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1. Introduction The expression kāna wa-ʾaxawātuhā lit. ‘ kāna and its sisters’ occurs as a grammatical technical term in the sense of kāna and the verbs that grammatically resemble kāna. This term refers to a category of verbs sharing with kāna the same grammatical qualities and occurring in the same syntactic constructions. In their discussions of this category of verbs, the grammarians focus on two main kinds of kāna: kāna at-tāmma and kāna an-nāqiṣa (Levin 1979:185). The grammarians also briefly discuss two other marginal kinds of kāna: kāna az-zāʾida and kāna allatī fīhā ḍamīr aš…

1. Introduction The form kalima (pl. kalim), commonly denoting ‘a word’, sometimes occurs as a grammatical term corresponding in sense to the modern linguistic term ‘morpheme’. This sense of kalima is inferred from Sībawayhi ( Kitāb II, 330.15–339.19), al-Mubarrad ( Muqtaḍab I, 36–52), Ibn as-Sarrāj ( ʾUṣūl III, 171.1–179.5), and Ibn Yaʿīš ( Šarḥ I, 21.5–20 ed. Jahn; I, 18.29–19.15 Cairo ed.). The discussion of kalima by al-Mubarrad and Ibn as-Sarrāj resembles that of Sībawayhi. Ibn Yaʿīš's short discussion of this topic is mentioned by Fleischer (1888:III, 540). 2. Division into p…

The term ism al-fiʿl (pl. ʾasmāʾ al-fiʿl) is used for interjections conveying the sense of a verb. Most of them denote an imperative, e.g. nazāli ‘go down!’, ʾilayka ‘go away!’, hālumma ‘come here!’. However, some ʾasmāʾ al-fiʿl have the sense of a declarative sentence ( xabar), e.g. hayhātu ‘far from it!’. The plural form is mentioned for the first time in the 8th century, by Sībawayhi ( Kitāb I, 102.8). The singular ism al-fiʿl or ism fiʿl occurs only in later sources. Interjections known by this term are also called ʾasmāʾ li-l-fiʿl (sg. ism li-l-fiʿl) and ʾasmāʾ al-ʾafʿāl (Levin 1991:24…

The term ʾimāla is used by the medieval Arab grammarians to denote the fronting and raising of Old Arabic ā toward ī, and the old short a toward i (Levin 1992:74, esp. n. 1). Although the term ʾimāla denotes the fronting and raising of both ā and a, the ancient Arabic sources almost completely ignore the ʾimāla of short a, and the term in these texts usually denotes the ʾimāla of long ā (Levin 1992:74). The few grammarians who mention the ʾimāla of short a deal with it only when it occurs in the proximity of r (Sībawayhi, Kitāb II, 293.6–294.5; Zamaxšarī, Mufaṣṣal 160.10–11; Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ II, 1265…