The Ecology of Arabic

Abstract

Views of the Arab Grammarians on the Classification and Syntactic Function of Prepositions”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 342–67) are not mentioned, nor is Jacques Grand’Henry’s chapter (“Some Particles in Middle and Dialectal Arabic”, in Proceedings of the Third International Conference of AIDA held in Malta 29 March–2 April 1998, ed. Manwel Mifsud [Hal Lija: Association internationale de dialectologie arabe, 2000]) on particles in Middle and dialectal Arabic. The author could also have mentioned ʿUmar S. ʿAbd al-Galı̄l’s study (H ̇ urūf al-jarr fı̄ l-ʿarabiyya: Dirāsa nah ̇ wiyya fı̄ d ̇ awʾ ʿilm al-lugha al-sāmiyya al-muqāran [Cairo: Dār al-Thaqāfa al-ʿArabiyya, 2000]) in which he compared Arabic prepositions (li-, ʿalā, bi-, and ka-) with those in other Semitic languages. Lastly, although it deals with Arabic prepositions and complex prepositional phrases only in the strictly pedagogical context of Arabic as a foreign language, Ah ̇ mad T. H ̇ asanayn and Narimān N. al-Warrāqı̄’s book (English translation: The Connectors in Modern Standard Arabic [Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994]) on connectors would have deserved more attention than a single reference outside the literature review (p. 307). Not only do H ̇ assanayn and al-Warrāqı̄ deal with many “simple” and “complex” prepositions not studied by the author, but they also introduce pseudo-verbal prepositional groups. To be sure, the author should not be expected to carry out a systematic diachronic study of the grammaticalisation of all these prepositional groups, but more could have been done to provide a balanced view of the linguistic situation and on the range of research that remains to be done. The diachronic approach that is made possible by corpus-based research has just begun to bear fruit in Arabic studies, not only in the field of syntax but also in lexicography. The present book demonstrates the interest and validity of this approach.