al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha

al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha (Language and Linguistics) is an introductory work on general linguistics written by the British linguist John Lyons, originally published in English in 1981 under the title Language and Linguistics: An Introduction and translated into Arabic by Mustafa Zaki Hasan al-Tuni al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha+1. The book was written for both general educated readers and specialists in linguistics al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.

Composition and Publication

The original English work was published in 1981 and saw consecutive annual reprints in 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985 al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha. Prior to the full translation of the first part, the translator published Arabic translations of two chapters—Chapter Seven ("Some Modern Schools and Trends") and Chapter Ten ("Language and Culture")—in issues 250 (January 1987) and 251 (February 1987) of al-Bayan, a magazine issued by the Writers Association in Kuwait al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha+1.

The first volume of the Arabic translation, completed in Cairo in 1987, comprises the first five chapters of the work al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha+1. In preparing the translation and its annotations, the translator consulted specialized references, including David Crystal's A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics and Mourad Wahba's al-Mu'jam al-Falsafi (Philosophical Dictionary), while also acknowledging consultations with Mahmoud Fahmy Hegazi and Mourad Wahba al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.

Structure and Contents

The original work consists of ten chapters divided conceptually into two halves: the first five chapters address pure descriptive linguistics, whereas the latter five treat historical and interdisciplinary branches of linguistics al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha. The translated first volume contains:

• Chapter One: Language – Explores the definition of language, various linguistic definitions, linguistic behavior and systems, language and speech, a semiotic perspective, the notion of homogeneity, and the non-existence of primitive languages al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.
• Chapter Two: Linguistics – Examines the branches of linguistics, the scientific status of linguistics, terminology and symbols, the descriptive rather than prescriptive nature of linguistics, the priority of synchronic description, and structure and system al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.
• Chapter Three: The Sounds of Language – Treats the phonic medium, phonetic and orthographic representation, articulatory phonetics, phonemes and phones, distinctive features and prosodic phonology, and phonological structure al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.
• Chapter Four: Grammar – Covers grammar, inflection, and morphology; grammatical correctness, productivity, and arbitrariness; parts of speech, form classes, and grammatical categories; additional grammatical notions; constituent structure; and generative grammar al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.
• Chapter Five: Semantics – Discusses variation in meaning; lexical meaning, polysemy, and synonymy; sense and reference; semantics and grammar; sentence meaning versus utterance meaning; and formal semantics al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.

The remaining five chapters outlined in the work are: Language Change (Chapter Six), Some Modern Schools and Trends (Chapter Seven), Language and Mind (Chapter Eight), Language and Society (Chapter Nine), and Language and Culture (Chapter Ten) al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha. The Arabic translation of the first volume concludes with a bilingual English–Arabic glossary of linguistic terminology al-Lugha wa Ilm al-Lugha.