al-Lugha al-Arabiya Manaha wa Mabnaha
- Author died
- 1432 AH
- Editions
- Alam Al-Kutub
al-Lugha al-Arabiya Ma'naha wa Mabnaha (The Arabic Language: Its Meaning and Structure) is a modern linguistic study by the Egyptian scholar Tammam Hassan (d. 1432 AH / 2011 CE), devoted to analyzing the grammar, morphology, phonology, and semantics of Classical Arabic through contemporary descriptive linguistic theory .
Background and Purpose
In his introduction, Hassan argues that Arabic linguistic thought largely ceased developing innovatively after the fifth century AH, giving way to an era of abridgments, commentaries, and rigid adherence to precedent (taqlid) . The work was composed to re-evaluate the traditional Arabic grammatical heritage in light of modern descriptive methods, seeking to strip Arabic syntax of speculative rationalizations while retaining its descriptive core .
Structure and Scope
The book is arranged into a preface, an introduction, and thematic chapters addressing the linguistic levels of Arabic :
- Introduction: Examines the nature of classical Arabic linguistic studies, the requirements of modern methodology, and semantic inquiry across Western philosophy, logic, psychology, literary criticism, and linguistics .
- Speech and Language (al-Kalam wa-l-Lugha): Distinguishes between speech as physical performance and language as a conventional social system composed of phonological, morphological, and syntactic sub-systems, while presenting the lexicon as an inventory and highlighting the necessity of situational context (al-maqam) .
- Phonetics and Phonology (al-Aswat): Differentiates between raw phonetic observation and abstract phonological organization, evaluating the phonetic terminology and classifications of Sibawayh alongside modern phonetic findings .
- Subsequent Chapters on Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics: Detail the structures of morphological categories, syntactic relations, and the composition of linguistic meaning through textual and situational factors .
Core Linguistic Theory
The centerpiece of the work is Hassan's formulation of the "confluence of contextual clues" (tadafur al-qara'in), proposed as an alternative to the classical theory of grammatical operators (nazariyyat al-amil) . Hassan argues that no single formal marker independently determines grammatical meaning; rather, multiple clues operate jointly, analogous to a chemical compound producing a unified semantic result .
Hassan divides these clues into semantic clues (qara'in ma'nawiyya)—such as predication (al-isnad), specification (al-takhsis), and attribution (al-nisba)—and eight verbal clues (qara'in lafziyya) :
- Inflectional mark (al-alama al-i'rabiyya)
- Word order or rank (al-rutba)
- Morphological pattern (al-sigha)
- Concord or agreement (al-mutabaqa)
- Linkage (al-rabt)
- Collocation (al-tadam)
- Particle (al-ada)
- Intonation or pitch (al-naghma)
Under this framework, inflectional case is treated merely as one verbal clue among many rather than the sole driver of syntactic analysis . The governing objective of linguistic structure is identified as "security against ambiguity" (amn al-labs), which permits the absence of certain formal markers when other clues sufficiently clarify the intended meaning . In developing this syntactic model, Hassan draws conceptual inspiration from the notion of syntactic attachment (al-ta'liq) and structural arrangement (al-nazm) articulated by Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani, as well as the critique of grammatical operators advanced by Ibn Mada .
At the level of semantics, the text posits that full meaning (al-ma'na al-dalali) integrates both cotextual meaning (al-ma'na al-maqali)—consisting of functional values, lexical items, and verbal signals—and situational meaning (al-ma'na al-maqami), which encompasses extra-linguistic circumstances and non-verbal cues such as physical gestures .
Publication History
The book was first published in Cairo in 1973 . Subsequent editions were issued by the General Egyptian Book Organization in 1979 and 1985, by Dar al-Thaqafa in Casablanca in 1994, and by Alam al-Kutub in Cairo in 2009 .
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