Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
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Subject: Language And Linguistics
Managing Editors Online Edition: Lutz Edzard and Rudolf de Jong
The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online comprehensively covers all aspects of Arabic languages and linguistics. It is interdisciplinary in scope and represents different schools and approaches in order to be as objective and versatile as possible. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online is cross-searchable and cross-referenced, and is equipped with a browsable index. All relevant fields in Arabic linguistics, both general and language specific are covered and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online includes topics from interdisciplinary fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science.
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The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online comprehensively covers all aspects of Arabic languages and linguistics. It is interdisciplinary in scope and represents different schools and approaches in order to be as objective and versatile as possible. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online is cross-searchable and cross-referenced, and is equipped with a browsable index. All relevant fields in Arabic linguistics, both general and language specific are covered and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online includes topics from interdisciplinary fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Māḍī and Muḍāriʿ
(3,161 words)
Māḍī and
muḍāriʿ are two terms for the verb in its apparent temporal or aspectual modes. They are part of the oldest vocabulary of Arabic grammar, occurring already in the opening pages of the
Kitāb of Sībawayhi (d. ca. 180/796), where verbs are classified as
māḍī lit. ‘having passed, elapsed’, or
muḍāriʿ ‘resembling’, an abbreviation for
fiʿl muḍāriʿ li-sm al-fāʿil ‘verb resembling the agent noun’. Since there is no firm evidence that they were in use much before Sibawayhi’s time, they probably arose in the period of his association with the pioneers o…
Date:
2018-04-01
Mafʿūl
(4,360 words)
1. Definition The word
mafʿūl is derived from the Arabic root
f-ʿ-l ‘to do, make’ and refers to something done or made. In the
Qurʾān, the word
mafʿūl occurs twice: “that Allah might conclude a thing that must be done” (Q. 8/42, 44; translation Pickthall 1938:262–263). In grammatical terminology,
mafʿūl refers to the accusative noun/pronoun on which the act of the verb ‘falls’. This covers all the nominal complements of the verb, in particular the object, which was also called
mafʿūl bihi. Both terms are usually translated with ‘object’, although a better equivalent for
mafʿūl is ‘ patient’…
Date:
2018-04-01
Mafʿūl fīhi
(2,962 words)
In the canonical theory of the Arabic grammarians, the term
mafʿūl fīhi indicates the adverbial adjunct of time and place as one of the complements of the verb. Adjuncts usually have an accusative ending, both in Classical and in Modern Standard Arabic, e.g.
ṣumtu ramaḍāna ‘I fasted during Ramadan’,
sirtu farsaxayni ‘I walked two parasangs’,
sa-ʾad̄habu g̣adan ‘I'm going away tomorrow’,
qumtu xalfa-ka ‘I stood up behind you’. In the case of place adverbials, a prepositional phrase is preferred when the location is specified, e.g.
ṣallaytu fī masjidi n-nabiyyi ‘I prayed in the Proph…
Date:
2018-04-01
Maġribī
(2,349 words)
The term
maġribī is the generic name for a host of scripts or styles used in the western part of the Islamic world from Tunisia to Morocco (
ʾIfrīqiyā, Maġrib), southern Spain (Andalusia), and sub-Saharan Africa, for the copying of books and for use in the state apparatus (principally the chancery), as well as for ordinary purposes of writing. Although
maġribī is easily identifiable as a group, there is still much research that needs to be done before we can attempt a comprehensive history of its development and its various styles. In a way, the problem …
Date:
2018-04-01
Maḥmūl
(1,750 words)
The term
maḥmūl ‘predicate’ is part of Arabic philosophical terminology, equivalent to the Latin
praedicatum (Georr 1948:217; Afnan 1969:80–81; Versteegh 1993:24–25). Its meaning in philosophical terminology corresponds to that of xabar in linguistics (Elamrani-Jamal 1983:138–144; Fārābī,
Ḥurūf 111.5–7), or ṣifa as opposed to
mawṣūf in theological terminology (Wolfson 1976:112–132; Ibn Sīnā,
Maqūlāt 18–19). The composition of mawḍūʿ ‘subject’ and
maḥmūl can be brought about ‘in the way of limitation’ (
ʿalā naḥw at-taqyīd) or ‘in the way of report’ (
ʿalā sabīl al-xabar). Fol…
Date:
2018-04-01
Majāz
(5,617 words)
The term
majāz, used both in Arabic linguistic thought and in the hermeneutics of the
Qurʾān, is usually translated as ‘trope’, although its meaning is not completely congruent with the Western concept.
Majāz is explained as a verbal noun of
jāza ‘to go beyond something’, in the sense of a participle denoting
al-kalimatu al-jāʾizatu ʾay al-mutaʿaddiyatu makānahā l-ʾaṣliyya ‘a word that goes beyond its original place [i.e. its literal meaning in the language system]’ (cf. Jurjānī, ʾ
Asrār 365; Mehren 1853:75). In the history of the term, a semantic specialization or narro…
Date:
2018-04-01
Majhūra/Mahmūsa
(1,417 words)
The terms
majhūra/mahmūsa denote a phonological correlation, generally held to correspond to the opposition between voiced/voiceless (e.g. Schaade 1911:13), or to that between lenis/fortis phonemes (for a discussion of the difference between these two oppositions, see Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996:95–99). Both terms were first used by Sībawayhi (d. 175/791) in his
Kitāb (II, 405). He probably based his observations on earlier research by his predecessors. However, his teacher al-Xalīl ibn ʾAḥmad (d. 175/791) does not mention this classification in the
Kitab al-ʿayn, although …
Date:
2018-04-01
Malagasy
(1,591 words)
Malagasy is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Madagascar by approximately 13 million speakers. Its closest relative is Ma'anyan, a language spoken in southeast Kalimantan (cf. Dahl 1991). The language was probably brought to around 400 c.e. Between the 11th and the 14th century, Islamic peoples migrated to the island, probably from the East African coast (Rajaonarimanana 1990:180), who became the ancestors of present-day clans like the Antemoro. The medieval contacts between Madagascar, called by the Arab geographers
Jazīrat al-Qamar (this term later came to designat…
Date:
2018-04-01
Malayalam
(3,835 words)
1. Historical background Malayalam, a South Dravidian language (see Krishnamurti 2005), is the mother tongue of 96 percent of the population of the Indian state of Kerala. It is also the principal language of Lakshadweep, the Laccadive Islands, a chain of islands in the Arabian Sea running parallel to the coastal strip in the southwest of India that makes up Kerala. The total number of inhabitants recorded for Kerala in the 2001 census was 31,841,374, and for Lakshadweep 60,650. The history of Malayalam as a separate language goes…
Date:
2018-04-01
Malaysia
(5,373 words)
This article considers the role of the Arabic language in the area covered broadly by the modern state of Malaysia, from the establishment of Islam in the region up to the early 21st century. Strictly speaking, the term “Malaysia” only applies to the nation established in 1963, consisting of the Federation of Malaya on the Malay Peninsula, Singapore (which withdrew to become an independent state two years later), and the former British colonies of Sarawak and Sabah on the island of Borneo. However, in light of the relevance of …
Date:
2018-04-01
Mali
(4,489 words)
In the contemporary Republic of Mali in West Africa, Arabic is not a native language of the largely Muslim population (80–90% Muslims), except for a minority of approximately 1 percent of Ḥassāniyya speakers (www.ethnologue.com). However, Standard Arabic plays an important role in Islamic education and scholarship in Mali, and in this role the language has a long history in the region. Arabic did not spread to the Sahel region of West Africa primarily as the language of Islam, however, but as a language of commercial communicat…
Date:
2018-04-01
Malta
(3,513 words)
Situated 93 km south of Sicily, 288 km east of Tunisia, and 355 km north of Libya, the island of Malta presents an intriguing linguistic situation. Although nearer to Sicily and culturally European, its inhabitants still speak a language that is basically a variety of Arabic, albeit a “highly deviant offshoot of vernacular Arabic” (Borg 1997:271, see also 245–247; Kaye and Rosenhouse 1997:263). The deviation derives from two parallel processes: while the original Arabic dialect lost contact with…
Date:
2018-04-01
Maltese
(8,376 words)
1. General The affiliation of Maltese within other Arabic vernaculars is a controversial issue. It is likely that successive waves of impact reached the Maltese shores from different Arab stations and at different points in the island's history (for theories about a Phoenician origin of Maltese, Malta). Most linguists (see, for example, Aquilina 1961, 1979) agree that typologically Maltese fits well into the general characteristics of Maghrebi dialects, including the most distinctive isoglosses such as the
n- prefix for the 1st person plural of the imperfect (
niktbu ‘we write’,
nimx…
Date:
2018-04-01
Maʿnā
(3,646 words)
1. Introduction In a modern Arabic-English dictionary, the term
maʿnā is rendered by such words as ‘sense’, ‘meaning’, and ‘signification’, so that it forms with its conceptual counterpart a semantic pair quite akin to the signifier/signified couple familiar to contemporary linguistics. Yet, a close examination of a number of Arabic texts of different periods in which both these terms show up, separately or together, reveals that it has not always been so, and that it is only in the final stage of a long evolution that the
lafḍ/maʿnā couple ended up with its present-day functional…
Date:
2018-04-01