Subject and predicate in the thinking of the arabic philologists
The sine qua non of human speech is the sentence, whose function it is to express a "complete ascriptive linkage" (nisha tāmma) between two terms, a subject-term and a predicate-term. The sentence structure itself is made up of two fundamentally different parts: a subject-expression and a...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Oriental Society |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
American Oriental Society
[Oct. - Dec., 1985]
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| In: |
Journal of the American Oriental Society
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| Further subjects: | B
Hebrew language
B Semitic studies B Arabic language |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | The sine qua non of human speech is the sentence, whose function it is to express a "complete ascriptive linkage" (nisha tāmma) between two terms, a subject-term and a predicate-term. The sentence structure itself is made up of two fundamentally different parts: a subject-expression and a predicate-expression. The nature of the difference between these two parts is a matter of considerable interest to the Arabic philologists. In the case of the verbal sentence, their analysis of the difference bears some similarity to P. F. Strawson's analysis with reference to the English sentence: whereas the subject-expression simply signifies a term, the predicate-expression (which, as in English, must always be a verb), in addition to signifying a term, also signifies the ascriptive linkage of that term to the term signified by the subject-expression. The analysis of the Arabic nominal sentence involves somewhat different considerations, and in the case of nominal sentences in which the predicate is a "deinfinitival (mushtaqq) noun"-which bears a certain resemblance to the verb-the analysis becomes rather complex. The account of the thinking of the Arabic philologists on these subjects here set forth is intended to be provisional and provocative of further investigation. |
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| ISSN: | 2169-2289 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Oriental Society, Journal of the American Oriental Society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/602723 |