Ecclesiastical Arabic Dictionary: "Methodology & Model"
Almoataz B. Al SaidThe Arabic ecclesiastical heritage contains many unique linguistic phenomena, vocabulary, and meanings. However, the Arabic library lacks a dictionary for its ecclesiastical heritage apart from a few lexicons and glossaries whose material is limited to strictly ecclesiastical terms. With the aims to direct researchers to this heritage in need of care and to pave the way for workers in lexicography in order to systematically construct a dictionary of Ecclesiastical Arabic, this study seeks to reveal the reality of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage and the uniqueness of its words, meanings, and evidence and then provide an applicable systematic vision for constructing this dictionary. The study is committed to the descriptive approach based on studying the texts and deducing their characteristics regardless of the criteria of right and wrong as imposed by language rules. The researcher relies on a linguistic corpus derived from the reality of the ecclesiastical heritage throughout the history of Arabic in which the representation of sects and ecclesiastical sciences was taken into account while choosing the material. The study aims to provide a reference framework to set the standards for constructing an ecclesiastical Arabic dictionary in two stages (i.e., collecting and editing), as well as to reveal some of the characteristics of this language.
Yöntem ve Model Bakımından Kilisenin Arapça Sözlük Çalışmaları
Almoataz B. Al SaidArap kilise kültürel mirası, pek çok eşsiz dil olgusu, kelime ve anlam içermekle birlikte Arap kütüphanesi, içeriği kilise terimleriyle sınırlı olan birkaç sözlük ve indeks haricinde kilise kültürel mirasıyla ilgili bir sözlüğe gereksinim duymaktadır. Araştırmacıları bu kültürel mirasın ihtiyacıyla ilgilenmeye yönlendirmek ve leksikografi alanında çalışanların Arap kilise kültürel mirasına ait metodolojik temele sahip bir sözlük yapımının önündeki engelleri kaldırarak işlerini kolaylaştırmak adına bu çalışma, Arap kilise kültürel mirasının mevcut durumunun yanı sıra eşsiz kelimeleri, anlamları ve şahitleri üzerinde durmayı ve bu noktadan hareket ederek bu sözlüğün yapımı için uygulanabilir metodolojik bir vizyon sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma, dil kurallarının dayattığı doğru ve yanlış ölçütlerinden bağımsız olarak metin incelemesi ve özelliklerinin çıkarsamasını temel edinen betimsel metoda bağlı kalmıştır. Araştırmacı, bu hususta Arap tarihi boyunca kilise kültürel mirası gerçekliğinden elde edilen ve içerik seçiminde kilise mezhepleri ve ilimlerinin temsil edildiği dilsel bir külliyatı temel edinmiştir. Çalışma, derleme ve kaleme almadan oluşan iki aşamada kilise kültürel mirasına ait bir sözlük inşasının standartlarını belirlemek için gerekli bir referans çerçeve sunmanın yanı sıra bu dilin bazı özelliklerini ortaya koymayı da amaçlamaktadır.
Ecclesiastical Arabic is a unique language containing many rare phenomena, vocabulary, and unique linguistic uses. This language has rules that are not subject to the laws of natural languages and is independent of the rulings that are customarily sanctioned by the followers of the religion; it lacks the authority of the general Arabic reality or the interference of its masters. Despite the richness of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage, due care has not been taken, and its language has been studied only a little to this day. This can be attributed to the most following important reasons: this heritage’s limitations to church parishioners, the lack of publications on this heritage compared to its size, and the weak linguistic formation of most research on it.
The linguistic study of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage will help to explain many linguistic phenomena in Arabic dialects, fill a wide gap regarding its vocabulary, trace back to its origins, and reveal aspects of the influence of Arabic as well as its own influence on other languages. The study will also help connect the vicious circles in the history of Arabic. If the study also goes beyond the limits of just a linguistic study, it will reveal other beneficial aspects including a deep understanding of the topics of belief, philosophy, and comparison of religions as an objective study of the psychological and social aspects of Arab Christian sects and a re-reading of Arab history, especially the history of the East.
Sensing the richness of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage and its need for the attention of those engaged in linguistic study, especially with regard to the scarcity of research achieved in this field, the study’s researcher seeks to dig into this language and explore some of its secrets. The study relies on linguistic material involving more than 170 sources from the Arabic ecclesiastical printed and manuscript heritage and extends in time from the earliest known appearance of that heritage until the modern era using a variety of texts to express the various schools and sciences. The researcher has attempted to invest the collected material in a study of this language from a lexical perspective by tracing its verbal and semantic peculiarities; searching its origins, history and uses; and reviewing it according to the regulations of modern lexicography.
This study shows the uniqueness of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage with its many linguistic phenomena that characterize it as a unique language. These phenomena vary to include morphological forms, structures, and meanings. The study traces the history of the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage as well as its authorship trends. The researcher has ended up classifying the authors of that heritage into two schools: the Eastern School (Mashreq), and the Coptic School. The researcher also points out that some individuals and limited trends have occurred that do not belong to either of the two schools (e.g., Arabists and missionaries).
The researcher has sought to track down previous works and concluded the Arabic library to be devoid of an ecclesiastical heritage dictionary with the exception of a few studies concerning ecclesiastical terminology and other studies concerned with Coptic Arabic. This study suggests a methodology for building an Ecclesiastical Arabic dictionary based on a linguistic corpus derived from that heritage and also on modern lexicography rules. The researcher has demonstrated the features of the proposed methodology through two main phases: the first concerned with collecting and preparing material and the second with lexical editing.
In the stage of collecting materials, the researcher built a computerized linguistic corpus for the Arabic ecclesiastical heritage and provided a description of this corpus. It contains 6,388,401 words from 179 sources. The researcher classified the texts of the corpus according to three considerations, with the first being in terms of a historical representation into three sections (i.e., ancient heritage, medieval heritage, and modern heritage), the second being in terms of six sections of sectarian representation (i.e., the Melkite texts, Maronite texts, the Nestorian texts, the Jacobite texts, the Coptic texts, and other texts), and the third in terms of cognitive representation in five sections (i.e., sources of beliefs and theology, sources of jurisprudence and worship [and laws], biblical sources [translations and commentaries], sources of literature and ethics, and sources of church history).
The study also presents a separate statistical description of the corpus texts in each of the three classifications and proposes a methodology for editing the desired dictionary along six axes representing the basic information included in the dictionary: entries and lexical units (lexemes), lexical meanings, lexical evidence, etymological information, historical information, and levels of use.
With regard to the entries and lexical units, this study provides a vision for editing the lexical forms, and the researcher suggests three types of lexical units: singular units, compound units, and special morphemes. As for lexical meanings, the researcher presents the conception of liberating the meaning from the context and suggested two sources for this. One is basic and represented in the linguistic corpus, and the other is secondary and represented in the previous lexical achievement. With regard to the lexical evidence, the study shows the feasibility, both direct and indirect, of the lexical evidence. Regarding tracing the special meanings in particular, the researcher presents a conception of the contextual features and the controls for citations. In regard to the etymological information, the researcher concludes that the nature of the desired dictionary dictates the richness of its etymological material and also presents a methodological vision for editing morphological information based on one of three possibilities: that the word belongs to one of the languages of the ancient world, that the word is borrowed from Arabic, or that the word belongs to one of the modern languages. As for the historical information, the study shows the changing nature of this information according to the available text material, and the researcher suggests a methodology for dating texts based on the dates of their composition and on the dates of their authors’ deaths. Regarding the levels of use, the researcher presents a concept for editing these usages in the dictionary and suggests categorizing them by considering their position under three levels: worship, learning, and social. The researcher also suggests classifying them by considering which of three levels they belong to: Mashreq Arabic, Coptic Arabic, or Common Ecclesiastical Arabic.
