A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic by Karin C. Ryding Ernest McCarus A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. By Karin C. Ryding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xxv, 708. ISBN 0521777712. $39.99. Karin Ryding describes her excellent reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as ‘a handbook intended for the general learner’ (xvii). It serves elementary to advanced level learners: all technical terms—whether conventional grammatical terms, technical linguistic terms, or terms specific to Arabic grammar—are defined and amply exemplified. Throughout the book, when a technical term is used, a more conventional alternate term is added for the beginning student. For example, after pointing out that the two morphological tenses of Arabic are often referred to as the ‘perfect’ and the ‘imperfect’ tenses, she prefers, for the sake of clarity, to use the terms ‘past’ and ‘present’; at the same time, she often includes ‘(imperfect)’ after ‘present’ and ‘(perfect)’ after ‘past’ to help the learner adjust to the broader terminology. Additional clarifications and alternative analyses are often provided in footnotes, and for the advanced specialist there are also generous references to published works for follow-up research. In dealing with MSA, with its multilayered diglossia, there is always the problem of how to define the language to be covered. With the goal of describing contemporary expository prose reflecting a broad range of social and cultural values and interests, R has based her description on a corpus primarily of newspapers and magazines, but also of novels and nonfiction, gathered over a ten-year period. The grammar description is limited to items occurring in the corpus, although alternative analyses or rarer items not occurring in the corpus but current in Arabic writing today are identified in footnotes. In comparing MSA and Classical Arabic, the Arabic of the early Islamic period, R found that there were few structural inconsistencies between them and that the major differences were stylistic and lexical: MSA is a streamlined Classical Arabic. In explaining the basis for her choosing the print media to represent MSA, she says ‘[i]t is just this ability to reflect and embody change while maintaining the major grammatical conventions and standards that make journalistic Arabic in particular, a lively and widely understood form of the written language and, within the style spectrum of Arabic as a whole, a functional written standard for all Arab countries’ (9). Ch. 1 is an overview of Arabic within the Afro-Asiatic and Semitic language families and a brief sketch of the history of Arabic and of Arabic today in the modern period. Ch. 2 deals with phonology and script, starting with the alphabet, including rules for the different hamzas, and then discussing the pronunciation of the phonemes, context vs. pause form, syllable structure, and word stress; the spelling and pronunciation of the definite article and of nunation are also explained. Citations in the book are given in phonemic transcription as well as in voweled Arabic script. Ch. 3, ‘Arabic word structure: An overview’, deals with word structure and derivation, both as word morphology (the root-and-pattern system and word compounding) and as inflection (the inflectional categories of verbs and nouns). Ch. 4 is likewise an overview, the main chapter in the book devoted primarily to syntax. It is a survey of the basic sentence structures: types of sentence, word order, constituent components of the sentence, negation of equational (verbless) sentences, verb-subject agreement, topic-comment constructions, and doubly transitive verbs. The remaining thirty-five chapters are morphology-oriented with relevant observations on syntax [End Page 204] inserted often. Appendix 1 suggests ‘How to use an Arabic dictionary’ and Appendix 2 is a ‘Glossary of technical terms’ (Arabic and English grammatical terms). The coverage is comprehensive and detailed. The presentation of features follows the pattern of definition, semantics, and then form, with each variation in form or structure presented in its own numbered section with examples and further points on meaning and usage. Points of contrast with English grammar are highlighted. There is thus quite detailed coverage of all structures. This provides all the reader might want to know on a given feature, and it occasions a good deal of overlap...