LINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE PROJECT BY ABDEL RAHMAN HAJJ SALAH
The linguistic repertoire project is one of the most prominent projects established by the linguistics scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj Saleh who succeeded in convincing many Arabic language academies and research communities of its importance and feasibility. Despite the beginning of its concretization and its cultural importance, the exorbitant commissioning of this project and the death of this great scientist suspended its application. However, this project must be valued and resurrected. There should be also a political and civilized will to allocate sufficient funds to ensure its success, as planned by its founder, because his students and followers believe in it. What does this linguistic project consists in? How can we make it successful? and What is its civilizational and political impacts on the entire Islamic nation? This project aims at introducing a new automatic Arabic lexicon including all the vocabulary of the Arabic language as it was used in the ancient and contemporary Arab heritage, so that the researcher for the meaning of a word or phrase can know their various uses. In this context, heritage books should be edited, automatically stored and electronically processed, hence the importance of creating an automatic bank for the actually-used language, containing texts and not vocabulary. Those texts represent the real language utilization, which extends over time and includes countries, employing the Arabic language, as well as the various knowledge and sciences. Treating language in this way makes it a living, vital and practical material, which is not the case in the available dictionaries that represent the theoretical explanation of a word rather than its meaning in the context where it is used because they do not take into account the real use of language. However, such treating requires great effort and important coordination between a large number of researchers in various disciplines such as mathematics, computer sciences, automated media and software. It also necessitates huge funds and continuous and methodical work, which has already been initiated through many research centers and universities in the Arab countries, particularly Algeria. Nevertheless, this project began to fade away with the death of Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj Saleh and the absence of binding laws to continue its application. The aim of this intervention is to explain the importance of the project, its implementation plan and its great cultural and physical implications. This project is like an Arabic search engine or Arabic Google, as called by the late Hajj Saleh. So, will the dream of this man, which instilled it in the souls of many of his students who can supervise, follow up and embody this civilizational linguistic work, come true?.
Keywords: Linguistic Repertoire, Abdel Rahman Hajj Salah, Arabic Language Academies