Pedagogical Considerations and Terminological Conventions in Arabic Grammatical Tradition: The Term jumla Revisited

It has been claimed in modern scholarship that the term jumla (“sentence”/”clause”) as used by early grammarians differed from its use by later ones, in that it excluded verbal clauses, or at least a subtype thereof. The present article argues that conclusions regarding grammatical theories should not be drawn from isolated texts; rather, other factors, such as pedagogical considerations, the history of terms and manners of speech which were conventional in grammatical writings, should also be taken into account. More specifically, it will be shown that although some texts display terminological inconsistencies regarding the use of jumla, they do not reflect an early theory.