580
Views
2
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

The formal approach of ʔal-Khalīl to Arabic lexicography

Pages 21-39 | Published online: 15 May 2015
 

Abstract

The Oxford English Dictionary has become the model for dictionary making. Elsewhere, however, there are other and older traditions of dictionary making. The one that is of interest here is the Arab tradition. ?al-Khalīl ?ibn ?aħmad ?al-Farāhīdī, (719–791 A.D.), is the father of this lexical tradition. He envisioned an original and a formal description of Arabic. This was not a syntactico-morphological analysis, but a lexical analysis. It is the first complete lexicon of Arabic written on a formal basis. It is original in design and conception. It is not a mere alphabetical listing of all the words of Arabic, but an accounting for the underlying skeletal structures of Arabic, based on their phonetic features, that are realized in the derivations according to the permitted measures of the language. The dictionary is constructed, in a systematic way, on the premise that the underlying forms have a limited number of skeletal structures on a range of two to five radicals per root. For example, [k, t, b] as a possible structure would have the permutations [k, b, t], [t, k, b], [t, b, k], etc. Though the lexicon is constructed on the principle of the permutability of the radicals within the roots, not all permutations are permitted in Arabic.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.