Ibn Kaysan’s Views on Grammar and Morphology in Al-Radi’s Commentary on *Al-Kafiyah*: A Critical Analytical Study

Abstract

This study examines a selected group of the grammatical and morphological views of Abu al-Hasan Ibn Kaysan as preserved in al-Radi al-Astarabadi’s commentary on Ibn al-Hajib’s Al-Kafiyah. It analyzes the way al-Radi presented these views, discussed their arguments, and identified the points of acceptance, rejection, and preference. The study proceeds from the premise that the significance of Ibn Kaysan’s views is not limited to disagreements over specific grammatical or morphological issues; rather, it is connected with an important stage in the history of Arabic linguistic thought, namely the interaction between the Basran and Kufan schools and the emergence of a Baghdadi trend characterized by selectivity and independent reasoning.

The study adopts a descriptive, analytical, and critical approach and focuses on seven issues that reflect the diversity of Ibn Kaysan’s presence in al-Radi’s commentary: the sound masculine plural of nouns ending in ta’, the structure of the pronoun iyya and its suffixes, the preposing of the predicate of defective verbs preceded by negation, the rules governing the comitative object, the preposing of the circumstantial accusative before its preposition-governed noun, certain rules related to la of absolute negation, and the cause of morphological conversion (al-‘adl) in converted numeral forms.