Logic-and-meaning Study of Arabic Literary Language: Morphogy vs. ishtiqaq

Abstract

The same object – the Arabic literary language (ALA) – is represented as two com­pletely different subjects of study in theories based on the two different types ra­tionality, namely, in the Arabic linguistic tradition (ALT) and in European linguist­ics (EL). The presumption of the possibility of the universal description of language “as such”, or, in a milder version, of language “as it is”, shared by EL and philosophy, is incorrect and should be discarded. The evidence of its falsity is the fact that the description and analysis of ALA in ALT and EL coincide in noth­ing, since they use basically different tools of rationality, namely, category systems and predication logics (process and substance logic respectively). Each of those two types of theories generates a detailed discourse on ALA after they define the initial atomic minimum of the sound substrate of speech and the logic of build­ing up complex units. Both (the task of setting up the initial “atom” and the logic of its multiplication) are directly determined by the tools of rationality that ALA and EL use. Language is a specific object of study, being a product of the collect­ive mind, yet the conclusions of this study are general. No rational instrument is absolute and none can be applied unrestrictedly, and therefore no object of research can be taken “as such”, as an invariant object, it is always posited as a variable subject. Any scientific theory should explicate “from scratch” all the tools of ra­tionality that it uses, take into account their decisive influence on the construction of the subject of research and allow the same object to be considered as an alternat­ive subject of study by means of an alternative rationality.