This four-part book explores Arabic metrics, phonology, the theory of matrices and etymons (TME), and the Arab grammatical tradition. Part One presents an accessible method for identifying the sixteen meters of classical Arabic poetry, followed by a survey of metric sequences in the Qurʾānic text. Part Two examines phonology, proposing an analysis of hollow and defective verbs based on the concrete stem rather than the abstract representations used by Arab grammarians.
Part Three, the book’s largest section, introduces TME and demonstrates, through Semitic and Romance languages, that sub-morphemic units are unordered. It concludes by showing how TME explains homonymy in the Arabic lexicon. Part Four examines the Arab grammatical tradition, exploring Ibn Khaldūn’s account of the linguistic situation of his time, the motivation of the linguistic sign in the works of Arab grammarians, rhetoricians, Qurʾānic commentators, and jurists, and the absence of a concept of the morpheme in Arab grammatical thought, where derivation proceeded from word to word, blending concrete and abstract forms.
Professor Georges Bohas is a distinguished Arabic scholar, holder of the French agrégation and a doctorat d’État, and a corresponding member of the Arab Academy of Damascus. He has served as director of the Institut français d’études arabes de Damas (IFEAD) and is now professor emeritus, having taught at Université Paris 8 and the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He has published extensively on Arab grammatical theory, poetics, linguistics, popular literature, and TME, a theory he formulated.
Editors: Georges Bohas
Language: English
Subject: Arabic and Islamic Texts and Studies
Series: Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Series
Publication Date: 2026
Number of Pages: 222
Book Dimensions: 17 x 24 cm
Cover Type: Hardcover
Shipping Weight: 0.600 kg
ISBN: 9786144920343
