This article approaches the nature of Classical Arabic from the ideological discourse about it. More specifically, it investigates the controversy about “pure” and “Arabized” Arabs which was raised during the Umayyad period. The paper claims that underlying this controversy was an attempt by northern and southern Arabians to appropriate the symbolic capital of the sacred language. The tribal genealogies developed during the same period are also claimed to reflect political alliances. A third claim made in this connection is that Basran and Kufan grammarians were probably also involved indirectly by selecting data on which they based their linguistic analyses.

Under the name of ‘pivot derivation’, this article reconsiders a phenomenon known by Arab grammarians and lexicographers as well as by Arabists and Semitists: the derivation of a secondary lexical family from a primary one, via a morphologically ambiguous form. Through the examples of ma‘īn, masīḥ and ma/isāḥa, and a rereading of Mez (1906), it proposes several extensions of this type of derivation, made possible not only by homophony but also by homography or phonetic accidents, and compatible with the borrowing from other languages.