The Approaches of Arabic Linguists on the Phenomenon of Necessity

Abstract

Necessity is a concept used for many morphological and grammatical linguistic phenomena that are scattered in the works of Arabic linguists and critics. In ancient Arabic poems, the usual rules of the Arabic language were broken and the views, attitudes and approaches of critics and linguists varied on the various irregular uses expressed by the term "poetry necessity". Linguists also touched upon the subject of necessity while creating their works in the field of syntax. This is not because the necessity is among the syntax issues, but because it is an easy way out for them. It seems that there are two fundamentally opposite views about the phenomenon of necessity: The view that accepts every ungrammatical use that occurs in poetry and expands the scope of necessity, regardless of whether the poet is compelled or not, and the view that accepts the necessity only because the poet had to, that is, because the poet could not find another use instead of that usage. While the representatives of the first view are the majority of the linguists led by Sibeveyhi and Ibn Jinni, the second view is represented by of Ibn Malik. In addition, Ahfesh believes that necessity, which is a special case for poets, is also appropriate in the normal words of poets due to their language habits, while Ibn Faris argued that there is no phenomenon of necessity, saying that these uses, which are considered contrary to the rules of language in poetry, are nothing but mistakes. From this point of view, it seems that there are four different views about necessity. The reason for these differences about the phenomenon of necessity is that language scholars do not distinguish between the language of poetry and the language of prose. Since linguists want to apply the language rules they use in normal speech to poetry, they considered the usage that contradicts the language rules in normal speech as a phenomenon of necessity due to the necessity of meter and rhyme in poetry. Linguists brought evidence from poetry while putting forward the rules of language. Sometimes it has been observed that the usages against these language rules occur in poetry. In this respect, there are many differences of opinion about the necessity phenomenon. Some put these ungrammatical uses under the phenomenon of necessity, which the poet resorted to because of an obligation caused by the language of poetry, while others suggested that it would not be appropriate to put it under the title of necessity as these uses were special to the Arabic language and others suggested that they were exceptional uses. Among linguistic scholars, there is also a dispute as to whether the phenomenon of necessity is a license granted to the poet or an exceptional use. Since the linguists do not see the necessity as a linguistic phenomenon, there was no consensus on this issue and this phenomenon was put forward in the syntax books without drawing a general framework. Linguists have dealt with such usages, which are considered to be necessities, through one of the two resolutions. While the first of these two resolutions is to simulate something that is not permissible to something permissible, the second is to return a word to its original. The reason why linguists resort to these two resolutions is to put the necessity phenomenon within the framework of language rules. In general, quality uses and structures of the phenomenon of necessity emerging as a manifestation of the Old Arabic poetic language, both in individual works and in language and literature sources have been handled according to their pleasant or unpleasant nature, usually with a subject classification method and sometimes with a qualitative approach. In these sources, the phenomenon of necessity has been studied through literary, historical and religious texts such as poems, verses, hadiths and proverbs. In this study, the approaches of linguists to the necessity phenomenon will be examined with a critical point of view.