.51) realizes many inflected verbal forms and affix pronouns: (s.52)
gabodūni zamān gale nem∫i-l-nukta ni∫uf/ min wisolta unak ∫an nera mukila bta dn kif /they-size-me (3rd perf.) time say I-go (1st imp.) the post I-see (1st imp)/from I-arrived (1st perf.) there for I-see (1st imp) problem of John how/ “They captured me when I went to the police station to see/since I arrived there to assess the problem of John . . .”
Like the Dinka witness in Case 1, William uses the WSA n- 1st sg. imperfect pers. pronoun instead of NSA a-. Note also the use of verb gale ‘say’ to introduce an embedded sentence (zamān gale ‘time that’). The witness (W. the soldier) starts with a formal mesolectal level: (s.75) ana kunta ∫a al fi-l-jawazāt, ana sāken fi Muluk “I was working in the passports, I lived in Muluk.” But very quickly he alternates between basilectal and mesolectal features: ana jit ja wosolu fi medresa /ana fāt/ fialan fatet.. “I arrive near the school/ I passed/ of course I passed”; baadin ana jīt ana gul “when I arrived I say,” ana gulta tayib ya axwāna matakum sakal bit fi tarīka zede “I said good oh my brothers, don’t quarrel a girl in this way” (note JA negative imperative marker matakum ‘dont’!’). He ends up speaking almost only Juba-Arabic, including at the phonological level ( >s, x > k). Unlike the speakers of Case 1, his level of Juba Arabic is more grammaticalized. It includes many verbal TMA markers as well as embedded sentences: (s.75bis) dá tawāli gum amol musakīl fo mōbili li raat ma aoz kaser mōrat bta arabiya zatu “He immediatly started making problems in the Mobil station until he was almost breaking the mirror of the car” ana bija fūt fi jawazāt ya neselem kelem kabār li jamaa fi taakir el ana akεr line zaman “I was going to the passeport (office) in order to bring the news to the people about the delay that I delayed before.”
Compared to Case 1, Judge 1 (Ramadan) shows the same level of phonological variation (s/, x/k, z/j) but uses more lexical and morphological mesolectal features (see s.25, s.37, s.52, s.74, s.79). It may be noted that in (s.25) when Judge1 is summarizing the testimony of the police-
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woman, he makes more gender agreement than she did and employs the 2nd and 3rd fem. personal pronouns inti and iya: (s. 25) el-bint de gāl iya ma∫ya “The girl said (masc.) that she was going (fem.);” inti jāya min wēn “you (fem.) coming (fem.) from where?”; saa btao fakkat waga “watch (fem.) of-him drop (fem.) fall (mas.).”
But he also mixes with more basilectal JA and consistently uses the invariable form gul ‘say’: (s. 25) intakum gul inti ermuta sakeT “you-pl say you (fem.) prostitute only” (s. 52) nāker u gūl woket dak kalam inti gul ma hasal kúlu-kúlu deny and say time-that word you (f.) say not happen all-all/ “He denied and said (that) at that time what you say never happened.”
As in Case 1, the conjugation of verbs and auxiliaries leads to cases of malapropism or mix forms.: (s.52)
asa nafarēn de badi sumit kalamu /now person-Dual this after I-listened word-his/ “now after I listened the word of these two persons” (sumit vs. JA asuma and NSA samit) fi tarīka gāmo daribtu bi daraba ∫adid /in way they-stand you-beat with beat strong/ “On the way you started to beat her strongly” (gāmo vs. NSA gumtu).
Compared to Judge 1, Judge 2 (see s.66, s.70, s.76, s.78), sticks to a more basilectal pronunciation ( > s, x > k, etc) and grammar: (s. 66) musu barau rūtan bta bay keda wonosú /Neg alone language of Bay like-this spoken/ “Isn’t it a specific Bay language which is spoken?” (note the impersonal structure rendered by shift of stress to the final syllable of wonosu).
Case 2 highlights the coexistence of different levels (types?) of (Juba) Arabic and different degrees of mixing. The level of the police-lady and the intermediate level of Judge 1 and D2 could be an indication that the mesolectal level is indeed the prestigious urban formal level that people speak or try to speak in formal context like the Court. This hypothesis is however not sustained by the data from Kator B Court, which indicates another type of urban use.
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catherine miller Texte 3, Kator B Court, Judge Stephen, 1984. (Transcript in Appendix 3)
Summary: This case starts in a noisy atmosphere and the Judge Stephen asks for silence from the audience (s.1). The secretary and the policeofficer try then to stop a person who wants to talk (s.2 to s.5). The case concerns the non-payment of a dowry. The plaintiff Gabriel (from s.10 to s.30) accuses the defendant (Santino) to have married his sister during the first civil war and to have never paid the dowry. The sister had died and Santino did not take care of the four children, and one died in an accident. Gabriel now takes care of the children and is asking for the payment of the dowry. From (s.31) to (s.33) there is another interruption from a woman. In (s.35) the defendant explains why he was in the incapacity of paying the dowry. A number of relatives come to give their testimony (parts not reproduced in the Appendix). At the end, the family of the defendant agrees to pay the remaining of the dowry and the Judge Stephen (s.36) asks everybody to reconcile. The plaintiff is speaking in Juba Arabic while the Defendant is speaking in Bari. The Judge Stephen, as well as the police and the secretary shift between Juba-Arabic, Bari and a few English (see s.30 for an example of code mixing Bari-English). This Case illustrates a type of language use very common among the Bari population of Juba and surrounding areas, with a deep interpenetration between Bari and Juba-Arabic, which certainly helped the vernacularization of JA. When the Judge Stephen and the plaintiff are speaking in JA, one notes the phonological influence of the Bari languages with realizations: f>p pi ‘in’ (NSA fii); pogu ‘on’ (NSA fōgu), z>j julumin ‘spoiled’ (NSA mazlūmīn) ā > aat banaat ‘girls’ (JA banat/NSA banāt), maat ‘die’ (JA mutu/ NSA māt) e>" g diyat ‘case’ (JA gediya/NSA gadīya) (/"/ is noted ö in Bari script and by Bari speakers). A number of words are common to both JA and Bari like mali ‘dowry’ from Arabic maal ‘money’, or kurju ‘cultivate’ from Bari kuruju. Some expressions are idiomatic translations from Bari expressions such as (s.38) tusu bujak ~tufu buzaK “spit saliva,” i.e. “give benediction.”
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When the defendant is speaking in Bari, one notes the presence of a number of Arabic (sometimes from Ottoman military Arabic) words like temporal markers kan ‘was/before’, badin ‘then/at that time’, asa ‘now’, discourse markers taban ‘of course’ kalas ‘OK’, numerals (all numbers are in Arabic) and words linked to administration or political events such as hawadis ‘civil war’, hukum ‘judgement’, korbaʙat ‘whip’. Inter-penetration between the two languages goes over phonological and lexical transfers. It includes also syntactic similarities like the use of verb ‘say’ (gale in JA, adi in Bari) to introduce embedded clauses (Miller 2001). (s.7)
taban ana sufu zede gal kan uwo ro p tisu mal . . . . /naturally I saw like-this say if him go look dowry . . ./ I realized that if he was going to look for the dowry” (s. 36) kirut adi monye sarji adi ukum nagwon köju monye a ukumbe adi asa man ‘dek pitönö kwe “Then her father sent a message that the judgement passed before was that now I want the remainder of my money.”
Note that almost none of the mesolectal features, so common in the Garawiyya, were recorded in this case. I noticed that the Judge Stephen never tried to imitate a mesolectal level, even if some of the young participants were talking in mesolectal JA. If he had to alternate and adapt to the speaker, it was between JA and Bari and not between JA and mesolectal. Stephen’s way of speaking is still a rather formal and juridical way of speaking and cannot be associated with an informal level of JA. However his speech (particularly s.37), as well as that of Plaintiff Gabriel, was rather similar to the level of JA broadcasted by the radio of the Sudan Council of Churches and is rather similar to what linguists will consider as Juba Arabic (see Watson (1984) in particular).
3. Conclusion The three cases illustrate different levels/types of Juba-Arabic. Of particular interest was the attitude of the two Judges, Ramadan in the Garawiyya and Stephen in Kator. Ramadan realized a number of mesolectal features and used some Arabic Juridical terms. However, he was adaptating his speech level to his interlocutors (cf. compared degree of mesolectal insertion between Case 1 and Case 2) and he never tried to assert his Authority through the exclusive use of a high linguistic
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norm. He also never commented about the language use of the other participants. As for Stephen, he always spoke a basilectal vernacularized Juba Arabic and was playing between Bari and Juba Arabic. He often made some comments about the Southern identity (ena fi januub “here in the South,” kalam bta januub “words/languages of the South,” arabi bitana bta januub “our Southern Arabic”) and once criticized a young man talking like a Northerner. The language use of the Judges indicate that while the Garawiyya Court was influenced by its surrounding Arabized Malekiyya neighborhood, the Kator B Court was influenced by the Bari surrounding, even if most speakers prefer to speak Arabic rather than Bari. Two types of urban models were present here. On the one hand, the Northern Sudanese Arabized urban model symbolized by the merchant community (both Arabs and non Arabs living near-by), which still had an influence upon part of the Southern population (old settlers as well as newcomers). On the other hand, the East African urban model (Nairobi, Kampala) brought back by the returnees and supported by the local Churches and the political Southern activists. In 1984, at the breaking of the second civil war, these two urban models were still coexisting together with more rural traditional ways of life. Language diversity, as well as religious and ethnic diversity, were considered natural components of the city. How far did somebody like Hawa, the young Bay policewoman, and Stephen, the former policeman or Gabriel consider that they were speaking the ‘same language’ (Juba-Arabic?), or that they were speaking two different languages? This was a question that I did not ask at the time of recording and that I can’t answer. I later worked with some Bari informants in Khartoum. They could very easily reproduce Creole/basilectal Juba Arabic features, when asked to do so. For those who knew NSA, they were perfectly able to distinguish between the two systems. They had therefore a clear consciousness of what JA was, as a distinctive linguistic system. I noticed, however, that when I asked some of them (students trained in linguistics) to transcribe some of the tapes recorded in Juba local Courts, they tended to systematically transcribe them in a basilectal Juba Arabic phonology, without reproducing the mesolectal variations. It was as if, for them, people from Juba were speaking one language. I did not discuss with them the reasons of their attitudes and I don’t know if they were not aware of these variations. The recording of ‘natural’ corpora help to better grasp the ‘natural’ diversity. But it makes the linguistic analyses more complex and renders the concept of ‘autonomous linguistic system’ rather problematic. As it
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is also the case with Standard and Colloquial Arabic, it is possible to describe the two poles of the continuum as two different systems. But it is hardly possible to decide where the boundary is between these two languages within the continuum.
4. References Heine, Bernd. 1982. The Nubi Language of Kiberia. An Arabic Creole. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Luffin, Xavier. 2005. Un créole arabe: le kinubi de Mombasa, Kenya. Muenchen: Lincom. Mahmud, Ushari. 1979. Variation and Change in the Aspectual System of Juba Arabic. Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University. Miller, Catherine. 1984. Étude socio-linguistique du développement de l’arabe au Sud Soudan. Thesis, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III. ——. 1987. “De la campagne à la ville. Évolution fonctionnelle de l’arabe véhiculaire en Equatoria (Sud Soudan).” Bulletin du Centre d’Etude des Plurilinguismes (Nice) 9. 1–26. ——. 1989. “Kelem kalam bitak: langues et tribunaux urbains en Equatoria.” Matériaux Arabes et Sudarabiques (Paris) 2. 23–58. ——. 1993. “Restructuration morpho syntaxique en Juba-Arabic et Ki-Nubi: à propos du débat universaux/superstrat/substrat dans les études créoles.” MAS-GELLAS Nouvelle Série 5. 137–174. ——. 2001. “Grammaticalisation du verbe dire et subordination en Juba Arabic.” Leçons d’Afrique. Filiation, rupture et reconstitution des langues: un hommage à G. Manessy, ed. by Robert Nicolaï, 455–482. Leuven: Peeters. Owens, Jonathan. 1991. “Nubi, Genetic Linguistics and Language Classification.” Anthropological Linguistics 33, 1–30. ——. 1997. “Arabic-based Pidgins and Creole.” Contact Languages. A Wider Perspective, ed. by Sarah G. Thomason, 125–172. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. ——. 2001. “Creole Arabic: the Orphan of all Orphans.” Anthropological Studies 43, 3. 348–378. Tosco, Mauro and Jonathan Owens. 1993. “Turku: A Descriptive and Comparative Study.” SUGIA 14. 177–268. Tosco, Mauro. 1995. “A Pidgin Verbal System: The case of Juba Arabic.” Anthropological Linguistics 37, 4. 423–459. Versteegh, Kees. 1984. Pidginization and Creolization: the Case of Arabic. AmsterdamPhiladelphia: John Benjamins. Watson, Richard. 1984. Juba Arabic for Beginners. Juba: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Wellens, Ineke. 2005. The Nubi Language of Uganda. An Arabic Creole in Africa. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Yokwe, Elisai M. 1985. “The Diversity of Juba-Arabic.” Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 9. 323–328.
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catherine miller 5. Appendices
5.1
The Dinka’s case: Garawiyya Juba, 1981
(1) S. ombāre gedíya fi mantār tultu míya tnén u asrín / tabán ombāre azimó asan mára de i ébu nás/ jól el ga-āref asán zādu bta jól de / gal ō yáani deŋ wa ō gāl mālūk/
“Yesterday the case in the register (was recorded as) three hundred twenty two. Of course it has been reported so as the woman could bring people, somebody who knows him [i.e. the defendant] and could testify. Because the man said he is called Deng and she said he is called Maluk.” (2) J. winú suúd/ zól el-bārefu jól da / inta “Where is the witness? The one who knows this person? You?” (3) T. aθma θol igúl θenú ya wāktu / gúl nás tómon fi kň kň / lkan maθi lomon / oman gál zól de arámi / mumkin fi jeríma tāni nina má dεr māθi / umon kāfu bé / má dεr māsi/
“Listen she says what ô Wakotu (??) /she says that their people are in Konyo Konyo/ if she goes to them / they say this person is a thief / maybe there are other crimes / we don’t want to go / they are afraid of him, they don’t want to come.” (4) J. Nīna bas íl haj-e-enú/ nína nádin jól /úwo biji aán ije-wóri isim ta jól de bεs / mús kalám táni/ bas iji wóri gūl ya mahkama ána bárefu jol de / ísim tó filán / asán úwo indi tnēn isim ena / jól de biwóri yatú el-numεro biyāref fōgó / bes kalám táni mā fí/
“We take him for what? / we called the person / (so that) he comes to show the name of the person only / Nothing else / He just comes and tells ô Court I know this person / his name is so / because he has two names here / The person tells which number (name) he knows / there is nothing else.” (5) T. Yaú ána kélem le θede b"t nagáfa / gál lé/ lkán intákum dεr kalam/ kεlita θol irú wodīna ma bōlīθ fi kň kň Indeed I talked to him like this but he refused / he says to me / if you want words / let’s somebody go take us with the police in Konyo Konyo.” (6) J. La la / táyeb húwa indu áxu / jól bitaó fí / rajel bitaó wēnú ? “No, no / OK does she have a brother / does she have somebody / where is her husband?” (7) T. ay fí fi bára ‘Yes he is outside.’
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Tāyeb / kan uwo ra ma axu bitao / ma rajel bitao / uwa birūh wri nas del / yajeb nas del / ma fi kalam dosoman / keli nasma bōlis lokan fi bōlis
“Good / she should go with her brother / her husband / she goes to tell this people / she brings this people / there will be no troubles / let’s listen to the police if there is a policeman.” [interruption] The policeman refuses to go with the woman and says: / you can not approve a sick man / you cannot approve it a all / because we bōlis ma negder/. ./ (8bis J.) it’s up to us / lakin de ya ma besma min kalám tay aja zede / de fikra ana kelem ta sakeT maales / kan keda kwayis / izakan u ma jebu nas de / jol / nas el belεd el ja wōri isem / nina balasu-l-gedīya / “It’s up to us / but this one does not listen to me / this was a simple idea / no matter / if so ok / if she does not bring the people / the person / people of the village who come to show the name / we will end the case.”
[the case is suspended, the woman goes outside and comes back with a witness] (9) J.
inta bahalef harba wala būk / bibl / asma el-mahkāma nādi eta a∫an haja / nasaltek aja / tәwori kalam mosbūt inta baaref / eta ma tәddisu / mara de gāl aslu inta baarfu jól de / jól de gabel keda besufó ?
“You swear on the spear or on the Book? / the Bible? / Listen the Court call you for something / we ask you something / you tell the right thing you know / you don’t hide / this woman say that you know this person / this person did you see her before?” (10)
W. jol de / ana baaref yisim bita / isem t maluk / maluk aywen This person / I know his name / his name is Maluk / Maluk Aywen (11) J. inta arfu da mitin “Since when do you know him?” (12) W. Ya zōl taban ana bigul neθīya /asa jina asa θa l ma kāsel ydi / fa w d de māθa alē u blīs masa alēna / u w d de taban u barefu zol de taban / lakin u mubāleK / badelma ana baref zol de / ana ma mumken nugasr gediya bita lō / interruption /
“O naturally I will say the truth / actually I work as a cleaner / and the boy came to me and the police came to me / and this boy of course he knows this person / but he is the plaintiff / since I know him (not clear if it is the plaintiff or the defendant) I cannot shorten(?) his case if …”
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(13) J.
tegriban jo kem sanawāt eta baārfo? “Approximately, for how many years do you know him?” (14) W. aywa sá / min kemθa u θabain “Yes true / since 1975.” (15) J. inta mudda de / min kemsa u sabain li haddi nahar de / jól de min de inta bārfo uwo / hl inta baarfo aglaK bitao / u jól kwayis wala kan indu jerima bta nas bi∫il haja bta nas
“You, during this period / since 1975 until now / this person since you know him / do you know his behavior? / Is he a good person or someone who has crime of people stealing things of people?” (16) T.
sā kalām ya θayed el-reyīs / inta tabyan ta-aref zol wa inta yikun kunta gyad fi bet wād / inta ma botaaref tani jol de / bāref bθ u binum wēn / inta ainu fi θka / teselem yēdu u bāref taban / u lekin inta mā āref baaml θenu aw baaml θenu
“You are right Mr. the President / Of course you know a person if you are staying with him / you don’t know else / this person you just know where he sleeps / you see him on the way / you great him you I know him of course / but you don’t know what he is exactly doing.” (17) J.
mā batāl / Deng Mayen inta bikutu isomu bitak musu Deng Aywen / lakin dāk bigul isom btāk Malūk Aywen / indak sual le / asal / “Not bad / Deng Mayen didn’t you put your name as Deng Aywen? / But this one says that your name is Maluk Aywen / Do you have a question for him? / Ask!” (18) D. uwa dé / ana indu sual waε gidamu / uw akyuT / ana naīm seta yom / uwa ma adana akel wala mōya / de lujal jεr / [laughter in the room] / mara de dεr fεgri ana bi bi b-l-awanta
“This one / I have one question for him / Is he a brother? / I slept six days / he did not give me food nor water / He’s a ?! / This woman wants to make me poor by her tricks!” [The witness and the defendant start to argue between themselves in Dinka] (19) J. mutarjem winu “where is the translator?” (20) W. nerja le kalam de / uw gal θenu / izakan ana axūk ita addūni futur aw ita adūni θay / u gal keda / lekin ya asāsi ana gutta lek jebel / әl-zol de ana baaref u-binum wēn / wa baamol θenu fi-l-yom u baamol !enu ana ma baaref /negabel fi sєka nesalem yeda / fa neddu әl -akel/ má indi akwān rabεto kulu
“Shall I return to you the words? / What did he say? / if I am your brother you give me breakfast or tea / He said like this / but I told you before /
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this person I know where does he sleep / and what does he do during the day I don’t know / I meet him on the way, I great him / and I would give him food? / Didn’t I have brothers that I all raised?” (21) J. to W. izakan ita kan kazāb / inta begul sehi lama kan әl-mahkāma sala / lokan gal ana aarfa kalam btau uwa jol batál / lakin inta betkelem ez-zīn / әl-haG / inta gul ma baaref el aja uwo baamol / bes inta ligo fi seka bes / de mus kwayis? / tεb ya mara / weled btak suker winu
“If you were a liar / you would have say true when the Court ask you / if you had say I know hos words he is a bad man / but you speak the right / the truth / you say you don’t know what is he doing / you just meet him on the way / isn’t it fine? / Ok ô woman / where is your small boy?” (22) J. to D.
delwokti maakama ligak bi galata galatatēn / alēla inta kizibta / inta gulta isma bitaki Deng / wa hini akwana btāk igulu lā de mūs isema btak / da tazāwir / isem btak Maluk Aywen / de barau jiza / jiza numεro itnin / sarεkta dura bta mara de / inta sarεkta dura li"ana inta gēr isma bitak / lokan ita ma serεG inta ma mumkin bitager isma btāk /. . . [the story continues again and again..] / fa keda /nina binsuf nas / daiman mujrimin ketír / nama gabodú bikεr isem /. . ./ an keda kalam de nihna gul inta muznīb alat-tnin / fa kalam el-mahkama / inta biyemsi sita suur fi sijin / izakan inta ma jibtu talāta u talātin gine bta mara de / w jiza btāk an inta xāin әl-aman / inta bmsoku talata suur / kulu juma s-sijin btak tesa saār / izakan ma dafa grūs / kan dafa grus inta tāla bara min sijin
“Now the Court find you with two faults / today you lied / you said your name is Deng / and your brothers say no it’s not your name / this is falsification / your name is Maluk Aywen / this alone is a fault / the fault number two / you stole the sorghum of this woman / you stole the sorghum because you changed your name / if you did not steal you would not change your name / [the story continues] and like this / we see people / many criminals always / when they are taken they change their names / because of this we say that you are culprit for two things / and the decision of the Court / you go six months in jail / if you don’t bring the 33 pounds of this woman / and your fault that you are a perjurer / you take three months / the total of the jail is nine months / if you don’t pay the money / if you pay you will got out from the jail.”
626 5.2
catherine miller The Bay’s case
/. . ./ indicates a cut. /. . ./ (4) J2. ísmu mínu “Your name?” (5) J2. ηabíla ? “Tribe” (6) J2. sāken wín “Living where?” (7) J2. sógol btāk “Your work?” (8) J2. (9) J2. (10) J2. (11) J2. (12) J2. (13) J2. (14) J1.
D1. John Gabriel D1. Bay D1. Hay is-sinema
D1. ma ∫ā el/tāleb “I’m not working/ student” әmrūk D1. tnín u iſrīn “Your age?” “Twenty two” mut εm numεro tnin ísmu mínu D2. welyam pitεr ηabíla D2. bay sógol btāk D2. ma ∫ā el/tāleb student / ah yūr ed D2. ‘omrí/ sabaatá∫er sána yur ed by ingliz/ eta mus asa tāleb wela kīf “Your age in English / aren’t you student or what?” ya askári inta bitaálfa / ah a∫án igúlu әl-háG / kut yidek éna / tabán mesíya mu∫ kéda / gūl wálā al-azīm / kitáb el-mukaddes / agúl el-háG / kúl-el-haG / welā ∫áy gēr el-háG / kéda worí el-mōdu li-l-mahkáma / naferín da ámal lék ∫énu
“Ô soldier you take an oath / ah in order to say the truth / put your hand here / of course Christian isn’t it ? / say Ô Lord the Great / Sacred book / I say the truth/ all the truth / nothing else than the truth / so tell the matter to the Court / what did these two-persons make to you?” (15) P. wellay ombāreh hawāli saa saba fi-l-misa ana jay bi tarīk bta-l-mádrasa tijāriyya de / ana jīt / fí askāri mā∫i giddāmi lābes rasmi / baadin el-awlād bardū kaman fi giddāmi / ana jīt talāta bi jambum / el-be henāk gāl le ya axi salām mā fí / el bi-jay bardu kaman gāl le salām mā fi / ana sakεtta / aslu mā gutta hája / ana mā∫ya / baadin ana gumta zitta katwa btay / hum bardū zādu katwa waray / el-be henāk ja garasnī fisulbi / badin el-bi jay ja dagga∫nī
“By God, yesterday / around seven o’clock in the evening I was coming by the road of the Commercial School / I came / There is a soldier walking before me, wearing his official clothes / then the boys also are before me / I came near them / this one told me ‘of my brother, no greetings?’ / the other also said ‘no greetings?’ / I kept silent / I did not say any thing /
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I was walking / then I accelerated my walk / they also accelerated their walk / this one started to pinch my buttocks / and then the other started to beat me . . .” (16) J1. b-әl-yedd wela bi kurā “With the hand or with foot?” (17) P. bi-yәddu garasnī fi sulbī bi-yәddū / baadin el-bi-jay ja dagga∫nī keda bi-ketfa / ana gumta wagәftu / gulta mālkum ya axwāni / gāl le mālkum kēf / ma titfahim ma'anā / ana gult nitfahim ma'akum agūl maākum ∫enū / gāl le inta askut / inta mā ∫ermūta u bass / ana gulta lem ∫ukrān / ana mā∫et / el-bi jay da tawāli masaknī ja garasni /gulta le inta mālek asa / gāl li axlaK xa∫mak asa ana beduggәk /. . ./ tawāli gumta nadēt askāri / gutta ya askari taal haj ∫ūf el-jamaa del al-ajamūnī minū / tawāli hu / waled de ja gam darabni bunya / askari jire ja / ja gāl intum mālkum ya awlād /. . ./ gulta hum ajyomūni / a∫ān keda ana korokta lek / askāri da gāl xlās xlās de mawdua basīt /"arahkum / woled de lisa der amol maaya mu∫ākel /. . ./ sukna maanā l-merkez tawāli /. . ./ askari da / fí arabiya tāli keda / askāri tawāli wāgef arabiya / arabiya aba yagif / ma∫i wāgef musāfa keda /. . ./ lamm-ú jere mā∫i li-l-arabiya henāka / kullum itnīn tawāli ājāmu foK / de gām b dr d fōK / gaadīn nesāru / baadin de gām b dr bni bi wara kamān /. . ./ sa'ā fekka min yәddi / ma āref kán úwa yaú ālu / wela kan wgá wēn / ána ma ārfu /. . ./ yaú gumna jīna lahadd-әl-nūkta / sbbo le / inta ∫enū / nahāl dīnek wa inta ∫ermūta u bass / inta mā∫i ∫áriya sākeT /. . . . /
“With his hands he pinched my buttocks with his hand / then this one slapped me / I stopped / I said what’s the matter ô my brother / he said what the matter how? / let you understand us ! / I said I understand you I tell you what? / He said to me ‘you shut up’ / you are just a pimp / I told him thank you / I went / this one sized me directly and pinched me / I told him what’s the matter / he said close your mouth now I will beat you /. . ./ I immediately called the soldier / I said ô soldier come and see this people who are attacking me / immediately he / the boy started beating me badly / the soldier run /asked what the matter ô boys / I said they attacked me / this is why I shout after you / the soldier said ok ok this is a simple matter / let’s go ! / the boy still wanted to make me problems /. . ./ we brought them to the post directly /… / the soldier / there was a car coming like this / the soldier stopped the car immediately / the car refused to stop / it went stopping at some distance / when he run after the car there / both of them immediately attacked me again / this one beated me again / we were fighting / then this one hit me from behind / my watch came off from my arm / I don’t know if he took it / or if it fall
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somewhere / I don’t know /. . ./ so we came up to the police-station / they insulted me / what are you / Curse on your religion you are just a pimp / you go in the street for nothing . . .” /. . ./ (24) J1. (25) J1.
intum samēt kalām da D1. samētu “Did you hear these words?” “I heard” el-bint de gāl iya ma∫ya w intakum ta-azәmtәlu sākeT / gūl dik ya ∫ermūta / u de gerres fisˢәlbu hene / w-inta bardu daggestū bi ketf / u baādin gāl mālkum / intakum gul inti ∫ermuta sākeT / inti jāya min wēn / fi tarīka gāmo daribtu bi daraba ∫adid / wa gam korrεk l-askāri ja / w bardu baad el-asāker / kamān intu gwum darәbtu baad / asnā askāri mā∫i ∫an ijib / yemsi kelem lel-l-sowwaK el-kan waggofu / fat giddām / enta azemtolu darobtu li-raet ma saa btao fakkat waga / wa wahed halaK kamán / da amīn / entu gabeltū fi sεka / inta /. . ./
“The girl said she was walking and you attacked her for nothing / this one said ô pimp / and that one pinched her buttock here / and you also slapped her / and then she said what’s the matter / and you said you are just a pimp / from where are you coming / on the way you start to beat her badly / and she cried the soldier came / and also after the soldier / you start to beat each other / during the time the soldier went to bring / went to talk to the driver who stopped / he went in front / you attacked her and beated her until her watch came off / and a hear-ring also / this is sure / you met in the way / you /. . . ./” (28) D1.
el-bit-de / ana kunt jay min hay kәmεr∫yal li-l-bεT / fi waεd gidāmi / ana ma baarfū gābel / ma bit de wara / towones mā bit de ké / umon gam fi akla / an ána zeyde / ana askate umon /
“The girl / I was coming from the Commercial District / there is one in front of me / I don’t know him before / with the girl behind / he discusses with the girl / they start quarreling / because I’m like this / I make them silent.” (29) J1. (30) D1.
da awli sā kem “This about what time?” awli sā sábaa / fi jay bōlīs / fi jay / bit kórεk le bōlīs / fialán el-bōlis já / woddit lená mukíla kúlu / ana māi le-beT / yalla ez-zōl eldaraba-l-bit de / ú ma bōlis gaadīn isuggū zōl de li-nukta / uman fāt giddām / ana ja wara / nama ana wosol mōbil / uman lisa / jól el-dagga bit u bōlis / ana ja ligúm lísa fi mukíla / dél fi mukíla unāk / min kede nama bōlis ainu ána / el-bit gāl aywa ána gibel hināk / ana
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gāl filān ana gibel hināk / akala hāsel ana fí / yaú al-amal min ene ana ma ārif / bōlis masako jól de u jól de fāt / yaú ja bas masakanī wāhed be-rejlan /. . ./
“Around seven o’clock / a policeman came / the girl called after the police / of course the police came / and brought us the all problem / I was going home / Then the person who hit the girl / he and the police they were driving this person to the police-station / they went in front / I was coming behind / when I arrived to the Mobil station / they were still, the one who beat the girl and the police / I found them still quarrelling / from this when the police saw me the girl said yes I was there before / I said of course I was there before / the quarrel happened I was there / then I don’t know what happened / the police sized the person and the person went / then one took me by the legs /. . ./” /. . ./ (34) D1.
away / badalnā talāta / ána / bōlis u bít da / sillūna fi núkta / amdulla ána ligó waed min aεz ma mōbil enāk / baaref nās béT / ána gál kwayis / kan keda am∫i kélem nās bét / gál ána fi núkta / ∫il-ana fi nūkta / minnak axuy de / nama nsma kede / rá fi nókta enāk / nama aīnu axuya ja / gāl yaú tāni fí / kuttú tawāli jowa / u badin sabá / bit de gam já lenā / gāl saa woddurú u ∫enú / u filan ana ma ∫uftu saa kúlu kúlu /
“Yes / we stayed three / me, the police and the girl / they took us to the police station / Amdullah I found one I wanted in the Mobil station / he knows the house / I said good / if it’s so go and tell the people of the house that I am in the police-station / they took me in the station / from there my brother / when he heard like this / he went to the post / when he saw my brother coming / he said the other came / they put him inside immediately / and then in the morning / the girl came and told us that her watch was lost and what / and of course I did not see her watch at all” (35) J1.
táyib / lama kān wāled de /el-biyammәl ma∫ākil maa bít de / inta ma ma∫it / inta ajiju / inta kan barak wela ma walәd da /
“Good / when there was this boy / who was doing the trouble with the girl / you did not go / you support / you were alone or with this boy?” (36) D1.
ána baraý “I was alone”
630 (37) J1.
catherine miller inta baraý / táyeb baādin hinay de / lama bōlis gabódu weled dāk mā∫i bió / u gamaa ∫ākal da / inta ajijtu maa el-bint-da / bōlis lamma já / hәl giddám el-b lis eta amoltu ma∫ākil maa bint da
“You were alone / good and then / when the police captured that boy and went with him / and the group quarrel / you supported the girl / the police when he came / did you in front of the police make quarrel with this girl?” (38) D1.
ana ma awmol ma∫ākel / bass darab bitóman ána ja katal “I did not make quarrels / I stopped their fight’
/. . ./ (45) D2.
el-zōl de ombare ma biill nihna / ana gaad fi-l-bet / yaú rasel wәdd da min el-mōbīl / wodd de maa unāk / gāl ya nās el-bet John gabadú / yaú ma kan nem∫i yisúf li-l nókta
“The person of yesterday did not take us / I was at home / and he sent the boy from the Mobil station / the boy went there / he says ô people of the house John has been captured/ so I had to go and see at the police station.” /. . ./ (50) J1. (51) D2.
ínta ma fīs / u gabodūk mittīn “You were not present / where did they capture you?” gabodūni zamān gale nem∫i-l-nukta ni∫uf / min wisolta unak ∫an nera mu∫kila bta djn kif / bass waed askāri gāl yaú lāzem bikūn wahed minhum / bas ja fi hene / tāni ma barja bēt / u fialan jabūni fi-l-arāsa / yaú sabá bit de maa unāk / djn gal yaú bit bta ombare enay jabūni fi arāsa unāk /… /
“They captured me when I went to the police station to see / when I arrived there in order to assess the problem of John / one soldier said he must be one of them / he came here / I didn’t come back to the house / and of course they took me in jail / and in the morning the girl came / John said this is the girl from yesterday who brought me in jail” /. . ./ (52) J1.
ya bit / asa nafarēn de badi sumit kalāmu / da numεro wahed de nāker / u gūl woket dak kalam inti gul ma hasal kúlu-kúlu / gāl uwa māi liga inta kunta akal maa wahed tāni / w uwo māi aan iyazizkum / iyazizkum bas inta maa zōl dak / el-wokT inta nādit askāri ja / w-el-askāri gam sōgo / sōG el-waled maaki / inta māi u bardu waratum kaman / kddam giddām henāk intum wageftu kaman bitkelem kalmāt keda / lama u masa wosolu lekum henāk / bōlīs gāl xlās kan izan keda ta'ali inta kaman maa el-jamaa del / gam xala dāk u alu uwa
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“Ô girl / these two persons after I heard their words / number one this one denied / and said at that time, the story you tell did not happen at all / he was going and met you quarreling with somebody else / and he came to support you / support you against this person / when you called the soldier came / and the soldier took the boy with you / you go and he is behing you also / in front in front there you stopped you talked / when he arrived near you / the police say ok if it is like this come you also with the people / he let that one and sized him” /. . ./ (66) J2.
/. . ./ keda ita indu rōtān / musu barau rūtan bta bay keda wonosú “Do you have a language / isn’t it a specific Bay language which is spoken?”
(67) D1. ana borton ndogo lakin ma fi rūtan bay “I speak Ndogo but there is no language Bay” (68) J2. kulu ndgo intum trtn ndgo “You all speak Ndogo?” (69) P. ana borton ay / norton kalam enu lakin “Yes I speak / but what shall I say?” (70) J2. de bigūl uman beroton enay de rutān / de bigul lā / ma boroton ndgo / beroton bay / nina azin ārfu uman sei bay aw /. . ./ :
“This one says that they speak their tribal language / this one says no / he doesn’t speak Ndogo / he speaks Bay / we want to know if there are really Bay!” (71) J1.
tayyb / izakan bay / el-fakka bikun fi enu / lokān ma bay bikun fi enu / nesma el-jarīma bass
“Ok / if Bay / the difference would be in what? / If not Bay what would happen?/ we listen to the crime only!” (72) J1.
hata kan ηabīla tāni baraú ma tam / jol el-aārfu jol amel maō ajam / biwori gul yaú de / kan gabāil wela ma bay biwori / bas el muhim inta jeb el-bōlis el-kān ahall al-mawdu /. . ./
“Even if it is another tribe it doesn’t matter / the person who knows the person who attacked him / he shows that it is him / if from the Bay or not he shows / the important you bring the policeman who solved the matter!” /. . ./
632 (74) J1.
catherine miller asma / al-sakya da ixtarrat gāl inta sāhid / lama kan hāsel beinakum maa nafarēn del masākal / eta keda gul sī el eta bitaarefi bi zabti / eta jīt kif / eta legīt maamal enu keda / gul lenā / le-l-mahkāma
“Listen the lady (?) decided that you are the witness / when the problems happened between you and this two persons / say what you know exactly / how did you come/ what did you find? / tell us / the Court!” (75) W.
taban siyātu / ana kunta sa al fi kart / fi-l-jawazāt / maāl el-jensiyat / baādin ana sāken fi muluk / lama ana jit ja wosolu fi medresa Komeriy l / ana fāt / taban al-bit de askāri ana ma baaref / lābis maleki / ana ma biyaref askari aw ma askāri / faalān fātēt / giddām swiya / baad-ma fatēt / al-bit de gum bikorε bi-isma-l-bōlis / gal ya bōlis ya bōlis taāl agaod / fialan fī ganūn btatna / bta al-bōlis / ay jol bikōrek bi-isim el-bōlīs ma mafrūd tafōgo / lajem ita-ajri suf fi senu fi senu / tekusu / fialan ana jay / ana jay legītum del itnīn kúlu biajem el-bit de / baadin ana jīt / ana gul ya jamaa mālkum fi senū / gal el-bit de sottemuni u fāt keda / ana gulta tayib ya axwāna matakum sakal bit fi tarīka / bi tarika zede / keda tosūf el-jisim btāna w-el jisim bitākum wa jisim el-bit / taajem el-bit fi tarīka bi-l-lēl zede mā sāh / wa lisa bikōroko / līsa bikōroko / fa ana asala-l-bit / hasala enu maak / gul nas del yaú fat keda / nās del ajemu fi tarik / agru sulbu bitao / u nama kelem umon setemu / fialan uman setemu /. . ./ baād-ma ana rajo enāka / ana raja / ana ja legitum lisa bisakal ala bit / nama ana raja min mahal taban ana fūt keda / baad-ma ana asma korokoro waray b-ism el-bōlis / ana jire tawāli ja wara w ana ja legitum l-itnin del kullu / uman yau / fa filan kelemtum liw / ana gul ya akwānna nina janūbiyin ma mafrūd nesākel maa badna / hajāt zede ma kwayis / el-muskila de besīt tkelwokT /…/ el bit de je gum kelem gāl ya askāri ilā tawasolūna fi nukta /…/
“Of course Sir / I was working in the cards / in the passports / the place of nationalities / then I am living in Muluk / when I arrived at the Commercial school / I passed / of course I don’t know that the girl is a soldier / she wore normal clothes / I don’t know if she is a soldier or not / of course I passed / a little bit in front / after I passed / the girl started to call by the name of the police / she said ô police ô police come in / of course in our laws / of the police / anyone who call after the police you can’t let him / you must run see what is happening / you search / of course I came / I came and found them both attacking the girl / I came / I said ô people what’s the matter / the girl said they insulted me and went / I said, good ô my brothers don’t quarrel a girl in this way / by this way / you see my body and your body and the body of the girl / you attack the girl by night like this it’s not correct / and they still shout / they still shout / and
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I asked the girl / what happened with you / she said this people passed like this / this people attacked her on the way / they pinched her buttock / and when she spoke they insulted her / of course they insulted her /. . ./ when I came back / I came back / I found that they still quarrel on the girl / when I came back from the place I went there / after I listened the cries behind by the name of the police / I run directly back and found them both / there they are / and I spoke to them / I told them ô brother we are southerners no need to quarrel between us / things like this are not good / the problem is small until now /. . ./ the girl spoke and said ô soldier you must bring us to the police office /. . . ./” (75bis) W.
ma fī maal hukuma keda gerīb fogo /. ./ fi arabiya gaad jā /. . ./ ana gum jire bi-wara arabiya de bi-zātu /. . ./ min ana jire henak / ana asma baga el-bit de biga bikore / uman tāni keda bidugu el-bit biwara /. . ./ filan ana jere kede kede kede / ana ja gabodtu da / xalas ‘amdullah / fi fi mujra waga fi jua mujra /. . ./ negedem kede kede kede likaat nina wosolu mobīli /. . ./ dá tawāli gum amol musakīl fo mōbili li-raat-ma aoz kaser mōrat bta arabiya zatu / aoz amol musākil fi jua arabiya zātu / baadu sīd el-arabiya uf kede mā fī / da gum maragu bara / ana bardu gum maragu /.../ tāni arabiya ja / rakebna fogō le-raat wosoluna fi nokta / baad-ma wosoluna fi nokta / ana gul jol da jere kalās lakin axu da biyaref mahal de / dé nāker gul mā biyaref da / dé maal btao barao u dé barao / u ma biyaref kúlu kúlu / ana gul kīf / lajem de aku btao li"anu uman hader al-musākel giddāmi ana /. . ./ el-hamdulilay lam fatāna baláK / mowdu negla askāri de masi mustafa / ana biga fūt fi-jawazāt ya neselem kelem kabār li jamaa fi taakir el ana akεr lina zaman / ana māsi wodi kabar li-hum enay / lama fi rojyu bitay / el-hamdullay dé kamān gum wasal / ana gal yaú de bεs yaú de bεs / uman l-itnīn el ajam ala bit yaú de bεs /
“There is no governmental place nearby /. . ./ a car came / I run after the car /. . ./ when I run there / I heard the girl shouting / they were again beating her from behind /. . ./ of course I run like this like this . . ./ I captured this one / ok thanks to God / there is a sewer canal / he fall in the sewer /. . ./ we accompany like this like this until we arrived at the Mobil station /. . ./ this one started to make problem in the station until he was near to break the mirror of the car / he almost make problem inside the car / then the owner of the car see it’s not possible / this one went out / I also went out /. . ./ another car came / we went in until we arrived at the police station / after we arrived in the station / I said this one run away but his brother must know the place / he denied he said he doesn’t know him / this one has his own place and this one also / and
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he doesn’t know him at all / I said how? / It must be his brother because they attended the troubles in front of me /. . ./ Thanks to God when we opened the case / the matter of the transport of the soldier to the hospital / I went to the passports to bring the news to the people there about my delay before / I was going to bring the news to them there / when I was coming back / Praise God this one also arrived / I said this is him this is him / the two who attacked the girl, this is him /. . ./” / story continues . . . ./ (76) J2.
Tayib intakum āref nefsu kalatānin “Good do you recognize that you are faulty?”
(77) D1.
la la la kalām ke ana wosol dak ana baray / kalam de kadāb / ana ma jay maa jol / ana jay baray
“No no this words I arrived there I was alone / these words are lie / I didn’t come with somebody / I came alone” (78) J2.
yaú de suhud kelem kalam btaō / keda wonosu ma suhud / asalo / ind"k sual yesālo
“But the witness spoke / so discuss with the witness / ask / do you have a question for him?” [Discussion between the defendant and the soldier /. . ./] (79) J1.
intum kalatanin / mahkama gul "annu intu ažžemtu bit da fi-t-terīk bidun ay munasaba / u ∫atemtu u gul ermuta / u into garestu-ha li-raet-ma sa"a bitwōdda / tamenu xemsa u arbain gine / w indu wahed fardeK halla wodurú / tomon sabaa gine u nus / de kúlu bi kusūs masākel btakūm maao fi-t-teriK /. . . continue /. . ./
“You are faulty / the Court says that you attacked this girl on the way without any reason / and you insulted her and said pimp / and you pinch her until her watch got lost / its price was 45 pounds / and she had earrings which got lost / their price seven pounds and half / all because of your quarrel with her on the way/. . . ./” 5.3
Kator B Court 1984, Record 3/ 1984
Judge Stephen to the public (1) J.
. . ./ numεro tnin koreraK / izakan nasi bikore bi-ataku k tir ma bik li makama ymsi / izakan nas biasma kalam de bmsi bi-rā / u g diyat bemsi bi sūra / gowám / mumkin nihina baamolu isrin gediya pi yom / izakan ma pi pogu ija’at / aja’at bi sikil de /. . ./ arjuk sabab wa intum
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nas mutaimin mutamain / el ja asan asma makama / intum ma bija ena sakiT / eta jet asan testepiT fi makama / asan kul waε baadin bukura bisala kalam pi bet / aw mara kaman banaat kan ja asma asan ma baamalu kalaT pi biyutum / sukran / istamir gediya tāni /
“Number one, shoutings / if people shout laugh a lot it does not let the Court going / if people listen the words go quietly / and the case goes quickly / fast / we can do twenty cases in one day / if there is no troubles / things like this /. . ./ I praise young people and you the defendants / those who came to listen the Court / you didn’t come here for nothing / you came to benefit in the Court / because each one later tomorrow solve his problem at home / or women, also girls they come to listen in order not to make mistake in their house / thank you / continue next case!” (2) S.
(3) J. (4) (5) J. (6) J. (7) J. (8) J. (9) J.
(10) P.
Taban Sabastian ../ Alexi Lado S. to the J. lisa ma ja “Not yet arrived!” to a man nearby) kede belay atla awal haja / ihina fi g diya / wa mata lakbat / ita yau ga-asma kalam ini / ita ja bikelem / istena lakad bad g diya / msi “Please go away from here first thing / we are in a Case / don’t interfere / you have heard the words here / you will speak / wait until after the case / go!” to policeman k li jol de yeji hina / korbaaT btak winú ? / “Let’s this person going here / where is your whip?” Police yau le Wani “It’s with Wany” ilu min Wany / u de jatu barfu urkali ? / masi tow gene-gene bita enay / “Take it from Wani / and this one does he know the Court’s police? / go and sit there!” mubālek minu / Mogga lo munu D. ana “Who is the Plantiff? / Who’s Mogga?” “I” a isim bitak D. “Gabriel Morbe” “Ah, your name?” Barinit wen D. lobunuk “Bari from where?” u eta majlum knyo u knyo. “From what are you victim?” de taban kan pi ukti keda / kan juju ukti fi jaman hawadis / badin ana ruwa nadi māl / / gal mal maap / taban jaman de hawadis / taban ana sufu zede gal kan uwo ro p tisu mal / mumkin boro ligo harib / taban pi jaman de pi aja de …/
“Of course there was my sister / he married my sister during the civil war / then I went to ask for the dowry / he said there is no dowry / of course it was during the civil war / I realized that if he was going to look
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for the dowry he would maybe find the war / of course at that time there were such things…” (11) J. (12) J. (13) P.
hawādis pi sanatu k m “Troubles of which years?” badin ada ta awadis mitin “Then the end of the troubles when?”
(9) P.
tamanya u sitin “Sixty eight”
tnen u sabain / badin kida pi itnin sebeyin / taban ina kaman nadi mal / gal mal maap / ila nina amul aja de / d git m risa / anina aju wodi le uwo / gali kasara ita jibu / ana ma indu haja tani / badin uwo amulu karama / badin d gig m risa de nina wodi le aja de / le uwo / ma amul lena haja tani / badi swiya yaba ja mat /anina amulu karama ta yaba w kit maat / wa asa ukti de / ukti de mat / wokan ma w di le ana māl / bes teletin jine eli kan wödi le nina
“Seventy-two / then in seventy-two / we asked again for the dowry / he said that there is no dowry / only we do this thing / beer flour / we want to bring it to him / he said you bring it for nothing / I have nothing else / then he made a ceremony / then this beer-flour we brought it to him / he did not do anything else for us / later on our father died / we made a ceremony for our father when he died / and now my sister / my sister died / and he did not give us the dowry / only 30 pounds that he gave us.” (14) J. māt mitin “When did (s)he died?” (15) P. mat aja de fi tnin u tamanin / saar idaser “(S)he died in seventy-two / in November” (16) J. indu iyal “Does (s)he have children?” P. indi iyāl “He has children” (17) J. kam “How many?” (18) P. fi tegriban arba / waiT kan ge dowru ma rokuba / uwo ma wödi baal pogo / ja waga fi nār / gam ja mat “Approximately four / one was walking on his knees / he did not take care / he fall in the fire / he died” (19) J. pi taláta P. pi taláta ay “There is three?” Yes there is three.” (20) J. taláta de fi banát fogo P. fi wae bit u badin tnin yál / tnin woled “Among the three “There is a girl and two there are girls?” boys/two boy.” (21) J. eli mutu de woled “The one who died was a boy?” (22) P. la / bineya / wa asa itnin iyal de uwo ma biw di baal fogo / asa itnin de ge geni le ana
“No / a girl / and now the two boys he does not take care of them / now these two are staying with me.”
language use in juba local courts (23) J. (24) P.
(25) J. (26) P. (27) J. (28) P. (29) J. (30) P.
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ge gene le eta / kalam kwes / aʙah / “They stay with you, good, aah?” wa min de taban ina julumin / bineya tanina ma mijawaz / bes ina akudu teletin jine fakat / u bineya kaman maʙat / iyal kaman ana lisa yau ge akilu “And from there of course we have been spoliated / our daughter is not married / we just took 30 pounds only / and the girl died / and the children I am still feeding them.” itakum yau ge raba “You (pl.) are the ones who raise them” nina yau ge raba / yau ana majlum ma kalam de “We are the one who raises them / I am spoliated by this story” ita masi leo pi bet / le bet btomon gale malu ita keli iyal de kede . . . “Did you went to him in the house / to their house to ask why you left the children like this” walay insala ana masi aslu ma bijibu kabar “By god, even if I go he will never inform me” ma ja kurju ‘He did not cultivate (for you)?’ bikurju lakin oslu ma bowodi le iyal de “He cultivates, but he never gives to the children”
/. . . . . ./ Interruption with another case (31)
a woman : nan kan a tu i diηit na kora na toro’bo na a ηilu ηutu ti möröri möröri yi ko wate
“I went at the time of the distribution of the furniture and then he fought with me and his wifes” (32) J.
ηina köju ködyo kiyang baligga / kede kiyang sina / maybe nan kan a mistake / ado yiηe gwoʙdam nyo Wani ? ma tini wuni ηilo korobat / ti ko yege ηo kunen ko doggu kito kadi / bonggwat ban le /
“She had reported the case earlier / wait first of all like this / I might have been mistaken / why do you stand still Wani ? you go receive that whip / let him carry these, carry these furniture / are there no clothes?” (33) Woman: bonggwat ma a kekeren “Clothes! He torn them” (34) J. Santino makme ko “Santino there it is” (35) D. Walayi / a hal diri bijab i yemba nio nagwon nan yembi kiyasir nanyit na i diηit na hawadis / a de i ηinu diηit ni kan ukum a itinasar jine badin kayayu a saba jine / badin köjulu anan medde sona anan di min ta’ab kulu anan kan lunggi luηaser baba ηuba a ko doggi male kwe kunu ηuba nyu / kirut ni a kine mali kirut taban jur kaman kötir bayn a nan / kalas ηutu adi kalas lo ηutu taban bubulō yemba makune mali lepeng aje dippa salet / loηutu gwe a komonit ti poki ibang / nyena diri i gwe i dida ko ηina ηuro / taban ko yaba ko atu a nan bubulô tindu ηo
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catherine miller nagwon kata / wu hal kajelu ni a baba lo twane / badin ne a monye lo twane / kirut adi monye sarji adi ukum nagwon kôju monye a ukumbe adi asa man dek pitönö kwe ti gurut kune ko na ηutu nan dek sitin jine /
“By God / really during the time of my marriage when I married his sister during the civil war / by then the Judgement here was twelve pounds and ours was seven pounds / At that time, on seeing this, and in order to avoid these troubles, I decided to call my father’s brother from Juba so that he could go to collect my dowry from Juba there / Then from there this dowry, of course the village is large, not me alone / ok, people said ok, this man can marry, here is the dowry, he has prepared a cooking place / He has become an in-law, let him be in the house / at this point I started to stay with this woman / of course, if her father comes, I can give him what ever possible / and at that time my father died / then her father died too / then her father (i.e. an uncle) sent a message that the judgement passed before was that now I want the remainder of my money of this woman I want sixty pound /. . . . ./ [The case continues in Bari and JA with many different participants. At the end the Defendant and his family agree to pay the remaining of the dowry] Conclusion from Judge Stephen: (37) S. d giga / d giga / ah bagi mal el kede eta bi silu lau pi bet le n sibat inak / ah / u w dium kabar gal nina jain / asan bisilu iyāl de k li ruwa tusu bujak / uman kaman bip tisu k ruP kwes kida / u jama biji yesrub / wa nas umu yani makasutin / nas kálu / kulu jene beji intum bestenu / jebu g diya tani
“Minute / minute / ah the rest of the dowry you take it to them at home to your in-law there / and give them news that we are coming / so that they take the children for spitting saliva (benediction) / they also look for a good sheep like this / and the people come to drink / and the mother’s people are happy / the maternal uncle’s people / every child you wait for (??) / bring another case!.”
PARADIGMATIC STABILITY AND FINAL LARYNGEALS IN NIGERIAN ARABIC, OR WHY HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF, WITHOUT ACTUALLY DOING SO Jonathan Owens CASL, University of Maryland
1. Introduction Arabic presents a rich, if underutilized, domain for examining processes of linguistic change. At one extreme are the challenges presented by the rapid and dramatic restructuring witnessed in the Creole Arabic varieties of the southern Sudan and East Africa (Versteegh 1984, 2004). At the other are the mundane, day-to-day, decade to decade, century to century processes which move slowly through the different varieties, sometimes leading to marked changes, sometimes not. In this paper I would like to document one such change, which has happened not once, but a number of times in the history of Arabic, and relate the phenomenon to a more global interpretation of Arabic language history. At issue is the conceptualization of Arabic language history. The reigning paradigm today, indeed one established some 150 years ago, is that a classical language, or Old Arabic, by various processes of simplification passed into the modern dialects, or Neo Arabic. One of a number of problems with this model is that it leads one to collapse what are often internally differentiated developments into a common mold, which are then assumed to substantiate the Old Arabic/Neo Arabic dichotomy. Why this militates against a properly nuanced reading of Arabic language history is that what may lie behind linguistic changes are a combination of diverse local developments and fundamental linguistic principles. There have indeed been many changes in the many varieties of Arabic spoken throughout Asia, Africa and in former times, Spain. The fact of change in one variety, however, does not justify an historical model based on the Old/New split. This point will be illustrated on the basis of verbs ending in a glottal stop, or in some cases, a final voiceless glottal fricative /h/. Classical Arabic, of course, has a glottal stop, whereas nearly all modern dialects do not.
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Thus, in Classical Arabic forms such as badaʙ ‘begin’ and jāʙa ‘come’ appear in most dialects as bada and jā. For purposes of this paper I will assume that there has been a change of ʙ → , whereby verbs such as badaʙ fell together with verbs like banā ‘he built’.1 In contemporary dialects these will typically belong to the same class of weak-final verbs, as the following sampling indicates: (1) Algerian bdī-t, bnī-t ‘I began’, ‘I built’, Nigerian badē-t/banē-t, Eastern Libyan bidē-t/binē-t, Mardin (Turkey) baday-t/banay-t, etc.2
A related development is attested in contemporary Western Sudanic Arabic comprising NE Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad and the western part of the Sudan (see Owens 2006, chapter 5). In the rest of the paper I will describe the development in the western Sudanic area on the basis of a relatively detailed corpus-based analysis of Arabic from Maiduguri in NE Nigeria, and then address the question of its significance for the history of Arabic.
2. Nigerian Arabic3 Nigerian Arabic is unremarkable vis à vis other Arabic dialects in its verbal structure. Like all other varieties of Arabic it has two basic verb forms, perfect and imperfect. The perfect stem is marked by suffixes indicating person, number and gender, in the imperfect these being indicated by suffixes and prefixes. Both perfect and imperfect stems have two conjugations based on whether the stem vowel is high or low. In (2) strong verbs are illustrated, with the verbs katab ‘write’ and libis 1 The proviso ‘for purposes . . .’ leaves open the possibility that the modern glottal (stop)-less dialects go back to original glottal-less dialects in Old Arabic (see Rabin 1951). Certainly the glottal-stop-less varieties go back to pre-diasporic Arabic, as attested in their widespread distribution across the Arabic-speaking world, and their attestation in Old Arabic sources. If there are proto-forms of Arabic without the glottal stop, the thrust of the paper would need to be reorientated. A few Yemeni dialects have a glottal stop (Behnstedt 1985, 43). Even in classical times, there was a variety without the glottal stop that a glottal stopless variant which was prominent enough that in the Koranic reading tradition (qirāʙāt) recitations are fully allowed without the phoneme (Ibn Mujahid ). 2 The value of the suffix, -īt, -ēt, -ayt is an issue independent of the status of the glottal stop. 3 Research support for this work was provided by the German Research Council (DFG).
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‘wear’, which belong to opposite conjugations in both the perfect and imperfect: (2) Low stem vowels: perfect /a/ katab; imperfect /a/ bi-lbas ‘he dresses’ High stem vowels: perfect /i/ libis; imperfect /u/ bu-ktub ‘he writes’4
By and large the assignment of verb stems in imperfect and perfect to the two classes is lexically determined, and as seen in the example, one and the same verb stem can, indeed as a rule is, assigned to a different class in the perfect and imperfect tenses. Final weak verbs in Nigerian Arabic also follow the same classificatory schema, as can be seen in the following examples in (3): (3) Low stem vowels: bana ‘he built’, bi-lga ‘he finds’ High stem vowels: ligi ‘he found’, bi-bni ‘he builds’
2.1
Final laryngeals /ʙ/, /h/ in Nigerian Arabic, some data
So far as the basic paradigmatic facts go, Nigerian Arabic is fundamentally identical to other Arabic dialects, and broadly similar to classical Arabic. One phonological change involving two sounds has, however, complicated the distribution of lexical forms. The two sounds are h and ʙ. Historically speaking, NA h has two sources, OA (or pre-diasporic), /h/ as in šahar ‘month’ < OA *šahar, and OA *hˢ as in hilim ‘dream’, < hˢ ilm. NA /ʙ/ derives from /ʚ/, as in ʙirif ‘he knew’, < OA ʚarifa. The change of OA /hˢ / and /ʚ/ to /h/ and /ʙ/ is one common to Arabic in Chad, Nigeria and parts of the western Sudan. It happens, however, that /h/ and /ʙ/ themselves are ‘weak’ sounds, and liable to variation of different kinds. The range of variants includes the following: They may be kept: biʙarif ‘he knows’, šahar ‘month’, wāhid ‘one’ and ahamar ‘red’.5 They may change to the semivowel /y/ next to an /i/: biyarif, wāyid. Lastly, they may be deleted altogether: biarif, shār, wāid.
4
As in many dialects, there is no phonemic contrast between short high front and back vowels. In this dialect, however, /i/ and /u/ must be lexically specified, as they are unpredictable. As far as verbs go, given a lexical stem specification, the pre-formative vowel is usually determined by vowel harmony rules: if the stem vowel is /u/, the prefix vowel is /u/. Otherwise it is /i/. 5 Via the so-called ‘gahawa-complex’, whereby an /a/ is inserted in the sequence of guttural C + C, in this case < *ahmar < ahˢ mar.
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The variation spoken of here is at the individual level, determined by contextual and socio-linguistic factors (see Owens 2006, 242 for statistical treatment); one and the same speaker may in one place for ‘month’ give šahar, and in another šār. The question I will investigate in this paper is what happens to verbs like simi ‘hear’, ga#a 6 ‘cut’ and karah ‘hate’, verbs with final /h. There are two reasons for concentrating on the laryngeals in this position. First it is only in this position that a change in the laryngeals is nearly categorical, as will be explained.7 Secondly, it is here that the phonological change has direct morphological consequences. If they are deleted in final position, what effects, if any, the deletion has on the morphological structure of the language need to be specified. Given a form such as tismao ‘you.M.PL hear’, if the final glottal stop is deleted, the form tismao would automatically arise. Tisma-o, with final V-V is not a paradigm otherwise attested in the dialect, however. Alternatively, it could collapse with the already existent weak final paradigm, tilga ‘you get’, tilg-o ‘they get’ (see (3) above), which would yield tism-o. Which alternative emerges is described in this section. The data for addressing this question is of two types. One is textual data, which will be summarized in 2.2 below. First I present the results of a test in which 8 Arabs from Maiduguri were presented orally with a series of test sentences in which one word was left out. The respondents had to complete the sentence with the ‘correct’ form. All of the answers involved verbs with a final // or /h/, the purpose of the test being to see in which contexts the final laryngeals were kept or deleted. A sample question was the following, involving the verb simi ‘hear’, the first sentence requiring a perfect verb, the second an imperfect: (4) hu simi an-nādim haw ana kula …………. he heard the man and I also hi tisma l-kalām haw hinna kula …………. she hears the sentence/matter and they F also
6
The /#/ is emphatic and implosive. It is my impression that the deletion in this position is statistically more common than in word initial or medial position, though I have not checked this. 7
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The most obvious response for the first was ‘heard him’, the Arabic for this being either simī-t-a ‘heard-I-him’ if the final /ʙ/ is deleted, or simiʙ-t-a if it is kept, while for the second either b-ismaʙ-ann-a ‘3-hear-FPL-it’ (if kept) or bism-ann-a (if deleted). Note that in the imperfect a final V-initial suffix (-an FPL in the second example) replaces the final stem vowel if the final laryngeal is deleted. The respondents were all under 30 and most are educated. It was found that those older than 30 had trouble concentrating on the questions, so unfortunately age differential could not be taken into account. A total of 16 sentences were asked. The anticipated ‘responses’ were distributed among different morphological classes of verbs, both basic and derived verbs for example, and among different inflectional contexts, though only subject suffixes were tested for. Questions were asked for both perfect and imperfect verbs, as illustrated in (4) above. Two types of suffixes can be distinguished here, those that begin with a C (e.g. 1SG -t) and those that begin with a V (e.g. FPL -an). In the 16 test sentences, the answers divided into forms involving the following suffixes: (5) Perfect verbs with subject person suffix -t 3MPL -o 3FSG -at Imperfect 3 MPL -u/o9 total
N = 58 N = 3 N = 1 N = 5 (3FPL -an, N = 2) N = 16
There were 128 total responses (16 8). In all but 2 cases the responses conformed to the anticipated answers. The two ‘deviant’ answers are ignored here, so in all there are 126 responses. The results are summarized in (6). In (7) three typical responses are given. (6) Stems appearing with:
8 This stands for any subject suffix that begins with a -t, including for example 1 sg, simī-t ‘I heard’, 2 FSG simī-ti ‘you F heard’ and 2 MPL manē-tu ‘you MPL prevented’. 9 In the imperfect the MPL suffix is -u after a high stem vowel, bimš-u ‘they go’ from the stem bimši, and -o after a low stem vowel, bilg-o ‘they find’, from the stem bilga,.
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Stems appearing with (a) (b) (c) ʙ/h = Ø Ø, stem vowel kept ʙ/h kept (= weak verbs) (mixed stems) (= strong verbs)
Perfect -t 36 -o 11 -at 2 Imperfect -u/o 14 -an 8 Total 71 before C-initial suffixes: 36 before V-initial suffixes: 35 (7)
(a) ʙ/h =Ø
0 1 0
2 12 6
1 8 2
25 8 53
0
2
2
51
(b) mixed stem
(c) ʙ/h kept
Perfect -t ga#ē-t ‘I cut’ ga#aʙ-t Cf. weak verb mašē-t ‘I went’ cf. strong verb katab-t -o sim-o ‘they heard’ daba-o ‘they killed’ sim-o ‘they heard’ cf. maš-o ‘they went’ Imperfect -u/o bism-o ‘they hear’ bisma-o bisamʙ-o cf. bilg-o ‘they get’
The verbs in column (a) behave like weak-final verbs, examples of which are given in brackets in (7). The verbs in column (c) behave like strong verbs, verbs with 3 consonantal roots. The mixed stem in column (b) has attributes both of stems with deleted final laryngeal and of those with the laryngeal maintained. Like the former the laryngeal is deleted; like the latter the final stem vowel is maintained. There is a fundamental contrast defined by the variable C- or V-initial suffix.
Final ʙ/h disappear almost categorically before a C-initial subject suffix (36 cases where ʙ/h = Ø (column a), 2 where they are kept (column c)). The verbs are then conjugated like weak-final verbs, that is, verbs with a CVCV stem, e.g. ga#ē-t ‘I cut’ < *ga#a-t , cf. mašē-t ‘I walked’. Otherwise the maintenance of /h is slightly dominant statistically, though only in one instance is the dominance overwhelming, namely in the form bā-at ‘she sold’ with the 3 FSG suffix -at. Whether the conditioning factor here
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is the suffix itself or the verb stem (CāC-, which I suspect is the case) is not apparent in the data since only one -at frame was used. As with C-initial suffixes, usually before a V-initial suffix if /h are not used, the stem is shifted to the weak-final class, e.g. ga#-o ‘they cut’, budb-o ‘they M slaughter’. In two cases, however the stem vowel was kept: daba-o ‘they m slaughtered’, bitba-o ‘they M follow’. Also, in three cases where /h are not used, stress was irregularly shifted to the penultimate syllable, bukár-u ‘they M hate’. None of the respondents categorically used or disposed of the final /h, even in a discrete sub-class of forms (e.g. perfect stems, excepting the C-initial conditioning factor). Table 1 summarizes the global scores for individuals. TABLE 1
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSES
Respondent
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
/h kept /h dropped
4 12
2 14
9 7
2 14
9 6
13 3
9 7
4 11
For 6 of the respondents there is textual material against which their test scores can be compared. These texts include standard interviews as well as less formal situations. Of the six, one has no tokens of final /h in his text, and one has only 1. The total scores from the texts, classified into morphological context, are given in Table 2. TABLE 2
TEXT SCORES OF SIX INDIVIDUALS
Perfect /h
–t/n 0 10
-o 6 7
Imperfect –at 5 5
u/o 10 5
–an 3 0
–á 0 6
AP
Total
–V, 0 2
24 35
The contexts are the following; in the perfect: suffix -t/n 1 SG, 2, 1PL, MPL -o, FSG -at, in imperfect MPL -u/o, FPL -an, 3 MSG with object suffix, AP with plural suffix. An example of each (taken from texts) is as follows, where relevant giving one example with the final laryngeal kept, one with it absent. dabēt ‘I slaughtered’, daboh-o ‘they slaughtered’, dabō-a ‘they M slaughtered it F’ (these 2 tokens from same speaker); wagaat ‘she fell’; simata ‘she heard him’, bisám-o ‘they M hear’; tugo ‘you M fall’; bimbáa-an
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‘they F are sold’; basemá ‘I hear him’; tābīn (AP, active participle) ‘following-MPL’ (
test text
TEXT COUNT: /H KEPT BEFORE MPL SUFFIX/DROPPED, % KEPT
kept
perfect dropped
%
kept
imperfect dropped
%
11 7
12 6
48 55
14 10
25 5
64 66
The texts also indicate that before object suffixes there is a categorical shift to the weak-final paradigm, regardless of whether or not the suffix begins with a V or C; thus dabáa-hin ‘he slaughtered them F’, budbá ‘he slaughters it M’, rather than dabah-hin/budbaha.108 There is also a fair degree of agreement between the test scores of individual speakers and their treatment of /h in natural speech. Speaker 4, for instance has the lowest percentage retention of /h in the test, and is also lowest in the text count, while speaker 6 has the highest percentage retention in both. Only speaker 7 has a lower percentage retention in the text than in the test. 10 After strong verbs object suffixes are suffixed directly to the final -C, with no other changes occurring, e.g. katab-a ‘he wrote-it’, katab-hin ‘he wrote-them’. After verbs ending in a final -V the final vowel lengthens before a suffix, ligi-hin → ligī-hin ‘he found them’. Before object suffixes (which were not tested in the frames like (4)) the laryngealfinal verbs shift to the weak-final class.
paradigmatic stability and final laryngeals TABLE 4
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TOTAL RETENTION/DELETION OF FINAL ʙ/H IN TEXTS OF 5 SPEAKERS
Speaker
2
4
6
7
8
/h kept deleted
0 1
4 11
9 2
6 11
5 8
For the present sample of speakers it can then be said that verbs with final ʙ/h belong to a mixed paradigm: before C-initial subject suffixes they belong to the paradigm of weak-final verbs; before V-initial subject suffixes they are treated variably, in cases even by the same speaker, sometimes as CVCVC stems, sometimes as CVCV, weak- final stems. 2.2
Larger sample
Looking at the larger sample of texts, as summarized in Owens (1998), the extent of deletion in the pre-vocalic context was indicized over three sample groups, Maiduguri interviews (N = 58), Maiduguri group conversations (N = 61) and village interviews (N = 52). Aspects of the corpus can be briefly summarized here. In the following, an index of 0% means that the laryngeal is never deleted, of 100% that it always is. Table 5 groups all speakers together, while Table 6 divides them according to place and sex. The following indices pertain only to the context V ʙ/h-V, i.e. V-initial suffixes. TABLE 5 Table 5a: Place Village Maiduguri
TOTAL SAMPLE Table 5b: Sex
71% 79%
Male Female
TABLE 6
Maid Villages
Table 5c: Age
79% 71%
<32 32–49 >49
83% 83% 61%
PLACE X SEX Male
Female
81% 74%
75% 54%
More so than the data examined thus far, the overall scores point to a loss of final laryngeals in pre-vocalic position, the loss being most pronounced
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among younger, male residents of Maiduguri, with Maiduguri well ahead of the village overall among both males and females. The text scores show a higher degree of deletion overall than do the test scores described above. This is interesting, if the test scores indicate a higher degree of monitoring (the ‘reading list effect’ in the classical, early sociolinguistic studies), it would indicate that the laryngeals are somehow ‘there’ to a higher degree than the test scores would show. The lower female scores would deserve comment, if adequate comparative data were available, which it is not. In western studies, females have consistently been shown to ‘lead’ changes. However, even if western sociolinguistics attempts to draw far-reaching conclusions from such tendencies (Chambers 1995, 139), the present data cautions against overgeneralizing, to say the least. Looking at the data overall, a change can be said to have occurred in the apportionment of final verbal ʙ/h verbs: before C-initial suffixes they merge with weak final verbs whereas before V-initial suffixes they variably merge with weak-final verbs. Factors speak both for and against the variable merger going to completion. In favor thereof, urban dwellers, especially younger ones, have the highest degree of merger. Rural dwellers, however, have a lower degree, and at this point in the history of Arabic in Nigeria, they constitute the overwhelming majority. Moreover, there are structural factors favoring retention: in explicit tests the final laryngeal was retained more often than in spontaneous speech. Moreover, in other positions, V-ʙ/h-V sequences, such as word-internally (šahar ‘month’), are generally maintained, so at this point at least, the high degree of variability is most marked at the right morphological edge. Moving to the next section, the current situation will be represented as having a split paradigm, with the possibility, that in the future laryngealfinal verbs will merge completely with weak-final ones. Before proceeding to the final section, it is relevant to note that an identical treatment of laryngeal-final verbs is found in Abbeche Arabic in eastern Chad (Roth-Laly 1979, 8–10). This shows that the split of laryngeal-final verbs into two morpho-phonological classes is old enough to be a pan-western Sudanic Arabic trait. Again, however, without more detailed study of the situation in eastern Chad it is not possible to say more than that. If the loss of laryngeals is more advanced in Chad than in Nigeria, one would predict that they would also be lost eventually in Nigeria. If, on the other hand, the same complementary treatment of final laryngeals is found as in Nigeria (governed by form of suffix), one would rather see the split as stabilized.
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3. Morphological Regularity, paradigmatic stability Before continuing, it is relevant to examine the manner in which the laryngeal-final verbs have split into two classes. As seen in (7), the laryngeal-final verbs either end in a laryngeal (column c in (7)) or in a vowel (column a). They thus either remain in the class of C- final verbs or they shift to the class of weak-final verbs: (8) strong verb (C-final) ga#aan ‘they F cut’ cf. katab-an ‘they F write’
weak verb (V-final) ga#ēti ‘you FSG cut’ cf. mašē-ti ‘you FSG went’
What happens only rarely is that a new morphological class is created, one with properties of both the strong and weak verbs. In (6) there are two such tokens, attesting to the fact that such forms do in fact occur.11 They are given in column b; both tokens occur before V-initial suffixes. A form like daba-o ‘they M killed’ derives from dabah-o with deletion of the final laryngeal. Rather than switch to another stem class, which is what usually happens when the final laryngeal is deleted (dab-o), the final stem vowel has been maintained. In essence, a new morphological class has been created. This class, however, has not become widespread or established in the speech community. Looking at the development structurally, the deletion of the final laryngeal leads to the splitting of /h-final verb stems into two preexisting morphological classes, the distribution of these being broadly defined by morpho-phonological context. What did not happen is that the loss of the final laryngeal in one context led to the development of a new morphological class based on the stem CVCV-suffix. Morphological stability takes precedence over forms, which would be derived by the logic of phonological rules. The WSA developments would ostensibly appear to support the idea of linguistic history repeating itself: final laryngeals in Arabic verbs tend to ‘drift’ into weak-final ones. This repeats a similar process, which occurred in pre-diasporic Arabic, as illustrated in (1) in section one (bada-t/badē-t). Under one interpretation of Arabic language history, one could this add drift to the catalogue of features characteristic of New Arabic (allowing for the cautionary note 1 above). 11 In the texts from speakers from the present sample no mixed forms occur. In other texts, however, they are attested.
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However, the data allows for a more nuanced description. The change described for WSA can be broken down into two parts. On the one hand, what may be termed a principle of paradigmatic stability, one aspect of morphological stability, can be invoked: (9) Principle of paradigmatic stability: do not create new paradigms
In its categoricality this statement is clearly too strong, and one can imagine adding many conditions to it, but it serves present purposes. Both the Old Arabic and the WSA data obey the principle: the loss of a final laryngeal in both cases did not lead to the creation of a new paradigm. Rather, the laryngeal-less forms simply collapsed, or in the case of WSA, are still in the process of collapsing, into already-existing paradigms. The other part is the phonological change that creates the condition for the collapse into pre-existing paradigms. This change is one of happenstance. In WSA, /hˢ/ became /h/ and /ʚ/ became /ʙ/. This type of change is not unique among varieties of Arabic. /ʚ/ has moved to /ʙ/ in the Tihama, /q/ appears as /ʙ/ in Cairene, Damascene, as well as elsewhere. Maltese presents a complicated picture of its own. γ and /ʚ/ merged in /ʚ/, which in turn was lost, leading, as in WSA, to the merger of */ʚ/-final verbs with weak finals.129 (10) sm-ayt tf-ayna
‘I heard’ ‘we threw’ (< dfʚ)
Why the changes occurred in WSA is, frankly, not clear at this point, as is the question, why in some dialects ʙ and/or h continue on to Ø. One 12 In Maltese the final -a of the suffix is conditioned by the historical pharyngeal, and hence contrasts with, say, bn-eyt ‘I built’, where the suffix goes back to the diphthong *ay-t. In fact, the historical phonology of Maltese remains to be worked out in detail. Not least is the problem of a not inconsiderable dialect variability, with its potential importance for historical reconstruction (cf. Owens 2006, chapter 7 on ʙimāla in Maltese). Mifsud (1995, 308-9) explains the final /y/ in sm-ayt etc. as a change of the historical pharyngeal trace to /y/. This analysis is interesting in and of itself, but probably deserves an article of its own. Briefly, while Mifsud’s analysis still maintains the paradigmatic stability principle, it is on an a priori basis more complicated than the treatment offered here. Mifsud notes that in general verbs with historical final voiced pharyngeals merge with weak-final verbs (e.g. nitfa ‘we throw’, like ninsa ‘we forget’). The current analysis sees the merger as having occurred throughout all inflectional paradigm members, allowing for the underlying phonetic conditioning of [a] due to the pharyngeal trace. Mifsud’s analysis would split the paradigm of voiced pharyngeal-final verbs. In the process this creates an otherwise unattested CCay-C stem, where the /y/ represents C3 of the root, and hence would contrast with the split paradigms-analysis offered above for WSA, since in the present analysis laryngeal-final verbs split into two existent paradigms.
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can, of course, appeal to sub-stratal influence. This is quite plausible in the case of WSA. However, why should the shift have occurred in WSA, but not in another notable Sprachinsel where Arabic is a remarkable minority language, Uzbekistan?13 In short, the phonological shift to /h/ and // and the further loss of these sounds, is history in its truest sense, contingent on particular developments in particular places, in particular times. This contingency is in evidence in WSA in the very variability of the process. It is unfortunate that longer term trend studies cannot be followed through on to trace the further development of this phenomenon. At what point, if ever, does the change go to completion, and why? In any case, once these sounds are given up, the paradigmatic stability principle takes over. This obtains in all varieties of Arabic that have (1) above, in WSA, as described here, and in Maltese as well, as suggested around the discussion of (10) above. In short then, the ‘sequence’ of developments is as follows: (11) loss of final laryngeal (12) obeisance of the paradigmatic stability principle (see (9) above)
In other words, given the loss of the laryngeal, collapsing into the weakfinal paradigm follows automatically. In the current framework, only (11) is history proper. (12) is suggested to be the instantiation of a general linguistic principle in Arabic verbal morphology. In a sense, so long as Arabic exists, (12) will be operative in the way described here. Its reappearance at different points in the history of Arabic, however, is not compatible with a conceptualization of Arabic as having changed from and Old type to a New type. To the contrary, because the same structural forces are at work in pre-diasporic times as are at work in 2006, no change has occurred.
4. Appendix Verbs used in test frames (given in the form of a possible answer): dábaho ‘they slaughtered’; simīt ‘I heard’; wājēt ‘I faced’; karaho ‘they hate’; ga#ēt ‘I cut’; garēti ‘you FSG stopped’; manētu ‘you MPL prevented’; binfaan ‘they F are useful’; budbaho ‘they M slaughter’; bisaman ‘they F hear’; 13 Moreover, in WSA emphatic sounds are fully maintained, but they are lost in Uzbekistan Arabic.
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tuwājuhu ‘you MPL face’; bikrahu ‘they M hate’; bitbao ‘they M follow’; bāat ‘she sold’; bibīu ‘they M sell’; ga#ao ‘they M cut’.
5. References Behnstedt, Peter. 1985. Die nordjemenitischen Dialekte. Teil 1: Atlas. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Chambers, Jack. 1995. Sociolinguistics Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Ibn Mujāhid, Ahˢmad b. Mūsā. 1972. As-Saba fī l-qirāāt. Ahˢmad Šawqi Dˢ ayf, ed. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif, 1972. Mifsud, Manwel. 1995. Loan Verbs in Maltese. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Owens, Jonathan. 1998. Neighborhood and Ancestry: Variation in the Spoken Arabic of Maiduguri, Nigeria. Amsterdam: Benjamins. ——. 2006. A Linguistic History of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rabin, Chaim. 1951. Ancient West Arabian. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press. Roth-Laly, Arlette. 1979. Esquisse grammaticale du parler arabe d’Abbeche. Paris: Geuthner. Versteegh, Kees. 1984. Pidginization and Creolization: the Case of Arabic. In Amsterdam: Benjamins. ——. 2004. “Pidginization and Creolization Revisited: The Case of Arabic.” In Haak, Martine, Rudolf de Jong, and Kees Versteegh, eds. Approaches to Arabic Dialects: A collection of articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Leiden: Brill, 343–358.
SOME ASPECTS OF DIGLOSSIA AS REFLECTED IN THE VOCABULARY OF LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC Judith Rosenhouse Swantech Ltd., Haifa, Israel
1. Introduction 1.1
Preliminary remarks
This paper focuses on diglossic differences between literary and colloquial Arabic mainly from the morpho-phonological and lexico-semantic aspects. The lexical part of the language is probably the area that most clearly distinguishes between these varieties of Arabic. Our survey deals with phonology, morphology and lexicon/semantics. After the introduction, the second part deals with phonological features that distinguish literary Arabic from colloquial Arabic (e.g., consonants such as /q, j/ and /t/, the vowel of word-final ʙimāla, and the emphatics). The main differences between the two varieties of Arabic reflect the well-known typical segmental features of colloquial Arabic. Next, morphological or morpho-phonological comparison between the phonological system of cognate lexical items in colloquial Arabic (as spoken in Israel) and literary Arabic is undertaken. Literary Arabic uses a considerable number of lexemes in their foreign forms often adapted to Arabic morpho-phonology ; in such cases colloquial and literary Arabic lexemes are often cognate. We look briefly into the lexical areas where these phenomena occur. These features can be described within language interference or language contact as terms of one linguistic approach, or as code mixture according to another. From this point of view, these features do not differ much from phenomena in other Arabic dialects (Boucherit, 2000, Heath 1989, Owens, 1998, Taine-Cheich, 2000) or languages (e.g., Ritchie and Bhatia, 2004).
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judith rosenhouse Introductory remarks
The centuries-long development of modern literary Arabic, elsewhere also Modern Standard Arabic, and colloquial Arabic, the two faces of the Arabic language, and the differences between literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic, have been the topic of much linguistic debate especially since Ferguson’s (1959) well-known paper on diglossia (e.g., Blau, 1977, Blanc, 1960, Bousaffara-Omar, 2005, Diem, 1974, Fernandez, 1993, Fück, 1950, Haeri, 2003, Holes, 1995, Kaye, 1994, 2002, Mejdell, 2002, Meiseles, 1975, 1980, Monteil, 1960, Stetkevych, 1970, Versteegh, 1997). As this area is also of much interest for Professor Kees Versteegh I dedicate this paper to him. Literary and colloquial Arabic reveal differences on all linguistic levels, including phonology, morphology and syntax, in addition to vocabulary, as described in Ferguson (1959). Our recent work on trilingual dictionaries (Rosenhouse, 2001, 2004) has given us a genuine and tangible feel for this situation from the lexical aspect of Arabic diglossia in Israel, and the present paper is partly based on items in those volumes. Some random examples of such differences are shows in Table 1 below. We take into account the relevant literature, and rely on a lexical search of several Arabic newspapers from which we gathered examples for the studied points. TABLE 1
EXAMPLES OF LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC NON-COMPATIBLE LEXEMES
Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic
Gloss
dumya iğhād ihtada zujāj kura zawraq
lube tarh libes el-kundara qazāz tābe flῡka
Puppet Abortion To put shoes on Glass Ball Boat
The situation of the Arabic language has recently been described as follows in Ayyoub: “In societies where a substantial segment of the population is literate, and two variants of language usage exist, the gap between the literary/written and spoken Arabic tends to diminish. With the gap disappearing, a continuum emerges, offering the speaker a rich array of possibilities” (2002, see also Kaye 2002). Such a mixed language
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655
can be examined at present from oral material, or from written texts dating from the 7th century to the present (e.g., Blau 1977,1 and see Chapter 1 in Mazraani 1997, for a review of relevant literature). For Arabic, this mixture is known also as middle Arabic (al-luġa al-wustˢā, Badawi 1973).2 The importance of the lexical aspect in the distinction between literary and colloquial Arabic is partly due to the sheer number of the lexical items, which naturally far exceed the number of grammatical structures and phonological categories. Our research hypothesis and therefore starting points are based on two assumptions: 1. More literary Arabic lexemes (and more loanwords from various languages) are used in colloquial Arabic, than colloquial Arabic lexemes are used in literary Arabic (cf., e.g., Al-Falay 1996, chapter four). This apparently is because literary Arabic often uses loan translation (calque) or new terminology coined by official authorities such as academies of Arabic language in Egypt and elsewhere (e.g., Shraybom-Shivtiel 2005) instead of loanwords. 2. When foreign lexemes are used in literary Arabic or colloquial Arabic, they usually adapt to the Arabic system phonologically, and also morphologically when necessary and possible. 1.3
Literary and colloquial Arabic cognate words
Literary and colloquial Arabic cognate words vary mainly in phonological and/or morphological features and not semantically (Cadora 1979). Most of the colloquial Arabic examples referred to below reflect colloquial Arabic as spoken in Israel. The picture we get from this country may differ somewhat from that in other countries. In fact, literary Arabic is not uniform either, and literary Arabic lexemes vary in different 1 Several views of middle Arabic do not consider it a separate variety or a variant of the language, “for it lacks a grammatical coherence: we simultaneously find correct forms of the literary Arabic and deviations from these forms. We even find hybrid forms that are neither literary nor dialectal” (Ayyoub, 2002. Cf. e.g., Kaye, 2002, Mejdell, 2002). 2 Diglossia is also related to bilingualism, since two language systems are dealt with (cf. Fasold, 1984, Rosenhouse and Goral, 2004). Thus, when speakers use colloquial Arabic lexemes in a literary Arabic context, or vice versa, they may do it either for specific functional (stylistic) purposes or as an unintentional process of code switching. Although we do not deal with code switching in this paper, I believe that the use of literary Arabic words in a colloquial Arabic context is not to be considered code switching or code mixing if the literary Arabic word is already integrated in colloquial Arabic and used in it as the only accepted lexeme for that specific notion.
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Arabic-speaking countries, in particular in the fields of technical and scientific vocabulary (Holes 1995, Badawi 1997). For simplicity, we refer to literary and colloquial Arabic as distinct and independent systems. The following sections of the paper focus on a comparison of contemporary literary and colloquial Arabic vocabulary as reflecting Arabic diglossia, and not on their diachronic development. After a short description of phonological and morphological features of literary and colloquial Arabic vocabulary (§ 2), three aspects relating to semantics are examined: (1) the use of foreign lexemes in literary and colloquial Arabic (§ 3.1); (2) the use of colloquial Arabic words in literary Arabic and literary Arabic words in colloquial Arabic (§ 3.2); (3) semantic differences between cognate literary Arabic / colloquial Arabic words (§ 3.3). Section 4 concludes this essay.
2. Phonological and morphological differences between literary and colloquial Arabic The brief description of phonological and morphological differences between literary and colloquial Arabic lexical pairs in this section is intended to demonstrate processes that distinguish literary from colloquial Arabic. These processes appear in the oral articulation of literary and colloquial Arabic and mark them clearly. Ferguson (1959) considered such lexical literary / colloquial Arabic pairs as an important feature of diglossia. For a detailed phonological and morphological analysis of colloquial / literary Arabic lexical items in the discourse of speakers from three countries (Egypt, Iraq and Libya) see Mazraani (1997). 2.1
Phonology
Phonological differences between literary and colloquial Arabic in Israel and elsewhere are among the most studied and noted features in the literature of Arabic diglossia (e.g., Altoma 1969, Blanc 1960, Meiseles 1980, Fischer and Jastrow 1980, Holes 1995, Mazraani 1997, Rosenhouse 1984, Versteegh 1997). Usually, speakers of a colloquial Arabic dialect use the same consonants for literary Arabic speech as for colloquial Arabic. The emphatics /s, d, t, / and the somewhat language-specific
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pharyngeals /, h /, as well as plosives, fricatives, lateral and semivowels are pronounced in the same manner in both (spoken) literary and in colloquial Arabic (at least in Israel), and therefore are not discussed here. That is, most speech sounds are shared by the phonological systems of literary and colloquial Arabic. In Israel as in other dialects (see Kaye and Rosenhouse 1997), the phonological differences between literary and colloquial Arabic refer mainly to uvular /q/, the three interdentals /t, d, z/, and the allophones /ž - j/ for Semitic *g. The phoneme /k/ has a palatalized variant /č/ used in certain rural and Bedouin dialects in Israel, but its use seems to be somewhat dwindling (at least in Israel) due to the effects of prestigious urban colloquial Arabic (in Israel) dialects and the spread of literary Arabic due to school education. Another case is that of the emphatic /d/ which merges with // in certain (rural) dialects. Sometimes such dialect speakers do not merge these phonemes in literary Arabic. The vowel system of many colloquial Arabic dialects (in Israel) includes two vowels that do not exist in literary Arabic: /e, o/, and the parallel long monophthongs /ē, ō/ which usually reflect the literary Arabic diphthongs /ai, au/ respectively. When speaking in literary Arabic, the traditional literary Arabic articulation of these diphthongs, as diphthongs, is usually retained in Israel. Let us discuss now the ‘problematic’ phonemes of the system as they occur in Israel. Mainly Muslim, Christian, and Druze speakers of rural dialects pronounce the phoneme q as uvular. In urban dialects this phoneme is articulated as glottal /ʙ/ and in Bedouin dialects and some rural dialects its pronunciation varies, often under certain conditions, between /g/ and /j/. However, Bedouins and urban speakers do articulate the phoneme /q/ as uvular when reading the Qurān or when certain literary Arabic lexemes are used in words such as al-qurʙān ‘the Koran’, qadiyye ‘problem, issue’, qawmiyye ‘nationalism’, or dimuqrātiyye ‘democracy’3 (cf. Mazraani 1997, Haeri 2003). A similar process refers to the other phonemes under discussion here: the colloquial Arabic dialects vary in their articulation between the urban /d-d-z/ for /z/ and /s, t/ for / t/, and the respective ‘traditional’ literary Arabic articulation /d/ and /d/ which simultaneously characterizes rural and Bedouin dialects. The four basic emphatics /s, d, t, z/ (especially at word-final position) are often
3 In non-phonetic dictionaries the transcription usually hides such dialect differences. Also in our dictionary only one letter transcribes q in colloquial Arabic.
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pronounced as non-emphatic phonemes in some colloquial Arabic dialects (in Israel), mainly urban ones, as in /s/ for /s/ in colloquial Arabic /sandūʙ/ for literary Arabic/sundūq/ ‘box’ (see Rosenhouse 2002). These phonemes are, however, transcribed in colloquial Arabic dictionaries (in Israel) without consideration of the option of this non-emphatic articulation. Colloquial Arabic (in Israel) has, on the other hand, a few emphatic consonants that do not exist in literary Arabic, and are usually phonetic variants of non-emphatic phonemes. The phenomenon is marginal in rural and urban colloquial Arabic in Israel and is more prevalent in Bedouin dialects (in Israel and elsewhere). But it may form phonemic distinctions in certain words such as /b$ba/ ‘pope’ vs. /b$%ba/ ‘her door’, or /a&&a/ ‘God’ vs. /ʙal-la/ ‘he said to her’. The vowel /a/ of the feminine ending in noun and adjective forms, which in modern literary Arabic is pronounced /a/, may be /a, e/ or /i/ in colloquial Arabic (in Israel), with differences depending on dialect features and phonetic factors. The phonetic condition of urban and rural dialects in this region is that if the consonant preceding the suffix is pharyngeal, laryngeal, emphatic, or uvular, the vowel remains /a/; cf. /sāa/ ‘hour, clock’; otherwise it bends upward (ʙimāla of classical Arabic), as in e.g. /sane, sini/ ‘year’. The /a/ is also a feature characterizing (colloquial Arabic) Bedouin dialects. Thus this suffix uses the vowel /a/ in formal (literary Arabic) and Bedouin speech, but also in (non-Bedouin) colloquial Arabic when preceded by a back or guttural consonant. The difference in the use of /e/ or /i/ in this ending is less easy to define, because although it is sometimes apparently dialectdependent (see examples in, e.g., Geva-Kleinberger 2004) it often reflects free variation and is sometime also a more central /i/. Consequently, four contexts of articulation of the tāʙ marbūta as /a/ (rather than /e/ or /i/) can exist: (1) formal, literary Arabic; (2) a Bedouin dialect; (3) phonetically-conditioned urban/rural colloquial Arabic (in Israel); or (4) a mixed/switched utterance using literary Arabic pronunciation within a colloquial Arabic structure (in Israel). The features briefly described here for colloquial Arabic (in Israel) are similar in principle to those in many other colloquial Arabic dialects, including Mesopotamian q'ltu and g'l't dialects (Blanc 1964, Jastrow 1978). Unlike consonants, the vowel system differs in colloquial Arabic from literary Arabic almost in all the Arabic dialects. This is expressed by expansion of the phonetic vowel system on the one hand and the merging of several vowels to a smaller set of phonemes on the other
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hand (the latter is conspicuous in North African dialects). The wider the differences between the traditional literary Arabic phonological system and that of daily colloquial Arabic, the more literary Arabic articulation ‘errors’ may be found in the speech of such colloquial Arabic speakers. This also is a typical feature of the code-mixing phenomenon. Examples abound in any recorded colloquial or literary Arabic text (e.g., Blanc 1960), and even presidential speeches (see Mazraani 1997). 2.2
Morphology
Morphological differences between literary and colloquial Arabic (in Israel) exist in various categories. The pronominal system exhibits wellknown differences in the free and bound pronouns in the nominal and verbal systems. See examples in Table 2. TABLE 2 EXAMPLES OF MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic
Gloss
nah nu antum dāruki dārukunna katabtu taktubīna
nih na, ih na intu(m) dārek dārku/dārkun/dārken katabt (b)tukutbi/(b)tikitbi
we you, pl. m. your sg. f. home your pl. f. home I wrote you sg. f. write/will write
The suffixed object bound pronouns also differ: literary Arabic talabtuka vs. colloquial Arabic (in Israel) talabtak ‘I requested you, m. sg.’, literary Arabic fatah ahu vs. colloquial Arabic (in Israel) fatah o ‘he opened it,’ etc. In the nominal system we note literary Arabic af al vs. ifal in several local dialects of colloquial Arabic (in Israel), e.g., literary Arabic aswad— colloquial Arabic (in Israel) iswad ‘black’ in the colors groups. Another example is the female form of some adjectives, which in literary Arabic are of the falā pattern whereas in colloquial Arabic they are ‘regular’, i.e., with the tā marbūta, e.g. literary Arabic sakrān colloquial Arabic (in Israel) sakrāne ‘drunk’. Differences between literary and colloquial Arabic (in Israel) also occur in plural patterns4 as the examples in Table 3 show.
4 We refer to those lexemes where the singular is identical or at least cognate in both literary and colloquial Arabic.
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TABLE 3 EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PLURAL FORMS IN LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC (IN ISRAEL) Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic (Israel)
Gloss
ābār ašhur, šuhūr numūr nuqūs bah h āūrūna
byāra š(u)hūr nmura nawāqes bah h āra
wells months tigers defects, faults seamen
Such differences are, of course, in addition to basically phonetic differences of cognates, existing in singular as well as in plural forms— see Table 4. TABLE 4
PHONETIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COGNATE LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC LEXEMES
Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic (Israel)
Gloss
ism far mintaqa ibar asnān daqāiq asātida
usum fār mantiqa ubar snān daqāyeq ’asātze
name mouse region needles, injections teeth minutes gentlemen, professors
In the verb system also certain verb patterns vary between literary and colloquial Arabic (in Israel). See regular verb patterns such as literary Arabic qadara—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) ġidir ‘was able’, literary Arabic arafa—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) iref ‘knew’, and their respective non-past patterns: literary Arabic yaqdiru—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) yiġdar ‘will be/is able’, literary Arabic yarifu—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) yiәraf ‘will know/knows’. Differences are also found in verbs of C1//, e.g., literary Arabic yaxudu- colloquial Arabic (in Israel) yāxud/yōxud/yōxed ‘will take/he takes/, C2w/y/’ pattern, e.g., literary Arabic xiftu—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) xuft ‘I was afraid’, C3w/y pattern, e.g., literary Arabic baqiya—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) baqa/ biqi ‘he remained’, literary Arabic qaraa—colloquial Arabic (in Israel) qara, qiri ‘he read’, and many more. Differences of these kinds are well known from the literature, and in a dictionary presenting both literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic (in Israel) (such as Rosenhouse 2001, 2004) one at once sees the abundance
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of these forms. However, the main goal of a dictionary study is word meanings, and to this issue we now turn.
3. Semantic considerations of the differences between literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic lexemes 3.1
The use of foreign lexemes
Like other languages, Arabic has absorbed many lexical items from foreign languages from its classical past to the present. Since the second half of the 20th century the major source of foreign loanwords in Arabic has been the American English language, which has become the modern lingua franca of the world. Before that, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Persian, Latin, Greek and others made lasting impacts on Arabic vocabulary (Rosenhouse, to appear). Literary Arabic was ‘revived’ in the 19th century through the diverse efforts of writers, journalists, scientists and linguists. These efforts led to the establishment of academies for the Arabic language in Damascus (1919), Cairo (1934), Baghdad (1947) and Amman (1976). Coining new terminology for modern notions is one of the declared tasks of these academies, as it is of many language academies elsewhere. The linguistic methods applied include borrowing terms and integrating them into the language phonologically and morphologically; extending meanings of existing (Arabic) words; analogical creations based on existing roots; translation of foreign words into Arabic (calque); and blending (Stetkevych 1970, also quoted in Suleiman 2005, Shraybom-Shivtiel 2005). Such Arabicizing of foreign terminology goes on in other Arabicspeaking countries too (e.g., Al-Qahtani 2002, for Saudi Arabia, and Kharbush 2002, for Jordan see Badawi 1997). This activity has added thousands of new words to the literary Arabic vocabulary, although there is no full agreement between the various language institutes (whatever their titles) in Arab countries and although many of these new words remain buried in dictionaries without enjoying general public use (Badawi, 1997). Whatever the distribution of lexical innovations in literary Arabic vocabulary, this process clearly contributes to the decrease in the number of foreign terms in literary Arabic, particularly in the semantic fields of modern technology and science. Unlike literary Arabic, colloquial Arabic is not subject to any official language policy and it develops spontaneously, albeit under the effect of internal and external circumstances. Accordingly, foreign terminology
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flows freely into colloquial Arabic and is integrated in keeping with the needs of its speakers (see Rosenbaum 2000/2). As noted, this terminology now comes mainly from English, but residues of the effects of other languages from earlier periods can still be found. In Israel the situation is somewhat different from Egypt (as Rosenbaum ibid. describes it), since in Israel Hebrew is the dominant language (Rosenhouse forthcoming). Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 native speakers of Arabic in Israel have been in contact with Hebrew officially and spontaneously. Since they use Hebrew daily, the latter has a strong impact on their Arabic mother tongue. The fact that they study Hebrew at school from grade three to the end of high school reinforces their Hebrew proficiency. Hebrew has been the major source of borrowing of foreign lexemes for colloquial Arabic in Israel for the last five decades or so. English lexemes (including American-English) also penetrate colloquial Arabic directly, or through Hebrew that often serves as mediator (see, e.g., Abdeen 2004, Amara and Spolsky 1986, Koplewitz 1989). A simple dictionary search soon reveals many cases where literary Arabic uses Arabic words (often modern innovations) while colloquial Arabic (in Israel) uses foreign words for the same items (see Table 5). Literary and colloquial Arabic also share identical foreign loanwords. Some of these words in colloquial Arabic (in Israel) may be transferred directly from the foreign language, or indirectly via literary Arabic, in particular when they refer to ‘higher’ and ‘modern’ lexical domains such as politics, religion or other cultural areas, e.g., ʙittisˢāl ‘communication, often by phone’, ʙijrāʙā:t ‘procedures (in court)’, ʙağsām mudˢādda ‘antigens’, ʙisˢtiˢ nāʙiyy ‘artificial’, ʙihˢtiyātˢ ‘reserves’, ʙihˢ sāˢ ʙiyyāt ‘statistics’, ğawāz safar ‘passport’ (see more examples in Table 6). The best sources for such examples are newspapers and weekly magazines, which usually use the literary Arabic variety nearest to middle Arabic. On the other hand, a large share of lexemes of ‘basic’ daily colloquial Arabic (in Israel) vocabulary refers to proper names of products and place names, which are not usually translated into Arabic, e.g., jeans, coca cola, jeep.5
5 Usually, such words are not translated into any other language, though they may be adapted to them phonologically and morphologically, as described above.
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TABLE 5 EXAMPLES OF ARABIC LEXEMES IN LITERARY ARABIC AND FOREIGN LEXEMES IN COLLOQUIAL ARABIC (FOUND IN ROSENHOUSE 2001) Literary Arabic words
Foreign colloquial Arabic words
Translation
šarītˢ an-nār šatˢīra šamʚat al-ištiʚāl tˢabtˢāba ʚajala ʙihˢtiyātˢiyya miqwad muhˢ arrik mujhir funduq
fyūz sandwīš būgiyye rakēt spēr stīrin matōr mikroskōb otēl
(electric) fuse sandwich plug (in a car) racket (in tennis game) spare (tiyre in a car) steering (in a car) motor microscope hotel
TABLE 6 EXAMPLES OF IDENTICAL FOREIGN LEXEMES IN LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL ARABIC (FROM ROSENHOUSE 2001, AND AL-AHRĀM, 4/3/2006) Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic
Gloss
al-ʙaksada ʙinfluenza atˢ-tˢuyūr al-ʙinterbank ad-dūlāriyy aršīf istitˢlāʚ ar-raʙy
al-ʙaksade Id. Id. Id.
aristuqrātˢiyya bank bīra brūtīn būtagāz daktūr ad-diktafōn dīmuqrātˢiyy elektrūniyya mashariyya ğanarāl hīmūglūbīn ʙistād ğihāz al-mōbāil
Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. elektrōniyya fāza Id. Id. istˢād belefōn6
oxidation bird influenza The Dollar Interbank archives of public opinion polls aristocracy bank beer protein gas stove, oven doctor dictaphone democratic electronic vase general hemoglobin stadium mobile phone
6
Based on the Colloquial Arabic term for this device.
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TABLE 6 (CONT.) Literary Arabic
Colloquial Arabic
Gloss
malyūn malyūnēr mawqi‘ gugl milyār mūda mikānīkiyy mūsīqā klāsīk ūtūmātīk al-ūtizm ar-rōtārī sālūn bār sekretēra sigār simfūnia sināryu sīlīkūn sirāmik as-sundūq al-aswad šambū slaidāt šūfīniyya šūkūlāta talifōn (also hātif) zarāfa
Id. Id. Id. Id. mōda mekanīki mūsīqā klāsīkiyye ’ōtōmātīki Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. Id. silikon Id. es-sandūq el-iswad Id. Id. Id. šuklāta talafōn zarāfe
million millionaire Google site milliard/billion fashion mechanic classical music automatic autism Rotary (club) saloon bar secretary cigar symphony scenario silicon ceramics the ‘black box’ in a vehicle shampoo slides Chauvinism chocolate telephone giraffe
3.2 Literary Arabic words in colloquial Arabic and colloquial Arabic words in literary Arabic Diglossia has been often described in rather idealistic terms, as comprising two varieties, literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic. However, more and more voices (in the 20th century) describe Arabic on a continuum of various degrees and types of intermingling elements of these two poles or varieties (see Ayyoub 2002, Badawi 1973, Blanc 1960, Diem 1974, Ferguson 1996, Fischer and Jastrow 1980, Meiseles 1975, 1980, Mitchell 1986, Kaye 1994, Holes 1995, Versteegh 1997, etc.). Since literary Arabic is the prestigious variety of Arabic, while colloquial Arabic is hardly deemed (by its native speakers, even today) to merit any official attention or reference, colloquial Arabic speakers will naturally tend to borrow from literary Arabic more than literary Arabic
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(writers or speakers) would tend to borrow from colloquial Arabic.7 This prestige factor is also well known in language communities that borrow from other languages (e.g. Owens 1988, Thomason and Kaufman 1988/1991, Thomason 2001, Weinreich 1967). Moreover, since communicating in literary Arabic is obviously more difficult for colloquial Arabic speakers than communicating in colloquial Arabic, both lexical and grammatical elements from colloquial Arabic slip into these speakers’ literary Arabic utterances by code-mixing and codeswitching processes (cf. Haeri 2003, Meiseles 1975, 1980). The varieties developed in Arabic (typical of the 20th century) are entitled al-luġa al-wustˢā ‘middle Arabic’ (Meiseles 1975, 1980, Holes 1995, Kaye 2002, Versteegh 1997), and ‘educated spoken Arabic’ (Badawi 1973, El-Hassan 1978, Mitchell 1986), among others. It has been observed that “the modern version of Middle Arabic establishes bridges between literary Arabic and dialects” (Ayyoub 2002). Moreover, “the deliberate use of dialect within the written text has resulted not in the dialect as a distant variant but as a level of literary Arabic” (Ayyoub 2002; see also Rosenbaum 2000/2, 2004, and Somekh 1991, 1993). A major field of differences between literary and colloquial Arabic vocabularies concerns the semantic fields of the items. literary Arabic has been used for ‘high’ scholarly fields since classical times, and still today it is the carrier of modern scholarly terminology in the realms of religion, culture, science and technology, namely areas not typically considered part of the colloquial Arabic ‘world’ (see examples in section 3.1). However, with the integration of these modern topics and concepts in the speakers’ daily life, their lexical elements (from literary Arabic) penetrate the daily discourse, via the mediating stage of code mixing until they integrate in colloquial Arabic and become an inseparable part of its vocabulary.8 An important part of colloquial Arabic oral communication and vocabulary is often described as dealing with emotions and personal needs (also in Holes 1995, Versteegh 1997). This is complemented by the fact that personal topics are not normally discussed in literary Arabic.
7 That colloquial Arabic borrows and uses literary Arabic items more than literary Arabic borrows from colloquial Arabic is readily seen in any dictionary. 8 For more examples of such lexemes see Diem 1974, 46–47, section 9.54, and ʚAbd Al-ʚāl’s introduction (1971, 7) to his dictionary of Colloquial Egyptian Expressions Whose Origins are Arabic (i.e., cognates).
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Although literary Arabic certainly has ways of emotional expression, as written literary Arabic prose and poetry show, the general attitude to emotion in literary Arabic, even in modern writers, is still generally not as warm as their attitude to the flowing and rich colloquial Arabic style. The difference between the ‘serious’, ‘preaching’ style of literary Arabic and the spontaneous colloquial Arabic speech has been demonstrated and explained, for example, through the simultaneous use of literary and colloquial Arabic in three Arab leaders’ speeches (Mazraani 1997). Arab writers often complain that literary Arabic vocabulary and structure need to be facilitated and made more natural, supple and personal, like colloquial Arabic. For example, Tawfiq al-Hakim and Mahmud Taymur write in the beginning of the 20th century about their struggle to make their works natural by using colloquial Arabic words and expressions (see for example Diem 1974, 117 ff.),9 and Mikhaʙil Nuʚayma (among others) puts in quotation marks the colloquial Arabic words he uses in his early stories (e.g., sanatuha al-jadīda, sāat dahab), thus marking their difference from the main story style. As a result of this distinction, however, many Arab writers end up using colloquial Arabic in their works—in drama, in novels and short stories, and always in caricatures—to make their expressions more realistic as well as lively. In Egypt this spontaneous development has reached the level of a writing system (Rosenbaum 2000/ 2002, 2004). Literary Arabic has developed and is now much more fluent and easy than it was at the turn of 19th century, when the revival movement was gaining power (Haeri 2003). Still, the general attitude to colloquial Arabic and literary Arabic has remained largely unchanged. 3.3 Cognate literary/colloquial Arabic words and semantic differences between them The basic and largest part of the vocabulary in Arabic is shared by literary and colloquial Arabic, and includes pronouns, kinship terms, body parts, social structure, animals, geographical objects, basic activities (verbs), etc. These lexemes are cognate items, namely ‘the same words’ (expressed in the same consonantal roots), used in different forms 9 From another angle, Frayha (1955) describes his son’s frustration and problems in answering a simple question in literary Arabic. Frayha (1959) later suggested a method for accomplishing the simplified language (although later on he stopped publicizing this position).
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(inflections, derivations) in literary and colloquial Arabic. The main differences between literary and colloquial Arabic cognates seem to be not semantic but phonological or morphological (see section 2 above), and lexemes where the semantic notion is not shared by literary and colloquial Arabic are relatively few. Cadora (1979) analyzes the lexicon in the Syro-Lebanese region, to which colloquial Arabic (in Israel) belongs, and we therefore refer to it here. Cadora realizes that Swadesh’s list (1952), on which his work is based, includes words whose meanings “are so general that cultural innovation or discontinuation does not affect them greatly” (26), which reduces their validity. Still, he finds (27) in the Syro-Lebanese varieties checked against this vocabulary list, that 151 (75.5%) of the 200 lexical items have non-contrastive compatibility (i.e., more or less, lexical similarity) This rate is even higher (165 or 82.5%) if the dialect of Dēr Ez-Zōr is removed from the analysis. The comparison of literary Arabic and Syro-Lebanese colloquial Arabic varieties reveals an even higher compatibility, which on the average reaches 91% (29). Comparing the studied Syro-Lebanese dialects (except Dēr Ez-Zōr) among themselves, Cadora finds 96% non-contrastive compatibility between each pair of dialects (32). The differences between these dialects and more distant ones (Casablanca, Cairo, Jidda, Baghdad) are larger, of course, but let’s keep to our region. Cadora prepared another list, based on Swadesh’s list (1952), and an unpublished list by Ferguson and Saʚid (1958), with his modifications of them. This new list finally had 101 contrastive compatible items. From the results of this work, on the whole, he finds that Arabic tends to use cognate words in literary and colloquial Arabic, while different words (rather than cognates) occur in cases where the meanings differ between literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic. Differences between literary and colloquial Arabic cognates may arise when the literary Arabic items have several semantic fields, not all of which are used in modern colloquial Arabic lexical items. The colloquial Arabic items may refer to one of the several semantic fields of the literary Arabic item. Such cases may be due to the fact that modern literary Arabic draws on a huge dialectal inventory from the past, which is not known in all the colloquial Arabic dialect regions. Among the most famous examples, is šāf, Literary Arabic (rarely used) ‘to polish’ vs. colloquial Arabic ‘he saw’ (it is probably famous also because it appears in Ferguson 1959). Other examples more specific to the region of colloquial Arabic in Israel are ʙujra, in literary Arabic ‘wages’, colloquial Arabic ‘taxes’ (‘wages’ in colloquial Arabic in Israel is more often ʙajar,
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maʚāš or rāteb, which are also used in literary Arabic); muʚallim in literary Arabic means ‘a teacher or instructor’, but in colloquial Arabic ‘teacher’, as well as a ‘boss in a workshop, an office etc.’10 Kabs(a) is in literary Arabic ‘pressure, attack’, colloquial Arabic ‘heavy (rain)’ (parallel to the English expression ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’); fatˢina (literary Arabic) / fitˢen (colloquial Arabic)—literary Arabic ‘be clever, smart’, colloquial Arabic ‘remember’; qalb—literary Arabic ‘heart’, colloquial Arabic ‘one’s internal part of the body’, used also for the ‘heart and entrails.’
4. Conclusion This chapter has focused on literary and colloquial Arabic vocabulary. An important feature of colloquial Arabic vocabulary is that it is more affected by literary Arabic lexemes than literary Arabic is by colloquial Arabic lexemes (as expected). The reasons for this have been studied elsewhere and we did not analyze them here. Suffice it to say that this picture is largely due to the prestigious status of literary Arabic compared to colloquial Arabic (see Rosenhouse forthcoming). We have also seen that phonological and morphological features mark many auditory / articulatory differences between literary and colloquial Arabic. Our semantic comparisons between literary and colloquial Arabic lexemes have shown both diverging and converging trends of development in each of these varieties. A relatively small part of the sum total of Arabic lexical items is composed of foreign loanwords that penetrate Arabic due to the cultural trends of modernization / Westernization. In this section of the vocabulary we also note that colloquial Arabic uses more foreign loanwords (in Israel sometimes borrowed via Hebrew) than literary Arabic does. This state is apparently due to the fact that in many cases literary Arabic uses translations (calque) and newly coined terms rather than the foreign ones used in colloquial Arabic (see Abu-Haidar 1992, Shraybom-Shivtiel 2005). We did not find many colloquial Arabic items in Israeli newspapers. Those found occurred mainly in advertisements and caricatures where foreign loanwords relating to politics, shopping and economics,
10
Wehr (1971) gives also ‘master of trade’ as one of the meanings of this word.
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sports and entertainment, etc., are used, as in many other language communities in the world. On many hoardings (especially in Arabicspeaking townships or villages in Israel), however, colloquial Arabic (of Israel) vocabulary and structures play an important role, even if they are not the norm. A considerable measure of linguistic influence on the general public comes from mass media such as radio and TV, where advertisements are orally and visually published. These recurring ads affect the public subconsciously so that this source of mixture between literary and colloquial Arabic, which was on the increase all through the 20th century, has been going on up to now. Abu-Haidar (1992, 104) sums up the effect of modern standard Arabic on dialect convergence (in Baghdad) by saying that certain lexemes (in their MSA forms) “are now part of Muslim Baghdadi and Christian Baghdadi speakers’ everyday experiences” (105). She adds: “salient features of Muslim Baghdadi and Christian Baghdadi have for a long time constituted closely defined boundaries separating the two dialects from each other and from Modern Standard Arabic. At the present time, however, these boundaries are shifting as some salient features become obsolete and more unassimilated Modern Standard Arabic forms are diffused into both dialects” (p. 105). In her conclusion Ayyoub (2002) states: From its journey across the 20th century, the Arabic language carries two remarkable traits: never in the past have the written and spoken languages been intricately intertwined; never before have the centrifugal forces of standardization affected the dialects as much as now . . .
A separate question is, however, what will become of the Arabic language in the future? If the past century has sensibly modified the modalities of functions between literary and dialectal Arabic, present for more than one and a half millennia, multiple paths remain possible (Ayyoub 2002).
Literary Arabic is a source of fascination (for researchers and native speakers alike, if we may add) because of its relation to both the secular and the sacred (Haeri 2003). Moreover, economic constraints and globalization alike favor literary Arabic, as a common language for a vast geographic area, more advantageous than multiple languages (Ayyoub 2002). Ayyoub (2002) poses additional questions about the future of literary Arabic and colloquial Arabic in the 21st century: “Will a form of Middle Arabic be the future? Will the dialects become the national languages of tomorrow?”
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We see that the diglossic makeup of Arabic is changing and evolving all the time, including the structure and vocabulary of this language. In spite of the generally unfavorable attitude to code mixing/switching between some foreign language and colloquial Arabic, these processes are apparently inevitable under the modern “global village” circumstances. These foreign lexical elements penetrate colloquial Arabic, the receiving language (or ‘matrix language’, according to Myers-Scotton 1993), and usually become an integral part of it. A similar process takes place in literary Arabic, although apparently at a smaller (slower?) rate. Since this process existed also in the past (see, for example, Al-Falay, 1996, chapter four) without lessening the vitality of the Arabic language, we assume that the similar process of modern times will not lead to an entirely different future development. In spite of the huge number of lexical items (including borrowed and innovated words) and their semantic fields in a language like Arabic, lexemes are an open class and may be added, exchanged, renewed or discarded according to need. When thinking of structural changes of Arabic due to code mixing or code switching phenomena, we do not consider the lexical developments of literary and colloquial Arabic as described here to be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Moreover, the features and examples in this chapter do not differ much, in principle, from those found in other Arabic dialects (Boucherit 2000, Heath 1989, Owens 1998, Taine-Cheich 2000). We therefore assume that the Arabic language will continue its basic path sweeping along all the “side trimmings” noted in the changes of its vocabulary. We also support the view that the relation between the studied linguistic varieties in Arabic (Arabic dialects and literary Arabic) is similar in many respects to the relations between different languages in bilingual situations (Fasold 1984). The above analysis may be seen within the framework of phenomena of language interference or language contact according to one linguistic approach, in addition to bilingual code mixing according to another. We hope the examination of the intertwining vocabulary of literary and colloquial Arabic will contribute to the attempts to improve our understanding of the Arabic language. Since the paths that the Arabic language will take do not have to be identical to the paths of the past, further attention to the issues raised here should prove to be interesting.
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5. References Abd al-Āl, Abd al-Munim Sayyid. 1971. Mujam al-alfāz al-āmmiyya dāt al-usūl al-arabiyya. Cairo: Maktabat Nahda al-Misriyya. Abu-Haidar, Farida. 1992. “Shifting Boundaries: The effect of modern standard Arabic on dialect convergence in Baghdad.” In Broselow et al., Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics IV, 91–106. al-Falay, Ibrāh$m Salāh. 1996. Izdiwājiyyat at-luġa: An-nazariyya wa-t-tatbiq. Ar-Riyād King Saūd University. Al-Hassan, S.A. 1978. “Educated spoken Arabic in Egypt and the Levant: A critical review of diglossia and related concepts.” Archivum Linguisticum, 8(2):112–132. Altoma, Salah J. 1969. The Problem of Diglossia in Arabic: A comparative study of classical and Iraqi Arabic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Arnold, Werner, and Hartmut Bobzin, eds. 2002. Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten Aramäisch, wir verstehen es! 60 Beiträge zur Semitistik Festschrift für Otto Jastrow zum 60. Geburtstag. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Ayyoub, Georgine. 2002. “An Odyssey of Words: Evolution of the Arabic language in the 20th century”. Al-Jadid Magazine 8:40 (Summer). Badaw$, Sa$d Musta fā. 1973. Mustawayāt al-luġa al-arabiyya al-muāsira fī misr. Cairo: Dār al-Maārif. Badawi, Mohamed. 1997. Probleme des Fachwortschatzes im Arabischen dargestellt insbesondere an der Terminologie der Teleinformatik. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Bhatia, Tej. K., and William. C. Ritchie, eds. 2004. The Handbook of Bilingualism. New York: Blackwell. Blanc, Haim. 1960. “Stylistic Variation in Spoken Arabic: A sample of interdialectal educated conversation.” In C.A. Ferguson, ed., Contributions to Arabic Linguistics, 81–156. ——. 1964. Communal Dialects in Baghdad, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Blau, Joshua. 1977. “The Beginnings of the Arabic Diglossia. A study of the origins of Neoarabic.” Afroasiatic Linguistics 4:4–28. Boucherit, Aziza. 2000. “Reflexions sur le contact de langues à partir du cas d’Alger.” In Manwel Mifsud, ed., Proceedings of the Third International Conference AIDA, Malta, 83–88. Bousaffara-Omar, Naima. 2005. “Diglossia.” In Kees Versteegh et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 629–37. Broselow, Ellen, Mushira Eid, and John McCarthy, eds. 1992. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics IV, Papers from the Fourth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Cadora, Frederic. 1979. Interdialectal Lexical Compatibility in Arabic: An analytical study of the lexical relationships among the major Syro-Lebanese varieties. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Diem, Werner. 1974. Hochsprache und Dialekt im Arabischen: Untersuchungen zur heutigen arabischen Zweisprachigkeit. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. Elgibali, Alaa, ed. 1996. Understanding Arabic: Essays in Contemporary Arabic Linguistics in Honour of El-Said Badawi. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press. Fasold, Ralph, W. 1984. The Sociolinguistics of Society, Cambridge: Blackwell. Ferguson, Charles Albert. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word, 15: 325–340. ——. 1996. “Epilogue: Diglossia revisited.” In Alaa Elgibali, ed., Understanding Arabic: Essays in Contemporary Arabic Linguistics in Honour of El-Said Badawi, 49–67. ——. (ed.). 1960. Contributions to Arabic Linguistics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ——, and Majid Sa’id. 1958. “Lexical variants in Arabic dialects” (unpublished).
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Fernandez, Mauro. 1993. Diglossia: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1960–1990 and Supplements. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Fischer, Wolfdietrich, and Otto Jastrow. 1980. Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Furayha, An$s. 1955. Nawa arabiyya muyassara. Beirut: Dār a%-%aqāfa. ——. 1959. Tabsīt qawāid al-luġa al-arabiyya alā usūl jadīda: iqtirā wa-namādij. Beirut: American University of Beirut. Fück, Johann. 1950. Arabiyya: Untersuchungen zur arabischen Sprach- und Stilgeschichte. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Geva-Kleinberger, Aharon. 2004. Die arabische Dialekte der Stadt Haifa in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Haeri, Niloofar. 2003. Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hary, Benjamin. 1996. “The importance of the language continuum in Arabic multiglossia.” In Alaa Elgibali, ed., Understanding Arabic: Essays in Contemporary Arabic Linguistics in Honor of El-Said Badawi, 69–90. Heath, Jeffrey. 1989. From Code Switching to Borrowing: Foreign and diglossic mixing in Moroccan Arabic. London: Kegan Paul International. Hetzron, Robert, ed. 1997.The Semitic Languages. London: Routledge. Holes, Clive. 1995. Modern Arabic: Structures, functions and varieties. London: Longman. Jastrow, Otto. 1978. Die Mesopotamisch-arabischen qeltu Dialekte. Vol. 1: Phonologie und Morphologie. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Kaye, Alan S. 1994. “Formal vs. Informal Arabic: Diglossia, triglossia, tetraglossia, etc., polyglossia- multiglossia viewed as a continuum.” Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik, 27:47–66. ——. 2002. “Diglossia. The state of the art for the new millennium.” In W. Arnold and H. Bobzin eds., Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten Aramäisch, 379–88. ——, and Rosenhouse, Judith. 1997. “Arabic dialects and Maltese.” In R. Hetzron, ed., The Semitic languages, 263–311. Koplewitz, Emanuel. 1989. “The use and integration of Hebrew lexemes in Israeli spoken Arabic.” Multilingual Matters 71.181–195. Levin, Arieh. 1995. Grammar of Spoken Arabic in Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew). ——, and Friedmann, Yohanan, eds. 2004. Studies in Honor of Moshe Piamenta. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 29, Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Mazraani, Nathalie. 1997. Aspects of Language Variation in Arabic Political Speech Making. Richmond, UK: Curzon. Mejdell, Gunvor. 2002. “Features of luġa wustā—mixed discourse in spoken Arabic of Egypt.” In A. Youssi et al., eds. Aspects of the Dialects of Arabic Today, 317–28. Meiseles, Gustav. 1975. Oral Literary Arabic: Its main characteristics in speech and reading, Ph.D. thesis, The Hebrew University in Jerusalem (in Hebrew). ——. 1980. “Educated spoken Arabic and the Arabic language continuum.” Archivum Linguisticum 11:118–143. Mifsud, Manwel (ed.). 2000. Proceedings of the Third International Conference AIDA, Malta, 29 March–2 April 1998. Paris: Association International de Dialectologie Arabe. Mitchell, Terrence F. 1986. “What is educated spoken Arabic?” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61, 7–32. Monteil, Vincent. 1960. L’arabe moderne. Paris: C. Klincksieck. Myers-Scotton, C. 1993. Duelling Languages: Grammatical structures in code-switching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nuayma, M$xā$l. 1961.6 Kāna yā mā kāna: Short Stories, Beirut.
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Owens, Jonathan. 1998. Neighbourhood and Ancestry: Variation in the spoken Arabic of Maiduguri, Nigeria. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. al-Qahtani, S. 2002. Arabization and the Theory of Language Planning: An Applied Study of Terminology Arabization in Saudi Arabia. Beirut: Center for Studies of the Arabic Union. Ritchie, W.C., and Tej K. Bhatia,. 2004. “Social and psychological factors in language mixing.” In T.K. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie, eds. The Handbook of Bilingualism, 336–352. Rosenbaum, Gabriel M. 2000/2. “ ‘Do you parler ‘Arabi?’ Mixing colloquial Arabic and European languages in Egyptian literature.” Materiaux Arabes et Sudarabiques (Nouvelle Serie), 10:11–47. ——. 2004. “Egyptian Arabic as a written language”. In A. Levin and Y. Friedmann, eds. Studies in Honor of Moshe Piamenta, 281–340. Rosenhouse, Judith. 1984. The Arabic Bedouin Dialects: General problems and a close analysis of North Israel Bedouin Dialects. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. ——. 2001. Trilingual Practical Dictionary: Hebrew—literary Arabic-colloquial Arabic. Rosh Ha-’ayin: Prolog. ——. 2002. “Phonetic trends of colloquial Arabic dialects in Israel.” In W. Arnold and H. Bobzin, eds., Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten Aramäisch, 599–611. ——. 2004. Trilingual Practical Dictionary: Literary Arabic-Hebrew—colloquial Arabic , Rosh Ha-’ayin: Prolog. ——. Forthcoming. “The English language and its impact on Arabic in Israel.” In. J. Rosenhouse and R. Kowner, eds., Globally Speaking. ——, and Mira Goral. 2004. “Bilingualism in the Middle East and North Africa: A focus on the Arabic-speaking world.” In T.K. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie, eds. The Handbook of Bilingualism, 835–868. ——, and Rotem Kowner, eds. Forthcoming. Globally Speaking: Motives for Borrowing English Loanwords in World Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Shraybom-Shivtiel, Shlomit. 2005. The Revival of the Arabic Language as a Mission of the National Ideology in Egypt. Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew). Somekh, Sasson. 1991. Genre and Language in Modern Arabic Literature. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. ——. 1993. “Colloqialized ‘fush $’ in modern Arabic prose fiction.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 16:176–94. Stetkevych, J. 1970. The Modern Literary Arabic Language: Lexical and stylistic developments. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Suleiman, Yaser. 2006. “Arabiyya.” In Kees Versteegh et al., eds. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 173–178. Swadesh, Morris. 1952. “Lexico-statistics dating of pre-historic ethnic contacts with special reference to North American Indians and Eskimos.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, XCVI:452–463. Taine-Cheich, Catherine. 2000. “Reflexions sur le statut des emprunts dans les langues ‘mixtes’ à partir du cas mauritanien.” In M. Mifsud, ed. Proceedings of the Third International Conference AIDA, 107–12. Thomason, Sara Grey. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ——, and Terrence Kaufman. 19881/19912. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Versteegh, Kees. 1984. Pidginization and Creolization: The Case of Arabic. AmsterdamPhiladelphia: J. Benjamins. ——. 1997. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ——, et al., eds. 2006. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Vol. 1. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
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EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ʙĀL, YIʙŪL ‘TO SAY’ IN EGYPTIAN ARABIC* Manfred Woidich University of Amsterdam
1. Introduction The idea of contributing to the Festschrift for our esteemed friend and colleague Kees Versteegh with an article on the verb ʙāl, yiʙūl (gāl, yigūl) ‘to say’ in Egyptian Arabic dialects and its various idiomatic uses, came to me when I was reading a draft of his lemma ‘Serial Verbs’, which he had written for the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics.1 In this lemma, he reconsiders my view of items like (01) as an originally paratactic but now grammaticalized construction in order to introduce a pseudo-complement,2 and prefers to regard it as serialization, that is, as a serial verb construction, albeit not without hesitation. (01)
huwwa raddi ʚalēk ʙallak ʙē? huwwa radd ʚalē-k ʙāl-l-ak ʙē he answered to-you said-to-you what “What did he answer you?” LAB 118,–8
Unfortunately, I do not share this view and I shall reaffirm my position in section 4 below. Since this pseudo-complementation is not the only case for ʙāl, yiʙūl to appear in contexts and functions that involve grammaticalization, it seemed appropriate to give an overview of several other cases where ʙāl, yiʙūl clearly has lost its original lexical meaning by a process known as ‘bleaching’ and acquired new meanings and developed into a function word. After making some brief remarks on the syntactic behaviour of ʙāl, yiʙūl as a lexical verb in section 2, several steps and ramifications in the history of ʙāl, yiʙūl will be described in
* I should like to thank Rudolf de Jong for going through an earlier draft of this article and giving me some valuable hints. Needless to say, any remaining errors are mine. 1 To appear as Versteegh 2007. 2 Woidich 2002, in particular pp. 183–184.
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section 3 based on data collected over the last 40 years mostly from written sources but also from some recordings of rural dialects. The starting point of these developments apparently is the use of āl, yiūl by the speaker to introduce reported speech3 on discourse level4 within a pragmatic strategy, namely introducing a direct or an indirect quote, be it the speaker’s own words or the speech of somebody else, in order to show rejection and non-acceptance of an utterance, to give reasons for acting in a certain way, to explain intent, to make a comparison between two things or for other reasons. The final section—section 5—deals with a lexical aspect and gives some examples of the use of āl, yiūl with vocatives and in delocutive derivations.
2. On propositional level: direct vs. indirect speech Here I will briefly describe a syntactical point, that is, the introduction of direct and indirect speech. Direct or quoted speech follows āl, yiūl as an asyndetic sentence without a complementizer: (02) ana muš aylālik hāti )a)ūa “Did I not say to you, ‘bring an ashtray?’ ” RUH 112,-1; (03) alitlaha taāli uudi maāya “She said to her, ‘sit down with me!’ ” FWQ 107,-7 (04) nās kitīr bau yūlu f-nafsuhum w ana māli “Many asked themselves, ‘what business is this of mine?’ ” BAHN 122,9
A sentence reporting indirectly what was said, however, may either be introduced by the complementizer inn (05, 06) or be connected asyndetically (07, 08): (05) iddakatra ālu inn a ābak tabāna šwayya “The doctors said that your nerves are a little bit off ” HAM 95,7f (06) āl innu aynām andina llēla diyyat wi bass “He said that he would sleep with us only that night” LAB 16,8 (07) *ā*a kkallim wi āl aybāt ba++a “Daddy called and said that he would spend the night out of the house” LAY 113,3
3
Following Güldemann et al. (2002, viii), I use the term -reported speech as a generic term for both direct and indirect speech. 4 In many languages, the verb -say constitutes a source of various pathways in grammaticalization that can lead to distinct types of function words, see Heine et al. (1993), and Heine et al. (2002, 261 ff ).
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(08) Ādil kān āl ayāxud agāza nnaha+da w ayšūfu ššaa f-Almāa “ Ādil has said, he would take the day off and they would have a look at the apartment in Almā'a” WAZ 374,12
3. āl, yiūl (gāl, yigūl) on discourse level Reported speech introduced by āl, yiūl (gāl, yigūl) serves in various ways and on different levels for text constitution and as a discourse device. In narration it is commonly used for telling a story (3.1) by means of reporting it as a dialogue. In a similar way, reasons and intentions may be presented to the hearer in the form of reported speech (3.2), that is, in the form of the speaker’s own words. Whereas the last two uses do not exhibit any syntactic differences in comparison to the normal one in a simple proposition (see 2), there are phrases formed with āl, yiūl that deviate in certain respects from the normal usage and suggest that the items concerned are—or at least have started to be—grammaticalized. So, ulti ē serves as a turn-giving device asking for a positive reaction (3.3), ūl marks a short-cut (3.4), āl serves as a marker of incredulity (3.5), tiulš as a comparison marker (3.6), baullak ē as a turntaking device (3.7), biyūlu as a reference to hearsay and general knowledge (3.8). 3.1
Narrative device: story-telling by means of reported speech
A very common way of telling a story is to present it as a sequence of direct utterances, that is, as a constructed dialogue in which each utterance is introduced by quotative āl, yiūl (gāl, yigūl). The phrases are juxtaposed asyndetically and are not connected by means of wi ‘and’. Speakers make extensive use of this means, as can be seen in any collection of texts of Arabic dialects recorded in the field. For the audience, a story structured step by step in this way is more insightful and easier to follow than a purely descriptive narration, since the narrator gives the story a structure that conveys liveliness and persuasion and involves the hearer. 5 A short passage from a Bēri text may illustrate this:
5 Involvement of the hearer is considered one of the most important pragmatic strategies in Georgakopoulu et al. (2004, 136f).
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gālat isma&&a alēk yá-w+ad, isma&&a alēk mālak. gultilha-na anaalam wu nāji an nafsi anijlib min ilba+bax ašān nissabba, rut wagat min fōg ilmanāma. galatli kaamt rijli ya wlēdi. gultilha ana gultluk ijilbi wa+āy? wu baadēn galatli +aa-txallīni nmūt kamān wu rijli maksūra, gultilha līyiš āli. galatli jaddak Abda&&a lGum māt huwwa w rijla maksūra. gultilha min ē? galatli lamma kānaw aytiu fi a&amāt, gultilha kē ytiu fi a&amāt galatli lē nta miš ārif ilikkēwa? gultilha lā ma-šufthāš wala xabirš āja. galatli badri, )irīg issuwwā diyya . . . “She said: ‘May God keep you safe, my boy, may God protect you! What’s wrong with you?’ I said to her: ‘I was dreaming and [in my dream] I jumped involuntarily from the footbridge to have a swim. So I fell from the sleeping roof.’ She said to me: ‘You sprained my ankle, my boy!’ I said to her: ‘Did I tell you to jump after me?’ And then she said to me: ‘You are going to let me even die from a broken leg.’ I said to her: ‘It was not my fault.’ She said to me: ‘Your grandfather Abda**a lGum died from a broken leg.’ I said to her: ‘How come?’ She said to me: ‘When they were pulling on the colossoi.’6 I said to her: ‘How come they pulled on the colossoi?’ She said: ‘Why? Don’t you know the story?’ I said to her: ‘I did not see it, nor do I know anything.’ She said to me: ‘In former times, this tourists’ way . . .’ ” (Woidich 1980, 236,27–31)
This use of directly reported (quoted) speech introduced by āl, yiūl (gāl, yigūl) is characteristic of the narrative style and gives a dialogue structure to the whole narrative or parts of it. The narrative becomes like a theatre play delivered by the speaker, and indirect speech and complicated subordinate structures are avoided. There is no sign of grammaticalization, and āl, yiūl (gāl, yigūl) is subject to inflection following the logic of the story and remains in its position in front of the quoted speech. 3.2
Argumentation by quoted speech
In a similar way, comments on a statement may be given by the speaker to the hearer in the form of direct speech, mainly as the speaker’s own words, presenting the argumentation as an inner monologue. Such selfquotations are introduced by ult ‘I said’ and follow a statement. Speakers report to the hearer the reasons for decisions or conclusions they made,
6 i a&amāt * nm (literally ‘the idols’) is the Bēri word for the Colossoi of Memnon on the West Bank of Luxor.
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or the reasons they had for acting in a particular way. 7 This comment explains either why what is described in this statement occurred (10, 11) or what the intention behind it was or is (13, 14, 15). In other cases it tells the hearer what follows for the speaker from what is described in the statement (12). Again, presenting the argumentation as internal dialogue makes it more insightful to the hearer and easier to follow and involves him directly.8 Using ult in this way is very common in standard Egyptian Arabic, in both its spoken and its written form. If an intention is involved, the verb is in the y-imperfect. (10) ruti +af a idayya )awwāli mdarya wišši, ulti la-ykūn alēh afrīt ismu
(11) (12) (13) (14) (15)
i/rab “I immediately lifted my hands up to protect my face. I said, ‘it may have got an evil spirit on it, I am afraid, whose name is i/rab [hit!]’ ” LAB 214,4 (reason) ana grīt ulti yimkin miawwiš āga kida walla kida min wa+a-mmi “I hurried up, I said, ‘perhaps he has somehow saved something behind the back of my mother’ ” HAM 28,1 (reason) laetkum )ayyibīn ulti ya bitt uudi “I found you to be good people, I said, ‘stay here, girl!’ ” RUH 30,–5 (consequence) miš gayyili nōm ult atmašša “I could not sleep, so I said, ‘let me go for a walk’ ” SIB 89,3 (intention) il0ayya btizaf kamān ala šširka. ulti nsibha abli ma tiġ+a “The water is creeping towards the company, too. I said, ‘let us leave before it is flooded’ ” FWQ 50,–1 (intention) lammēt šuwayyit xašab kasri ala ittitēn awāli wi ult awalliha addaffa bīha “I collected a little bit of broken wood and some corn cobs and said, ‘let me set fire to it to warm me up’ ” MHR 7,6 (intention)
(15) shows that a syndetic connection with wi ‘and’ is also possible. (16, 17) provide evidence that this discourse strategy is not confined to a quotation of the speaker himself using the 1st person but may be applied in the same way in narratives in the 3rd person as well. While we cannot see in (16) whether direct or indirect speech is involved, the use of a 1st pl. verbal form in (17) signals direct speech:
7 For similar functions of self-quotation in German (i.e. reporting on decisions, reasoning, intention), see Golato 2002. Further development of items meaning ;saying— i.e. original quotation markers to a grammatical markers expressing causality or—is widespread in the languages of the world, see e.g. Lord 1993, 177 for se ‘say’ in Twi and for the Turkish gerundium diye ‘saying’, see Kissling 1960, 191; for Bengali bole ‘having said’ see Chisarik et al. 2003. 8 See Georgakopoulu et al. 2004, 136f.
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ba i a kkanaba lwa++aniyya ma-ltaāš ayyuha āga, zaġar a kkursiyyēn iluddamiyyīn iltaāhum ya mawlāya zayyi ma xalatini, āl tiba ššan)a lli wa+a “He looked at the rear seats, but did not find anything, he glanced at the front seats, but found them empty, he said, ‘it must be the boot’ ” LAB 59,4 (conclusion) (17) fa xad ba/ītih wu ē, a+abiyya mi lmināžim gāl nišūfu (ilmi Yūsif yikūn ižžann “He set out and what? [he took] a car from the mines, he said, ‘let us have a look at ilmi Yūsif, perhaps he’s gone mad’ ” (Ba<ariyya: Mandīša) (intention) (16)
3.3
ulti ē what did you say? as a discourse routine
ulti ē,—literally “What did you say?”—immediately follows a statement conveying a suggestion or presenting an astonishing fact to the hearer (21). ulti ē is connected to this statement by the intonational contour. At first glance, the perfect ult makes it look like a request to repeat something that has been said, pretending that a comment has been overheard. But this is not the case since ulti ē is closely connected to the statement with no pause and there is no time for the hearer to show any reaction to this statement. Rather, it functions as a turn-giving discourse marker, which asks for a positive comment on the statement that is presented hereby as surprisingly good news to the hearer. For that reason, it should be translated as “How about that!” which should be understood as “Aren’t you surprised and am I not to be praised?” Examples: (18) tikkaffil inta bi mašawīr il-iyāl wi ddurūs w ana astannāh, ulti ē? “You are put in charge of the errands for the children and lessons, and I wait for him, (so) what do you say now?!” BTR 11,–3 (19) wala yhimmak ya (sēn xušši ala lbutīk xud illi yigibak wi kullu bi ttasī) tidfa tultumīt ginē dilwati wi lbāi bi ttasī) ilmirayya ala išrīn šah+i xamas t-alāf ginē, ulti ē? “Don’t mention it, isēn, go into the boutique, take what you like and pay for everything in instalments; you pay 300 pounds now and the rest in easy instalments, 5000 pounds over 20 months, so how about it?!” RAS 13,5 (20) tirū ilwat illi yigibak, fi nnūr, fi //alma. illi tšūfu, ulti ē? You go whenever you like, with daylight, in the darkness, just as you see it (whenever it is convenient for you), isn’t this a good suggestion?” SIK 106,–10 (21) ana tnāzilti an ai fi kkaka li ššēx Imēša, ultu ē baa? “I gave up my rights to the cake in favor of Šēx Imēša, what do you say now?” MAX 93,4
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Given this meaning, we would expect a continuous form of the verb such as tiūl ē or bitūl ē, rather than of the perfect ulti ē. But replacing the perfect here with an imperfect, ulti ē would mean losing its special effect, which originates in a violation of the discourse record principle:9 the speaker acts as if his statement had already been commented on, thereby constructing a reality that contradicts the speaker/hearer record of the discussion so far and attracts the attention of the hearer and makes it more relevant to him. At the same time, the rhetorical intonation of ulti ē suggests that the hearer is assumed to consider this statement as positive and to react accordingly. Apparently, this discourse routine10 did not yet lead to grammaticalization and to the forming of a particle, since ulti ē still follows the rules of concord, as can be seen in (21). (22) shows that giving the turn may be done not only by the speaker but also by a third participant in the discourse: (22) Š: ana mumkin anām uddām ilbāb ilxarígi laddi ma lmuškila titall, bass tiwidūni nni ma-fīš addi yxušši min innaya ttanya li lbēt—: ulti ē ya Ašūr? A: ittafana. Š: “I can sleep in front of the outer door until the problem is solved. You only have to promise me that nobody will enter the house from the other side.”—: “What did you say [what do you mean], Ašūr?”—A: “Agreed!” MUW 134,–4. Again, the use of perfect by in (22) makes no sense and ulti ē has to be
seen as a turn-giving discourse marker. 3.4 ūl say! as a discourse marker ūl ‘say!’—the masculine imperative of āl, yiūl—may be used in two different ways. Within a text it introduces what a longer explanation or description boils down to and serves as a short-cut in order to finish a topic and to switch to another one. It corresponds to ‘in short’ or ‘to cut a long story short’ in English, as in:11 (23) )iliti ba+āa wi lwād i abi huwwa lli tabas bidāli, a&&āh yir/a annu, ūl amadti +abbina lli )liti b gildi
9 See Schwenter et al. 2005 for a case of discourse record manipulation regarding English too. 10 This is why I prefer to call it a routine, i.e. a discourse technique to reach a certain goal, and not a marker, which in my view would include some grammaticalization as is the case with āl ‘say!’; see 3.5. 11 There are other markers with a similar function such as u r ikkalām, ila d, nahaytu.
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“I was found not guilty and the apprentice was jailed instead of me, may God bless him, in short, I praised God that I had come away safely” DAR 71,10 (24) wi māsik sikkīna āyiz yišui bīha ba)ni. girīt minnu. )ār wa+āya. ūl innās ašūh “With a knife in his hand, he wanted to rip my belly open. I ran away, he went after me. To cut a long story short, people held him back” DAR 93,8
There is no evidence for female ūli being used in this way, but apparently the plural ūlu serves the same purpose when several persons are addressed. So ūl in this case should be considered not as a marker but as a routine: (25) innās yadōb simit fīh marākib mal, risyit ala baladhum wi dōl gary ašān yištiru. ūlu awwil markib itbāit fi saāt “The people had only just heard that a salt ship had moored in their town when they came running in order to buy. In short, the first shipful was sold within hours” MAL 36,8 (26) aadit šah+i w šah+i w šah+. ūlu iblit “She stayed a month and a month and [another] month. In short, she got pregnant” MAL 39,33
Another use of ūl ‘say!’ derives from a discourse routine, that is, selfcorrection in the form of a request to the hearer to correct a piece of information—very often numerical information—adduced by the speaker. As the speaker seeks confirmation from the hearer, he suggests that he is not sure about his estimate and that this information is not 100% reliable. Within a sentence ūl may thus indicate an approximation, and correspond to ‘perhaps; like’, for example like the English: the whole affair lasted, say, 10 minutes, as can be seen from (27). ūl underwent grammaticalization and is frozen as a particle, since neither the feminine nor the plural form are possible here and it is moved into the sentence, standing for example in front of the direct object (29) or an adverbial expression (30). More often than not, it combines with yīgi ‘about’ as a reinforcement of this approximative meaning (28, 29, 30): (27) ilamaliyya atāxudlaha talat t-iyyām ūl a+baa “The operation will take three days, perhaps four” YUN 72,9 (28) kām ya Nabawiyya kām?—ūl yīgi išrīn ginē aw akta+ “How many, Nabawiyya, how many?—Perhaps about twenty pounds or more” RUH 137,7 (29) iggamustēn ayilibulna kulli yōm ūl yīgi mīt kīlu laban “The two buffalos will give us about 100 litres of milk a day” HAM 90,–4
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(30) wi lamma ifyu aadti ala faršiti ūl yīgi sāa, itnēn “And when it had finished, I sat down on my bed for an hour or two” RUH 7,7
3.5
Discourse marker for rejection and non-acceptance āl and āl ē
The entry āl in Hinds et al. (1986, 722b) gives āl as a ‘modal of incredulity’ with “just imagine! fancy that! can you credit it!” as translation equivalents. And āl—āl “nonsense! baloney! humph!,” which introduces and closes a word or sentence as an ‘exclamation of jeering disbelief.’12 I shall try to give a more precise description of its use and at the same time sketch the historical development. As the examples below show, an āl introduces or follows the reported utterance made by somebody else and urges the hearer to interpret this utterance as rejected and not acceptable to the speaker. It functions thus as a discourse marker and is fully grammaticalized as it is no longer inflected (31, 33, 35). As becomes clear from the examples, it is indirect speech here, not direct speech. (31) Munīra: baūl li a/ritik ana miš aštaġal andi add, ana miš xaddāma.— Bahīga: miš xaddāma! samīn! āl ma-hīš xaddāma “Munīra: I am telling you, I shall not work with anybody, I am not a maid.— Bahīga: Not a maid! Did you hear! Not a maid, incredible!” NAS 81,4 (32) ilminayyil ibn i))abbāxa bn Ummi Anwa+, āl gayy yux)ub Gamalāt “This damned son of the cook, Umm ʙAnwar’s son, incredible! He is coming to ask for the hand of Gamalāt!” FWQ 90,12 (33) laēt ilumm bitaadni wi btiddīni darsi fi linniyya.—ilinniyya?—āl ana miš fa/ya l-binti wi ašān kida hiyya bitrū bēt zimilha da ašān ummu hiyya-lli anīna alēha “It happened that the mother let me sit down and gave me a lesson in affection.—Affection?—As if I would not be free for my daughter and this is why she goes to the home of her colleague because his mother always shows affection towards her” SIG 131,–3
In both (31) and (33), the context leaves no other possibility than that it was a female speaker who made the incriminated utterance, even though āl remains masculine. āl may follow the reported speech (34) and may even occur in both positions at the same time (35). The latter is particularly common with single words, as in (36):
12
For a brief discussion, see Woidich 1995, 265.
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(34) wi biyūlu ma-bništaġalši āl “And they say, can you believe it, [that] we do not work!” WAR 20,–5 (35) daxalit ti alli āl bit alli āl )ayyib xallīha t alli “She went in to pray, what she calls ‘pray’, well, let her pray then!” NAS 130,12 (36) dukham! sama biyūlu ala abbahathum ē? dukham! āl dukham āl! “Those (people)! Did you hear what they said about her parents? Those! Imagine, those!” GIL 142,3
Grammaticalization is further corroborated by the fact that āl acquires increased mobility and may be moved into the sentence itself (37, 38) and occur within subordinated sentences (39): (37) dōl fi Ma ri āl biyiksabu bi lmīt alfi gnē “In Cairo they earn—can you believe!—a hundred thousand pounds!” SMB 93,–5 (38) gālu žāw xawažāt fi lBawī)i, illi lbalad ilmidīna di. yigūlu imu+uk1n. žāw 2 , wala xadu wala amilu, gāl xadu ax mirsūm dīk, dahab. bassi da kalåm 2 hayugudu yibitu lxawažåt? “They said that foreigners came to ilBawī>i, which is the main town. They say Americans. They came, allegedly, they took [with them] a golden statuette in the shape of a cock. This is babble: they neither took anything nor did anything. Would foreigners go around digging up things?” (Ba<ariyya: Mandīša) (39) ālit imbāri innak āl ma-bitruš ilmadrasa “She said yesterday that you—incredibly enough!—do not go to school” TAY 38,–11
In all cases from (31) through (39), the rejection of real speech—that is, utterances that were really made—happens by reporting it, introduced by āl and pronounced with the appropriate intonation. In first instance, it is this typical intonation of indignation and annoyance that makes it clear to the hearer what the speaker means: disapproval and rejection. Reporting it alone would not be sufficient for this purpose; intonation must be an integral part of the construction. The semantic content of this intonation materializes in grammaticalized āl. This means that disapproval and rejection now belong to the semantic content of āl, which in this way is recruited as a pragmatic marker for disapproval and rejection.13 This makes it possible that the development goes further
13 Indeed, for at least some speakers/writers āl seems to be no longer associated with the verb qāl in this meaning. In MRR and BAHN, for example, we find it written with Alif Mādda as 3Ó whereas āl as a verb preserves the original orthography and is written with qāf 39 throughout.
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and āl no longer needs to refer back to a real utterance or to an earlier part of the discourse (see 31, 35, 36), but rather to a general saying as in (40). āl thus loses its function as a discourse marker and undergoes a development into something like a sentence adverb, but its semantic content remains unchanged. As both (40) and (41) show, the sentence introduced by āl was not uttered earlier: (40) yiba ++āgil lābis yāa w žakitta w alēha ban)u w lāfif ala rabtu kufiyya ūf wi byirtiiš mi-lbardi wi llabwa m+ātu walla bintu mašya gambu mal)i wala hiyya sala f-bardi walla f-talg. āl irriggāla yitġa))u wi nniswān yitarru “So the man wears a collar, a jacket, and over it a coat, and wraps his neck in a woollen scarf, and still he is shivering from cold, and his wife, the bitch, or his daughter, walks naked beside him not bothered by cold or snow. Unbelievably, the men cover themselves and the women strip themselves” DAR 163,3 (41) ilfustān )ili dayya alēha, āl batahūli albisu! “The dress was too tight for her, incredible, she sent it to me to wear!” FWQ 92,5 (the person who sent the dress does not show up personally)
A further extension we notice when āl introduces a sentence starting with yani, ašān, or biyūlu. Just as in the examples above, āl no longer introduces a quote or reported speech, but expresses disapproval of a fact or, more properly, the inference of the earlier statement. More often than not, a sense of irony is involved. So, in (42) the first statement by A invites the inference that A, as a matter of course, does not wet himself, an inference that is rejected by B, ironically by using āl together with yani, which itself could convey a similar meaning.14 āl serves here as a reinforcement of this inference and adds the disapproving semantic element. In the same vein, in (43)—which is a quote from Bayram at-Tūnisī’s ‘isSayyid wi m+ātu f-Barīs’—the pretentious behavior of the umda described in the first part of the sentence and its inference, is rejected and ridiculed by introducing this inference in the second part of the sentence with āl. (42) A: ti+af ya ammi Waīd iligli da biyšuxxi ala nafsu—B: āl yani inta-lli ma-bitšuxxiš? A: “Do you know, Uncle Wa<īd, this calf wets itself!”—B: “Baloney, would you pretend not to pee?!” RUH 40,–4
14 For a possible role of Sudan Arabic yani in the grammaticalization of Beja miyaad 3fait de dire by language contact, see Vanhove 2004, 149.
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(43) (after having listened to a short text in unintelligible newspaper talk) yiūm ilumda yubrum šanabu wi yhizzi dmāġu āl yani fāhim “The mayor twists his moustache and shakes his head, thus pretending that he had understood” SMB 84,–10.15
āl may be deleted in this case, since yani alone already conveys a similar meaning and connects the two utterances in much the same way, albeit without the sense of irony, cf. ya sitt ina waklīn fūl yani mbaršimīn “Madam, we have eaten fool, that means, we are full” RAS 15,3 and i))ulumba mumkin tištaġal ala a+abiyyitēn, yani mumkin taman a+abiyyāt yimlu banzīn fi nafs ilwat “The pump can serve two cars, that means, eight cars can refuel at the same time” NUS 35,3. In (44) below, it is not so clear if rejection of the inference and irony, which can clearly be understood from (42) and (43), are present and we may even note here a further step in the semantic development towards the sense of ‘as if ’, just as in (45): (44) nazlīn yisallimu laslia di l-nās fi ma r, a))īn ilmanga foha ġa)a āl yani humma tuggā+ fakha “They went to deliver these weapons to people in Cairo, they had put mangos on it as a cover, thus pretending that (~ as if) they were fruit merchants” BAHN 116,11 (45) lustāz Ibēdu baa txallī masalan yidhin awalēn buu min iggināb kirēm abya/ āl yani +aġāwi “let, for example, Ustāz ʚIbēdu smear white cream on the side of his mouth, as if it were foam” ABM 206,-5
Similar semantic extensions may be stated for āl ašān and āl biyūl, in both cases āl could be deleted: (46) wi lingilīz gum āl ašān yimu ma r “And the English came in order to—what they called—‘protect’ Egypt” MAL 79,28 (47) ana ftakartu sak+ān wi biyxa++af āl biyūl ē inn ilad+a )ilitlu wi huwwa māši gamb sūr ikkinīsa “I considered him drunk and raving, when he—baloney—said that the Virgin appeared to him when he was walking besides the wall of the church” RUH 114,5 (48) da ddinya hayga wi lukūma alba ddinya hnāk āl biyūlu lau iša+āt hināk biyiftau “The world is upset and the government is turning everything round there, they say—baloney—that they found traffic signs there that open the road” RUH 108,4
15
See SMB 85,4 for a similar passage.
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This grammaticalization of āl apparently started when it was used as an exclamation with a strong tone of disapproval, introducing reported speech16 uttered by somebody, but not approved by the speaker. The following step must have been the switch from report to the inference of the utterance, and finally from there to independent, generally known facts, not specifically uttered previously. The connection with a real utterance made by somebody was thus lost. This semantic development—namely semantic bleaching and reinterpretation—is accompanied by a morphological reduction of āl, that is, the inflection is lost, and a syntactic flexibility appears: it may occur within sentences and in subordinate clauses, and may be repeated producing a kind of circumfix around a rejected phrase (35, 36). The discourse marker āl has āl ē as an equivalent, which is nothing other than the common rhetorical question formed with ē, a type of discourse strategy that abounds in narrative contexts in Egyptian and other dialects of Arabic.17 An utterance like (49) biyūl alēki di bitibbini, āl inti bitibbī “He says about you: ‘she loves me.’ ‘Nonsense, you and loving him!’ ” FWQ 90,–6 can be transformed into a narrative question, as in (49) biyūl alēki di bitibbini, āl ē, inti bitibbī with the same disapproval, disbelief and incredulity as the exclamation. Again, there is lack of concord (50–53), that is, āl no longer refers to any referent. Grammaticalization as a discourse marker is further evidenced by the possibility of incorporation of āl ē into the sentence, and, conversely, by the fact that āl ē may be dropped from sentences (51–53) below without disturbing the syntactical structure: (50) xadit minni baiyyit iliršēn illi fa/līn kamālit iššah+, āl ē atixzin bilibēf wi mallabāt wi abūn wi makaronāt “She took the rest of the few remaining piasters for the month, allegedly she would store corned beef, tins, soap and pastas” GIL 120,–4
16 All my examples show indirect speech, not direct quotes, as far as this can be seen from the reference of the pronouns. Direct quote as the original structure from which the further development started cannot be excluded and is even probable. The lack of examples could be seen as proof of early grammaticalization with loss of the starting point structure. This view is corroborated by the fact that no inflected examples of āl in this sense could be found. 17 Any sentence may be split up into a kind of cleft sentence with a first part ending with ē what? and the rest of the sentence as answer to this question: ām wāid minhum ē, wāxid bālu mi lamaliyya, ām zanna ē, ala aibna ām aibna )aban ē, badi ma allu ana +āyi dort il0ayya, xa+ag ala ba++a “One of them then what? He realized what was going on, he hemmed in what? our friend, our friend of course what? After he had told him ‘I go to the loo’, he headed out the door” [Cairo: recorded text]. See Woidich 2006, 50.
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(51) kānu biyūlu nni arb ilistinzāf di āl ē ma-kanši laha lazma “They used to say that this war of attrition—just baloney—was not necessary” BAHN 78,–3, = kānu biyūlu nni arb ilistinzāf di ma-kanši laha lazma (52) ittit binti mafū a dikit alayya w šayyilitni šan)a āl ē ala ma txušš ittawalēt “A worthless squirt of a girl fooled me and let me carry a bag—can you credit it?—while she went to the loo” SIG 102,–5 (53) kānu lbuada amlīn ālē tuggā+ manga “They—far be they from you—acted as—unbelievable!—mango traders” BAHN 82,–6, = kānu lbuada amlīn tuggā+ manga
3.6
Comparative tiulš
A rhetorical question formed by an introducing tiūl “You could say” followed by the interrogative suffix -š as in tiulš or provided with a full negational ma- . . . -š as in ma-tulš, and a subordinated sentence as reported speech, follows a proposition which describes an unexpected and surprising fact as in (54, 55).18 Reported speech here communicates a reason for this fact, but this reason is not the true one and in fact contradicts reality. You could only compare it to the true reason. For tiulš ~ ma-tulš, therefore, a pathway from “Couldn’t you say . . .?!” = “You could say . . .!” to “As if it were > like” can reasonably be assumed.19 On the discourse level, sentences with comparative tiulš convey the astonishment and excitement of the speaker. (54) sabni wala saal anni, tiulš illa kunti bawakkilu )ūb miš tasiyya w lamit +ās? “He left me and did not inform about me any longer, could you say that [= as if] I had fed him with bricks, not with broth and meat of the head?” DAR 90,15. (55) badi šwayya asma dawša w kalām tiulš ilō/a malyāna nās “After a while I heard noise and talking, as if the room was full of people” GIZ 56,8 (56) labsa amī ama+ min ġēr ikmām wi riglēha iryāna ma-tulši ladaitni a+aba “She was wearing a red sleeveless shirt and her legs were naked, [I was shocked] as if a scorpion had stung me” MRR 80,8 (57) nazlīn alē iddīni iddīni ma-tulš innu huwwa nāir ilwaf “They showered him with ‘Give me, give me!’, as if he were the supervisor of the endowment” NAZ 62,9
18
See Woidich 1989, 124 and 2006, 281. For similar pathways of grammaticalization of ‘say’ to ‘like, as if ’ in other languages, see Heine et al. 2003, 268. 19
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tiulš may be followed by inn introducing indirect speech (57). (56) differs in some way from (54, 55) since the comparison expressed by means of reported speech does not refer directly to the fact, but refers to its consequence, which is not expressed itself [hence put into brackets in (56)]: the unexpected seductive appearance of the lady causes a shock to the speaker, which may be compared to the sting of a scorpion. We notice here a shift of reference from a fact to the inferences thereof similar to what occurred with āl (cf. 3.5), which suggests that tiulš got more independence in its use and that it is on its way to become a function word with the notion “as if.” The question is how far tiulš has developed in this way. It still may vary and be inflected according to the person spoken to, that is, we can find it as fem. tiulīš or pl. tiulūš followed by a complete sentence: (58) mahé dilwati aklitha wi labri bar/ak, ana miš fāhim anhi banna aw fāil illi xtara ikkaki bi ššakli da? tiulīš illa byimilu xal)it mūna “But nowadays, it takes you to the grave when you eat it. I do not understand: which mason or bricklayer invented this sort of cake? You could say they mix mortar!” SMM 55,–5 (59) wi lmōg )āli nāzil tiulūš milāya arīr zara “And the waves went up and down, you could say like a ladies’ dark-blue silk cloak” DAR 141,6 (60) min sāit ma simit ilxaba+ iššūm wi hiyya nazla la)mi w buka tulīš ibnaha “Since she heard this awful news, she has been constantly slapping her face and crying, as if it were her (own) son” RUH 152,–7
On the other hand, there are examples in the singular when we would expect the plural, as in (61), a sentence that addresses a general public (cf. ma-taxzunīš pl. “Do not blame me!” three lines further in the same opening speech): (61) w ahé layyām ammāla tigri, tiulš alla zalāna minna! “And the days fly past, as if—alas—they were angry with us” MAL 1,3
Whereas the facts with regard to inflection remain inconclusive, other features suggest that tiulš is on its way to be grammaticalized. In (54, 58) above, both parts apparently still have separate intonational contours as indicated by the authors by means of a question mark. But, on the other hand, we see in (62, 63) below that tiulš can be followed by one argument only, not a complete sentence, which suggests that tiulš has been incorporated into the sentence and that it is used just as the preposition zayy ‘like’. Indeed, the whole sequence has to be read here with a single intonational contour.
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(62) ammāl yilsa fi llisān tiulši a+aba “It stings the tongue, as if it were a scorpion” TAY 169,8 (63) w inta ē mkašša+ wi manfūx a lāxir tiulši raīs wizā+a “And what are you, grave looking and utterly pompous, as if you were a prime minister” RAS 82,–920
Moreover, tiulš can leave its original head position and be moved within the sentence, as in: (64) laēt makān Ġazāla zayyi ma huwwa, faršitu tulši lissa mafrūša dilwati “I found Ġazāla’s place unchanged, his bed was as if it had been made just now” LAB 49,2 (65) wala assi b-ayyuha āga ġēr inn ila+abiyya wafa w humma tulši nizil alēhum sahm a&&āh guwwa lutumbīl “Nor did he feel anything but that the car had stopped and that they were as if God’s arrow had fallen on them in the car (i.e. they had suddenly fallen still)” LAB 91,7
The original position in (64) would be tiulši faršitu lissa mafrūša . . . and in (65) tiulš nizil alēhum . . . . This strongly suggests that tiulš in these cases is grammaticalized and serves as a function word to express an unreal comparison. tiūl ‘you could say’ without a interrogative suffix -š is rarely found in Egypt, for example in (66) )amaha lazīz tiūli hiyya malban “It tastes nice, you’d say it is Turkish delight” ARA 58,-1 and in texts from Dakhla-Oasis (alMūšiyya): atgarādit tiūl di agār “It rolled down as if it were a stone.” These last two examples coincide with the widespread use of tiūl in other Arabic dialects in the form of tegel and apparently grammaticalized as a preposition “like” or something similar; see for the Da%īna tigel, tegel ‘tu dirais’ Landberg (1942) 2542; for the Rwala tesma ebī nejūrahom te4el dammām “It is as if one could hear the angry voice of their mortars, like to the sound of a great drum” Musil (1982, 84,3) and passim; for Souchne bitšūfu tikū&innu cabal ‘er sieht aus wie ein Berg’ Behnstedt (1994, 353), originally “When you see him, you’d say it is a mountain;” for Syrian nomads see Cantineau (1937, 196); for Tunisia see Marçais (1959, 3310f.); for Morocco Colin (1993, 1624).
20 An example from Bēri dialect in Upper Egypt: ilfurusa +a00āa tgūliš ikēle “The mare gallops like a young stallion.”
āl, yiūl ‘to say’ in egyptian arabic 3.7
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Turn-taking device:21 baullak ē
Another phrase commonly used as a discourse marker by a speaker in order take the lead in the conversation and to start a new topic, is baullak ē “I’ll tell you something! Listen!” see (66, 67) or simply baūl . . . “I say . . .” as in (68) without addressing the addressee directly. It attracts the attention of the hearer by inviting the inference that he is telling him something important. It is often used to prevent a longer discussion and to give directions and instructions. (66) Š: aywa ana āib ilfa/li alēkum, a di nnu lolāya ana ma-kanši fī addi minkum gih hina, wi fi lāxir absinni ba++a miš ayzīn tidaxxalūni ana— aywa baullak ē! ana miš fā/i li lhartala btatak di! lissa āyiz abu) i/ati w au)) kamirāti . . . “Š: Yes, it is due to me, I mean, without me, none of you would have come here, and, in the end, you shut me out and do not let me come in here any longer!—Yes, listen! I am not free for this nonsense of yours now! I want to fix my lighting and set down my cameras . . .” MUW 40,–2. (67) N: la ya *ā*a, la! Fatiyya lāzim tikammil talimha. kifāya lli ga+āli ana w 5ša uxti min adit ilbēt wi lirmān min ittalīm.—B: baullik ē ya Nagība, ya binti. kalām kitīr miš āyiz asma w ana xalā qa++a+t . . . No, Daddy, no! Fat
At the same time the use of baullak ē creates kind of intimacy between the speaker and the addressee, preventing the directions from coming over too rude.
21 As to the exclamation of strong assertion bitūl fīha “no question about it! you bet! you said!” adduced in Hinds et al. 1986, 722b, I could not find any example in the literature except the ones given in this entry: idirti truddi ala lmudīr?—bitūl fīha w šatamtu kamān “Did you dare to answer the boss back?—You bet I did! and I cursed him too!”
692 3.8
manfred woidich Reference to hearsay information and general knowledge
biyūlu “they say” introduces what is known from hearsay or is general knowledge and from a non-specific source functioning as an evidential marker, see Heine et al. (2003, 265). As usual, the 3rd pl is used in this case, see Woidich (2006, 357): (69) simiti agāt kitīr biyūlu kulli āga hatiba ala lbi)āa “I have heard a lot. They say everything will be on a personal identity card” RUH 112,–1 (70) inta lāzim )allat illi biyūlu nnak miggawwizha “You must have divorced the one which, they say, you had married’’ FWQ 120,–10 (71) biyūlu kamān kān sākin fīha wada w bintaha “They say, too, that a woman and her daughter were living in it” RUH 18,–10
Often a proverb is quoted in this way: (72) wi lē baa listigāl da, da atta biyūlu lagala min išši)ān “And why this haste, they even say, haste is from the Devil” WAZ 377,15
4. āl, yiūl introducing pseudo-complements22 In his article on serial verbs in EALL, Kees Versteegh mentions a use of āl, yiūl “to say” in Egyptian Arabic, which he considers as a complementizer derived from a serial verb construction [SVC], which in his view provides a syntactic slot for an object. Quoting an example taken from Woidich (2002, 183) he compares this use of āl, yiūl to similar developments in Creole languages such as Krio Creole English and Ki-Nubi. (73) huwwa raddi alēk allak ē? “What did he answer you?” LAB 118,–8
Earlier, Catherine Miller brought the development of gāl as a complementizer in Juba Arabic to our attention, Miller (1998, 2000, 2001) where gāl is grammaticalized and used as a complementizer after verbs of saying and cognition.23 Let me first cite some additional examples: 22 See Woidich 2002, 181ff, Woidich 2006, 401. Phrases of the same type, but used to express the direction or a goal, are formed with +ā, as in kuntu btuxrugu trūu fēn? “where did you go out to?” FWQ 62,6, see Woidich, loc.cit. 23 Hopper et al. (2003, 194–196) discuss similar developments of ‘say’ in Akkadian, see as well Hopper et al. (2003, 13–15) for West African languages. For a similar use
āl, yiūl ‘to say’ in egyptian arabic (74) (75) (76) (77) (78) (79)
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ilmaxāzin )aban atruddi tūl i anfi ġēr mawgūd “The stores of course will answer and say, ‘this kind is not available’ ” RAQ 38,8 ana kutti baġanni baūl ē? “What, was I busy singing?” [film] inta sākit ya (asanēn, akkallim ana!—atikkallimi tūli ē? waffari kkalām! “You are silent, asanēn? Then I shall speak!—What are you going to say? Keep your words to yourself !” ABM 144,–6 ašān kida dayman an a zabayni aulluhum iwa ya-bni tu))i āga f-gēbak “This is why I always advise my customers and say, ‘take care, my boy, not to put anything in your pocket’ ” YUN 27,3 rafa/u alūlu ina malna “They refused and said, ‘not our business!’ ” NUS 7,–6 xayya+ūni ammāti alūli taxdi bni ammik “My aunts made me choose, they said to me: ‘you should take your cousin’ ” RUH 59,3;
The differences between the use of āl, yiūl in our case and gāle in Juba or se in Krio Creole English are indeed significant: the first mentioned introduces quotations and noun phrases—mostly the question pronoun ē “what?”—and is fully inflected, whereas the other two serve as a complementizer for subordinated sentences of various kinds and are no longer inflected. Egyptian Arabic āl, yiūl remains connected with locutive and speech-related verbs, and its use is not extended to other types of verbs as happens in many West African languages (Lord 1993, 176 ff) and in Juba-Arabic (Miller 2001). There is no trace of āl in Egyptian Arabic functioning as complementizer “that,” a fact earlier stated for Arabic dialects in general in Versteegh (1984, 101). Can we analyse āl, yiūl constructions as an SVC, then? For a verbal sequence to be recognized as an SVC it has to fulfil some conditions formulated in Newmeyer (2004, 2f) and Kroeger (2004, 226–256). Some of these are met by our āl, yiūl constructions:24 – they are two verbs within the same clause, neither of which is an auxiliary; – they belong to a single intonation contour25 and refer to a single event;
of the Turkish gerund diye “saying” see Kissling (1960, 190). For Bedja, see Vanhove 2004. 24 See in particular Kroeger (2004, 229). 25 For a case with no single intonation contour but two contours, see gaadit turgu wu tġanni, gālit abībi a+ā balad ilLayy, inša&&a mā ēni yiriddi alayy “She started to
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– they share at least one semantic argument, which is the agent in their case; – they contain only one grammatical subject. 26 At first glance, this makes the āl, yiūl constructions good candidates for SVC, were it not for some other diagnostic features that exclude them from the SVC. SVC do not contain any overt markers of subordination or coordination. This is not true for āl, yiūl constructions where wi ‘and’ may separate the two verbs, suggesting that what we have here is a coordinate construction: (80) raddi Ġazāla w allu mafhūm ya ammi “Ġazāla answered and said to him, ‘understood, Uncle!’ ” LAB 138,–6 (cf. 74) (81) wi ġanna w āl mawawīl “And he was singing Mawwāls” MAL 45,8 (cf. 75) (82) af/al ana abar)am w aūl atta ladwiya kamān biy addarūha “I shall keep muttering: even the medicine they export as well’ GIL 58,8 (cf. 84 below) (83) ultilu kulli da, raddi w alli inta-zzayy awālak? miš kuwayyis? “I told him all this, he answered and said to me: ‘how are you? Not good?’ ” ULA 66,2 (cf. 75) Tense, aspect, modality, negation, etc. are normally expressed only once in
true SVC, and only occasionally are both verbs marked for these. āl, yiūl constructions, however, usually mark both verbs in the same way, that is, both verbs appear in the same tense or aspect (see the examples above), with the exception of bi- and a-prefixes: bi- may be and a- is always omitted on yiūl; see (74, 76) above. For bi-, see (84):27 (84) ilbitti bitbar)am tiūl ē? “What is the girl mumbling?” SIG 126,11
dance and to sing: my darling went to the country ilLayy, he will never return to me, I hope” (Ba<ariyya: MandBša). 26 This excludes, by the way, causative xalla clauses from the serial verb constructions: xallētu ma/a “I made him sign” contains two agents/subjects. 27 Exceptional is katabu yūlu ē? “What do they write and say?” MRR 101,4 which does not follow the above rules. It contains a sequence of a perfect and an imperfect instead of perfect in both verbs, as in katabu ālu ē? “What did they write and say?” In both cases, the question word ē “what?” asks for the opinion of the writers. Since the act of writing happened in the past and the opinion expressed by this writing stays present till the moment of asking, an imperfect yiūlu seems justified for this moment. The semantic notion here overrules the syntactic one; see Woidich (2003, 131).
āl, yiūl ‘to say’ in egyptian arabic
695
This is usual when two imperfects of this type are coordinated, see Woidich (2006, 282). Even different verbal modals with more or less the same semantic content are possible, as (85) shows, when the verbs are coordinated by wi ‘and’: (85) ummā& ēh illi inta āid tixa++af wi ammāl tiūlu da? “What is it then what you are raving about all the time?” ABM 39,1
SVC verbs should not contain two overt NPs that refer to the same argument; see Kroeger (2004, 230). In āl, yiūl constructions this is possible and both verbs may keep their original semantic and syntactical structure, cf. (73) and (77) above and: (86) inta bitwašwiš ilbinti bitullaha ē? “What are you whispering to the girl?” MRR 198,11 (87) ammāl tikallim nafsak tiūl ē? “What are you talking to yourself ?” LIB 64,12
Finally, as Newmeyer (2004, 3) reports, in a coordinate structure moving an NP of one of the verbs from its original position should be impossible (coordinate structure constraint), but it is possible in an SVC. In the āl, yiūl construction, noun extraction by forming a cleft sentence is not possible: *ē lli raddi alēk alhūlak? or *ē lli akkallim aūlu? Strangely enough, (85) with its coordinated verbs offers such a cleft sentence containing a moved NP, though it should be not possible in this case according to the coordinate structure constraint adduced by Newmeyer loc. cit. In my view, these are enough reasons not to consider āl, yiūl constructions as SVC. Rather, I think that they developed from paratactic entailments to intransitive verbs with a semantic component of ‘saying’ such as28 6anna ‘to sing’, āyir ‘to blame’, ayya) ‘to cry’, bar)am ‘to grumble’, daa ‘to curse’, dalla ‘to give a nick-name’, ikkallim ‘to talk’, kidib ‘to lie’, na)a ‘to pronounce’, na a ‘to give advice’, radd ‘to answer’, rafa/ ‘to refuse’, arrax ‘to shout’, wašwiš ‘to whisper’, xa++af ‘to talk nonsense’, which do not have a syntactic slot to express the content of the performative act and cannot quote directly. By adding—be it asyndetically or by means of wi—a sentence with the locutionary verb āl, yiūl that disposes of that slot, the problem is solved. This coordinative structure describes one 28 The list of verbs with pseudo-complement as registered in my database. 13 of the 28 registered cases include the question āl ē.
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fact and shows cohesion as to intonation, but not the syntactic cohesion normally displayed in SVC. Following Seuren (1991, 196), I prefer to interpret these āl, yiūl constructions as pseudo-complements, especially since āl, yiūl is not the only type of these complements. Many verbs with the semantic content of ‘moving into a direction’ do not have a syntactic slot for the direction of the movement. Here a pseudo-complement with +ā, yirū ‘to go to’ fills the gap by introducing this direction, as in miši +ā fēn? “Where did he go to?”; see Woidich (2003, 181ff ) for more details. Similar behavior is exhibited by xad, yāxud ‘to take’ and šāl, yišīl ‘to take away’, which may be combined with wadda, yiwaddi ‘to bring to’ to form utterances such as anšīlu nwaddīh fēn AWL 44,6 “Where shall we bring him to?”, imbāri bi llēl šalha waddāha lbēt “Yesterday evening he took it home” WAZ 369,-3f.
5. qāl in delocutive derivations29 āl, yiūl is combined with set phrases such as vocatives or idiomatic expressions, thus enlarging the lexicon of the language. This is common in Cairo Arabic. Here, it will suffice to give some examples: (88) a))i dēlu bēn wi+āku w āl ya fakīk “It hung its tail between its legs and cleared off ” FAG 119,5 (89) aadt a/rab fī l-ġāyit lamma āl ya bass “I kept beating him till he could take no more” Hinds et al. (1986, 74b) (90) ittit dīn ala txallīha tūl ai b raabti “An awful beating, which makes her give in” RUH 63,–2 (91) kunti baūl ya ar/ inšai w iblaīni “I said, ‘O Earth split open and swallow me!’ = “I wanted to vanish into thin air” LAB 218,4
Of a different type is āl with sound-related interjections or ideophones (or expressives, as they are sometimes called) to form ‘descriptive compounds’. Only two examples have come to my attention, but there are bound to be more: (92) āl wi (93) āl gạ2y2
29
“He vomited” Hinds et al. (1986, 947b) “He gave up, resigned”30 ʚAzīz 129
Plank (2002, 465 and 478). For gāy ~ gāy “help!” see Hinds et al. 1986, 146a; for the Arabic etymology, see Behnstedt 1997, 36. 30
āl, yiūl ‘to say’ in egyptian arabic
697
We quite often find this type of gāl, yigūl with sound-related interjections as a direct object in Upper Egyptian Arabic, for example in Bēri.31 They mostly describe a sudden event connected with a sound, and occur commonly in narrative style, not necessarily as intransitive expressions as described in Plank (2002, 468). +ā gāyil ka+a+āw bīha “He rushed at her” itgūl dibb fi lar/ “She toppled over” ma++a wida gāl dáradib “All of a sudden, it went ‘knack’ ” gāl daradíyy “He crashed down” gult ijlibb “I jumped up and ran away” gāl, igūl )ī) “to break wind” gālat )irri minnīh “It buzzed away” gālat šinn “It bubbled up (boiling water)” žāt ittit ul)ēa kida w gāl hub, a+ā gālib ilgulāl wu lbōša wu adda min ġēr iml “A flat piece came, he made ‘hub’ and threw down the jars and the bowl and went off without a burden” (Ba<ariyya: Mandīša) (103) wu badēn ilga)ir gāl )ū), gallih ma tistanna lamma žžallabiyya tinšif “And then the train made ‘>ū>’, he said to it, ‘wait untill the gallabiyya has become dry’ ” (Ba<ariyya: Mandīša) (94 (95) (96) (97) (98) (99) (100) (101) (102)
6. References 6.1
General References
Azīz, Ašraf. 2005. al-Kināyāt al-āmmiyya al-mi riyya. al-Qāhira: al-Hadara Publishing. Behnstedt, Peter. 1994. Der arabische Dialekt von Soukhne (Syrien). Teil 2 und 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. —— 1997. “Koptisch oder Arabisch?” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 87, 31–39. Cantineau, Jean. 1937. “Etudes sur quelques parlers de nomades arabes d’Orient.” Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales III,119–237. Chisarik, Erika and Wim van der Wurff. 2003. “From ‘Say’ to ‘Because’: Grammaticalisation and Reanalysis.” Paper read at the Conference on Comparative Diachronic Syntax, University of Leiden Centre for Linguistics (ULCL), 29–30 August 2003. http://www. let.leidenuniv.nl/ulcl/events/compdiachr/programme.htm Cohen, David, Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle, Martine Vanhove. 2002. “The grammaticalization of ‘say’ and ‘do’: An areal phenomenon in East Africa.” In Güldemann, Tom and Manfred von Roncador, eds. Reported discourse: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 227–251.
31 For the very elaborate use of these expressions in Ethio-Semitic, which goes much further than what we know from these Upper Egyptian Arabic dialects, see Cohen et al. (2002, 227 and 238 ff). Cf. for the Da7īna Landberg (1909, 1268) gāl hubēs “se mit à courir.”
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Colin, Georges S. 1993. Le dictionnaire COLIN darabe Dialectal Marocain. Sous la direction de Zakia Iraqui Sinaceur. Volume 6. Rabat: Editions al Manahil. Fischer, Wolfdietrich und Otto Jastrow. 1980. Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte. Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Neue Serie 16. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Georgakopoulu, Alexandra and Dionysis Goutsos. 2004. Discourse Analysis. An Introduction. 2nd print. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Golato, Andrea. 2002. “Self-quotation in German: Reporting on past decisions.” In Güldemann, Tom and Manfred von Roncador, eds.. Reported discourse: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 49–70. Güldemann, Tom and Manfred von Roncador, eds. 2002. Reported discourse: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinds, Martin and El Said Badawi. 1986. A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kissling, Hans-Joachim. 1960. Osmanisch-Türkische Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Klamer, Marian A.F. 2002. “ ‘Report’ constructions in Kembera (Austronesian).” In Güldemann, Tom and Manfred von Roncador, eds.. Reported discourse: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 323–340. Kroeger, Paul R. 2004. Analyzing Syntax. A Lexical-Functional Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Landberg, Carlo de. 1909. Études sur les dialectes de l’arabie méridionale. Deuxième volume. Da%īnah. Deuxième partie. Leiden: E. J. Brill. –––– 1942. Glossaire Datīnois. Troisième volume ( –w) publié par K.V. Zetterstéen. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Lord, Carol. 1993. Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Marçais, William and Abderrahmān Guīga.1959. Textes Arabes de Takroûna. II Glossaire. Sixième Tome. Paris: P. Geuthner. Miller, Catherine. 2000. “The Grammaticalization of the Verb ‘to say’ in Juba Arabic.” Proceedings of the Third International Conference AIDA, Malta 29 March–2 April 1998, ed. by Manwel Mifsud, 213–218. Malta: Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe. –––– 2001. “Grammaticalisation du verbe gale ‘dire’ et subordination en Juba Arabic.” Leçons d’Afrique: Filiations, ruptures et reconstitution de langues: Un hommage à Gabriel Manessy, ed. Robert Nicolai, 455–482. Louvain: Peeters. Musil, Alois. 1928. The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. New York: American Geographical Society. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2004. “Some thoughts on the serial verb construction.” Paper read at: Atelier du 9 décembre 2004. CRLAO, EHESS, Paris. La notion de “construction verbale en série” est-elle opératoire? Fédération TUL (internet: http://www.typologie. cnrs.fr/fr/ gabarits/TUL%20Newmeyer.pdf). Plank, Frans. 2005. “Delocutive verbs, crosslinguistically.” Linguistic Typology 9, 459–491. Schwenter, Scott and Richard Waltereit. 2005. “Presupposition accommodation and language change: From additivity to speech-act marking.” Paper read at From Ideational to Interpersonal: Perspectives from Grammaticalization. Leuven, 10–12 February 2005. Abstract: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/fitigra/schwenter.pdf Seuren, Pieter. 1991. “The definition of serial verbs.” Development and Structure of Creole Languages: Essays in honor of Derek Bickerton, eds. Francis Byrne and Thom Huebner. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 193–205.
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Vanhove, Martine. 2004. “ ‘Dire’ et finalité en bedja: Un cas de grammaticalisation.” Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 25,2, 133–153. Versteegh, Kees. 1984. Pidginization and Creolization: The Case of Arabic. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Volume 33). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. –––– 2007. “Serial verbs.” In Kees Versteegh et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, vol. 3. Leiden: Brill. Woidich, Manfred. 1980. “XIV. Text aus il-Birāt.” In W. Fischer and O. Jastrow, Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte, 235–242. –––– 1989. “illi ‘daß’, illi ‘weil’ und zayy illi ‘als ob’: Zur Reinterpretation von Relativsatzgefügen im Kairenischen.” Mediterranean Language Review 4/5, 109–128. –––– 1995. “Some cases of Grammaticalization in the Egyptian Arabic Dialects.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Lassociation internationale pour la dialectologie Arabe, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, 10–14 September 1995, 259–268. Cambridge: Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe. –––– 2002. “Verbalphrasen mit asyndetischem Perfekt im Ägyptisch-Arabischen.” Estudios de dialectología norteafricana y andalusí 6, 121–192. –––– 2006. Das Kairenisch-Arabische. Eine Grammatik. Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Neue Serie 22. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 6.2
Literary Sources
ABM = Amīn Bakīr, Xamas masraiyyāt kumidya. al-Qāhira 1986. ARA = Lu>fī al-Xōlī 1988. il-arānib. Kairo. AWL Alī Sālim. 1986. awladna f Landan. al-Qāhira. BAHN = Sāmi< Farag. 1999. Bānhōfštrāsa. Riwāya bi l-āmmiyya l-mi riyya. al-Qāhira. BTR = Alī Sālim. 1991. ilBitrōl )ili fi betna. al-Qāhira. DAR = usayn Šafīq al-MiDrī. 1929. il(aggi Darwīš w Umm Ismaīl. al-Qāhira. FAG = A<mad Fuād Nigm. 1993. Muzakkirāt ilFagūmi. al-Qāhira. FWQ = Numān Āšūr. 1958. inNās illi fō. al-Qāhira: Dār an-Nadīm. GIL = Numān Āšūr. 1972. igGīl iggidīd. al-Qāhira. HAM = Bahīg Ismāīl. 1994. ilĒn ilamra. al-Qāhira. HUD = Fat->aba a%-%āniya). SIB = Sad ad-Dīn Wahba. 1966. isSibinsa. Masra
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SMB = Bayram at-Tūnisī. 1925. isSayyid wi m+ātu f Barīs. al-Qāhira. SMM = Bayram at-Tūnisī. 1925. isSayyid wi m+ātu f Ma r. al-Qāhira. TAY = Mu
INDEX
ā, 571, 571 n. 24 ending, 544 Abbeche Arabic, 648 Abbès, 315, 363 Abd al-Ᾱl, 665 n. 8, 671 Abd al-Fattāh Salīm, 187 ʚAbd al-H usayn al-Fatlī, 22, 187 Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, 232 Abd as-Salām Muhammad Hārūn, 23, 43, 64 Abda**a lGum, 678 Abdallāh, 56, 61 Abdalmalik b. H abīb, 195, 195 n. 10 Abdeen, 662 Abdel-Malek, Kamal, 563 Abderrahmān Guīga, 698 Abdūh, Mūsā, 548, 563 Abdul-Malek, 544 Abdul-Raof, 393–395, 395 n. 85, 400 abitud, 215 abitudines, 214–215, 226 ablatiuo, 214, 216, 227 ablative, 216–217 ablativus, 221 Ablaut, 256 ʙabnāʙ al-ʚAjam, 115 ʙabnāʚ al-ʚArab, 115 Abney, 475–477, 478 n. 3, 483, 485, 498 ʙabniya, 316 Abraham, 324 n. 14, 363 ʙAbū Abdallāh M. b. A. al-Kinānī, 208 ʙAbū Alī al-Fārisī, 10, 165 ʙAbū l-Aswad ad-Duʙalī, 116, 120, n. 4, 133 Abu Athera, Said Salman, 543 n. 1, 563 ʙAbū Bakr M. b. Abdallāh b. Muhammad b. Ušta al-Isbahānī, 200 n. 30 ʙAbū Dāwūd, 93, 110 ʙAbū H anīfa, 35 ʙAbū l-H asan [al-Axfaš], 167 ʙAbū H usayn, 43 ʙAbū l-H usayn al-Basrī, 38, 40–41 ʙAbū Jafar Quray b. Uqba b. Bašīr, 198 ʙAbū l-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahmān b. Ishāq, 113 ʙAbū Qīr, 130 ʙAbū t-Tayyib al-Lughawī, 206 n. 45
ʙAbū Rīš Academic Hospital, 533 ʙAbū Ubayda, 64 ʙAbū Xirāš, 90 ʙAbū Yūsuf, 43 Abu Zinima, 566 n. 6 Abu-Haidar, 668–669, 671 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 544, 563 Abuw lHøl, 569 n. 16 Abuw Znēmah, 566, 566 n. 6, 578 academy(ies) of, 655, 661 Baghdad, 661 Cairo, 661 Damascus, 661 Jordan, 661 Acc-ing, 478, 483, n. 10 construction, 476 accompli, 315 n. 4 du présent, 331 accusatif, 118, 130 accusative, 7–8, 10, 18–19, 19 n. 15, 95, 135, 135 n. 2, 138, 138 n. 19, 139–140, 142, 144–147, 216–217, 227–228, 230 ending, 138, 144 +genitive, 135 accusativus, 221 acento, 215 n. 11 achèvement, 334, 341, 341 n. 24, 347 du processus, 333–334, 339 Ackema and Neeleman, 475–476, 478– 479, 480 n. 5, 481, 481 n. 6, 482, 482 n. 8, 483, 483 n. 10, 484–485, 495, 497 n. 30, 498 acquis, 326, 334–335, 339–341, 350 caractéristique, 326–327, 329–331, 334, 337–341, 344, 348, 348 n. 29, 351 non, 327, 330–331 constitutif, 338 dernier, 326, 331, 333, 339–340, 349 final, 326 instable, 338 passager, 327 n. 18 permanent, 320 résultatif, 325, 325 n. 15, 326–328, 330–332, 339, 341, 343, 349–350, 352 non-caractéristique, 329 temporaire, 335, 338
702
index
transitoire, 327 n. 18 acquisition d’état, 326–327, 330, 334, 338–340, 342–343, 346, 358, 360 acteur, 335–337 l’actif, 115 activities durative, 299 habitual, 299 actors, 396 acusatiuo, 214, 216 acusativo, 227 Ād, 195, 202–203 Adab literature, 199 Adam, 39, 190, 192–195, 197–198, 200, 206 adaptation(s) morphological, 308 phonological, 306, 308 addēš, 86 Aden, 82–83, 83 n. 18, 84 adjectif(s), 325–329, 331–332, 335, 342, 346–347, 349–350 analogue(s), 327, 341 assimilé, 327, 331–333, 341–342, 345–352 d’état acquis, 334 caractéristique, 328, 333–335, 339–342, 344–345, 351–354, 358, 360 non-caractéristique, 328, 331, 333, 335 adjectival agreement, 29 adjective(s), 17 n. 13, 49, 153 n. 5, 154, 156, 156 n. 11, 157, 158 n. 13, 160, 167, 176, 189, 248–249, 250–251, 308, 370 n. 14, 373, 376 n. 34, 382 n. 53, 477, 484–485 arabī, 190 feminine, 250 indefinite, 251 nominalized, 382 adjunct adverbial, 391 attributive, 391 adjunction, 293 Adnān, 201, 203 adverb(s), 214, 229, 252, 374–375, 384, 385, 397, 477, 577 interrogative, 398 n. 90 sentence, 685 temporal-, 63 adverbial, 150, 153 n. 5, 159–160, 162–163, 167, 169 n. 26, 170, 172, 180, 183, 371 n. 17, 375, 384, 387 constituent, 166
degree, 384 expression, 682 manner, 384 phrasal, 387 phrase, 150, 152, 153 n. 5, 159, 162–163, 163 n. 20, 164, 164 n. 23, 167–168, 171–172, 177–180 prepositional, 175–176, 179–180, 183–186 semantic component, 170 sentence, 376–378, 387 structures, 54 time, 384 af ‘āl al-madh wa-d-damm, 378 n. 4 an-nāqisa, 378 n. 41 al-muqāraba, 378 n. 41 al-qulūb, 142, 378 n. 41 ar-rajā, 378 n. 41 aš-šurū, 378 n. 41 at-tafdīl, 378 n. 41 affirmatif, 519 affirmation, 398 affix, 370 n. 11, 477–480, 481 n. 6, 482–483, 483 n. 10, 484, 484 n. 12, 485, 492, 497 n. 30 internal, 483 masdar, 485, 492, 494–497, 497 n. 28 nominal, 480 nominalizing, 479, 482–483, 483 n. 11, 493 phonological, 481, 496 prosodic, 495 stem, 490 syntactic, 481, 496 Affix Grammars over Finite Lattices, 369, 369 n. 10, 370, 372 n. 18, 373 n. 23, 377 n. 36, 383 affixation, 367 affixes, 230, 479–481 non-, 372 stem, 488 terminal, 372 Africa, 621, 639 East, 639, 697 African, 607, 609, 611, 621 East, 620 West, 692 n. 23, 693 affricate, 597 affrication, 611 Afroasiatic, 595 Agapito à Valle Flemmarum, 212, 226, 231, 232, 233–234, 234 n. 48, 237, 239 Agāylah dialect(s), 567, 572 n. 25
index agent, 321, 321 n. 11, 322–323, 326, 326 n. 17, 343, 348–349, 351 n. 32, 354–357, 376 n. 31, 380, 392–394, 394 n. 83, 395, 396 n. 85 explicit, 391 humain, 348, 351–352, 356 implied, 391 agentives, 394 agentivité, 321, 321 n. 11, 323, 328 n. 19, 336, 344, 350–351, 359 entière, 323, 349, 359 neutralisée, 321–322, 335, 338, 343–344, 348 n. 29, 351, 359 non, 321, 343–344, 359 partielle, 321, 323, 344, 347, 349, 349 n. 31, 351, 359 pleine, 321, 344 Aggadic material, 192 Agha & Khalidi, 190 n. 1 Agha, Saleh Said & Tarif Khalidi, 207 agreement, 368, 370, 374, 376 n. 31, 368 n. 4, 377, 381, 383–384, 389, 397 Aguila, Antonio de, 212, 231–232 Ägyptisch-Arabisch, 699 Ahaywāt, 566 n. 9 dialects, 567 ahl al-arabiyya, 55 ahl al-luġa, 39 Ahlwardt, Wilhelm, 21, 86 n. 23, 87 n. 23, 110 Ahmad Fuād Nigm, 544, 563, 699 Ahmad Muhammad Shākir, 205 n. 41 Ahmad Muxtār Umar, 65 Ahmad Šams ad-Dīn al-H ajjājī, 700 Ahmad Yūsuf Najātī, 64 Ahmad, 364 al-Ahrām, 530 āid, 59 air, 256, 256 n. 8, 257 nn. 12–13, 261, 262, 268, 270 ajam, 115–116 Akkadian, 597–604 early, 598 pre-, 598 lakkadien, 125 alā lladī, 79 alā, 17, 21 Al-Ani, Salman H., 247 Albany, 202 n. 33 Alcalá, Pedrode, 209 n. 1, 210–214, 214 n. 9, 215–217, 217 n. 15, 218–220, 220 n. 22, 221–222, 224–226, 231 n. 41, 239, 241 Alegat, 565 n. 3, 566 n. 7 Aleiqat, 565 n. 3, 567 n. 9
703
Alep, 113, 123 aleph(s), 595, 596 n. 6, 597, 597 n. 8, 599 nn. 13, 15 Aleppo, 232 n. 44 Aleut, 294 Alexandrie, 130 Al-Falay, Ibrahim S., 655, 670–671 al-Alfī, 530 Alfiyya commentaries, 3 alġayta, 141 n. 32, 160 Alger, 113 Algerian, 640 Arabic, 596 Al-Hassan, 671 Alī b. Abī Tālib, 134, 206 Alī H aydar, 23 Alī Sālim, 699 Alī Tawfīq al-H amad, 187 Alī, 117 Ali, 26–27, 34, 36–37, 39–42 Alī, caliph, 31 Ali, Mohamed M. Yunis, 44 alif cequin, 218 alif, 123 n. 12, 127, 598 mādda, 684 n. 13 8sākin, 218 allā, 17 al-la, 658 a&&a, 658 alladī, 67–72, 76–81, 81 n. 8, 82 n. 13, 83 n. 19, 84–85, 88–89, 91, 93, 103 clause, 68, 70–71, 82, 85, 88–89, 95–97, 102 conjunction, 75, 100–101 conjunctional, 70, 75, 79 infinitival, 79 Allāh, 69, 72, 89, 91–92, 97, 109, 200 allemande, 118–119 allemands, 118, 123 allophone(s), 273 etymon, 272–273, 568, 576, 657 alternance(s) vocalique(s), 315, 317, 337, 344, 345 n. 28, 350, 353 Altoma, Salah J., 656, 671 amā, 17, 21 amal, 10–11, 124, 140 n. 30, 141–142, 142 n. 37, 143–146, 149–152, 152 n. 3, 153, 159 n. 14, 160, 164, 166–167, 171–172, 180–181, 184–186, 224, 228, 234–235 jarr, 10 jazm, 10 nasb, 10 raf , 10
704
index
Amara and Spolsky, 662 Amari, M., 84, 110 American English, 661 British, 560 Americans, 560 n. 40, 561, 684 Amerindian, 210 al-Āmidī, 37 āmil, 10 n. 8, 124, 135–147, 149, 151–152, 160, 160 n. 15, 161–162, 162 n. 18, 163, 168, 170, 175, 178–179, 181, 184, 212, 234, 237, 240 theory, 62 Amīn Bakīr, 699 amir, 217 $mmiyya, 403, 405, 411, 529, 529 n. 1, 531–532, 532 nn. 7–8, 533–537, 539–540 ammā, 13 n. 9, 15–17, 21 Ammar, Sam, 315, 318 n. 7, 319, 323, 343 n. 25, 344, 344 n. 26, 353 n. 33, 363 amorite, 316 amr, 6, 34, 210, 217 Amsterdam, 565, 565 n. 2 an(na) clause, 24, 95, 99, 171 an-, 7 n. 5, 15, 79 8-clauses, 78 n. 3 analogical creations, 661 analysis automated, 390, 391 etymonial, 258, 261–262, 265 anaphora, 171 anaptyctic(s), 572, 574, 582 n. 60 anaptyxis, 571–572 Anawati & Jomier, 93, 110 Andalousie, 128 al-Andalusī, 78, 435, 438–441, 444, 447–449, 453 Andersen, R., 308–309 angels, 190 Anghelescu, Nadia, 19 n. 16, 23 animal, 345, 346, 396 animate, 367, 370, 383, 394, 396–397 non-, 394, 394 n. 81 animéité, 520, 522 AnBs, Ibrāhīm, 364 annamā, 16 Ansār, 202 antecedens, 81 n. 8 antecedent, 59, 91–92, 151, 153 Antilles, les, 129 antinomy, 367 n. 3 Antiquité grecque, 114 Anubhûti Svarûpâcârya, 209
apercion, 225 apocopate, 227, 230 n. 39, 248, 575–576, 581 n. 56, 592 n. 91 Apostolou Panara, A., 299, 301–303, 307, 309 apposition, 69, 71, 102, 169 n. 26, 182 clauses, 72 approximant, 266, 266 n. 28, 267, 272, 280, 280 n. 41, 285–286 après événementiel, 325 Aquila, Antonius ab (Antonio dell’Aquila), 123, 212 n. 4, 223, 237, 239, 241 Aquilina, Joseph, 100, 111, 296, 310 Arab, 26, 41, 236, 527, 534, 540, 543, 543 n. 1, 551, 557 countries, 541 genealogists, 201–202 genealogy, 202 grammarians, 70, 79, 206– 207 grammatical theory, 3 grammatical thinking, 45 linguistic studies, 41 literary studies, 543 medieval grammarians, 595 n. 3 Muslims, 67 nationalists, 197 native speakers, 9 North, 201 philosophers, 192 poetry, 3, 4 n. 1 theologians, 192 tribal groups, 201 world, 527–528, 541, 543 n. 1, 561, 563 writers, 543 arabe, 35, 114, 116–121, 121 n. 8 122–123, 131, 133 d’Abbeche, 652 ancien, 118–119, 122, 124–125, 130, 313, 315–317, 319, 321, 321 n. 10, 323, 325, 327, 332, 339, 343 n. 25, 349, 353 n. 33, 354–355, 355 n. 36, 357, 362, 501, 505, 508, 509 n. 21, 509–512, 515 n. 33, 519, 520–521, 621 dialectes, 125 classique, 116 n. 2, 119, 121 n. 7, 124–125, 126, 128 n. 18, 130, 335 n. 20, 510 contemporain, 347, 353 créole, 621 dialect, 128 dialectal, 119, 121 n. 7, 122, 124 n. 13 égyptien, 335
index fasˢīhˢ , 120 histoire de, 118-119, 120 n. 6, 125 marocain, 698 moderne, 116 n. 2 moyen, 118–119, 128 n. 18 néo-, 118–119, 122, 124–125, 130 sédentarisé, 117 vulgaire, 124, 124 n. 13 Arabes, 115–117, 120, 128–129, 133 langue des, 117 populations, 114 populations, non-, 114–116, 133 arabes, néo-, 124 ʚarabī, 189 Arabia, 201, 563 Central, 563 Northern, 563 Arabian, 201 Ancient West, 652 Old South, 597, 599–603 Arabic, 9, 9 n. 7, 26, 35, 38, 61, 67–68, 70, 72, 75, 79, 87, 87 n. 24, 88, 90, 92–93, 95, 98, 101, 104, 106–109, 114, 119, 157, 165–166, 168–169 n. 26 171–172, 177, 181, 189–211, 211 n. 2, 212, 213 n. 7, 214, 216–218, 221, 222 n. 26, 223, 223 n. 28, 224, 224 n. 32, 225–230, 232, 232 n. 44, 233, 233 n. 45, 234–235, 235 n. 51, 236, 238–240, 247–248, 250, 252–253, 255, 260 n. 21, 266 n. 28, 272, 283, 292, 292 n. 2, 295–296, 296 n. 4, 297, 306, 309 d’Abbeche, 648 Adam’s-, 192 Algerian, 596 alphabet, 200–201, 219–220 Cairene, 73–75, 85, 94–95, 100–102, 104, 568, 586 n. 70 of Cairo, 696 Christian, 71, 89 classical, 13, 68, 72, 72 n. 2, 76–77, 95, 98, 100, 155, 189, 210, 216–219, 222–224, 227, 229–230, 237, 247, 368 n. 5, 369, 369 n. 10, 370, 370 n. 12, 377 n. 37, 381, 393, 395, 396, 399, 403, 404, 405, 405 n. 2, 410, 415, 418, 420, 421, 421 n. 15, 427, 431, 433, 435, 437–439, 449, 455–456, 458, 465–468, 470, 471–472, 475, 486, 486 nn. 16–17, 487 n. 18, 489, 490 n. 22, 491–492, 492 n. 25, 493, 493 n. 25, 527, 529, 529 n. 1, 530–531, 535, 537, 540–541, 544, 549 n. 9, 555 n. 31,
705 559, 565 n. 1, 567–568, 578, 595, 595 n. 3, 596, 596 nn. 5–6, 597–598, 598 n. 11, 599–604, 604 n. 17, 604–605, 607, 609–610, 614, 618, 619–621, 639, 640, 641, 640 n. 1, 643, 648, 649, 650, 651, 652, 675, 699 colloquial, 211–212, 214, 223–224, 226, 595–596, 596 n. 6, 597, 605, 621 Damascene, 224 n. 31 of Granada, 222 Northern Sudanese, 608 Northern Creole, 621, 639 Juba, 611, 698 Damascene, 238 corpus, 532 n. 5 dialect(s), 189, 578, 595, 677, 687, 690, 693 dialectology, 72 dialects, 104, 595 n. 3, 596–597, 604, 604 n. 17, 658 dictionary, 221 diglossia, 654, 656, 671 doxology, 107 early, 201 educated Cairene, 7 Egyptian, 675, 692–693, 698–699 grammar, 23, 25, 35, 42, 75, 200, 438 grammatical literature, 79 sources, 23 terminology, 213, 219 n. 19 terms, 210–212, 224 theory, 216, 219 tradition, 23, 227, 237 early, 23 Granadan, 212 graphemes, 540 history, 189 history of, 192 ,211 n. 2 Jewish, 296, 299 literary, 370 Maghribian, 291, 296–297 Magribian, 309 Moroccan, 292–293, 295–297, 308 Modern Standard, 248–249, 251, 253, 367–369, 372 n. 19, 373, 376, 376 nn. 31, 35, 377 n. 39, 379–380, 384, 387–388, 390–394, 398, 568–569, 586 n. 70, 598 urban colloquial, of Damascus, 211 vernacular, 210 imperfect, 70
706 Ismāʚīl’s, 197 Jewish, 101 Juba, 128, 128 n. 19, 607–612, 616, 618–621, 692–693, 698 Judaeo, 68, 71–72, 72 n. 2, 100, 100 n. 30 dialect of Tunis, 100 n. 30 Juna, 617 Jurhum, 200 Khartoum, 608 Koranic, 531 Kuwaiti, 563 language, 47, 89, 654–655, 661, 669–672 history, 639, 649, 651 Lebanese, 99 letters, 220 lexical items, 668 lexicography, 196 linguistic history, 652 linguistics, 28 literature, 544 literary document, 189 literary, 84 Maltese, 100 masˢdar, 484 media, 530–531, 532 n. 5, 536, 540, 543 medieval, 181–182 middle, 72, 72 n. 2, 118 modern, 541 modern Cairene, 72 modern literary, 95 n. 28 Moroccan Jewish, 81 n. 10 mother tongue, 662 native speakers, 9, 9 n. 7 North, 201 neo, 75–76, 95, 103, 118, 639 new, 649, 651 newspapers, 654 Nigerian, 639–641 Northern Sudanese, 609 old, 118–119, 639, 640 n. 1, 650, 651 orthography, 189 Ottoman, 619 poetry, 204 popular, 544 pre-diasporic, 640 n. 1, 641, 649 pre-modern, 79 pre-neo-, 77 Prophet Muhammad’s, 205 of prophetic language, 189 Quraishi, 200 religious pre-history of, 192
index scholars, 194 script, 200–201 sentences, 181 sources, 211 n. 2 South, 201 speaking countries, 656, 661 speech, 67 spoken, 652 standard, 621 Egyptian, 679 standardization of, 189 studies, 528, 565 n. 1 Sudan, 685 n. 14 Sudanese, 608 sudanic, 648 syntax, 88 Syrian, 86 terminology, 224, 227, 231, 233–234, 236, 236 n. 53, 237, 239–240 terms, 214, 216, 218, 226, 231, 233, 237 tradition, 211 n. 2, 216, 220, 227 Tunisian, 100–101, 104 Upper Egyptian, 697, 697 n. 31 Uzbekistan, 651 n. 13 vocabulary, 189, 661 Western Sudanese, 614 Western Sudanic, 611, 640 writing, 200 written, 528, 541 Yaʚrub’s-, 199, 201 arabicization, 235 arabicizing, 661 Arabie, 120 centrale, 120 n. 4 méridionale, 563, 698 arabique est-, 125 ouest-, 125 arabisants, 113, 118, 121, 123, 125 arabisation, 130 Arabisch, 697 Alt-, 118, 119 Mittel-, 118 Neu-, 118, 119 Arabists, 67, 527 Western, 104 al-ʚarabiyya, 53, 119–120, 121 n. 7 Arabized, 620 Arabness, 189 Arabs, 26, 33, 40, 86, 106–107, 191, 194, 197–199, 201, 203, 205, 207 North, 202, 217, 227, 230, 235–236, 240, 528, 534, 543, 620, 642 non-, 620
index arafa, 660 Araic Classical, 602 Aram, 70 Aramaic, 72, 189, 197, 201, 595, 597, 600, 605 Biblical, 597, 599–601 Jewish, 600–601 Old, 601 Arazi & Masalha, 110 Arberry, A.J., 87 arbre conceptuel, 358, 359 archaisms, 595 Archimède, 501 ard sūrā, 194 Arfaxšad b. Sām, 195 ārid, 169 al-Arīš dialect of, 570 n. 21 Aristotelian dialectic, 34 logic, 25, 41 Aristotle, 33, 41 arrangement morphological, 437 orthographical, 437 article(s), 209 n. 1, 210, 211 n. 2, 217 n. 15, 226, 571, 573–574, 576, 591 n. 88 al-, 573–574, 576 il-, 573–574, 576 definite, 214–215, 217, 306, 373, 411 indéfini, 509, 515 n. 33 indefinite, 305 separate [= not suffixed], 229 ašān, 76 Ashtor, Eli, 82, 82 nn. 13–14, 110 Asia, 232, 639 Asín, Palacios, 222 asl, 438, 448, 507, 507 n. 18 marfū, 169 asmā al-af āl, 178 ASP, 72 n. 2 aspect, 294, 370–372, 384 n. 55, 389, 395 perfect, 378, 378 n. 42, 520, 522 Assaf, Simha, 84, 110 Assemani, Joseph Simon, 220, 220 n. 22 assimilate, 574 assimilating, 574 assimilation, 127, 568, 579 nn. 43, 48, 581 n. 55, 586 n. 73, 604 of + h, 568 of initial h of suffixes, 568 Assise, Saint François d ’, 121 n. 8
707
Assyrian, 601 Astarābādī, 162 n. 19, 163 n. 20, 164, 164 nn. 22–23, 169 n. 26, 170 n. 28, 171–172, 175–177, 186 Ašūr, 681 aswad, 659, 664 Ataba, 538 ātār, 30 n. 3 athnach, 219 n. 19 ’atnach, 219 n. 19 Atif Efendi, 44 attention, 398 attribute, 71 attributive clauses, 68–69 relative clauses, 69 Audebert, Claude, 335, 363 audience, 249, 405, 424, 432–433 Auezova, Zifa, 437, 446, 453 augment(s), 440–444, 446, 448 internal, 444 augmentation, 441 Austronesian, 210 auxiliaries, 293, 302 379 finite, 293 Auzā, 199 avant événementiel, 325 Avi Shivtiel, L.J., 595 n. 1, 600–601 Avokaya L., 609 AwaJ, L., 403 n. 1, 434 awāil -collections, 198 -literature, 198 awāmil, 10–11, 140, 141 n. 32, 142, 160, 185, 232, 234 8operants, 10 Awlād Saīd, 566 n. 9 Awlād Silmiy, 567 n. 3 Aws Abū Ād, 195 awwaliyya, 507 n. 18 awzān, 314 al-Axfaš, 45, 46 n. 3, 47 n. 4, 62, 51 n. 8, 64, 154 n. 10, 157, 167–168, 175–176, 180–182 āya, 29, 46, 46 n. 1, 50–54, 56, 58, 60, 191 ayn, 540 ayna, 16, 20 Ayoub, G., 378 n. 41, 400 el-Ayoubi, 374 n. 25, 375 n. 29, 381 n. 51, 385 nn. 56, 59, 386, 386 nn. 60–61, 398 n. 91 ayy, 14 n. 10 Ayyoub, Georgine, 654, 655 n. 1, 664–665, 669, 671
708
index
al-A'amī, Muhammad Musta fā, 200, 200 n. 31, 201, 207 Azīz, Ašraf, 696–697 al-Azraqī, 195, 195 n. 12, 207 Baalbaki, Ramzi, 3, 6, 7 n. 5, 8 n. 6, 12–23, 230 n. 39, 235 n. 49, 242 Bāb Tūma, 222 n. 26 bäba, 658 *ā*ai, 658 Bābil, 196, 202 Babylon, 196, 203–204 Babylonian Old Egyptian, 692 n. 23 Tower, 191, 196 back consonant, 658 Backus, A., 294, 310 bada lladī, 79 badal, 169 n. 26, 182 badamā, 17, 19 Badārah, 566 n. 9 Badawi, El Said, 158 n. 13, 187, 313, 314 n. 3, 363, 371 n. 17, 374 n. 25, 379 n. 47, 381 n. 51, 385 n. 56, 386 n. 64, 387–388, 388 n. 67, 400, 542, 655–656, 661, 664–665, 671, 698 Badawi-Hinds, 532, 538 n. 23, 542 al-bādiya, 115 Badrān, 557 n. 35, 559 Bagdad, 113 Baghdad, 667, 669, 671 Bahariyya, 680, 684, 694 n. 25, 697 Bahīg Ismāīl, 699 Bahīga, 683 Bahloul, Maher, 368 n. 4, 371 n. 17, 400 Bahr al Ghazal, 610, 614 Bahri, A., 272, 287 Bailey, Clinton, 544, 549 n. 11, 563, 566 n. 4, 566 n. 7, 566, 570 n. 18, 577–578, 585 n. 68, 586 n. 75 Bailly, A., 276 n. 37, 287 Bakhtin, M.M., 408, 434 balāġa, 23 balbala, 194, 196 Bangala, 609 Banī Ati yya, 561–562 banī firōn, 545 n. 2 Banī H asan, 546 Banī Sad, 206 Banī Sad b. Bakr b. Hawāzin, 206 Baniy Wāsi, 567 n. 9 Banū H ām, 203 Banū Hāshim, 204–205 Banū Ismāīl, 195
Banū Qahtā n, 195 Banū Rala bint Yašjub b. Yarub b. Lūdan b. Jurhum b. Āmir b. Saba b. Yaq tān b. Ābir b. Šālix b. Arafxašad b. Sām b. Nūh, 199 Banū Yarub, 204 baqa, 660 al-Bāqillānī, 34, 38, 43 baqiya, 660 Baram, Amatzia, 197 n. 17 Barhebræus, 107 Bari, 609–611, 618–620, 635, 638 Barrāk Dāġish Abū Tāyih, 562 base bi-consonantal, 256 basilectal, 608, 611–612, 614, 615, 617, 620 Basra, 30 n. 3, 64, 114, 117, 133 Basran(s), 160 n. 15, 175–176 Basrien, 117 Bassiouney, R., 407, 434 Bath-party, 197 Baumgartner, Walter, 605 Baumstark, Anton, 105–107, 111 Bay, 610, 614, 617, 620, 626, 631 bayān, 38 al-Bayhaqī, 203 Bayram at-Tūnisī, 563, 685, 700 Bedja, 693 n. 23, 699 bedouin Arabic, 599 dialects, 565 n. 2, 567, 573, 575, 586 n. 70, 657–658 Sinai, 568, 571 speech, 658 tribe, 565–566 usage (qawl al-arab), 47 Bedouin(s), 25, 30, 46, 543 n. 1, 544–547, 548 n. 6, 550 n. 22, 552, 553 n. 27, 557 n. 35, 560 n. 40, 560–563, 565, 565 n. 2, 566–568, 571, 573, 575, 577–578, 586 n. 70, 586 n. 75, 657 badu, 545 contemporary poetic tradition, 544 Egyptian, 578 in Iraq, 546 Iraqi, 546 Jordanian, 562 law, 578 Nothern Arabia, 563 of Jordan, 546 poet, 545 n. 4, 560 poetry, 544–545, 560 n. 38, 563
index poets, 544–545, 560, 563 popular poetry, 544, 559 Rwala, 698 Sinai, 545 n. 2 society, 544, 563 tribal poetry, 561 Bédouins, 114–115 Beersheva, 543 n. 1 Behnstedt, Peter, 567–578, 652, 690, 696 n. 30, 697 Beja, 685 n. 14 Bekir, M., 43 Belot, J.B., 313, 314 n. 3, 363 Ben Cheneb, Mohammad, 113, 232 n. 43, 242 Benares, 209 beneficiary, 394–396 Bengal, 209 Bengali, 679 n. 7 Benjelloun, Fauzia, 674 Benveniste, Émile, 320, 335–337, 350, 356, 363 Berākā, 105–106, 108–109 Bergman, 375 n. 27, 387 n. 66, 400 Bergsträßer, G., 33 n. 4, 44 Bēri, 677, 678 n. 6, 697, 690 n. 20 Berrendonner, 506 n. 16 Beyrouth, 113 Beziehungsnomen, 69 Bhatia, K., 671, 673 Bible, 189, 196, 611, 623 Arab, 223 n. 28 Hebrew, 219 n. 19 Jewish, 189 Biblical, 106, 198 Aramaic, 597, 599–601 Hebrew, 595, 595 n. 4, 596, 599, 599 n. 13, 602–603 material, 192 Bickerton, Derek, 698 Bihār, 209 Biir, 618 bilabial stop, 595 n. 3 bilingual(s), 291, 293, 295, 301, 308, 408, 433 bilingualism, 291, 295, 297, 299, 301, 307, 309, 655 n. 2 homeland, 308 immigrant, 308 biqi, 660 Bīr anNasb, 566 n. 8 Bir Nasb, 565 n. 3 biradical verbs, 449 Blachère, Régis, 125, 131, 313, 363
709
Blair, Tony, 561 Blanc, Haim, 121 n. 10, 131, 567 n. 13, 570 n. 20, 570 n. 22, 573 n. 31, 574 n. 32, 575 n. 37, 578–579, 579 n. 49, 586 n. 71, 654, 656, 658–659, 664, 671 Blas Francisco de Salamanca, 210 n. 2 Blau, Joshua, 68, 68 n. 1, 69–72, 74, 77, 80, 89, 93–94, 99, 111, 119, 131, 654, 655, 671 bleaching process, 675, 687 blending, 256–259, 259 n. 20, 265, 272, 277 n. 38, 283, 285, 661 Bobzin, H., 109, 111, 671, 673 Bohas, George, 4, 23, 255, 255 nn. 2, 4–5, 256, 257 n. 14, 258, 259 n. 18, 260 n. 22, 262, 264 n. 27, 265, 269 n. 30, 272, 279 n. 40, 283, 285 nn. 48–49, 287–288, 371 n. 15, 400, 448, 453 Bonaventura da Molazzana, 211 n. 2 Boormans, Maurice, 313, 314 n. 3, 327 n. 18, 363 Booth, Marilyn, 544, 563 Borer, Hagit, 494, 498 Borg, Gert, 527 borrowing foreign lexemes, 662 terms, 661 Bosworth, C.E., 200 n. 28 Boucherit, Aziza, 653, 670, 671 Boumans, Louis, 291, 292 n. 1–2, 293, 309–310 Boussofara-Omar, Naima, 404, 404 n. 2, 407, 434, 654, 671 Brague, Rémi, 502 n. 2, 522 Braham, A., 315, 363 Braslavski, 83, 110 Bravmann, Josef, 28 n. 1, 68–70, 111 Bravmann, Meir, 44 Brazilian, 304–305 British, 544, 546, 560 Brockelmann, Carl, 86, 86 n. 23, 87 n. 23, 313, 313 n. 3, 327 n. 18, 363, 599 Broselow, Ellen, 671 Bubenik, Vit, 595 n. 1, 601–602 Buburuzan, Rodica, 28, 44 al-Buxārī, , 78, 90, 110, 199 bukara-Dialekte, 578 bukarra, 578, 580 n. 52, 583 n. 65 Būlāq, 161 bunya, 435 Burton, John, 65 Bush, George, 560
710
index
CA, 72 n. 2, 540, 659 Caballero, 210 n. 2, 224, 224 n. 31, 225–231, 233, 238, 240–241 Caballero, Lucas, 209 n. 1, 210 n. 2, 211 n. 2, 222, 224, 224 n. 31, 237 Cachia, P., 434, 403 n. 1 cadi, 117, 221 n. 26 Cadora, Frederic, 655, 667, 671 CAI, 659 n. 4 Caire, 113, 131 Cairene, 75, 80, 94–95, 98, 100, 568, 586 n. 70, 591 n. 87, 650 Arabic, 76, 78, 86, 568, 586 n. 70 modern, 72, 94 Cairo, 83, 101, 528, 598 n. 12, 684, 686, 687 n. 17 Arabic, 696 Genizah, 101 Old, 79, 80 n. 6 caliph ʚAlī, 31 calque, 655, 661, 668 Cameroon, 640 Camilleri, A., 296–297, 310 Canadian, 302 Cañes, Francisco, 210, 210 n. 2, 211, 212, 222, 224–227, 229–233, 238, 240–241 canonical, non-, 61 Cantarino, 374 n. 25, 381 n. 51, 386 cantillation marks, 219 n. 19 Cantineau, Jean, 283, 288, 314, 316, 316 n. 5, 335 n. 20, 363, 690, 697 capacité de parole, 502 caractère abstrait, 519 Carter, Michael G., 4, 4 n. 2, 6 n. 3, 23, 25, 30–31, 35 n. 8, 39 n. 9, 44, 65, 140 n. 30, 147, 155, 162 n. 19, 187, 209 n. 1, 228, 228 n. 35, 234, 240, 243, 313, 313 n. 3, 363, 503 n. 6, 522 case(s), 368 n. 4, 370, 372–373, 382–384 389, 394, 399 accusative, 248–251, 253, 280, 382–383, 476, 484, 484 n. 13, 493 definite, 375 indefinite 252 ending(s), 8, 9, 11, 18, 30 n. 2, 141, 216, 251, 253 feature, 373 genitive, 248–251, 253, 375, 383, 484, 494 marking, 374, 384
nominative, 383, 248–251, 253 role(s), 369 n. 7, 391, 393–394, 394 n. 83, 395, 395 n. 85 system, 217 Caspari, 363 Caspari-Uricoech, 313, 314 n. 3, 327 n. 18 Castilian alphabeth, 213 n. 7 letters, 220 Castilians, 227 Castro, 532 casuistique, 503, 503 n. 6 casus accusativus, 228 n. 35 cataphora, 154 n. 8 catégorie intermédiaire, 321 lexicales, 359 moyenne, 321 noun, 391, 399 particle, 399 sémantiques, 344, 359 syntactic, 370 verb, 391, 399 categories mixed, 475, 478, 484, 498 nominal, 477, 485 verbal, 477, 485 categorization verb, 399 Cauallero, Lucas, 224, 228 Caubet, D., 292 nn. 1–2, 310 causal clause, 88, 92, 108–109 non-coreferential, 92 subordinate, 89, 91 conjunction, 76, 91 connection, 76 function, 87 n. 24 non-, 87–88 relation, 87–88, 104, 109 structure, 87, 55 causative, 441 function, 68 xalla clauses, 694 n. 26 causativité, 313 causativity, 450 cause(s) consequence relation, 263, 267–268, 278, 284 de transformation, 317–318, 318 n. 7 Central Arabia, 563 Chad, 640–641, 648 Chadian, 605
index chaînes de raisons, 501 Chambers, Jack, 648, 652 changement d’état, 326–331, 333–335, 339–340 changes educational, 404 political, 404 social, 404 technological, 404 chercheur, 504 chesmantes, 230 China, 223 Chisarik, Erika, 697 Chomsky, 503 Chrétiens, 123 Christian Baghdadi speakers, 669 doxology, 106, 109 faith, 221, 221 n. 26 liturgy, 105–106 Maronites, 224 scholars, 34 speakers, 657 Christian(s), 79, 93, 106, 109, 195, 209 New, 212, 213 n. 7 Old, 212, 213 n. 7 circumstantial(s), 391, 393, 395, 399 local, 395 optional, 395 clan, 545, 565, 565 n. 3, 570 n. 20, 571, 586 n. 71, 589 classement, 503–504 grammatical, 504 classer, 503–504 classes nominales, 503 n. 5 classical, 213, 428, 640 n. 1 Arabic, 549 nn. 9, 13, 555 n. 31, 567–568, 595–596, 596 nn. 5–6, 597–604, 639–641 elements, 224 n. 31 language, 98, 639 non-, 79 registers, 223 post-, 70 clause, 69, 100, 152, 164, 177 n. 35, 180 complement, 369, 376, 376 nn. 30, 33, 377–379, 379 n. 45, 380, 386, 388–389, 391 Clauson, Gerard, 443 nn. 7–9, 453 cleft sentence, 76, 687 n. 17, 695 clusters prepositional, 386
711
coda, 487 position, 488 n. 19, 489 code mixing, 618, 659, 665, 655 n. 2, 670 mixture, 653 switching, 291 n. 1, 295, 297 n. 7, 298 n. 8, 300–301, 307, 406–408, 417, 433, 665, 655 n. 2, 670, 672 codes linguistic, 403, 410 Codoñer, Carmen, 243 Coelho, Paulo, 535 cognate(s), 597, 597, 602, 653, 655–656, 659 n. 4, 660, 666, 667 lexemes, 653 cognitum, 235 n. 51 Cohen, David, 296, 310, 314, 321, 335 n. 20, 344 n. 26, 363, 370 n. 14, 400, 523, 697, 697 n. 31 Colin, Georges S., 690, 698 collectivity, 397 collocation, 391, 393 embedded, 309 foreign, 309 language colloquial Arabic, 595–596, 596 n. 6, 597, 604, 621, 653–655, 655 n. 2, 656–670 Chadian, 605 dialect(s), 656–658, 667 dictionairies, 658 lexemes, 655, 668 lexical items, 656 pairs, 656 Proto-, 597 speakers, 659, 664, 665 Sudanese, 605 text, 659 vocabulary, 656 words, 666 colloquial, 211, 213–214, 222, 224 n. 31, 403, 403 n. 1, 422, 529, 531, 533, 536 n. 13, 538, 540 elements, 224 n. 31 Egyptian, 529, 540 features, 614 modern, 529 speech, 227 urban speech, 224 n. 31 written, 540 colloquialisms, 224 n. 31 Colossoi of Memnon, 678 n. 6
712
index
combinatoire binaire, 521–522 comitative, 393–395 commands, 397 comment, 368 n. 4, 376–377, 393, 397 n. 89 Q+ alladī + topic, 96 Qcompound, 5, 14, 15 nn. 11–12, 17–20, 22 Qconditional, 17, 20–21 Q-topic, 76 QQstructure, 96 Qxabar, 216 communication, 520, 522 quotidienne, 122 savante, 122 community Dutch-Moroccan, 293 Companion(s) of, 193, 206 the City (ash āb al-qarya), 195 the Prophet, 206 competence language, 294, 308–309 complement, 376 nn. 30, 32, 378, 379, 381, 381 n. 50, 382, 386–389 function, 385, 388 phrase interjectional, 387 prepositional, 375, 385, 390–391, 396 structure, 391 complementizer(s), 406–407, 419, 676, 692–693 compléments, 518 collocational, 309 completive(s), 380, 391, 393, 395, 399 composites binary, 287 ternary, 287 compound(s), 456 Dutch, 456 verbal, 293 words, 456 Comrie, Bernard, 324 nn. 13–14, 326 n. 17, 363 concept religious, 471 technical, 470 concord, 212, 368, 368 n. 4, 374, 376 n. 31, 377, 383–384, 389, 397 concrete, 370, 383, 396–397 conditional clause, 177 conditionnements phonétiques, 350
confirmation, 398 conjugaison, 316 n. 5, 317, 343, 357, 505, 517 arabe, 332 conjugated, 644 conjugation, 486, 640 verbal, 436 of verbs, 613 conjunction(s), 67–69, 71–73, 75, 77–79, 86, 87 n. 24, 88–89, 95–104, 107, 109, 213, 229, 374–375, 388, 533, 541 causal, 88, 103, 108–109 of comparison, 77 coordinating, 388–389 final, 80 n. 6 h ukm arabī, 190 lisān arabī, 190 subordinating, 388–389 conjunctional, 67–69 alladī, 69 function, 71 connaissance, 501 conocimiento, 212, 212 n. 7, 214, 217, 217 n. 14 conquête islamique, 114, 116, 120, 128 consonant(s), 236 n. 53, 247, 258, 286, 368, 368 n. 6, 436–437, 441–444, 448–451, 567–568, 571, 611 augmented, 436, 441, 445 basic, 436, 444–445, 449 diffusion, 256 doubled, 443 emphatic, 614 final, 437, 451 geminate, 437, 451 initial, 437, 451, 572 medial, 437, 451 middle, 446 non-basic, 444, 450 non-regular, 437 pharyngeal, 614 root, 371 sound, 437, 451 uvular, 256 n. 10 velar, 256 n. 10 vocalized, 447 voiceless, 579 n. 48, 592 n. 91 weak, 437 consonantal, 276 bi-, 596, 598, 598 n. 10 mono-, 596, 596 n. 6, 598 phonemes, 567 roots, 644 tri-, 598
index consonantalism bi-, 598 mono-, 598 tri-, 598 consonante, 215 n. 11 consonne(s), 319, 506–508, 508 n. 21, 509, 509 n. 22, 510–511, 511 n. 26, 512–514, 515 n. 31 d’arrière, 318 double, 509 n. 21 glottales, 319 implosives, 512 longue, 508 n. 21 proto-, 510 n. 24, 511 n. 25, 515 n. 31 vocalique, 515 n. 31 constant phonetic, 271 phono-semantic, 272 semantic, 271 constituency immediate, 369 constituent(s), 367–368, 376, 383–384, 390 phrasal, 398–399 order higher, 291 lower, 291, 292 n. 1 constitution de la langue générale, 502 construcción de concordancia, 212 de régimen, 212 construct state, 574 construction(s) auxiliary, 293 impersonelle, 343 periphrastic, 293, 295, 296 n. 4, 297, 297 n. 6, 299–304, 304 n. 11, 305–309 possessive, 493 contextual, 5, 13 elements, 5 continuant(s), 256, 256 n. 8, 257, 260–261, 266–270, 275–276, 278, 280–282, 285–286 non-, 256 n. 8 continuity, 247 Contossopoulos, N.G., 298, 310 contour principle obligatory, 259 n. 19 contractual language, 25 contrainte(s) formelles, 361 morphologiques, 361
713
phonétique, 510 sémantiques, 361 contrôle, 321, 343, 348–349, 351 n. 32 imparfait, 321 convention structurée, 521 conventionalization, 294 conversational implicature, 36 coordination, 388, 517–518, 520 asyndetic, 388 n. 67 coordinator(s), 388 adversative, 388 coordonnants, 519 Coran, 125–127, 130 du Caire, 127 langue du, 120, 125 du Maghreb, 127 coranique, 125, 128 n. 18 coreferential, 24, 26–27, 33, 43 non-, 109, 159, 165, 180 subject, 92 coreferentiality, 92 Cornips, L., 297 n. 6, 310 coronal, 255–257, 259–261, 265–266, 266 n. 28, 267, 270, 272, 275, 279 n. 39, 280 n. 41, 281–282, 284–286 correspondence input, 480, 482–484, 493, 495–496, 498 linear, 479–480, 483–484, 493–496, 498 quantitative, 479 n. 4 Corriente, Frederico, 213, 215, 215 n. 11, 217 nn. 14, 15, 243 countable, 396 couplets, 548 n. 5 Cowan, William, 210, 213 n. 7, 214, 215, 215 n. 11, 217–218, 218, n. 17, 243, 365 Cowley, 320 n. 9 crement initial, 262, 262 n. 25 inset, 262 n. 26, 265 crementation initial, 264 creole, 692, 698 Arabic, 639 Juba-, 611 languages, 692 créole(s), 128–129, 607, 608, 620–621 études, 128 créolisation, 129 créolistes, 129 creolistic, 608
714
index
creolization, 607, 621, 652, 699 crosslinguistically, 698 Crystal, David, 27, 44 culture Arab, 424 Islamic, 468 curvature, 257, 264, 270, 279–280 Cuvalay, Martine, 378 n. 41, 400 Cuvalay-Haak, Martine, 400 Czapkiewicz, Andrzej, 192 n. 2, 207 D ahab, 569 n. 16 Dahbi, 674 colloquial Arabic, 659, 662 discourse, 665 dāim, 56 Dakhla-Oasis, 690 dālika, 15 n. 11 Damas, 113 Damascene, 650 Franciscan tradition, 211 Damascus, 210, 211 n. 2, 221, 221 n. 26, 222, 239, 532 damir, 210, 217–218, 239 damm, 227 damma, 14, 218, 218 n. 16, 230, 239 damma, 224, 231 dammatān, 218 Dankoff, R. and K., 437, 453 Dannenfeldt, 210 n. 2, 219 Dante, Alighieri, 121 n. 8 darf, 216 Darfouf, 255 n. 5, 287 ad-Dārimī, 89, 110 Darwin, Charles, 274, 274 n. 35 Dat, 255 n. 4, 257 n. 14, 272, 288 Datī na, 690, 697 n. 31 datiuo, 214, 227 dative, 214 dativus, 221 Dawāsir, 563 Day of Judgment, 190 Dbūr, 566 n. 9 de Jong, Rudolf, 565, 567 nn. 10, 12–13, 569 n. 17, 570 nn. 21, 23, 572 nn. 25, 27–28, 573 nn. 30–31, 574 n. 32, 575 nn. 34, 37, 577 n. 40, 578, 583 n. 63, 586 n. 70, 591 n. 88, 652, 675 n. * de Sousa, 211 n. 2 déclaration, 517 n. 44, 518–520, 520 n. 47 du lien, 517 declarative sentence, 169 declension, 373, 436 declensional, 227–228
endings, 227 non-, 227 decreolization, 608 décrochage, 361 deductive application, 25 défaut, 345–346 defective, 252–253 deficiency (illa), 53 définir, 503–504, 506 definite, 250–251, 253, 172, 373 marifa, 47 article, 17 n. 13, 611–613 definiteness, 175, 368 n. 4, 370, 382, 384, 389 définition(s), 455–456 504, 504 nn. 8–9, 505, 505 n. 12, 506 n. 16 deixis, 27 Dell, F., 256 n. 7, 288 demonstratives, 373, 406–407, 419 denativization, 308 Deng, 612, 622, 624–625 dénombrements; entiers, 501 denominatives, 373 dental, 262 dependencies, 368–369, 376, 381–382 Derenbourg, Hartwig, 43, 143 n. 43, 187 derivation, 370, 372, 374, 395, 486 feature, 372–373 déroulement du temps, 505, 512 Descartes, René, 501, 503, 522 Desclés, Jean-Pierre, 313 n. 1, 321, 324, 324 n. 14, 325, 325 n. 15, 326, 326 n. 17, 330, 332–333, 336 n. 21, 341, 347, 362–363 description(s), 456–458, 465–467, 469–472 paraphrased, 455–456 formal, 367–369, 369 n. 10, 370, 372 nn. 18–19, 374, 376 n. 35, 377 nn. 36–37, 39, 387, 391 linguistic, 367, 376, 383, 385 phonemic, 368 translations, 467, 469 descriptive analysis, 48 compounds, 696 déterminants, 513, 516 determination, 373, 374 Dévényi, Kinga, 23, 46 n. 1, 44, 45, 56 n. 12, 65 dhamma, 233 Diab, 257 n. 11, 288 diachronic, 67, 74, 656
index dialect(s), 10, 97–101, 216, 223, 403, 403 n. 1, 404, 404, n. 2, 405–408, 410, 427, 543, 545, 567, 573, 570 n. 20, 571, 573, 577–578, 586 n. 71, 591 nn. 88–89, 595, 595 n. 3, 596–597, 604, 640 n. 1, 641 n. 4, 650, 650 n. 12, 642, 653, 657, 665, 669–674, 687 of the Agāylah, 567 of the Ahaywāt, 567 Arabic, 640–641, 677, 690 of the Arabs, 543 of al-Arīš, 570, 570 n. 21 bedouin Sinai, 571, 575, 578, 586 n. 70 Bēri, 690 n. 20 Cairene, 540 contemporary, 640 of Damascus, 222 dependent, 658 differences, 657 n. 3 Eastern Arabian, 555 n. 30 Egyptian Arabic, 675, 697 n. 31, 699 English, 596 n. 6 features, 658 of the Jarājrah, 567 of the H amādah, 565 H amādiy, 567 H ijāzī, 16 Jewish, of Tripolis in Libya, 100, 104 of the Lēgāt, 565 ‘Lēgiy, 567 local, 403 modern, 70, 75, 94, 100, 102, 527, 639 of the Mzēnah, 567, 567 n. 12, 568 Mzēniy, 575 of Negev, 570 n. 22, 565, 567, 574 n. 32, 575, 575 n. 37, 8 Neo-Aramaic, 595 n. 3 North African, 659 rural, 676 of the Samānah, 572 n. 25, 574 n. 32, 567 of Sinai, 568, 573, 574 n. 32, 575, 575 n. 34 bedouin, 568 of southern Sinai, 567, 568, 568 n. 14, 572 n. 25, 573, 573 n. 29, 575 n. 35 speakers, 657 Tamīmī, 16 of the Tarābīn, 567, 569 n. 17, 575 of the Tayāhah, 567 of Tunis, 100, 104 Yemeni, 640 n. 1 dialectal, 80, 81 n. 10, 403 n. 1, 405, 405, n. 3, 414, 422, 608
715
inventory, 667 Marocain, 698 dialecte(s), 120, 563 ancien, 126 arabe, 100, 128 n. 19, 129 moderne, 126 de l’arabie méridionale, 698 dialectic(s), 22 Aristotelian, 34 dialectical, 34, 42 dialectique, 114 dialectologie historique, 129 dialectologists, 211 dialectology, 72, 605 diaspora communities, 302, 306 diathèse, 316 n. 5, 335, 336 externe, 336–337, 352, 353 n. 33, 354–360, 362 objective, 513, 519 subjective, 513, 519 diatopic, 74 Díaz, Lourido, 210 n. 2, 211 n. 2, 243 dichotomy, 639 Dichy, Joseph, 313, 315, 317, 318 n. 7, 319, 323, 327, 341 n. 24, 343 n. 25, 344, 344 n. 26, 347, 353 n. 33, 362–363, 394 n. 81, 396–397, 400 dictionaries, 455–459, 462, 465–473 Arabic, 455 Arabic-Dutch, 455, 472 Arabic-English, 578, 605 bilingual, 455–456, 471 classical and MSA, 532 n. 7 Dutch-Arabic, 472, 455 Egyptian Arabic, 604, 698 English-Arabic, 457 etymological, 443, 443 n. 7, 446, 449, 455–456, 472 French-Arabic, 457 German-Arabic, 457 Hamito-Semitic, 605 Hebrew, 605 lexicographical, 437 Modern Arabic, 605 monolingual, 455 Moroccan Arabic, 605 multilingual, 455 dictionnaire(s), 315, 317, 326 n. 16, 340, 347 d’Arabe Dialectal Marocain, 698 informatisé de l’arabe, 315 didactic, 220 Diem, Werner, 81–82, 110, 130–131, 654, 664, 665 n. 8, 666, 671
716
index
Dietrich, Albert, 93, 110 diflā (oleander), 21 diglossia, 189, 403–404, 415, 421, 527, 653, 654, 655 n. 2, 656, 664, 671–672 diglossic, 212 differences, 653 makeup of Arabic, 670 situation, 403, 528 diglossie, 121 diglossique, 125, 129 DIINAR, 391, 391 n. 72 diminutive(s), 373, 444, 450 dimuqrātˢiyye, 657 ad-Dīnawarī, 202 aJ-Xindān, 563 Dinka, 610, 612–613, 616, 622, 624 Nilotic, 610 diphthong(s), 406–407, 419, 491 n. 23, 568–569, 576, 650 n. 12, 657 diptote, 124, 127 dīrah, 544, 566 nn. 7–8 direct speech, 534, 537, 539, 676, 678–679, 683 disambiguation, 367 n. 2, 369, 390, 398 discourse, 368, 656, 672 functions, 300, 403, 417 marker(s), 619, 680–681, 683, 685, 687, 691 political, 405, n. 3 record, 681, 681 n. 9 manipulation, 681 n. 9 routine, 680–682 strategies, 410 structure, 27 dispensable part, 136–138, 142, 146 dispersion, 350, 356–357 semantique, 313, 315, 321, 356 dissent, 397 Ditters, Everhard, 367, 368 n. 4, 369 nn. 8, 10, 374 n. 26, 376, 376 nn. 31, 35, 379 n. 43, 382 nn. 52–53, 385 n. 58, 386 n. 62, 400–401 divinity, 404 diviser, 501 Dīwān al-Adab, 436–438, 445, 446 n. 11, 447 Dīwān al-HudalByBn, 110 Dīwān Luġāt at-Turk, 437, 441–447, 449, 450–452 dīwāns, 545 do-construction(s), 301, 307 Dombay, Franciscus de, 223, 241 Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, 124 n. 13, 221, 223 domma rafo, 225
Doniach, 473 dorsal, 256 n. 10, 257, 264–266, 270, 279, 279 n. 39, 280 non-, 256, 275 Doss, MadBha, 529 doubt, 398 Doxologie, 106–107 doxology, 106–109 Driver, G.R., 597 n. 8 dropping (ilqā), 53 Drost, 218 n. 18 Druze speakers, 657 \ū l-Qarnayn, 190 dual, 82 n. 15, 91, 153, 227, 383, 397 n. 86 durée, 324–325, 327–328, 338, 341, 351–352 Dutch, 293, 295–297, 297 n. 6, 299 n. 9, 309, 455–458, 465–482, 565 n. 2 non-standard, 297 standard, 297 dzhamma, 226 Edman, Johan, 222 n. 27 Educated Spoken Arabic, 665 education, 404 Egyptian, 403, n. 1, 405–406, 407, n. 5, 407–423, 425, 429, 433 higher, 404 public, 404 Egypt, 81, 83, 83 n. 18 197, 224 n. 31, 528–530, 536, 544, 545 n. 2, 563, 566 n. 6, 578, 655–656, 662, 666, 671–673; 686, 690 Upper, 690 n. 20 l’Egypte, 130 Egyptian(s), 105, 190, 537, 544, 545 n. 4, 578, 590 n. 84, 598 n. 12, 600–604, 675, 679, 687 Ambassador, 529 Arabic, 675, 679, 692–693, 698–699 Arabic dialects, 675 Babylonian Old, 692 n. 23 history, 528 egyptianisation, 539 Eid, Mushira, 402–403, 403 n. 1, 405, n. 3, 407, 410, 434, 498, 671 Eisele, John, 371 n. 17, 384 n. 55, 401 El Aissati, 309–310 El Assal, 403, n. 1 El Escorial, 210 n. 2, 211 n. 2 elatives, 373 élément(s), 504–505 embedded, 292
index Elgibali, Alaa, 402, 671 El-Hassan, 665 elision, 23, 572 Elzeiny, Nagwa, 375 n. 28, 401 emphatic(s), 284, 569, 642 n. 6, 653, 656–658, 571 consonants, 658 lateralized, 283 sounds, 651 n. 13 enantiosemy, 272, 272 n. 33, 286 Encarnación, Juan de la, 210 n. 2, 211 n. 2 ending(s) feminine, 492, 250 inflectional, 216–218, 225, 231–233, 239 English, 92–94, 291, 296–299, 299 n. 9, 300–304, 304 n. 11, 305–309, 391, 395, 399, 456, 465, 483 n. 10, 493, 548 n. 5, 569, 578, 583 n. 63, 595, 596 n. 6, 605 Old, 596 n. 6, 609–611, 618, 626, 661–662, 668, 673, 681, 681 n. 9, 682, 686, 692–693 ensemble, 503–506 entertainment, 403, 425, 432 enthusiasm, 397 entité(s), 503, 505, 508, 512 n. 27, 520 abstraites, 512 n. 27 communes, 516 multidimensionnelles, 512 universelle(s), 516, 516 n. 41 entity(ies) animate, 396–397 non-, 396 human, 396–397 non-, 396–397 perceptible, 396 pseudo-animated, 397 entry(ies), 435–437, 449, 456, 465–466 derived non-, 375 noun-, 375 double, 446 Dutch, 455 lexical, 369, 381, 383, 395 verbal, 369 n. 7, 377, 379–380, 391, 395, 397 n. 86, 391–392, 394–396, 399 epenthetic, 489 époque préislamique, 120 Equatoria, 609, 611, 621 Ermers, Robert, 435, 437, 441, 449, 453
717
Erpenius, Thomas, 211, 231–234, 236, 236 n. 52, 238, 240–241 Escavy, R., 243 espace, 512, 512 n. 27, 517 n. 41 l’espagnol, 115 Ess, Josef, van, 192 n. 3, 194 n. 6 état(s), 317, 321, 323–324, 324 n. 13, 325–326, 326 n. 17, 327–333, 337, 339–340, 342, 347–359 accompli, 334 présent, 332, 325 n. 15, 341 résultatifs, 330–331, 347 non-caractéristiques, 329 Ethio-Semitic, 697 n. 31 etymological, 13, 14, 17, 20–21, 91 etymology, 5, 8, 13, 17 n. 13, 20–22, 203, 262, 436, 440, 444, 696 n. 30 etymon(s), 256–258, 258 n. 15, 259–262, 262 n. 26, 264–268, 270–275, 277, 277 n. 38, 278–281, 283–285, 287 homonymic, 261 l’Euphrate, 128 Euphrates, 196 Europe, 209–210, 219–220, 121 n. 8, 223, 232 Northern, 231, 240 European(s), 221 n. 26, 608 language, 213 scholars, 222 événement(s), 321, 324, 324 n. 13, 325–326, 326 n. 17, 327, 330–334, 339–340, 342–343, 347, 349, 351–352, 359, 505 event, 476 nominal, 475 Évora, 219 n. 20 Evripidou, D., 300, 303, 310 Evstatiev, Simeon, 44 exceptive, 19, 21 sentences, 171 excitative (tah /:/), 16 exclamation(s), 375, 387, 397–398 exegesis, 49 n. 5 Quranic, 438 exegetes (ash $b at-t;wīl), 54, 193 exegetical methods, 63 tradition, 63 grammatical, 64 works, 45 Exodus, 105 expérience(s), 505, 508, 511–510, 520 non-physical, 396 experiencer, 394, 396 n. 85
718
index
explicit, 368 n. 4, 378–380, 389, 392 n. 77, 397 n. 86, 394 expression(s), 455–456, 466, 469 adverbial, 484 frozen, 375, 375 n. 27, 387 extending meanings, 661 extensions, 518 verbal, 379, 380 extra-textual linguistic source, 46, 61 al-Ezbekiyah, 538 fa- after ammā, 60 fā, 7 n. 5, 21, 38 faala, 313, 314 n. 3, 314, 316–323, 337, 350–351, 353–358, 360–361, 435, 440 factitif, 115 factitivité, 313 fāil, 151–152, 154, 154 nn. 7, 9, 155–158, 158 n. 13, 161, 164, 167, 175–184, 323, 329 faila, 314, 314 n. 3, 314, 316–318, 320–323, 327, 327 n. 18, 337–338, 344–347, 349–350, 351 n. 32, 356, 358, 360–361 falā pattern, 659 falsafa, 114 familles morphologiques, 315, 324–325 n. 15 far structure, 151 al-Fārābī, 42–43, 120, 131, 436–438, 445, 447, 453, 504 n. 8, 513 n. 29, 522 Farāj, Muhammad, 247, 249, 253–254 Farazdaq, 7, 8 n. 6 al-Fārisī, 11, 143 n. 43, 144 nn. 49–50, 147, 164 n. 23, 165, 165 nn. 24–25, 166–168, 171, 177, 180, 185–186 al-Farrā’, 45–46, 46 n. 3, 47–48, 49 n. 6, 50, 50 n. 7, 51–56, 56 n. 12, 57, 57 n. 13, 58–62, 62 n. 15, 63–64, 64 n. 17, 125, 129, 175 n. 33 fasād, 114, 129, 194, 207 al-luġa, 118, 124, 128 fasāh a, 120 Fasold, Ralph, 655 n. 2, 670–671 Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader, 386 n. 63, 401, 475, 475 n. 1, 484–485, 498 fatah ahu, 659 fataho, 659 fath , 227 fath a, 14–15, 218, 218 n. 16, 224–225, 226, 230–231, 239 fath atān, 218 Fathi RaJwān, 699 Fathiyya l-Assāl, 699
Fātihah, 105 fatina, 668 faula, 313–314, 314 n. 3, 316–317, 320, 322, 327–329, 337–338, 338 n. 23, 340–341, 343–344, 350, 353, 353 n. 34, 357–358, 360–361, 435–436 al-Fayrūz Ābādī, 353, 353 n. 35 feature(s), 368–370, 370 n. 12, 371, 371 nn. 15–17, 372 n. 18, 373, 376, 381, 383, 389–390, 392 n. 75, 394, 396–398 clusters, 369, 383, 389 ideal, 386 inherent, 367 n. 1 inherited, 367 n. 1 linguistic universal, 368 manner, 386 morphological, 371, 373 names, 367 n. 1, 370, 372, 372 n. 18, 373 nn. 20, 23, 385, 391 noun, 396 place, 386 prepositional, 396 semantic, 368, 368 n. 5, 369, 369 n. 7, 383, 386, 390, 397–399 semantico-syntactic, 369 n. 9 time, 386 values, 367 n. 1, 369 n. 9, 370, 370 n. 11, 371–372, 372 n. 18, 373 nn. 20, 23, 383, 385–386, 390, 391, 392 n. 77, 393, 398 local, 390 semantic, 399 variables, 373, 389, 397–398 featuring, 367, 367 n. 3, 380, 393 morphological, 368 nominal, 369 phoneme, 371 n. 15 semantic, 368 syntactic, 368 verbal, 369 Feghali, Michel, 99, 111 feminine ending, 231 marker, 182 Ferguson, Charles A., 121 n. 9, 131, 404, 654, 656, 664, 667, 671 Fernandez, Mauro, 654, 672 Ferrando, Ignacio, 126, 131 Fez, 232 figement lexical, 362 fil, 151, 154, 154 n. 9, 156–157, 163 n. 21 +fāil, 177
index Filip IV of Spain, 223 n. 28 filiyya, 149, 177, 158 n. 13, 165 n. 24 fillers, 377–379, 382, 385–389 Fillmore, Charles, 369, 401 finite forms, 488 verb, 163 fiqh, 31 Firanescu, Daniela, 387 n. 65, 401 firaq islāmiyya dālla, 530 Fischer and Jastrow, 656, 664 Fischer, A. & A.K. Irvine, 208 Fischer, Wolfdietrich, 672, 698–699 fiten, 668 Fleisch, Henri, 314, 316, 316 n. 5, 320 n. 9, 321, 321 n. 10, 328–329, 335, 335 n. 20, 344 n. 26, 364, 371 n. 15, 373 n. 22, 378 n. 40, 401, 513 n. 29, 522 Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht, 118–119, 121, 121 n. 7, 131, 132 flexion casuelle, 125–126 désinentielle, 117–118, 120–123, 130 triptote, 130 language, 662, 670 lexemes, 655–656, 661 loanwords, 661–662, 668 terminology, 661 words, 662 form, 380 pausal, 248 prejunctural, 250–252 prepausal, 250–252 formal, 403–405, 423 literally Arabic, 658 formalism, 369 n. 10, 370, 396 formality, 405, 410 format, 369 formation external, 373 internal, 373 forme(s), 315 n. 4, 332, 357–358, 360–362 augmentées, 314 construites, 316 dérivée(s), 313, 313 n. 3, 314 verbale, 332, 362 forms bound, 374, 384 finite, 369, 488 free, 374, 384 hispanicised, 229-230 non-finite, 488 paradigmal, 449
719
fraccion, 225 français, 331, 339, 343–355, 355 n. 36, 511 n. 25 Franciscain, 123 Franciscan(s), 210, 211 n. 2, 212, 221, 221 n. 26, 222, 231–232, 232 n. 44, 237, 239–240 authors, 211 Spanish, 211 College, 222 tradition, 222 Frank, Armin Paul, 243 Frayha, Anīs, 666 n. 9, 672 French, 119, 292, 292 n. 2, 295–296, 297 n. 7, 298, 299 n. 9, 300, 302, 308, 456, 465, 661 fronted, 169 n. 26 fricative(s), 260, 282, 407, 597, 657 final glottal, 639 interdental, 407, 407 n. 5, 409–410, 413, 418–420 voiced, 419 voiceless, 268, 419 Fritz Paul, & Horst Turk, 243 Fück, Johann, 119, 124 n. 13, 128, 132, 210 n. 2, 219–220, 233, 243, 654, 672 Fuentes, Pedro, 223 n. 30 function, 380 word(s), 675, 676 n. 4, 689, 690 Funktionsschwäche, 75, 94, 96 Funktionsschwächung, 69, 86 fush $, 403–404, 404, n. 2, 405, 405, nn. 2–3, 406–407, 407 n. 5, 408–410, 410, n. 8, 411–416, 416, n. 12, 417–423, 427–433, 529 al-Fust ^t , 79–84, 101, 130 Gabriel, John, 615, 618–620, 626, 635 gahawa(h) complex, 641 n. 5 syndrome, 572, 588 n. 81 Galloway, George, 561 gap(s) lexical, 455–456, 458, 465–472 Garawiyya, 609–612, 614, 619–620, 622 Gardner-Chloros, P., 303, 310 Ġazāla, 690 Gedichte, 563 Geez, 597, 599–603 Geiger, Ludwig, 231 n. 41, 243 el-Gemei, Dalal M., 391 n. 71, 401 geminates, 611 gemination, 489 n. 21, 490, 491
720
index
Gen(esis), 191, 194, 196, 198, 202 gender, 154 n. 6, 249–250, 367, 368 n. 4, 370–374, 378, 380, 382–383, 389, 395, 615 affixes, 611 genealogical traditions, 192 genealogists, 203, 205 génitif, 130 genitiuo, 214, 227 genitive, 7, 10, 13, 106, 135 n. 2, 144, 214, 216, 227–228, 230, 230 n. 39 genitivus, 221 Genizah, 79–80 genre, 513 Georgakopoulu, Alexandra, 677 n. 5, 679 n. 8, 698 German, 81 n. 8, 92–94, 98, 104, 456, 465, 679 n. 7, 698 German-Arabic, 458, 462, 466–468 gerund(s), 299, 301, 305, 476, 476 n. 2, 477–479, 482, 492 English, 475–476, 482, 493 nominal, 477 Gesenius, 320 n. 9 Geva-Kleinberger, Aharon, 658, 672 Ghassān Surūr aš-Šbaylāt (ʙAbū Surūr), 546–548, 551–556, 559 Ghawānmah, M., 548, 563 Ghazeli, et Hassour, 315 ghost words, 472 Giargianius, 235 ġidir, 660 Giesbers, H., 297 n. 6, 310 Gil, Moshe, 80, 80 nn. 4, 6, 81, 81 n. 8, 82, 84, 110 Gilliot, Claude & Larcher, Pierre, 195 n. 11, 208 glide(s), 368, 437, 441, 446–450 inserted, 444 glissement(s) de sens, 338, 342 sémantique(s), 321, 326, 334–335, 338–341, 354–358, 360–362 global, 405, 410, 417, 433 glottal, 657 catch, 571 stop, 595 n. 3, 596, 596–597, 597 n. 8, 598, 598 n. 12, 639–640 nn. 1–2 final, 642 goal, 380, 394–395 God, 26, 35–37, 39–42, 189, 190–191, 193–194, 196–200, 202–204, 207 Godefroy-Demombynes, Maurice, 313, 314 n. 3, 363
Goitein, Dov, 80, 80 nn. 4, 6, 81–82, 110–111 Golato, Andrea, 684, 698 Goldenberg, Gideon, 76–79, 111, 153–154, 163 n. 21, 173 n. 31, 174, 187, 595 n. 1, 596 n. 6, 597 n. 8, 598 n. 12, 600 Goldziher, Ignaz, 119, 132, 208 Golius, Jacob, 211, 238 Gonzáles Palencia, A., 43 González, Bernardino, 210 n. 2, 211 n. 2, 221–222, 226 Gonzalez, Francisco, 212, 231, 238 Goral, Mira, 655 n. 2, 673 Gottheil & Worrell, 81–84, 111 Goutsos, Dionysis, 300–301, 310, 698 grammaticalized, 78 grammaire(s), 113–114, 118, 121, 123 n. 12, 502 n. 4, 507 arabe(s), 116–117, 126, 130, 314, 348 n. 30 arabisantes, 313, 319, 327 comparé, 118 générale, 517 n. 44 l’histoire de la, 114 grammairien, 113, 118, 122, 126 arabes, 124–125, 129, 505–506 non-arabes, 506 grammar(s), 3, 4 n. 1, 23, 25–26, 28, 31, 33, 37, 42–43, 45, 62, 77, 79, 171, 209, 209 n. 1, 210, 211 n. 2, 212, 213, 215, 217 n. 15, 218 n. 18, 219, 219 n. 19, 220, 223, 224, 226–227, 232, 234–236, 239–240, 370, 527–528, 617 of de Alcalá, 219, 219 n. 19, 226, 232 Arabic, 248, 252–253, 435–437, 439, 442, 448–449 Classical, 223, 249 Granadan, 212 of Caballero, 209 n. 1, 210, 210 n. 2, 221, 222, 224 n. 31, 238 of Cañes, 211, 221, 222 case, 369, 381, 393, 399 Castilian, of Antonio de Nebrija, 215 dependency, 369 n. 8 early, 25, 49 n. 5 formal, 367, 388 of Greek classical, 223 modern, 223 n. 30 generative, 4 of Hebrew, 209 Indian, 209 of Japanese, 210 Latin, 216, 239
index of Martelottus, 238 medieval, 213 missionary, 213 North-European, 211 Renaissance, 213 of Sanskrit, 209 Semitic, 605 Spanish, 210, 211 n. 2, 212, 223 n. 30, 237 of Tagalog, 219 n. 19 Tamil works of, 210 traditional, 11–12 transformational, 396 of Turkish, 224 n. 30 grammarian(s), 3, 6–8, 10 n. 8, 11–13, 17, 17 n. 13, 20, 22, 26, 33, 39–40, 45–46, 60, 70, 79, 135, 135 n. 2, 138 n. 21, 142, 143 n. 43, 146, 149, 150, 150 n. 2, 151, 152, 152 n. 3, 153 n. 5, 154, 154 n. 7, 155–157, 158, 158 n. 13, 160–165, 167–170, 172, 173, 173 n. 31, 174–175, 177–179, 181, 184–186, 220, 223, 225, 235, 240, 595 n. 3 Basˢran, 175 classical, 5 Franciscan, 212, 238 medieval, 150, 154, 160, 162, 176–177 Arab, 184 missionary, 238 traditional, 11, 13 n. 9 grammatical, 3–4, 4 n. 1, 6,–8, 10, 12, 15, 17–18, 19 nn. 15, 17, 21, 23, 25, 33–34, 45–46, 46 n. 3, 47, 47 n. 4, 48, 55–57, 61–64, 64 n. 17, 78–79 analysis, 4, 6, 12, 22–23, 42, 46–48, 49 n. 5, 62, 64, 142, 146 categories, 34, 38 coherence, 655 n. 1 description, 209 features, 33 form, 25, 30 framework, 210 literature, 79 medieval, 186 Arab, 158 medieval Arabic, 181 markers, 679 n. 7 monographs, 239 problems, 25 rule, 49, 57–62 of jazā, 59 structure, 48, 152 n. 4, 655 of sentences, 160 subject, 694
721
systems, 4 term(s) Arabic, 210 exo-, 218 technical, 217 terminology, 233 orientalising Western, 240 endo-, 240 theory(ies), 8, 228, 240 Arab, 3 medieval Arab, 168, 178 non-Western, 239 Western, 239 thinking medieval Arab, 152, 168–169 thought medieval Arab, 180 tradition, 42, 64, 211 n. 2, 210, 227 Hebrew, 209 Italian, 211 n. 2 Indian, 209 of the Franciscans, 211 n. 2 medieval Arab, 149 works canonical, 220 writings, 160 n. 15 grammaticalisation, 294, 621, 697–699 grammaticalization, 675, 676 n. 4, 678, 681, 681 n. 9, 682, 684, 685 n. 14, 687, 687 n. 16, 688 n. 19, 697–699 endo-, 236 exo-, 236 grammaticalized, 581 n. 54, 616, 675, 677, 683–684, 689, 690, 692 grapheme(s), 540, 598 Arabic, 371 grec(que), 124, 130 classiques, 124 gréco-arabe, 119 Greco-Latin, 219, 226, 228 Greek, 34, 105–106, 108, 189, 193, 213, 221, 661 American, 301–302, 304 Classical, 223 Cypriot, 300–301, 303 doxologies, 107–108 ethics, 42 expansions, 108 grammar, 228 n. 35 Modern, 223 n. 30 vernacular, 223, 233 n. 46, 291, 298, 298 n. 8, 299–301, 303–304, 306–307, 309 verbal system, 108
722
index
greetings, 387 formulaic, 375 Gregory James & Emilio Ridruejo, 244 Grice, H. Paul, 27–30, 42, 44 Gricean, 28, 29 n. 1 maxims, 33, 42 griechisch, 106 Grimshaw, Jane, 475, 475 n. 1, 476, 476 n. 2, 498 Gruntfest, Y., 123, 132 Guadagnoli, Philip, 211 n. 2, 232–235, 235 n. 51, 238–241 Guadañoli, Felipe, 212, 231 Guentchéva, Zlatka, 324 n. 14, 330, 362–363 Guerssel, M., 256, 288 Guillaume, Jean-Patrick, 318, 317 n. 7, 318 n. 8, 364 Güldemann, Tom, 676 n. 3, 697–698 Gully, Adrian, 313 n. 3, 314, 363 guttural(s), 256 n. 9, 262, 266 n. 28, 280 n. 41 consonant, 658 Haak, Martine, 379, 401, 578, 652 h abbadā, 17 habitudo, 215, 215 n. 12 h add structure, 151 h adf (deletion), 61, 163 al-h ādira, 115 H adīt , h adīt , 25, 30 n. 3, 36, 120, 163 n. 21, 173 n. 31, 192, 198, 206, 530 canonical, 199 scholars, 30 n. 3 H adramawt, 14, 16, 199 Haeri, Niloofar, 404, 434, 654, 657, 665–666, 669, 672 H afs ‘an ‘Āsim, 127 Hagar, 197 al-H akīm, 315, 362 al-Hakkak, Ghalib, 313, 364 h āl, 50, 50 n. 7, 57, 57 n. 13, 60, 136, 138, 138 n. 19, 139–142, 145–146, 159–160 hallā, 17 Halle, M., 256 n. 8, 288 halumma, 13 n. 9, 16, 17 H ām, 196 H amādah, 565, 567 n. 9, 571 h amādiy, 566 n. 8, 567, 573, 575–576, 576 n. 39, 577 dialect, 568, 568 n. 14, 569, 571–573 h amd, 46, 47 H amdalah, 67, 70, 85, 91–92, 96, 104, 106–107, 109
H amīdullāh, M., 43 Hamilton, Charles, 31, 44 H ammām Farawn, 566 H amwī, Subhī, 364 hamza, 214 n. 10, 226, 437, 441, 444–445, 598, 598 nn. 11– 12 initial, 437, 445–446, 451 al-wasl, 598 H anafī, H ., 43 H anafīs, 31, 35 h arakat, h arakāt, 211, 225, 231 ayn, 513 h aram, 199 h arf, 165 n. 24, 218, 507 n. 18 8jarr, 135 8nid$, 41 8tat niya, 182 8w$id, 14, 16–17 Harmon, R.M., 305, 310 Harnell, Richard S., 605 H arrān, 196, 197 Harsusi, 604 n. 17 Hartley, A.H., 298, 301, 303, 310 Hartmann, Regina, 396, 401 Hārūn, Salām, 143 n. 43, 161, 368 n. 6, 370 n. 13, 378 n. 40 h asan, 26 Hashemite(s), 549, 552 H assān, Tamām, 247, 249, 250, 254 Hasse, Johann Gottfried, 123 Hasselmo, N., 308, 310 Hassoun, Mohamed, 315, 363 h attā, 21 Haugen, E., 308, 310 Hauschild, Richard, 209–210, 243 Hava, J.G., 578, 586 n. 77 Hawa, 614–615, 620 h āwiy, 583 h ayawān nātiq, 502 h ayt umā, 14–17, 19 Haywood, 437 head(s), 69, 73–74, 76, 80–82, 84, 87–89, 90–91, 96–99, 103–104, 156, 163, 368 n. 4, 376, 376 nn. 33-34, 377 n. 38, 378–379, 381–82, 382 n. 53, 383–390, 393, 396, 482 function, 376, 381, 381 n. 50, 384, 388 nominal, 89, 480, 485, 494 n. 26 phrasal, 380 phrase interjectional, 387 verbal, 378–380, 393, 480, 482, 485, 494, 496
index header(s), 386, 390 prepositional, 390 Heath, Jeffrey, 295–296, 308, 310, 653, 670, 672 hébreu, 320 n. 9, 321 n. 10, 354–355, 355 n. 36 Hebrew, 68 n. 1, 70, 80 n. 6, 108, 189, 193, 195–196, 198–199, 209, 219 n. 19, 221, 264, 273, 493, 595 nn. 3–4, 596, 596 nn. 5–6, 597, 598, 598 n. 10, 604–605, 662, 668, 672–673 Biblical, 595–596, 599, 599 n. 13, 602–603 classical, 198 dialectical, 198 grammar(s), 231, 231 n. 41 grammatical tradition, 209 Israeli, 596 n. 6 Middle, 600, 602 posodical-grammatical terms, 219 n. 19 pre-, 599 n. 14 proficiency, 662 Proto-, 596 n. 6, 598–599 Qumranic, 600 terminology, 231 Hedjaz, 120, 120 n. 4 hedjazismes, 125 Heine, Bernd, 607, 621, 676 n. 4, 688 n. 19, 692, 698 Heinrichs, Wolfhart, 595, 602 Hell, Joseph, 208 hemistich(es), 548 n. 5 Hernández Terrés, M., 243 Herrero Muñoz-Cobo, B., 296, 310 Hetzron, Robert, 672 heuristics, 255, 286, 368 high vowel, 572, 574 Hˢ ijāzī, 16 hˢ ikāya, 13–15, 15 nn. 11–12, 16–17, 19–21, 22, 58 particles, 15, 15 n. 11, 20–22 particles, non-, 15, 19, 20–22 hˢ ikma, 9–10 Hˢ imyar kings of, 203 Hindāwī, Hˢ asan, 187 Hinds and Badawi, 596 Hinds, Martin, 542, 604, 683, 691 n. 21, 696, 696 n. 30, 698 Hindustān, 209 Hinnenkamp, Volker, 408, 433–434 hispanicised forms, 229–230 historians, 203
723
history Arab world, 528 Hoberman, Bob, 595 n. 1, 3, 596 n. 6, 598 Holes, Clives, 128, 132, 248–249, 254, 543, 563, 654, 656, 664–665, 672 Holy Congregation of the Propaganda Fide, 211 n. 2 Land, 211 n. 2 hominisation, 522 homme(s), 501–502, 502 n. 4, 503–504, 506, 512, 520–521 homo loquens, 502, 522 sapiens, 521 homonymy, 255 n. 1, 255, 257–259, 261–262, 269, 272, 278, 286–287, 367 n. 3 homophonie, 515 n. 32 hongrois, 119 Hoogland, Jan, 391 n. 71, 401, 455, 473, 532 n. 5, 542 Hopkins, Simon, 77, 111 Hopper, Paul J., 692 n. 23, 698 host, 297 matrix, 291, 291 n. 1, 292, 295, 307–309 minority, 297 superimposed, 291–292, 308–309 Hūd, 195 humain, 345–346, 351 n. 32, non-, 351 n. 32 human, 370, 383, 389, 392, 394–397, 397 nn. 86–87 humanist learning, 219 Hurst, Nicholas, 305–306 hˢ urūf, 38, 228, 237 al-hˢ alq, 318 jarr, 228 Hurwitz, S., 262, 271 n. 32, 275, 288 Hˢ uwētāˢ t, 561–562 Hˢ uwētīˢ , 562 hybrid forms, 224 n. 31, 655 n. 1 hybridity, 403, 405–407, 408, n. 7, 409–410, 413, 413, n. 10, 417–418, 421, 421, n. 14, 422, 432, 433–434 hypallage, 512 n. 27, 517 n. 42 hypercorrection, 80 n. 5, 596 n. 6 hyperonym(s), 465–466, 469–470 translations, 469 iarab, 218, 218 n. 17 ʚIbēdu, 686 ʙibil, 47
724
index
Ibn Abbās, 193, 200 Ibn Abī d-Dam aš-Šāfiī, 87, 111 Ibn Abī r-Rabī, 150 n. 2, 153 nn. 5–6, 156, 168, 170–171, 173–174, 186 Ibn Ājurrūm, 232, 232 n. 43, 233, 236, 238–240 Ibn al-Anbārī, 124, 151, 152 n. 3, 153, 160 n. 15, 162 n. 19, 163–164, 175, 176 n. 34, 186–187, 513 n. 29, 522 Ibn Aqīl, 17 n. 13, 22, 155, 187 Ibn Asākir, 194, 198 n. 21 Ibn Durayd, 203 Ibn Fāris, 125, 131, 435, 505 n. 12, 507 n. 19, 513 n. 28, 522 Ibn H anbal, 86–87, 111 Ibn H azm, 201, 201 n. 32, 208 Ibn Hišām al-Ansārī, 157, 175–177, 177 n. 35, 178–187 Ibn Hishām, 203 Ibn Jinnī, 8–9, 9 n. 7, 10–12, 22, 164, 164 n. 22, 169, 169 n. 27, 170, 170 n. 29, 187, 193, 317, 318 nn. 7-8 Ibn Kathīr, 205 n. 40 Ibn MaJā al-Qurt ubī, 11, 22 Ibn Man'ūr, 115, 131 Ibn Masūd, 49 n. 6, 56, 56 n. 12, 61 Ibn Mujāhid, Abū Bakr, 640 n. 1, 652 Ibn Mutarrif at-Tarafī, 196 n. 13, 208 Ibn Mutī, 35, 43 Ibn Qutayba, 197 n. 19, 203 Ibn Sad, 196 n. 13, 198 nn. 20–21, 23, 199, 199 n. 25, 206 n. 44 Ibn as-Sarrāj, 4, 22, 152–154, 162–163, 163 n. 21, 165 n. 24, 187 Ibn Taymiyya, 39 Ibn Usfūr, 154 n. 10, 163, 163 n. 20, 164, 169, 171, 176 n. 34, 187 Ibn Ušta, 200 Ibn Wallād, 33–34, 43 Ibn Xālawayh, 318 n. 8, 353 n. 34, 355 n. 35, 362 Ibn Xaldūn, 3 n. 1, 23, 119–120, 120 n. 6, 128–129, 131, 543, 544, 563 Ibn Yaīš, 154, 154 n. 9, 157, 157 n. 12, 169, 172–173, 178, 180, 187, 254, 316 n. 5, 316 n. 5, 319, 336 n. 22, 342, 362 Ibrāhīm, 190, 195–200 ibrānī, 196 ibtidā, 137, 139, 144 n. 46, 145, 149, 153–154, 156, 158–159, 161, 162 n. 18, 167, 173 n. 32, 175–176, 178, 185–186
Icelandic, Old, 213 Id Abuw Silīm (al-Atraš at-Turbāniy), 565 id, 14 n. 10, idea, 396 ideal, 396 identité, 503–504 identity(ies), 405–406, 408, 423–424, 428, 430, 433 cultural, 403 personal, 430 ideophones, 696 idġām, 127 idiomatic expressions, 611, 618, 696 idmā, 16–17 idmār, 45, 51–61, 63 Idrīs, 195 Idriss, Socheil, 473 Igla, B., 294, 310 ignoratum, 235 n. 51 ijtimā al-kalām, 56 ilBawīti, 684 ilġā, 141, 141 n. 32, 142, 142 n. 37, 143, 145–146, 147, 160 ilhām, 192, 192 n. 3 illa, 114, 317 illā, 7, 10 n. 8, 12, 15, 17, 19–21 illi, 72–76 Ilyās, Jūsīf, 326 n. 16, 331, 345, 364 imāl, 63 n. 16, 141, 141 n. 32 imāla, 650 n. 12, 658 Imlīq, 203 immā, 16, 17 impératif, 343, 343 n. 25, 519 imperatiuo, 217 imperative(s), 34, 59, 217–218, 295, 569, 575, 575 n. 36, 681 negative, 597 imperfect(s), 70, 224 n. 31, 570, 574, 575 n. 36, 576–577, 581 n. 56, 586 n. 78, 603, 616, 640–643, 643 n. 9, 645, 646, 681, 694 n. 27, 695 y-, 679 imperfectif, 315 n. 4 imperfective, 296, 613 implicatures, 27 implicit, 378–379 implied, 392 n. 77 Imra al-Qays, 68, 86 n. 23 Imru’ al-Qays, 324 in, 14 n. 10, 16, 21 inaccompli, 315 n. 4, 332 inaccuracies, 472
index inceptive, 21 incipient shift, 308 incompatibilities semantic, 286 incongruities semantic, 286 incrementation, 256 initial, 275, 277, 281 indefinite 26, 162, 248, 250–251, 253, 373 indefiniteness, 217 India, 210 Indian, 209 indicative, 10, 228, 230 n. 39, 378 indices contextuels, 362 indirect speech, 676, 676 n. 3, 678, 687 n. 16, 679, 683, 689 indispensable part, 135–136, 142, 146 predicate, 135–137, 40–141, 141 n. 33, 142–143, 146–147 indo-européennes, 118 Indo-Iranian, 295 inductive derivation of rules, 25 infinitive(s), 292–293, 295–296, 298, 301, 305–306, 373, 383, 386 nominal Dutch, 483 n. 10 infixes, 436 inflections verbal, 294 informal, 403, 405, 423, 432 information, 403, 425 Ingham, Bruce, 544, 563 Ing-of construction, 476–477, 483 n. 10, 484, 492 inherent, 373 inherited, 373 inn-, 74 inna, 21, 135 Qsentences, 165 innamā, 11, 15–16, 19, 19 n. 17 inšā, 28 inšād, 126 n. 15 instabilité formelle, 317 instrument, 380, 393, 395 insults, 387 integrating terms, 661 integration morphological, 292, 295, 297 n. 7, 298–300, 304, 306–309 morpho-phonological, 308 intensivité, 313
725
intention (qasd ), 9, 396–397 interaction, 405, 405, n. 3, 410, 424, 427, 432 interdental(s), 567–568, 586 n. 70, 591 n. 88, 657 interjection(s), 229, 374–375, 387, 398 interne, 321, 335–337, 344, 346–347, 349–350, 352, 353 n. 33, 354–360, 362 interrogatif, 519 interrogation, 398 interrogative(s), 17–19, 161, 170, 577 8a-, 156, 170, 184 component, 170 sentence, 169 n. 27 intertextuality, 543 intertwining vocabulary, 670 interview(s), 405, 405 n. 3, 409–412, 415, 423–433 format, 425, 427 multi-textual, 426, 428 set-up, 424, 427–431 intransitifs, 337 intransitive 247 intransitivité, 319, 320, 320 n. 9, 336 invariant(s) cognitifs, 324 n. 14 notional, 255, 255 n. 5, 256–257, 257 n. 11, 259–260, 260 n. 21, 261, 263–266, 268–269, 275, 279–281, 283–285 inversion, 151, 156 irāb, 3 n. 1, 8, 46, 50–51, 58–60, 117, 118, 121–123, 123 n. 12, 124–126, 156, 180, 211, 218 n. 17, 228, 230 n. 39, 232, 234–235, 237 endings, 46, 50–51, 58–60, 62 n. 15, 64 n. 17 Īram b. Sām, 195, 202 iranienne, 113 Iraq, 197, 529–530, 545–546, 560, 560 n. 40, 561, 563, 656 Iraqi, 546, 561 iref, 660 Irish, Old, 213 irrégularité, 507 Īsā, 190 Šarm aš-Šayh, 530 išbā, 448 al-Isfahānī, 203 Ishāq, 195 Ishmael, 198, 202, 578 Ishmōēl, 197 islāh al-lafz, 170
726
index
Islam, 27, 39, 42, 92, 193, 196, 202, 205, 207, 404 heilige Sprache des, 119 medieval, 42 religious language of, 104 Islamic, 109 conquest, 207 data historical, 42 East, 109 fundamentalists, 561 law, 42 scholars, 41 sciences, 28 society, 42 Islamic times pre-, 105, 109 history, 192 past, 207 times, 189, 206 world civilization, 207 ism, 58, 155 al-fāil, 341 fil, 177 kāna, 179 al-maf ūl, 341 wāh id, 14, 18 Ismāīl b. Ibrāhīm, 190, 195, 197–200, 202 ismiyya, 149–150, 157, 158 n. 13, 165, 165 n. 24, 177 isoglosses, 608 Isolated Natural Subject, 28 n. 1 Israel, 546, 653–660, 662, 667–669, 673 sons of, 195 Israeli(s), 561, 595 n. 3 Hebrew, 596 n. 6 Israelite settlers, 197 istaqarra, 159–160, 162–164, 167, 180, 183–185 hypothesis, 162, 164, 167, 180, 185 istidlāl, 34 istifhām, 4, 117 isti lāh , 192 istināf, 49 n. 5, 50 istiqrār, 141, 163 n. 20, 179–180 istish āb al-h āl, 36 istit nā, 31 iswad, 659, 664 Italian, 296, 298–299, 661 Italie, 124 n. 13 itbā, 48, 52, 63 itération, 313 itimād, 152, 152 n. 4, 153, 153 n. 5, 154, 157 n. 12, 172, 179–180, 184
izhār, 57 ízm mudáf, 215 izzayy, 86 Jabal Says, 127 n. 18 Jackendoff, Ray, 479, 498 Jādis, 195, 202–203 al-Jaft, 562 Jāhiliyya, 190 al-Jāhi', 13, 45, 122–123, 131, 328 n. 19 jāhi'ien, 123 Jahn, G., 136 n. 8, 147, 238 Jāir Abū _amūd, 195 jāiz, 33 n. 4 James, Gregory, 210, 243 Janah, A., 283, 287 Japanese, 210 scholars, 210 Jarajira, 567 n. 9 jarr, 29, 216, 225, 227, 228, 230 Jāsim, 203 Jastrow, Otto, 658, 671–672, 698 jawāb, 53 al-Jawharī, 3 jazā, 59 al-Jazīra, 194 jazm, 59, 226–228, 230–231, 234 Jeremiah, 595 n. 2 Jerusalem, 81–82, 84, 221 Jerusalemites, 80 n. 6 Jesuit, 209–210 Jesus, 190 Jewish, 82 n. 14, 101, 106, 109, 296 Aramaic, 600–601 Jews, 195 jezme, 215 n. 11 Jibrīl, 200 Jīhān Mahmūd, 528 jinn, 190 Jordan, 543, 543 n. 1, 545–548, 551, 561–562, 601, 661 Jordanian(s), 546, 548, 552, 554, 557, 557 n. 35, 559, 560 n. 40, 560–562 society, 547 tribe, 546 José de León, 221 Joseph, 190 Joüon, Paul, 264, 288, 314, 320 n. 9, 321, 321 n. 10, 335 n. 20, 344 n. 26, 354, 364 Juba, 607– 612, 614, 618, 620–622, 637–638 Arabic, 607-621, 638, 692–693, 698
index courts, 607–609, 620, 693 Rejaf, 609 Judaeo-Arabic, 79–80 Jüdisch, 105 jumla, jumal, 113, 177 fi liyya, 149–150, 157, 165, 165 n. 25, 166–167, 177 n. 35, 178–186 ismiyya, 149–150, 157, 164–167, 169, 177–186 inverted, 150, 150 n. 2, 162, 182 šarziyya, 177 n. 35 zarfiyya, 158, 167–168, 179–181, 183–185 wasf, 158 n. 13 juncture 249 Jurhum, 195, 197–200, 202 jurisprudence, 42 al-Jurjānī, 8, 10–12, 22–23, 154 n. 7, 163, 164, 174, 187, 232, 235, 238–240 jussive, 10, 16, 56, 228, 230 n. 39, Juynboll, W.M.C., 243 ka, 78 kaanna, 16 kaannamā, 16, 19 kaayyin, 16 Kaʚba, 196, 197, 206 kabs(a), 668 kadā, 16–17, 31, 34–35, 35 n. 7 Kahle, Paul, 125, 132 Kairenisch, 72, 74, 699 Kakwa, 609 kalām, 27, 47, 49–50, 52–55, 57–59, 177 al-arab, 49 al-arab/badw, 61 Kalb, 202 kalima wāh ida, 14, 16–17 ka-lladī, 77–78 kalladī, 78 kam al-xabariyya phrase, 171 kamā, 16, 78 Kamel Al-Kabir French-Arabic, 458, 462, 466, 468 kāna an-nāqisa, 135 at-tāmma, 178 n. 36 Kaplony, Andreas, 113 n. 1 al-Kāšġarī, Mahˢmūd, 435, 437, 441–447, 449–450, 453 kasr, 227 kasra, 218, 218 n. 16, 239 kasratān, 218 Kator, 609, 610–611, 617–620, 634
727
Kaufman, Terrence, 294, 311, 665 Kautzsch, 320 n. 9 Kaye, Alan S., 595, 597, 605, 654, 657, 664, 665, 655 n. 1, 672 kayfa, 20 Kayne, Richard, 494, 499 Kāzˢim Bahˢr al-Marjān, 187 Kazimirski, A. de Biberstein, 115, 132, 257, 277, 284, 288 Kelly, James, 437, 453 Kembera (Austronesian), 698 Kennedy, J.H., 305, 311 Kenstowicz, M., 256 n. 9, 257 nn. 12–13, 288 Kenya, 608, 621 Kerkhof, Maxim, 243 kesra, 224–226, 231 kesre, 233 Khadduri, Majid, 26, 44 Khalidi, Tarif, 202 nn. 33–34, 208 Kharbush, A., 661, 672 Kharga, 536 Khartoum, 608, 620 Khatef, L., 272, 288 Khim, Alain, 401 Khubchandani, L.M., 308, 311 Kifāya movement, 529 Kihm, 368 n. 4 Killean, Cavolin G., 210 n. 2, 243 Kināna, 116 kināya, 34 Kinberg, Naphtali, 50 n. 7, 54 n. 11, 65, 384 n. 55, 401 Ki-Nubi, 607–608, 621, 692 Kirsten, Peter, 232, 234, 238 al-Kisāʙī, 52 n. 9, 54 Kissling, Hans-Joachim, 679 n. 7, 692 n. 23, 698 Kister, M.J., 205 n. 40 kitāb, 141, 316, 318, 320 n. 9, 329, 338, 338 n. 23, 353 n. 34, 504, 504 nn. 8, 10, 507 n. 18 Klamer, Marian A.F., 698 Kleiber, Georges, 506 n. 16, 522 Koehler & Baumgartner, 595 n. 2, 596, 597 nn. 8–9, 598, 598 n. 10, 599, 599 n. 13, 600–602, 602 n. 16, 603–605 Koehler, Ludwig, 605 koinéïsation, 126 Konjunktion, 69, 75, 87 n. 24 Koplewitz, Emanuel, 662, 672 Koptisch, 697 Koran, 105, 223 n. 28, 410, n. 8, 411 530–531
728
index
Koranic reading, 640 n. 1 Koster, Cornelis, 369 nn. 8, 10, 370, 389 n. 69, 401 Kouloughli, D.E., 23, 161, 164, 168, 175, 185 n. 38, 187 Kremers, Joost, 475, 475 n. 1, 484–485, 485 n. 14, 493, 499 Krio Creole English, 692–693 Kroeger, Paul R., 693, 693 n. 24, 695, 698 Kropp, Manfred, 202 n. 35, 204 nn. 38–39, 208 Kūfa, 117 Kūfan(s), 35, 63–64, 151, 154 n. 8, 157, 160, 160 n. 15, 162 n. 19, 175–176, 181 Kundālīzza Rāys, 543 n. 1, 563 Kurpershoek, P. Marcel, 544, 560 nn. 38–39, 563 Kuwaiti Arabic, 563 lā, 14 LA, 659 n. 4, 665 n. 7, 666 n. 9 laʚalla, 16 laʚallamā, 16–17 labels, 367, 373 n. 20 labial(s), 255–256, 256 n. 6, 257, 259, 264–265, 267–268, 270, 279–282, 284–286 Labīd, 18, 86, 87 n. 23, 111 Labov, William, 129, 405, 410, 410, n. 9 ladu, 546 lafzˢ, 151, 169 n. 26, 173, 176 structure, 151, 171 lafzˢī, 10, 10 n. 8, 11 lafzˢiyya, 235, 235 n. 49 ʚLāgiy clan, 565 n. 3 laġw, 14, 14 n. 10, 15–16, 136, 138, 146, 160 lahˢ n, 117–118, 123, 206 lam, 20 lām, 21 al-lām al-fāriqa, 21 lamhˢ al-ʙasˢl, 17, 17 n. 13, 20 lammā, 16 Lammens, 200 n. 28 lan, 15 n. 12, 123 n. 12, 124 Landberg, Carlo le Comte de, 544, 563, 690, 697 n. 31, 698 Landsberger, Benno, 601 Lane, E.W., 147, 581 n. 57, 600, 605 langage naturel, 521 Langhade, Jacques, 120 n. 5, 132 Landsberger, Benno, 601 language(s) academies, 661 as behavior, 4 body-, 29
community, 291–292, 308 contact(s), 291, 293–298, 306–309, 653, 670 dominant, 610, 662 embedded, 291, 291 n. 1, 295, 297, 307–308 exposure, 309 faculty, 479 foreign, 308 institutes, 661 interference, 653, 670 matrix, 292, 307 natural, 367 shift , 307 socially, 291–292, 307 specific pharyngeals, 657 structure, 398 superimposed, 295 usage, 27 metaphorical, 369 ordinary, 369 varieties, 408, 410, 418, 420, 433 langue(s), 502, 502 n. 4, 503, 505 n. 12, 506, 506 n. 16, 508, 511–512, 517–521, 521 n. 49, 522 arabe, 124, 121, 316, 317, 319, 349, 355, 501, 505, 508 n. 21, 509-511, 515 nn. 31, 32, 519-521 commune, 521 historique(s), 515 n. 31, 519 n. 46 humaines, 521 littéraires, 121 n. 8 maternelle, 128 naturelles, 521 négro-africaines, 503 n. 5 sémitiques, 506, 508, 508 n. 20, 511, 514 vulgaire, 121, 121 n. 8, 124 n. 13 Larcher, Pierre, 28, 44, 113, 120 n. 5, n. 6, 121 n. 9, 126 nn. 14, 17, 128 n. 21, 130, 132, 314, 316 n. 5, 321 n. 10, 335, 341 n. 24, 364 laryngeal(s), 598, 642, 644, 646, 646 n. 10, 647–651 final, 639, 641–645, 647–650, 650 n. 12, 651, 658 lāta, 20 lateral, 257, 257 n. 13, 268–270, 275–276, 278, 280–282, 286, 657 Latin(s), 115, 119, 121, 121 n. 8, 124, 211 n. 2, 211, 213–217, 221, 229–233, 235–236, 239–240, 661 classiques, 124 letters, 220 sources, 211 n. 2 terminology, 211, 218, 236–237
index latine, 124, 502 néo-, 119 latinized form, 231, 233, 236 n. 53 Lavie, Smadar, 578 Lavorel, Pierre-Marie, 506 n. 15, 522 law, 25–27, 33, 38–40, 42, 209, 213, 243 Islamic, 25 religious, 205 Law, Vivian, 213 lawlā, 16 lawmā, 16 laysa, 20 layta, 20 Leeman-Bouix, Danielle, 332, 364 Left-to-Right Association, 489 legal, 25–26, 33, 33 n. 4, 40, 43 argumentation, 27 contexts medieval, 42 definitions, 37 implications, 25 methodology, 25 obligation, 32 principle, 37 sciences, 35, 39, 41 semantics, 38 system, 25, 43 terminology, 31 theory, 25 valid speech, 37 works, 33, 41 legalistic, 38, 42 ʚLēgāt, 565–566, 566 nn. 7, 9, 567 n. 13, 574–575, 578 ʚLēgiy, 565 n. 3, 566 nn. 7–8, 567, 570, 573, 575–578 dialect, 567–568, 568 n. 14, 569, 571–574, 574 n. 32 Lehmann, Christian, 87 n. 24, 111 lengthening, 446–449 consonants, 447 prosodic, 446, 448–449 Lentin, Jerome, 211, 243 LeTourneau, Mark, 393, 401 Levant, 547 Levin, Aryeh, 135, 137 nn. 13–14, 138 n. 19, 140 n. 30, 141 n. 33, 143 n. 41, 147–149, 153, 153 n. 6, 158, 162, 163 n. 20, 187, 391, 391 n. 73, 395, 399, 401, 672 lexemes, 568, 586 n. 70, 614, 646, 653–655, 655 n. 2, 657, 659 n. 4, 660, 661, 663, 665 n. 8, 666, 670, 672 lexical, 38, 56, 611–612, 616, 619 aspect, 654–655, 676
729
domains, 662 cultural areas, 662 politics, 662 religion, 662 figement, 362 forms, 641 items, 653, 655, 661, 667, 670 literary Arabic pairs, 656 meaning, 38–39, 675 pairs, 656 lexicographer(s), 207 lexicographical, 39 work, 211, 219 lexicography, 435, 448, 450, 471 Arabic, 455, 471 lexicon, 255, 273–274, 287, 370, 393, 395, 406–413, 415–416, 418, 418 n. 13, 420–422, 449, 608 Arabic, 255, 286, 399 semantics, 653 verbal lexique arabe, 326 li + a relative clause, 140 li + genitive, 140 li-ʙann, 76 Libya, 656 Libyan Eastern, 640 Lichtenstädter, Ilse, 239, 243 lien, 506 général, 515 limite, 504 n. 8 linear descriptive text analysis, 63 interpretation, 63 linearization, 494–495 Lingala, 609 lingua franca, 661 linguist(s), 150, 609 Egyptian, 529 linguiste(s), 115, 118, 130 linguistic(s), 25–30, 33 nn. 4, 6, 36, 40–42, 44–46, 52, 68, 190, 192, 295, 307–308, 369, 403–404, 408, 410–411, 420, 422, 424, 433, 527–528, 533, 543, 559, 565 n. 2, 595 n. 1, 596 n. 6, 605, 607, 609, 619–621 Arabic, 250, 435, 437, 441, 448–449 analysis, 3–4, 10, 12, 20, 22, 64 n. 17 aspects, 26 awareness, 5, 8–9 codes, 25 community(ies), 193, 201 corpus, 25 developments, 541
730 exegesis, 63 extra-, 33, 36 forms, 189 history, 191, 195, 200, 203 history of, 209 n. 1, 210 n. 2, 211 ideas history of, 4 methods, 45 panorama, 201 phenomena, 4, 9–10 process, 25 sciences, 35 situation, 527 systems, 4 theory, 213 typology, 80 works, 222 linguistique, 113, 118, 133, 502 arabe, 121 n. 9, 129, 317, 317 n. 7, 323 l’histoire de la, 113 médiévale arabe, 314–315, 318–320, 329 historique, 118–119, 121, 123, 130 néo-hellénique, 121 n. 9 Lipinski, E., 273 n. 34, 288 liquids, 262 lisān, 196 n. 15, 257, 288 āmm, 119, 121 āmmī, 121 aslī, 120 mudarī, 120 arabī, 190 Literary Arab, 658 Arabic, 653–655, 655 n. 2, 656–670, 672–673 articulation “errors”, 659 and Colloquial, 653–657, 659, 662–663, 665, 668–670 diphthongs, 657 lexemes, 655, 668 lexical items, 656 pronunciation, 658 text, 659 vocabulary, 661, 666 written and spoken, 654 language, 80, 85 literature, 403–404 Arabic, 403, n. 1 Littmann, Enno, 126 n. 16, 132 loan translation, 655 verbal, 302
index verbs, 299, 303, 652 word(s), 298 n. 8, 299 n. 9, 301, 307–308, 472, 540, 602, 655 English, 299–300, 304, 307 local, 404–405, 417, 433 dialects, 659 localisation, 505 locus, 417 London, 529–530 long monophthongs, 657 vowel phonemes, 568 Lontos, S.S., 301, 303, 311 Lord, Carol, 679, 693, 698, 698 n. 7 Loucel, Henri, 39, 44, 208 Lowenstamm, J., 256, 288 Luffin, Xavier, 607, 621 luġa(t) 8āmmiyya, 121 n. 7, 122 8dārija, 121 n. 7 8fush ā, 120, 120 n. 3, 121 n. 7, 125 8Mudar, 120 QQurayš, 120, 125 Lūt , 195 Luxor, West Bank, n. 6, 678 Lyons, John, 321, 324 nn. 13–14, 326 n. 17, 364 mā, 14 n. 10, 18–19, 21, 79 interrogative, 13 n. 9 ma-...-š, 688 Ma‘an, 562 Maadd, 201 maāš, 667 Maaß, Kurt-Jürgen, 243 Māceiaru, Adrian, 595 n. 1 Machrek, 128 marūf, 235 n. 51 mādā, 17–18, 18 n. 14, 19, 22 maddo, 226 madh , 555, 558, 561 mādī, 59, 315, 315 n. 4, 316–317, 323, 331–332, 334, 339 Madina, 601, 605 Maeda, S., 266 n. 28, 289 al-Mafraq, 546 maf ūl, 151, 179, 214, 217 mafuŭl, 214 mafúul, 216 Maghreb, 101, 128, 223 Maghrebine, 101 Maghrebis, 80 n. 6 mah all, 169 n. 26, 249 al-waqf, 249
index Mahdi, 120 n. 5, 131 al-Mahdiyyah, 81, 83, 110 Mahˢmūd Bayram at-Tūnisī, 544 Mahˢmūd Taymūr, 666, 699 Mahmud, Ushari, 607–608, 621 Maiduguri, 640, 642, 647–648, 652 Maingueneau, Dominique, 324 n. 14, 326 n. 17, 331, 364 majāz, 507 n. 18 majrūr, 177, 214, 216 Makkah, 200 Makram & ʚUmar, 46 n. 2, 49 n. 6, 52 n. 9 Makram, ʚAbd al-Āl Sālim, 65 Malak al-Ašraf, 221 n. 26 malaka, 3 n. 1 malapropism, 613, 615, 617 Malbad, 566 n. 9 Malekiyya, 620 Malkiel, Y., 294, 311 Malta, 698 Maltese, 296, 299, 650, 650 n. 12, 651–652 Maluk, 612, 622–625 Mamluk, 89 mamūl, 124, 149, 151, 168, 170, 235 maʚnā, 38, 151, 157, 176 l-fi ʚl, 176 l-hˢadīt , 38 l-hˢudūt , 342 l-kalām, 38 n-nasˢb, 38 t -t ubūt, 342 manawī(iyya), 10, 10 n. 8, 11, 235, 235 n. 49 mandā, 18–19, 22 Mandarin, 223 Mandīša, 680, 684, 693 n. 24, 697 Al Manhal French-Arabic, 458, 462, 466–468 maniabilité, 508 manière, 504 n. 8 manner, 392, 394–395, 397 al-manqūs, 252–253, 449 manša, 507 n. 18 Mansouri, W., 256 n. 6, 288 mansūb, 124 Manwel Mifsud, 698 mapping, 482 idiosyncratic, 481, 481 n. 6 one-to-one, 481 n. 6, 497 n. 30 phonological, 498 principle, 479, 479 n. 4, 480, 484, 493, 495 general, 480 lexical, 480
731
rule, 479, 497 n. 29, 481 n. 6, 482, 492 idiosyncratic, 481, 497, 497 n. 30, 498 Maʚqil b. Xuwaylid, 89 al-maqsūr 252–253 Marçais, William, 121 n. 9, 132, 690, 698 Mardin, 640 marfū, 59 marker adjective, 249 adverbial, 249 case, 411–412, 476 idiosyncratic, 490 infinitive, 298, 299 n. 9 mood, 409 non-finite, 488 object 249 present tense, 409 relative clause, 406–407, 419, 412 stem verb, 496 stem VII, 488–489 verb foreign, 299 marking nominal, 476 Maronite, 211, 220, 222 n. 26 Christians, 211 martaba structures, 171 Martelotti, Francesco, 226 Martelottus, Franciscus, 226 n. 33, 234, 236, 238–241 Maruyama, Toru, 210, 243 Marwān Qadrī, 535 Marx, Emanuel, 578 Masāʚīd, 566–567, 569 n. 9 masculin, 123 n. 12 masdar(s), 47, 118, 210, 355, 381 n. 50, 383, 436, 475, 484–487, 487 n. 18, 488–494, 494 n. 27, 495–497, 497 n. 28, 498, 513–514, 532 n. 7 +acc, 484–485, 493 Arabic, 475, 484, 487–488, 498 formation, 475, 486, 492, 495–496 Arabic, 493 idiosyncratic, 492 +li, 484, 485 n. 14, 492–493 mīmīy, 492 stem II, 490, 492 stem III, 492, 497 stem III, 497 n. 30 stem IX, 489 n. 21 stem V, 490 n. 22
732
index
mashūl, 235 n. 51 Masoretic times, 219 n. 19 mass media, 669 al-Masʚūdī, 196, 196 n. 16, 202 matching, 377, 380, 390, 390 n. 70, 393, 396–397 agent, 395 feature, 393 gender, 397 nn. 86–87 number, 397 n. 86 matres lectionis, 540 matrix(ces), 255–256, 256 n. 6, 257, 257 nn. 11, 14, 258–260, 260 nn. 21, 22, 261–266, 266 n. 28, 267–269, 269 n. 30, 270–271, 273–275, 277–280, 280 n. 41, 281–285, 287, 291 binary, 273 language, 670 segment, 262 source, 263 Mauritania, 223 mawdi, 40 mawdū al-luġa, 507 n. 18 Al Mawrid English-Arabic, 458–459, 468 Mawsūʚat al-hˢadīt , 111 mawsūf, 151, 153 Mawwāls, 694 maxim of manner, 28 of quality, 27 of quantity, 27 of relation, 27 maxrŏr, 214 maxrór, 215 al-Maydānī, 502 n. 3, 523 mazīd, 313 Māzin al-Mubārak, 187 Māzin Mubārak, 113, 131 Mazraani, Nathalie, 655–657, 659, 666, 672 McAuliffe, Jane, 208 McCarthy, John, 259 n. 19, 288, 421 n. 15, 476, 486, 486 n. 17, 488, 490, 492, 494–495, 497 n. 29, 498–499, 671 McKenny, J., 304, 311 Mdaxxal Slēmān, 565 n. 3 meaning(s) general, 466, 469 specific, 465–467, 469 Mecca, 197, 202–203, 206, 561 Meccan period late, 190 middle, 190
Mecque, 117, 125 médde, 215 n. 11 media, 403–404, 404, n. 2, 405, 432 broadcasting, 403–404, 404, n. 2, 405 written, 404, 405 n. 2 Medina, 202 médio-passif, 335 Mehri, 604 n. 17 Meijer, Hans, 370, 401 Meiseles, Gustav, 654, 656, 664–665, 672 Meissner, Bruno, 544, 563 Mejdell, Gunvor, 434, 654, 655 n. 1, 672 mesolectal, 608, 610–614, 616–617, 619–620 Mesopotamian, 658 Messiah, 190 metalanguage, 217 n. 15, 227 non-Western, 231 Spanish, 240 meteg, 219 n. 19 metheg, 219 n. 19 methodological armory, 33 méthodologies, 501–503, 504 n. 8 linguistique, 501 methodology, 236 Michaelis, Johann Davis, 123 Middle Ages, 221 n. 25 Arabic, 655, 655 n. 1, 662, 665, 669 Hebrew, 600, 602 mifal, 249 mif al, 30, 31 n. 3 Mifsud, Manwel, 296, 311, 650 n. 12, 652, 672, 698 milehal, 219 n. 19 Miller, Catherine, 128, n. 19, 607–608, 619, 621, 692–693, 698 minĕb, 218 minenbĕn, 218 minibĕ, 218 minibĭ, 218 minibŭ, 218 mininbĭn, 218 minunbŭn, 218 mirbad, 30 missionary(ies), 210, 211 n. 2, 212, 219 n. 19, 231 linguistics, 209 n. 1, 219, 219 n. 20, 240, 244 sources, 223 Spanish, 211 n. 2, 219 Mitchell, Terence F., 248, 254, 664–665, 672
index mix(ed) form(s), 611–615, 617 language, 655 utterance, 658 m-masˢdar, 492, 492 n. 25, 497 mnemonic, 217–218 terms, 239 words, 220 Moabite, 602 mobility social upward, 291 modalité, 516–517, 517 n. 41, 519 n. 45 d’animéité, 517 d’itération, 508 n. 21 de temps, 517 de vie, 517 mode(s), 510 of action, 263 irréel, 519 potentiel, 519 prepausal, 247, 252 réel, 505 n. 13, 507, 507 n. 18, 519 model descriptive, 368 prosodic, 476 modèle italien, 121 modern literary Arabic, 654, 667, 658 Moroccan, 596, 605 proto-colloquial, 597 scholarly terminology, 665 Standard Arabic, 527, 545, 568–569, 598, 598 n. 12, 654, 669, 671 standard language, 560, 598 n. 12 technology, 661 version of Middle Arabic, 665 written Arabic, 605 modification sémantique, 334 modifier(s), 367 n. 1, 368 n. 4, 376 n. 34, adverbial, 378–379 aspectual, 378 modal, 378 peripheral, 378–379 temporal, 378 modus, 505 n. 11, 512, 512 n. 27, 513, 515, 517 nn. 42–43, 44, 519, 519 n. 46, 521 n. 49, 522 communs, 513 d’exclamation, 516 d’assertion, 515 général, 515 infinitif, 514
733
Mohamed Sami, 536 Mokilko (East Chadic), 604 n. 17 Mol, Mark van, 458, 462, 466, 468, 473 Mombasa, 621 monocausal, 69–70 monolingualism, 293, 297, 304 monophthongs ē and ō, 569 monotheist, 197 monotheistic religions, 196 Monroe, James T., 210 n. 2, 220–222, 244 Monteil, Vincent, 654, 672 mood, 248, 251–252, 372, 384 n. 55 aspect, 371 imperative, 378 perfect, 371 n. 17 non-, 371 n. 17 subjunctive, 386, 388 mora, 486 n. 16, 489, 491, 491 n. 23 Moravcsik, Julius, 396, 402 Mörner, A.R. & Magnus Mörner, 222, 244 Moro, 609 Moroccan Arabic, 596, 605 Morocco, 232, 690 morpheme(s) 491, 496 autosegmental content, 421 fem., 570, 574 grammatical, 421; 496 masˢdar, 492 n. 24, 495, 498 morphological, 435, 435 n. 2, 436–442, 442 n. 6, 443–450, 452 nominal, 438 nominalizing, 493 non-finite, 490 non-finiteness, 489 paradigmatic, 436 prosodic, 486 root, 489, 495 radical, 435 verbal, 438 vowel, 438, 439 morphèmes définisseurs, 519 spécificateurs, 519 morphologic, 9 morphological, 63, 87 n. 24, 91, 568 n. 15, 570, 592 n. 91, 608, 611–612, 615–616, 642–643, 645, 648–650 differences, 659 reduction, 687 morphologie, 316 arabe, 508 n. 21, 509 n. 22 médiévale, 344
734
index
morphology, 256, 292, 296–297, 299, 307–309, 368, 370, 370 n. 12, 373–375, 384, 388–390, 396, 398, 406–407, 412, 418–420, 431, 436, 443, 449, 475, 485, 573, 653–654, 659 Arabic, 475–476, 486, 494 concatenative, 498 non-concatenative, 475, 498 nominal, 573 verbal, 574, 651 morphophonological, 648–649, 653 morphosyntax, 212, 479 n. 4, 480 Moscati, Sabatino, 315 n. 4, 316, 364, 597, 605 Moses, 190 mother tongue, 201 motion, 396, 397 Mounin, Georges, 506 n. 16, 523 Mount Jūdī, 195 Moutaouakil, Ahmad, 28, 44 mouvement sémantique, 116 Moyen Age, 121 n. 7 MSA, 527, 529, 529 n. 1, 531–533, 535, 537–538, 540, 586 n. 70 Muʚallaqah, 86, 86–87 n. 23 (al-)Mubārak, Māzin, 113, 131, 187 al-Mubarrad, 4, 23, 33, 175, 176 n. 34 al-Mubarrid, 329, 335, 343, 362 mubtada, 48, 137, 137 n. 13, 138–139, 144–145, 149, 151–153, 154 n. 9, 55–157, 157 n. 12, 158, 158 n. 13, 159–164, 168–170, 170 nn. 28–29, 171–173, 173 n. 32, 174–176, 178–179, 181–186, 214, 216 clause, 172 definite sentence-initial, 174 indefinite, 169, 169 nn. 26–27, 170, 170 n. 29, 172, 174 al-kalām, 55 position pre-, 149 post-, 174 xabar, 151–152, 169, 170- 173, 177 mubtedĕ, 214 mubtede, 215 mudăf, 214 mudāf, 214, 216 Mudˢar Badrān, 554, 557 n. 35 Mudˢar, 120, 129 mudāri, 230, 315 n. 4, 316–319, 323, 338 mudmar, 151 mufrad, 164 muġayyira, 15–16 muh addat anhu, 167, 173, 173 n. 31, 181
muh āl, 29 Muhˢammad al-Fanātiˢ l al-Hˢ ajāyā, 560 Muhˢammad b. ʚAlī, 198 Muhammad Salām, 199 Muhˢammad Taymūr, 700 Muhammad, 36, 39, 86, 106, 189, 191, 193, 195, 198, 200, 202–206 muxātab, 4, 36 Muhazzim Qahˢtāˢ n, 203 Muhtaseb, 396 al-Muʚjam al-wasītˢ, 331, 340 mujarrad, 313, 314 n. 3 al-Mujāšiʚī, 162 n. 19, 164, 164 n. 23, 187 mulġan, 136, 138, 146 multicausal, 70 multilingual, 609 Muluk, 616, 632 munādā, 214, 217 al-munādī, 221 munĕde, 214 Munīra, 683 al-Munjid, 331, 340, 347 muqaddar, 163 murād, 37 Murray, George W., 565 n. 3, 567 n. 9, 567 n. 13, 575 n. 37, 578, 589 Mūsā, 190, 548, 551–552 Musaylima, 204 mush af, 36 Musharrafa, Musˢtaˢ fa, 434 Musil, Alois, 544, 549 n. 9, 563, 690, 698 Muslim, 25, 29, 37, 42, 79, 92, 104, 189, 191–192, 193 n. 4, 196, 530 Arab tradition, 199 scholarship, 192 Baghdadi speakers, 669 dogma and consensus, 189 faith, 207 narratives, 197 revelation, 191 scholars, 34 Spain, 221 n. 25 speakers, 657 speech, 92 musnad, 177 al-muštakī, 221 mustaqarr, 136–139, 141–142, 145–146 ġayr, 136, 146 mustaqīm, 26, 37 al-mustaqtiʚ, 221 al-mustaʚtī, 221 musulman, 128 mutakallim, 4 al-Mutaˢ rrizī, 239–240
index al-mutasammī, 221 al-mutawallid, 221 mutˢawwalāt, 3 Muʚtazilī, 39 muʚtazilites, 11, 193 muwallad, 115 muxbar, 174 Muysken, P., 293, 295, 302, 302 n. 10, 311 Muzeina, 566, n. 3 Myers-Scotton, C., 291 n. 1, 311, 670, 672 Mzēnah, 566 nn. 7, 9 dialect, 567 n. 12 Mzēnih, 567–568 Mzēniy, 575 N projection, 477 Nabatˢ, 201 Nabatean(s), 197, 200–201 inscriptions, 197 kingdom, 201 language, 201 script, 201 Nabawiyya, 682 an-Nābiġah, 86, 87 n. 23 Nadā Tˢūmān ʙAbū Tāyih, 562 Nagība, 691 nahˢw, 12, 23, 113–114, 118, 121, 123 n. 12, 133 nahˢwa, 118 nahy, 34 najr, 9 n. 7 Nairobi, 620 Najd, 544, 560 n. 38, 563 Namrūd, 196 nāqisˢ, 178 narration(s), 415, 417, 428, 430–432 an-Nasāʙī, 87, 111 nasal, 257, 259–261 nasˢb, 30, 30 n. 2, 32, 34, 41, 47–49, 49 n. 6, 50–51, 55–56, 58, 60, 124, 158, 160, 162 n. 18, 169 n. 26, 175, 227–228, 230, 234, 238 nasbo, 225 nāsˢib, 58, 124 Nāsˢīf al-Yāzijī, 35 Nāsˢīf, Jirjis, 326 n. 16, 331, 345, 364 nassuantes, 230 naʚt, 47, 49 native speaker(s), 72, 94, 101, 527 of Arabic in Israel, 662 Hebrew, 596 n. 6 natural language processing, 367, 370, 389 Arabic, 367 Understanding System, 396
735
nawā, 7 n. 4 nazˢm, 12 Nebajoth/Nabat,ˢ 201 Nederhoff, Mark-Jan, 370, 402 Neeleman, Ad, 475–476, 478–479, 480 n. 5, 481, 481 n. 6, 482, 482 n. 8, 483, 483 n. 10, 484, 486, 495, 497 n. 30, 498 négatif, 519 negation, 14, 378 n. 42, 398, 505 n. 13, 578 n. 42, 694 value, 378–379, 381, 381 n. 51, 382 negative(s), 14, 21, 406–407, 413, 419 participle, 154 sentence, 169 n. 27, 170 n. 29 Negev, 567, 574 n. 32, 575, 575 n. 37, 577–578 dialect, 570 n. 22 type of dialect, 567 neoArabic, 75, 77, 639, 649, 651 Aramaic dialects, 595 n. 3 neologism(s), 465–467, 469–472 Arabic, 471 translations, 467 Nepos, Ferdinandus, 215, 215 n. 12, 242 van Ness, S., 308, 311 Nestorian, 106 nestorianische Kirche, 106 The Netherlands, 565 n. 2 Netherlands-Flemish Institute, 529 neutestamentlich, 105 new terminology, 655, 661 Testament, 106, 189 World, 212 Newmeyer, Frederick J., 693, 695, 698 news, 405, 412 Neyreneuf, Michel, 313, 364 Niederehe, Josef, 210 n. 2, 242, 244 Nigeria, 640–641, 648, 652 Nigerian, 640 Arabic, 639–641 Nijmegen, Arabic corpus, 532 n. 5 Nile valley, 545 n. 2 Nilotic Dinka, 610 speakers, 613 nisba, 194 niyya, 7, 7 n. 4, 151 Nizār, 201 Nizāri(s), 202 nodes, 369 n. 8
736
index
Nöldeke & Schwally, 105, 107 Nöldeke, Theodor, 111, 200 n. 30 nom, 315 n. 4, 362, 504, 504 n. 8, 505, 505 nn. 12, 41, 506 abstrait, 512 n. 27 commun, 508, 512 n. 27 nomad(s), 546 Syrian, 690 nomade(s), 117, 120 d’Orient, 697 nomadism, 545, 563 nombre, 513 nominal, 92, 109, 153, 157, 181, 183, 219 complex, 476 n. 2 constituent, 153, 184–185 declension, 216 element(s), 157, 165, 165 n. 25, 178, 181 ending, 228 event, 476 simplex, 475 n. 1 indefinite, 172, 173 non-referential, 155 paradigm, 214 phrase, 162 referential, 155 sentence(s), 6, 18, 77, 135–138, 144–146, 149, 166, 178, 216 inverted, 154 n. 8 result, 475 n. 1, 476 n. 2 simplex, 476 n. 2 system(s), 659 type, 80, 86, 89–90, 92–93, 98 nominality, 476 nominalization, 293, 483 nominalized clause, 171 phrase, 58 nominalizer, 488–492, 492 n. 24, 495–497 idiosyncratic, 490–492 nominatif, 124, 130 nomination, 507–508, 508 n. 20, 509 n. 22, 520, 522 des entités, 508 des expériences, 508 sémitique nominatiuo, 214 nominatival constituent, 156, 181, 183 indefinite phrase, 173 nominative, 10, 13, 18, 19 n. 15, 137–139, 142, 144–145, 160, 178 n. 37, 215, 227–228, 230, 238, 374 nominativo, 227
nominativus, 221 nonBedouin Colloquial Arabic, 658 compound, 15, 19 concatenative morphology, 498 contrastive compatibility, 667 coreferential, 92 emphatic articulation, 658 phonemes, 658 finiteness, 488 ikāya, 15, 19–22 past verbal patterns, 660 phonetic dictionaries, 657 n. 3 restrictive, 26, 33, 103 clause, 91 Nortier, Jacomine, 297 n. 5, 308, 311 Norwegian, 484 n. 13 Research Council, 209 n. 1 nose, 257, 260–261 notificación, 226 noun(s), 7–8, 13 n. 9, 14, 17 n. 13, 18, 41, 43, 50, 59, 68–69, 84, 88, 92, 95, 102, 108, 135 n. 2, 137–139, 141–142, 144–145, 151–152, 155–156, 156 n. 11, 158 n. 13, 160, 165–167, 177, 180, 213–214, 218, 218 n. 17, 225–230, 230 n. 39, 231, 235, 235 n. 49, 239, 248–252, 299, 302–303, 305, 308, 367, 370, 370 nn. 12–14, 373, 376 n. 34, 381, 383, 390, 396–397, 436–437, 439, 441–447, 451–452; 482 n. 8, 573 abstract, 16, 20, 386, 436 accusative, 8 agentive, 481, 481 n. 6, 482 biradical, 438 clause(s), 68–69, 172 collective, 392 n. 78 colloquial Arabic, 226 common, 373, 382–383 corroborative, 18 definite, 251 definite subject, 150 deverbal, 373–374, 382, 484 n. 13, 488 ends, 227 genitive, 7 indefinite, 169, 173, 175, 251, 381 individuality, 373 multitude, 373, 381–383 nominatival, 149, 173, 173 nn. 30–31, 181 +noun, 165 phrase, 153, 169, 174–175, 368 n. 4, 376, 386, 693 definite, 150
index nominatival, 159 plural (non-human), 155 singular, 155 proper, 213 quality, 373 relation, 373 tetraradical, 442, 446 triradical, 439 uniradical, 448 verbal, 60, 247, 382, 436 vessel, 373 vocative, 41 NOW, 565 n. 2 noyau, 517–518 de la phrase, 518 NP, 695 NSA, 609–618, 620 N-to-D movement, 494 Nuʚayma, Mīxāʙīl, 673, 666 Nubi, 607–608, 621 Nūhˢ, 190, 192, 194–196 Nuijtens, E.T.G., 297 n. 6, 311 Nuʚmān ʚĀšūr, 699 number, 368 n. 4, 370, 371–374, 378, 382–383, 389, 395 numerals, 35, 373, 619 nunated forms, 218 nunation, 225, 248, 251–253 Nūr ad-Dīn, 313, 314 n. 3, 316 n. 5, 364 Nuweiba, 565 n. 3 Nyckees, V., 255 n. 1, 288 Obicini, Thomas, 232, 232 n. 44, 233, 233 n. 48, 234, 238, 242 object(s), 30, 37, 40 n. 10, 56, 68–69, 73–74, 91–92, 109, 214, 217, 380, 392–395, 395 n. 85, 476, 484, 484 n. 13, 493, 494 n. 27, 544, 611, 692 accompaniment (maʚahu), 217 accompanying, 393 clause, 68–69, 102 cognate, 393 direct, 179, 217, 230 n. 39, 238, 293, 306, 309, 378 n. 40, 379–380, 391–392, 682, 697 direct (bihi), 217 from it (minhu), 217 fronted direct, 182 human, 393 n. 80 non-, 393 n. 80 indirect, 293, 380 locative, 217 locative ( fīhi), 217 noun verbal, 293
737
predicate-, 369, 377, 380–381, 383–384, 389–390, 397, 399 preposition-complement, 397–399 prepositional, 379, 391 pronoun, 73 reason (lahu), 217 topic-comment, 377, 383–384, 389–390, 397, 399 objet, 319, 327, 327 n. 18, 335, 337–338, 354, 356–357 double, 357 externe, 354–355 obligatory constituent, 160 fronting, 169 occlusion, 515 n. 31 official, 404, 414, 423, 427–429 language policy, 661 old Arabic, 639, 640 n. 1, 641, 650–651 South Arabian, 597, 599–603 Testament, 105, 108, 595 n. 2, 605 Syriac, 108 World, 212 Omayyade(s), 117 one-to-one equivalent(s), 456, 465 translation(s), 455 onomatopée(s), 517 n. 43, 520–521 onset, 486 n. 16, 487, 491 operants, 8, 10– 11 opération humaine, 503 operator(s), 151, 160–161, 175, 180–181, 183, 237 abstract, 178 Oppenheim, Max Freiherr von, 565 n. 3, 578 oppositions binaires, 515 n. 34, 520 optional constituent, 160 oral articulation, 656 communication, 665 Order of St. Jerome, 210 ordonner, 511 ordre, 501, 521 n. 49 Orel and Stolbova, 604 Orel, Vladimir, 605 organisation binaire, 522 des langues générale, 501, 521–522
738
index
primitive, 520 primordiale, 522 Orient, 128, 527 Oriental languages, 221, 222 n. 27 orientalising terminology, 211 n. 2 Orientalist(s), 220, 527 orientalistes, 130 orthographic, 595, 596 n. 5, 598 n. 11 sign, 217 orthographical, 540 orthography, 189, 368, 448, 540, 598 n. 11, 684 n. 13 Ottoman, 612 Arabic, 619 ougaritique, 316 Owens, Jonathan, 127, 132, 158, 165, 187, 188, 216–217, 228, 228 n. 36, 244, 453, 595 n. 1, 598 n. 11, 607, 621, 639–640, 642, 647, 650 n. 12, 652–653, 665, 670, 673 Oxford Doniach English-Arabic, 458–459, 466, 468, 473 Oyanguren de Santa Inés, 219 n. 19, 242 palatalization, 611 palatalized variant, 657 Palestine, 113, 197, 201 Palestinian Ancient South, 72, 72 n. 2 pan-Arab, 404–405 Pap, L., 306, 311 Papapavlou, A., 300, 303, 311 paradigm(s), 639, 642, 647–648, 650, 650 n. 12 weak final, 642, 646, 651 stability, 651 paradigmatic, 641, 649–650, 650 n. 12, 651 paragraph, 367 paraphrases, 455 parser(s), 369–370 part/whole relationship, 269 participants, 405, 425, 427, 429–431 participe(s), 341, 341 n. 24, 342 actif(s), 341, 341 n. 24, 342, 344, 347–348, 348 n. 30, 349–350 passif, 341–342, 115 participial form, 151, 614 participle(s), 82, 107–108, 150–156, 156 n. 11, 158 n. 13, 160, 163–164, 178–179, 181, 183–186, 295, 373, 498, 588 n. 80, 602 active, 108, 151–152, 152 n. 3, 153–154, 154 n. 7, 157–158, 167, 646
conditional, 375 coordinating, 375 formation, 492 Greek, 108 Greek attributive, 108 passive, 157, 488, 492, 497, 497 n. 30 present, 482 selective, 375 singular, 155 singular feminine, 155 particle(s), 5, 8, 13, 13 n. 9, 14–15, 15 n. 12, 17, 17 n. 13, 18–22, 38, 41, 54, 63, 165, 165 n. 24, 167, 170, 172, 177, 210, 214, 227–229, 229 n. 37, 230–231, 233, 235, 235 n. 49, 237–239, 367, 370, 370 n. 12, 374–375, 376 n. 32, 378, 384, 388, 397, 579 n. 49, 612, 681–682 auxiliary, 292 n. 3, 384 n. 55 conditional, 375 conjunctive conditional, 388 connective, 388 of comparison, 78 coordinating, 374 cumulative, 374 dual-marking, 182 exceptive, ʙillā, 171 interrogative, 152–153, 155–156, 170, 179–180, 184 mā, 238 min, 135 n. 2 negative, 156 relative, 70–72, 76, 86, 95, 108 selective, 374 type, 374 verbal, 614 vocative, 30 particularité, 346 particulas charrantes, 230, 237 particule(s), 504–505, 505 n. 13, 506 Partikel, 69 ʚašīra, 546 passé composé, 331, 332 simple, 332 passif, 115, 343 n. 25 passive(s), 38, 63, 64 n. 17, 231, 235 n. 51, 281, 282 n. 43, 316, 323, 406–407, 419, 441 Pastrana, Juan de, 215 patient, 323, 349, 393, 393 n. 80, 394–395, 395 n. 85 pattern, 370
index Arabic, 444 biradical, 440, 447 heptaradical, 441 hexaradical, 441 morphological, 435–437, 439–450, 452 nominal, 439 pentaradical, 440 tetraradical, 440, 446 triradical, 439–440, 442–444, 446 nominal, 439 uniradical, 440 verbal, 436 Paul V, 221 pausal form, 30 n. 2 pause(s) 219 n. 19, 247–249, 570 rules 248 syntaxique, 510 Payne Smith, S. and R., 107, 111–112 PCCL, 377, 379 Peled, Yishai, 149, 160, 169, 188 Pellat, Charles, 30 n. 3, 123 n. 11 Pellitteri, Antonino, 44 People of the Cave, 190 Perez de Soto, Antonio, 222, 241 perfect, 96, 371, 572, 577, 586 n. 78, 616, 640–643, 645–646, 680–681, 694 n. 27 stems, 645 perfectif, 315 n. 4 perfective, 613 Perfekt asyndetisch, 699 performative, 28, 41 aspects, 41 Persans, 115, 128 Persian, 193, 661 person, 370–374, 378, 380, 382, 389, 395–396 verbal affixes, 611 persona(s), 423–424, 428–429, 431–432 hybrid, 431 private, 428, 430, 432 professional, 432 public, 428, 431–432 personal, 24, 417, 426–432 personne deuxième, 514–515 première, 509, 515 Peter, William, 616 le Petit Robert, 288 Pfaff, 295 Pharaoh, 105, 190 pharyngeal(s), 256, 256 n. 9, 257, 266 n. 28, 275–276, 279 n. 39, 284, 286, 598, 650 n. 12, 658 final, 650
739
philological methods, 219 philology (ʚilm al-luġa), 12 philosophers, 205 philosophie, 502 Phoenician, 597, 599–602 phoneme(s), 10, 256, 273, 284, 368, 370 n. 14, 508, 510, 520, 522, 540, 567–568, 576, 586 n. 70, 613, 640 n. 1, 657–658 Arabic, 368, 371, 371 n. 16 auxiliary, 371 voyelles, 510 consonnes, 510 consonantal, 567 phonemic, 568, 576 n. 38, 598 n. 12, 641 n. 4 phonetic(s), 9, 258, 260–261, 273–274, 281, 286, 571, 650 n. 12 differences of cognates, 660 evolution, 273 variants, 658 vowel system, 658 phonetical, 63 phonetically-conditioned urban/rural Colloquial Arabic, 658 phonétique, 319 phonological, 602, 608, 611–613, 616, 515 n. 34 618–619, 641–642, 649–651 analysis, 656 categories, 655 differences, 656–567 features, 653, 655, 656, 668 systems, 657 phonology, 295, 297, 368, 406–408, 416, 418–420, 442–443, 479–480, 492–496, 497 n. 30, 498, 567, 576, 597, 620, 653–654, 656 Arabic, 490 morpho-, 3 phonotactics, 571 phrase(s) adjective, 376, 376 n. 34, 377, 379–380, 382, 388, 397 n. 89, 504, 506, 506 n. 16 indefinite, 379 n. 46 adverb, 376, 376 n. 30, 377–379, 384–386, 388, 390, 393, 395 adverbial, 485 n. 14 Arabic, 494 complement, 388 conjunctive, 376, 376 n. 30, 384, 388–389 inflectional, 386 n. 63 interjectional, 376 n. 30, 384, 387 nominales, 341 noun, 368 n. 4, 369, 370 n. 12, 376,
740
index
376 n. 33, 377–381, 381 n. 50, 382, 382 n. 53, 383–385, 385 n. 57, 386–388, 391–395, 397, 477, 485, 494 particle, 376, 376 n. 30, 384 prepositional, 369, 376, 376 n. 30, 377–380, 382, 384–387, 390–395 structurée, 517 non-, 517 n. 43 verb, 376–380, 386, 388, 393, 397 nn. 86, 88 verbal, 386, 477, 482, 482 n. 7, 483, 484 n. 13, 485, 493, 495, 497 n. 29 phraseology, 548 Piamenta, Moshe, 67–68, 112 Pidgins, 128, 607, 621 pidgin-créole, 128 pidginisation-créolisation, 128 Pidginization, 607, 621, 652, 699 pilgrimage, 199 Pisa, 84 place, 371, 373, 378 n. 40, 380, 394–397 of pause 249 plaidoirie, 504 n. 7 Plank, Frans, 696 n. 29, 697–698 Plato, 547 Platonic, 39 plosives, 657 plural(s), 227, 374, 383, 397 n. 86, 436 affixes, 611 feminine, 224 n. 31 form(s), 153, 660 nominal, 373 patterns, 659 poem(s), 61, 204, 543 n. 1, 543, 545–548, 548 n. 5, 552, 554, 556, 559, 560 n. 40, 562 couplets, 548 n. 5 hemistich, 548 n. 5 meter, 548, 559 metrically, 548 n. 5 rhyme, 486 n. 16, 548 n. 5, 550 n. 18, 559 scheme, 548 rhyming, 548 n. 5 syllables, 548 n. 5 verse, 548 n. 5 poésie, 123 n. 12, 125–126 arabe ancienne, 323 poet, 189, 543 n. 1, 544–545, 545 n. 3, 547, 553 n. 27, 559–560, 560 n. 38, 561–563 Bedouin, 544–545, 545 nn. 2, 4, 560, 563 Jordanian, 546 poète(s), 117 modernes, 116
poetic(s), 43, 544–545, 547–548, 550 n. 18, 559–562, 578 genres, 204 poetical, 45, 561 poétique, 125, 126 n. 15, poetry, 3 n. 1, 436, 448, 450, 543, 543 n. 1, 544, 545 nn. 3–4, 547, 562–563 Arabic popular, 543–544 Bedouin, 543 n. 1, 544, 560 nn. 38, 40, 563 contemporary, 545 popular, 544, 559 tribal, 561 Jahiliyya, 190 love, 204 popular, 543–544 praise, 204 pre-Islamic, 86, 559 political satire, 543, 559 polysémie, 355, 359 polysemy, 255 n. 1, 367 n. 3, Pope John Paul II, 197 Portius, Simon, 223 n. 30 Portugal, 219 n. 20 Portuguese, 210, 211 n. 2, 291, 294, 298, 304–307, 309 American, 306 Poss-ing, 478, 483, 483 n. 10 construction, 476, 483–484, 495 postdeterminer, 381, 381 nn. 50–51, 382 postmodifier, 381–382, 384–385 pragmata, 33 n. 6 pragmatic, 27–28, 29 n. 1, 33, 33 n. 6, 34, 42 analysis, 36 approach, 33 Gricean, 30 modern, 41 Pragmatist, 40 préceptes, 501 predeterminer, 381–382 prédicat(s), 339, 341 verbaux, 339 predicate(s), 7, 28–29, 29 n. 1, 68, 74, 135–137, 141, 145, 149–150, 155, 158 n. 13, 159, 162–163, 163 n. 21, 165–166, 168, 171–173, 173 n. 31, 216, 230, 368 n 4, 376, 378, 389, 397 n. 86 adjectival, 155–156 adverbial, 150 clauses, 68
index indispensable, 138, 140–141, 145–146 non-verbal, 152 prepositional, 150 pre-subject verbal, 156 subject, 76, 369, 377, 380–381, 383–384, 389–390, 397, 399 order, 162, 172 predicatival constituent(s), 152, 167,179–180 non-verbal, 152 prepositional phrase, 168 relationship, 149, 159–160, 162, 165–166, 180 sentences, 170 n. 29 predicative constituent, 149, 177, 179–181, 184 adverbial/prepositional, 185 prefix(es), 15, 224 n. 31, 262 n. 25, 262, 264, 275, 277, 292, 407, 409, 412, 436, 486, 488, 488 n. 20, 490, 490 n. 22, 492, 492 n. 24, 494, 597, 604, 612, 640 detransitivizing, 488 n. 19 incrementation, 271 prefixation, 17 n. 13 préfixe, 509 préfixé, 315 n. 4, 316, 317–319, 338 présent, 331–332, 342 prefixed, 17 n. 13 preformative(s), 262, 597 prejunctural, 249 premodifier, 378–379, 384–385, 387–389 prepausal mode 247 prepause 249 preposicion, 215, 230 preposition(s), 7, 63, 79, 89, 93, 97, 101–102, 163, 165, 214–218, 229–230, 374–375, 385–386, 389, 391, 484, 497 n. 28, 541, 576–577, 579 n. 47, 581 n. 54, 598, 598 n. 10, 689–690 bi-, 7, 102 dummy, 476 Latin, 216 prepositional, 379 n. 48, 380, 384, 389 n. 68, 391 conjunctive, 389 linker, 385–386 phrase, 54–55, 152, 153 n. 5, 159–160, 162–163, 163 n. 20, 164, 164 n. 23, 167, 171–172, 177, 179, 184 definite, 150 present tense, 224 n. 31 presentations, 397 prestige, 404 prestigious variety of Arabic, 664 presuppositions, 27
741
pre-vocalic position, 647 Prince, Alan, 421, n. 15, 476, 486, 486 n. 17, 488, 490, 495, 497 n. 29, 499 Priscian, 209 private, 403, 405, 423, 427–430 procès, 321–324, 324 n. 13, 325–326, 328 n. 19, 329–330, 332, 335–339, 343, 347–349, 351 n. 32, 354–357 accompli antérieurement, 331 processing, 369, 377 n. 36 automated language, 367, 367 n. 2, 370 n. 14, 396, 398 processus, 321, 324, 324 n. 13, 325–326, 326 n. 17, 327, 329–331, 333, 340, 342–343, 347, 349, 351–352, 357, 359, 361–362 accompli, 332 cognitif, 349 professional, 426–432 progressif, 341, 341 n. 24, 347 projection nominal, 485 verbal, 485 pronominal, 73–74, 97, 571 n. 24, 573 concatenation, 73–74 element, 154–155 system, 659 prononciation pausale, 126, 127 n. 18 pronoun(s), 15 n. 12, 73, 88, 91, 106, 151, 154 nn. 7-8, 164, 164 n. 23, 173, 176, 180, 182, 578 n. 41, 613, 615–616, 687 n. 16 affix, 612–613, 616 affixed, 615 anticipatory, 171, 176 conjunct, 217–218 free and bound, 659 implicit, 151 indefinite, 373, 381–383 interrogative, 373, 381–383 negated, 576 object, 615 suffix, 611 personal, 89, 154, 154 n. 7, 164, 373, 381–383, 612–613, 617 possessive, 613, 615 prefixed, 379 relative, 18, 67, 71, 78, 87 n. 24, 91, 94 n. 27, 98–99, 101, 103–104, 107–108, 152, 576, 373 resumptive, 73, 87 n. 24 Spanish, 218 suffixed, 239, 379, 381 n. 50 Syriac relative, 108
742
index
pronunciation(s), 249, 253, 409–410, 410, n. 8, 411–413, 419 proper names 250 properties phonological, 479 semantic, 479 syntactic, 479, 492 prophet(s), 26, 37, 190–192, 195, 198, 200, 204–206 Muhammad, 189, 191, 193, 195, 198, 200, 202, 204 prophetic language(s), 195, 204 prose contemporaine, 343 prosody, 486, 490 protasis, 377, 486 n. 16 ProtoEthio-Semitic, 600 Hebrew, 596 n. 6, 598 Semitic, 595, 596 nn. 5–6, 597–599, 601, 604 proverb(s), 3 n. 1, 375, 387, 578, 692 proximity (itbā), 48, 52 theory, 56 public, 403, 405, 415, 423–424, 427–432 purposes (aġrād), 9 Q. (Qurān), 155 Qabbāwa, 318, 364 qabīh , 29 qad, 49, 50, 52, 57 qadara, 660 qa/iyye, 657 qāfiya muqayyada, 126 mutlaqa, 126, 126 n. 15 Qahtā n, 202, 204 al-Qahtani, 661, 673 qalla, 19 qallamā, 17, 19 Qāmūs, 257 al-Qāmūs al-Muhīt , 288 qānūn, 42 qara, 660 qaraa, 660 qat, 49 n. 5, 50, 50 n. 7 Qatar, 532 qawl, 47, 58–59 qawmiyye, 657 al-Qayrawān, 84 Qays, 201 q'ltu and g'l't dialects, 658 qillat al-ijtimā, 52 qirāa, 61 qirāāt, 46, 48, 51, 652
qiri, 660 qisas al-anbiyā, 192 qiyās lafzī, 11 qualité, 320, 327 n. 18, 328, 345–346 constante, 337 constitutif, 338 durable, 327–328, 337 inhérente naturelle, 320, 338 permanente, 327–328 temporaire, 327 transitoire, 327 quantifiers, 373 quantitatives, 397 quantity, 398 Quechua, 484 n. 13 Queiroz, A., 304–305, 311 Quiniou, Y., 274 n. 35, 288 Qumranic Hebrew, 600 Qurān, 25–26, 29, 36–37, 45–49, 51–54, 57, 61, 64, 64 n. 17, 77, 79, 86–87, 92, 105–106, 109, 189–192, 196, 205–207, 247-248, 611, 657 ajamī, 190 Arabic, 198, 205 exegesis of, 192–193 language of, 189–190 Q 3/180, 36 Q 67:1, 105 Q 7:54, 105 grammatical commentary, 45 vers, 193, 198 Qurānic, 45–47, 49–50, 52–53, 55–56, 60, 87–88, 105–106, 108, 194 excerpts, 45 exegesis, 62–63 linguistic outlook, 191 message, 200 readings, 47 revelation, 190, 205–206 sciences, 49 n. 5 text, 46, 58, 63, 155 traditions, extra-, 191 verses, 19 n. 17 Qurayš, 120, 125, 202, 206 Qušayr, 117 Qutrub, 126–127 Rabbi David (i.e. Qimhi), 209 Rabin, Chaim, 120 n. 4, 133, 640 n. 1, 652 racine(s), 317–318, 345, 507–508, 508 nn. 20–21, 509, 509 nn. 22–23, 510, 510 n. 24, 511–516, 520, 521 n. 49, 522 consonnes, 513, 516
index de consonnes, 508 n. 20, 509 n. 22 de syllabes, 508 n. 20, 509 nn. 22–23 de voyelles, 508 n. 20 monoconsonantiques, 515, 515 n. 32, 516 primitives, 507 proto-, 515–516 triconsonantique, 516 radical(s), 253, 256–258, 262, 269–270, 274, 277, 277 n. 38, 282, 285, 287, 371–372, 435, 440–441, 443 n. 8, 444, 446, 450 augmented, 436, 440–442 base, 435 basic, 436, 441, 447 final 252 middle, 445–446 non-ambiguous, 258 nn. 16–17, primary, 441 second, 446 original, 441 primary, 440 three-, 435 Turkic, 441 radicale(s), 314–315, 317, 353 n. 34, 511 n. 26 consonne(s), 313, 318–319, 338, 344, 345 n. 28, 353 deuxième, 317–319, 345, 345 n. 28 première, 318 troisième, 318 radio broadcast 251 Syrian 248 raf ʚ, 29, 33, 46, 48, 52, 56, 58–60, 149, 152–154, 156–160, 160 n. 15, 161, 162 n. 18, 167, 170 n. 27, 171, 175–176, 180–181, 183–185, 225, 227–228, 230, 234, 238 case, 161, 181, 183, 186 ending, 46, 46 n. 3, 49 n. 6, 50, 58, 158 rāfiʚ, 55, 58–59, 161, 167, 175 Rāġib, Yūsuf, 93, 111 rajaz, 204 Ramadan, 609, 616, 619 ar-Ramlah, 566, 566 n. 7, 578 range, 393, 395 Rappaport Hovav, Malka, 391 n. 73, 401 Rās íadr, 566 Rās Sˢadr, 566 n. 7, 575, 575 n. 37 Rashīd al-Kīlānī, 548, 556 rasm, 125 rasūl, 191 rāteb, 667
743
reading oral 247 style, 411–412, 414, 425 reasons (ʚilal), 9 recitation 247–249 Reckendorf, Hermann, 77, 112 rection, 10–11, 15–17, 19 Red Sea, 561 Reese, 371 n. 17 reflexive, 271, 277, 441 réflexivité, 313 regular verb patterns, 660 verbal sentence, 166 régularité(s), 356, 507, 511 sémantique(s), 313, 356 regularities, 368, 389 relation(s) biunivoque, 514, 517, 517 n. 44, 518–520, 520 n. 47, 521 n. 49 causal, 276 univoques, 517–520 relationships, 368–369, 376, 381–382 relative, 2, 6, 13, 26, 33–34, 36, 38–39, 42–43 clause, 68–69, 71–72, 76–77, 87, 87 n. 24, 88–89, 91–93, 97–98, 103–105, 107–109 asyndetic, 151–152 causal, 104 coreferential, 98 non-restrictive, 98 Relativpronomen, 85, 87n. 24 Relativsatz, 69, 75, 106 syndetischer, 75 Relativsatzgefüge, 70, 74 religious arengas (xutˢbas), 89 language, 104 orders, 221 scholars, 43 Renaissance, 209, 213 Rendsbourg, G.A., 595 nn. 1–2, 600–601, 602 n. 16 reported speech, 676, 676 n. 3, 678, 683, 685, 687–689 representation morphophonological, 479–480 morphosyntactic, 479–480 phonological, 479–480 semantic, 479 syntactic, 479 res, 505 n. 11, 512–513, 517, 519, 519 n. 46, 520, 522
744
index
animée, 514 banales, 514 communes, 513 d’ostension, 515 de représentation, 515 générales, 515 montrées, 515 représentées, 515 vagues, 515 restriction, 398 résultat, 330–331 résultatif, 329 resumptive, 8, 87 n. 24 retrieval information, 369 n. 8, 389 n. 69 Reuchlin, Johannes, 209, 218, 231 n. 14, 242 Reuland, Eric, 483 n. 10, 499 de Reuse W., 308, 310 revelation(s), 190–194, 198, 204–205 pre-Arabic, 198 revelationist theory, 193 tradition, 194 Rhema-Thema, 75–76 rhetoricians, 46 rhyme, 486 n. 1, 548 n. 5 scheme(s), 436, 450 Ridruejo, Emilio, 210 n. 2 rime absolue, 126 interne, 127 liée, 126 Ritchie, C., 671, 673 Ritchie and Bhatia, 653 Ritter, Elizabeth, 493, 499 Rizzi y Franceschi, Mariano, 229 n. 37 Ritter, Helmut, 23 Rmēlāt, 569 n. 17 Rodrigues, J., 304, 311 Rodrigues, João, 210, 242 Roeder, Larry, 565 n. 3 Roldán, A., 243 Roman(s), 121 n. 8, 228 n. 35, 314, 316, 316 n. 5, 321 n. 11, 341 n. 24, 347, 349 n. 31, 353, 364, 501, 505 n. 13, 508 n. 21, 509 n. 22, 523 Romance, 212 n. 7 romanes, langues, 119 Romani, 294 Rome, 223 n. 28, 232, 232 n. 44, 233, 235, 238, 240, 243 Romero, Juan Antonio, 223 n. 30 root(s), 8, 9 n. 7, 13, 56, 203, 216, 231 n. 41, 239, 286, 370, 370 n. 14, 371,
407, 435–436, 446, 448, 450, 480, 486–489, 491, 496, 498, 568, 580 nn. 50, 53, 581 n. 54, 586 n. 77, 596 nn. 6–7, 597, 598 n. 10, 599 nn. 13, 600–601, 604, 604 n. 17; 650 n. 12 bilateral, 486 n. 15 consonant(s), 489, 489 n. 21, 491 consonantal, 370 n. 14, 395 nominal, 438 mono-, 596 quadri-, 287 tri-, 286, 287 paradigmatical, 435 quadriliteral, 486 n. 15, 497 n. 29 strong, 251 triradical, 442, 488 verbal, 438, 494 Rosenbaum, Gabriel M., 662, 665–666, 673 Rosenhouse, Judith, 595 n. 1, 596 n. 6, 653–654, 655 n. 2, 656–658, 660–663, 668, 672–673 Rosenthal, Franz, 544, 563 Roth, Heinrich, 209, 242 Roth-Laly, Arlette, 648, 652 rubba, 19 rubbamā, 17 Rubin, Aaron D., 70, 112, 595 n. 1, 601 Rubin, Uri, 208 rules agreement, 367 n. 1 concord, 367 n. 1 ar-Rummānī, 34–35, 43, 504 n. 8 rural, 657 dialects, 657 Russian, 294, 546, 561 Rwala, 563, 690, 698 ar-Ryēnih, 566 n. 7 sāʚa, 658 Saad, George Nehmeh, 369, 371 n. 15, 381, 393–394, 394 n. 81, 396 n. 85, 399, 402 Saba, 199, 202 sabab, 114 sabʚat ʙahˢ ruf, 64 n. 17 Sacy, Sylvestre de, 314, 364 Sad ad-Dīn Wahba, 699–700 sˢadaqa, 31 Sadat, Anwar, 544 Saddam Hussein, 561 Šādī Šarīf al-Jazīrī, 528 šāf, 667 Safā Abd al-Munim, 699 as-Safadī, 200 n. 30
index aš-Šāfiī, 26, 205, 205 n. 41 al-Saffār, 369 n. 9, 402 Saguer, Abderrahim, 255, 255 n. 2, 257 n. 14, 258, 262, 262 n. 24, 288–289, 400 as-Sāhibī, 125, 131, 505 n. 12, 507 nn. 18–19, 513 n. 28 Sahīh, 78, 90 Saint-Barthélémy, 129 as-Sakkākī, 28 šakl, 217 sakrān, 659 sakrāne, 659 Salamanca, 221 Sālih, Subhī, 195, 206 n. 49 salīqiyya, 9 n. 7 Saloniki, 82 Sām, 196 Samānah dialect(s), 567, 572 n. 25 Sāmih Farag, 699 San Diego, 222 San Pietro di Montorio, 211 n. 2 sandū, 658 sane, sini, 658 Sanskrit grammars of, 209 Santino, J., 618, 637 São Paulo, 219 n. 20, al-Sāqī, FāJil, 370 n. 13, 402 Sarābīt al-Xādim, 565 n. 3, 566 n. 6, 578 Sarah, 197 Šarīf al-Alfī, 528 šartˢ (cause), 54 aš-Šartūnī, Rašīd, 314, 318, 364 šarwā, 21 satirical, 528 Saudi Arabia, 545, 561–562, 661, 673 Saudi(s), 545, 561–563 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 502, 523 Sawālhah, 567 n. 9 Šawqī D ayf, 22 Saxon genitive, 476 šayʙ wāhˢ id, 16 aš-Šaybānī, 40, 43 Schabert, Peter, 100, 112 Schatz, H., 308, 311 Schepper, Hugo de, 243 Schmidt, Richard, 418 n. 13, 420, 434 Schnurrer, 210 n. 2, 212 nn. 3–5, 220, 220 nn. 21–22, 222–223 scholars of religious Law, 205 Schregle, Götz, 473 Schuler, Bernard, 504 n. 7, 523 Schulz, David, 408 n. 7, 434 schwa(s), 219 n. 19, 296
745
Schwenter, Scott, 681 n. 9, 698 science, 661 Seaman, P.D., 302–304, 307, 311 Searle and Austin, 28 Seattle, 595 n. 1 Second World War, 544 Segeral, 256, 289 Sellheim, Rudolf, 239 Selkirk, Elizabeth, 486 n. 16, 499 semantic(s), 3, 8, 14–15, 22, 48–49, 70–71, 76, 86, 87 n. 24, 91, 96–98, 101, 103–104, 255 nn. 1, 5, 258, 261, 262 n. 25, 263–265, 269–270, 272–275, 277–278, 281, 284–287, 367–368, 369 nn. 7–8, 370, 370 n. 12, 371, 387, 389–391, 393, 397–399, 421, 479, 496, 656, 684–687, 694–695 analysis, 48, 49 n. 5 aspects, 3, 22 content, 684, 694 n. 27, 695–696 differences, 656, 666 elements, 5 fields, 70, 661, 665, 667, 670 finite, 370, 396 generalization, 93 level, 8 static, 389, 389 n. 69, 390 status of commands, 33 semantically, 15, 54, 70, 96, 103, 103 n. 31 deficient verb, 178 sémantique, 314, 316, 319 arabe, 324 semicolon, 219 n. 19 semiconsonants, 448 Semitic, 197, 201, 595, 597–598, 598 n. 10, 599, 599 n. 13, 604–605 ancient, 597 East, 598 languages, 108 Proto-, 595, 596 nn. 5–6, 597–599, 599 n. 13, 600–601, 604, 657, 672 Proto-Ethio-, 600 West, 108 sémitiques, langues, 125 Semitist, 595 señal, 217, 217 n. 15, 226 de demostración, 217 n. 15, 226 n. 34 sens, 313, 315, 319, 322 n. 12, 324, 326, 328, 330, 333, 339–344, 349, 352, 354–358, 360–362 abstract, 508 grammatical, 324, 358, 360–362 grammaticaux, 359, 362 lexical, 330, 334, 340 lexicaux, 362
746
index
sense(s), 258–259, 260 n. 21, 261, 263–265, 267–270, 272, 274–279, 281–282 n. 42, 283–286 abstract, 275 contradictory, 272 homonymic, 263, 266, 270 static, 264 sentence, 367 -initial position, 154, 156, 161, 170 n. 29, 172, 174, 185 nominal, 368 n. 4, 376, 376 n. 31, 377, 384, 388–389, 393, 397, 399 medieval theory of, 150, 156 meaning, 28, 38 type(s), 149–150, 156–158, 158 n. 13, 162, 164–168, 173 n. 31, 176–177, 179–181, 183–185, 185 n. 38, 376, 398–399 Arabic, 157, 185 verbal, 368 n. 4, 376, 376 n. 31, 377–378, 384, 387–389, 393, 397, 399 separator, 249 Serabit el-Khadim, 565 n. 3 Serhane, R., 257 n. 14, 288, 289 serial verb construction(s), 675, 692, 694 n. 26, 698 SVC, 692–696 serial verbs, 692, 698–699 serialization, 675 Seuren, Pieter, 696, 698 Seville, 211 n. 2, 221–222 Šēx ʚImēša, 680 Sezgin, Fuat, 10, 23 Shawqi Daif, 404, 404, n. 2, 405 Sheba, 603 Shiblī, 198 n. 22 Shiites, 193, 206 Shīth, 195 Shraybom-Shivtiel, 655, 661, 668, 673 Shuʚayb, 195 Sībawayhi, 3, 3 n. 1, 4, 4 n. 2, 5–6, 6 n. 3, 7, 7 n. 5, 8, 10, 12–15, 15 nn. 11–12, 17–18, 18 n. 14, 19, 19 n. 15, 20, 21–23, 25–28, 28 n. 1, 29, 29 n. 1, 30, 30 n. 3, 31–33, 33 nn. 4–5, 34–43, 45, 52, 62, 62 n. 15, 64, 64 n. 17, 129, 135, 135 n. 2, 136–138, 138 n. 19, 139, 139 n. 25, 140–141, 141 n. 32–33, 142, 142 n. 39, 143, 143 n. 43, 144 nn. 49–51, 145–147, 149, 151–152, 152 n. 3, 153, 156, 156 n. 11, 158–159, 159 n. 14, 160–162, 162 n. 18, 167, 175, 178, 180, 182, 184, 187, 216–217,
227, 232, 238–240, 316, 318, 320 n. 9, 329, 336 n. 22, 338, 338 n. 23, 345 n. 27, 353, 353 n. 34, 362, 368 n. 6, 370 n. 13, 378 n. 40, 402, 504, 504 n. 8, 505, 505 n. 12, 523 sibilant(s), 262, 407, 407, n. 5, 409, 413, 418–419 pronunciation, 409–410, 410, n. 8, 420 sˢifa, 54, 140, 151, 157, 169, 169 n. 26, 173 n. 30, 174 mušabbaha, 333, 341–342 signifiant(s), 507–508, 508 n. 21, 510, 513, 520, 521 n. 49, 522 de cas, 510 de l’animéité, 513 de mode, 509 du temps, 513 signifié(s), 509–510, 520, 521 n. 49, 522 sˢila, 59 Silesia, Dominicus Germanus of/de, 211 n. 2, 221, 223, 241 Simon, Udo, 28, 44 sˢināʚa, 3, 4 n. 1 Sinai, 543 n. 1, 545, 545 n. 4, 560 n. 38, 563, 565, 566 n. 7, 9, 567 n. 9, 568, 572–574, 574 n. 32, 575, 575 n. 34, 577–578, 586 n. 70, 587, 587 n. 79 bedouin dialect(s), 568, 571 Sinaitic, 567–568 Singer, Hans-Rudolf, 100, 100 n. 29, 112 single phrase, 164 word, 18 singular, 157, 227, 380, 383, 397 n. 86, 659 n. 4, 660 feminine, 224 n. 31 form, 153 as-Sīrāfī, 44, 117, 136 n. 8, 143 n. 43, 144 n. 48, 145, 147, 164 n. 23, 336 n. 22 aš-Širbīnī, 37, 44 Šlēwīhˢ, 563 slots, 377–380, 382, 385–389 Smith-Stark, Thomas, 219, 244 Sobelman and Harrell, 596 Sobelman, Harvey, 605 social differentiation, 408 sociality, 398 Socin, Albert, 544, 563 sociolinguistics, 291, 297, 307–308, 652, 648 sociolinguistique(s), 121, 123–124 américaine, 129 Soden, Wolfram von, 605
index Somekh, Sasson, 665, 673 sonorant(s), 256 n. 6, 257, 257 n. 12, 269, 282 non-, 257 n. 12 non-voiced, 256 n. 7 voiced, 257 n. 12 Soqotri, 604 n. 17 sorrow, 397 Souchne, 690 Soudan, Sud, 128 Soukhne, 697 sound-related interjections, 696–697 source, 380, 392–395 language, 455–457, 466–467 sourdité, 515 n. 31 southern Sinai, 565 n. 2, 566–567, 567 n. 12, 573, 573 n. 29, 575 n. 35 dialects, 567, 568 n. 14 southern Sinaitic dialects, 568 Southern Sudan, 609–610 Sowayan, Saad Abdallah, 544, 563 Spain, 210, 211 n. 2, 220, 223 n. 28, 639 Spanish, 210, 210 n. 2, 212, 218, 222–223, 223 n. 30, 225, 231, 294, 296, 661 tradition, 212 Sparvenfeldius, Johannes Gabriel, 220, 220 n. 23 speaker’s awareness, 5, 8, 12, 17, 20, 22 speech(es) acts, 27 community(ies) 404 Arabic, 403 context(s), 403–405, 410, 410, n. 8, 413, 417, 423, 432–433 event, 249–250 sounds, 657 spontaneous, 427 style(s), 406, 410, 414–415, 419–420, 422, 426–427, 427 n. 17, 429, 431–432 religious, 251 Spitaler, Anton, 21, 27–29, 32–35, 47, 68–72, 74–75, 78, 78 n. 3, 86, 92–94, 97–100, 105 n. 33, 112, 596 n. 6, 605 Sprenger, Aloïs, 125 stabilité formelle, 317 standard, 404 variety, 403 state construct, 375 statif, 328 status (manzila), 7 stem(s), 371, 395, 436, 441–442, 442
747
n. 6, 444, 481, 486, 486 n. 17, 487, 496, 640–641, 641 n. 4, 643, 643 n. 9, 644–647, 649, 650 n. 12 I, 488, 492 II, 490–492, 497 III, 490–492, 492 n. 25 V, 491–492, 497 VI, 492, 497, 497 n. 29 IV, 489 V, 488, 490–492, 492 n. 24, 497 n. 29 VI, 488, 490–492, 492 n. 24, 497 n. 29 VII, 488 n. 19, 496 VIII, 488 nn. 19–20 X, 488 Arabic, 489 base, 372–373, 488, 491 causative, 262 denominative, 262 derived, 372–373 extension, 296–297, 299 final weak, 647 laryngeal, 646 perfect, 645 perfective, 486–487 quadriliteral, 497 n. 29 reflexive, 262 verb, 478, 488 Stephen, 610, 618–620, 634, 638 Stetkevych, Jaroslav, 654, 661, 673 Stewart, Frank Henderson, 578, 580 n. 53, 584 n. 67, 586 n. 70, 591 n. 89, 592 n. 90 Stockholm, 222 Stoic, 33, 33 n. 6 Stolbova, Olga V., 605 stop(s) 407, 409, 418–419 glottal, 407 uvular, 407 Strängnäs, 222 strategy conversational, 417 stylistic, 417 stress, 18 n. 14, 21, 569–572, 572 n. 25, 576, 591 n. 87, 617 on the penultimate syllable, 219 n. 19 stressed, 540, 569–571, 573–574 strike a blow to, 255–257, 259–260, 263–266, 270, 281–282, 285–286 structuration binaire, 520–521 structure(s) complement, 369, 369 n. 7, 379–380, 393 n. 79, 395–396, 398–399 verbal, 369, 378–380, 393 n. 79
748
index
exclamative(s), 117, 124 interrogative(s), 117, 124 morphological, 475, 495 phonological, 480 n. 5, 481, 483, 488 radicale, 519 syntactic, 480 n. 5, 481–483, 492, 494–495, 497–498 syntaxiques, 506 n. 15 style(s) casual, 405, 410–411, 427 conversational, 418, 427 differentiation, 429 formal, 410–411 shift, 415, 417 stylistics (balāġa), 11–12, 368 subject, 18, 28–29, 29 n. 1, 29, 38, 68, 73–74, 89, 91–92, 96–98, 102, 104, 136–138, 145–146, 149, 152–154, 154 n. 6, 155–156, 158, 158 n. 13, 159–160, 162, 165–168, 171, 173 n. 31, 175, 181, 184, 210, 214, 230, 230 n. 39, 238, 397 n. 86, 476, 484, 544, 559, 694, 694 n. 26 clause, 68, 102, 154 n. 7 definite, 150, 168 explicit, 394 human, 96 implicit, 394 n. 84 indefinite, 150 nominal, 55, 58 position, pre-, 155 predicate relation, 68 Subjekt, 73–75 Subjektssätze, 10 subjonctif, 124 subjunctive, 10, 16, 23, 228, 230 n. 39 subordinate clause(s), 6–7, 9, 87 n. 24, 89, 91–92, 104, 109, 687 causal, 91 substantival clauses, 74 substantive clause, 71–72 subordination, 388, 517–518, 520 subordinators, 388 subordonnants, 519 succession d’états, 326, 331 Sud Soudan, 621 Sudan, 619, 640–641 Arabic, 685 n. 14 southern, 639 Sudanese, 614 Northern, 608–609, 611, 620 South, 607 Southern, 608–609 Southerners, 608
Sudanic, 640 Arabic, 640, 648 WSA, 649–650, 650 n. 12, 651, 651 n. 13 suffix(es), 15, 292, 292 n. 2, 293–294, 296, 298, 436–437, 441–442, 444–445, 450, 478, 480–481, 481 n. 6, 482–483, 486, 494, 494 n. 27, 568 n. 14, 571 n. 24, 572–573, 581 n. 56, 592 n. 91, 611, 640 n. 2, 643 n. 9, 645–646, 648–649, 650 n. 12 agentive -at, 644, 646 C-initial, 644 C-initial subject, 644 diminutive, 482 n. 8 English, 480–481 final V-initial, 643 finite, 488 first person, 541 future, b-, 224 n. 31 inflectional, 249, 294 infinitive, 296 -kiy, 568 n. 14 nominalizing, 484 n. 13 non-finite, 482, 488, 490 n. 22, 491–492, 495, 497 non-finiteness, 489, 496 object, 645–646 paradigmal, 444 past tense, 442 plural, 645 pronoun, 576 -š, 688, 690 subject, 643 n. 8 person, 643 syntactic, 482 template, 488 verbal, 298 V-initial, 644–645 suffixation, 19 suffixe(s), 509, 612 C-initial, 644–645, 648 C-initial subject, 647 object, 646, 646 n. 10 relateur, 126, 128 n. 18 subject, 643, 646 V-initial, 644, 647–649 V-initial subject, 647 verbal, 612, 640, 643 suffixé, 315, 315 n. 4, 316–317, 331–332, 334 suffixed, 19, 568, 572–573, 575, 615, 646 n. 10 object bound pronouns, 659 preposition(s), 576–577, 579 nn. 46–47
index sujet, 123 n. 12, 316, 321 n. 11, 329, 335–337, 347, 521 n. 49 extérieure, 336 grammatical, 321–323, 329, 338, 351 n. 32, 354–357 humain, 337, 345–346, 351, 351 n. 32, 352 non-humain, 346, 351–352, 356 intérieur, 335–336, 356 sukūn, 218, 230, 253, 371 Suleiman, Yasir, 9 n. 7, 23, 661, 673 Sumerian, 197 summarizing text-, 369 n. 8 sundūq, 658, 664 sunletters, 574 sunna, 42 support, 398 Sura, 190–191, 193–194, 198 sūrat Yāsīn, 195 surprise, 397 Suryāna, 194 suryāniyya, 194 as-Suyūtīˢ , 10 n. 8, 17, 17 n. 13, 23, 120 n. 5, 131, 192, 194 n. 8–9, 195 n. 10, 198 n. 24, 199 n. 26, 200 nn. 29–30, 203 n. 37, 205 n. 42, 208 Swadesh, Morris, 667, 673 Swanson, D., 298, 311 Sweden, 222 Shˢeri, 604 n. 17 syllabe(s), 508, 509 n. 23, 510, 511 n. 26, 520, 522, 573 open, 57, 570, 570 n. 21, 571, 574, 598 closed, 570 nn. 22–23, 574 syllable(s), 18 n. 14, 219 n. 19, 548 n. 5 closed, 598 CVC, 490 CVV, 490 extrametrical, 489, 491 final, 617 penultimate, 645 synonyms, 38 syntactic, 9, 16, 33, 50, 62 n. 15, 68, 73, 77, 79, 90–93, 96, 101–104, 135, 141, 144 n. 44, 611, 675, 677, 687, 692, 694 n. 27, 695–696 analysis of sentences, 174 constructions, 135, 141, 144 context, 86, 91 feature, 92 non-human, 96 object, 92
749
positions, 214 relations, 12 shift, 91 structure, 50, 62 n. 15 subject, 96 syntactical, 8, 11–14, 19 n. 17, 30, 42, 72, 76, 93–94, 106–107, 676, 695 analysis, 11, 13 constructions, 79 ramifications, 18 rules, 12 structure, 687 syntactico-semantic, 3 syntaktisch, 69, 75 syntax, 12, 17, 21 28 n. 1, 29, 33, 35, 62 n. 15, 72, 104, 212, 229, 232, 235, 367–369, 369 n. 7, 370, 371, 373–376, 378, 383–384, 387–391, 393, 396, 398, 406–407, 412, 416, 418–420, 431, 475, 477, 479, 492, 495–496, 497 n. 30, 527, 654 morpho-, 3 syntaxe, 120, 133, 316, 510 de position, 120 syntaxique, 126–127 Syria, 532, 546, 557 n. 35 Syriac, 41–44 105, 105 n. 32, 106–109, 193–196, 201–203, 600–601 doxology(ies), 107–108 New Testament, 107 Nūhˢ’s, 192 perfect, 103 relative, 43 script, 200 nomads, 690 Syrian, 220 Syrie, 113 Syrien, 697 syrisch, 105 Syro-Lebanese Colloquial Arabic, 667 dialects, 667 region, 667 varieties, 667 system(s) generative, 479 natural language, 368 nominal, 487 verbal, 487 système(s) de communication, 510–511, 518–520, 520 n. 47 de nomination, 508 n. 21, 510–512, 514, 516, 519, 520 n. 47
750 matériels, 506 n. 14 syllabique, 509 n. 23, 510, 513 universel, 518 Systemzwang, 569, 596 n. 6 tā marbūta, 128 n. 18, 248–250, 571, 658–659 tā’ mabsūta, 250 taajjub, 117 at -_aālibī, 199 at-Tabarī, 45, 53–57, 63–64, 193, 196, 196 n. 14 tabīa, 39 tâches, 510–511 sémantiques, 505 Täckholm, Vivi, 578 tadiya, 158, 178 n. 37, 185 tadmīn, 116 tafsīr, 37, 51, 156, 193 tah qīq, 507 n. 18 tah rīf, 194–195 Taine-Cheich, Catherine, 653, 670, 673 tajwīd, 126 talabtak, 659 talabtuka, 659 tālamā, 19 n. 16 talīl, 9 n. 7 Talmon, Rafael, 62 n. 15, 65, 152 n. 4, 159, 161 n. 17, 173 n. 30, 175 n. 33, 188, 444, 453 _amānūn, 195 Tamil language, 210 Tamīm, 120, 126 n. 15 Tamīmī, 9, 16 Tamis, A., 302, 311 tamyīz, 138, 138 n. 21, 140, 146, 217 _amūd, 202–203 tanwīn, 126 n. 15, 126–127, 217, 225, 509, 515 n. 33 taqdīm, 120, 149, 161, 168–169 wa-taxīr, 149, 161 wa-tarīx, 120 taqdīr, 5–6, 6 n. 3, 7, 7 n. 5, 8, 11, 142–143, 143 n. 41, 146–147, 151, 156, 164 _aqīf, 199 Tarābīn, 566 n. 9, 575, 575 n. 37 dialects, 567, 569 n. 17 target, 393, 395 language, 456, 466 Tārīx, 186 n. 14, 198 n. 21, 199 n. 22 Tasm, 202, 203 Tassa, 277 n. 38
index tat niya, 4 tawādu, 39, 192 tawahhum, 8 n. 6 Tawfiq al-Hakim, 666 tawlīd, 115 tawqīf, 39, 192, 192 n. 3 Tayāhah, 566 n. 9 dialects, 567 tayīn, 170 at-Tayyib, Muhammad Sulaymān, 565 n. 3, 566 nn. 4, 7, 577 technical and scientific vocabulary, 656 Teixidor, J., 287 n. 50, 289 television broadcast 251 news 248 Tell Amarna, 316 temĭç, 217 n. 14 temiz, 210, 217 template(s), 486, 486 n. 17, 490–491 CV-, 486 prosodic, 486–487, 494 stem, 488–490, 497 n. 29 stem I, 488 stem II, 488, 491, 497 stem V, 497 verbal, 490 temple of Hathor, 566 n. 6 temporal markers, 619 temps, 504–507, 511, 512 n. 27, 513, 517 n. 41, 517, 517 n. 41, 519–520, 522 général, 515 tenifa, 210 tenivofa, 210 tense, 248, 251–252, 294, 370–371, 371 n. 17, 372, 384 n. 55, 389, 395 mood, 384 past, 437 present, 294 Terabin, 567 n. 13 terminals non-, 367 terminological, 62 terminology, 47 n. 4, 62 Texas, 560, 560 n. 41 text data, 376, 390 n. 70 Arabic, 367, 395, 398–399 textes arabes médiévaux, 315 texts religious, 411 textuality, 425, 432
index Theodory, Constantin, 473 theologians, 205 théorie du levier, 501 Theory of Matrices and Etymons, 255, 272 Thom, 506 n. 15 Thomason, S.G., 294, 311, 665, 673 Thomason and Kaufman, 665 Tibériade, 113 tier autosegmental, 488, 498 prosodic, 494–495 segmental, 488–489, 495–496 syllabic, 489 tightening, 256, 284, 286 Tigre, 128 Tīh, 566 Tihama, 650 time, 373, 380, 394–396, 398, 522 Tingstadius, Johan Adam, 210 n. 2, 222, 222 n. 27 TMA, 611, 614–616 token, 29 Toledano, Moses, 81, 111 Toledo, 82 tongue, 256 n. 10, 257, 257 n. 13, 269–270, 275–278, 280–283, 286, 371 topic(s), 368 n. 4, 376, 376 n. 33, 377, 377 nn. 37–38, 405, n. 3, 414–417, 421, 423–429, 431–433 agent, 376 n. 31 personal, 414 shift , 417, 427 Torre, Patricio José de, 220 Tosco, Mauro, 607, 621 Tottoli, Roberto, 208 Toulouse, 221 traction, 257, 260–261 tradition(s), 77–78, 87, 90, 92–93 arabe, 114, 118, 507, 509 Arab-Islamic 247 grammatical Arabic, 373, 378, 378 n. 40, 380 grammaticale arabe, 503 n. 6, 504 n. 10, 506–507, 507 n. 19, 513, 519 n. 45 non-, 509 orientaliste, 507 sunan, 205 traditional Literary Arabic articulation, 657 phonological system, 659
751
traditionists, 199 trait commun, 503 transitif(s), 115, 337, 343 transitive, 247 transitivité, 313–314, 314 n. 3, 319–320, 336, 336 n. 22, 343, 344, 349–350, 521 n. 49 directe, 320, 337 indirecte, 320, 337 transitivity, 379, 379 n. 44, 380–382, 391, 435, 441 translation(s), 456–458, 465–467, 469–470, 473 Arabic, 456–459, 462, 471 English, 457, 467–468 equivalent(s), 457–458, 466, 471–472 of foreign words, 661 French, 457 German, 457 profile(s), 467–470 unidirectional, 456 tree conceptual, 396 lexicogenetic, 269–270, 276, 278, 280–281, 286 semantic, 396 structures, 477 syntactic, 494 Treffers-Daller, 299 n. 9, 311 tribal, 544–545, 555, 558–559, 561–563 community, 201 history, 201, 204 tribales, 129 tribe(s), 189, 195, 199–200, 559, 561, 563, 565, 566 nn. 3–4, 569, 571, 586 n. 71, 589 n. 82, 601, 626 Arab, 192, 201 Arab Canaanite, 197 Arabic-speaking, 198 bedouin Sinai, 577 Canaanite, 197 Jordanian, 546 Jurhum, 197–200 South Arabic, 202 sub-, 203 Yamani, 202 tribu de la région de la Mecque, 117 triptote, 124–125, 127 Troupeau, Gérard, 6 n. 3, 7 n. 4, 23, 38, 44, 141 n. 32, 148, 234, 244, 504 n. 8, 523
752
index
Truckenbrodt, Hubert, 486 n. 16, 499 Tubayq, 561–562 Tubba kings of, 203 Tunis, 84 Tunisia, 101, 690 Turbāniy, 575 n. 37, 576–577, 580 n. 53 Turcs, 128 Turkey, 640 Turkic, 435–438, 442–443, 446, 446 n. 10, 448–450 Turkish, 294–295, 568, 661, 690, 693 n. 23, 679 n. 7 Turku, 607, 621 Twi, 679 n. 7 Ubayl, 195 Ubayy b. Kab, 49 n. 6, 56, 56 n. 12, 61 Uganda, 608, 621 Ugaritic, 597 n. 8, 597, 599–603 uira, 667 UK, 561 ulqiyat, 61 Umayyim, 203 Umm al-Jimāl, 126 n. 16 Umm Anwar, 683 umma, 404, 404, n. 2 ‘Unēz Abū Sālim at-Turbānī, 545 n. 4 unification-principle, 370, 383 unité(s), 508, 511–512 amorphes, 519 de nomination, 506, 509, 509 n. 23, 510, 512, 515 n. 33, 516–518 banale, 514 commune, 514 générale, 514 de nomination des entités, 508 de nomination des expériences, 508 fléchies, 519 units, 367 lexical, 456 Upper Egyptian Arabic, 697 Uppsala, 222 n. 27 Ur, 197 urban Colloquial Arabic, 657 dialects, 657, 658 speakers, 657 Ursprache, 118 US, 531–532, 536 uskitat, 61 al-Ušmūnī, 17 n. 13, 23 u
u
index n. 41, 233 n. 47, 235, 235 n. 49, 239, 258–260, 263, 270–271, 282, 284, 292, 292 n. 2, 293–297, 297 n. 7, 298–304, 304 n. 11, 305, 307–309, 367, 369, 369 n. 7, 370, 370 nn. 12, 14, 371, 379, 391, 393–394, 397, 407, 435–437, 439–442, 447, 449, 451–452, 475 n. 1, 475–476, 481, 482 n. 7, 484 n. 13, 486, 487 n. 18, 490, 497 n. 29, 498, 532 n. 5, 572, 575 n. 36, 576–577, 577 n. 40, 578 n. 42, 580 nn. 50, 53, 581 n. 56, 589 n. 83, 592 n. 91, 597 n. 8, 612–613, 616, 619, 639–641, 641 n. 4, 642–644, 646, 646 n. 10, 647, 650 n. 12, 649, 651, 676 n. 4, 679 -acting constituent, 156 of action, 394 ʙāl, yiʙūl, 675–678, 681, 692–696 of approximation, 378 n. 41 banish, 391, 395, 399 base, 371 of beginning, 378 n. 41 bitransitive, 380 C- final, 649 of change, 394 classes, 391, 396, 399 cognitive, 178 conjugation, 617 construction bilingual periphrastic, 291, 297 coreferential, 92 delocutive, 698 embedded, 307, 309 English, 305–306 of esteem, 378 n. 41 of experience, 394 final /ʚ/, 650 ʙ/h, 648–649 /ʙ/ or /h/, 642, 647 laryngeal-, 646 n. 10, 648–649, 650 n. 12 pharyngeal-, 650 n. 12 weak, 641 finite, 97, 155, 163, 178, 183, 294, 296, 371–372, 372 n. 19, 378, 378 n. 42, 379–380, 384, 394 n. 84, 395, 491 foreign, 292–293, 295, 306–309 imperfect, 228 embedded, 307 morphologically, 303–304, 306 transitive, 293 form(s), 294, 407, 409, 640
753 gāl, yigūl, 675, 677–678, 697 of the heart, 378 n. 41 Hebrew, 596 n. 6 of hope, 378 n. 41 imperative, 34 incomplete, 378 n. 41 incorporation, 294 integration, 292–293, 295, 296 n. 4, 297–298, 306–309 intransitive, 391, 435, 482, 695 lexical, 675 li- +, 54 -like constituent, 152 -like element, 160 loan, 297, 652 locutive and speech-related, 693 modal, 371 n. 17 monotransitive, 380 +noun dichotomy, 165 +noun type, 165 patterns, 660 of praise and blame, 378 n. 41 prepositional, 63 prohibitive, 34 pseudo-, 73 remove, 392, 395 serial, 675 stem(s), 292, 294, 297, 299, 301, 306, 641, 645, 649 foreign, 292, 306 I, 407 IV, 406–407, 419 strong, 640, 644, 646 n. 10, 649 Syriac, 109 system, 660 temporal, 371 n. 17 of transformation, 394 transitive, 391 bi-, 391 mono-, 391 tri-, 391, 380 triliteral, 487 Turkic, 437, 440, 442 n. 6 type, 369, 372, 395 weak, 369, 372, 644, 649 final, 252–253, 640, 644, 647–650, 650 n. 12, 648–649 verbal, 54–55, 57, 72, 86 n. 23, 89, 108–109, 608, 611–614, 616, 640 analysis, 151, 153–154, 154 n. 8, 155–157 clause, 163 construction, 155
754
index
effect, 156 element, 165 n. 25, 181 ending(s), 210, 228 force, 155–156, 168, 176 form(s), 531, 679, 613, 615–616 function, 151, 153–156, 166 measures, 572 modals, 695 paradigm(s), 224 n. 31, 230 n. 39 phrase, 55 prepositional phrases, 54 sentence(s), 6, 77, 139, 149, 151, 154 n. 8, 157 status, 178 structures, 54 system, 230 n. 39 type(s), 10, 81, 86, 89–90, 92-93, 98, 109 Verbalphrasen, 699 verbe(s), 115, 118, 134, 314–315, 318–320, 323, 326–330, 332–335, 339–343, 345–352, 353 n. 35, 354–356, 358–362, 504–505, 506, 506 n. 15, 509, 513, 515 n. 35, 573, 575, 621 d’acquisition d’état, 335, 344, 351, 358–360, 362 caractéristique, 352 non-caractéristique, 334 actif(s), 320, 336–337, 350 d’action, 314, 319–321, 323, 336, 359 agentif(s), 354 entièrement, 359 non-, 322-323 336, 344, 346, 351, 351 n. 32, 355, 359 partiellement, 322, 359 pleinement, 322, 328 n. 19, 350–351 d’agentivité neutralisée, 328 n. 19 arabe, 313 augmenté(s), 313, 324 non, 315 de changement d’état, 328–329, 331, 333 commun, 508 concaves, 353–354, 356 caractéristique, 322, 330, 334, 341–343, 352, 357, 359, 361 d’état, 314, 319, 320, 320 n. 9 321, 323, 326, 328, 334–336, 342–344, 354, 359, 362 externe(s), 336–337, 350 intransitifs, 320, 338, 344, 346–348, 351, 356
médio-passif(s), 335–336, 344, 346, 352, 354–356, 358–360 moyen(s), 320–321, 335, 335 n. 20, 336–337, 344, 346–347, 349–350, 352, 354, 359–360 intransitif(s), 355, 337 transitif(s), 328 n. 19, 338 n. 23 direct, 337 indirect, 337 passif, 343 de perception, 323 primitif, 314 pronominaux, 354 de qualité, 321 n. 11, 328–329 redoublés, 353, 353 n. 34, 354, 356 regular, 575 de sentiment, 323 simple(s), 313, 315–316, 316 n. 5, 317–322, 322 n. 12, 323, 324, 326–327, 337–338, 344, 350, 353, 357–360, 362 statifs, 320 transitifs, 320, 337, 338 n. 23, 341, 349, 352, 354, 356–357 directs, 348–351 indirects, 347–351 vernaculaire(s), 125 vernacular(s), 223, 403, 527, 559–560, 607, 609–610, 613 African, 609, 611 Non-Arabic, 610 speech, 227 vernacularization, 608, 618 vernacularized, 611, 620 non, 612 Arabic, 607 verse(s), 46 n. 2, 189, 204, 548 n. 5 pre-Islamic, 89 Versteegh, Kees (C.H.M.), 33, 44–45, 65, 114, 117, 120 n. 6, 121 n. 10, 124, 126, 128, 128 n. 20, 133, 209 n. 1, 227, 364, 371 n. 15, 402, 434, 436, 441, 453, 455, 473, 503 n. 6, 504 n. 9, 523, 565 n. 1, 578, 607, 621, 639, 652, 654, 656, 664–665, 671, 673, 675, 675 n. 1, 692, 693, 699 vocabulary, 654, 656, 662, 665–666, 668–670 vocalisation, 233 n. 45, 445 vocalism, 604 vocatiuo, 214 vocative(s), 41, 214, 217, 375, 387, 397–398, 676, 696 noun, 41
index vocativus, 221 voice(s), 370–372, 395, 426–432 active, 379 passive, 379–380, 397 n. 88 voiced, 256 n. 7 non-, 256, 256 n. 7, 267, 275 voicing, 371 Voigt, Rainer, 595 n. 1, 599 volition, 370, 383, 396–397 Vollers, Karl, 125, 130 Vopadeva, 209 vowel(s), 9, 15, 47, 214 n. 10, 217–219, 219 n. 19, 224 nn. 31–32, 225–228, 230, 233, 239–240, 247, 250, 256, 368, 435, 445, 446 n. 10, 447–450, 540, 543, 568–570, 570 n. 23, 572, 572 n. 27, 573–575, 575 n. 34, 577, 579 n. 44, 582 n. 60, 595, 597–598, 601, 612–613 back, 296 Canaanite, 598 declensional, 230 n. 39 deletion 251 empty, 371 ending(s), 46–47, 63 n. 16, 252–253, 543 short-, 63, 64 n. 17 final, 16, 63, 253, 295, 646 n. 10 stem, 643–644, 649 front, 296 high stem, 641, 643 n. 9 infixed, 371 inflectional, 216, 224–227 -initial, 572, 572 n. 27 length, 449, 488 lengthened, 448 long, 252–253, 407, 407 n. 4, 440, 449, 488–489, 491, 491 n. 23, 611, 614, 640, 641 n. 4, 649 low stem, 643 n. 9, 641 marks, 251 mutation, 9 omission, 253 pattern(s), 370, 411–412, 447, 488, 490, 492 prefix(ed), 371, 641 n. 4 preformative, 262, 597 quantity, 488 rear, 256 n. 10 semantic, 224 semi-, 641 sequence, 436, 439 stem, 641 n. 4, 644–645
755
short, 247, 251, 449, 568, 569 final, 248–249, 251 short high front and back, 641 n. 4 system, 224, 224 n. 32, 233, 657–658 terms, mnemonic, 217 omission of, 224 n. 31 zero-, 227 voyelle(s), 314–315, 316 n. 5, 317, 319, 338, 345 n. 28, 510, 510 n. 24, 511, 511 nn. 25–26, 512–513, 515 n. 31 désinentielle, 509 première, 513 médiane(s), 313, 314 n. 3, 315, 317–319 wa-, 38 wa/, 39 wā/i (creator), 10 Wādiy ásˢSaˢ haw, 566 Fērˢān, 566 Ġarandal, 566 Isla, 566 Lihˢyān, 566 Wahhabi scholars, 200 Wahˢīd, 685 wahy, 192, 193 wajh, 48, 249 wājib, 169 Walid ʚIrfa, 535 Walīd Yūsif, 699 wallada, 115 Wallin, Georg August, 544, 563 waqf, wuqūf, 85, 227, 247, 247–253 Warš an Nāfiʚ, 127 wasfiyya, 158 wasl, 127 Watson, Richard, 607, 619, 621 waīfa, 249 wazn, 435, 444, 509 Wehr, Hans, 344, 365, 599, 600, 601, 602, 603, 604, 605, 668, 673 Wehr-Cowan, 315, 331, 339, 340, 343, 353 Weinreich, Uriel, 665, 674 Weiss, Bernard G., 193, 208 Weiß, Josef, 228, 234, 244 Wellens, Ineke, 607, 621 Werner, John Henry, 220 Wernitz, C.J., 292, 311 West Germany, 546 Western
756
index
languages, 104 Sudanese Arabic, 614 Sudanic, 611 tradition, 219 Wetzstein, Johann Gottfried, 126, 133 wi (and), 677, 679, 694, 695 wiā, 163 Wild, Stefan, 435, 436, 437, 438, 453 Winograd, 393, 402 wish, 398 Woidich, Manfred, 72–78, 80, 85, 86, 94–98, 100-102, 112, 224, 224 n. 31, 402, 455, 473, 565 n. 2, 675, 675 n. 2, 678, 683, 683 n. 12, 687, 687 n. 17, 688, 688 n. 18, 692, 692, n. 22, 694–696, 699 word classes, 213, 236 -final position, 657 formation, 475, 479, 498 order, 12 Wright, William, 314, 320, 327, 338, 365, 373, 374, 378, 385, 386, 388, 435, 436, 453, 487, 499 written tradition, 210 WSA, 610, 616 Wurff, Wim van der, 613, 614, 697 Wurzelbegriff, 219 Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand, 195, 203, 207 xabar, 48, 49, 138, 144 n. 19, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 216 accusatival, 159 adverbial, 169 adverbial/prepositional, 164, 168 clausal, 164, 180 fronted, 153, 182 kāna, 179 non-adverbial, 169 muqaddam, 153 mubtada, 180 obligatorily fronted, 168, 173, 174 obligatory fronting, 170, 171 preposed obligatorily, 173 as-sifa, 173 xaf/, 60, 234 xāfi/, 58, 60 Xālid b. Sinān al-Absī, 195 al-Xalīl b. Ahmad, 28, 29 n. 1, 33 151, 152, 155–156, 238, 444, 453
Xawārij, 530 al-Xidr, 195 xiftu, 660 xilāf (or muxālafa), 162 XP, 478 xucla, 210, 217 xuft, 660 al-Xwārazmī, 33 yā, 41 Yahwe, 105 Yaman, 202, 203 Yamani(s), 202 yaqdiru, 660 al-Yaqūbī, 199 Yāqūt, 202, 203 yarifu, 660 Yarub, 202, 203, 204 Yarub b. Qahtā n, 196, 199, 201–204 Yašjub b. Qahtā n, 195, 199, 202 Yašjub/Yaman, 202 Yassin, M.A., 555, 563 yāxud, 660 yaxudu, 660 Yemen, 195 Yemeni dialects, 640 Yeou, M., 266, 289 yieraf, 660 yiġdar, 660 Yishmāēl, 198 Yngve, Victor, 389, 402 Yoda, Sumikazu, 100, 112 Yokwe, Elisai M., 607, 621 Yoon, James, 483, 499 Youssi, Abderrahim, 674 yōxed, 660 yōxud, 660 Yucatán, 219 Yumnā Bassiouni, 533, 536 Yūnus, 195 Yūsuf al-Qaīd, 699 Yūsuf Ōf, 699 Zaborski, Andrezej, 402 āhir, 151 |āhirite(s), 11 az-Zajjāj, 57, 58, 64, 113 az-Zajjājī, 113, 114, 121–124, 126, 131, 153, 154, 157, 186, 187, 318, 362 zakāh, 31 Zakariyyā, Michel, 3, 23 Zakia Iraqui Sinaceur, 698 az-Zamaxšarī, 89, 111, 157, 177, 180, 287, 320, 329, 338, 342, 343, 345, 362
index Zande, 609 arf, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 162, 177, 181, 214, 217. dispensable part, 135, 136 indispensable part, 135 indispensable predicate, 136 maa, 144 mulġan, 142, 147
arfiyya, 177, 184 Zarpetea, P., 303, 311 az-Zarqāʙ, 546 zawāid, 509 Zayd, 13 zayy, 78, 689 illi, 74, 77, 78 zero endings, 230
757
STUDIES IN SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS 3. Corré, A.D. The Daughter of My People. Arabic and Hebrew Paraphrases of Jeremiah 8.13-9.23. 1971. ISBN 90 04 02552 9 5. Grand’Henry, J. Les parlers arabes de la région du Mza¯ b (Sahara algérien). 1976. ISBN 90 04 04533 3 6. Bravmann, M.M. Studies in Semitic Philology. 1977. ISBN 90 04 04743 3 8. Fenech, E. Contemporary Journalistic Maltese. An Analytical and Comparative Study. 1978. ISBN 90 04 05756 0 9. Hospers, J.H. (ed.). General Linguistics and the Teaching of Dead Hamito-Semitic Languages. Proceedings of the Symposium held in Groningen, 7th-8th November 1975, on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Semitic Studies and Near Eastern Archaeology of the State University at Groningen. 1978. ISBN 90 04 05806 0 12. Hoftijzer, J. A Search for Method. A Study in the Syntactic Use of the Hlocale in Classical Hebrew. With the collaboration of H.R. van der Laan and N.P. de Koo. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06257 2 13. Murtonen, A. Hebrew in its West Semitic Setting. A Comparative Survey of Non-Masoretic Hebrew Dialects and Traditions. Part I. A Comparative Lexicon. Section A. Proper Names. 1986. ISBN 90 04 07245 4 Section Ba. Root System: Hebrew Material. 1988. ISBN 90 04 08064 3 Section Bb. Root System: Comparative Material and Discussion. Sections C, D and E: Numerals under 100, Pronouns, Particles. 1989. ISBN 90 04 08899 7 14. Retsö, J. Diathesis in the Semitic Languages. A Comparative Morphological Study. 1989. ISBN 90 04 08818 0 15. Rouchdy, A. Nubians and the Nubian Language in Contemporary Egypt. A Case of Cultural and Linguistic Contact. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09197 1 16. Murtonen, A. Hebrew in its West Semitic Setting. A Comparative Survey of Non-Masoretic Hebrew Dialects and Traditions. Part 2. Phonetics and Phonology. Part 3. Morphosyntactics. 1990. ISBN 90 04 09309 5 17. Jongeling K., H.L. Murre-van den Berg & L. van Rompay (eds.). Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Syntax. Presented to Professor J. Hoftijzer on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09520 9 18. Cadora, F.J. Bedouin, Village, and Urban Arabic. An Ecolinguistic Study. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09627 2 19. Versteegh, C.H.M. Arabic Grammar and Qur"a¯ nic Exegesis in Early Islam. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09845 3 20. Humbert, G. Les voies de la transmission du Kita¯ b de SÊbawayhi. 1995. ISBN 90 04 09918 2 21. Mifsud, M. Loan Verbs in Maltese. A Descriptive and Comparative Study. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10091 1 22. Joosten, J. The Syriac Language of the Peshitta and Old Syriac Versions of Matthew. Syntactic Structure, Inner-Syriac Developments and Translation Technique. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10036 9 23. Bernards, M. Changing Traditions. Al-Mubarrad’s Refutation of SÊbawayh and the Subsequent Reception of the Kita¯ b. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10595 6
24. Belnap, R.K. and N. Haeri. Structuralist Studies in Arabic Linguistics. Charles A. Ferguson’s Papers, 1954-1994. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10511 5 25. Talmon R. Arabic Grammar in its Formative Age. Kita¯ b al-"Ayn and its Attribution to ]alÊl b. Ah.mad. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10812 2 26. Testen, D.D. Parallels in Semitic Linguistics. The Development of Arabic la- and Related Semitic Particles. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10973 0 27. Bolozky, S. Measuring Productivity in Word Formation. The Case of Israeli Hebrew. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11252 9 28. Ermers, R. Arabic Grammars of Turkic. The Arabic Linguistic Model Applied to Foreign Languages & Translation of #Abu- ayya-n al-#AndalusÊ’s Kita-b al-"Idra-k liLisa-n al-"Atra-k. 1999. ISBN 90 04 113061 29. Rabin, Ch. The Development of the Syntax of Post-Biblical Hebrew. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11433 5 30. Piamenta, M. Jewish Life in Arabic Language and Jerusalem Arabic in Communal Perspective. A Lexical-Semantic Study. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11762 8 31. Kinberg, N. ; Versteegh, K. (ed.). Studies in the Linguistic Structure of Classical Arabic. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11765 2 32. Khan, G. The Early Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought. Including a Critical Edition, Translation and Analysis of the Diqduq of "Abå Ya#qåb Yåsuf ibn NåÈ on the Hagiographa. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11933 7 33. Zammit, M.R. A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur"§nic Arabic. ISBN 90 04 11801 2 (in preparation) 34. Bachra, B.N. The Phonological Structure of the Verbal Roots in Arabic and Hebrew. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12008 4 35. Åkesson, J. Arabic Morphology and Phonology. Based on the Mar§È al-arw§È by AÈmad b. #AlÊ b. Mas#åd. Presented with an Introduction, Arabic Edition, English Translation and Commentary. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12028 9 36. Khan, G. The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Qaraqosh. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12863 8 37. Khan, G., Ángeles Gallego, M. and Olszowy-Schlanger, J. The Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought in its Classical Form. A Critical Edition and English Translation of al-Kit§b al-K§fÊ fÊ al-LuÇa al-#Ibr§niyya by "Abå al-Faraj H§rån ibn al-Faraj. 2 Vols. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13272 4 (Set), ISBN 90 04 13311 9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 90 04 13312 7 (Vol. 2) 38. Haak, M., De Jong, R., Versteegh, K. (eds.). Approaches to Arabic Dialects. A Collection of Articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13206 6 39. Takács, G. (ed.). Egyptian and Semito-Hamitic (Afro-Asiatic) Studies in Memoriam W. Vycichl. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13245 7 40. Maman, A. Comparative Semitic Philology in the Middle Ages. From Sa#adiah Gaon to Ibn Barån (10th-12th C.). 2004. ISBN 90 04 13620 7 41. Van Peursen, W.Th. The Verbal System in the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13667 3 42. Elgibali, A. Investigating Arabic. Current Parameters in Analysis and Learning. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13792 0 43. Florentin, M. Late Samaritan Hebrew. A Linguistic Analysis of Its Different Types. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13841 2 44. Khan, G. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Sulemaniyya and \alabja. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13869 2 45. Wellens, I. The Nubi Language of Uganda. An Arabic Creole in Africa. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14518 4 46. Bassiouney, R. Functions of Code Switching in Egypt. Evidence from Monologues. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14760 8
47. Khan, G. Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14834 5 48. Mejdell, G. Mixed Styles in Spoken Arabic in Egypt. Somewhere between Order and Chaos. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 14986 4, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 14986 1 49. Ditters, W.E. and Motzki, H. (eds.). Approaches to Arabic Linguistics. Presented to Kees Versteegh on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 16015 6
