Introduction

The issue of the conditional in Classical Arabic (CA) is treated in the classic Arabic grammars, be the authors Arab, both traditional such as Awḍaḥ al-Masālik by Ibn Hišām (1989) (d. 761 ah/1360 CE) and modern such as Ğāmiʿ al-Durūs al-ʿArabiyya by al-Ġalāyīnī ([1912] 2000) (1886–1944), or foreign (Arabist), for instance Blachere and Gaudefroy-Demombynes (1975), Fischer (1987), or the work dedicated by Peled (1992) to this question. Using the novel Al-Zaynī Barakāt by Ǧamāl al-Ġiṭānī as a starting point, I identified many deviations from the rules of Classical Arabic. The question then arose of how we express the conditional in Modern Arabic. Assuming that the answer must be found in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) grammars, I intended to compare what we saw in different contemporary literary texts with what these grammars say on the subject. Yet the study of the literary texts shows that these grammars are descriptively inadequate. My purpose here will be to study only the literary register of MSA, highlighting at the same time the descriptive inadequacy of the MSA grammars and the relationship existing between the operator of the conditional clause and the apodosis of the hypothetical clause in question.

This chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the literary corpus used in the study, some methodological reflections, and some first observations about hypothetical clauses in MSA. Section 3 goes on to illustrate how, in face of the reality of the texts, ‘Modern’ Arabic grammars are shown to be descriptively inadequate on this particular point. Supporting data will be presented in detail in section 4 and analysed in section 5 leading to the conclusion that MSA conditional clauses are best characterised by the relational approach proposed here.

Literary corpus, methodology, and first observations

In order to achieve a realistic description, I chose a linguistic approach based on corpus methods. I have thus reviewed hypothetical clauses in extenso in a corpus made up of various contemporary literary works. Diachronically, my sample covers the period from 1963 to 2005.