Relations of Grammaticality and Reference in Discourse between Sibawayh and Van Dijk

الملخص

Early Arab grammarians—most notably Sibawayh—established foundational principles for the coherence of meaning in speech, which serve to determine its acceptability to the listener. That is, speech is judged as acceptable or unacceptable based on these linguistic and semantic principles. Just as Sibawayh addressed these issues, similar perspectives and analytical approaches can be observed among discourse analysts, particularly in the works of Teun A. van Dijk, despite the differences in terminology between the two traditions.

Accordingly, this study focuses on identifying certain semantic relationships in their analyses that contribute to the coherence of meaning within sentences—specifically, the relationships of grammaticality (istiqāmah) and reference (iḥālah). These relationships help determine the levels of correctness or error in syntactic structures, based on both formal cohesion and semantic coherence. This, in turn, defines whether speech is correct and coherent, or falls into the realm of impossibility, falsehood, or awkwardness. In Van Dijk’s discourse theory, such distinctions are expressed through the terms acceptable, less acceptable, and unacceptable, as reflected in translated discourse frameworks.

The study demonstrates the classifications and the degree of convergence between the perspectives of Sibawayh and Van Dijk, including the similarity of examples and analytical approaches. This affirms the depth of classical Arabic grammatical analysis, which extended beyond mere syntactic structure—contrary to the common critique of traditional Arabic linguistic thought.

Grammaticality and reference are among the most prominent semantic relationships that contribute to the coherence of meaning within linguistic structures. They are used to determine the correctness or incorrectness of a construction based on its meaning and context. Grammarians have pointed to such relationships as criteria for judging speech: if the elements are consistent and harmonious, the speech is deemed grammatically sound, thus achieving a high degree of acceptability to the listener. This aligns with what discourse analysts classify as acceptable speech.
Conversely, if the structure lacks coherence, it is judged as ill-formed, false, or awkward, depending on the sentence’s meaning—rendering it unacceptable.