Abstract
The present study is an investigation of the Arab grammarians treatment of the linguistic phenomenon, or rather phenomena, known under the name of IDAFA. Our objective is two-fold, on the one hand to present and discuss some fundamental issues raised by the nature of scientific terminology in the Arabic tradition, hoping to arrive at a clearer understanding of how these texts should be approached and understood. On the other hand, we attempt to describe and analyse the basic features of the Arab grammarians principles of linguistic analysis, and how these principles are applied in the case of IDAFA.