In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

115 7 the notion of “Complete” and “incomplete” verbs in early arabic Grammatical theory: Kāna and its sisters H ANA ZABARAH Georgetown University contemporAry ArAb grAmmAriAns are in agreement that verbs known as kāna and its sisters are considered to be ‫ناقصة‬ ‫افعال‬ ʾafʿāl nāqiṣa “incomplete verbs,” because they do not indicate all elements of ‫تامة‬ ‫افعال‬ ʾafʿāl tāmma “complete verbs.” Verbs inherently indicate an action occurring at a specific time, and therefore the lack of one of these elements renders the verb “incomplete.” Kāna and its sisters are verbs that indicate a change in time or state, and thus they lack the notion of “action” that is fundamental in regular verbs. How and when did these concepts emerge? When did the terms “complete” and “incomplete” verbs appear in the history of Arabic grammatical theory? This chapter investigates the chronological development of these concepts through an analysis of early Arabic grammatical literature. It examines early Arabic grammarians’awareness, or lack thereof, of these notions; how they presented these verbs in their writings; and how they accounted for this difference. Before analyzing the historical development of these verbs, it is necessary to define a few terms I use in this chapter. These terms are generally used in Western linguistics and do not necessarily “match” Arabic terminology. There is a lack of consensus among modern Arabists regarding the correct translation for these terms. And because this is not the topic in hand, I use these terms with a slight modification in their definitions to suit my purpose. Consequently, these terms should only be viewed in light of the definitions given in this chapter. The term “nominative,” according to Crystal (1997, 260) is the form taken by a noun when it is the subject of a verb. In Arabic grammatical theory, the term ‫مرفوع‬ marfuʿ is the form taken when a noun is the subject of a verb and, in this case, corresponds to the term “nominative.” However, there are other cases when marfuʿ is used where the word is not a subject of a verb but they all share the -u vowel ending as the default marker for this case. Similarly, the term “accusative” is defined by Crystal (1997, 5) as the form taken by a noun when it is the object of a verb. The Arabic term ‫منصوب‬ manṣūb corresponds to the term “accusative” when a noun acts as the object of a verb. This term, manṣūb, is also used in cases when the word is not hana Zabarah 116 the object of a verb but they all indicate the default marker -a as the proper case ending. The terms “nominative” and “accusative” should be viewed in this chapter as devoid of their traditional association with the verb, and only in the light of -u or -a vowel endings for words.1 Verbless sentences occur in Arabic and are usually called nominal sentences, because they start the sentence with a noun. This noun is the ‫مبتدأ‬ mubtadaʾ, and I refer to it here as the subject of a nominal sentence (SNS). For the sentence to be meaningful and complete, the mubtadaʾ needs a ‫خبر‬ xabar “predicate.” Crystal (1997, 304) defines the predicate as “that term in a proposition which provides information about the individual or the entity.” In Arabic, this term does not need to be a verb. Predication can be given with a verb, an adjective, a noun, a phrase, or another sentence . When predicates are adjectives or nouns, they are essentially describing the SNS—that is, referring to the same entity—and hence these sentences are sometimes called equational sentences.2 Both elements of an equational sentence receive the ‫فوع‬‫ر‬‫م‬ marfūʿ nominative case: the SNS and the predicate, as illustrated in example (1): ‫لطيف‬ ‫لد‬‫و‬‫ال‬ (1) ‫لطيف‬ ‫لد‬‫و‬‫ال‬ al-walad-u laṭīf-un The boy (nom. -u; SNS) nice (nom. -u; predicate) “The boy is nice.” Kāna and its sisters are verbs that appear with nominal/equational sentences to change the time or state in which the sentence occurs. Once kāna is added to the sentence, it is no longer a nominal sentence, and the two elements that follow are called the ‫اسم‬ ism “noun” and ‫خبر‬ xabar “predicate” of kāna; they are not the subject and object. Consequently, these verbs do not assign case to a subject and an object as do regular verbs (Ḥasan 1975, 543n2). They assign the nominative case (-u) to the noun of kāna and the accusative case (-a) to the predicate of k...

Share