a noun, a verb, or a meaningful particle. For Sībawayh said at the beginning of his book:

“Speech consists of a noun, a verb, and a particle that conveys a meaning and is neither a noun nor a verb.”

He thus specified a particular sense of harf: a particle that conveys a meaning and is neither a noun nor a verb. Sībawayh’s contact with the language of the Arabs was still recent, and he knew that they called a noun or a verb a harf. He therefore qualified his statement by saying:

“They divided speech into a noun, a verb, and a particle that conveys a meaning and is neither a noun nor a verb.”

Sībawayh meant that speech is divided into these as a whole is divided into its parts, not as a universal is divided into its particulars. This resembles division as discussed by jurists: real estate and movable property are divided among heirs, with one group receiving a share distinct from that of another. Likewise, speech is composed of nouns, verbs, and meaningful particles, and is divided into these components. This division differs from dividing a genus into its species, as when one says, “Nouns are divided into inflected and indeclinable nouns.”

Al-Jazūlī and others subsequently objected to the grammarians on this point without understanding their words. They said:

“Whenever a genus is divided into its species or the individual members of those species, the name of what is divided must apply to those species and individuals; otherwise, they are not its subdivisions.”

They intended this as an objection to al-Zajjāj’s statement, “Speech consists of a noun, a verb, and a particle.” Yet what al-Zajjāj stated was precisely what Sībawayh and the other leading grammarians had stated. They meant the first, familiar kind of division: dividing existing things into their parts, as real estate and wealth are divided. They did not mean the division of universals—which do not exist as universals