DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF ARABIC DICTIONARIES: STRUCTURAL, HISTORICAL, AND LEXICOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES
Abstract
Arabic lexicography represents one of the most ancient and systematically developed traditions in the history of world linguistics. The Arabic dictionary-making tradition, spanning over thirteen centuries, is distinguished by its unique structural organization, rooted in the trilateral root system (jidhr thulathi) that fundamentally differentiates it from Indo-European lexicographic practice. This paper investigates the principal distinctive features of Arabic dictionaries, encompassing their macrostructural arrangement (rhyme-based, root-based, and phonetic ordering systems), microstructural conventions (vocalization patterns, grammatical information encoding, and illustrative citation practices), and the evolution of specialized lexicographic genres including monolingual, bilingual, terminological, and electronic dictionaries. Special attention is devoted to classical Arabic dictionaries such as al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi's Kitab al-Ayn (8th century), Ibn Manzur's Lisan al-Arab (13th century), and al-Fayruzabadi's al-Qamus al-Muhit, as paradigmatic works that shaped the tradition. The paper further addresses the challenges Arabic poses for computational lexicography, particularly the handling of non-concatenative morphology and the diglossia between Classical Arabic (fusha) and colloquial varieties (ammiyya). Findings suggest that the Arabic lexicographic tradition offers unique methodological insights relevant to modern computational linguistics and corpus-based dictionary development.
Keywords
Arabic dictionaries, Arabic lexicography, root-based ordering, trilateral root, Lisan al-Arab, classical lexicography, computational Arabic lexicography, diglossia, morphological structure.
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