Sībawayhi is incredibly irenic in general but I think he must have been a little cantankerous. He doesn’t mind saying that this or that expression is ugly, vile, disgusting etc. even when he’s talking about Al-Khalīl. Also explains lots of insults. Ch. 75: إنّما أنت شُرْبَ الإبل “you drink like a camel”

Fun fact: after discussing eg مررتُ به فإذا له صوتٌ صوتَ الأسد Sibby discusses له علمٌ علمُ الفقهاء He then says إنما فُرِق بين هذا وبين الصوت لأنّ الصوت علاج وأنَّ العلمَ صار عندهم بمنزلة اليد والرِّجل

100 years from now the historical challenge will be to explain how a charlatan like Chomsky managed to hoodwink so many intelligent people.

Question for scholars of early Islam: what’s the story wrt memorization of the Quran? How common was it? What were the social expectations for scholars (or others), in particular grammarians? Could you even discuss the Quran without it? If you had to rely on writing would you be taken seriously?

Announcement: The Hellas Myass Award, to be bestowed on occasion to the most egregiously stupid attempt to credit the Greeks for Arab/Islamic achievements. Think “Razzies”. You might think the day for this has passed, but you would be wrong.

Sumerian, Akkadian, etc. were thousands of years old when the Greeks showed up. And we have lots of documentary evidence (cuneiform tablets etc) But so far as I know (not much) no grammars or other docs expressing metalinguistic reflection. Isn’t that weird?

Hypothesis: all intellectual “progress” is based on metalinguistic reflection. Thinking about your language in your language lays the foundation of fancier speculation. Try to imagine Plato etc. in the absence of literary training, which is a species of metalinguistic reflection.

Translation check: in chapter 70 Sībawayhi discusses eg إنّما أنت سَيْرًا سَيْرًا and ما أنت إلّا الضَّرْبَ الضربَ . Meaning something like “you’re always doing X” maybe expressing exasperation? Like “Dude, what’s with the ‘strike strike’ all the time?!” Whaddya think?

More weirdness from Sībawayhi ch. 68: المنصوب الذي أنت في حال ذكرِك إيّاه تَعملُ في إثباته وتزجيته repeated verbatim several times, contrasted with eg وَيلٌ لك and سقيا ورعبا.

That’s a hoot! Obviously it should be ذي لاين THEE line, the one and only!

“Literacy” inescapably implies (written) letter forms. Was Sībawayhi literate? Probably, he did write. But did his concept of language depend on notions of writing? I don’t think so.

Kitāb updates: 61-66 (accusatives): 61 سَقْيًا وَرَعْيًا (masdars) 62 تُرْبًا وَجَنْدَلًا (nouns) 63 هَنِيْئًا مَرِيْئًا (adjectives) 64 وَيْلَكَ ووَيْحَكَ (muḍāf maṣdars) 65 حَمْدًا وَشُكْرًا لَا كُفْرًا وَعَجَبًا 66 سُبْحَاْنَ اللهِ وَمَعَاْذَ اللهِ وَرَيْحَاْنَهُ www.sibawayhi.org/updates-61-6...

Memo to scholars who need to write multilingual texts: emacs. Full stop.

What does “grammar” even mean? You can go with Chomsky, or Wittgenstein, or Priscillian, or Dionysius Thrax etc. My take: essentially meaningless.

The only figure remotely like Sībawayhi, as far as I can tell, is Panini. Anybody read them both? Sībawayhi was resolutely focused on actual speech practice, going so far as to record in great detail many speech idiosyncrasies. Did Panini do this?

Conspicuously absent from Palmer’s “Mood and Modality” (2nd ed.): any account of “nominal modals” (for lack of a better term.) like Arabic لَيْتَ and لَعَلَّ etc. Which do NOT express “propositional attitude”! E.g. لعلّ زيدا ذاهبٌ should not be parsed as “maybe [Zayd is going]” but as…

Updates to chapters 502-503 (phonology of pronominal suffixes) www.sibawayhi.org/updates-502-...

Required reading: “The problem of Speech Genres” by Mikhail Bakhtin. If you haven’t read this you have no business talking about language. I’m looking at you, Noam!

Haven’t read this, but the obvious question is “why would you think language is in the business of ‘representing’ reality (whatever that is)”?

“Twins are birds” sayeth the Nuer. (According to the anthropologist.) Is that really more opaque than “‘Horse’ is a noun”?

Great new article by Geoff Pullum on Post, Chomsky, and the roots of generative grammar, written with his customary verve, depth, and precision. doi.org/10.1075/hl.0.... #histlx #Linguistics #LangSky

You know what really hurts? Listening to a piano player with no sense of rhythm playing Corea’s “Spain”.

I’ve been rereading Michael Carter’s 1994 book on Sibawayhi. Carter is widely recognized as an authority (even the authority) on Sībawayhi. That depresses the fuck out of me. It’s like reading a Creationist’s interpretation of Darwin. Complete nonsense.

Why study Sībawayhi? Simple answer: he will make your head explode. All that stuff your fancy Western education has taught you about language - gone! Right down to the most basic concepts. Take “verbal mood” for example. Seems trivially obvious, yet he had no such concept.

It's easy to find the article of Sībawayhi's Kitāb that you want, either by article number or by edition/volume/page number. See www.sibawayhi.org/using-the-toc/

Updated articles on أمالة imālah: www.sibawayhi.org/updates-ml-t...

And now, for something completely different: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! The Hellenizers are relentless! This may be the stupidest “scholarly” article I’ve ever read. And yet: it was published in a respectable journal. What does that tell ya?

Sībawayhi’s treatment of the “verb” is, by Western standards, bizarre at best. I can’t say I’ve read all the literature but I’ve read a lot of it, and one thing that stands out is that what he actually says is usually ignored. He had no concept of voice (active/passive)? Ignore that!

The subtlety of Sībawayhi’s thinking is amazing. He would have felt right at home among the dons of Ordinary Language philosophy at Oxbridge. Look at article 145 where he discusses نِمْمَ. Translate عبدُ الله نِعْمَ الرجلُ. The الرجل does *not* refer specifically to عبد الله !

How does our metalinguistic terminology affect our thinking? We say “exception”, the Arabs say استثناء, which is a very different concept, rooted not in the notion of “taking out” but in the notion of duality or maybe secondness.

Especially relevant for linguistics www.quantamagazine.org/carlo-rovell...

New translation of Aristotle just published. Seriously: who cares? Any serious scholar will learn Greek and read the original. Debating the merits/demerits of translations is a total waste of time.

I still do not grok the whole tattoo thing. You’ve never been in the Navy, why do you have 27 tattoos on your arms? In the end it’s just sad sad sad.

I see a new translation of Aristotle has been published. Still no translation of the greatest book about language ever written, the Kitāb of Sībawayhi.

New Blog Post on the Najdi demonstrative hāḏī phdnix.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/w...

Three cheers for Leiden! Centuries of scholarship on Arabic and Islam, continuing to this day.

Sometimes what you don’t say is just as important as what you do say. Even amateur thespians know how powerful silence can be. Mood/modality seems just obvious to us westerners. But it is conspicuously absent in Sibawayhi. What does that tell us about his way of thinking?

Sib 129 says a thing may be described by something هو هو وهو من اسمه or sth هو هو وليس من اسمه or what is ليس به ولا من اسمه. I’ve been beating my head on من اسمه for months. (It occurs elsewhere as well.) “0f/from its noun” makes no sense to me. Suggestions?

"As you see, o youth" www.sibawayhi.org/as-you-see-o... explains the use of كما ترى and يا فتى in the Kitāb of Sībawayhi

Memo to modern (mostly Western) scholars of Arabic: please STOP relying on Wright’s Grammar! Its ridiculous! 50 years ago, maybe, but today we have access to Arabic sources, including modern ones. case in point: النحو الوافي ok it’s 4 dense volumes but so what?

Updates to articles 45-49 now available at www.sibawayhi.org. Covers e.g. سِيْرَ عَلَيْهِ سَيْرٌ شَدِيْدٌ وَضُرِبَ بِهِ ضَرْبٌ ضَعِيْفٌ (art 45); قَدْ عَلِمْتُ أَعَبْدُ اللهِ ثَمَّ أَمْ زَيْدٌ (art 46); رُوَيْدَ زَيْدًا (art 47); variations on رُوَيْدَ (art 48); and commands expressed using nouns with iḍāfah, e.g. عَلَيْكَ زَيْدًا and حَذَرَكَ زَيْدًا etc. (art 49)

I have two online events coming up next month, one talk and one course! Oct 16: An online talk version of my Abjad Numerals workshop, where I'll cover their history & how to use them. We'll do live exercises to properly integrate this ancient system. 1/2 www.arabbritishcentre.org.uk/whatson/when...

Reading Sibawahi (www.sibawayhi.org) is devoted to the study of the Kitāb, Sībawayhi's massive study of the Arabic language. Full text, full tashkeel, hyperlinks, lookup by article number or edition/volume/page, and much much more! #sibawayhi #arabic #arabicgrammar