The Arabic Language

qawl
). When this utter-
ance conveys a meaningful message, it becomes 
kalām
, a semantically complete 
message. The closest equivalent in Arabic grammar to our notion of ‘sentence’ is 
that of 
jumla
, a syntactically complete string of words. In their analysis of senten
-
tial constructions, the Arabic grammarians differ from the Western analysis. 
According to them, there is a distinction between a nominal sentence (
jumla 
ismiyya
), that is, a sentence that in its underlying structure starts with a noun, 
and a verbal sentence (
jumla fiʿliyya
), that is, a sentence that in its underlying 
structure starts with a verb. These represent not just alternative word orders, but 
basically different sentence types. In the verbal sentence, the two constituents 
are the verb (
fiʿl
) and the agent (
fāʿil
); the sentence may also contain an object 
(
mafʿūl
). Thus, we have in (1):
(1) 
ḍaraba 
zaydun 
 ʿamran
fiʿl 
fāʿil 
 mafʿūl
‘Zayd hit ʿAmr’
In this sentence, the verb is responsible for the nominative of the agent 
zaydun
and the accusative of the object 
ʿamran
. In the nominal sentence two basic 
constituents are distinguished by the Arabic grammarians, the one with which 

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The Arabic Linguistic Tradition 
113
the sentence starts (
mubtadaʾ
) and the one that tells something about it (
ḫabar
), 
as in (2):
(2) 
muḥammadun 
ʾaḫūka
mubtadaʾ 
ḫabar
‘Muḥammad is your brother’
The grammarians found it difficult to account for the nominative of the first 
constituent in such a sentence: by definition, no other word preceding it could 
be held responsible for its ending. The standard theory found the solution in an 
abstract principle called 
ibtidāʾ
, that is, the initial position in the sentence, which 
caused the nominative ending. The second constituent in its turn was assumed 
to be governed by the first.
In the example given here, the 
ḫabar
is a noun, but it may also be a sentence, 
as in (3) and (4):
(3) 
muḥammadun 
ʾaḫūhu 
 
zaydun
mubtadaʾ
ḫabar
mubtadaʾ 
 
ḫabar
‘Muḥammad, his brother is Zayd’
(4) 
muḥammadun 
ḍaraba 
ʾabūhu 
ʿamran
mubtadaʾ 
 
ḫabar
fiʿl 
fāʿil 
mafʿūl
‘Muḥammad, his father hit ʿAmr’
Most Western analyses call this phenomenon ‘topicalisation’: it consists in 
the fronting of a constituent from the sentence for special emphasis. In these 
sentences, the Arabic term 
mubtadaʾ
is, therefore, the equivalent of the Western 
term ‘topic’. The advantage of the grammarians’ approach becomes evident when 
it is applied to sentences like (5):
(5) 
muḥammadun ḍaraba 
ʿamran
mubtadaʾ
fiʿl
-
fāʿil

mafʿūl
In such a sentence, the grammarians analyse 
ḍaraba
as a combination of a verb 
with a zero agent, which is not visible on the surface level, but must be posited on 
an underlying level. When the agent is plural, it does appear, as in (6):
(6) 
ar-rijālu 
ḍarabū
|ḍaraba-w|
mubtadaʾ 
ḫabar
fiʿl
-
fāʿil
‘The men hit’

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114
The Arabic Language
The verbal form 
ḍaraba
is combined here with the bound agent pronoun of the 
plural 
-w
; at a morphological level, this becomes |ḍaraba-w|, at a phonological 
level /ḍarabu-w/ with assimilation of the vowel to the glide, which is realised as 
[d̴ɑrɑbuː]. Similarly, in 
ḍarabta
‘you have hit’, the element 
-ta
is regarded by the 
Arabic grammarians as a bound pronoun (/ḍaraba-ta/ > [d̴ɑrɑbta] because of a 
phonological rule which prohibits the occurrence of the sequence CvCvCvCv). In 
the case of a feminine noun, the analysis is somewhat more complicated. In (7)
(7) 
al-fatāt-u 
kataba-t
ART-girl-NOM write.PERF-3fs
‘The girl wrote’
the ending 
-t
cannot be analysed as an agent pronoun, since it also appears when 
the noun follows, as in (8):
(8) 
kataba-t 
al-fatāt-u
 
write.PERF-3fs ART-girl-NOM
‘The girl wrote’
Since two agents cannot occur in one sentence, the 
-t
cannot be an agent. Conse
-
quently, it is analysed by the grammarians as a feminine marker, essentially 
identical with the feminine marker 
-t
of the noun. In 
al-fatātu katabat
, the agent 
of 
katabat
must then be a zero pronoun, just as in the masculine form.
In this way, the Arabic analysis provides an explanation for the agreement 
between noun and verb in sentences where the noun is initial, and at the same 
time it brings together all noun-initial sentences into one category of topicalised 
sentences. The latter seems to be supported by the semantics of the construction: 
later grammarians pointed out that in a sentence such as 
zaydun ḍaraba
the focus 
is on 
zaydun
, about whom something is predicated, rather than on the action. 
The Arabic analysis of the linguistic material contrasts with the Western analysis, 
which applies the notions of ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’ to both sentence types in 
Arabic.