Vocabularies of Sleaziness and their Standards in Earliest Lexicons

Abstract

The standards upon which earliest lexicographers relied in criticizing languages (Arabic dialects) on the phonetic and structural levels had a remarkable impact on the linguistic impeccability, which is a direct demon for linguistic criticism. After collecting data of a language, structuring it according to grammatical, morphological and phonetic disciplines, lexicographers followed their linguistic taste to present their judgment on languages and dialects that do not conform to their linguistic tastes. Those judgments contain solecism, sleaziness, disfavoring, weakening and others that reduce the status of a dialect compared to other Arabic dialects. Judgments recurred in the lexicographers' works until they produced doctrines sought to clarify the main principle which the earliest lexicographers accepted in examining the impeccability of the criticized work and its conformity to the familiar linguistic rules. As such, they became aware of the aspects of excellence and the sleaziness of linguistic phenomena.