This is a Chapter on What is Inclined not According to Ԍiyās ‘Pattern’; Rather, it is Exceptional

9.00 As a first formalization of the grammar of Arabic, Sībawayh in his book isolates the regularities he finds in the language according to the patterns of the language. This pattern he calls Ԍiyās. As illustrated in the previous two chapters, the Ԍiyās states that ʔimālah ‘inclination’ of an ʔalif [A] comes about if the ʔalif [A] has a kasrah [i] or a yāʔ [y] in its immediate environments. But Sībawayh also notices irregularities. These irregularities, or the so-called exceptional cases, are when there is ʔimālah without the phonetic triggers that affected the ʔimālah changes that he had observed in their proper environments. In accounting for the data available to him he does not overlook such irregularities but pauses to give us examples of them. In addition, he reaches into the deeper social/linguistic contexts to give a rationale for their occurrence. He puts such irregularities beyond phonetics into a larger social context to justify their occurrence. The justification of their occurrence is the greater frequency of use of some lexical items, which affects their usage by the language users, who prefer the use of the inclined to the un-inclined ʔalif [A]. The preference on the part of the users for the use of ʔimālah in forms with an ʔalif [A] in frequent lexical items is the justification for these unusual forms.