Grammarians and Grammatical Theory in the Medieval Arabic Tradition (Variorum Collected Studies, 782)

Professor Baalbaki deals here with the Arabic grammatical tradition and the analytical methods of the medieval Arab grammarians. The essays included open new perspectives on the most authoritative work on Arabic grammar, Sibawayhi's tome or Kitab, on the relation between grammatical study and other areas of linguistic enquiry such as Qur'anic readings and stylistics, and on the techniques which the grammarians employed to explain and rationalize usage and to incorporate within their system the vast body of dialectal material which the corpus comprises. The author has sought to highlight the central position which Arabic grammar enjoys within the wider Arab culture, and in so doing has examined several aspects of a legacy which has been revered over a millennium and which forms to this very day the backbone of the teaching of grammar in the Arab world. Baalbaki compiles 18 articles on the various methods of analysis adopted by medieval Arab grammarians and their attempts to justify and defend linguistic usage, primarily in view of their belief that a grammarian should unveil The Wisdom that characteristically lies at the root of any usage. Five of them focus on the Kitab of Sibawayhi (d. 180/796), the first extant grammatical source, which set out most of the field's concepts, terms, and analytical tools that remain the backbone of teaching Arabic grammar today. Another five survey some schools of grammarians. The rest explore grammatical theory, focusing on controversies. They were originally published 1979-2001. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR