The Lexicon
Alexander Key
Chapter from the book: Key, A. 2018. Language between God and the Poets: Maʿnā in the Eleventh Century.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Key, A. 2018. Language between God and the Poets: Maʿnā in the Eleventh Century.
This chapter introduces the theory and practice of the Arabic lexicon. The lexicon was both lexicographers’ iterative curation of lexical precedent, and an epistemological foundation for theory across all scholarly genres. In the lexicon, vocal forms connected to mental contents, and the intent of the speaker governed whether or not those connections followed lexical precedent. With the theory of ḥaqīqah and maǧāz, language that is accurate and language that goes beyond the lexicon, we start to see how eleventh-century Arabic theory probed the boundaries between language, mind, and reality – between epistemology and ontology – in a way quite different from European and Anglophone thought.
Key, A. 2018. The Lexicon. In: Key, A, Language between God and the Poets. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.54.e
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Published on Aug. 28, 2018