‘Speech Consists Entirely of Noun, Verb and Particle’: Elaboration and Discussion of the Theory of Parts of Speech in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition

Abstract

Anticipating subsequent developments to some extent, Arabic grammatical tradition should in fact be noted that and in indisputable fashion, in the writings of Arab grammarians, it does not do so until after the mid-fourth/tenth century, and very probably under the influence of the Greek logico-grammatical tradition. The agreement on the point of the two traditions, which evidently considered themselves entirely autonomous and independent, can only have encouraged the adherents of both in the idea that the noun/ verb/ particle tripartition was a universal fact. With the generation of al-Mubarrad's disciples, the standard framework of grammatical theory was progressively set in place. One of the most immediate characteristics of this rupture, of which the founding text is the Kitab al-Usul of Ibn Sarraj, consists in the elaboration of an order of systematic presentation in which the totality of questions constituting traditional grammatical material is integrated.