أثرُ الثِّـقةِ في الأداء اللغويّ عند سيبويه

Abstract

    The Arabic language exists on several levels. Among these levels is the language that flows from pure sources whose clarity has not been disturbed by any trace of grammatical error or foreign influence. This form appears on the tongues of the eloquent Arabs who have drawn from the pure wellspring of Arabic. Another level is that which occurs on the tongues of its scholars who have been occupied with it and with teaching it. Through their engagement with the language, they developed particular concepts and consequently coined terms for these concepts by which their linguistic performance became distinguished. When speaking about Arabic, one inevitably speaks of its fresh root and its leading authority from whom abundant knowledge has flowed: Sibawayh (d. 180 AH), who has enriched Arabic from the earliest reception of it until the present day.

Sibawayh possessed a particular performance and a linguistic conduct that distinguished him in analysis, exemplification, and responses. From all this richness emerged the concept of “trustworthiness” (thiqah) as an evaluative concept that found its way from Islamic sciences, among them the science of hadith. Sibawayh—being a product of these sciences—drew from them several concepts and terms, among them thiqah, which is the subject of this study. Thus, the research deemed it necessary to examine this performance through definition, application, and investigation of its occurrences in al-Kitāb.

The study is entitled “The Impact of Trustworthiness on Linguistic Performance According to Sibawayh.” It seeks to examine an important aspect of sociolinguistics, namely scientific language, as it discusses the linguistic performance of one of the scholars of Arabic, Sibawayh, through the perspective of his terminology. Among these terms is thiqah, by which is meant the mechanism used by Sibawayh as evidence in transmission, whether from his teachers or from the Bedouins whom he heard directly. Thus, the authority of trustworthiness became one of the mechanisms of argumentation in his method. Sibawayh expressed this mechanism in two ways: first, by using the verbal sentence, and second, by using the nominal sentence, so that the study arrives at the most important results arising from all of this usage.

The research was divided into four sections. The first was concerned with explaining the meaning of thiqah in language and terminology. The second was concerned with explaining the meaning of trustworthiness in the science of hadith as the discipline most closely connected with this term. The third section explained the meaning of trustworthiness in al-Kitāb, and the fourth traced the occurrences of thiqah and its derivatives in al-Kitāb. The research concludes with general results from which the reader may benefit.