Sibawayh on ?imalah (Inclination)

Reviews / Votes

Finally, this book is an important contribution to Arabic Phonetics and specifically to the investigation of the phenomenon of inclination. It serves as an excellent model to any future attempt of translation of studies on the Arabic language and its structure. -- Salman H. Al-Ani, Indiana University, Bloomington, * The Phonetician * An important contribution to the subject of phonology in Classical Arabic Linguistics, this book deals with the treatise of the Imalah by the founder of Arabic linguistics, Sibawayh, who is also a great grammarian and the creator of the most comprehensive systematic description of classical Arabic grammar. This translation by Professor Sara is faithful and his analyses are masterfully accurate. The book makes a significant contribution to Arabic linguistics in general and to phonetics and phonology of the language in particular. It is a very welcome addition to our increasing number of studies on the foundational analyses of Classical Arabic Linguistics. -- Bassam K. Frangieh, Yale University Professor Sara's rigorous and innovative work, with its "rich translation format", gets to the inner depths of the text and immediately helps the reader realize that Sibawayh and his contemporaries were in fact operating, not within any Western or Eastern paradigms, but rather within their own paradigm of Arabic linguistics. It is a very welcome and long-awaited contribution to the fields of Arabic language and linguistics, history of Arabic grammatical tradition, and history and historiography of linguistics. -- Mohammad T. Alhawary, Professor of Arabic Language, University of Oklahoma