Grammar and Polyphony From Ibn Makkī’s Tathqīf al-Lisān to Modern Readings of Laḥn al-ʿĀmma Literature

Abstract

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.