Arabic Linguistics

issue under discussion. Their acceptance or refusal of constructions based on this
approach is very well established although we should be reminded continuously
of the fact that, irrespective of how convincing these analogies are, the ultimate
aim of the grammarians is to prove the inner logic of the language and the
interrelatedness of its components. The chapter on kāna and its sisters is
particularly rich in this respect. Indeed, the very fact that these so-called
―incomplete‖ verbs (af„āl nāqis}a) exercise rection is attributed to their analogy to
―real‖ or complete verbs (af„āl h}aqīqiyya). 24 More specifically, since transitive
verbs exercise a twofold rection by causing the nominative in the subject (fā„il)
and the accusative in the direct object (maf „ūl bihi), kāna and its sisters were seen
to be given analogically a twofold rection as well and were made to cause the
nominative in the subject (ism) and the accusative in the predicate (hàbar).
Moreover, the permissibility of sentence 2, where the predicate of kāna is placed
before its noun, and sentence 3, where the predicate is placed before kāna and its
noun, is ascribed to analogy since it is permissible to place the direct object before
the subject (e.g., d}araba „Amran Zaydun) or before the verb and the subject (e.g.,
„Amran d}araba Zaydun). 25 Conversely, the impermissibility of placing the subject
(fā„il) before the verb – as this would cause a sentence like qāma Zaydun to
become Zaydun qāma, which is interpreted as a nominal sentence with Zaydun as
its mubtada‟ – is said to be carried over to kāna through analogy. 26
Other instances of analogy between ―incomplete‖ and ―real‖ verbs include
more complex constructions. Sentence 3a, for example, is accepted on the basis of
its resemblance to another sentence in which a ―real‖ verb occurs in the same
syntactic position as the ―incomplete‖ verb (cp. mā qā‟iman kāna Zaydun and the
prophetic tradition mā l-faqra ah`šā „alaykum, where both qā‟iman and al-faqra
precede the operant 27 ). Similarly, sentences of the type kāna t}a„āmaka Zaydun
ākilan (no.27), such as kānat Zaydan al-h}ummā ta‟hùdu are rejected by some
grammarians on the grounds that no operant (i.e., including ―real‖ verbs) may be
separated from what it operates on by an alien element (ağnabī; t}ufaylī ), as in
d}arabtu wa-dahaba „Amran Zaydun. 28
The extent to which the grammarians availed themselves of qiyās in their
discussion of word order in kāna constructions, however, can only be appreciated
fully by examining how they analogically extended to kāna and its sisters the
status of other particles or verbs. Without going into too many details, we shall
restrict our examples to those in which qiyās was the arbiter in allowing or
rejecting the patterns represented by constructions cited above:
1. The Kufans and al-Ah`faš al-Awsat} are reported to have allowed sentence
10 (qā‟iman mā zāla Zaydun) based on the analogy between mā zāla and another
negative particle, lam, since qā‟iman lam yazal Zaydun is permissible. 29
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