The Syntactic Basis of Arabic Word Classification* By
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THE SYNTACTIC BASIS OF ARABIC WORD CLASSIFICATION* BY JONATHAN OWENS 1. Introduction MoNC the most famous tenets of Arabic grammar is the division Aof words into verbs, nouns and particles. What is perhaps given less attention is the fact that the Arabic grammarians defined each of these according to criteria from all levels of linguistic analysis- phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic/pragmatic. Of these perhaps the two most important are the morphological and syntactic. In this paper I will show the importance of syntactic analysis in the definition of the three basic word classes. That syntactic criteria are important can be seen if one examines Ibn Malik's (in his Alfiyya) definitions of nouns, verbs and particles (as discussed briefly in Weiss 1976). Nouns have the genitive case, nunation (tanwin), the definite article, the vocative and occur as subjects. Verbs are distinguished by the suffixes -t and -i (feminine) and the energetic nun, while particles are what are left over. One point that is apparent on this list is that many of the criteria admit of significant exceptions. (1) Nouns: genitive case and nunation. Any noun which is un- inflected (gayr mutamakkin, mabnl) such as demonstratives, and relative, personal, and interrogative pronouns, lack all case inflec- tion and nunation (cf. 2.3). (2) Nouns: definite article. Proper names, demonstratives and pronouns all lack the definite article. (3) Verbs: special classes of verbs, like the verbs of exclamation, the nominal verbs and verbs such as bl'sa «how bad» (Basran viewpoint) all lack (non-feminine) -t and the energetic nun. By contrast other criteria, which are clearly of a syntactic nature, such as a noun's occurrence at subject position, have a high degree of general applicability (cf. 2.1.1 ). In this paper I shall argue that * A number of important improvements on an earlier version of this paper are due to suggestions by Pierre Larcher. 212 syntactic criteria are of particular significance, examining the ques- tion from two perspectives. In part 2, I look at the role of syntactic criteria in the definition of word categories most particularly as elaborated by grammarians from Mubarrad's time on. I concen- trate on three points, the criteria themselves, the extent to which they are formally based, and the status of irregularly inflected words. In part 3, I argue that syntactic criteria played a crucial role in the development of the category of locative (jafl. As a preliminary orientation to the problem, two aspects, one determinate the other indeterminate, can be mentioned. First the determinate. By Mubarrad's time the three word ( = kalima) classes, noun, verb and particle, were a firmly established, pre- determined pillar of Arabic grammatical thinking. In these terms the criteria serve as much as a post hoc justification for recognizing the three classes as an empirical tool for cataloguing the class membership of any given form. What poses no fundamental problem to the present discussion, though to be noted, is that the notion of kalima that is the object of the Arabic definition cuts across the traditional (cf. below) morpheme-word boundary in modern western practice. As Levin (1986) shows, kalima in Sibawayhi, as well as in later grammarians (e.g. Ibn generally corresponds to «word», though in certain instances, as with the -tu in dahab-tu «I went» it would be «morpheme» (cf. Fleisch 1960, Owens 1988 § 3 for further discussion). These differences can be conceded without prejudice to the current exposition, whose task it is to examine the criteria by which the construct «kalima», which I will gloss as «word», is classified in Arabic practice. Secondly the indeterminate. One must raise the question what is meant by morphological or syntactic relation. The traditional for- mulation, morphological = relation within word, syntactic = rela- tion between words (e.g. Lyons: 194) only works so long as «word» can be unequivocally identified. In the vast majority of cases Bloomfield's (1927) «word as minimal free form» serves this pur- pose, though inevitably problematic cases arise. In what sense, for example, is a preposition like bi «by means of» a free form, given that it always occurs with a complement. Nor does it help to speak in terms of processes rather than units, morphological vs. syntactic processes, word formation vs. phrase or sentence formation, since so many of the basic building notions, like class and substitution, are similar in the two cases. .