The Sentence in Its Syntactic and Semantic Aspects in Al-Salimi’s Grammatical Scholarship

Abstract

This research aims at defining the concept of the sentence, its components, and types according to the Omani scholar Abdullah bin Humaid Al-Salimi (1913). Like most Arab grammarians, Al-Salimi concentrated on the syntactic level of the sentence without denying the semantic aspect. Al-Salimi adopted the traditional grammatical concept of the sentence. According to Arab grammarians, the sentence is the minimum structure that makes sense. It consists of two main factors: the subject and object. This concept makes problems when applied to the relative clause and the first part of the conditional clause. Both conditional and relative clauses consist of two elements, i.e. subject and object but they do not make complete meaning. Like traditional grammarians, Al-Salimi divided the sentence according to initiation and implication. Initiation is when the sentence starts with a noun, then it will be classified as a nominal sentence; otherwise it will be considered a verbal sentence. Implication is when the small sentence is implied in the big sentence. This research arrived at some findings which include the following results: 1-Al-Salimi was a traditional grammarian but he had some innovative ideas. 2-Al-Salimi’s approach can be considered structural, but one that does not ignore semantic considerations. 3-The sentence classification in Salimi’s work is built on syntactic principles.