Chapters by Fabio Gasparini
Global and local perspectives on language contact, 2024
This chapter gives an account of my experiences conducting fieldwork on Bəṭaḥrēt (commonly referr... more This chapter gives an account of my experiences conducting fieldwork on Bəṭaḥrēt (commonly referred to as Baṭḥari), a Semitic-Afroasiatic language that is critically endangered and spoken by fewer than 10 elders in the eastern part of the governorate of Dhofar, Oman. Using data and observations collected during fieldwork in the area between 2016 and 2017, I will address community and speakers' attitudes in order to understand why the Baṭāḥira tribe have switched almost completely to the dominant Arab-Bedouin identity, which will inevitably lead to the disappearance of traditional Baṭāḥira heritage in just a few decades. While the influence of colonialism and the growth of Arab nationalism since the start of the twentieth century played a crucial role in shaping the contemporary cultural landscape elsewhere in the Middle East (Khalidi et al. 1991; Miller 2003), Dhofar, its people, and its cultures remained disconnected and almost unknown to outsiders until the 1970s, when the country was unified and underwent a process of rapid Arabization. Prior to this, its inhabitants lived in seminomadic tribal groups. The Baṭāḥira have undergone a process of identity reshaping since then. The shift toward the local Bedouin Arabic culture inevitably also involved a process of language shift; in fact, Arabic has now replaced Bəṭaḥrēt in every social domain within the local community.
Modern South Arabian languages, 2020
In the course of this chapter we will discuss what is known about the effects that contact with A... more In the course of this chapter we will discuss what is known about the effects that contact with Arabic has had on the Modern South Arabian languages of Oman and Yemen. Documentation concerning these languages is not abundant, and even more limited is our knowledge of the history of their interaction with Arabic. By integrating the existing bibliography with as yet unpublished fieldwork materials, we will try to provide as complete a picture of the situation as possible, also discussing the current linguistic and sociolinguistic landscape of Dhofar and eastern Yemen.
Papers by Fabio Gasparini
This paper presents a short unpublished text recorded in the town of Lima, a small settlement loc... more This paper presents a short unpublished text recorded in the town of Lima, a small settlement located on the eastern shore of the Musandam peninsula (formally an Omani exclave). The text is fully transcribed and glossed, and a discussion follows in which the main phonological and grammatical peculiarities of the informant's speech are investigated. The analysis confirms the findings of the few existing studies on Musandam Arabic, and adds some previously undocumented features, discussing their possible relations with other dialects of the Gulf Area. In particular, the hypothesis is put forward that some of the traits typically encountered in Musandam Arabic may find their ultimate origin in the southernmost regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
This paper investigates the phenomenon of emphasis in Semitic from a phonological perspective. It... more This paper investigates the phenomenon of emphasis in Semitic from a phonological perspective. It is well known that Semitic emphatics can be realized either as ejectives (Ethiosemitic) or as pharyngealized consonants (Arabic). Recent interest in the Modern South Arabian languages revealed that the emphatics in this group can be realized through an interaction of glottalization and pharyngealization. Starting from a general assessment of glottalization from a cross-linguistic perspective, a focus on Semitic emphatics will be given by using data from the endangered Modern South Arabian language, Baṭḥari. Our goal is to provide a feature analysis of emphasis in Baṭḥari and to correlate it with the rest of Semitic, with special attention to the peculiar phonological patterning of the emphatic /ṭ/. This consonant appears to pattern in Baṭḥari together with the class of breathed consonants (Heselwood and Maghrabi 2015), probably due to its peculiar features. It will be shown that, by adopting Duanmu's (2016) framework of phonological features, it is possible to provide a coherent model for the patterning of Baṭḥari and Modern South Arabian emphatics within Semitic. Furthermore, this paper will provide some tentative parallels between Semitic emphatics and glottalized segments found in the rest of Afroasiatic.
Tipologia e sociolinguistica: verso un approccio integrato allo studio della variazione. Atti del workshop della Società di Linguistica Italiana (20 settembre 2020), a cura di Silvia Ballarè e Guglielmo Inglese, Milano, Officinaventuno, 2021
Questo intervento vuole fornire una riflessione sui processi di insubordinazione in sudarabico mo... more Questo intervento vuole fornire una riflessione sui processi di insubordinazione in sudarabico moderno (Semitico, Afroasiatico). In particolare, oggetto di indagine saranno le cosiddette costruzioni 'pseudorelative' (Pennacchietti 2007) in Mehri e Bathari, due varietà strettamente collegate geneticamente e sociolinguisticamente. La questione sarà riveduta applicando come modello di analisi il concetto di nominalizzazione indipendente ('stand-alone nominalization'), termine con cui si indica un processo di nominalizzazione a livello frasale in contesto sintattico indipendente. Attraverso l'esame e il confronto delle caratteristiche sintattiche delle costruzioni nominalizzate indipendenti nelle due varietà si porrà l'accento sui meccanismi di sviluppo che portano il medesimo processo lungo traiettorie simili, ma non perfettamente coincidenti, cercando di carpirne un'eventuale direzionalità.
«QuadRi» – Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONI, 2017
Baṭḥari is one of the six Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman and Yemen and belonging t... more Baṭḥari is one of the six Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman and Yemen and belonging to the Western branch of the Semitic family. Once supposedly spoken in a wider area at the extreme East of Dhofar region, recent fieldwork revealed that only 12 elders from the Baṭaḥira tribe remember the language at various degrees of proficiency. It is very likely that Baṭḥari will disappear in less than a couple of decades with the death of the last speakers and no action other than documentation and description can be made to secure memory of this language. The present paper presents the first results of an ongoing study conducted over a corpus sample of oral texts collected by prof. Miranda Morris and Khalifa Hamood al-Baṭḥari for the “Documentation and Ethnolinguistic Analysis of the Modern South Arabian languages” project. The concurrence of two phonetic processes in the Baṭḥari phonetic system, namely pharyngealization and glottalization, will be explored in detail. These two processes are involved in the realization of the socalled “emphatics”, which are known to show both kinds of realization in various contexts in MSAL (Watson & Bellem 2011; Ridouane & al. 2015). The analysis of Morris’ sample was
followed by a period of fieldwork in Autumn 2016, in order to gather more material and gain a better knowledge on this heavily endangered language.
This paper focuses on the grammaticalization of adnominal demonstratives towards simple determine... more This paper focuses on the grammaticalization of adnominal demonstratives towards simple determiners in Neo-Aramaic, a dialectal cluster belonging to the Semitic family. Scholars still do not agree about the presence of a definite article in NA and in Aramaic dialectology the systems of demonstratives and determiners have not yet received sufficient attention from a comparative point of view. New grammaticalized items seem not to act like traditional determiners since they encode, besides definiteness, a related though not totally overlapping feature: specificity.
This paper focuses on contemporary linguistic developments in Neo-Aramaic. Modern Assyrian, altho... more This paper focuses on contemporary linguistic developments in Neo-Aramaic. Modern Assyrian, although widely used as an oral medium in a variety of domains belonging to everyday life, and in modern and traditional literature (both as an oral and a written medium), is lagging behind in the expression of many modern concepts (such as in technology, politics, etc.). The lexical and phraseological problems faced by the community are evident in the analysis of political documents from contemporary Iraq – especially when their Arabic and/or English versions are compared.
In the enrichment of modern Assyrian, resort is made to the usual mechanisms of:
a. the adaptation of existing Syriac material in order to satisfy modern needs: ܒܹܐܡܵܐ (Bēmā) ‘pulpit, lectern’ (itself from Greek βη̃μα) - Assyrian ‘forum’; the use of this term in the name of an Iraq-based political organization bears witness to the metaphorical shift;
b. the creation of a new word out of existing stems with the addition of morphological machinery: ܡܸܬܗܵܘܝܵܢܬܵܐ (meṯhaunatā) ‘appreciated’ from Syriac maṯhē with the suffix -an; also the formation of compounds out of existing words: ܒܲܤܵܡܬܵܐ ܕܪܹܫܵܐ (basamtā d-rišā) ‘solace’ (from basamtā, “cure” and rišā, “head”);
c. the calquing of a new word or phraseological unit, in which the single elements are part and parcel of the language, but the result is utterly new:ܙܵܘܥܵܐ (zūwʿā) ‘movement’ (in the socio-political sense) is obviously calqued from Arabic حركة (haraka), English movement, etc.;
d. borrowing, i.e., the simple adaptation of a loanword: ܡܲܕܘܼܥܹܐ (Madūʻā)‘issue’ from Arabic مَوْضوع.
The result is a new, “artificial” literary and, in perspective, national Assyrian language, on the model of Heinz Kloss’ (1967) concept of “Ausbau language.”
Edited Volumes by Fabio Gasparini
«QuadRi» Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONI, 2017
This volume contains nine contributions by ten scholars of Semitic languages, focusing on the Ara... more This volume contains nine contributions by ten scholars of Semitic languages, focusing on the Arabic dialects of Eastern Arabia, the Modern South Arabian Languages, Gulf Pidgin Arabic and contact between the Arabic- and Persian-speaking communities of the Gulf.
List of Authors: Andrei Avram, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Simone Bettega, Emma de Murtas, Julien Dufour, Fabio Gasparini, Denes Gazsi, Abdullah Musallam al-Mahri, Roberta Morano, Janet C. E. Watson.
The volume is open-access and can be downloaded at the following URL:
http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/QuadRi/issue/view/200/showToc
Drafts by Fabio Gasparini
This paper aims to investigate a pervasive type of clause linking in Mehri: the paratactic conjun... more This paper aims to investigate a pervasive type of clause linking in Mehri: the paratactic conjunction through the semantically bleached connective wǝ-. This research stems mainly from the reading of Isaksson & al. (2009), where a careful examination of the concept of Circumstantial Qualifiers is given. A Circumstantial Qualifier is "an enhancing [i.e. supporting] clause that lacks explicit semantic marking as to its relation to the head" (Isaksson et al. 2009:4). Syntactic studies concerning the Modern South Arabian languages (henceforth MSAL) in general are far from abundant: it is hoped that this paper will foster scholarly interest on the subject. This study, conducted on the basis of Rubin's (2018) edition of Johnstone's Mehri texts is intended to serve as a first step towards a better comprehension of unmarked clause linking in this language. Attention will be given to cross-linguistic categories in order to provide a solid typological approach.
Language and Ecology in Southern and Eastern Arabia
In recent years, the topic of water has become more and more central to landscape and environment... more In recent years, the topic of water has become more and more central to landscape and environmental studies. Water is indeed essential to human survival and its management is of critical importance for every human group. This chapter will examine the relationship between the indigenous MSAL-speaking people of Dhofar and water from both an anthropological and a linguistic point of view. The linguistic coding of water sources and traditional strategies for water fetching will be discussed in order to show the profound entanglement between culture and environment. Furthermore, the poetic use of water-related images among different people of Arabia will be examined in order to further investigate related cultural and social aspects.
Book Reviews by Fabio Gasparini
Talks by Fabio Gasparini
Uploads
Chapters by Fabio Gasparini
Papers by Fabio Gasparini
followed by a period of fieldwork in Autumn 2016, in order to gather more material and gain a better knowledge on this heavily endangered language.
In the enrichment of modern Assyrian, resort is made to the usual mechanisms of:
a. the adaptation of existing Syriac material in order to satisfy modern needs: ܒܹܐܡܵܐ (Bēmā) ‘pulpit, lectern’ (itself from Greek βη̃μα) - Assyrian ‘forum’; the use of this term in the name of an Iraq-based political organization bears witness to the metaphorical shift;
b. the creation of a new word out of existing stems with the addition of morphological machinery: ܡܸܬܗܵܘܝܵܢܬܵܐ (meṯhaunatā) ‘appreciated’ from Syriac maṯhē with the suffix -an; also the formation of compounds out of existing words: ܒܲܤܵܡܬܵܐ ܕܪܹܫܵܐ (basamtā d-rišā) ‘solace’ (from basamtā, “cure” and rišā, “head”);
c. the calquing of a new word or phraseological unit, in which the single elements are part and parcel of the language, but the result is utterly new:ܙܵܘܥܵܐ (zūwʿā) ‘movement’ (in the socio-political sense) is obviously calqued from Arabic حركة (haraka), English movement, etc.;
d. borrowing, i.e., the simple adaptation of a loanword: ܡܲܕܘܼܥܹܐ (Madūʻā)‘issue’ from Arabic مَوْضوع.
The result is a new, “artificial” literary and, in perspective, national Assyrian language, on the model of Heinz Kloss’ (1967) concept of “Ausbau language.”
Edited Volumes by Fabio Gasparini
List of Authors: Andrei Avram, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Simone Bettega, Emma de Murtas, Julien Dufour, Fabio Gasparini, Denes Gazsi, Abdullah Musallam al-Mahri, Roberta Morano, Janet C. E. Watson.
The volume is open-access and can be downloaded at the following URL:
http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/QuadRi/issue/view/200/showToc
Drafts by Fabio Gasparini
Book Reviews by Fabio Gasparini
Talks by Fabio Gasparini
followed by a period of fieldwork in Autumn 2016, in order to gather more material and gain a better knowledge on this heavily endangered language.
In the enrichment of modern Assyrian, resort is made to the usual mechanisms of:
a. the adaptation of existing Syriac material in order to satisfy modern needs: ܒܹܐܡܵܐ (Bēmā) ‘pulpit, lectern’ (itself from Greek βη̃μα) - Assyrian ‘forum’; the use of this term in the name of an Iraq-based political organization bears witness to the metaphorical shift;
b. the creation of a new word out of existing stems with the addition of morphological machinery: ܡܸܬܗܵܘܝܵܢܬܵܐ (meṯhaunatā) ‘appreciated’ from Syriac maṯhē with the suffix -an; also the formation of compounds out of existing words: ܒܲܤܵܡܬܵܐ ܕܪܹܫܵܐ (basamtā d-rišā) ‘solace’ (from basamtā, “cure” and rišā, “head”);
c. the calquing of a new word or phraseological unit, in which the single elements are part and parcel of the language, but the result is utterly new:ܙܵܘܥܵܐ (zūwʿā) ‘movement’ (in the socio-political sense) is obviously calqued from Arabic حركة (haraka), English movement, etc.;
d. borrowing, i.e., the simple adaptation of a loanword: ܡܲܕܘܼܥܹܐ (Madūʻā)‘issue’ from Arabic مَوْضوع.
The result is a new, “artificial” literary and, in perspective, national Assyrian language, on the model of Heinz Kloss’ (1967) concept of “Ausbau language.”
List of Authors: Andrei Avram, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Simone Bettega, Emma de Murtas, Julien Dufour, Fabio Gasparini, Denes Gazsi, Abdullah Musallam al-Mahri, Roberta Morano, Janet C. E. Watson.
The volume is open-access and can be downloaded at the following URL:
http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/QuadRi/issue/view/200/showToc