Introduction
from I - Preliminaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
ʔabuw Bišr ʔibn ʕuθmān ʔibn Qanbar Sībawayh, (AH 140?–180/AD 757–796), was an eighth-century linguist. His is the most recognizable and respected name among grammarians of Arabic, and he is known simply as Sībawayh. He was born in Baydʕāʔ, in the province of Shiraz, in southwestern Iran/Persia. From there his family migrated during his youth to Basrah, a southern Iraqi city, where he attended school. He studied under the most noted and influential linguists of his time, in the School of Basrah. All his teachers are mentioned and frequently quoted in his book on Arabic. Two of the most quoted of his teachers are ʔal-Khalīl ʔibn ʔaħmad ʔal-Farāhīdī (AH 100–175/AD 719–91), who is quoted 608 times, and Yuwnis ʔibn ħabiyb (died AH 183/AD 799), who is quoted 217 times, according to Troupeau (1976: 228, 230). Sībawayh's book, also known as ʔal-Kitāb (1898), is a full-fledged analysis of Arabic. The book includes a wealth of detail on the structure of Arabic and a generous supply of illustrative examples. According to Yāquwt (1992), there are 9,735 sentences analyzed in the book, in addition to the thousands of inflectional and derivational morphological illustrations. There are hundreds of quotes from the Qurʔān, the canon of classical Arabic poetry, contemporary linguists and other living informants, and reports by others on the Arabic of the time. In addition, the book is a compendium of the opinions of the linguists of his time.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sibawayh on ?imalah (Inclination)Text Translation Notes and Analysis, pp. 3 - 6Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007