--- title: "Textual reading of issues in Arabic grammar — شياع 2023" description: "This Arabic-language article asks whether classical grammatical argumentation can be read as text in the sense of modern text linguistics, rather than as…" authors: ["م.د. علي رزاق شياع"] year: 2023 venue: "مجلة اداب ذي قار 1" source: "https://jart.utq.edu.iq/index.php/main/article/view/471" doi: "10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; مجلة اداب ذي قار)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/anon-2023-textual-reading-issues-arabic-grammar/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/anon-2023-textual-reading-issues-arabic-grammar/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2023](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2023/page/7/) / Textual reading of issues in Arabic grammar # Textual reading of issues in Arabic grammar **Authors:** م.د. علي رزاق شياع · **Year:** 2023 · **Venue:** مجلة اداب ذي قار 1 · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; مجلة اداب ذي قار)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471) · [PDF](https://jart.utq.edu.iq/index.php/main/article/download/471/541) · [DOI 10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471](https://doi.org/10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4391937251) **Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) ## Summary This Arabic-language article asks whether classical grammatical argumentation can be read as *text* in the sense of modern text linguistics, rather than as isolated rules. The author first surveys how "text" is understood: the Latin root *texere* and the Arabic *nasj* both mean weaving. A text is described as self-contained, closed and independent of length. The article then lays out the analytic toolkit: general, macro and micro textual units; cohesion (form-based) versus coherence (content-based); and situational (exophoric) versus textual (endophoric, anaphoric/cataphoric) reference. These tools are applied to seven well-known grammatical issues taken from grammarians of different periods. Two examples are Sibawayh on suspending the government of *ẓanna* and its sisters, and the pronoun after counterfactual *lawlā*. The author concludes that these grammatical passages are cohesive, persuasive texts whose arguments fit text-linguistic standards. The study matters because it treats grammar books as reasoned discourse aimed at a reader, not as bare lists of rules. ## Key points - Seven grammatical issues are analysed, chosen from different eras and books. Each is one where a "well-known" (*mashhūr*) opinion was adopted. - Sibawayh's view: when *ẓanna*-type verbs are placed after their clause, cancelling their government is the stronger choice. He reasons that the speaker begins in certainty and doubt arrives only later. Placed first, the verb governs. - The article identifies reference devices in Sibawayh's passage. The speaker and addressee pronouns act as situational reference, and terms such as *alghayta*/*al-ilghāʾ* act as anaphora. - On *lawlā*, al-Khalil, Sibawayh, al-Kisāʾī and al-Farrāʾ accept attached forms (*lawlāya*, *lawlāka*), while al-Mubarrad rejected them. Ibn Mālik treats the detached nominative pronoun as the well-known form, citing Qur'an 34:31, but supports the variant with poetry. - Text is analysed on phonetic, syntactic and semantic levels, drawing on Barthes, van Dijk and de Beaugrande. ## Interesting ideas - Word order can mark epistemic stance: a postposed "I think" behaves as an afterthought hedge rather than a governing verb. — For Mova (frames): Treat sentence-final or parenthetical "I think/I guess" as a speaker-uncertainty marker on the main proposition, not as a frame whose object is the clause. - The same evidence can yield a parse decision: a cancelled-government verb is a detached comment, while a governing verb takes the clause as its complement. — For Mova (tree): Use this contrast to decide between `parataxis` and `ccomp` for postposed reporting and cognition verbs, and log the reason so the choice stays explainable. - Keep cohesion (surface links) and coherence (content fit) as two separate tests of a text. — For Mova (world): Check surface links (pronouns, connectives) and world-level consistency independently, so a failure can be traced to the right layer. - Split reference into situational (speaker, addressee, outside world) and textual (backward or forward to words in the text). — For Mova (frames): Route "I/you" to discourse participants and third-person or cataphoric forms to in-text antecedents before coreference scoring. - A minority variant with attested evidence is accepted alongside the "well-known" form instead of being called an error. — For Mova (learn): When silver parsers disagree on rare but attested constructions (e.g. "than me"), keep them as valid variants with provenance rather than discarding them as noise. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [Coreference resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/coreference-resolution/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{2023textual, title = {{Textual reading of issues in Arabic grammar}}, author = {شياع, م.د. علي رزاق}, booktitle = {مجلة اداب ذي قار 1}, year = {2023}, doi = {10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471}, url = {https://doi.org/10.32792/tqartj.v1i43.471} } ``` - [← previous Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/li-2023-textbooks-all-need-ii-phi/) - [next → The Belebele Benchmark: a Parallel Reading Comprehension Dataset in 122 Language Variants](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bandarkar-2023-belebele-benchmark-parallel-reading-comprehension/) - [↑ back to papers of 2023](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2023/page/7/) ## References 2 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. The Holy Quran. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 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