Intransitives Verb und Präpositionalobjekt bei den arabischen Grammatikern des 8.–14. Jahrhunderts. Eine terminologie- und begriffsgeschichtliche Studie

This study examines how intransitive verbs with prepositional objects in literary Arabic have been described by the Arab grammarians of the formative period of Arabic grammar (8th–14th centuries CE). The study covers twenty-three grammarians, from Sībawayh (d. 796), the most influential Arabic grammarian of all, to Ibn Hisham (d. 1360), the last significant grammarian of the formative period. The theories of the Arab grammarians are evaluated against the background of a linguistic analysis of Arabic prepositional objects. According to this analysis, intransitive Arabic verbs with prepositional objects fall into two categories: a non-translocative category and a translocative category. The translocative category is restricted to verbs of movement with bi-, where bi- has comitative, transitivizing and causative functions. These parameters make it possible to better understand the theoretical approach of the Arab grammarians, particularly with regard to the translocative category, and also permit to identify analytical inaccuracies.

Keywords: Arab grammatical tradition, intransitive verbs, non-tranlocative and translocative verbs, prepositional objects