ABSTRACT
Early Arab lexicographers and grammarians, as one concludes from their various biographical sources as well as their own work or even their disparate coiranents reported by later authors, compiled their data on linguistic usage from a limited nuraber of sources. Four of these sources can be clearly discerned. These are: the Qur'an, the Hadit poetry and current usage of the language by certain individuals, groups or tribes, etc. Qur'aic readings, which are frequently quoted and discussed in grammatical works, create a problem of classification as they are based on the Qur'aic text (i.e. they linguistically interpret the text), but often vary significantly from one reader to the other reflecting differences in the dialects of those readers. Being the embodiment of current linguistic usage - basically of a dialectal nature - the qira'a, regardless of their classification, can theoretically serve as a major source for the compiler of data on such usage.
