This work presents a new grammar of the Classical Arabic
Verb Inflection, carried out within the system of the WP morphological
theory (the Word and Paradigm model of analysis as formalized by
Professor P. H. Matthews). It is thus basically an application of
this structural theory, rather than an assessment of its merits. Yet
a general evaluation of characteristics of this theory, compared with
two other interrelated systems, is presented with"particular attention
to the concept of adequacy' in relation to Arabic grammar.
The thesis consists of six chapters, the first of which
represents an elaborated introduction meant to define the implicit
questionable points that the title may raise. This is followed by a
chapter on phonemic investigation, restricted to the problematic areas
where the scholarly dispute over a specific number of Arabic phonemes
has been building up since the Classical era. The terminological
distinctions between the basic traditional terms of Arabic grammar and
their presumed equivalents in modern linguistics is discussed in
Chapter III as a prelude to the major body of the work.
Chapter IV reviews, first, the three relevant linguistic
models of analysis in relation to the morphology of Classical Arabic,
which is taken here beyond the restrictive study of the individual
language to the domain of the general linguistic theory; and, second,
it presents a comprehensive summary of WP: its basic terms, rule system
and evaluational procedure, followed by the reasons that made
it the ideal choice for the present purpose. Chapter V, which serves
as a background to the application in Chapter VI, represents the core
of the discussions devoted to the Classical Arabic verbal system.
It comprises all the explanations that are possibly needed for the
making and understanding of the grammatical rules, and which find no
room in the final chapter without interrupting the flow of the rule divisions.
The final chapter is merely an application of the WP model
to the inflectional system of the Classical Arabic verb. It consists
of the verbal grammatical rules, preceded by a minimized group of the
required guiding notes, and followed by an exemplary demonstration of
the drivational system. The thesis is ended with a Summary and
Conclusions that survey the work in general and briefly record its
findings.
In addition to the original views and postulations
distributed over almost all the chapters of this work, and apart from
the empirical value regarding the theory adopted, the present grammar
represents on the one hand a further step in the evolutional course
of the Classical Arabic grammar, and on the other it provides a new
link between this classical grammar and the continual evolution of
the linguistic theory