The origins of the transformative generative theory in Sibawayh’s book, a grammatical-linguistic approach

The study aims to prove that modern linguistics theories emanate from ancient linguistic studies and classical texts. It also highlights the flexibility, reproduction, and growth features of the Arabic language, where endless sentences can be generated from a single sentence through transformational rules, depending on the potential energy behind generating their vocabulary. This was demonstrated by the study through Sibawayh’s book. Among the topics that the study proved concerning the foundations of transformational-generative theory in Sibawayh’s book are the factor, the origin and the subsidiary, estimative parsing, change of parsing diacritics, precedence and posterior-position shifting, disambiguity. The study proceeded according to three requirements; the first is the foundations of transformation-generative theory and its pillars, the second is the origins of transformational rules in Sibawayh’s book, and the third is the linguists’ position on the origins of transformational-generative theory. The study confirms that transformational generative theory pays consideration to the speaker, as it restored meaning to him. Since judging the correctness of the sentence syntactically relies on the speaker’s intuition and guesswork, as clearly demonstrated by the applied study on Sibawayh’s book. The study also emphasizes that transformational generative theory starts with meaning first, then composition and sentences, and that this theory has roots in Arabic grammar, as it is evident in Sibawayh’s book. Thus, the study highlights the origins of transformation generative theory in Sibawayh’s book focusing on the factor, the origin and the subsidiary, estimative parsing, change of parsing diacritics, precedence and posterior-position shifting, disambiguity, and the diversity of styles for the diversity of meanings.