From ʿilm al-naḥw to maʿānī l-naḥw in ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī’s linguistic thinking

ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī (d. 471/1078) is today known for being the author of two fundamental treatises: Dalāʾil al- ʾiʿǧāz and ʾAsrār al-balāġa. The first one is about ʿilm al-maʿānī, a discipline labelled by some modern scholars as “syntax semantics”, “grammatical semantics”, “syntax stylistics” and even as “functional grammar”. The second treatise is about the study of rhetoric (ʿilm al-balāġa). However, most of Ǧurǧānī’s works are about grammar (naḥw), dealing with topics such as grammatical operativity (ʿamal), desinential inflection (ʾiʿrāb), noun and verb morphology, etc. As a rule, ancient and modern scholars have kept separate the two methods of his linguistic thinking: the descriptive and at times pedagogical approach; and the theoretical, semantic-oriented approach, concerning which Ǧurǧānī is acknowledged among the pioneers. Thus, his works would have been addressed to various kinds of readers and have known a different fortune depending on the time, the geographical area and the cultural environment of their reception. It is, however, possible to suppose a continuity in Ǧurǧānī’s linguistic thinking connecting the two groups of works. Following this line of enquiry, one is supposed to find in his grammatical dissertations the seeds of what would have become his “theory of meaning” within the Dalāʾil al-ʾiʿǧāz.