Sibawaihi

THE BOOK THIS BOOK is a short glimpse on the huge encyclopaedic work on Arabic grammar, achieved by Persian Sibawaihi ("apple smell"). To put it in Mazini's terms: "Whoever wants to write about (Arabic) grammar after Sibawaihi, let him feel humble". This book further shows that the transformational grammatical operation suggested in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957) onward, is a fundamental principle of this masterpiece. It cuts across all levels of linguistic analysis, i.e. phonology, morphology, syntax and stylistics.

THE AUTHOR The author holds a BA in American Civilization (Fez 1988), an MA in French linguistics (York 1982) and a PhD in Arabic linguistics (Dublin 1990). He has produced many publications on different subjects and has given talks and lectures in many countries. He spent one academic year in the Linguistic Department of the University of Washington, in which colleagues have much appreciated the diversity of his competences. "Dr. Ben Rochd is qualified to teach Arabic and many areas of linguistics: especially introduction to linguistics, syntax and history of linguistics. I met Dr. Ben Rochd personally and find him very knowledgeable, articulate and totally fluent in English." (Fritz. Newmeyer)