Giuliano Lancioni, Ph. D. (1995) in Linguistics, Roma Tre University, is Professor of Linguistics at Roma Tre University. He has published extensively on the history of the Arabic grammatical tradition and on Arabic generative and computational linguistics.Lidia Bettini is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florence. Her research interests include Arabic medieval linguistic thinking and modern Arabic Bedouin dialects. Her recent publications include the volumes Contes féminins de la Haute Jézireh syrienne – Matériaux ethno–linguistiques d’un parler nomade oriental, (Firenze, 2006) and Min sawālif al–ḥarīm fī l–Jazīra al–sūriyya al–‘ulyā, published by the Ministry of Culture of the Syrian Arab Republic, Damascus.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionGiuliano Lancioni and Lidia BettiniSection I: The Word in the Arabic Linguistic Tradition1. The Concept of kalima in Old Arabic GrammarAryeh Levin2. What is a kalima? ʾAstarābāḏī’s AnswerPierre Larcher3. Defijining the Word within the Arabic Grammatical Tradition: ʾAstarābāḏī’s PredicamentJean-Patrick Guillaume4. Ellipsis in the Arabic Linguistic Thinking (8th–10th century)Cristina SolimandoSection II: The Word in the Arabic Rhetoric Tradition5. ‘Word’ in the linguistic thinking of ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-JurjānīAntonella Ghersetti6. On lafḏ̣ and maʿnā Again: Some Aspects of Their Relationship According to the balāġiyyūnLidia BettiniSection III: The Arabic Word in Contemporary Linguistic Theory7. Levels of Analysis of the Word in ArabicGeorges Bohas8. Automatic Extraction of Prepositions in a Corpus of Modern Standard Arabic Written TextsGiuliano LancioniSection IV: The Arabic Word in Contact9. Heavy and Light Borrowing of Arabic VerbsKees Versteegh10. When Arabic Resonates in the Words of an African Language: Some Morphological and Semantic Features of Arabic Loanwords and Calques in BambaraFrancesco ZappaIndex of NamesSubject IndexIndex of Arabic WordsLanguage IndexList of Contributors