As early as in the 8th century Sībawayhi described the phenomenon of ‘valence’ of the verb as a matter which can be characterized as subclass-specif-ic rection contrary to rection in general, although he did not clearly define it. This can be shown by the usage of the term ta^caddā “to govern the accusative”. While on the one hand this term stands in all instances of a verbal predicate (fi^cl) governing a non-verbspecific accusative it is on the other hand used as specification for the rection of verb-specific supplements, which here refers to accusative objects. Sībawayhi classifies the verbs according to the number of verb-specific supplements they require. Later Arab grammarians like al-Zajjājī, Ibn Jinnī, al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn Ya^cīsh among others modify the views developed by Sībawayhi only slightly. On the one hand they systematize the instances of verbs governing a non-verbspecific accusative in a new way, but on the other they take certain subclasses of verbs out of the chapter dealing with the ‘valence’ of the verb in order to deal with them in separate chapters. Besides that there is an extension of the scope of ta^caddā taking place: this term can now be used too to specify the rection of the verb in regard to a prepositional object which would not be possible according to Sībawayhi’s view. From the — on principle — existing understanding that such a prepositional object syntactically takes the same position as an accusative object the Arab grammarians, however, did not draw the conclusions of their theoretical assumptions. They did not come to a classification of verbs according to their ‘valence’, i.e. in terms of modern valence-theory. Nevertheless, in dealing with the national grammar of Arabic in the context of the ‘modern’ notion of ‘valence’ one is able to contribute a series of important points of the view in the same way as it — the other way round — might be of some use for the understanding and interpretation of the Arab grammarians to proceed from the theoretical viewpoint of a modern linguistic theory like dependency-grammar and valence-theory.