S. Maslukh's dissertation «Acoustic...» as evidence for the persistence of ideas about the harf structure of language in Arabic linguistics

Butakova Dar'ya Dmitrievna ORCID: 0009-0002-9567-3357 Postgraduate student; Institute of Asian and African Countries; Lomonosov Moscow State University 11A Suzdalsky ave., block 87, Vladimir region, 600027, Russia butakova.darya@yandex.ru

Today, Arabic linguistics builds a description of language (both literary and spoken) based on terminology developed by Western linguistics. This system has penetrated into Arabic science over the past few decades and has been firmly established in it thanks to the Egyptian philologist Ibrahim Anis ^[11] and his followers ^[14]. Together with his students, he made a significant contribution to the transition of Arabic linguistics, which for centuries relied on the term "harf", which has no analogue in the conceptual system of general linguistics, to the previously unusual concepts of "sound", "syllable", "stress", etc.

Harf, which can be put in line with the term "mora" introduced by N.S. Trubetskoy ^[18] to denote a syllable with a short vowel, where longitude is represented as the sum of two short elements, was used by representatives of the classical period of Arabic linguistics as a designation of the minimum unit of several levels of language, including phonetic and prosodic. The approach of classical Arabic grammar in this study is considered on the example of treatises by Sibawaihi ^{[1, 8, 17]}, Maburrad ^[10], Ibn Jinni ^{[5, 6]}, Zamakhshari ^[7], Ibn al-Jaziri ^[4] and Galayyini ^[9]. All of them were engaged in the development and systematization of the rules of the literary Arabic language based on the Quranic readings.

At the same time, the term "harf" is understood by modern Arabists in different ways. Some scientists suggest that it should be considered a phoneme, others a syllable, and others a syllogophoneme. There is also not a substantive, but a procedural understanding of this term, which indicates its complex nature, which does not fit into the framework of general linguistics.

The key property of harf in the tradition is its coherence or inconsistency, directly related to its structure, which determines its function as a marker of coherent speech or as an indicator of prosodic pause, respectively. In this case, the prosodic segment must begin with an agreed harf, and end with an uncoordinated one (for more details, see ^{[12, 13]}). These requirements cause certain changes in cases where a particular word does not comply with these standards. In addition, the Harf theory has given rise to the concepts of full and pausal forms of a word, which indicate the place of a word in a phrase and differ in the quality of the final harf.

Ibrahim Anis rejected this system, abandoning the use of authentic concepts, bringing the terminology of Arabic linguistics in line with general linguistic, building a description of the language on the basis of the term "sound".

However, as a study based on a comparative historical method involving conceptual and cognitive analysis shows, not all Arab scientists have completely abandoned the conceptual system based on the term "harf". Linguist Saad Maslukh in his dissertation "Acoustic characteristics of Arabic consonantism and vocalism and the norms of poetic rhyming" ^[15], written under the supervision of G.M. Gabuchan, examines the phonetic and prosodic features of rhyming in the Arabic literary language and the Egyptian dialect, and when compared with treatises of Arabic traditional linguistics ^[3] it becomes possible to trace the continuity between grammarians of the classical period and influenced by the general linguistics of Maslukh. It is important to note that he does not use the term "harf" in his work, indicating that he understands it as a letter and a sound at the same time, continuing to follow the path of Ibrahim Anis and relying on his description of the syllabic structure of the Arabic language, however, the general vector of his vision of the norms of constructing a poetic line does not contradict the Harf theory of the classical period of Arabic linguistics and even confirms it.

At the same time, he argues that Sibawaihi, as the author of the first treatise on grammar, considered phonetics and prosody to be an indivisible whole, and his followers divided the sound structure of the language into two layers, which eventually ceased to overlap almost completely, which significantly influenced not only the phonetic theory developed by the Arabic linguistic tradition, but also poetry. Saad Maslukh also notes that literary critics often neglect prosody when studying the sound side of poetic works. In addition, he emphasizes that, with the exception of Ibrahim Anis, the author of the first scientific work on phonetics in Arabic linguistics after his acquaintance with the European tradition, linguists do not turn to poetry in matters of the phonetic structure of the Arabic language, which significantly affects the result of the analysis.

The scientist notes that the purpose of his work is to find patterns of rhyme construction in poetry in the literary language and the Egyptian dialect. It can be argued that he focuses his attention on the outcome of a line of poetry, trying to identify patterns in the construction of rhyme, which is directly related to the phenomenon of the pausal form of the word.

It is important to note that the norms of constructing a poetic line in ALA, as D.V. Frolov writes ^{[19, 20]}, are based by their nature on the term "harf". According to the scientist, the prosodic structure of the language gives "the beginning of both the rhythm of speech as a whole and the verse" ^{[20, p. 59]}, and "the prosodic pause is audible and prosodically significant in the final position." That is, we can say that the pausal form of the word, which is a natural product of the prosodic structure of the word, turns out to be an essential part of a line of poetry, marking its end. At the same time, this education has its "own rhythm" ^{[20, p. 60]}, which is related to the rhythm of the verbal models included in it. In turn, the beit (line of poetry) is a "metrical idealization of the pausal group." In this case, the pausal form of the word acts as a marker for the end of a poetic line or a half-verse.

It should also be noted that in poetic speech, the pausal division has some features that are not characteristic of the standard position of the outcome of the prosodic segment.:

– the pausal form of a word at the end of a poetic line eliminates the possibility of an accumulation of uncoordinated harfs. It is noteworthy that this situation is considered not only the norm, but also an additional indicator of the pausal form of a word in traditional grammar.;

– singular masculine words in the accusative case are characterized by the retention of the [n] indefinite article. According to the norm fixed in traditional grammar and the science of recitation, in these cases, the [n] indefinite article is replaced by the alif harf. It is interesting to note that in modern ALASKA, in this situation, the norm with the preservation of [n] tanvin has taken root, and not the option with its replacement.;

– instead of the most frequent method of truncating the final short vowel (isk a n), its lengthening is used. Forms with truncation of the final short vowel are not prohibited, but they are "most likely a preserved remnant of pre-Arabic verse" ^{[20, p. 60]}.

It is also important to note that, unlike other Semitic languages, ALA in its prosodic structure was guided by versification [for more information, see 16], and not by the norms of spoken speech. From this it can be concluded that the pausal form of the word is an integral part of the Arabic metrical (Arabic) verse system.

Since the rhyme on which Saad Maslukh focuses is directly related to the pausal form of the word that forms the end of a poetic line, it makes sense to consider in more detail the critical remarks made by the scientist against Ibrahim Anis, who, in Maslukh's opinion, neglects the latest linguistic changes and acoustic features of sounds and considers some natural prosodic phenomena "shortcomings of rhyme."" ('uy b al-q a fiya).

Saad Maslukh studies the permissible and unacceptable alternations of sounds in rhyme, i.e. the "qualitative and quantitative relations of vowels in the system" of the language. This inevitably leads him to the need to determine the minimum unit of the sound structure of Arabic speech. Saad Masluh emphasizes that the term "harf" is better suited to describe the phonetic and related prosodic structure of the Arabic language, since it is based on the concept of mora, which is closer than syllable to Arabic speech, and also allows you to maintain the connection between spelling (Arabic is moric, i.e. as lowercase graphemes it reflects consonants and long vowels, while short vowels exist in writing exclusively in the form of diacritics, which corresponds to the Harf theory, where the short vowel acts as an independent component) and the sound phenomena that were justified by it ^[2].

However, the scientist himself prefers to remain within the framework of general linguistic terminology, justifying his choice by the same argument as Ibrahim Anis, i.e. by the fact that Arabic grammarians have known about the division of speech sounds into vowels and consonants since the dawn of the tradition (VIII-IX centuries). At the same time, Saad Maslukh mentions an alternative view by V.A. Zvegintseva, who does not agree with this provision and believes that the division into consonants and vowels did not arise before Ibn Jinni (10th century), who needed it to describe the characteristics of consonant sounds in his treatise "Sirr sina'at al-i'rab" ^[6]. The separation of the vowel and consonant, which tradition considers to be integral components of the harf, was necessary for a clearer and undistorted perception of the consonant. However, it should be noted that Maslukh stipulates that the same Ibn Jinni considered it impossible to pronounce a separate consonant sound, since it contradicted the rule on the beginning of a prosodic segment with a pronounced harf, i.e. a Cv unit. Therefore, the grammarian insisted that he considers consonants, prefixing them with the pronunciation of hamza with qasra, i.e. [’i].

Based on the identification of two categories of sounds, Saad Masluh argues that, although the Arabic tradition did not use the term "syllable," its beginnings existed, since it inevitably follows from the idea of the juxtaposition of vowel and consonant sounds. At the same time, the traditional view of rhyming seems to him to be more accurate, the scientist relies on it when studying various types of endings of a poetic line.

Having considered examples from Arabic poetry, as well as drawing on the text of the Koran, where rhyming parts are present, Saad Masluh comes to the conclusion that the basis of poetic prosody is a syllable that the linguist himself mentions exclusively in phonetic terms, without denying, however, the possibility of using the concept of "mora" to describe the prosody of the Arabic language. He focuses on the fact that only certain types of syllable alternations with a consonant at the end are possible in the rhyme position: CV'C, CVVC, CV’+CVC, CV’+CVVC. It is noteworthy that the linguist claims that the most characteristic syllables for literary Arabic are CV, CVV, CVC, CVVC, CVCC, and for the Egyptian dialect – CVC, CV, CVV, CVVC, CVCC.

Disagreeing with Ibrahim Anis, who argues that Arabic poetry tends to open-type syllables, the scientist writes that in poetry in the Cairo dialect, most of the syllables in the prepausal position are closed (Maslukh emphasizes that before him, the analysis of the phonetics of the Egyptian spoken language was conducted only through self-observation of scientists. He considers Tammam Hassan to be the only one who has tried to conduct experiments using modern technologies). At the same time, Saad Masluh emphasizes that even open syllables in the Egyptian spoken language tend to add the sound [h] to the rhyme positions, i.e. harf h a’ in an uncoordinated version, which directly indicates the method described by the Arabic linguistic tradition of forming the pausal form of a word by adding (ziy a da), which consisted in adding an uncoordinated harf at the end of the word, so that it conforms to the norms of the pause. The linguist notes this phenomenon as a phenomenon that occurs exclusively in the pre-pausal position. As a result of the analysis of the available information, he comes to the conclusion that in poetic works it makes sense to consider the syllables CVC, CVh, CV'C, CV'h, CVVC, CVVh.

In addition, Saad Maslukh, studying closed syllables in the rhyme position, notes that the vowel preceding the final consonant, both in cases with long and short, demonstrates alternation between the sounds [i] and [u], but the vowel [a] never participates in this process. Emphasizing that this phenomenon was described by the founder of the grammatical tradition, al-Khalil, Saad Maslukh writes that the reason for this pattern is the greatest breadth of the mouth, which characterizes the vowel [a] in contrast to all others. At the same time, the linguist notes that the followers of the founder of Arabic grammar allowed all three vowels to alternate.

This system is clearly similar to the principle of forming the pausal form of a word by preserving finite reduced short vowels (rawm), where the preservation of [i] and [u] is acceptable, unlike the vowel [a]. Sibawaihi wrote about this, but subsequent scholars noted cases of preservation of this reduced short vowel.

Wondering if a long vowel can rhyme with a short one and in what ratio they are to each other, Maslukh selects ten subjects who are asked to write down words where long vowels were gradually reduced to short ones using an intonograph. Words with the CVVC structure were used for observations, since their meaning differs depending on the length of the vowel sound when they pass into the CVC structure. The experiment proved that the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of vowels are important for native speakers to recognize words, since with a strong shortening of the long vowel, some of the subjects doubted that the words were of Arabic origin. Maslukh also notes that recognizability also depends on the consonant in front of the final vowel, the characteristics of which affect the sound of the subsequent unit.

By linking the problems of recognizing words with vowels of different lengths with the question of their qualitative change with a reduction in the number, the linguist refutes the well-established opinion that the long vowel in Arabic is in a 2:1 ratio with the short one. According to Maslukh, the duration of a long vowel exceeds the duration of a short one by four times, and in an isolated utterance or at the end of a poetic line they show an even greater difference. This allows the scientist to conclude that the speech situation and context directly affect the perception of speech by ear.

Separately, the linguist considers the question of a possible change in the quality of the final long vowel with its strong reduction. The Arabic grammatical tradition denied this assumption, since the vowel system does not provide for any transitional options. However, Maslukh proves experimentally that in poetry in the Egyptian dialect, when the long vowels are strongly shortened, speakers begin to perceive them as short [o] and [e], respectively.

Based on these data, it can be concluded that long vowels never rhyme with short ones, which fully corresponds to the idea of Arabic grammar about the nature of the long vowel as an independent unit, harf, and the short one as part of the harf that follows the consonant component. The fact of a qualitative transition from one vowel to another while shortening the duration also suggests that they could not rhyme, which again confirms the Harf principle of constructing the end of a poetic line, therefore Maslukh suggests separating the concepts of phonemic and prosodic longitude in Arabic.

The scientist also suggests taking stress into account when building a hierarchy of vowels, but makes a note that reliable information about the reference reading of poetic texts has not been preserved. As a result of the experiment, he found that short unstressed vowels are characterized by the worst recognizability, speakers are somewhat better able to accurately identify short stressed ones, followed by long ones in two-syllable words and long ones in monosyllabic ones. The scientist emphasizes that long vowels in two-syllable words are three or more times longer than short ones. At the same time, he notes again that units that differ in longitude by two or more times never rhyme with each other.

A significant factor in the absence of alternation between long and short vowels in rhyme, the linguist recognizes the graphical principle, according to which long vowels are reflected in writing as independent graphemes, and short ones as diacritical marks. This again confirms Harf's theory, which has become entrenched in spelling.

Saad Maslukh concludes that the loss of the connection between phonetics and prosody by science has led to the lack of a clear separation of the role of short and long vowels in the structure of rhyme, which significantly affects the quality of verse analysis. Without returning to Harf's theory, which could explain many of the phenomena illustrated by his experiments, he argues that poetic texts in Arabic receive a more complete and logical study within the framework of the theory of the structural nature of the prosodic structure of the language than in the context of syllabic theory, which is manifested, in particular, in the rules for the design of the ending of a poetic line.

Since modern science has stopped using traditional terms to describe language, some of the previously described phenomena are now on the periphery of scientific issues, including due to the fact that they have lost clarity of description after the transition to syllabic theory in Arabic linguistics. An example of such a phenomenon is the pausal form of a word, which today is considered exclusively in historical terms, without ceasing to be a part of living speech. The study of such phenomena in the context of the Harf theory without abandoning generally accepted linguistic terms could help in compiling the most complete and detailed description of the phonological structure of the Arabic language. Saad Masluh is not the only one who is engaged in research in the field of experimental phonetics, the study of such works makes it possible to systematize the information of the Arabic grammatical tradition and present it based on the terms of general linguistics.