Kitāb Sībawayhi: translation of ch. 9 now available. Topic: complements of intransitive and passive verb. Feedback welcome.
www.sibawayhi.org/kitab/009/

Kitāb Sībawayhi: initial editing of Part I is now complete!
www.sibawayhi.org/initial-edit...

Another fascinating bit from Sībawayhi, ch. 124: saying هذا مَنْ لا أرفُ منطلقًا is equivalent to هذا الذي قد علِمتُ أنّي لا أعْرفُهُ منطلقًا Note the clear distinction between علم and عرف. How to translate? Know, learn, recognize? Or grok?

Translate: هذا أوَّلُ فارسٍ مُقْبِلٌ Sībawayhi ch. 125.

Here’s a great mystery which afaik nobody has addressed. Why do the Arabic names of letters involve “extra” letters? E.g. why is د named dāl instead of dā’? Where the hell did that lām come from?

The great Pinker posted this on X : “For ecumenical word nerds: Arabic "Hikma," wisdom, is homologous to Hebrew "chochma," which is the "Ch" in Chabad ("chochma," wisdom, "bina," understanding, "daat," knowledge).” I do not trust him and I don’t think he knows either language.

The whole “imālah” (إمالة) thing. Surely I’m not the first to think it’s basically trivial. You say ضارب no imālah. You say كاتب, imālah. Former: /a/ as in father, latter, /a/ as in cat. Not that complicated.

Is Steven Pinker the worst “public intellectual” of our time? A monolingual psychologist who promotes (without fully understanding) discredited theories of language. And now he’s trashing Oliver Sacks based on reporting from The New Yorker, while saying in the same breath that it can’t be trusted.

Pop quiz: in ch.119 Sībawayhi give two distinct readings of هذا عبدُ الله منطلقٌ. Can you?

One of the most fascinating aspects of Sībawayhi is his treatment of “nominal mood” for lack of a better term. Ch. 116 : أتاني زيدٌ الفاسقَ الخبيثَ note the نصب (accusative). You don’t say that (with accusative) to describe Zayd but to insult/condemn him. The inflection seems to be “modal”.

Re: Carter’s “Ethico-legal hypothesis”, which says that Sībawayhi just applied legal thinking to language, or something like that. Absurd in many ways but most obviously: …

Rereading some papers on Sībawayhi by Carter, Baalbaki, etc. My god it’s depressing. Most of it is total rubbish, often reads like a perverse parody of the real thing. I guess when nobody else can read the original you’re free to push your version, no matter how anachronistic and unhistorical.

Here’s a good one: هٰذَا بَاْبُ مَا يَعْمَلُ عَمَلَ الْفِعْلِ وَلَمْ يَجْرِ مَجْرَى الْفِعْلِ وَلَمْ يَتَمَكَّنْ تَمَكُّنَهُ and then وَذٰلِكَ قَوْلُكَ مَا أَحْسَنَ عَبْدَ اللهِ. Sībawayhi chapter 22. Whatsat mean? Works like a verb but doesn’t run like a verb?

First rule of scholarship: pay attention! Western scholars are puzzled by the “conditional” in Sībawayhi, because لو is not treated by him as a conditional. The reason is OBVIOUS: الجزاء does NOT mean conditional! It means something like “requital”. Ie it involves a notion of consequence.

Another memo to Arabists: الجزاء does NOT mean “conditional! Western writers routinely botch this because they confuse language and logic. They treat conditionals as involving a protasis and apodosis, both of which are (supposedly) truth-apt. So they’re puzzled by لو which is not a “conditional”.

Memo to Arabists: negation and denial are not the same. It’s not clear whether Sibawayhi understood the difference when using eg نفي but it is clear that treating this as negation is often wrong.

Everybody agrees Arabic doesn’t have “true” adverbs. But does it have true adjectives? Unequivocally: no!

What exactly does اللهُ أكبر "Allahu akbar" mean? Sībawayhi tells us in chapter 110: وَلٰكِنَّهُ حَذَفَ ذٰلِكَ اسْتِخْفَاْفًا
كَمَا تَقُوْلُ أَنْتَ أَفْضَلُ وَلَا تَقُوْلُ مِنْ أَحَدٍ
وَكَمَا تَقُوْل اللهُ أَكْبَرُ وَمَعْنَاْهُ الله أَكْبَرُ مِنْ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ
وَكَمَا تَقُوْلُ لَا مَاْلَ وَلَا تَقُوْلُ لَكَ وَمَا يُشْبِهُهُ
وَمِثْلُ هٰذَا كَثِيْرٌ
It's a truncated version of "Allahu akbar min kulli shay'"

Think you know Arabic? Explain the difference between مررتُ بزيدٍ الطويلِ and مرربُ بزيدٍ كلِّ الرجلِ. Both الطويل and كلِّ الرجل count as صفة “adjective” but according to Sībawayhi they function in very different ways.

Is there anything worse in life than a piano player with no sense of rhythm playing Billy Joel and Elton John songs? Talk about losing the will to live!

Chapters 9-99 of the Kitāb have now all been edited at least once. Full tashkīl, fine-grained segmentation, color-coded typesetting (easy to pick out his demo dicta أقوال). www.sibawayhi.org/kitab/

It's so amazing to me that "A Grammar of Mandan" already has almost 900 downloads after being put online less than a year ago! It's amazing to see how Open Access publishing really boosts visibility, so I'm pleased to see more publishers go that direction.

Misreading "mood" in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi: the subjunctive
www.sibawayhi.org/misreading-m...

It must be said: the bluesky ui totally stinks.

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...