The Arabic Language

7.2 Syntax
Traditionally, Arabic grammatical treatises start with a series of definitions 
in which the main categories of language are introduced. The first chapter in 
Sībawayhi’s 
Kitāb
, for instance, reads as follows:
Chapter of the knowledge of words in the Arabic language. Words are noun, verb, 
or particle intended for a meaning which is neither noun nor verb. Nouns are 
rajul
‘man’, 
faras
‘horse’, 
ḥāʾiṭ
‘wall’. Verbs are patterns taken from the expression of the 
events of the nouns; they are construed for what is past; for what is going to be, 
but has not yet happened; and for what is being without interruption … As for that 
which is intended for a meaning, without being a noun or a verb, this is like 
ṯumma
‘then’, 
sawfa
[particle of the future], 
wa-
in oaths, 
li-
to indicate possession, and so on. 
(
hāḏā bāb ʿilm al-kalim min al-ʿarabiyya, fa-l-kalim ism wa-fiʿl wa-ḥarf jāʾa li-maʿnan laysa 
bi-sm wa-lā fiʿl, fa-l-ism rajul wa-faras wa-ḥāʾiṭ wa-ʾammā l-fiʿl fa-ʾamṯila ʾuḫiḏat min lafḏ̣
 
ʾaḥdāṯ al-ʾasmāʾ wa-buniyat limā maḍā wa-limā yakūnu wa-lam yaqaʿ wa-mā huwa kāʾin lam 
yanqaṭiʿ … wa-ʾammā mā jāʾa li-maʿnan wa-laysa bi-sm wa-lā fiʿl fa-naḥwa ṯumma wa-sawfa 
wa-wāw al-qasam wa-lām al-ʾiḍāfa wa-naḥwa hāḏā
) (
al-Kitāb
I, ed. Bulaq, n.d., p. 2)
This division into what we would call three parts of speech remained intact 
throughout the history of Arabic grammatical tradition. The category of the noun 
(
ism
) was defined either as a word with certain syntactic characteristics, such as 
its combinability with an article, or as a word denoting an essence. It included 
not only what Greco-Latin grammar calls nouns, but also adjectives, pronouns 
and even a number of prepositions and adverbs, such as 
ʾamāma
‘in front of’, 
kayfa
‘how?’. The category of the verb (
fiʿl
) was defined either as a word that may 
be combined with the future particle 
sawfa
, or as a word denoting an action. It 
included some words which are usually called interjections, such as 
hayhāt
‘come 
on!’, 
ṣah
‘hush!’. In the Arabic system, the category of the particle (
ḥarf
) included 
the remaining words; they could not be declined and acted only as governing 
words, for instance, 
li-
‘for’, governing nouns and verbs, and 
ʾan
‘that’, governing 
verbs alone. Their main function was to assist other words in their function in 
the sentence.

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The Arabic Linguistic Tradition 
111
The basic difference between the three parts of speech is the declension (
ʾiʿrāb
). 
In principle, only nouns have case endings to indicate their function in the 
sentence. Western grammars usually call the three endings 
-u
, 
-i
, 
-a
‘nominative’, 
‘genitive’, ‘accusative’, respectively; in Arabic grammar they are called 
rafʿ
, 
jarr
, 
naṣb
. The difference between the two sets is not merely terminological: in Greco-
Latin grammar, the cases have an independent semantic meaning, whereas the 
Arabic tradition regards them as formal signs of syntactic functions. The nomina
-
tive case indicates that a noun’s function is that of agent (
fāʿil
), topic (
mubtadaʾ
), or 
predicate (
ḫabar
) of the sentence (about these sentential constituents, see below, 
pp. 112–14). They may be followed by an ending 
-n
to indicate that the word is 
indefinite (
tanwīn
, nunation).
The two main functions of the genitive case are to mark the effect of particles 
on nouns and to indicate the second noun in possessive constructions. In the 
Western tradition, particles governing nouns (
ḥurūf al-jarr
)
 
are called ‘preposi
-
tions’, for example, 
maʿa r-rajuli
‘with the man’, 
ʾilā l-madīnati
‘to the city’. In the 
possessive construction (
ʾiḍāfa
), the first noun (
al-muḍāf ʾilayhi
) has neither article 
nor nunation, and the second noun (
al-muḍāf
) is put in the genitive case, for 
example, 
baytu l-maliki
‘the king’s house’. The governance relationship between 
the two nouns in the 
ʾiḍāfa
construction is a controversial issue. Since in principle 
nouns do not govern, later grammarians objected to Sībawayhi’s view that the 
first noun governs the second. Instead, they attributed the genitive ending to a