Istiṯnāʾ — Brill 21/09/2021, 06:05

Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics

Istiṯnāʾ
(1,903 words)

Istiṯnāʾ, a verbal noun of Form X from the radicals ṯ-n-y, literally means ‘setting aside as
excluded; exclusion, exception’ (Lane 1863–1893:I, 357; Wehr 130). The term is used in Arabic
grammar to denote an exception or an exceptive sentence (jumlat al-istiṯnāʾ), which basically
consists of two parts: the general term from which the exception is made (al-mustaṯnā minhu)
and the exception itself (al-mustaṯnā). The relationship between these two parts of the
sentence is made through the use of an exceptive particle (ḥarf al-istiṯnāʾ), mostly ʾillā (a
compound of ʾin and lā and traditionally considered the ʾaṣl ‘source, basic principle’ of the
exceptive particles). Other expressions are used in the sense of ‘excluding, excepting’ as well,
for example nouns like siwā ‘another [besides so-and-so]’ and ġayr ‘other than, different from’,
or the verbal clauses mā xalā ‘what is free from’, mā ʿadā ‘what goes beyond’, and ḥāšā ‘he
excepted’ (Cachia 1973:19–20 [A-E], 27 [E-A]; Wright 1967:II, 335–343, and Howell 1990:I, 296–
319, both of whom also mention the verbal expressions laysa and lā yakūnu to denote
exceptions in Classical Arabic; Fischer 2002:168–170; Cantarino 1975:III, 192–193, 338–352;
Dahdah 1988:180–181; Reckendorf 1967:712–726, “Exzeptivsätze”; Reckendorf 1921:502–512,
“Ausnahmesätze”; Blachère and Gaudefroy-Demombynes 1975:405–406, 445–446, “phrase
exceptive”; Blachère 1985:156; Badawi a.o. 2004:671–684).

The general principles of exceptive sentences are usually explained based on the way the most
widely used exceptive particle, ʾillā, occurs in Arabic. ʾIllā's natural position in the sentence is
after the general term from which the exception is made; the syntactic function of the
exception following ʾillā depends on the relationship between the general term and the
excepted element. There are three types of exceptive sentences, called ‘void exception’ (istiṯnāʾ
mufarraġ), ‘joined exception’ (istiṯnāʾ muttaṣil), and ‘severed exception’ (istiṯnāʾ munqaṭiʿ); they
are translated, respectively, as ‘exhaustive’, ‘continuous’, and ‘discontinuous’ exceptions in
Badawi a.o. (2004:671).

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The void-exceptive sentence – the most frequently used in Modern Standard Arabic – is
always negative and has no general term; the exception obtains whatever case the general
term would have had were it expressed. Hence, in mā qāma ʾillā zaydun ‘no one stood up
except Zayd’, zayd assumes the nominative case ending because, if expressed, the general term
would have taken the nominative, e.g. mā qāma l-qawmu ‘the people did not stand up’. The
following examples provide further illustration: mā ʿalayka ʾillā tajdīdu malābisika ‘you only
have to change your clothes’, lam yakun ʾillā majnūnan ‘he was nothing but insane’, ʾamrāḍun
lā tuʿālaju ʾillā bi-d-dawāʾi l-mustawradi ‘illnesses that can only be treated with imported
medicine’ (Cantarino 1975:III, 342; Badawi a.o. 2004:673, 674).

The joined exception is characterized by the fact that the general term is explicitly mentioned
and the exception belongs to the same genus or generic category as the general term, as is the
case with qawm ‘people’ and zayd ‘Zayd’. The syntactic function of the excepted element
depends on whether the antecedent containing the general term is positive or negative. If
positive, the exception expresses an exclusion from the general term and obtains the
accusative case: qāma l-qawmu ʾillā zaydan ‘the people stood up except Zayd’, i.e., everyone
stood up, but Zayd was excluded from them and did not stand up. When the antecedent is
negative, however, the exception might be considered a substitute for the general term and
takes over its syntactic function. In mā qāma l-qawmu ʾillā zaydun ‘the people did not stand
up, except Zayd’, Zayd is the only one standing up from among the people, taking their place
as it were. Examples of positive joined exceptions are wa-qad turjimat kutubuhu fī ḥayātihi ʾillā
kitāban wāḥidan ‘all his books were translated during his life except one’ and taraka l-ʿamala
ʾillā ʾašġālan xafīfatan ‘he gave up work except small jobs’. Examples of negative joined
exceptions are lam yatruk lahum šayʾan ʾillā naṣībahu fī baytin qadīmin ‘he did not leave
anything for them except for his share in an old house’ and laysa lī naṣībun min ad-dunyā ʾillā
hāḏihi s-sāḥatu d-ḍayyiqatu l-jāmida ‘I have no other property on earth than this narrow, dry
patch of land’ (Cantarino 1975:III, 340; Badawi a.o. 2004:675).

In a severed exception, the antecedent containing the general term is negative (as in the last
mentioned examples), but the exception belongs to a fundamentally different category than
this general term. As a consequence, the exception expresses exclusion and cannot take the
syntactic function of the general term, so it is always put in the accusative case. In mā jāʾanī
ʾaḥadun ʾillā ḥimāran ‘no one came to me except a donkey’, the donkey cannot substitute for a
human being, and ḥimār obtains the accusative case ending to emphasize its being different.
Although the concept of the severed exception is prominent in the discussions about
exceptive sentences in the Arabic grammatical tradition (which may be due to the fact that
initially the distinction between severed and void exceptions was not made; cf. Sībawayhi,
Kitāb I, 319ff.), the grammatical construction itself is rare in Standard Arabic (no examples
were found in Badawi a.o. 2004; cf. 672, 675). For other usages of ʾillā (e.g. ʾillā wa-, ʾillā with

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clauses introduced by ʾan or ʾanna, ʾillā with adverbial clauses), the rules for ġayr and siwā
(which resemble those for ʾillā), and the use of verbal clauses with the sense of exception, see
Cantarino (1975:III, 338–352) and Badawi a.o. (2004:675–684).

The principal grammatical rules for exceptive sentences, as formulated in Sībawayhi's Kitāb
based on the use of the exceptive particle ʾillā (Kitāb I, 314–329; cf. Carter 1975; Bernards
1997:16–18), were not subject to fundamental disagreement between grammarians of Arabic,
but the interpretation and application of the rules left ample room for discussion. Especially
the governance of the exceptive particle ʾillā was elaborated. In Sībawayhi's view, for example,
the noun following ʾillā in a severed exception is governed by the antecedent in the same way
that dirhaman is governed by ʿišrūna in the expression ʿišrūna dirhaman, where the
nūn/tanwīn of ʿišrūna separates the two elements of the sentence and prevents the genitive
case in dirham (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I, 315; cf. Carter 1972 for further analysis of what he has
coined the tanwīn-naṣb construction; Owens 1990:107ff., who calls it the ‘separation and non-
identity principle’, SNIP; see also Talmon 1993, 2003:245ff.). Mā jāʾanī ʾaḥadun ‘no one came to
me’ is a grammatically correct and complete sentence – the nūn/tanwīn indicates this
completeness. That a donkey did come (ʾillā ḥimāran) stands by itself. The donkey cannot take
the place of the general term, a human being; the donkey cannot even be considered to be a
description of the general term as an adjective (waṣf/ṣifa), so in this case there can be no
grammatical agreement between ʾaḥad and ḥimār. Hence, ʾillā assumes the meaning of wa-
lākinna: ‘no human being came to me, but a donkey did’, and the accusative is preferred for the
excepted noun (Sībawayhi, Kitāb I, 319).

Among the first generations of grammarians after Sībawayhi, not only the nature of a severed
exception was contested but the regency of ʾillā as well. In a marginal note to the Kitāb
Sībawayhi, al-Māzinī (d. 248/862) argues that human beings and donkeys belong to the same
category of living creatures; and in the opinion of al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898; Muqtaḍab IV, 390),
ʾillā takes the place of a verb and gives what follows its case ending. Moreover, the regency of
ʾillā, more specifically in positive exceptive sentences like qāma l-qawmu ʾillā zaydan ‘the
people stood up, except Zayd’, is the topic of one of the masāʾil ixtilāfiyya, the Streitfragen
between Baṣran and Kūfan grammarians as it appears from Ibn al-ʾAnbārī's ʾInṣāf (118–122,
masʾala no. 34). Subsequent generations of grammarians pondered the issue, refining and
clarifying Sībawayhi's theories without, however, changing the basic underlying concepts (see,
e.g., Zajjājī, Jumal 235–236; Ibn Jinnī, Lumaʿ 28; ʾAbū Ḥayyān, Manhaj 162ff.; Ibn Yaʿīš, Šarḥ II,
79–81; cf. Bernards 1997:16–22).

Monique Bernards

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Cite this page

Monique Bernards, “Istiṯnāʾ”, in: Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Managing Editors Online Edition: Lutz Edzard, Rudolf de Jong.
Consulted online on 21 September 2021 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1570-6699_eall_EALL_SIM_vol2_0035>
First published online: 2011
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004177024, 20090831

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