From Description to Prescription The exceptive in Arabic grammatical theory

Once the need to learn a language arises, grammatical instructional manuals evolve from descriptive grammars of that language. Language description involves the uncovering of the rules of the language from collected data, and teaching those rules is the reason grammatical manuals exist. The most comprehensive descriptive grammar of Arabic is Sibawayhi's Kitab (d. ca. 161-94 AH/777-810 A.D.). He includes the rules of Arabic as he deduced them from the language of the Arabs. As time passed and the need to learn Arabic increased, many grammarians started to write grammatical manuals for beginners. Sibawayhi's monumental work was too speculative and highly theoretical for this task and was never suitable for instruction. The descriptiveness of Sibawayhi's Kitab needed to morph into a more approachable grammar. Zaggagi's Gumal (d. ca. 337-340/948-951) and Ibn Babasad's Muqaddima (d.469/1077) are two instructional manuals that are concise and more suitable for beginners. This study examines how pedagogy in Zaggagi's Gumal and Ibn Babasad's Muqaddima evolved from the descriptive rules of Sibawayhi's Kitab through a careful analysis of istitna' "exception" rules presented by each grammarian in this study. Although the rules are essentially the same in all three books, presentation and description or lack thereof are sufficiently different illustrating their distinct objectives.