The Grammatical Function and the Communicative Function: Between Communication Theory and Arab Linguists

Abstract

The distinction between the grammatical function and the communicative (or pragmatic) function was not explicitly established as a terminological distinction by classical Arab grammarians, as it is in contemporary linguistics. Nevertheless, it was clearly present in their analytical treatment of texts. This is evident in their differentiation between the grammatical role of a linguistic element and the meaning it conveys within the communicative context. This distinction became even more pronounced in the works of Arab rhetoricians and scholars of *ʿIlm al-Maʿānī* (the science of meanings), where linguistic expressions were examined from two complementary perspectives: their grammatical function and their communicative meaning.