Morphological Facilitation According to Ibn Jinni in the Secret of the Art of Syntax ((The Structures of Broken Plural as a Model))

Abstract

Since language is one of the essential components of social life and humanity has an inherent need for it, mankind has never been able to dispense with it. Rather, societies have been inclined to preserve language by all possible means, even struggling and defending it. With the advent of the Qur’an, this defense became even stronger, and scholars competed in safeguarding and serving the language. One of the demands of the age that undertook this task was facilitation (al-taysīr), a principle encompassing all linguistic elements.       

          As Ibn Jinnī was both a member of the Arab community and a devoted son of the Arabic language—indeed, a prominent scholar—he exerted considerable effort to enrich his works with various forms of facilitation. Among his writings, Sirr Ṣināʿat al-Iʿrāb reveals clear traces of this principle, with numerous examples related to its manifestations. Since morphology dominates this work, particularly the structures of plural formation, we have selected the patterns of irregular plurals as a focal point. These fall into two main types: the patterns of paucity plurals and the patterns of abundance plurals. Hence, the study has been titled: “Morphological Facilitation in Ibn Jinnī’s Sirr Ṣināʿat al-Iʿrāb: Irregular Plural Patterns as a Model”.                                                       

       It should be noted that Sirr Ṣināʿa does not encompass all the possible irregular plural patterns. The reason for this may be the organizational framework upon which Ibn Jinnī constructed his book. For this reason, the present study is confined to what serves its purpose, shedding light on how Ibn Jinnī engaged with the texts and how this engagement can be understood as an instance of morphological facilitation.