LINGUISTIC AUTHENTICITY: A STUDY OF ARABIC PRESERVATION AND CLARITY

Abstract

This study, using a comparative descriptive approach, aims to address the concept of "linguistic authenticity", which is a concept frequently used in spoken discourse without being thoroughly investigated by serious scientific research tools to determine its objective reality and linguistic dimensions. As demonstrated in the first section of the study, linguistic authenticity is one of the characteristics that distinguish Arabic in a way that has not been achieved by other known languages. This is due to the stability of its structure and its continued existence as an active language for seventeen centuries until today. The current relevance and survival of Arabic as a global and civilizational language of communication negates any excuse that would make its long temporal extension a sign of obsolescence or stagnation. To dispel the stereotypical and abbreviated rhetorical practices surrounding the concept of authenticity, the study, in its second section, attempted to formulate it as a specific linguistic concept based on linguistic facts that can be objectively examined and verified. This was evident in its approach to the structural principles and foundations that have given Arabic its continuity and constant preservation. One of the most prominent findings was that Arabic, with its fixed grammatical core, consistent structures, analogical innovations, and rationality, possesses internal principles that have formed conservative forces ensuring its temporal extension with structural clarity. This has given it an authenticity manifested in its continuity within a single linguistic state that is not divisible into structurally separate states. Time has had a severe impact on other languages, dividing them into states where clear linguistic communication between successive generations is severed. A speaker of English today, for example, is well aware that there is Old, Middle, and Modern English, which are sequential states of a single language where communication and understanding are interrupted with increasing historical depth. This is not the case with Arabic, which does not have such disconnected states, as it extends through time without restriction.