The beginning of the 21st century marks an important event in world Arabic studies: a special encyclopedia dedicated to the Arabic language and Arabic linguistics (hereinafter - EALL) has been prepared and published. Until now, such a broad field of Oriental studies as Arabic studies had reference or generalizing works only in certain branches, for example: "Encyclopedia of Islam "(Leiden, 2nd ed., 1960), fundamental essays on the history of Arabic literature [Sezgin, 1967-2000], special reference publications on the Koran [Prochazka, Ambros, 2004]. At the same time, Arabic linguistics was represented only by separate incomplete or rather outdated bibliographic reviews, short reviews of Arabic grammar, incomplete or incomplete etymological dictionaries of the Arabic language (for example, prepared by the German Oriental Society) or dictionaries on individual monuments of the Arabic language (such as the Koran [Zammit, 2002], poetic "divans"). [Polosin, 1995; Lewin, 1978], etc.).

At the same time, in recent decades there have been collective reviews and generalizing fundamental works, such as "Essays (Grundris)". on Arabic Linguistics "[Grundriss..., 1982], "Introduction to Arabic Geographical Dialectology" [Behnstedt, Woidich, 2005], which prepare the basis for a large comprehensive encyclopedic work on the Arabic language and the science of the Arabic language.

EALL includes the widest range of topics and directions of Arabic linguistics: synchronous and diachronic description of all forms of existence and functioning of the Arabic language - from the pre-Islamic period to the modern one, from the ancient and classical language to modern territorial and social dialects; traditional, structural-functional, generative and other methods of describing and analyzing language facts, as well as a system of information analysis. concepts and terms of the national Arabic grammar, essays on more than 40 dialects common in ancient times and currently in the territories of the functioning of the Arabic language or in neighboring regions. In a number of articles, the main sociolinguistic issues and the comparative historical direction of Arabic studies and semitology are considered.

Volume I (A - Ed) and volume II (Eg - Lan) make up about half of the total volume of the projected encyclopedia. This part already completed shows that not only Arabists, but also the widest range of linguists, philologists, sociologists, historians and cultural scientists receive a fairly complete source of information and references on the listed aspects of the Arabic language and issues of Arabic linguistics.

The EALL material can be divided into several large topics. The grammatical topic includes terms and concepts of general linguistics, for example: adjective - "adjective"; dissimilation - "dissimilation"; reflection - "inflection, inflection", etc. The title unit is given the definition accepted in general linguistics. Then this concept is considered on the material of the Arabic language, and typological comparisons with the facts of Arabic dialects are also involved.

Gen. ed. K. Versteegh; Assoc, ed.: M. Eid, A. Elgibali, M. Woidich, A. Zaborski. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006. 672 p.; 2007. 716 p.

Encyclopedia of the Arabic language and [Arabic] Linguistics, Vol. I, II / Ed. by K. Versteh; co-editors: M. Eid, A. Elgibali, M. Voidich, A. Zaborsky. Leiden-Boston: Bril, 2006. 672 p.; 2007. 716 p.

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The grammatical topic also includes terms and concepts developed and accepted in traditional national Arabic grammar, for example: 'asl -" origin, base, pattern " - "initial form; basis"; ' idqfa "annexation, addition-further, in terms of general linguistics - genetic construct, in domestic Arabic studies it is accepted as Status constructus - "genitive phrase" or, without translation as "idafa, izafet"; jim-" name of the 5th letter of the Arabic alphabet " - corresponds to one of the phonemes of the Arabic language, which has different phonetic realizations in literary Arabic and in Arabic dialects. The unit under consideration is given phonetic characteristics, examples of different pronunciation, examples of contextual implementation, and so on.

Dialectology topics include: a) review articles, such as the classification of Arabic dialects (vol. I, pp. 604-613), where the general classification is based on relevant linguistic features that make up isoglosses, which ultimately lead to the generally accepted territorial and social classification of dialects into "east - west" and "nomadic-settled"; the question of the main features of the Arabic dialect classification system. the origin and development of dialects (vol. I, pp. 613-622) - a question that remains unresolved to date due to the lack of factual material from the pre - written period, but which becomes quite obvious by the tenth century, when dialect differences and features are already recorded by contemporary Arab authors; a geographical overview of the territorial distribution of Arabic dialects (vol. I,pp. 613-622). p. 583-593); b) individual essays devoted to the description of specific dialects, accompanied by a brief description of the relevant state or region of the Arab world; essays devoted to the description of "island" Arabic dialects that exist and function in the environment of languages of other systems: in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Eritrea, Cyprus, etc.

This category also includes articles about the languages of other non-Arab countries (Indonesia, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh, China), East and Central African countries (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon, etc.), the Kurdish language, and Hebrew.

Sociolinguistic topics are also covered in the encyclopedia in many ways, in particular, the problem of the correlation between literary written and oral spoken forms of the Arabic language. The published two volumes of EALL include articles on the problem of diglossia ("bilingualism") in Arab society, language policy and language planning in Arab countries, the role of Arabic language academies in a number of Arab states, the conditions of language contacts and the consequences of these contacts for the Arabic-speaking community, the phenomena of language interference and convergence, creolization problems of forming regional koine, a debatable question about the "middle" language, the language of the "educated strata of society". Special articles are devoted to the issues of teaching Arabic, its assimilation as a first language, as well as as a second language.

In terms of language, ethnic and gender aspects of the Arabic-language continuum are considered, as well as the peculiarities of using Arabic in computer systems, on the Internet, and in a special Braille system.

The historical topic of EALL includes articles on lexical borrowings in Arabic and from Arabic to specific contact languages, articles on the formation of a national grammatical tradition in line with the Arabic humanities. It includes articles about the first epigraphic monuments of the Arabic language, about ancient contact languages that left their traces in the vocabulary and dialects of the Arabic language (Aramaic, Himyaritic, Coptic, etc.). Special articles are devoted to the origin and development of the Arabic script, the term "Arab, Arabs" in its historical and etymological aspects.

The actual historical question of the place of the Arabic language in the genetic classification of Semitic languages and the stages of the development of the Arabic language is considered in the article by F. A. Shishkin. Corriente (vol. II, pp. 261-268). Deeper and more distant genetic connections of Arabic as a member of the Semitic family of languages with Afrasian languages are shown in the article by A. Zaborsky (vol. I, pp. 35-40). The article provides a brief but exhaustive description of the main branches of the Afrasian macrofamily. The main morphological features (including prefixal verb conjugation) are noted, which allow the author of the article to bring Semitic languages closer to Berber and Cushitic, in contrast to ancient Egyptian and Chadian languages. The most archaic features preserved in the classical Arabic language system are presented, which form isoglosses with some non-Semitic languages of the Afrasian macrofamily and can go back to the most ancient Proto-Afrasian period. The propositions put forward in the article are based on the results of the latest research by the author himself, comparativists of Western schools and Russia.

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From a comparative historical point of view, the question of the two - consonant structure of the Arabic (and Semitic) root is also considered-a phenomenon that goes back not only to the proto-Semitic, but also to the earlier proto - Afrasian period (vol.I, pp. 313-314).

The article devoted to etymology (vol. II, pp. 65-69) as one of the areas of general linguistics examines the procedure for applying the methods of internal and external etymology to the material of Arabic vocabulary and its correspondences in Semitic and other Afrasian languages.

It is quite obvious that the scope of the review does not allow us to fully cover and evaluate the diverse content of EALL. I will focus only on two key issues of theoretical grammar of the Arabic language, which are covered in the articles in the first and second volumes: on apophony (otherwise-ablaut, morphonological vowel alternation) and on internal and external inflection.

The article " Apophony "(vol. I, pp. 119-123) provides an analytical review of the main views of semitologists and Arabists on the phenomenon of vowel apophony in the Arabic language. The basic theory remains that of I. Kurilovich, who back in the 1960s developed a hypothesis about the origin of apophony in Semitic languages, its main features and conditions of action. Vowel alternation in Arabic as a grammatical way of inflection and word formation primarily implies the presence of" original "and" derived " forms, as well as the regularity of the rules for changing them, their predictability based on the original form.

The material of the article is limited to the phenomenon of apophony in the verb system, mainly in the primary (non-derivative) verbal bases of the perfect/imperfect. However, it is in the group of primary verbal bases that the rules of regular predictability are violated. The desire to construct a consistent regular and symmetrical formula for the apophony of short vowels for primary verbal bases leads some linguists to introduce a zero sign in place of an unpredictable vowel or to assume one of them in a given vowel opposition as an unknown phoneme "x". In general, it should be emphasized that in this article the problem of apophony is considered synchronously and is limited to the material of the verb system of non-derived stems with short vowels. Such significant phenomena of apophony as vowel alternation in longitude and gemination of root consonants are left out of the topic.

The theme of the article " Inflection "(vol. II, pp. 345-354), i.e. "inflection, inflection", to a certain extent intersects with the theme of apophony. However, this article deals with a wider range of phenomena of the Arabic language-in synchronous typological terms and in diachrony, since in some cases the question of the origin of certain forms and morphemes is raised. The author uses the traditional concepts and terms "internal" and "external" inflection both to describe phenomena in the noun system and to describe forms in the verb system. In the concept of internal inflection, it includes not only apophony of vowels, but also their change in number (short: long), as well as gemination of root consonants. In addition, in a number of derived forms, the author notes the indissoluble connection of vowel elements of the base with external affixation, to which he quite rightly refers only unambiguous affix morphemes that are not related to the base of the word. In general, this article gives a fairly complete picture of the grammatical system of the Arabic language as an inflectional language. Possible alternative interpretations of grammatical phenomena are not affected.

If in the article "Apophony" there is a tendency to "fit" all forms into consistent, regular and symmetrical schemes and formulas of verb inflection using the simplest examples, then in the article "Reflection" we can note a tendency to historically explain the diversity of forms and derived models by the action of prosodic factors (rules of the accent-syllabic system) of the classical language and colloquial languages. forms of Arabic. In the articles under consideration, the question of the relationship between the consonant and vocal composition of the root base is not raised, but the operational concept of "consonant root"is initially accepted.

I would like to add that many of the issues discussed here, such as the hypothesis of root and non-root vowels, the idea of "discontinuous morpheme" as an operational unit of segmental analysis, the concept of "suprasegmental morpheme", are quite fully and thoroughly developed in Russian linguistics (see the works of N. V. Yushmanov, V. P. Starinin, I. M. Diakonov, A. Y. Militarev, L. E. Kogan and many other authors from research centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg), as well as continuing in other research centers (Tbilisi, Tashkent).

The organizers and authors of EALL are evidence of the broadest international cooperation between scientists from Arab countries and various research centers in Europe, Asia, Australia, America and Africa. From the list of participants in the first two volumes of EALL to submit-

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V. S. Rybalkin (Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev), author of the article "' Amal "(vol. I, pp. 67-74), about one of the most important terms and concepts of traditional Arabic grammar, related to the range of concepts of syntactic control; S. Karabekyan and M. Yavrumyan (Yerevan State University)-co - authors of the article "Harf" (vol. II, pp. 236-239) - about the term of traditional Arabic grammar, which is characterized by several meanings that are not directly comparable with the terms and concepts of Western linguistics: it can denote the smallest segment unit of an Arabic word, prosodic unit as a single word. The smallest component of the word model, letter, phoneme, etc. This unit is also one of the fundamental concepts of the national Arabic grammar.

Many facts of the Arabic language and problems of Arabic linguistics, considered by the authors of the articles in the first published volumes of EALL, have been and remain the subject of serious scientific research by scientists from Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. These include questions about the function of vowels both in the Arabic language system and in the systems of other Semitic languages (in the works of N. V. Yushmanov, V. P. Starinin, etc.), the question of the structure of the Semitic root (in the works of N. V. Yushmanov, S. S. Maizel, A. S. Lekiashvili, A. Yu. Militarev Much attention in Soviet / Russian linguistics has been paid to the problem of structural and typological interpretation of the grammatical function of vowels (apophony or interrupted morpheme) in the works of V. P. Starinin, V. S. Khrakovsky and others. In the field of syntax, Arabic studies has a wide range of structural and typological studies on vide-temporal and voice constructions, on sentence syntax (V. S. Khrakovsky et al.). Many problems of sociolinguistics and dialectology have been fundamentally developed and continue to be developed (G. Sh. Sharbatov, Yu. N. Zavadovsky, E. N. Mishkurov, V. E. Chagall et al. etc.) 1.

Noting the significant contribution of the Russian school of Arabic studies and semitology to the theory of general linguistics, in particular in its structural and typological direction, it should be noted that the authors of the EALL articles that address these problems, the work of these scientists and the development of similar issues, are apparently unknown. See, for example, the article " Ibdal "(vol. II, p. 280-281), dealing with the question of alternation of root consonants in the Arabic three-consonant root; the article " Apophony "(vol. I, p. 119-123) on the grammatical function of Arabic vowels - a question that allows for different interpretations; the article "Reflection" (vol. II, p. 345-354) and '"Istiqaq" (vol. II, p. 447-451), dealing with the issues of inflection and word formation in literary Arabic and related to the structure of the Arabic root; the same can be said for articles on the causative (vol. I, p. 355-360), on diathesis (vol. I, p. 622-626), on key constructions (vol. I, pp. 195-201), on sentence syntax (vol. II, pp. 536-540).

At the same time, the authors of articles related to the comparative historical direction of Arabic linguistics (on the etymology, genetic classification of Semitic and Afrasian languages, on the Himyaritic language, on the history and reconstruction of the formation of the Arabic and Semitic root, on the comparative description of some North African dialects) take into account domestic research in these areas, and in some cases even in the they rely on them. The scientists of Armenia and Ukraine mentioned above also reflect in their articles many of the results achieved by domestic scientists in the field of deeper study of the heritage of the Arabic national grammar.

The extensive work of an international research team can, to a certain extent, indicate the place that a scientist or an entire scientific field occupies in world science. I would like to emphasize, however, that the roles and tasks of the authors of the first and second volumes of EALL were distributed fairly evenly, without any preference for a particular trend or hypothesis. Naturally, this review shows more interest in the role of Arabists in Russia and other CIS countries on the world stage, since such an encyclopedia can serve as a sufficient indicator or reflection of it. Already from the first two books, we can say that the results of scientific research of the St. Petersburg-Moscow and Tbilisi schools of Semitology and Arabic studies also found their direct and indirect reflection in the first part of EALL.

1 For domestic works in the field of Arabic linguistics, see: Belova A. G. Semitic linguistics in Russia (XIX-XX centuries). 2003. N 3, pp. 23-35; 2004. N 3, pp. 40-52.

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Further cooperation between Arabists and semitologists at the international level, I hope, will lead to a more complete acquaintance of foreign scientists with the results of the Russian school of Arabic studies and semitology.

In the near future, the final two volumes of EALL are expected to complete the difficult but noble mission of its organizers and publishers, and a wide range of Orientalists and linguists will have at their disposal a source of necessary information prepared at a modern level.

list of literature

Polosin V. V. Dictionary of poets of the tribe 'abs (VI-VIII centuries). literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1995.

Behnstedt P., Woidich M. Einleitung in die arabische Dialektgeographie. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005.

Grundriss der arabischen Philologie: Bd. I. Sprachwissenschaft. Hrs. von Wolfdietrich Fischer. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1982.

Lewin B. A Vocabulary of the Hudhailian Poems. Goteborg, 1978.

Prochazka S., Ambros A. A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2004.

Sezgin F. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 1 - 12. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967 - 2000.

Zammit M. R. A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur'anic Arabic. Leiden-Boston-Koln: E. J. Brill, 2002.

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