Review of: Andreas Hallberg, Case Endings in Spoken Standard Arabic, Lund 2016. (original) (raw)

The conflict of theory in Arabic grammar

2014

The conflicts between schools of grammar among Arab traditional grammarians indicated that the differences on intellectual approaches occurred in modifying the Arabic Grammar system. For example that the Basra school used the philosophy and logic approaches in their analyzing, critique, modifying and replacing the system in Arabic Grammar. Otherwise, the Kufa school more concentrated on reading Holy Quran, Hadith and Arabic poetry such as Asim bin Abi Nujud, Hamzah Zayyat and Kisaai whose from Qura` Sab`ah among the thinkers of the school worked on informant sources meant they associated with something unexpected or different what normally happens. The views above had been discussed and clarified by some researchers, historians, linguists and grammarians that Basra school based on analogy and the Kufa school on anomaly approach. However, this research aims to verify the approach of Basra and Kufa schools in order to investigate their principles in implementing the linguistic argumentation.

Systematizing the Description of Arabic: The Case of Ibn al-Sarrāj

asian studies, 2017

This paper will focus on the Arabic grammatical tradition and, in particular, on the new arrangement, in the 4th/10th c., of grammatical matters already elaborated in the first centuries of Islam. With this aim in mind we will take into consideration two representative grammatical treatises of the 8th c. and the 10th c.: Sībawayh's Kitāb and Ibn al-Sarrāj's al-Uṣūl fī l-naḥw, which both represent watershed moments in the history of the Arabic grammatical tradition. Abū Bakr ibn al-Sarrāj's philosophical training is obvious in the way he approaches the subject through the precise description of single items and in the laboured logic of the subdivision of his treatises. He follows the principle of "comprehensive subdivisions" (taqāsīm) borrowed from the logic he had studied under the direction of al-Fārābī. Ibn al-Sarrāj's method of organizing and introducing linguistic matters will be contrasted with the approach of the father of Arabic grammar, Sībawayh, who wrote-two centuries earlier-the most comprehensive description of Arabic. The fourth/tenth century was marked by a conspicuous focus on the activities of organization and arrangement across the various fields of cultural and scientific endeavour within the Arab-Islamic empire. This holds true for the discipline of linguistics, and, in particular, grammar. A pivotal moment in this process was the publication of al-Uṣūl fī l-naḥw by Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/929), a treatise that was held in high esteem by his contemporaries as well as the following generations. It also provided the standard model according to which many subsequent grammatical treatises were arranged. Following a brief presentation of the significance and impact of the Kitāb Sībawayh, the most comprehensive description of Arabic and the most authoritative text of Arabic grammar, we will introduce al-Uṣūl fī l-naḥw and its innovative approach. We will then compare the introductory sections of the Kitāb Sībawayh and al-Uṣūl fī l-naḥw of Ibn al-Sarrāj that