The Arabic Language

Further reading
The most extensive handbook for the study of the Arabic language and its history 
is the one edited by Owens (2013), with twenty-four chapters, by different 
authors, on all major aspects of Arabic linguistics. The German 
Grundriß der 
arabischen Philologie
(
GAP
), in particular the first volume, contains articles dealing 
with, among other things, the classification of Arabic (Hecker 1982), Early North 
Arabian (Müller 1982), Classical Arabic (Fischer 1982), the Arabic dialects (Jastrow 
1982; Singer 1982) and the Arabic script (Endreß 1982). A bibliography of Arabic 
linguistics was published by Bakalla (1983); see also Hospers (1974) for a selection 
of older items. Older accounts of the state of the art are to be found in the 
Handbuch 
der Orientalistik
(
HdO
), in particular a survey of the Arabic dialects (Brockelmann 
1964) and an article on the expansion of the Arabic language (Spuler 1964a). The 
five-volume 
Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
(
EALL
, 2006–9), an inter
-
national project with more than three hundred authors, provides information on 
a large number of topics related to the Arabic language, its history, structure and 
varieties. 

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The Study of Arabic in the West 
9
There are a number of general introductions. Of the older ones, Chejne (1969) 
and Bateson (1967) may be mentioned. More recent introductions include one in 
English (Bakalla 1984), one in Romanian (Anghelescu 1984, 1986; in the meantime 
an Italian and a French translation have appeared), one in Spanish (Abboud-
Haggar 2010), and one in Dutch (Schippers and Versteegh 1987). Holes (1995a) is 
an extensive introduction to all aspects of Modern Standard Arabic, both linguistic 
and sociolinguistic; it includes a section on the history of the Arabic language.
For the study of the Arabic dialects, Fischer and Jastrow (1980) produced a 
Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte
, with a short introduction about the history of 
Arabic. There are two short introductions to the Arabic dialects, one in Polish 
(Danecki 1989) and one in Italian (Durand 1995). An important methodological 
introduction to Arabic dialectology was published by Behnstedt and Woidich 
(2005). The abovementioned 
Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
contains 
more than fifty sketches of dialects from all over the Arabic-speaking world, as 
well as surveys of the language situation in all Arab countries.
The standard account of the history of Arabic studies in the West is still Fück 
(1955); a more recent publication is Bobzin (1992); Hamilton (2006) has a short 
survey. For the early comparative studies of Hebrew grammarians, see Téné (1980) 
and van Bekkum (1983). The various shifts in attitude in Western Europe towards 
the role of the Arabs in the transmission of Greek knowledge and the effect that 
these shifts had on the study of Arabic are analysed by Klein-Franke (1980), from 
which the quotations from Frisius and Clenardus were taken; the impact of trans
-
lations from Arabic in Western Europe is studied by Daniel (1979). For the first 
Latin–Arabic glossaries, see van Koningsveld (1976). On the Christian perception 
of Islam and the Dominicans’ missionary strategy, see Nolan (2002: 233–55); on the 
early missionary grammars of Arabic from the seventeenth century, see Zwartjes 
and Woidich (2012). 
Comrie (1991, 2008) underscores the importance of Arabic for general linguistic 
studies, a highly relevant topic since Arabic is used relatively seldom in typological 
or general linguistic studies. The growing cooperation between general linguists 
and Arabic linguists has brought about an increased interest in those features of 
the structure of Arabic that are relevant from a general linguistic point of view 
(see Chapter 6).

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