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The terms majhūr(a) ("the pressure is fully applied at the place of articulation and the breath is impeded from flowing through till the pressure is completed and the sound goes on") and mahmūs(a) ("the pressure is weakly applied at the place of articulation so that the breath flows freely with it", v. Versteegh 1997: 88) as defined in chapter 565 of Sībawayhi's Kitāb have drawn much attention in both the traditional native Arabic literature (Ibn Jinnī, Sirr ṣinā῾‎at al-᾽i῾‎rāb, Cairo 1954, vol. 1, p. 69; Zamaḫšarī, al-Mufaṣṣal fī n-naḥw, Teheran 1969, p. 395; Ibn Ya῾‎īš, Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal, Leipzig, 1882-86, vol. 10, p. 128) and the modern literature (Schaade, A. 1911. Sībawaihi's Lautlehre. Leiden, pp. 2, 10-15, 66f; Bravmann, M. 1934. Materialien und Untersuchungen zu den Phonetischen Lehren der Araber. Göttingen, pp. 21-25; Fleisch, H. 1958. "Maǧhūra, mahmūsa: examen critique", Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph 35, pp. 193-210; Troupeau, G. 1958. "Le commentaire d'al-Sīrāfī sur le chapitre 565 du Kitāb de Sībawayhi", Arabica 5, pp. 168-182, at 176f; Semaan, K. 1968. Linguistics in the Middle Ages. Phonetic Studies in Early Islam. Leiden, pp. 42f; Bakalla, M. 1982. Ibn Jinni: An Early Arab Muslim Phonetician. An Interpretative Study of His Life and Contribution to Linguistics. Taipei, pp. 129-139; Odisho, E. 1988. "Sībawayhi's dichotomy of majhūra/mahmūsa revisited", Al-῾‎Arabiyya 21, pp. 81-91; al-Nassir, A. 1993. Sibawayh the Phonologist. London, pp. 35-38 with further references; Versteegh, K. 1997. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh, pp. 21, 88f). This writer [LE] thinks with Schaade and others that it does reflect the voiced-unvoiced opposition, as for Sībawayhi <ṭ> is clearly [+voiced, +velarized] (i.e., precisely the sound that we nowadays associate with <ḍ>, whereas was pronounced [+voiced, +velar]. (Angled brackets refer to graphemes.) This is also the opinion of al-Nassir (1993: 11). Sībawayhi quotes explicitly yaẓṭannu and yaṭṭannu, VIIIth forms of ẓanna (impf.), not *yaẓẓannu (or yaẓḍannu), as one might expect otherwise. (There is quite a number of divergences with respect to <ḍ>, <ṭ>, and <ẓ> in the manuscripts.) And it is basically the phonetic qualities of <ṭ> and that complicate matters for us in this respect. For Sībawayhi, on the other hand, <ḍ> represents a lateral sound whose qualities we don't know exactly. Jahn (vol. II, p. 884, bottom) is puzzled by this and puts "(so)" (i.e. "sic!") after yaẓṭannu. Already Schaade (1911: vii) wrote that he should really have transcribed il²bid² instead of iḍbiṭ 'seize!'. Of course there remains the problem of the glottal stop (hamza) being classified as a member of the ḥurūf majhūra. Bakalla (1982: 131) provides an overview of glosses for majhūr and mahmūs in the literature. Majhūr has been classified as "voiced", "vocal", "stimmhaft", "lenis", "schallstark", "sonore (et pressé)", "fortis", "éclatant", "unbreathed", and "sonorous"; mahmūs has been classified as "voiceless", "surd", "stimmlos", "fortis", "schallschwach", "sourd (et non pressé)", "lenis", "étouffé", "breathed", and "muffled". Ramzi Baalbaki (1990. Dictionary of Linguistic Terms. Beirut, pp. 531f) equates the terms majhūr and mahmūs without further ado with "voiced" and "voiceless", respectively.