Notes on 'Alif-Lām and Tanwīn
The alif-'lām ال (which Sībawayhi usually refers to as الْأَلِف وَاللَّام al-'alif wa-_llām “the alif and the lām”) is virtually always treated (in the Anglophone literature) as the “definite article”. This is a misnomer, as it is in English. Use of “the” and “a/an” does not necessarily serve to mark a distinction between definite and indefinite. Consider “I saw a man in the garden. The man was wearing a hat.” Here “a man” does not refer to some indefinite thing; it refers to a definite but unrecognized man. Similarly “the man” refers to a man who is not only definite but recognized as “the man I saw in the garden”. On the other hand, both terms may be used in a generic (and thus indefinite) sense: “The lion is a ferocious beast” refers to lions in general, and so does “A lion is a ferocious beast”.
The نُون nūn of تَنْوِيْن tanwīn, i.e. the final /n/ sound in words like رَجُلٌ rajulun “[a] man” often expresses what we express in English using “a/an”, but not always. Obvious counter-examples are proper names that take tanwīn, like زَيدٌ Zaydun and مُحَمَّدٌ Muḥammadun. And sometimes the function of tanwīn is similar to that of “a/an” but should not be translated with either. For example زَيْدٌ ذَاهِبٌ Zaydun ðāhibun means “Zayd [is] going”, not “Zayd [is] a going”. In this case a strict literal translation would be something like “Zayd, someone going”, with the implied copula “is”. Here the “indefiniteness” expressed by tanwīn must not be translated to “a/an”, but by may be expressed by some other English locution such as “some” or “someone”.
On the other hand, Sībawayhi gives an example where a similar word (ذَهَاْبٌ ðahābun “going”) is reasonably glossed with an indefinite article. In article 10 he says that قَدْ ذَهَبَ qad ðahaba “he has gone” is equivalent to قَدْ كَاْنَ مِنْهُ ذَهَاْبٌ qad kāna minhu ðahābun “there has been from him a going”.
Instead of “definite” and “indefinite”, Sībawayhi uses the terms مَعْرِفَةٌ maʕrifatun and نَكِرَةٌ nakiratun. By form these terms would seem to be verbal nouns, hence “knowledge” and “ignorance”, respectively. But his usage makes it clear that he intends them as passive participles: مَعْرُوفٌ maʕrūfun “known” (i.e. recognized) and مَنْكُورٌ mankūrun “unknown” (i.e. unrecognized) respectively. Sometimes he explicitly uses the latter two terms instead of the former. So any noun prefixed with ال is مَعْرِفَةٌ “recognized” or “recognizable”. The concept is fairly clear: one only uses the ال when both speaker and addressee(s) can “recognize” the reference. And it follows that beginning an utterance with an “unrecognized” noun results in كَلام مُحال kalām muḥāl “distorted speech”. So if you want to say “A donkey is in the garden” in Arabic, you start with “in the garden”, not “a donkey”: في الْحَدِيْقَةِ حِمَارٌ fī _l-ḥadīqati ḥimārun “In the garden is a donkey” is good Arabic, but حِمَارٌ في الْحَدِيْقَةِ “[A/some] donkey is in the garden” is not. Saying the latter is a bit like saying “Donkey is in the garden”. That makes the speech “distorted”, because you have begun with something your addressee cannot “recognize” (Donkey? What donkey? What are you talking about?!). Your talk goes off the rails with your first word.
In other words, nūnation (the n of ḥimārun) is not necessarily equivalent to the (so-called) indefinite article “a/an”; saying حِمَارٌ ḥimārun is not always translatable as “a donkey”.
Arabic ال is similar to English “the” in some contexts, but it often serves as a kind of relative article, expressing something like relative “who”, “what”, or “which”.
When used with a “pure” (for lack of a better term) noun it functions just like “the”: الرَّجُلُ _l-rrajulu “the man” or الْفَرَسُ _l-faras “the horse”.
But when used with a participle it may refer to a particular agent who has performed the action, but it may also function as a kind of relative article, equivalent to الَّذي _llaðiy “which or the one that” or مَا mā “what” or مَنْ man “who”. Depending on context the following substitutions convey the sense of الضَّارِبُ _l-ḍḍāribu:
- _l-ḍḍāribu الضَّارِبُ “the striker”
- _llaðiy ḍaraba الَّذي ضَرَبَ “the one who/that struck”
- _llaðiy yaḍribu الَّذي يَضْرِبُ “the one/that strikes or will strike”
- man ḍaraba مَنْ ضَرَبَ “who struck”
- man yaḍribu مَنْ يَضْرِبُ “who strikes” or will strike
- mā ḍaraba مَا ضَرَبَ “what struck”
- mā ḍarabaمَا يَضْرِبُ “what strikes” or will strike
Like “the” in English, ال may also be used to express a generic sense:
الأَسَدُ حَيَوَانٌ مُفْتَرِسٌ l-asadu ḥayawānun muftarisun_
The lion is a ferocious animal
There's much more to be said, especially about tanwīn. In fact a complete proper characterization of tanwīn in Arabic remains elusive to this day.
One take-away from all this is that one should be cautious in interpreting the use of ال and tanwīn in the Kitāb. In particular it is not always clear whether he is using ال in a particular or generic sense. For example he often uses النَّصْب _l-nnaṣb, referring to the so-called “accusative” or a-inflection. When he does, we need to decide whether he means to refer to some specific case, or all cases, or to the general notion of naṣb inflection as an abstraction. The difference can have a significant impact on the interpretation of his doctrines.