Replacement in the Book of Seibaweihi. A Referential Study in the light of Transformational grammar

Abstract

This study is concerned with The Book, for Seibaweih which is regarded as one of the best books among all books of syntax since it early covered topics such as transformational grammar which is contemporarily discussed in Chomsky’s theories.

 This study aims at: 1-revealing and clarifying the replacement as one of the transformational rules mentioned in the Book. I found more than a hundred examples in which Seibaweih discussed and explained many topics about Replacement. 2-clarifying the rooting of the term Replacement in our Arabic syntactic literature especially in the Book of Seibaweih with assigning the Replacement terms and synonyms. 3-analyzing and discussing the selected chapters and topics that included Replacement samples with identifying its linguistic characteristics depending on the descriptive, analytical, as well as the incomplete inductive approach.

Findings:1-before Chomsky proposed transformations including the replacement, Seibaweih had discussed them under other terminologies. The samples of replacement included the replacement of a noun in the position of a noun, the replacement of a verb in the position of a verb, the replacement of a noun in the position of a verb, and the replacement of a structure in the position of vocabulary. 2-Seibaweih, when dealing with replacement, was aware of the deep structure, omission, and expansion which were essential in the Transformational- Generative Grammar.