Product Description

Dr Wright's translation of Caspari's Arabic Grammar first appeared in 1859. Since that time it has been thoroughly revised and enlarged, and has become the standard authority. Volume I contains sections on orthography and pronunciation, on the verb, the noun and adjective, on numerals, prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions. Volume II deals with syntax and prosody.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1029905 in Books
• Published on: 1967-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 812 pages

Customer Reviews

Buy the Dover publication for nearly $20
Dover publishes books that are classics and charges far less money, so save yourself the money, it's the very same book. This is a reference book for grammar, not to be read from beginning to end if you want to learn the topic as a beginner, but very good if you want a particular issue clarified. Plenty of examples to illustrate the use of a grammatical functions can be very handy. There are other very good grammar books, such as Haywood's A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language (one of my favorite because I could also learn from it as an intermediate beginner and it contains exercises), but Wright's book is considered to be one of the most comprehensive Arabic grammar books. Most other grammar reference books, though quite good and comprehensive in some cases, focus either on Quranic/classical or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

Standard Reference grammar of Classical Arabic
Wright has been the standard reference grammar of Classical Arabic for over a hundred years, and is still the most comprehensive generally available for the Classical language. Wright's knowledge of Arabic and his use of Arab grammarians was vast, and he's worth persevering with. The traditional Western terminology is a positive advantage to anyone who's used to it, and I must say I think Jacob Minsky's examples are among the most extreme in the book, tho' his point is well made. However, Wright introduces the Arabic terminology almost everywhere, which is a great boon - modern writers tend to ignore Arabic terminology, which is rather pig-headed as it leaves the student unable to discuss language with Arabic speakers, and at a disadvantage when trying to understand books in Arabic on language.

Fischer's "A Grammar of Classical Arabic" is much more accessible to those unused to traditional Western grammar, even if it is rather less complete in its coverage. In particular, it has nothing on Arabic verse, for which you still neeed to use Wright.

As to editions, the Cambridge edition is really a bit over-priced (it always was expensive, costing 18/- [= £0.90 or about $5.00 at the time] in the mid 1930s just for volume 1!). Librarie du Liban does a hardback for much less which is at least as well produced and a sight better bound. At least one Indian publisher does a two-volume hardback edition as well. As for the unclear typography, that's at least in part due to poor reproduction of earlier letter-press printing.

Stop Press: I see that Cambridge have just re-released the book in a new printing. The good news is that the margins are wider. The bad news is that it's more expensive and they've made the decision to perfect-bind the book.

Solid Reference Grammar, but has Drawbacks
First, anyone considering this book needs to understand that this is a reference grammar, not a textbook for learning Arabic. The material is arranged by parts of speech and by grammatical concepts, not as a series of lessons going from simple to more complicated. There are no exercises and no excerpts for reading practice (although all discussions of grammar and semantics are illustrated by examples). The level of the book is not for beginners.

The main drawback is a level of unneeded complexity that is maintained in many sections of the book by the use of Latin grammatical terms and by trying to look at Arabic through the concepts of English grammar. The chapters on Syntax are especially notable for this. It is there that we find such gems of clarity
as :

If two *correlative* clauses follow the
hypothetical particles law (if), law 'anna
(if that), lawlaa, lawmaa and lawlam (if not), [*]
the verbs in both clauses have usually the
significance of our pluperfect subjunctive
or potential, though occasionally too of our
imperfect subjunctive or potential.

This is further "clarified" by the footnote:

[*] The protasis of a sentence, when introduced
by lawlaa, although it may not have a verb
actually expressed, yet includes a verbal idea,
viz. that of the verb kaana.

This creates the impression that Arabic hypothetical sentences are super-complex, and their meanings are difficult to grasp. In fact, there is nothing particularly hard about the sentences used to illustrate this discussion, and most of the difficulty comes from trying to arrange English and Arabic into parallel structures. I find it hard to recommend the Syntax section of the book, which has pages upon pages of such explanations. But many other parts (such as the discussion of the forms of the verb) are lucid and helpful, probably because there aren't any English parallels to get in the way.

I also find that the fonts and the typesetting are not great. Looking at the pages for a long time fatigues the eyes.

I feel that I must mention that the price ... seems unreasonably high to me.

In summary, the book is good, but make sure that this is what you want.