Ibn Kemal's Treatise "fî Cevāzi't- tawassuʿ fî kelāmi'l-ʿArab" and His Views on the Expansion of Meaning in Arabic

Abstract

In this article, Ibn Kemal's (Kemalpashazāde) (ö. 940/1534) treatise named "fî Cevāzi't- tawassuʿ fî kelāmi'l-ʿArab" and his views on language expansion in Arabic will be examined. In the treatise, the phenomenon of tawassuʿ, which means lexical expansion in the Arabic language, is discussed. According to Ibn Kemal, it is common for the word to undergo semantic expansion in the Arabic language. It is possible for the name to be used in different ways, to undergo a literal or semantic expansion through similes, metaphors and exaggerations. Again, the use of the noun as an infinitive in the sense of adjective, and the use of some special nouns used in the idiom to mean adjective are also types of semantic expansion. In the work, Ibn Kemal expresses the views of different linguists and rhetoricians on the expansion of the language through examples and sometimes expresses his own opinion. It can even be said that the main purpose of writing his treatise was to express these criticisms. The morphological and grammatical structure of the name can show what kind of semantic expansion it has undergone. However, in the final analysis, the main criterion that determines the expansion of meaning is the meaning meant by that word or phrase in everyday language. While gaining the adjective meaning of the name, Ibn Kemal draws attention to the grammatical, morphological, especially rhetorical aspects of the expansion and meaning change in the language. In other words, we can say that he wrote the treatise against linguists who did not fully express the semantic expansion in names. Ibn Kemal limited the semantic expansion to nouns and, unlike the semantic expansion discussions in Tafsīr, did not mention the phenomenon of tawassuʿ in verbs.