Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar (review)

The ‘Comprehensive grammar’ series from Routledge has given us a dozen works so far on languages including Cantonese, Greek, Indonesian, and Japanese. This mighty tome is what it is claimed to be—a comprehensive grammar of what is usually known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Following Hans Wehr’s classic Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (4th edn., ed. by J Milton Cowan, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1994), the authors prefer the term ‘written’ (MWA) to ‘standard’, noting that they chose this designation ‘to avoid such ill-defined labels as MSA (whatever that may be)’ (2). In fact, I have designated MSA ‘ill-defined’ in my ‘Modern Standard Arabic and the colloquials’ (Lingua 24.4.374–91, 412, 1970). What is most important to keep in mind, however, is that MSA (or MWA) is different from Classical Arabic, although they have many grammatical features in common.

All of the data in this grammar is post-1990, and most of it is taken from Egyptian and Gulf publications. The arrangement of grammatical topics is from smaller to larger units: word level, phrase level, and simple sentence patterns. Since this volume’s emphasis is on syntax, one is not surprised to see entire chapters (out of a total of twelve) devoted to negation, adjectival and nominal relatives, coordination, subordination, conditionals, exceptive sentences, interrogatives, hypersentences, and discourse analysis.

After a brief discussion of phonology (8–11), the authors focus on problems and innovations in orthography (11–16). They are correct to note that the two kinds of classical glottal stops have merged and are nowadays both markedly present. Thus, alɁintiẓār ‘parking’ is written with a hamza (glottal stop grapheme) as a superscript or subscript. In the case of the subscript rendition, the form alɁintiẓār is correctly noted; however, in the case of the superscript, the vocalization given as alɁintiẓār is erroneous, since one should supply a kasra ([i]) under the hamza yielding the correct alɁintiẓār (12).

One of the most interesting chapters for general linguists is Ch. 12 on the lexicon (740–69). Therein we find an informed discussion of loanwords (e.g. fabrīka ‘factory’ < French fabrique), innovations in the relative adjective in -ī (e.g. sukkānī ‘populational’ < sukkān ‘inhabitants’), new abstract nouns (e.g. nujūmiyya ‘stardom’ < nujūm ‘stars’), and abstract noun doublets (e.g. izdiwāj ‘being doubled’ and izdiwājiyya ‘duality; diglossia’).

Turning to the vocabulary that translates ‘poly-’ and ‘multi-’, we note taʕaddud azzawājāt ‘polygamy’, lit. ‘being numerous of marriages’ (761). I have seen and heard only taʕaddud azzawjāt, lit. ‘being numerous of wives’ (so too N. D. Doniach (ed.), The Oxford English-Arabic dictionary of current usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 945).

The pattern fawʕala is rightly seen as productive (762–63). In addition to ʕawlama ‘globalization’ and sawdana ‘Sudanization’, we may add the common saʕwada ‘Saudiization’ (from the root sʕd yielding ‘Saudi’).

The authors correctly remark that reduplication has been used to create new stems (764). Thus from xaṣṣa ‘to be private’, one notes xaṣxaṣa ‘to privatize; privatization’. However, there is also the doublet xawṣaṣa (not mentioned), which follows the aforementioned pattern fawʕala.

No comprehensive grammar is complete without a glossary and indices. The former is excellent (770–78) while of the latter the Arabic index (781–87) and the English one (including transliterated Arabic) are outstanding (788–812).

One would hope that the many misprints will be corrected when subsequent editions of this tome are released. Typical of such are the following: both m. and masc. are used for ‘masculine’ (even in the Table of Abbreviations (xi)); Gulf is correct for Gulfi (3); madrasa is vocalized erroneously with ḍamma ([u]) in Arabic script (27); the ṭ should be removed from the Arabic word meaning ‘many’ (218); ‘equipment’ is correct for ‘equipments’ translating the Arabic...