Fundamentals of Arabic Grammar by Mohammed Sawaie (review)

Prior to the crack of the twenty-first century, there were few, if any, good, modern Arabic reference grammars in English available to students. Budding Arabists were often spotted toting copies of William Wright’s Grammar of the Arabic Language (Wright’s Grammar), a nineteenth-century work, as little else existed. This situation changed in the early 2000s with the publication of Karin Ryding’s Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic and Elsaid Badawi, Mike G. Carter, and Adrian Gully’s Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar, and, later, Mohammad T. Alhawary’s Modern Standard Arabic Grammar. Mohammed Sawaie’s Fundamentals of Arabic Grammar is yet another addition to the list.

Fundamentals systematically walks the reader through each grammatical topic, supporting every claim with examples. For example, the iḍāfa chapter begins with information about the first term of the iḍāfa, then the second term, followed by the use of iḍāfa in sentences. The topic of multiple first nouns conjoined by wāw follows, then the “pseudo-iḍāfa”; the modification of iḍāfa with adjectives or demonstratives; the use of li- to break up complex iḍāfa; followed by a section on ghayr. Each explanation is supported with clear illustrative examples. The examples throughout the book are in Arabic only, with no transliteration, and are fully voweled. The voweling throughout is impressively thorough and meticulous and contains very few mistakes.

The book focuses on practical information that learners need in order to form proper sentences. Although generally based on traditional Arabic grammar, it deviates from the classical scholars’ rules and categories when necessary for clarity. For example, a separate chapter is devoted to adverbs and types of adverbial phrases, though this category does not exist in traditional Arabic grammar. Structures in which modern Arabic deviates from normative principles are pointed out. For example, the particle la- is often omitted from the apodosis of conditional sentences (256), and lā zāl “still” is common though purists disapprove (98).

An interesting result of the book’s practical approach is that it eschews theory and major generalizations. It does not attempt to present Arabic grammar as a cohesive system with interrelated parts. Grammatical case, for example, is rarely presented as an overarching linguistic phenomenon. In the chapter on equational sentences, we are never told that subjects and predicates are nominative as a general rule. Rather, specific types of words in specific syntactic positions are dealt with individually, for example, adjectives when the predicate of pronouns, or subjects in inverted sentences. Similarly, the formation of the imperative verb is described without mention of the fact that the imperative is derived from the jussive. The manqūṣ is not presented as a morphological rule, yet its intricacies are discussed in the appropriate sections, such as those covering the active participle of defective verbs (289) and the number thamāniya (376).

The treatment of case is not particularly consistent. On some occasions, case is not named. We are told only that a word in a particular position has such-and-such a vowel ending. Other times, words are said to be in the nominative, accusative, or genitive. No apparent fundamental distinction exists between vowel endings and cases. The avoidance of big ideas in favor of the nitty-gritty should be seen as a feature, not a bug: extraneous information is avoided, thus increasing clarity and simplicity.

What, then, is the role of Fundamentals in the ever-expanding bibliography of Arabic reference grammars? It makes an excellent companion reference for students engaged in the first, say, three years of classroom study. Curious learners who are not satisfied with the sparse coverage of grammar found in textbooks will benefit by keeping this book at hand. Unlike most of the works mentioned above, it is appropriate even for the student at the very elementary levels of study.

Such a student certainly has no business attempting Modern Written Arabic by Badawi and colleagues, which is aimed at specialists and linguists. Ryding...