Arabic Linguistic Thought and Dialectology

Book excerpt: The articles collected in this volume form a contribution to the study of Arabic linguistics. Most of them deal with Arabic medieval grammatical thought and terminology and are based on the oldest grammatical treatises known to us, especially Sibawayhi's al-Kitab. The study of these two topics is interrelated, since the understanding of Arabic grammatical thought depends on the understanding of its terminology and vice versa. During the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, some prominent scholars maintained that the linguistic data supplied by the early Arab grammarians are unreliable, and, as a result, their grammatical rules do not accord with the linguistic reality of Old Arabic. Professor Levin's studies concerning the history of Arabic language contribute to the refutation of this view, showing that Sibawayhi's linguistic method was mainly descriptive and that the linguistic information furnished by him is authentic and reliable. Professor Levin also shows that Sibawayhi's accurate description of Old Arabic is based primarily on the ordinary speech of certain Bedouin tribes who lived in Southern Iraq in the eighth century. The linguistic data found in the Ketab indicate that these Bedouins still spoke Old Arabic dialects. Aryeh Levin is Professor of Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also the author of "A Grammar of the Arabic Dialect of Jerusalem" (in Hebrew).