Sentence types and word-order patterns in Arabic have been a matter of debate and controversy for a long period of time. They were hotly discussed by the medieval Arab grammarians and continue to be a major topic of discussion among modern scholars. This book describes the development of the medieval grammarians' theory of sentence types; a development from the theory of ‘amal, which lies at the heart of medieval Arabic grammatical tradition. Each major topic is discussed with a view to explore the basic principles underlying the medieval grammarians' arguments. Special attention is given to conceptual problems arising from conflicts with the theory of ‘amal. This is followed by an assessment of the contributions made by modern scholars to the analysis and description of the constructions involved. Modern Arabists and linguists are shown to have concentrated on word-order patterns rather than on sentence types, placing special emphasis on the functional aspects of word order variations in Arabic.

Al-Arabiyya is the annual journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic and serves scholars in the United States and abroad. Al-Arabiyya includes scholarly articles and reviews that advance the study, research, and teaching of Arabic language, linguistics, literature, and pedagogy.

This volume brings together eleven peer-reviewed articles on Arabic linguistics. The contributions fall under three areas of linguistics: Phonology and phonetics; syntax and semantics; and language acquisition, language contact, and diglossia. They reflect some various perspectives and emphases. Including data from North African, Levantine, and Gulf varieties, Standard Arabic, as well as Arabic varieties spoken in diaspora, these articles address issues that range from sibilant merging, raising, lexicalization, agreement, to diglossia, dialect contact, and language acquisition in heritage speakers. The book is valuable reading for linguists in general and for those working on descriptive and theoretical aspects of Arabic linguistics in particular.

This second volume on The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics contains contributions from the second conference on Arabic linguistics, hosted by the University of Cambridge in 2012. All contributions deal with the grammatical theories formulated by the first grammarian to write a complete survey of the Arabic language, Sībawayhi (died at the end of the 8th century C.E.). They treat such topics as the use of hadith in grammar, the treatment of Persian loanwords, the expression of modality, conditional clauses, verbal valency, and the syntax of numerals. Contributors are: Georgine Ayoub, Michael G. Carter, Hanadi Dayyeh, Jean N. Druel, Manuela E.B. Giolfo, Almog Kasher, Giuliano Lancioni, Amal Marogy, Arik Sadan, Beata Sheyhatovitch, Cristina Solimando, and Kees Versteegh.

From Sībawayhi to ʾAḥmad Ḥasan al-Zayyāt: New Angles on the Arabic Linguistic Tradition is a volume edited by Beata Sheyhatovitch and Almog Kasher. It contains nine articles that trace the development of the Arabic linguistic tradition over the centuries, exploring its lesser-known aspects.

The book is a collection of ten research papers in which leading scholars approach different aspects of the study of Arabic grammar in medieval times, starting with the venerable figure of Sībawayhi (d. 180/796?) and spanning from al-Andalus to the Islamic East.

An introductory guide for students of Arabic language, Arabic historical linguistics and Arabic sociolinguistics.

Working with Arabic Prepositions: Structures and Functions is a reference book focusing on Arabic prepositions, their structure and usage. The system of Arabic prepositions is complex, and the textbook aims to assist students at the lower intermediate to advanced level understand it in an accessible way. This is an area in which students can experience great difficulty, and the aim of this book is to explain clearly the structures and functions of Arabic prepositions and their usage in Modern Standard Arabic and media Arabic. Drills and exercises are provided to enable readers to practice what they have learned in the chapters. This book will be an ideal source of information for undergraduate students studying Arabic, as well as graduate studies and additional courses in the major dialect areas, and a very useful resource for teachers of Arabic as a foreign language.

An essential handbook for literary studies The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms—drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics—provides an authoritative guide to the most important terms in the study of poetry and literature. Featuring 226 fully revised and updated entries, including 100 that are new to this edition, the book offers clear and insightful definitions and discussions of critical concepts, genres, forms, movements, and poetic elements, followed by invaluable, up-to-date bibliographies that guide users to further reading and research. Because the entries are carefully selected and adapted from the Princeton Encyclopedia, the Handbook has unrivalled breadth and depth for a book of its kind, in a convenient, portable size. Fully indexed for the first time and complete with an introduction by the editors, this is an essential volume for all literature students, teachers, and researchers, as well as other readers and writers. Drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Provides 226 fully updated and authoritative entries, including 100 new to this edition, written by an international team of leading scholars Features entries on critical concepts (canon, mimesis, prosody, syntax); genres, forms, and movements (ballad, blank verse, confessional poetry, ode); and terms (apostrophe, hypotaxis and parataxis, meter, tone) Includes an introduction, bibliographies, cross-references, and a full index

This book presents a comprehensive portrait of the Kitāb Sībawayhi. It offers new insights into its historical and linguistic arguments and underlines their strong correlation. The decisive historical argument highlights al-Ḥīra’s role, not only as the centre of pre-Islamic Arabic culture, but also as the matrix within which early Arab linguistics grew and developed. The Kitāb’s value as a communicative grammar forms the crux of the linguistic argument. The complementarity of syntax and pragmatics is established as a condition sine qua non for Sībawayhi’s analysis of language. The benefits of a complementary approach are reflected in the analysis of nominal sentences and related notions of ibtidā’ and definiteness. The pragmatic principle of identifiability is uncovered as the ultimate determiner of word order.