Elision

It is not the purpose of this paper to undertake an exhaustive treatment of the whole range of phenomena implied by the title. In the nature of things much of the material which should be dealt with in this short survey will have to be elided, and all that can be done here is give a general account of elision and the main problems connected with it, on the principle of rubba ‘išāratin ‘ablagu min ‘ibāratin. Within these limits there will be just enough space to mention the terms and conditions for the process of elision and the method of reconstructing elided elements by taqdīr, then to look briefly at the implications of elision and taqdīr for the text of the Qur’an and finally to draw some very broad conclusions about elision in medieval Arabic grammatical theory.