TheFoundationsofArabicLinguisticsII · 2017. 5. 14. · x listofcontributors treatiseTaḏkiratjawāmiʿal-ʾadawātbyMuḥammadb.Aḥmadb.Maḥmūd(Wies-baden,2012)andThesubjunctivemoodinArabicgrammaticalthought(Leiden

The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics II

Studies inSemitic Languages and

Linguistics

Editorial Board

A.D. Rubin and C.H.M. Versteegh

volume 83

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl

http://brill.com/ssl

The Foundationsof Arabic Linguistics II

Kitāb Sībawayhi:Interpretation and Transmission

Edited by

Amal Elesha MarogyKees Versteegh

leiden | boston

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters coveringLatin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For moreinformation, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 0081-8461isbn 978-90-04-30229-7 (hardback)isbn 978-90-04-30266-2 (e-book)

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi andHotei Publishing.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 providedthat 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.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Acknowledgments viiList of Contributors viii

Introduction 1Amal E. Marogy and Kees Versteegh

Some Aspects of the Relation between Enunciation and Utterance inSībawayhi’s Kitāb. A Modal Category: wājib/ġayr al-wājib 6

Georgine Ayoub

The Grammar of Affective Language in the Kitāb 36Michael G. Carter

Ittisāʿ in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb: A Semantic ʿilla for Disorders in Meaning andForm 66

Hanadi Dayyeh

What Happened to the Grammar of Numerals after Sībawayhi? 81Jean N. Druel

Real and Irreal Conditionals in Arabic Grammar: From al-ʾAstarābāḏī toSībawayhi 100

Manuela E.B. Giolfo

Abstract Principles in Arabic Grammatical Theory: The Operator Assigningthe Independent Mood 120

Almog Kasher

The Analysis of Valency in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb 138Giuliano Lancioni and Cristina Solimando

The Notion of tanwīn in the Kitāb: Cognitive Evaluation of Function andMeaning 160

Amal E. Marogy

vi contents

Sībawayhi’s and Later Grammarians’ Usage of ḥadīṯs as a GrammaticalTool 171

Arik Sadan

The Notion of fāʾida in theMedieval Arabic Grammatical Tradition: Fāʾidaas a Criterion for Utterance Acceptability 184

Beata Sheyhatovitch

What’s It Like to be a Persian? Sībawayhi’s Treatment of Loanwords 202Kees Versteegh

Index 223

Acknowledgments

This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the secondFounda-tions of Arabic Linguistics Conference (FAL II), which was held in the Facultyof Asian andMiddle Eastern Studies at theUniversity of Cambridge on Septem-ber 13–14, 2012. The editors wish to thank the contributors for their hard workand dedication, and for their patience and good-natured cooperation duringthe editing process.They alsowish to thank the publisher’s staff, in particular Stephanie Paalvast

and Marjolein Schaake, who did their best to ensure that the manuscript waspublished in the best possible way, and who were a pleasure to work with.Amal E. Marogy wishes to state that she is greatly indebted to Michael

G. Carter for being always there to guide and encourage. She expresses verywarm thanks to her dear colleagues, whomade the FAL II conference a successin every sense. She also expresses her deepest gratitude to her family, especiallyElise and Lana.Her heartfelt thanks are due toMrsAuLai Fong, Anna and SavioLee and their family for their generosity and friendship.

Amal E. MarogyCambridge, April 2015

Kees VersteeghBatenburg, April 2015

List of Contributors

Georgine Ayoubis professor of Arabic linguistics at the National Institute of Languages andCivilizations (INALCO), Paris, France, and a researcher at Cermom in the sameuniversity. Her fields of research include theoretical linguistics, the history ofthe Arabic language, Arabic linguistic thought, and ancient Arabic poetry. Herbooks include Prédicat, figures, catégories: La question de la phrase nominale enarabe littéraire (Lille, 1996). She has widely published on Sībawayhi’s Kitāb andon syntax and semantics in Arabic linguistic theory.

Michael G. Carterafter a D.Phil. (Oxon) taught at Sydney University (1968–1985), then Duke(1985–1986), New York University (1986–1996) andOslo University (1996–2004)until retirement. His research interests are Sībawayhi and early Arabic gram-matical theory, and the relationship between grammar, law and philosophy inMedieval Islam.

Hanadi Dayyehis currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Arabic and Near EasternLanguages in theAmericanUniversity of Beirut.Her thesis concentrates onSīb-awayhi in the context of Arabic historical linguistics. She has more than fifteenyears experience in the field of teaching and researching teaching methods inArabic, both to native and non-native speakers, and has produced a number oftextbooks in this field.

Jean N. Druelis a researcher in thehistory ofArabic grammar; sinceOctober 2014, hehasbeenthe director of IDEO (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies) in Cairo. After aMaster’s degree in theology and Coptic patristics (Institut catholique de Paris,2002), he obtained a Master’s degree in teaching Arabic as a foreign language(American University in Cairo, 2006), and in 2012 he obtained his Ph.D. at theUniversity ofNijmegenwith a thesis on theArabic grammarians’ theories aboutthe syntax of numerals.

Manuela E.B. Giolfowas lecturer in Arabic at the University of Exeter (2008–2012). In 2013 shemoved to the University of Genoa, where she is researcher in Arabic languageand literature, and lecturer in Arabic language and philology. From 2014 she is

list of contributors ix

also chercheuse associée at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le mondearabe et musulman (IREMAM)—CNRS—Aix-Marseille Université. She holdsan M.A. in philosophy from the University of Milan, and a Ph.D. in Arabiclinguistics from Aix-Marseille Université.

Almog Kasherhas a Ph.D. degree (2007) in Arabic; he is Lecturer in Bar-Ilan University. Hismain field of study is the Medieval Arabic grammatical tradition, with empha-sis on its early history, Sībawayhi’s commentaries, and pedagogical grammars.

Giuliano Lancioni(Rome, 1967) is Professor ofArabic Language andLiterature at RomeUniversity.His research interests include the history of Arabic linguistic thinking (Diminu-tives in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb, Rome, 2011) and Arabic formal and computationallinguistics. He co-edited (with Lidia Bettini) The word in Arabic (Leiden, 2011)and is co-editing, with Vanna Calasso, Dār al-Islām/Dār Al-Ḥarb: Territories,people, identities (Leiden, forthc.).

Amal E. Marogyis Affiliated Researcher in Neo-Aramaic Studies at the University of Cambridgeand is Founder Director of Aradin Charitable Trust (www.aradin.org.uk). Sheholds a Ph.D. in Oriental Languages and Cultures from the University of Ghent(Belgium). She taught Arabic at the University of Cambridge and was Directorof Studies in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College (Cambridge).In 2010 she launched and organized the first Foundations of Arabic LinguisticConference, followed by the second in 2012. She has also launched a new seriesof conferences under the title ‘NewHorizons in Intercultural Dialogue’ (NHID),the first of which took place in Cambridge in 2014. Her publications include:Kitāb Sībawayhi: Syntax and pragmatics (Leiden, 2010) and The foundationsof Arabic linguistics: Sībawayhi and early Arabic grammatical theory (Leiden,2012).

Arik Sadanholds a B.A. in linguistics and Arabic language and literature (2001) and anM.A. (2004) and Ph.D. (2010) in Arabic language and literature, all from theHebrew University of Jerusalem. His research fields are Arabic grammaticalthought, Arab grammarians, Classical, Modern and Colloquial Arabic linguis-tics, manuscripts in Arabic grammar and other fields. He teaches variouscourses in various academic institutions in these fields. After the publicationof several articles, he published two books: A critical edition of the grammatical

http://www.aradin.org.uk

x list of contributors

treatiseTaḏkirat jawāmiʿ al-ʾadawātbyMuḥammadb.Aḥmadb.Maḥmūd (Wies-baden, 2012) and The subjunctive mood in Arabic grammatical thought (Leiden,2012), the latter being a revised English version of his Ph.D. thesis.

Beata Sheyhatovitch(Tel Aviv University) is a Ph.D. student working in the field of Arabic grammat-ical theory. In her M.A. thesis (under the supervision of Prof. Yishai Peled) shehas explored themeaning of the term fāʾida in theArab grammarians’ writings,while in her present research (with the same advisor) she concentrates on theŠarḥ al-Kāfiya by Raḍī al-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī, with the aim of figuring out thedistinctive traits of this work.

Cristina Solimandois assistant professor of Arabic Language at RomaTreUniversity. She graduatedin Linguistics (La Sapienza) and obtained the Licentiate in Arabic and IslamicStudies at PISAI (Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies). Her fieldsof research are the history of Arabic linguistics, the teaching of Arabic as L2,and informal texts. Her publications include “The ellipsis in Arabic linguisticthinking of 8th–10th century” (2011), “A blog-based Corpus: Some issues” (2011),“Educated Spoken Arabic in Arabic blogs: Perspectives of linguistic analysis”(2014), and the textbook Imparare l’arabo conversando (Rome, 2011).

Kees Versteeghis emeritus professor of Arabic and Islam at the University of Nijmegen (TheNetherlands). He specializes in historical linguistics and the history of linguis-tics, focusing on processes of language change, language contact, and pidginand creole languages.His books includeTheArabic linguistic tradition (London,1997), and The Arabic language (Edinburgh, 1997, revised ed. 2014). He was theeditor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics (Leiden,2006–2009).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004302662_002

Introduction

Amal E. Marogy and Kees Versteegh

More than 1,200 years after his death the genius of Sībawayhi’s analysis ofthe Arabic language still occupies the minds of many researchers in Arabiclinguistics. At the first conference on the Foundations of Arabic Linguistics,hosted by Amal E. Marogy at the University of Cambridge in 2010, the majorityof the papers dealt with the internal structure and theory of Sībawayhi’s Kitāb,with the exception of two papers that dealt with the connection between theSyriac andHebrew grammatical tradition and the Arabic grammarians (for theproceedings of that conference see Marogy 2012). But this conference by nomeans exhausted the topics connected with the Kitāb Sībawayhi. The volumepresented here contains eleven contributions to the second conference onthe Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, which took place in 2012 at the sameuniversity, hosted again by Amal E. Marogy. All contributions deal with oneaspect or another of the linguistic theories in the Kitāb.GeorgineAyoub highlights the importance of two notions in Sībawayhi’s lin-

guistic theory that have not received much attention up till now, wājib and itsantonym ġayr wājib. She shows how these notions are part of Sībawayhi’s ter-minology to denote the expression ofmodality and explains themas indicatingthe speaker’s commitment to the factuality of an event. In her translation theseterms are equivalent to ‘assertive’ vs. ‘non-assertive’. Although Ayoub does notdeal in detail with the later use of this terminology, she notes that it continuesto be used by some grammarians, such as al-Zajjājī (d. 337/949) and Ibn Jinnī(d. 392/1002), but that in the later tradition Sībawayhi’s terms were replaced bya terminology based on ḫabar. The distinction between wājib/ġayr wājibmaybe identical with the categories of jumla ḫabariyya and jumla ṭalabiyya in latergrammatical writing, but this remains to be investigated.Michael Carter presents a large number of morphological and syntactic

phenomena dealt with in the Kitāb that are connected with the affective use oflanguage, such as diminutives, oaths, exclamations, vocatives, etc. He explainsthat because of Sībawayhi’s focus on the spoken language of the Bedouin, hisKitāb has preserved all kinds of special expressions that later grammariansfound difficult to explain because they deviated from the standard they hadset up for the Arabic language.Hanadi Dayyeh deals with one of the ways in which grammarians explained

deviations from the grammatical norm, by means of the notion of ittisāʿ. Sheexplains this notion as a kind of latitude the speakers have in uttering their

2 marogy and versteegh

language. Later grammarians incorporated the notion in their writings, but ina different way, because their preoccupation with formmade them neglect thesemantic aspects of the ittisāʿ. Dayyeh’s contribution may be read in conjunc-tionwith the one she contributed to the first conference, inwhich she analyzedthe use of frequency of usage (kaṯrat al-istiʿmāl) as an explanatory device forlinguistic phenomena (Dayyeh 2012).Jean Druel presents the results of his doctoral dissertation (Druel 2012) on

the syntax and morphology of the numerals in Sībawayhi. It is interesting tosee how the same materials and issues that are discussed in the Kitāb recurin later grammarians, but often in a slightly different setting because of adifference in methodological outlook and aim. The most striking differencebetween Sībawayhi and the later grammarians is that for Sībawayhi everythingmust bepart of a global consistency across grammar. For the later grammarians,such as al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) and Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928), it is sufficient ifthere is local consistencywithin a category. This has of course consequences forthe place in their writings in which these grammarians deal with the numerals,and for theway they explain the grammatical forms. Yet, since for themost partthey deal with the same grammatical issues as the ones treated in the Kitāb,superficially it looks like they are following Sibawayhi.ManuelaGiolfo’s contribution returns to the questionwhy the particle law is

not regarded as a conditional particle by the Arabic grammarians. In an earlierarticle in the proceedings of the first conference on the Foundations of Ara-bic Linguistics (Giolfo 2012), she had analyzed the structure and semantics ofconditional clauses in Arabic on the basis of the theories of the Arabic gram-marians. In the present contribution, her focus is more on the analysis of thesetheories themselves, in particular those of Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249) and al-ʾAstarābāḏī (7th/13th century). She presents these later theories by comparingthem with Sībawayhi’s theories, which had been central in her earlier article.One might even say that she takes a fresh look at Sībawayhi’s theories, but thistime from the perspective of the later grammatical tradition.Īt is generally agreed that for the Arabic grammarians the most urgent task

was to explain the declensional endings of the nouns and the imperfect verbs,both morphologically (e.g., the rules of the diptotic declension) and syntac-tically. Much attention has been given to the explanation of the dependent(‘accusative’) endings (e.g. Sadan 2012), but in his contribution Almog Kasherlooks at the explanation of the independent (‘nominative’) endings. Theseplaced the grammarians for a dilemma, since in many cases the nominativeending is default and one has to take recourse to abstract principles in orderto explain them. Kasher shows how the later grammarians used the same ele-ments as Sībawayhi did in explaining the independent ending, but gave them

introduction 3

a different role. Some commentators, such as al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978), went so faras to read the later theories into the Kitāb.Giuliano Lancioni and Cristina Solimando analyze the theory of verbal va-

lency in theKitāb and conclude that Sībawayhi applied logico-semantic criteriato define verbal classes, where later grammarians adhered to a strict dichotomybetween form (lafẓ) and meaning (maʿnā). Having analyzed the grammaticaltheories, they engage in a comparisonbetween these and the theoretical frame-work of modern linguistics. They are aware of the pitfalls of this comparison,1but claim that it is useful to make the comparison, not in order to present thegrammarians as being in some way the forerunners of modern linguistics, butin order to explain the commonalities between the theoretical frameworks.Because of their formal approach to the study of language, the grammarians’ideas in a number of points mirror the achievements of contemporary linguis-ticmodels. Additionally, their intuitions about the structure of Arabic grammarmay turn out to be useful for the study of the language itself.AmalE.Marogy returns to the functionof the tanwīn ending inArabic,which

is not only the marker of indefiniteness, but according to the grammarianshas a number of other functions as well. Marogy interprets the presence andabsence of nunation within a cognitive framework and concludes that itsabsence highlights problem-solving processes and marks discontinuity withcertain linguistic expectations. In her view, the range of the terminology of‘lightness’ (ḫiffa) and ‘heaviness’ (ṯiqal) in theArabic grammatical tradition hasto do with the scale of processing ease in communication.Among the sources used by the Arabic grammarians for their description

of the language, the text of the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry figureprominently.Much less frequently they quote phrases from ḥadīṯs, which is notentirely unexpected since transmitters of Prophetic traditions do not (always)claim verbatim transmission. Therefore, generally speaking, the text of thetraditions cannot be used as evidence for the correctness of expressions inArabic. Sadan shows that in spite of this less frequent use, ḥadīths remain animportant source for linguistic discussions, and he explains in which cases andto what purpose they are used by the grammarians. In his contribution hefocuses on Sībawayhi’s use of ḥadīṯs, specifically in discussions about depen-dent (accusative) endings.Beata Sheyhatovitch takes on another central term of the tradition, the

notion of fāʾida, which is not used in the Kitāb, but was introduced by later

1 For an insightful discussion of the methodological conditions of such a comparison seeOwens (1988:220–226, 245–248).

4 marogy and versteegh

grammarians. One of the functions they indicate with fāʾida or one of itsderived forms, such asmufīd, ʾifāda, or istifāda, is the pragmatic acceptability ofan utterance. Sheyhatovitch shows how the grammarians built on ideas in theKitāb having to do with utterance acceptability, and applied their own termfāʾida to this.Kees Versteegh looks for signs of a Persian connection in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb.

Sībawayhi does not mention his mother tongue very often, but he does devotesome attention to the incorporation of Persian loanwords in Arabic, from aperspective not shared by other grammarians: while Sībawayhi was interestedin the morphological and phonological adaptations of Persian loanwords inArabic, other grammarians were more concerned to find a way to distinguishbetween loanwords and pure Arabic words.The contributions in both volumes share a historiographical orientation

towards the grammatical literature. They analyze theArabic grammarians’ the-orieswithin the frameworkof thehistory of ideas,which aimsat the elucidationof these theories in their own right. While these theories may be relevant to abetter understanding of the structure of Arabic, the historiographer’smain aimis to gain a better understanding of the linguistic theories of the grammarianswithin their intellectual and social context.Compared to the proceedings of the first conference on the Foundations

of Arabic Linguistics (Marogy 2012), one might say that the papers presentedin this second volume have in common a rejection of the alleged monolithiccharacter of the Arabic grammatical tradition. These contributions show thatthe uniformity is only superficial: while all Sībawayhi’s successors built on thedata set established by Sībawayhi, they developed these materials in their ownway, by focusing on a selection of examples, or by structuring the materialsin a different way. It was not uncommon for them to quote Sibawayhi as if heagreed with them, while developing their own analysis which contrasted withhis. This explains why on the surface one gets the impression that they justcopied Sībawayhi’s ideas, while in actual fact they went their own way.Even though the first two conferences on the Foundations of Arabic Linguis-

tics differed considerably in scope and focus, they had in common a focus onthe founding period of theArabic grammatical tradition, in particular theKitābSībawayhi. In the meantime, the third conference on the Foundations of Ara-bic Linguistics has takenplace in Paris in 2014 at the Fondation Singer-Polignac;it was hosted by Georgine Ayoub (INALCO). As the programme of the confer-ence shows,2 the scope of the contributions was broadened in the sense that

2 It may be consulted at http://www.singer-polignac.org/fr/missions/sciences/colloques/tag/Foundations%20of%20Arabic%20Linguistics.

http://www.singer-polignac.org/fr/missions/sciences/colloques/tag/Foundations%20of%20Arabic%20Linguisticshttp://www.singer-polignac.org/fr/missions/sciences/colloques/tag/Foundations%20of%20Arabic%20Linguistics

introduction 5

the grammatical tradition after Sībawayhi occupied a more prominent place.Several papers dealt with later grammarians such as Ibn al-Sarrāj and Ibn Jinnī,as well as with later pedagogical grammars, such as Ibn Mālik’s (672/1274)ʾAlfiyya. Even so, Sībawayhi was mentioned frequently, and all papers dealingwith topics from the later tradition explicitly compared their findings with theKitāb, demonstrating once again how important his work has remained, bothin the Arabic grammatical tradition and in our own reception and analysis ofthat tradition. The contributions to this third conference are scheduled to bepublished in 2016. In that same year,ManuelaGiolfo has undertaken to host thefourth conference on the Foundations of Linguistics in Genoa, where many ofthe contributors to the first three conferences, as well as new participants, areexpected to continue an enterprise that has shown its usefulness as a forum forall those researchers who study the Arabic grammatical tradition. It is not yetknown what the exact focus of this fourth conference will be, but we can besure that the grammarian from Fārs will again play a central role.

Bibliographical References

Dayyeh, Hanadi. 2012. “The relation between frequency of usage and deletion in Sīb-awayhi’s Kitāb”. Marogy (2012:75–98).

Druel, Jean N. 2012. Numerals in Arabic grammatical theory: An impossible quest forconsistency? Ph.D. diss., University of Nijmegen.

Giolfo, Manuela E.B. 2012. “yaqum vs. qāma in the conditional context: A relativisticinterpretation of the frontier between the prefixed and the suffixed conjugations ofthe Arabic language”. Marogy (2012:135–160).

Marogy, Amal Elesha, ed. 2012.The foundations of Arabic linguistics: Sībawayhi and earlyArabic grammatical theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The foundations of grammar: An introduction toMedieval Arabicgrammatical thought. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Sadan, Arik. 2012.The subjunctivemood inArabic grammatical thought. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004302662_003

Some Aspects of the Relation between Enunciationand Utterance in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb. A ModalCategory: al-wājib/ġayr al-wājib1

Georgine Ayoub

1 Introduction

Two binary units, with the same element having two opposite values, onepositive, the other negative, are used throughout the Kitāb to describe themodal values of the verb, waqaʿa/ lam yaqaʿ and wājib/ġayr wājib. They are soclosely linked that, in some passages, the same statement is expressed in termsof waqaʿa and then repeated, some lines later, in terms of wājib/ġayr wājib, asin the description of the energetic:

(1) a. wallāhi la-faʿalta‘By God, you certainly did it!’ (Kitāb I, 403.21)2

b. wallāhi la-ʾafʿalanna‘By God, I will certainly do (it)!’ (Kitāb I, 403.17)

The contrast between faʿala in (1a), which does not accept the suffixation of thenūn after an oath and yafʿal in (1b), which does require it, is explained by theirvalue. But while faʿalta is always described in the same terms, fiʿl qad waqaʿa,3the value of ʾafʿalanna is said, once, to be that of a fiʿl ġayr manfīyy lam yaqaʿ(Kitāb I, 403.15–16), and a few lines later, fiʿl ġayr wājib (Kitāb I, 403.22), and wefind the following statement:

1 Quite independently, Michael Carter and myself were interested in the samemodal categorywājib/ġayr wājib. After the conference at Cambridge, Michael Carter very kindly sent mehis article written in 2006 but still to appear. Many of his conclusions are similar to mine.I gratefully thank him.

2 All references, unless explicitly indicated otherwise, refer to Derenbourg’s edition of theKitāb. The first number indicates the volume, the second one the page, the third one the line.Additionally, I compared all the relevant chapters to the Būlāq and Hārūn editions, in orderto locate differences that might be significant.

3 See Kitāb I, 403.20, 403.22.

some aspects of the relation between enunciation and utterance 7

(2) fa-l-nūnu lā tadullu ʿalā fiʿlin qadwaqaʿa. ʾinnamā tadullu ‘alā ġayri l-wājibi(Kitāb I, 403.22)

This quotation shows clearly that the two notions have to do with the categoryof modality. I use modality in the usual way as the grammaticalized expressionof the subjective attitudes and opinions of the speaker. Since Austin (1962) andSearle (1969), we know that executing a speech act requires from the speakers,not only to make a proposition, but also to transmit their communicativeintention. I use modality as referring to the grammaticalized expression of thiscommunicative intention, on the one hand, and to the degree of commitmentof the speakers towards the propositional content of their utterance, on theother.4Actually, as I have attempted to establish elsewhere in a study on the seman-

tic and enunciative description of the verb in Sībawayhi’s Kitāb,5 waqaʿa/lamyaqaʿ focuses on the event, lam yaqaʿ indicating that the event or the state ofaffairs is not taking place. It is not actual. It is not a fact. It is merely potential.By contrast,waqaʿa indicates that an event or a state of affairs is actual, is a fact.So we can translate (2) as (2′).

(2′) “The nūn does not indicate an action that is actual. It indicates ġayral-wājib”

The two expressions ġayr al-wājib and lam yaqaʿ may seem to be synonymousin this chapter of the Kitāb and in many others, but in fact they are not. Oneusage distinguishes them decisively: while they are both used to explain theinflections of the verb, especially the inflection of the prefixal conjugation(bināʾ yafʿalu, as Sībawayhi calls it), only al-wājib/ġayr al-wājib is essential fordetermining the word order of the sentence and the inflections of the nounin some contexts. The purpose of the present paper is to explore some ofthese contexts and to examine the notion of wājib/ġayr wājib on this basis,leaving aside the mood inflections for later examination.6 As a modal notionimplies the role of the speaker (mutakallim), the addressee (muḫāṭab), and thesituation of enunciation, to explore how this notion determines theword orderand the inflections of the noun is to explore how enunciation and utteranceare articulated in the Kitāb, and in what ways the form of utterances and

4 See also Lyons (1977:452); Bybee et al. (1994:176–181).5 See Ayoub (2010:28f.).6 The -a ending of the verb is examined in Ayoub (2010:35f.).

8 ayoub

their syntax are determined by the elements of the speech situation. Thisidentification, a topic that has been addressed in many ways in recent studies,remains amajor task in determining the specificity of the linguistic thinking ofSībawayhi. Even though it is well known in general linguistics that word orderis one of the grammaticalized ways to express modality, we still do not knowprecisely how this issue is treated in the Kitāb.

2 Wājib and Assertion

Two elements must be taken into account to understand the notion of wājib.First, wājib applies more accurately to the realm of language (categories orutterances) than to that of the external world. Whereas waqaʿa/lam yaqaʿapplies to ḥadaṯ, fiʿl, ʿamal, all of these terms meaning in these contexts theevent or the action, wājib/ġayr wājib, as illustrated in the quotations in (3),apply to kalām (3a), fiʿl (3b), ḥarf (3c), and never, as far as I could find out,to ḥadaṯ.7 Kalām, fiʿl, ḥarf correspond to three types of modality markers thatare well known in typological studies onmodality in general linguistics, i.e. thewhole utterance, verbs, and particles.8

kalām

(3) a. “ʾiḏ only occurs in the kalām wājib” (wa-lākin ʾiḏ ʾinnamā yaqaʿu fīl-kalāmi l-wājibi, Kitāb I, 45.6)

ʾafʿāl

b. “One of the places [of the nūn] is the ʾafʿāl ġayr wājiba that occur afterinterrogativemarkers … as when you say: hal taqūl-anna? and ʾa-taqūl-anna ḏāka?” (wa-min mawāḍiʿi-hā [mawāḍiʿ al-nūn] al-ʾafʿālu ġayru l-wājibati llatī takūnu baʿda ḥurūfi l-istifhāmi … wa-ḏālika qawlu-ka haltaqūlanna wa-ʾa-taqūlanna ḏā?, Kitāb II, 154.3–7)

7 I found only one occurrence of ḥadaṯ ġayr wājib. This occurrence is from later litterature, inal-Murādī’s (d. 749/1348) Janā 565. He discusses the rafʿ of the verb after ḥattā and asserts thatthe rafʿ is impossible in questions like ʾa-sirta ḥattā tadḫula-hā? “since the event [the sayr] isġayr wājib” (li-ʾanna-hu yadullu ʿalā ḥadaṯin ġayri wājibin).

8 Note that in (3b), Sībawayhi is referring to a linear order: al-ʾafʿāl ġayr al-wājiba allatī takūnubaʿda ḥurūfi l-istifhām, and, consequently, ʾafʿāl, the plural of fiʿl, indicates the verb and notthe action.


ḥurūf

c. “This is the chapter of grammatical markers that function as inter-rogative markers … because they are ġayr wājiba” (hāḏā bābu ḥurūfinʾujriyat mujrā ḥurūfi l-istifhāmi wa-ḥurūfi l-ʾamri wa-l-nahyi wa-hiyaḥurūfu l-nafyi šabbahū-hā bi-ʾalifi l-istifhāmi ḥayṯu quddima l-ismuqabla l-fiʿli […] li-ʾanna-hunna ġayru wājibātin,9 Kitāb I, 61.11–14)

Moreover, in some passages, al-wājib or ġayr al-wājib is used as a category byitself without any other specification, as in (3d) or as in (4).

d. “since the jazāʾ can only be in ġayr al-wājib” (li-ʾanna l-jazāʾa ʾinnamāyakūnu fī ġayri l-wājibi,10 Kitāb I, 399.21)

Note that the scope of ġayr al-wājib remains the whole proposition, whateverits subject. By definition, it is true for kalām. It is true for fiʿl as the verb isthe predicate in a proposition. And it is also true for ḥarf, since all the ḥurūfmentioned, as we will see below, introduce propositions. In other words, theirscope is the entire proposition.The second element to be taken into account to understand the notion is

the role of the speakers: they are the ones who make a kalām or a fiʿl wājib orġayr wājib, as we see in (4), with the causative verb ʾawjaba.

(4) “You should know that ʾan is not implicit after fa- when the [first proposi-tion] is awājib one, and only the -u ending is possible [on the verb follow-ing fa-] in this case […] aswhen you say ʾ inna-hu ʿinda-nā fa-yuḥaddiṯunā‘he is with us and he converses with us’ and sawfa ʾātī-hi fa-ʾuḥaddiṯu-hu ‘Ishall come to him and I shall converse with him’ […]. This is because youactualized the action indicated by the verb. So, the only possible endingon the verb is -u” (wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-fāʾa lā tuḍmaru fī-hā ʾan fī l-wājibi, wa-lāyakūnu fī hāḏā l-bābi ʾillā l-rafʿu […] wa-ḏālika qawlu-ka ʾinna-hu ʿinda-nā

9 Hārūn gives this slightly different text, where ḥurūf al-nafy are compared to the entireclass of ḥurūf al-istifhām and not only to the ʾalif : šabbahū-hā bi-ḥurūfi l-istifhāmi …li-ʾanna-hunna ġayru wājibātin (Kitāb I, 145 Hārūn). This difference is not very significant,for the ʾalif, by itself, represents the entire class in the Kitāb (see Kitāb I, 40.20–21 laysali-l-istifhāmi fī l-ʾaṣli ġayru-hu).

10 Somemanuscripts read ʾafʿāl ġayr al-wājib, which seems a possible reading as regards theuse of ġayr al-wājib independently.

10 ayoub

fa-yuḥaddiṯu-nā wa-sawfa ʾātī-hi fa-ʾuḥaddiṯu-hu […] li-ʾanna-ka qad ʾaw-jabta ʾan tafʿala fa-lā yakūnu ʾillā l-rafʿu, Kitāb I, 377.2–5)

In an article that appeared in 1991, I first pointed out the two notions ofwaqaʿa/lam yaqaʿ and wājib/ġayr wājib, and their importance in determiningboth the case of the noun and themood inflections of the verb, and I proposedto translate kalām wājib by ‘assertion’ and kalām ġayr wājib by ‘non-assertiveutterance’, with some reservations about the status of negation (Ayoub 1991:70).This seems reasonable, because in asserting anutterance, the speaker’s purposeis to indicate that the event or the state of affairs described by the proposi-tional content of the utterance is a fact, is actual. And just as we have seen, theactuality of the event is the crucial point to determine ġayr al-wājib. Neverthe-less, Sībawayhi’s notiondoes not necessarily coincidewithwhatwe consider anassertion. For instance, la-ʾafʿalanna in (1b) is regarded in some grammars as anassertion.11 It is, however, a ġayr al-wājib for Sībawayhi. In fact, in our concep-tion of assertion, what is crucial is the degree of commitment of the speakerstowards thepropositional content of their utterance. The action in la-ʾafʿalannais presented by the speaker as a fact, even if it is still unrealized, because it isasseverated by the speaker. By contrast, what is crucial in Sībawayhi’s concep-tion of ġayr al-wājib is the non-factuality of the event, even if the asseverationof an event still unrealized is marked by the -anna ending on the verb. Thus,I will translate ʾafʿāl ġayr wājiba as ‘verbs that indicate unrealized events forthe speaker’ and ḥurūf ġayr wājibāt as ‘grammatical markers12 that introducean event or a state of affairs unrealized for the speaker’. All thesemarkers intro-duce non-assertive utterances (kalām ġayr wājib).Finally, note that wājib/ġayr wājib, although they are closely related to the

affirmative/negative opposition (the ʾījāb/nafy opposition), is not to be con-

11 For instanceWright (1981: II, 41) “in simple asseverations and in those strengthened by anoath” or Badawi, Carter and Gully (2004:441) “The energetic form of the verb is used tomake very strong assertions”. But see Carter (to appear), who analyzes the energetic verbunequivocally as non-assertive.

12 It is preferable to translate the term ḥurūf by ‘grammatical markers’ rather than by‘particles’, for two reasons. In the first place, it is more accurate empirically, since theḥurūf also include, besides particles, nouns and ẓurūf categorized as such by Sībawayhi,for instanceman (see 10), ʾayna (see 15), kayfa, etc. In the second place, it is anachronisticto understand ḥarf as meaning ‘particle’ in the Kitāb, since this is the use of subsequentgrammarians. I agree with Levin (2000), and Carter (2004:75) that ḥarf indicates anysegment of speech in the Kitāb, the particle having no specific name but being describedas ḥarfun jāʾa li-maʿnan laysa bi-smin wa-lā fiʿlin (Kitāb I, 1.1–2).


foundedwith it. The two notions are conceptually and empirically distinct: theexamples in (5) fall under the ġayr al-wājib category, although there is no nega-tion in these utterances.

(5) a. la-ʾafʿal-anna‘I will certainly do [it]!’ (Kitāb I, 403.17)

b. hal taqūl-anna?‘Will you say [that]?’ (Kitāb II, 154.5)

c. ʾa-taqūl-anna ḏāka?‘Will you say that?’ (Kitāb II, 154.5)

Nevertheless, empirically, most of the time, the wājib is an utterance assertedonly positively. Carter’s (2004:78) translation of ʾījāb as ‘asserting positively’ isperfectly adequate. This fact raises a question about the status of negation, towhich I will return later.

3 Kalāmwājib and Syntax

The important issue here is how the notion of kalām wājib is pertinent insyntax, regarding nouns. In fact, when performed by the speaker, some speechacts require that the predication be built as a verb-subject structure, and notas a subject-predicate/topic-comment structure. As we know, predication inArabic may have these two structures, described by Sībawayhi by the conceptof bināʾ ʿalā.13 Asking a question (istifhām), commanding (ʾamr), prohibiting(nahy), supplicating an addressee (duʿāʾ), exhorting an addressee or incitingan addressee to do something (taḥḍīḍ wa-ʿarḍ), considering eventualities andtheir consequences ( jazāʾ), all require the verb-subject structure. Moreover,some of these speech acts require another important grammatical marker, theparticles that introduce these particular ‘meanings’, and these particles, in turn,require the same verb-subject structure. It should be emphasized that all of themarkers studied, except the conditional ones, are not operators (ʿawāmil) andthey require none of the two orders from this point of view. So what are the

13 As is well known, the expressions fiʿl mabniyy ʿalā l-ism and ismmabniyy ʿalā l-fiʿl (cf. KitābI, 36.10) describe the two possible structures in an utterance, when a verb occurs in thestructure: the subject-predicate/topic-comment one and the verb-subject one. We alsofind ism buniya ʿalayhi l-fiʿl and ism buniya ʿalā l-fiʿl to designate these two structures. Forthe notionmabniyy ʿalā, see Levin (1985:299f.).

12 ayoub

exact reasons for such a requirement?Why do these specificmodalities requirethis order, while others do not? What is the rationale behind it? And what sortof articulation is established between the enunciation and the utterance?

4 Ḥurūf ġayr wājibāt/Non-Assertive Grammatical Markers

4.1 Markers of Exhortation and IncitationThe first grammatical markers that require this order are markers of exhorta-tion and incitation: hallā, ʾallā, lawlā, lawmā. These have to be followed by averb (cf. 6). This verb can be explicit (muẓhar) (cf. 6 and 7) or implicit (muḍ-mar) (cf. 8), fronted (muqaddam) (cf. 6) or held back (muʾaḫḫar) (cf. 7a–c), butthey cannot be followed by a nounmubtadaʾ (cf. 9 qualified as lā yastaqīmu/lāyajūzu).14 It is possible for a noun to follow themodalmarker in the linear order(cf. 7 and 8), but this initial noun has to be in the accusative case and must begoverned by an explicit or implicit verb.15

(6) hallā ʾafʿalu?why.not do.Imperf.1s‘Why shall I not do [it]?’ (Kitāb I, 114.2)

(7) a. hallā zayd-a-n ḍarabta?why.not Zayd-Acc-n hit.Perf.2ms‘Why did you not hit Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.5)

b. lawlā zayd-a-n ḍarabta?why.not Zayd-Acc-n hit.Perf.2ms‘Why did you not hit Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.5–6)

c. ʾallā zayd-a-n qatalta?why.not Zayd-Acc-n kill.Perf.2ms‘Why did you not kill Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.6)

14 Cf. Kitāb I, 40.4–5: ʾammā mā yajūzu fī-hi l-fiʿlu muḍmaran ʾaw muẓharan, wa-muqadda-manwa-muʾaḫḫaran, wa-lā yajūzu ʾan yubtadaʾa baʿda-hu l-ʾasmāʾu, fa-hallā, lawlā, lawmā,ʾallā. Derenbourg reports in a note that many manuscripts have the variant lā yastaqīmu.

15 Cf. Kitāb I, 40.6: ʿalā ʾiḍmāri l-fiʿli.


(8) a. ʾallā zayd-a-n?why.not Zayd-Acc-n‘Why not Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.6)

b. hallā zayd-a-n?why.not Zayd-Acc-n‘Why not Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.6)

(9) a. *hallā zayd-u-n ḍarabta-hu?why.not Zayd-Nom-n hit.Perf.2ms-3ms

b. *lawlā zayd-u-n ḍarabta-hu?why.not Zayd-Nom-n hit.Perf.2ms-3ms

c. *ʾallā zayd-u-n qatalta-hu?why.not Zayd-Nom-n kill.Perf.2ms-3ms

4.2 The InterrogativeMarkersThe interrogative markers have the same requirement as themarkers of exhor-tation and incitation. They are ‘built’ for the verb.16 This is the ʾaṣl.17 Conse-quently, when a noun and a verb are both present in the utterance, the verb hasto follow themarker immediately and the nounmust be built on the verb, as in(10). The sequences in (11) where the object of the verb in (11a) is preposed, andwhere there is amubtadaʾ in (11b) are bad (qabīḥ) and only tolerated as poeticlicenses.

(10) a. kayfa raʾayta zayd-a-n?how see.Perf.2ms Zayd-Acc-n‘How did you see Zayd?’ (Kitāb I, 40.12)

b. hal ḏahaba zayd-u-n?Interrog go.Perf.3ms Zayd-Nom-n‘Did Zayd leave?’ (Kitāb I, 40.12)

16 See Kitāb I, 40.9–10 ḥurūfu l-istifhāmi kaḏālika buniyat li-l-fiʿli. But there is a variant inHārūn Kitāb I, 98, where they are said to be followed exclusively by the verb: ḥurūful-istifhāmi kaḏālika lā yalīhā ʾillā l-fiʿlu.

17 As in the following quotation in Kitāb I, 58.5: kamā ʾanna ḥurūfa l-istifhāmi bi-l-fiʿli ʾawlāwa-kāna l-ʾaṣlu fī-hā ʾan yubtadaʾa bi-l-fiʿli qabla l-ismi.

14 ayoub

(11) a. *kayfa zayd-a-n raʾayta?how Zayd-Acc-n see.Perf.2ms

b. *hal zayd-u-n ḏahaba?Interrog Zayd-Nom-n go.Perf.3ms

The Arabs allow some latitude in the use of the interrogative markers (tawas-saʿū fī-hā),18 since these can be followed by a nounmubtadaʾ when there is noverb in the utterance, as in (12).

(12) a. hal zayd-u-n fī l-dār-i?Interrog Zayd-Nom-n in Art-house-Gen‘Is Zayd at home?’ (Kitāb I, 40.11)

b. hal zayd-u-n munṭaliq-u-n?Interrog Zayd-Nom-n leave.Part-Nom-n‘Is Zayd setting off?’ (Kitāb I, 40.11)

The main question to address regarding (10–12) is: Why is the verb-subjectstructure required in the ʾaṣl? is it required for semantic, syntactic, morpho-logical, or enunciative reasons?

5 A First Paradigm: The Imperative

As in many other analyses of the Kitāb, the requirement of verb-subject struc-ture is related to another structure, which works as a paradigm. The paradigmof both the interrogative and the exhortative markers is the imperative (ʾamr).The basis for the similarity between these two grammatical markers is themaʿnā, the grammatical meaning.

(13) “This [similarity] is possible because thesemarkers are set out in order toincite and command. So what is good [lit. permissible] with the impera-tive, is good [lit. permissible]with them” (ʾinnamā jāzaḏālika li-ʾanna fī-himaʿnā l-taḥḍīḍi wa-l-ʾamri fa-jāza fī-hi mā yajūzu fī ḏālika, Kitāb I, 40.7).

18 See, for the notion of saʿa, Versteegh (1990); Carter (2004:64) “latitude of speech thatliterally stretches the rules”; and Baalbaki (2008). [See the contribution byHanadi Dayyehto this volume.]


As for the interrogativemarkers, the statement in (14) tells us in what partic-ular respect these particles are similar to the imperative.

(14) “They did so with the interrogation as it does not refer to somethingthat is actual, like the imperative. The speaker is asking the addresseeabout a state of affairs that is not well established for him” (wa-ʾinnamāfaʿalū ḏālika bi-l-istifhāmi li-ʾanna-hu ka-l-ʾamri fī ʾanna-hu ġayru wājibinwa-ʾanna-hu yurīdu min al-muḫāṭabi ʾamran lam yastaqirra ʿinda s-sāʾili,Kitāb I, 40.14–15).

According to these quotations, the structure of the predication in (6), (7), (8),(10), and (11), which is a verb-subject one, and the case of the noun in the ini-tial position are determined by themodality of the utterance, in other words bythe communicative intention of the speaker towards the addressee and the sta-tus of the propositional content for him. In both exhortative and interrogativeutterances, the speakers do not know the truth value of the propositional con-tent of their utterances, whether it is actual or not. In the case of hallā, lawlā,lawmā, ʾallā, the speaker is exhorting the adressee todo something. Exhortationis a kind of command. This communicative intention of the speaker, grammati-calized by hallā (maʿnāhallā) and implying that the event indicated by the verbis not a fact,19 constitutes the point of similarity with imperatives and deter-mines the structure of the utterance and, indirectly, the governor of the noun.In the case of interrogation, the speakers do not know whether the event is afact or not. They are precisely in the process of asking the addressee to tell themwhat it is. This non-actualization of the event or the state of affairs (ġayr wājib)is the aspect of similarity between imperative and interrogative and explainsthe verb-subject requirement. In many chapters of the Kitāb, interrogativesare glossed by an imperative: asking where Abdallah is, is like saying to youradressee ‘Tell me (ʾaʿlim-nī) where his place is’.In modern terms, we would say that command and inquiring are an event

modality as they refer to events that are not actualized, events that have nottaken place, but that are merely potential for the speaker.But why does a command itself require the verb-subject structure for Sīb-

awayhi? The argumenthere is purelymorphological. It is presentedmany chap-ters later, when Sībawayhi studies the case of the noun in the initial position ofthe imperative clause in (15), which has the structure that later became knownas ištiġāl.

19 See Kitāb I, 62.1: al-ʾamru wa-l-nahyu ġayru wājibayni.

16 ayoub

(15) a. zayd-a-n iḍrib-huZayd-Acc-n hit.Imp.ms-3ms‘Hit Zayd!’ (Kitāb I, 58.9)

b. ʿabdullāhi ḍrib-huAbdallah.Nom hit.Imp.ms-3ms‘Abdallah hit him!’ (Kitāb I, 58.12)

c. ʾammā zayd-a-n fa-qtul-huas.for Zayd-Acc-n kill.Imp.ms-3ms‘As for Zayd, kill him!’ (Kitāb I, 58.9–10)

d. al-sāriq-u/a wa-l-sāriqat-u/aArt-thief.masc.-Nom/Acc and-Art-thief.fem-Nom/Accfa-qṭa ʿū ʾaydiy-a-humāConn-cut.off.Imp.mp hand.Plur-Acc-3md‘As for the thief,male or female, cut off his/her hands!’ (Kitāb I, 60.9–10)

Note, first of all, that if the examples in (15a–c) seem to us artificial and mar-ginal, they correspond to real data in the Arabic of the 1st/7th century. Weneed only remind ourselves here of the long discussions about the two read-ings of the Qurʾānic verse Q. 5/38 in (15d). Sībawayhi, following the early gram-marian and Qurʾān reader ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766), whom he does not citeby name,20 seems to prefer the reading with the accusative case for al-sāriquwa-l-sāriqatu (Kitāb I, 61.1). But ʿĪsā’s reading is objected to and consideredexceptional (šāḏḏa), and it seems that this objection has prevailed from thebeginning since Sībawayhi indicates: “Somepeople read al-sāriqawa-l-sāriqatawa-l-zāniyata wa-l-zāniya. This reading is very strong in the ʿArabiyya,21 as Imentioned earlier. Nevertheless, the majority [of readers] refuse to considerany other reading than the nominative”22 (Kitāb I, 60.21–61.2).In fact, these lines tell us that there is some discrepancy between the ʿAra-

biyya and the usage, as regards these data. The main question is: why is (15d)with the accusative so ‘strong’ in the ʿArabiyya? As the ʿArabiyya is the stan-dardized language established by the grammarians where qiyās is crucial, the

20 See Kitāb I, 60.21 wa-qad qaraʾa ʾunās.21 For the difference between kalām al-ʿArab and ʿArabiyya, see Ayoub (2001:93f.).22 Kitāb I, 60.21–61.2 wa-qad qaraʾa ʾunāsun wa-l-sāriqa wa-l-sāriqata wa-l-zāniyata wa-l-

zāniya wa-huwa fī l-ʿarabiyyati ʿalā mā ḏakartu laka min al-quwwati wa-lākin ʾabati l-ʿāmmatu ʾillā l-qirāʾata bi-l-rafʿi.


reason is a theoretical one, and helps us understand why command utteranceshave to be verb-subject structures.The noun in the initial position in these structures is called by Sībawayhi

al-ismu llaḏī yubnā ʿalayhi l-fiʿlu wa-yubnā ʿalā l-fiʿli,23 as it can be ‘built’ in bothways, either as a mubtadaʾ in the nominative (as in 15b),24 or built upon theverb in the accusative (as in 15a). The latter is preferable; this is a general ruleset out in the first paragraph of the chapter (whose title is, precisely, Bābal-ʾamrwa-l-nahy), where the accusative is linked with the modality of the utterance.The accusative is said to be preferable because command and prohibitionbelong to the verb, so that the ʾaṣl consists in beginning (yubtadaʾ /yubdaʾ) withthe verb preceding the noun.25 In other terms, the modality of the utterancedetermines the structure of the predication and, indirectly, the case of the nounin the initial position, as dependent of/governed by the verb.26Yet, if the similarity with interrogatives is relied on to justify this statement,

it is explicitly said that the ibtidāʾ with a verb is stronger (ʾaqwā, Kitāb I, 58.6;ʾawjab, Kitāb I, 61.3) in command and prohibition than it is in interrogation,since command and prohibition can only be expressed by a verb (16).

(16) “Command and prohibition can only be by a verb, explicit or implicit”( fa-kaḏā l-ʾamru wa-l-nahyu li-ʾannahumā lā yaqaʿāni ʾillā bi-l-fiʿli muẓha-ran ʾawmuḍmaran, Kitāb I, 58.6).

The unique grammatical marker for command and prohibition is the verb.There is no other grammatical marker for it. This statement is repeated manytimes, as in (17a, b).

(17) a. “There is no other marker for command except the verb” (wa-l-ʾamrulaysa yaḥduṯu la-hu ḥarfun siwā l-fiʿli, Kitāb I, 61.6)

b. “[Command and prohibition] are expressed by no term except a verb”([al-ʾamru wa-l-nahyu] lā yakūnāni ʾillā bi-fiʿlin, Kitāb I, 61.3).

23 Lit. “the noun on which the verb is built or which is built on the verb”. See Kitāb I, 58.3–4.24 Its value, as we know, is then tanbīh al-muḫāṭab (Kitāb I, 58.13). For a discussion, see

Marogy (2009).25 SeeKitāb I, 58.3–5wa-l-ʾamruwa-l-nahyuyuḫtāru fīhimā l-naṣbu fī l-ismi llaḏī yubnā ʿalayhi

l-fiʿlu wa-yubnā ʿalā l-fiʿli kamā ḫtīra ḏālika fī bābi l-istifhāmi li-ʾanna l-ʾamra wa-l-nahyaʾinnamā humā li-l-fiʿli kamā ʾanna ḥurūfa l-istifhāmi bi-l-fiʿli ʾawlā wa-kāna l-ʾaṣlu fīhimā ʾanyubtadaʾa/yubdaʾa bi-l-fiʿli qabla l-ismi.

26 See Kitāb I, 61.2 ʾinnamā kāna l-wajhu fī l-ʾamri wa-l-nahyi l-naṣba li-ʾanna ḥadda l-kalāmitaqdīmu l-fiʿli.

18 ayoub

So it seems, at first glance, that this is a morphological argument, advancedto justify the requirement of the verb–subject structure of the predication. Butthis argument can be read differently, on the basis of the analysis of condition-als (see below, section 6).The clause introduced by the lām of command is similar to the impera-

tive, “as it is a command addressed to an absent, equivalent to if ʿal for theaddressee”;27 thus, we have (18).

(18) a. bišr-a-n li-yaqtul ʾabā-hu bakr-u-nBišr-Acc-n Conj-kill.Apocop.3ms father.Acc-3ms Bakr-Nom-n‘Bišr, let Bakr kill his father’ (Kitāb I, 58.11)

b. zayd-a-n qaṭaʿa llāh-u yad-a-huZayd-Acc-n cut.Perf.3ms God-Nom hand-Acc-3ms‘Zayd, may God cut his hand’ (Kitāb I, 60.2)

The same holds true for prayers as in (19). Actually, an invocation is equivalentto an order and a prohibition, but it was called ‘invocation’ “because it was con-sidered too big to call it order or prohibition”, with respect to the addressee.28

(19) a. ʾallāhumma zayd-a-n fa-ġfir ḏanb-a-huo God! Zayd-Acc-n Conn-forgive.Imper.ms sin-Acc-3ms‘O God! Forgive Zayd his sin!’ (Kitāb I, 60.1)

b. ʿamr-a-n li-yajzi-hi llāh-u ḫayr-a-nʿAmr-Acc-n Conj.reward.Apocop.3ms-3ms God-Nom good-Acc-n‘ʿAmr, may God reward him!’ (Kitāb I, 60.2)

In all of these structures, it is the modality of the grammatical marker thatdetermines the structure of the predication and, indirectly, the case of thefronted noun, by analogy with the imperatives. In the imperatives themselves,the argument for the verb–subject structure seems to bemorphological. In fact,the enunciative argument and the morphological one are narrowly linked, asappears in the second paradigm for interrogative and imperative markers, thejazāʾ.

27 See Kitāb I, 58.11 li-ʾannahu ʾamrun li-l-ġāʾibi bi-manzilati if ʿal li-l-muḫāṭabi.28 Kitāb I, 59.20–60.1: wa-ʿlam ʾanna l-duʿāʾa bi-manzilati l-ʾamri wa-l-nahyi wa-ʾinnamā qīla

duʿāʾun li-ʾannahu stuʿẓima ʾan yuqāla ʾamrun ʾaw nahyun.


6 A Second Paradigm: The Conditional Markers (ḥurūf al-jazāʾ)

There is another paradigm for both interrogative and imperative markers jus-tifying the data and the fact that these markers require a verb-subject predica-tion, namely the conditional markers expressing the potential (ḥurūf al-jazāʾ),ʾin being the canonicalmarker of this class.29 The arguments presented in favorof this analysis are all held by analogy. They concern correlative conditionalclauses in which imperatives and interrogatives are the protasis and in whichthe apodosis is built as a verb-subject predication with an apocopated verb.The similarities between imperatives and interrogatives, on the one hand, andconditional clauses, on the other, are structural, morphological, semantic, andenunciative. The quotation in (20) presents the arguments for this.

(20) “Don’t you see that its jawāb [the apodosis, when the protasis is aninterrogative clause] is an apocope. This is the reason why the accusativehas been chosen, and why they were reluctant to front the noun, as thesemarkers resemble the jazāʾmarkers because of what follows them. Theirjawāb is like theirs and the meaning of the statement they introducecould be a jazāʾ. They do not introduce factual events for the speaker,but indicate events that are merely potential like the jazāʾ. This is why itis bad to front the noun” (ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna jawābahu [ jawāb al-istifhām]jazm fa-li-hāḏā ḫtīra l-naṣbu wa-karihū taqdīma l-ismi li-ʾannahā ḥurūfunḍāraʿat bi-mā baʿdahā ḥurūfa l-jazāʾi wa-jawābuhu ka-jawābihā wa-qadyaṣīrumaʿnā ḥadīṯihā ʾilayhi wa-hiya ġayru wājibatin ka-l-jazāʾi fa-qabuḥataqdīmu l-ismi li-hāḏā, Kitāb I, 40.16–18).

Thus, (21a) is said to be equivalent to (21b), which is a jazāʾ structure.30

(21) a. ʾayna ʿabdullāhi ʾāti-hiwhere Abdallah.Nom come.Apocop.1s-3ms‘Wherever Abdallah is, I will come to him’ (Kitāb I, 40.18)

b. ḥayṯumā yakun ʾāti-hiwherever be.Apocop.3ms come.Apocop.1s-3ms‘Wherever he is, I will come to him’ (Kitāb I, 40.19)

29 See Kitāb I, 407.2 ʾin … ʾaṣlu l-jazāʾi wa-lā tufāriquhu. [See in this volume the contributionby Manuela Giolfo on the conditional markers.]

30 This is a ‘comme si’ argument: ʾiḏā qulta … fa-ka-ʾannaka qulta.

20 ayoub

c. ʾayna takūnu?where be.Imperf.2ms‘Where will you be?’ (Kitāb I, 385.9)

The first similarity is structural: (21a) and (21b) have the same structure withtwo propositions, a protasis and an apodosis ( jawāb) that is built as a verb-subject predication. In addition to this, the two protases and the two apodosesare said to be similar.31 This is how we understand the rather obscure state-ment about the similarity of the two protases many chapters later: the relationbetween the interrogative marker and the verb following it in (21c) is the sameas the relation of the ḥurūf al-jazāʾ with the verb following them in (21b). Inboth cases, the verb is not adjoined to the marker (ʾayna—ḥayṯumā) as a partof it, it is not a ṣila of the marker.32 In modern terms, we would say that themarker and the proposition it introduces are not a single constituent. In pre-senting his ownanalysis, Sībawayhi rejects another onemadeby thenaḥwiyyūnin order to determine the relation between interrogative and conditionalmark-ers. The naḥwiyyūn’s analysis asserts that all interrogative markers are condi-tionalmarkers.33 Sībawayhi rejects this analysis, noting that ʾin, ḥayṯumā, ʾiḏmāare conditionalmarkers, without being interrogativemarkers. His own analysisestablishes abstract similarities, rather than identity, between the two types ofmarkers.The second similarity is morphological and modal. It concerns the mood

inflection. The verb in the apodosis in (21a) is apocopated,34 just as it is in (21b).According to the Kitāb, this similarity is one of the reasons why the accusativecase is better on the noun in the initial position of interrogative clauses. Thisimportant similarity is not only morphological, but overtly modal in the Kitāb:the verb is apocopated in the apodosis because these markers introduce aprotasis with the meaning of ʾin, an analysis that is attributed to al-Ḫalīl.35The third similarity is the most essential one: it is the meaning of the state-

ment interrogative markers introduce. This meaning is a jazāʾ meaning: just

31 See Kitāb I, 40.16–17: wa-karihū taqdīma l-ismi li-ʾannahā ḥurūfun ḍāraʿat bi-mā baʿdahāmā baʿda ḥurūfi l-jazāʾi wa-jawābahā ka-jawābihi.

32 See Kitāb I, 385.8–9: al-fiʿlu fī l-jazāʾi laysa ṣilatan li-mā qablahu kamā ʾannahu fī ḥurūfil-istifhāmi laysa ṣilatan li-mā qablahu.

33 See Kitāb I, 385.5.34 See Kitāb I, 40.16: ʾa-lā tarā ʾanna jawābahu [ḥurūfi l-istifhāmi] jazmun fa-li-hāḏā ḫtīra

l-naṣbu.35 See Kitāb I, 399.12–13: wa-zaʿama l-Ḫalīlu ʾanna hāḏihi l-ʾawāʾila kullahā fīhā maʿnā ʾin

fa-li-ḏālika injazama l-jawābu.


like conditional markers, interrogative markers do not introduce statementsindicating factual events for the speaker.36This line of reasoning is extended to all grammatical markers that are ġayr

wājibāt, i.e. those that introduce clauses of different enunciative value, suchas ʾamr, nahy, istifhām, duʿāʾ, ʿarḍ (Kitāb I, 399.6). They are glossed37 by animperative and a conditional clause. Thus, an utterance like (22a)38

(22) a. ʾayna bayt-u-ka ʾazur-kawhere house-Nom-2ms visit.Apocop.1s-2ms‘Where is your house, I would visit you’

is glossed by (22b) or (22c)

b. ʾin ʾaʿlam makān-a bayt-i-ka ʾazur-kaif know.Apocop.1s place-Acc house-Gen-2ms visit.Apocop.1s-2ms‘If I know where your house is, I will visit you’ (Kitāb I, 399.14)

c. ʾaʿlim-nī ʾayna bayt-u-ka …let.know.Imp.ms-1s where house-Nom-2ms‘Let me know where your house is …’ (Kitāb I, 399.15)

To summarize, the grammatical markers that are ḥurūf ġayr wājibāt are giventhe conditional markers (ḥurūf al-jazāʾ) as their paradigm (Kitāb I, 61.11–14).The analogy is based precisely on the notion of ġayr al-wājib since all of thesegrammatical markers introduce non-factual events for the speaker, triggeringthe apocopated conjugation in the apodosis of a conditional clause. Theirsimilaritywith the conditionalmarkers (ṃudāraʿa ḥurūf al-jazāʾ) explains theirstructure and the case of the noun that occursmarginally in the initial position.The argument justifying the verb-subject structure for the ḥurūf al-jazāʾ

themselves is a morphosyntactic and morphosemantic one. It goes roughly asfollows: The canonical jazāʾ (ʾaṣl) [requires] the verb/the action and the jazāʾmarkers govern it/operate on it.39 Unlike all previously studied markers, thejazāʾ markers govern the apocopated conjugation. So they obey special con-

36 ġayr wājiba ka-l-jazāʾ.37 This gloss is presented as the meaning of the statement of the speaker (maʿnā kalāmihi).38 See Kitāb I, 399.6–15.39 See Kitāb I, 398.7–8 li-ʾanna ʾaṣla l-jazāʾi l-fiʿlu wa-fīhi taʿmalu ḥurūfu l-jazāʾi wa-lākinna-

hum qad yaḍaʿūna fī mawḍiʿi l-jazāʾi ġayrahu.

22 ayoub

straints. In three chapters (Kitāb ch. 256 to 258), in which the Kitāb categorizesthe grammatical markers with regard to government/operation and to thelinear word order, a number of arguments are given to explain why it is bad(qabīḥ) to have a noun preceding the verb with jazāʾ markers. Here again,the basis of the argumentation is the analogy principle. The speakers madethe ḥurūf al-jazāʾ similar to the other grammatical markers that assign theapocopated conjugation and that have to be followed immediately by the verbthey govern (lam, lā, the lām of command). But the ḥurūf al-jazāʾ have a certainplasticity (taṣarruf ): theymay, for instance, abandon the apocopated form andintroduce a faʿala verb, or they are equivalent to the relative pronoun allaḏī.Consequently, in certain contexts ʾin can be followed by a noun. In modernterms, this line of argumentation is based on the principle of homogeneizationof the paradigm, which is a formal homogeneization. Thus, a noun can followʾin in normal situations of speech if ʾin introduces a faʿala form and, only inpoetry, if ʾin introduces a yafʿalu form.40The conditionals in theKitābdeserve a study by themselves, but the relevant

points for our present purposemay be summarized as follows. In the first place,if the analogy between the grammatical markers that are ḥurūf ġayr wājibātand the conditional markers (ḥurūf al-jazāʾ) is based precisely on the notionof al-wājib and on the fact that all these grammatical markers trigger the apoc-opated conjugation in the apodosis of a conditional clause (21a equivalent to21b), this suggests that, according to Sībawayhi, there is a correlation betweenwhat we call modality, mood, and word order. The modality of the propositionthat triggers the apocopated conjugation in the apodosis and that grammati-calizes a command intention of the speaker, a prohibitive one, an imploringor an inquiring one, requires a verb-subject structure and does not accept theibtidāʾ of nouns.Secondly, by analogy, the requirement of a verb-subject structure is extended

to two markers, the temporal ʾiḏā and the spatial ḥayṯu, as in (23) and (24).

40 See Kitāb I, 406.15–18 wa-ʿlam ʾanna ḥurūfa l-jazāʾi yaqbuḥu ʾan tataqaddama l-ʾasmāʾufīhā qabla l-ʾafʿāli wa-ḏālika li-ʾannahum šabbahūhā bimā yajzimu mimmā ḏakarnā ʾillāʾanna ḥurūfa l-jazāʾi qad jāza fīhā ḏālika fī l-šiʿri li-ʾanna ḥurūfa l-jazāʾi yadḫuluhā faʿalawa-yafʿal wa-yakūnu fīhā l-istifhāmu fa-turfaʿu fīhā l-ʾasmāʾu wa-takūnu bi-manzilati llaḏīfa-lammā kānat tataṣarrafu hāḏā l-taṣarrufa wa-tufāriqu l-jazma ḍāraʿat mā yajurru minal-ʾasmāʾi llatī ʾin šiʾta istaʿmaltahā ġayra muḍāfatin naḥwa ḍāribi ʿabdillāhi li-ʾannaka ʾinšiʾta nawwantawa-naṣabtawa-ʾin šiʾta lam tujāwiz al-isma l-ʿāmila fī l-ʾāḫiri yaʿnī ḍāribin fa-li-ḏālika lam takunmiṯla lamwa-lā fī l-nahyi wa-l-lāmi fī l-ʾamri li-ʾannahunna lā yufāriqnal-jazma.


(23) a. ijlis ḥayṯu jalasa zayd-u-nsit.Imp.ms where sit.Perf.3ms Zayd-Nom-n‘Sit down where Zayd sat down!’ (Kitāb I, 45.1)

b. ijlis ʾiḏā jalasa zayd-u-nsit.Imp.ms when sit.Perf.3ms Zayd-Nom-n‘Sit down when Zayd sits down!’ (Kitāb I, 45.1)

(24) a. *ijlis ḥayṯu zayd-u-n jalasasit.Imp.ms where Zayd-Nom-n sit.Perf.3ms (Kitāb I, 44.9)

b. *ijlis ʾiḏā zayd-u-n jalasasit.Imp.ms when Zayd-Nom-n sit.Perf.3ms

These markers require the verb-subject structure41 in (23) “since they can havethe same meaning as conditional markers” (li-ʾannahumā yakūnāni fī maʿnāḥurūfi l-mujāzāt) without being categorized as ġayr wājibāt. So (25 a, b) aregood, but (26 a, b) are not, since it is bad to have a nounmubtadaʾ after them ifthere is a verb in the comment structure.42

(25) a. ʾiḏā ʿabdallāhi talqā-hu fa-ʾakrim-huwhen Abdallah.Acc meet.Imperf.2ms-3ms Conn-honor.Imp.ms-3ms‘When you meet Abdallah, treat him with honor!’ (Kitāb I, 44.7–8)

b. ḥayṯu zayd-a-n talqā-hu fa-ʾakrim-huwhere Zayd-Acc-n meet.Imperf.2ms-3ms Conn.-honor.Imp.ms-3ms‘Where you meet Zayd, treat him with honor!’ (Kitāb I, 44.8)

(26) a. *ʾiḏā ʿabdullāhi talqā-huwhen Abdallah.Nom meet.Imperf.2ms-3msfa-ʾakrim-huConn-honor.Imp.ms-3ms (Kitāb I, 44.8–9)

41 Kitāb I, 44.6 wa-mimmā yaqbuḥu baʿdahu ibtidāʾu l-ʾasmāʾi wa-yakūnu l-ismu baʿdahu ʾiḏāʾawqaʿta l-fiʿla ʿalā šayʾin min sababihi naṣban fī l-qiyāsi.

42 Kitāb I, 44.8–9 wa-yaqbuḥu ibtidāʾu l-ismi baʿdahumā ʾiḏā kāna baʿdahu l-fiʿlu.

24 ayoub

b. *ḥayṯu zayd-u-n talqā-huwhere Zayd-Nom-n meet.Imperf.2ms-3msfa-ʾakrim-huConn-honor.Imp.ms-3ms (Kitāb I, 44.8–9)

Thirdly, the ġayr al-wājib notion plays a crucial role in the analysis of the jazāʾitself. This analysis is undoubtedly semantic and enunciative, as shown by thefollowing two statements:

(i) There is only jazāʾ and the verb of the apodosis is apocopated when theprotasis is a kalām ġayr wājib:

(27) “There can never be a jazāʾ, unless the first proposition is ġayr wājibexcept as poetic licence” (lā yakūnu l-jazāʾu ʾabadan ḥattā yakūnal-kalāmu l-ʾawwalu ġayra wājibin ʾillā ʾan yuḍṭarra šāʿirun, Kitāb I, 402.11–12).

Therefore, according to our interpretation of ġayr al-wājib, there is only jazāʾif the event or the state of affairs indicated in the protasis is not actualizedand may or may not happen. This statement is repeated twice, for instance inch. 253:

(28) “The jazāʾ can only occur with ġayr al-wājib” (li-ʾanna l-jazāʾa lā yakūnuʾillā fī ġayri l-wājibi, Kitāb I, 399.21).

(ii) There can only be jazāʾwhen the actualization of the event in the apodosisdepends upon the actualization of the event expressed in the protasis:

(29) “because, in the jazāʾ, it is not an obligation for him [the agent of the verb]to actualize the action/the verb is not actualized, unless there is an actionin the first place” (li-ʾanna-hu fī l- jazāʾi laysa bi-wājibin ʾanna-hu43 yafʿaluʾillā ʾan yakūnamin al-ʾawwali fiʿlun, Kitāb I, 398.23–24).

Therefore, we have to combine the formal argument (the similarity with lamand lā) with this analysis to understand the grammar of the jazāʾ in the Kitāb.

43 Hārūn (III, 92) has ʾanna, too.


6 Negative Markers

What about negative markers? Where are they, with respect to the notion ofġayr al-wājib? By analogy, they require a verb-subject structure, since they aresimilar to interrogative, imperative, and conditional markers,44 the commonfeature being the fact that they are all ġayr wājibāt. But the negative markersdiffer from these markers45 because they negate a factual statement (nafyli-wājib). As such, they have to do with factuality. Some consequences followfrom this property. Firstly, it is easy to front the noun in (30a).46 Secondly, theycan be followed by a subject-predicate structure as in (30b) with amubtadaʾ inthe nominative case, and a predicate built on it. Therefore we say that negativemarkers can have in their scope a subject-predicate structure.47

(30) a. mā zayd-a-n ḍarabtu-hu wa-lā zayd-a-nNeg Zayd-Acc-n hit.Perf.1s-3ms Conj-Neg Zayd-Acc-nqataltu-hukill.Perf.1s-3ms‘I have neither hit Zayd nor killed him’ (Kitāb I, 61.15)

b. mā zayd-u-n ḍarabtu-hu wa-lā zayd-u-nNeg Zayd-Nom-n hit.Perf.1s-3ms Conj-Neg Zayd-Nom-nqataltu-huhit.Perf.1s-3ms‘Zayd, I have neither hit him nor killed him’ (Kitāb I, 62.1)

Indeed, it is hard to say whether Sībawayhi treats negatives as non-assertiveeverywhere. The difference between ġayr wājibāt and nafy al-wājib, while giv-ing us a telling example of a reasoning by analogy, indicates, linguistically,two different statuses of negation. It characterizes the complex link betweennegation and assertion. An utterance beginning by a negative marker can beregarded as an assertion (nafy al-wājib) (as in 30a), or a non-assertive utter-ance, introduced by grammatical markers that introduce an event or a state

44 Kitāb I, 61.12–13 šabbahū-hā bi-ʾalifi l-istifhāmi ḥayṯu quddima l-ismu qabla l-fiʿli li-ʾanna-hunnaġayruwājibatin kamā ʾanna l-ʾalifawa-ḥurūfa l-jazāʾi ġayruwājibatinwa-kamā ʾannal-ʾamra wa-l-nahya ġayru wājibayni.

45 Kitāb I, 61.14 wa-laysat ka-ḥurūfi l-istifhāmi wa-l-jazāʾi ʾinnamā hiya muḍāriʿatun.46 Kitāb I, 61.13–14 wa-sahula taqdīmu l-ʾasmāʾi fī-hā li-ʾannahā nafyun li-wājibin.47 Kitāb I, 62.1–2 ʾin šiʾta rafaʿta […] li-ʾanna-hunna nafyu wājibin yubtadaʾu baʿda-hunna

wa-yubnā ʿalā l-mubtadaʾi baʿda-hunna.

26 ayoub

of affairs unrealized for the speaker (30b). In some contexts, the non-assertiveinterpretation (ġayr wājibāt)—Sībawayhi’s view in the latter case—upheld bythe functioning of negative propositions, which imply fa- or wa-, for instance,in triggering the subjunctive, describes a real specificity of Arabic, while corre-sponding to general facts. It is well known in general linguistics that an asser-tion, when it is unmarked, is affirmative. Affirmation and negation are notsymmetrical with regard to assertion. Palmer (2001:12) in his classic study aboutmood and modality, observes that in many languages, the same marker existsfor negatives and interrogatives (note thatArabicmā is bothnegative and inter-rogative). He observes that negatives are sometimes “marked as irrealis whenthere is marking of mood”, and that in many studies “Negatives and Interroga-tives are classed together as being ‘non-assertive’ ” (Palmer 2001:11).The difference between ġayrwājib and nafy al-wājib is used in a very enlight-

ening way in al-Zajjājī’s Maʿānī l-ḥurūf wa-l-ṣifāt to describe the differencebetween lam and lā (31).

(31) “lā ʾātī-hi is in its principle non-assertive, whereas the expression lamʾāti-hi is a negation of a factual statement” (lā ʾātī-hi ʾaṣlu-hu ġayruwājibinfa-qawlu-ka lam ʾāti-hi ʾinnamā huwa nafyu l-wājibi).

With these examples, al-Zajjājī distinguishes two different ʾaṣls. In the firstexample, the yafʿalu form refers to an event still unrealized, in the second one,the tense value of lammeans that what is negated is a past event, i.e. a factualevent presupposed by the addressee. Even if al-Zajjājī’s purpose is different, hisnotion of wājib is similar to that of Sībawayhi and confirms our interpretation.But do all themarkers that introduce non-factual events (ḥurūf ġayrwājibāt)

require the verb-subject order? In other words, is the subject-predicate orderonly associated with the wājib, i.e. with factual statements? This is certainlynot the case. Sībawayhi states explicitly that unlike ʾinna, lākinna, which arewājibatāni48 (Kitāb I, 247.15–16), layta, laʿalla, kaʾanna49 are not, and by glosseshe categorizes three new speech acts as ġayrwājib: wishes (tamannī), desirable

48 Indiscussing constructions like ʾinnahāḏā ʿabdullāhimunṭaliqan, inwhich theḫabar, herein the sense of ‘new information’, is not the predicate, but a ḥāl, Sībawayhi states that ʾinna,lākinna are wājibatāni and, as such (li-ʾanna-hunna wājibatāni), the meaning (maʿnā) ofthe construction is the same as hāḏā ʿabdullāhi munṭaliqan (Kitāb I, 247.15–17). Further-more, all constructions that are good (ḥasuna) with the ibtidāʾ are good here, and what isbad (qabīḥ) with the ibtidāʾ is bad here, as if they have the samemaʿnā as the ibtidāʾ, bothbeing assertions (Kitāb I, 248.4 li-ʾanna l-maʿnā wāḥidun wa-huwamin kalāmin wājibin).

49 See Kitāb I, 246.20 lam takun layta wājibatan wa-lā laʿalla wa-lā ka-ʾanna.


probabilities (rajāʾ), and comparisons (tašbīh).50 These refer to non-factualevents. The treatment of coordination in (32) is consistent with the status oflayta, laʿalla, kaʾanna.

(32) a. layta zayd-a-n munṭaliq-u-n wa-ʿamr-a-nWish Zayd-Acc-n go.away.Part-Nom-n with-ʿAmr-Acc-n‘I wish Zayd and ʿAmr were on their way!’

b. *layta zayd-a-n munṭaliq-u-n wa-ʿamr-u-nWish Zayd-Acc-n go.away.Part-Nom-n Conj-ʿAmr-Nom-n

The only possible case for ʿamran is the accusative as conjoined to zaydan. Thenominativewould be bad (qabīḥ), as therewould be an implicit huwa function-ing as amubtadaʾ, ʿamrun being its ḫabar, so that the utterance would includetwo conjoined propositions, one non-assertive and the other one assertive, andit is bad to conjoin an assertive proposition with a non-assertive one.51As far as I know, theKitābdoesnot explain explicitlywhy the topic-comment

structure is required with layta, laʿalla, kaʾanna, although they are ġayr wājibāt.In modern terminology, we might say that all the modalities studied fall underthe generic category of irrealis modality, but they include different kinds ofirrealis modality. Some studies about mood andmodality in general linguisticsdistinguish propositionalmodality and eventmodality.52 Propositionalmodal-ity is concernedwith the speaker’s attitude to the truth-valueor factual status oftheproposition. Their scope is thewholeproposition. By contrast, eventmodal-ity refers to events that are not actualized, events that have not taken place butare merely potential. Their scope is only the event. In fact, the modalities thatrequire the verb-subject structure are those in which speakers express theircommunicative intention towards their addressees and are involved in a rela-tionwith them in such away that the actualization of the event depends on theaddressees. These are event modalities and their scope is only the event,53 so

50 See Kitāb I, 247.15–18 wa-kaḏālika ʾiḏā qulta ‘layta hāḏā zaydun qāʾiman wa-laʿalla hāḏāʿabdullāhi munṭaliqan wa-ka-ʾanna hāḏā bišrun munṭaliqan’ wa-ʾanta fī layta tamannā-hufī l-ḥāli wa-fī ka-ʾanna tušabbihu ʾinsānan fī ḥāli ḏahābi-hi kamā tamannayta-hu ʾinsānanfī ḥāli qiyāmin wa-ʾiḏā qulta la-ʿalla fa-ʾanta tarjū-hu ʾaw taḫāfu-hu fī ḥāli ḏahābin.

51 See Kitāb I, 246.20–21 fa-qabuḥa ʿinda-hum ʾan yudḫilū l-wājiba fī mawḍiʿi l-tamannī fa-yaṣīrū qad ḍammū ʾilā l-ʾawwali mā laysa ʿalā maʿnā-hu.

52 See Palmer (2001).53 I believe this is the linguistic reason for the following twodifferent acceptabilitieswith the

interrogativemarker hal: the interrogativemarkermay be followed by a nominal sentence

28 ayoub

they need the verb-subject structure. Grammatical markers like layta, laʿalla,kaʾanna express the speaker’s commitment to the propositional content of theutterance, its believability, uncertainty, or desirability. They are propositionalmodalities. Their scope is the whole proposition, so they introduce a subject-predicate structure.

7 TheMood of the Verb

Before concluding, I would like to stress that the same modalities that werecategorized above as ġayr wājib, also determine the mood inflections of theverb. I only illustrate the case of the energetic in (33) in order to show that themodalities involved in this suffixation are the very ones which are involved inword order, the key being precisely that the verb indicates an action that is ġayrwājib. The energetic is used in imperatives, as in (33a).

(33) a. iḍrib-anna zayd-a-nhit.Imp.ms-Energ Zayd-Acc-n‘Hit Zayd!’ (Kitāb I, 152.14)

in prohibitives, as in (33b)

b. lā tafʿal-anna ḏākaNeg do.Apocop.2ms-Energ Dem‘Don’t do that!’ (Kitāb I, 152.14)

in questions, as in (33c–d)

c. hal/ʾa-taqūl-anna?Interrog-say.Apocop.2ms-Energ‘Will you say [it]?’ (Kitāb II, 154.6)

d. kam tamkuṯ-anna?how.much stay.Apocop.2ms-Energ‘How long are you staying?’ (Kitāb II, 154.6)

if there is no verb (hal zaydunmusāfirun?), but not if there is a verb (*hal zaydun yusāfiruas against hal yusāfiru zaydun, which is acceptable). This constraint shows that when theutterance with hal contains a verb, the only possible interpretation is the event modality.


with markers of exhortation, as in (33e)

e. hallā/lawlā/ʾallā taqūl-anna?why.not say.Apocop.2ms-Energ‘Why don’t you say [it]?’ (Kitāb II, 154.15–16)

in a protasis after ḥurūf al-jazāʾ +mā as in (33f)

f. ʾimmā taʾtiy-ann-ī ʾāti-kaif come.Apocop.2ms.Energ-1s come.Apocop.1s-2ms‘If you come to me, I will come to you’ (Kitāb II, 155.2)

The reasons put forward to explain this suffixation show a remarkable con-sistency in the analysis throughout the Kitāb. Furthermore, as in many otherplaces in the Kitāb, reference is made to previous chapters where the affinitiesbetween the categories studied here, have been shown.54

8 Conclusion

At the end of this study, we can draw the following conclusions:

(i) In considering any point of the Kitāb, there is a close articulation betweensyntax, semantics and enunciation, giving specific notions and propositionsthat characterize the linguistic thinking of Sībawayhi. This articulation goesthrough the case and mood systems, and determines partly the word order inan utterance. It even determines the hypothesis of the presence of an implicitverb ( fiʿl muḍmar) in the structures we studied.

(ii) If we are correct, the relation of a speaker to his addressee is crucial in deter-mining the form of utterances. The data we studied are particularly interestingbecause the kind of fronting and the case of the fronted noun in these data areusually assumed to lack any semantic dimension.55 We have seen, on the con-

54 As in the following quotation (Kitāb II, 154.16–18): wa-qad bayyannā ḥurūfa l-istifhāmi wa-muwāfaqata-hā l-ʾamrawa-l-nahya fī bābi l-jazāʾi wa-ġayri-hi, wa-hāḏāmimmāwāfaqat-hāfī-hi, wa-turika tafsīru-hunna hāhunā li-llaḏī fassarnā fīmāmaḍā.

55 See Baalbaki (2008:175): “The sole purpose of the suppletion of the verb in affirmative andinterrogative constructions alike is to justify the accusative in Zaydan, and Sībawayhi doesnot refer to any semantic dimension for this suppletion”.

30 ayoub

trary, that the fronting and the case of the fronted noun (cf. 7, 18, 19 etc. for theaccusative) is fully significant. More generally, we can say that, in the Kitāb, themodality of the speech act determines the structure of the predication and thelinear word order, as well as the inflectionmood.We have studied in particularthe energetic.56

(iii) We have seen that the modalities requiring the verb-subject structureare event modalities. In these types of utterances, the speaker is involvedin a relation with the addressee in such a way that the actualization of theevent depends on the (answer or the action of the) addressee: interrogatives(istifhām), imperative (ʾamr), injunctive (ʾamr li-l-ġāʾib), prohibitive (nahy),incitative (ʿarḍ) utterances. Themodalmarkers that introduce these utteranceshave the conditionalmarkerswith ʾin as their paradigm. Sībawayhi’s argumentsfor establishing this paradigm are essentially modal: in a jazāʾ utterance withʾin, the event is non-factual for the speaker and may or may not happen.

(iv) The notion of wājib/ġayr wājib is one of the central notions connectingthe speech act to its form. It is an essential notion in the Kitāb. We have seenthat it has a theoretical consistency and corresponds roughly to the oppositionassertive/non-assertive opposition, even if it does not correspond exactly to theusual definition of assertion, as in the case of negatives. This notion emphasizesfundamentally the non-factuality of the event or the state of affair consideredby the speaker.

(v) An important conclusion about the jazāʾ constructions may be indicatedrapidly: if kalām ġayr wājib has to be understood as indicating the potentialonly, i.e. something thatmay ormaynot happen, since conditional clauseswithʾin constitute its most important paradigm, it becomes easier to understandwhy counterfactuals with law are not categorized as jazāʾ, as remarked byVersteegh (1991:79). In fact, Sībawayhi uses the modal notion of waqaʿa, whichfocuses on the event as we see it, to describe law (wa-ʾammā law fa-limā kānasa-yaqaʿu li-wuqūʿi ġayrihi,Kitāb II, 334.8). Is the categorizationdistinct becausethe speaker is certain—or quasi-certain—that the event expressed by thecondition did not happen or will very likely not happen? A characterization by

56 In the same way, another mood inflection is explicitly said to be determined by the‘meaning’, i.e. the enunciative value of the first proposition: when there is no grammaticalmarker in implied conditional and in result clauses, the enunciative value of the firstproposition triggers the apocopated inflection and/or the subjunctive in the second one.


al-Rummānī (d. 384/994) would suggest it. The formulation of Sībawayhi goesin the same direction: the speaker is certain that the event in the second propo-sition did not happen. However, many hypotheses have to be checked andthe conditionals deserve an independent study.57 But probably, we understandsomewhat better nowwhy the category of jazāʾ is not used for law in the Kitāb:jazāʾ is based on the ġayr al-wājib category and restricted to potentialities thatmay or may not happen.

(vi) The relationship between the speech act and the form of the utterancemay explain a point of terminology: kalām is usually translated as speech orutterance, in other words as the result of an enunciation, or the result of aspeech act. In fact, kalām is both the speech act and its result, i.e. the speech,the utterance. It is both enunciation andutterance, aswehave tried to establishelsewhere, just like the categories of ʾamr, nahy, istifhām, are the speech actand the grammaticalized forms that express it. If we are correct in (ii), this‘ambiguity’ in the terminology has a theoretical dimension.

(vii) Two terminological problemswith the category of wāgib have to be noted.In the first place, the same terms wājib and ʾījāb are used for affirmation andassertion. In the following quotation, nafy is opposed to wājib: fa-maʿnā laysal-nafyu kamā ʾanna maʿnā kāna l-wājibu (Kitāb I, 2.20). The use of wājib inthis quotation is consistent, as the assertion is only affirmative, but it leads toa confusion between affirmative/negative and assertive/non-assertive. In thesecond place, ḫabar and wājib seem to overlap, although they are conceptuallydistinct. In fact, there is one important shift from ḫabar to wājib: you can givean information about an event that has not or not yet been realized. Accordingto the Kitāb, this information is a ḫabar; for instance,mā faʿala is a ḫabar (māfaʿala jawāban li-hal faʿala ʾiḏā ʾaḫbarta ʾannahu lamyaqaʿ,Kitāb I, 407.18).58 Yet,as we have seen above, it is not always analyzed as a wājib, but rather as whatwill be called later a jumla ṭalabiyya excepting tamannī.Did these terminological problems lead to the recategorizationofwājib/ġayr

wājib as jumla ḫabariyya/ jumla ṭalabiyya within another configuration ofknowledge?We note that, by extension, the notion of jumla ṭalabiyya includesroughly the same types of utterances as the kalām ġayr wājib. This deservesmore research.

57 [For law see Manuela Giolfo’s contribution to this volume.]58 See Ayoub (2010:44) for discussion of this point.

32 ayoub

(viii) Historically, I have not yet been able to trace the history of the term wājibbefore Sībawayhi.59 Versteegh (2004) remarks that these discourse categorieswere verymuch present in the Stoic and Syriac grammatical traditions. Accord-ing to Sībawayhi, it is a category used by al-Ḫalīl, as we have seen above. But itis neither used in Kitāb al-ʿayn nor in early tafsīr. After the Kitāb, we find thenotion in al-Mubarrad, Ibn Jinnī, and al-Zajjājī. After that, it disappears, beingreplaced by ḫabar. It would be worthwhile to study the exact influence of thelogical tradition, especially of al-Fārābī, as suggested by Versteegh about law,and the later development.

Finally, we can say that the description of what we call particles is semanticand enunciative. But Versteegh (1991) is right when he says that the basis ofthe categorization of particles is syntactic: it is not ġayr al-wājib that is thewidest categorization, but the linear order and the requirement of government.The titles of the chapters are the best proof of it. The study of the particles isfound in a series of three chapters whose titles are: markers where no noun canprecede the verb (Hāḏā bābu l-ḥurūfi llatī lā tuqaddimu fīhā l-ʾasmāʾu l-fiʿla);markers which are followed only by a verb, but they do not modify the state itwas in before they preceded it (Hāḏā bābu l-ḥurūfi llatī lā yalīhā baʿdahā ʾillāl-fiʿlu wa-lā tuġayyiru l-fiʿla ʿan ḥālihā llatī kāna ʿalayhā qabla ʾan yakūna lahušayʾunminhā); and grammatical markers that can be followed by nouns and byverbs (Hāḏā bābu l-ḥurūfi llatī yajūzu ʾan yaliyahā baʿdahā l-ʾasmāʾu wa-yajūzuʾan yaliyahā baʿdahu l-ʾafʿālu). The whole category is based on form, becauseforms give the most consistent categorization.But there is another reason for the importance of forms that the study of

ġayr al-wājib highlights. Only forms can tell us the intentions of the speakers,or, in al-Ḫalīl’s words, as translated by Carter (2004:59): “God alone knowswhatis in people’s hearts and all you have to go on is what appears to you throughtheir tongues”.

Bibliographical References

A Primary SourcesʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ al-Kāfiya = Raḍī l-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʾAstarābāḏī, Šarḥ

Kāfiyat Ibn al-Ḥājib fī l-naḥw. Istanbul, 1893. (Repr., Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,1976.)

59 See Carter, to appear, for some speculation on the history of the term.

some aspects of the relation betwe

Documents

TheFoundationsofArabicLinguisticsII · 2017. 5. 14. · x listofcontributors treatiseTaḏkiratjawāmiʿal-ʾadawātbyMuḥammadb.Aḥmadb.Maḥmūd(Wies-baden,2012)andThesubjunctivemoodinArabicgrammaticalthought(Leiden