Grammar and Polyphony

Abstract

As the sole grammatical treatise and historiographical source for medieval Sicilian Arabic, Tathqīf al-Lisān wa-Talqīḥ al-Janān, authored by Ibn Makkī al-Ṣiqillī (d. 501/1107–8), has occupied a central position in the history of Laḥn al-ʿĀmma literature and Arabic linguistics in general. And yet modern scholars did not register enough of the underlying assumptions about language internal to Ibn Makkī’s methodology and logic. In this paper, I argue that his methodological insistence on cataloging the multiple grammars of spoken, dialectical Arabic reflects a recognition of the intrinsically diachronous and polyphonic nature of Arabic. Resisting a conception of language as static and normative, Ibn Makkī refrains from labeling spoken expression as categorically “incorrect.” This paper first studies the methodological shift in Tathqīf al-Lisān from a prescriptive to a descriptive approach to language centered on linguistic polyphony. From the formal organization in Tathqīf al-Lisān to its various methodological innovations, this article attempts to address significant shortcomings in modern scholarship on this grammatical treatise. Ultimately this paper reads the Tathqīf al-Lisān not merely as a repository of Sicilian Arabic semantic or morphological data, but rather as a milestone in the history of methodologies in premodern writings on Laḥn al-ʿĀmma