Un homme nommé ’Af‛al : Sībawayhi et les incertitudes du métalangage

Abstract

The ‘ pattern-words’ (mitāl, plural amtila), i. e. fictive words designed to represent the morphological patterns of real words, are among the first tools created by the Arabic grammatical tradition, and form an important element of its metalanguage. Sībawayhi (d. 797) devotes a chapter of the Kitāb to their status and their use, in the form of a discussion between himself and his master al-Xalīl ; this discussion, however, if far from being conclusive, as it constantly mixes between three different – and to a point mutually exclusive – lines of argumentation. These uncertainties are due, all things considered, to the tension which pervades all Arabic grammatical texts, between a strictly integrationist attitude (pattern-words are words like the others, and should be treated as such), and the preoccupation with preserving their function as metalinguistic tools.