Grammarians and Grammatical Theory in the Medieval Arabic Tradition

Ramzi Baalbaki is Professor of Arabic at the American University of Beirut, the Lebanon

Contents: Preface; Sibawayhi’s Kitab: The book in the grammatical tradition: development in content and methods; Some aspects of harmony and hierarchy in Sibawayhi’s grammatical analysis; A possible early reference to Sibawayhi’s Kitab?; A contribution to the study of technical terms in early Arabic grammar: the term asl in Sibawayhi’s Kitab; Coalescence as a grammatical tool in Sibawayhi’s Kitab. Grammarians and Related Disciplines: The treatment of qira’at by the 2nd and 3rd century grammarians; The relation between nahw and balaga: a comparative study of the methods of Sibawayhi and Gurgani; A balagi approach to some grammatical shawahid; Early Arab lexicographers and the use of Semitic languages; Kitab al-’ayn and Jamharat al-luga. Grammatical Theory: Arab grammatical controversies and the extant sources of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.H.; Tawahhum: an ambiguous concept in early Arabic grammar; 'I’rab and bina’ from linguistic reality to grammatical theory; Reclassification in Arabic grammatical theory; Expanding the ma’nawi ’awamil: Suhayli’s innovative approach to the theory of regimen; The occurrence of 'insa’ instead of habar: the gradual formulation of a grammatical issue; Bab al-fa’ [fa’ + subjunctive] in Arabic grammatical sources; Teaching Arabic at university level: problems of grammatical tradition; Index.