The Grammatical Lesson in Andalusia During the Eighth Century AH Between the Structure and the Meaning: Abu Hayyan and Al-Shatibi as a Model

Abstract

The issue of structure and meaning has sparked a wide debate, not only among grammarians and linguists, but also among other scholars in other scientific fields, such as fundamentalists, theologians, and others, each with their own interests. This controversy has not subsided over the ages, but has continued to our present era, and among the manifestations of that disagreement that reaches the point of contradiction in the evaluation of the inherited grammatical lesson, between those who say that it is a formal lesson in which the grammarians’ attention turned to the structures and words of speech, with neglect of the meanings of the discourse and the intentions of the speakers, and those who said that the grammarians' care for words did not distract them from the care of meanings, as they took into account them in their grammatical analysis and their determination of the rules of this science. To test the validity of this or that opinion, it was necessary to follow the grammatical lesson in its various eras and environments, so the choice fell on an era in which grammar was known for its richness and maturity, which is the eighth century AH in Andalusia, to be a model, and prominent grammarians known for their grammatical talent, such as Abu Hayyan and Al-Shatibi. It enables the extraction of objective scientific results in which these opinions are tested by denial or affirmation.