Arabic Dialectology

Arabic Dialectology
Studies in
Semitic Languages and
Linguistics
Edited by
T. Muraoka and C.H.M. Versteegh
VOLUME 53
Arabic Dialectology
In honour of Clive Holes on the Occasion of
his Sixtieth Birthday
Edited by
Enam Al-Wer and Rudolf de Jong
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2009
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arabic dialectology : in honour of Clive Holes on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday /
edited by Enam Al-Wer and Rudolf de Jong.
p. cm. — (Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics ; v. 53)
Includes a bibliography of Clive Holes’ published works.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17212-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Arabic language—Dialects. 2. Sociolinguistics—Arab countries. I. Al-Wer, Enam.
II. Jong, Rudolf de. III. Holes, Clive, 1948- IV. Title. V. Series.
PJ6709.A76 2009
492.7’7--dc22
2009014371
ISSN 0081-8461
ISBN 978 90 04 172128
Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
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printed in the netherlands

contents v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Bibliography of Clive Holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Poem: On Your Sixtieth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
by Said Abu Athera
TOPICS IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Indeterminacy and the Comparative Method: Arabic as

a Model for Understanding the History of Aramaic . . . . . . . 3
Jonathan Owens
From qǝltu to gǝlǝt: Diachronic Notes on Linguistic Adaptation
in Muslim Baghdad Arabic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Heikki Palva
The g/ǧ-question in Egyptian Arabic Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Manfred Woidich and Liesbeth Zack
DESCRIPTIVE DIALECTOLOGY
Words and Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Peter Behnstedt
The Arabic Dialect of a Šawāwī Community of Northern
Oman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Domenyk Eades
The Dialect of the Euphrates Bedouin, a Fringe Mesopotamian
Dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Bruce Ingham
Quelques Données Sociolinguistiques sur l’Arabe Parlé à
Damas à la Fin des Années Mille Neuf Cent Soixante-dix 109
Jérôme Lentin
CONTACT PHENOMENA
Contact, Isolation, and Complexity in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Peter Trudgill
vi contents
Loan Verbs in Arabic and the DO-construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Kees Versteegh
SOCIAL DIALECTOLOGY
When Najd Meets Hijaz: Dialect Contact in Jeddah . . . . . . . . . 203

Aziza Al-Essa
“Big Bright Lights” Versus “Green and Pleasant Land”?:
The Unhelpful Dichotomy of ‘Urban’ Versus ‘Rural’ in
Dialectology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
David Britain
The Variable (h) in Damascus: Analysis of a Stable Variable 249
Hanadi Ismail
CODE MIXING
The Variety of Housewives and Cockroaches: Examining

Code-choice in Advertisements in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Reem Bassiouney
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
contents vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The contributors to this volume have supported this project at short

notice from its inception and throughout. We thank them whole-
heartedly for their academic spirit and generosity.
Not many people get a poem for their birthday. Hats off to Sa’id
for composing a splendid poem and for making this tribute to Clive
truly special.
From the University of Essex, we thank Mike Jones for his helpful
suggestions and support.
We are also very grateful to the series editor, Kees Versteegh, who
has been, as always, generous with his time and insightful in his
comments.
From Brill we thank Liesbeth Kanis for her efficiency in dealing
with many complications, and for her help and patience.
It is customary to leave one extra special thank you to the end
line. In this case it goes to Deidre. According to Sa’id’s poem “Deidre
has knocked thirty years off Clive’s age”. We agree with him, of
course, and would like to add our heartfelt gratitude for her help
with editing and supplying material. We thank her also for respon-
ding promptly and discretely to our emails and phone calls, while
Clive remained blissfully ignorant!
viii contents
introduction ix
INTRODUCTION
Arabic Dialectology is a collection of articles written by leading schol-

ars and distinguished young researchers. In print, they come together
to pay homage to Clive Holes on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
As befits the honouree’s contributions and interests, the collection
covers a wide spectrum of the field of Arabic linguistics and linguis-
tics in general.
Clive’s earliest research on Arabic, in the late 1970’s, was in socio-
linguistics, specifically in Labovian variationist sociolinguistics, as it
is nowadays known. At the time, sociolinguistics was certainly thri-
ving, but sociolinguists were still thin on the ground. In Europe, the
Labovian approach took a leap forward at the hands of one of the
contributors in this volume, Peter Trudgill, whose study of his belo-
ved hometown has made the English city of Norwich itself almost a
part of sociolinguistics. Not many places earn this privilege, but just
over a decade after the Norwich Study, and thousands of miles away
from England, a tiny island in the Arabian Gulf was given equal
prominence in sociolinguistic research, this time at the hands of
Clive Holes, then an ‘alien’ researcher in the State. Clive’s research
on language variation and change in Bahrain is the first work on
Arabic dialects which is variationist ‘to the core’, executed with the
passion of an ethnographer and the knowledge of an insider. His take
on variation in Arabic has lent a fresh and realistic perspective to the
subject. As such, his work in the field has not only led but also shaped
subsequent studies on Arabic dialects.
In his research, Clive is a true nomad, but unlike the nomad ances-
tors of the people in whom he is interested, he has ventured into new
land while the old ground was still abundant. This journey has led
him to many other areas which he has made fertile: language manuals,
descriptive grammars, historical linguistics, culture and society and,
most recently, popular literature and poetry. His work throughout
has remained grounded in field linguistics, exploratory, locally
focused and socially sensitive.
His research on popular literature and Bedouin poetry gives centre
stage to deserving poets working undercover. In addition to docu-
menting a wealth of vocabulary and structures, folklore, local values
x introduction
and local traditions, it ingeniously uncovers a 4,000-year old literary

link going back to Sumerian. Vanquished by the modern Arab
society, much of this cultural heritage has been unfairly consigned
to oblivion, while the rest is being continually eroded.
Outside academia, Clive’s work on contemporary Bedouin poetry,
satirising current international politics has been cited in the media.
“An Oxford don’s research into traditional poetry seems an unlikely
place for George Galloway1 to crop up. But he is, professor Clive
Holes has discovered, the subject of a stirring verse tribute from a
Bedouin tribesman”, writes Maev Kennedy in The Guardian
(12 February 2008), with a picture of a jubilant Galloway and the
caption ‘Inscribed in the annals of honour his name!’ taken from
Clive’s translation of al Hajaya’s poem An Ode to George Galloway.
His analyses of Bedouin poetry uncover a wealth of adversarial sati-
rists whose poems are a biting satire on society and politics in the
Arab Middle East; such poems could not have been published in
Arab countries. To the Arab reader, the poems are enjoyable and
funny, often painfully so in their original text, but in many parts they
are incomprehensible without Clive’s decoding, as one of the editors,
a native speaker of Arabic with Bedouin roots, can testify. In one of
his articles, Clive astutely describes popular poetry as an exercise of
“free speech in the modern Arab World”.
Keeping to the traditional metre and rhymes, Clive reproduces
Bedouin poetry with its dry wit transposing its imagery to make it
accessible to the English-speaking reader. As an example, we cite
some verses from Yā Kundalīzza Rāys! (Hey Condoleezza Rice)2. In
this poem, George W. Bush is the speaker; Clive renders the poem
in the Texan dialect:
Mah mood’s good, y’all, on mah lips a smile is crackin’
Ah’m really in high spirits ’cos the bad guys we sent packin’!
Say, Powell, come here, ’n fetch some liquor in a flagon!
And Rumsfeld get a flautist (Ah ain’t stayin’ on the wagon!),
An’ hire a rebec-player—from the Gulf where they like singin’,
Where the desert A-rabs nod an’ to mah ev’ry word they’re clingin’
1
George Galloway is the British MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, known particu-
larly for his opposition of the Iraq war. The poem by al-Hajaya was written following
Galloway’s win in the 2005 elections.
2
Published (with S. Abu Athera) ‘George Bush, Bedouin Poet’, 2007. The poem
was composed in late 2003 by the poet M. F. al-Hajaya when it seemed the Ameri-
cans had won the Iraq war.
introduction xi
Bring some gin with y’all, and some whisky and some beer,
With good ole Condoleezza: bring ’em all over here!
As epitomised in Clive’s publications, true scientific research reflects
a mixture of fascination for the subject, an eye for detail and a thirst
for knowledge. If Arabic culture is a well in a dry land, then the study
of the Arabic language is the rope and pail to quench one’s thirst.
Not only the thirst to research the Arabic language, but also to dis-
cover the mechanics of language in general and, perhaps even more
so, to understand the culture of a people by which one was drawn
to that well in the first place.
Clive knows that anyone striving to understand what ‘makes the
Arab mind tick’ should first of all be able to communicate with
Arabs. To achieve this, reading books about Islam and newspaper
articles on current events in the Arab world is simply not enough.
One should first and foremost be able to truly communicate with
people: listen, and then answer… in Arabic, of course! Only this can
be a sound basis for understanding a culture, which is still viewed
by many as highly ‘exotic’. Indeed, Clive’s interests go deeper than
the study of the Arabic language alone. This language is the key to a
world of culture, of which its popular manifestations have caught his
heart as well.
Discussing linguistics with Clive is always much more than a dry
exchange of ideas on language. The same lively interaction that cha-
racterises the language that is discussed, also typifies the nature of
the exchange of ideas itself. And we remember many a time when
these exchanges were far from dry!
The contributions in this book from outside the field of Arabic
linguistics reflect the growing realisation of the importance to lin-
guistics of engaging with the insights from Arabic data in linguistics.
There can be no doubt that this promising endeavour is in large part
a result of Clive’s publications over the past three decades.
Apart from his own academic achievements, Clive has been uns-
tinting in his support for others, through his encouragement of
young researchers to his outspoken advocacy of fairness in access to
education.
As editors, we are indeed pleased to have gathered together the
most distinguished of scholars in this collection to bring a fitting
tribute to Clive Holes as a highly acclaimed linguist, a distinguished
xii introduction
professor and a Fellow of the British Academy. But, most of all we

were driven by the wish to honour a precious friend.
The book begins with a poem, composed especially for the occa-
sion by Clive’s friend and associate, the poet Said Abu Athera. We
apologise for not providing a translation of this poem, but we felt
that nobody but Clive could do it justice!
Enam and Rudolf

Colchester–Amsterdam
bibliography of clive holes xiii
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CLIVE HOLES
1980 ‘Phonological variation in Bahraini Arabic: the [j] and [y] allophones of
/j/’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 4. 72-89.
1983a ‘Bahraini dialects: sectarian dialects and the sedentary/nomadic split’,
Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 10. 7-37.
1983b ‘Patterns of communal language variation in Bahrain’, Language in Society
12/4. 433-457.
1983c Review of Al-Tajir, M.A. Language and Linguistic Origins in Bahrain,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 46/3. 552-553.
1984a Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. London: RKP (reprinted
1986, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2004. 319 pp + cassette).
1984b ‘Bahraini dialects: sectarian differences exemplified through texts’,
Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 13. 27-67.
1984c ‘Textual approximation in the teaching of academic writing to Arab stu-
dents: a contrastive approach’. Swales, J. and Mustapha, H. (eds) English
for Special Purposes in the Arab World, Aston University. 228-242.
1985a Review of Talmoudi, F. Diglossia in North Africa, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 48/3. 549-550.
1985b Review of Nakano, A. Folktales of Lower Egypt, Journal of Semitic Studies
30/2. 332-334.
1986a ‘The social motivation for phonological convergence in three Arabic dia-
lects’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 61. 33-51.
1986b ‘Variation in the morphophonology of Arabic dialects’, Transactions of
the Philological Society 84. 167-190.
1986c ‘Communicative function and pronominal variation in Bahraini Arabic’,
Anthropological Linguistics 28/1. 10-30.
1986d ‘Principles of Arabic language course design’. Proceedings of the BRISMES/
MESA International Conference on Middle Eastern Studies. 9-18.
1986e Review of Versteegh, C.H. Pidginization and Creolization: The Case of
Arabic. Bibliotheca Orientalis 43. 218-222.
1987a Language Variation and Change in a Modernising Arab State. Library of
Arabic Linguistics Series, Monograph No 7. London & New York: Kegan
Paul International. 214 pp.
1987b Review of Sowayan, S.A. Nabati Poetry, BRISMES Bulletin 13/2. 219-220.
1987c Review of Brockett, A.A. The Spoken Arabic of Khabura on the Batina of
Oman, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 50/3 (1987).
558-560.
1988a (with Baker, M.) ‘The use of computerised text concordancing in Arabic
language teaching and translation’. Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on
the Teaching of Arabic with the Computer. University of Leeds. 5-29.
1988b ‘The typology of Omani Arabic dialects’. Proceedings of the BRISMES
International Conference on Middle Eastern Studies. 12-21.
1988c Review of Kay, E. An Arabic Dictionary of Civil Engineering. BRISMES
Bulletin 14/2. 264-265.
1988d Review of Kaye, A. Nigerian Arabic-English Dictionary. Journal of Semitic
Studies 33/2. 337-338.
xiv bibliography of clive holes
1988e Review of Karmi, H. Al-Mughni Al-’Akbar (English-Arabic Dictionary),

BRISMES Bulletin 15. 175-177.
1989a ‘Towards a dialect geography of Oman’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 52/3. 446-462.
1989b Review of Haddad, E.W. A Dictionary of Data Processing and Computer
Terms (English-French-Arabic). BRISMES Bulletin 16/1. 103-104.
1990a Gulf Arabic. Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars Series. London:
RoutledgeCurzon. 302 pp.
1990b ‘A multi-media, topic-based approach to university-level Arabic language
teaching’. Diglossic Tension: Teaching Arabic for Communication. Folia
Scholastica (University of Leeds). 36-41.
1990c Review of Voigt, R.M. Die infirmen Verbaltypen des Arabischen und das
Biradikalismus-Problem. Journal of Royal Asiatic Society. 141-144.
1990d Review of Kaye, A. English-Nigerian Arabic Dictionary. Journal of Semitic
Studies 35/2 (1990). 374-375.
1990e Review of Bayyumi, H., Kalfat, Kh., al-Shafi‘i, A. Mu‘jam Tasrif al-Afal
al-‘Arabiyya, BRISMES Bulletin 17/1. 113-114.
1991a ‘Kashkasha and the fronting and affrication of the velar stops revisited: a
contribution to the historical phonology of the peninsular Arabic dialects’.
Kaye, A. (ed.) Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau, Vol. 1. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz. 652-678.
1991b Review of Feghali, H.J. Moroccan Arabic Reader. Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 54/2. 370.
1991c Review of Feghali, H.J. Arabic Adeni Reader. Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 54/3. 634.
1991d Review of Qafisheh, H.A. Yemeni Arabic I, Al-‘Arabiyya 24. 148-149.
1992a (with Harris, R. & Auty, N.) Breakthrough Arabic. London: Macmillan.
243 pp + 3 C90 cassettes; CD version, 2005, McGraw-Hill.
1992b Review of Irvine, A.K., Sergeant, R.B., and Smith, G.R. A Miscellany of
Middle Eastern Articles, In Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924-1983.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 55/1. 132-134.
1992c Review of Johnstone, B. Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies 55/3. 556-557.
1992d Review of Schall, A. Elementa Arabica. Journal of Semitic Studies 37/2.
348-349.
1992e Review of Sowayan, S. The Arabian Oral Historical Narrative: an Ethno-
graphic and Linguistic Analysis. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
19/2. 221-222.
1992f Review of Feghali, H.J. Arabic Adeni Textbook and Arabic Adeni Reader.
Al-‘Arabiyya 25. 139-140.
1993a (with Eid, M., eds.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics Vol. 5 = Current
issues in Linguistic Theory No 101. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 347 pp.
1993b ‘The uses of variation: a study of the political speeches of Gamal ‘Abd
al-Nasir’. Eid, M. and Holes, C.D. (eds) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics
Vol. 5. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 13-45.
1993c Review of Eid, M. and McCarthy, J. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics, Vols
I & II. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56/1. 132-134.
1993d Review of Rouchdy, A. The Arabic Language in America. Al-‘Arabiyya 26
(1993). 150-154.
1994a Main article ‘Arabic’, and articles on the language situation in ‘Bahrain’,
‘Lebanon’, ‘Libya’, ‘Oman’, ‘Saudi Arabia’, ‘Syria’, ‘United Arab Emirates’.
Asher, R.E. et al (eds) The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics (10
bibliography of clive holes xv
Vols.), Pergamon/ Aberdeen University Press: Vol.1. 191-194, 300; Vol.

4. 2068-2069, 2207; Vol. 5. 2872; Vol. 7. 3662; Vol. 8. 4500; Vol. 9. 4836.
1994b ‘Designing English-Arabic dictionaries’. De Beaugrande R., Shunnaq A.,
Heliel, M. (eds) Language, Discourse and Translation in the West and
Middle East. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 161-180.
1994c Review of Devenyi, K. & Ivanyi, T. (eds) Proceedings of the Colloquium
on Arabic Grammar, Budapest 1-7 September 1991. Journal of Royal Asiatic
Society. 268-9; Journal of Semitic Society 39/1. 129-130.
1995a Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties. Longman Linguistics
Library. London & New York: Longman. xiii + 343pp.
1995b ‘The structure and function of parallelism and repetition in spoken Arabic:
a sociolinguistic study’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 40/1. 57-81.
1995c ‘Community, dialect and urbanisation in the Arabic-speaking Middle
East’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 58/2. 270-287.
1995d ‘The Rat and the Ship’s Captain: a dialogue poem (muHawara) from the
Gulf, with some comments on the social and literary-historical back-
ground of the genre’, Studia Orientalia 75. 101-120.
1995e ‘The passive in Omani Arabic’. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the
International Association of Arabic Dialectology (AIDA). Cambridge.
69-74.
1995f Review of Abu-Haidar, F. Christian Arabic of Baghdad. Bulletin of the
1995g Review of Cadora, F.J. Bedouin, Village and Urban Arabic: an Ethnolinguistic
Study. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 58/1. 142-144.
1995h Review of Watson, J. A Reference Grammar of San‘ani Arabic. Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies 58/3. 555-556.
1995i Review of Muller, K. Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Rücken fiel. Ein
Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassischen Arabisch (2 Vols).
Journal of Royal Asiatic Studies. 407-408.
1995j Review of Selim, G.D. Arabic-English and English-Arabic Dictionaries in
the Library of Congress. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 22.
224-225.
1996a ‘The Dispute of Coffee and Tea: a debate-poem from the Gulf’. Smart, J.
(ed.) Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature. London:
Curzon Press. 302-315.
1996b ‘The Arabic dialects of south-eastern Arabia in a socio-historical perspec-
tive’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 31. 34-56.
1996c Review of Kurpershoek, M. Oral Poetry and narratives from Central Arabia
Vol. I: the Poetry of al-Dindan, a Bedouin Bard in southern Najd. Journal
of American Oriental Society 116.1. 155-156.
1996d Review of Ingham, B. Najdi Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 59/3. 561-563.
1996e Review of Suleiman, Y. (ed.) Arabic Sociolinguistics. British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies 23/1. 102-104.
1997a Review of Devenyi, K., Ivanyi, T., and Shivtiel, A. Proceedings of the
Colloquium on Arabic Lexicography and Lexicology, Part One. Journal of
Semitic Studies 42/1. 196-198.
1997b Review of Muller, K. Der Beduine und die Regenwolke. Ein Beitrag zur
Erforschung der altarabischen Anekdote. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 3rd series 7/1. 118-119.
1997c Review of Eid, M. (ed.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics Vol VII. Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 60/3. 560-561.
xvi bibliography of clive holes
1997d Review of Bergtsson, P. Two Arabic Versions of the Book of Ruth. Journal
of Royal Asiatic Society 3rd series 7/3. 434-436.
1998a ‘The Debate of Pearl-Diving and Oil-Wells: a poetic commentary on socio-
economic change in the Gulf of the 1930s’, Arabic and Middle Eastern
Literatures Vol 1 No 1. 87-112.
1998b ‘Retention and loss of the passive verb in the Arabic dialects of northern
Oman and eastern Arabia’. Journal of Semitic Studies 43/2. 347-362.
1998c Review of Watson, J. Sbahtu! A Course in San‘ani Arabic. Bulletin of the
1998d Review of Kurpershoek, P. M. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central
Arabia Vol II: the Story of a Desert Knight. The Legend of Shlewih al-‘Atawi
and other ‘Utaybah Heroes, Journal of American Oriental Society 118.1.
106-108.
1998e Review of Ingham, B. Arabian Diversions, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society
3rd series 8/2. 261.
1999a ‘Socio-economic change and language change in the eastern Arab World’.
Etudes Asiatiques 53/1. 45-74.
1999b Main article on ‘Arabic Literature in English Translation’ and articles on
‘the Koran’, ‘the Mu‘allaqāt’, and ‘the Muqaddima’. France, P. (ed.) The
Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
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1999c Review of Versteegh, K. The Arabic Language, Journal of Islamic Studies
10/1. 101-104.
1999d Review of Shryock, A. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral
History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan, Edebiyat 10. 167-172.
2000a ‘Uman: modern Arabic dialects’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol X. 817-818.
2000b ‘Al-Wahiba’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol XI. 47.
2000c ‘Reflexes of CLA qad and qat in the Arabic dialects of eastern and central
Arabia’. In Aspects of the Dialects of Arabic Today: Proceedings of the 4th
Conference of the International Association of Arabic Dialectology (AIDA),
Marrakesh. 88-97.
2000d Review of Edzard, L. Language as a Medium of Legal Norms: Implications
of the Use of Arabic as a Language in the United Nations System, Die Welt
des Islams 40. 104-106.
2000e Review of Kurpershoek, P. M. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central
Arabia 3: Bedouin Poets of the Dawasir Tribe, Journal of Royal Asiatic
Society, 3rd Series, 10/2. 222-224.
2001a Dialect, Culture and Society in Eastern Arabia, Volume I: Glossary.
Handbuch der Orientalistik Series. Leiden, Boston: Brill. lxiii + 573pp.
2001b ‘Dialogue of the Deaf ’. Institute of Translation and Interpreting Bulletin,
December 2001. 28-30.
2002a ‘Non-Arabic Semitic elements in the Arabic dialects of eastern Arabia’, in
Arnold, W. and Bobzin, H. (eds) “Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten ara-
mäisch, wir verstehen es!” 60 Beiträge zur Semitistik. Festschrift für Otto
Jastrow zum 60. Geburtstag. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 269-280.
2002b Review of Suleiman, Y. (ed.) Language and Society in the Middle East and
North Africa, Journal of Islamic Studies 13/1. 100-106.
2003a Review of Suleiman, Y. The Arabic language and National Identity, Times
Literary Supplement, 2 May. 29.
2003b Review of de Jong, R. A Grammar of the Bedouin Dialects of Northern
Sinai Littoral, Journal of Semitic Studies 48. 413-416.
bibliography of clive holes xvii
2003c Review of Borg, A. (ed.) The Language of Color in the Mediterranean,

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28. 425-428.
2004a Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties. Revised Edition.
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Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. xix + 420pp. (revised and
updated edition of the 1995 book of the same title).
2004b ‘Zawdj’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Supplement. 842-843.
2004c ‘Quadriliteral verbs in the Arabic Dialects of Eastern Arabia’. Haak, M.,
De Jong, R. and Versteegh, K. (eds) Approaches to Arabic Dialects: A
Collection of Articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his
Sixtieth Birthday. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 97-116.
2004d ‘Arabian Gulf hiyya biyya, Jewish Babylonian farfisa, Christian Sicilian
sepolcri: popular customs with a common origin?’ Journal of Semitic
Studies 49/2. 275-287.
2004e ‘Tanwīn in the Arabic Dialects of Eastern Arabia’. Woidich, M. and
Aguadé, J. (eds) Festschrift in Honour of the 60th Birthday of Peter
Behnstedt—Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí, 8. Zaragoza
[2006]. 89-97.
2004f Review of Kurpershoek, P.M. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central
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Series, 14/3. 273-276.
2005a Dialect, Culture and Society in Eastern Arabia, Volume II: Ethnographic
Texts. Handbuch der Orientalistik Series. Leiden, Boston: Brill. xli +
347pp.
2005b ‘The Birth of Orientalism: Sir William Jones’. France, P. and Gillespie, S.
(eds) The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Vol III
1690-1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1. 443-455.
2005c ‘Theme X of the verb in the Arabic dialects of eastern Arabia’. Khan, G.
(ed.) Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
115-125.
2005d ‘Dialect and national identity: the cultural politics of self-representation
in Bahraini musalsalāt’. Paul Dresch and James Piscatori (eds) Monarchies
and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf.
Reading: I.B. Tauris. 52-72.
2006a ‘Bahraini Arabic’. Versteegh, K., Eid, M., Elgibali, A., Woidich, M. and
Zaborski, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Vol 1:
A-Ed. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 241-255.
2006b ‘Gulf States’. Versteegh, K., Eid, M., Elgibali, A., Woidich, M. and Zaborski,
A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Vol 1: A-Ed.
Leiden, Boston: Brill. 210-216.
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Studies 36. 25-34.
2006d ‘The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq’. Ammon, Dittmar, Mattheier and
Trudgill (eds) Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science
of Language and Society, Volume 3. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
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Cultural Studies on Arabic and Hebrew. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik
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Modern. British School of Archeology in Iraq. 123-134.
xviii bibliography of clive holes
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Zaborski, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Vol 2:
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lar poetry and political satire: a study in intertextuality from Jordan’.
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Eastern Literatures 10 No 3. 273-289.
2007e (with Abu Athera, S.S.) ‘Animal imagery in modern Bedouin poetry’.
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Society. Reading: Ithaca Press. xviii+353pp.
2008b ‘A Bedouin poem on the Iraq War’. Toorawa, S. (ed.) Festschrift for Roger
Allen: Al-‘Arabiyya 40. 3.
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de l’arabe à travers l’histoire. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters. 193-229.
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revised version of the Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia,
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contents xix

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xx contents
indeterminacy and the comparative method 1
TOPICS IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

2 jonathan owens
INDETERMINACY AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD:

ARABIC AS A MODEL FOR UNDERSTANDING
THE HISTORY OF ARAMAIC
Jonathan Owens
1. Introduction
Historical linguistics seeks not only to render plausible reconstruc-

tions of earlier stages of a language, but also to localize postulated
developments within specific times and places. Semitic languages
offer a rich challenge to historical linguistics in the latter respect
precisely because a number of its members are attested either over
long periods of time or over broad geographical areas, or both.
Applying the comparative method, the basic analytic tool of historical
linguistics, to them potentially allows a detailed testing of its applica-
tive generality. One issue is how temporally precise, or determinate,
solutions suggested by the comparative method are. This question is
addressed here, using Aramaic as the language of study, and Arabic
as a language of analogical support.1
2. Proto-Semitic *ð in Aramaic
The issue can be set out on the basis of an article of scholarly rich-
ness, Driver (1926) approached the question of the chronological
dating of the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel, along with Ezra,
is of special interest for Aramaicists and Semiticists because about
half of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible is written in Aramaic and hence
it is one of the earliest extensive sources about Aramaic. Daniel him-
self was a Jewish counselor in the Babylonian court of Nebuchadnezzar
who reigned between 605-562 bce, hence dating the text is of con-
siderable interest. Driver’s conclusion that the text of Daniel was
written down in its current form around 300 bce against suggestions
1
As in Holes 1991, the bulk of the Arabic data comes from application of the
comparative method to contemporary varieties of Arabic. Classical Arabic plays only
a background role.
4 jonathan owens
that the language of Daniel is from the era of the Biblical Daniel, has
now been generally been accepted (Collins 1993:16). The interest for
Driver’s work here is not the issue of textual dating, but rather the
type of evidence he adduces to justify it, in particular one issue
regarding the realization of proto-Semitic *ð in Aramaic as z or d.2
The main sources Driver uses, besides the Biblical Aramaic (BA)
of Daniel and Ezra are the Aramaic papyri from Egypt, dating from
the early fifth century bce. Collectively these sources are a fairly uni-
form variety included within what is sometimes termed Official
Aramaic (Reichsaramäisch). Driver’s remarkable attention to detail
allows one to interpret his data independently of his own conclu-
sions. His own are as follows.
According to Driver, Biblical Aramaic and/or the papyri had on
a variational basis /z/ and /d/ as reflexes of */ð/, as in (1).
(1) znā ~ dnā “this (masc.)”
zhaḇ ~ dhaḇ “gold”
ziy ~ diy “relative clause/possessor marker”
These two reflexes are also found in the Egyptian papyri. Using care-
ful quantitative observations, Driver notes that the earlier Ezra con-
tained more z ~ d variation than did Daniel, with d becoming nearly
categorical in Daniel.3 In the papyri there is a similar decrease in
variation over time in favor of d. Driver further points out that other
changes in Aramaic tend to correlate with the move from z to d, for
instance, variation in the reflex of proto-Semitic *ð̻ as q ~ ʕ in earlier
Aramaic (arq ~ arʕ “land”) in favor of ʕ in later, including Daniel
(1926:113).
Driver went beyond noting the synchronic alternation in these
varieties, arguing that there was a linear sequence in Aramaic lan-
guage history, *ð > z > d. He explicitly rejects the idea that the ori-
ginal split was simultaneous:
2
Names of letter or graphemes are written in quotation marks, or are repre-
sented in the original script, their phonological realization in italics. “Historical” in
this paper usually refers to “attested in a written source in the main script of the
relevant language”. Historical Aramaic thus begins in the tenth century bce, from
which era the first inscriptions derive (with caveats implicit in n. 5). The history of
Aramaic, of course, is older than this.
I would note that the history of proto-Semitic *θ probably runs parallel to *ð,
though this sound requires treatment of its own.
3
In his 1926 article, Driver simply speaks of the two values, ‫“ ז‬z” and ‫“ ד‬d”, with-
out specifying a phonetic value for them. That he saw these as phonetically different
from and reflexes of proto-Semitic *ð is clear throughout his paper, as when he notes

“… although both ‫ ז‬and ‫ ד‬represent an original dh () …” (1926: 113).
(2)4 z
*ð
d
He argues against this by noting a chronological transition in the

papyri where z in the relative marker is first attested in 495 bce,
d not until 447. By 400 bce d had fully gained the upper hand. Driver
further dismisses an inscription from the early ninth century bce
with d as a scribal error. Assyrian scribes mistakenly wrote in
Akkadian Addi-idri in place of the intended Hadad-ʕezer, the name
of the king of Damascus. It can also be noted in this context that
eventually, e.g. in Syriac and in Samaritan Aramaic, as well as in
modern varieties, the d variant did completely supplant z, so the
endpoint of Driver’s sequence is at least correct.
Against Driver’s conclusion on this point, it is in fact easy to moti-
vate the very interpretation which Driver rejects, namely the simul-
taneous development of z and d as in (2). Today it is generally
accepted that speech communities and individuals in them can say
exactly the “same” conceptual thing in different ways. Holes (1987),
for instance, notes a series of phonological and morphophonological
variants among the Arabic-speaking communities of Bahrain, some-
times one and the same speaker using different variants of the same
form. Alternations such as darasat ~ dirsat “she studied”, ykitbūn ~
yiktubūn “they write” are richly described and explained, both in
terms of group-based and individual variation. Within Aramaic d ~
z variation is attested over a long period of time, beginning with
Biblical Aramaic and still present in Nabataean in 100 ce (Cantineau
1930:41). Muraoka and Porten (2003S:4) note that “d” (‫ )ד‬is in fact
attested around 500 bce in the Egyptian papyri, though confirming
Driver, note that it increases relative to ‫ ז‬over the century.
The least plausible element of Diver’s explanation is its phonetic
implausibility. The change from z to d is itself unmotivated. It is even
less so in that in Aramaic d and z have an etymologically independent
status from *ð–derived reflexes of z ~ d. BA dbaq “adhere to” and
4
For the sake of orientation it is relevant to note that this change represents a
merger, *z and *d being independent proto-Semitic phonemes:
z
z
*ð
d
d
6 jonathan owens
zman “time”, for instance, derive from *d and *z. Why all *ð-derived
reflexes of z, and only these, should suddenly merge with d is not
explained. An extended coexistence of the two variants and an even-
tual complete merging, as in Syriac, in favor of d is in line with
standard variational-historical linguistic teaching.
Driver’s linearly-orientated explanation for the development of
proto-Semitic *ð in Aramaic is thus untenable.
Driver’s interpretation has not stood the test of time, yet there are
elements of his explanation which need to be given greater attention
in a broader account of the development of proto-Semitic *ð in
Aramaic. Contemporary Aramaic studies offer another interpretation
of the grapheme “z” ( ‫ )ז‬in Old5 and Official Aramaic. Among
Aramaicists it is usually assumed that early Aramaic had ð, deriving
from PS *ð, which then developed into d. Segert (1997:117), echoing
Degen (1969:34) notes that the “letter z was used for both the sibilant
/z/ and interdental /ð/”, so that Segert postulates ð (and θ) in Old
Aramaic (1997:119).6 Huehnergard (1995:268) suggests that Old
Aramaic ð was written with the phonetically-closest letter, namely
“z”. Kaufman (1974:117) sees the change ð > d as occurring at the
end of the Old Aramaic period.
Garr (1985:26) gives a basis for the postulation of proto-Aramaic
*ð even in the absence of graphemic evidence. Both come from devel-
opments which occurred in Official Aramaic. The reflex d in Official
Aramaic could only have occurred from ð. This is an implicit rejec-
tion of Driver’s z > d development. In Garr’s interpretation, as with
Huehnergard and Kaufman, Old Aramaic graphemic “z” represented
derivates of both etymological proto-Semitic *z and etymological
proto-Semitic *ð. These are interpreted as distinctive phonemes, both
in proto-Semitic, and in the earlier stages of Aramaic. The develop-
ment is thus:
(3) PS > OA > Official Aramaic
*ð > ð > d
5
Roughly, Old Aramaic (Früharamäisch) is the stage before Official Aramaic,
approximately 1000 bce—800 or 600 bce (Degen 1965: 1). Terminology and dating
of Aramaic varieties varies from scholar to scholar and indeed, when “Aramaic” as a
linguistic entity should be recognized is a matter of debate (see Huehnergard 1995).
In any case, extensive historical sources are not found before 1000 bce
6
Segert in an earlier work (1975: 91) considers, but does not adopt, the possibil-
ity that the split of proto-Semitic *ð took place in the Aramaic pre-historic period.
In this view, there was no change *ð > z, only *ð > d. This interpreta-
tion currently appears to be the dominant view among Aramaicists
(Kaufman, Huehnergard, Muraoka and Porten, Folmer 1995:49).
Garr does give a second alternative. *ð did split into d and z, but
at different times and places. The development of d, as in the Egyptian
papyri and Biblical Aramaic is explicable if *ð had survived into a
later era, whereas the z of Old Aramaic inscriptions developed earlier.
This alternative is basically represented in (2) above.
While Driver’s *ð > z > d must be regarded as implausible, so far
as I know, which alternative, (2) or (3) above, is the better one has
not been extensively debated. As seen, solution (3) has currency
today among Aramaicists. Here I would like to take up this question,
and in so doing resurrect one important assumption in Driver’s
interpretation, namely that proto-Semitic *ð did indeed have a pho-
netic value of z in early Aramaic.
There are, in fact, two issues to be dealt with. The first is whether
(2) or (3) better represents Aramaic language history. This is the basic
question. The second deals with the era in which d and z arose, if at
all, from *ð. As well as observations from within Aramaic, I will
underpin my arguments with analogical arguments from Arabic and
Semitic in general, and from variationist theory.
2. Did Aramaic *ð > z Occur?
2.1. Orthography
As seen in (3), many Aramaicists do not postulate a change *ð > z
at all. However, a literalist interpretation of Aramaic orthography
requires this interpretation, since ‫ ז‬after all has minimally, by com-
mon consent the phonetic value of z. I think the literalist interpreta-
tion is correct.
To begin with, that d < *ð occurred in Old Aramaic is attested in
Driver’s ‘scribal error’, described above, and in at least one token in
an Aramaic text in the 7th/6th century (Segert 1975:92). Equally, ‫ז‬
occurs in various Aramaic sources all the way into Nabataean times
(Collins 1993:16, Cantineau 1930:41). A contemporarily-occurring
d ~ z variation, or from the perspective of the original sources, a ‫~ ז‬
‫ ד‬variation in the same etymological lexical set, is thus attested over
1,000 years of Aramaic language history.
8 jonathan owens
No one to my knowledge has argued that ‫ = ז‬ð obtains throughout

this period. Instead, later occurrences of ‫ז‬, for instance in Nabataean
(Cantineau 1930:41, citing an inscription from 290 ce in the Hijaz)
are held to be fossilized orthographic reflexes.
The argument for fossilization I believe is introduced as a deus ex
machina required on independent linguistic grounds, which weaken
the case for the assumption of original ‫ = ז‬ð. The background to this
is as follows (see Muraoka and Porten:5). Beginning sometime in the
Official Aramaic period a linguistic change set in which the (non-
geminate) stops b, g, d, k, p, t spirantized after a vowel, this pronun-
ciation being represented here with an underscore, ḇ gḏḵ p ṯ, and
by lack of a dot in the letter in the Aramaic script. While the argu-
ment is not well-articulated, it is clear that if Vd > Vḏ occurred by,
say 400 bce, then a first century bce text with ‫ = ז‬ð (Collins 1993:14)
cannot be held to represent ð, since by this time ð is an allophonic
(post-vocalic) variant of d. If “z” did represent ð, why wouldn’t it be
used as the post-vocalic variant Vð? Furthermore, if ð in the Official
Aramaic period had two sources, one from original proto-Semitic
*ð, as described above and represented as “z” (‫)ז‬, and one from the
new post-vocalic spirantization rule and represented as “ḏ” (‫)ד‬, one
would have a remarkable case of a phonetic merger held apart by
etymological convention.
To save the situation, the idea of graphemic fossilization is intro-
duced. ‫ ז‬does not represent ð in later occurrences, but rather a fos-
silized variant which originated as a representation of ð, but by later
times occurs only as a lexicalized convention.
A graphemic fossilization which extended over at least 600 years
of language history (say 400 bce–200 ce) is decidedly odd in Semitic
languages, however. In general in Semitic consonantal scripts indi-
vidual phonemes are represented by distinctive letters. Where there
is a many to one mismatch, as in the early Arabic script, it tends to
be quickly rectified. As soon as Arabic began to be widely used as a
language of writing, it developed distinguishing points for conso-
nants, such as “”, originally representing both d and ð giving rise to

and . This disambiguation took place within the first century of
Islam, even if full implementation took longer.
It might of course be argued that a certain degree of diglossia
allowed such graphemic fossilization to be maintained. This seems
to me to be the only general condition which could sustain the sug-
gestion. The issue of diglossia in Aramaic requires separate consid-

eration, though from the outset comparisons with Arabic diglossia
(Huehnergard 1995:275 n. 37) appear to me to be misplaced. Certainly
it needs to be motivated independently of those linguistic issues
which diglossia is invoked to explain. Here it can only be noted that
in general Aramaic is a “reform-orientated” language, with different
varieties utilizing and developing separate scripts (e.g. eastern vs.
western), and different varieties indicating local linguistic changes in
their orthography. The strong influence of Samaritan Hebrew on
Samaritan Aramaic, for instance, noted extensively by Macuch
(1982:78-128), is apparent from the available sources. Why only ‫< ז‬
ð should consistently fossilize is thus unclear.
Again invoking a parallel from Arabic, in Middle Arabic texts,
such as Galland’s edition of 1001 Nights there is variation between
ð ~ d, as in hāði ~ hādi7 “this (sg. fem.)”, which is transparently due
to actual pronunciation. ð is the Classical Arabic norm, whereas d
represents the Syrian dialect which underlay Galland’s edition (Mahdi
1984). No one has suggested that d in a word like hādi represents
anything other than itself.
It is also interesting to note, that given the often assumed strong
Nabataean influence on the creation of the North Arabic script, the
Arabic script never chose “z” to represent ð. In Nabataean, however,
given the “z” = ð interpretation, such a model would have been pres-
ent (as in Cantineau 1930:41, cited above).
Taking these observations together, the lack of orthographic “ð”
in Aramaic means simply there is no *ð attested in the language
(until the b, g, d, k, p, t spirantization). If Old Aramaic did in fact
have ð it would at some point have distinguished it orthograph-
ically.
2.2. Language Variation and Change

Given (2), with two values of proto-Semitic *ð, d and z, the variation
described in Official Aramaic by Driver in section 1 above is entirely
in keeping with what is known about variation in language com-
munities. In Arabic there have been numerous studies documenting
the synchronic maintenance of competing variants from a number
7
For instance, on p. 197 five tokens of d in hādih (spelled hdh).
10 jonathan owens
of Arabic-speaking regions. Holes (1987) on Bahraini Arabic cited

above, describes communal contact which, until very recent times,
appears to have supported variational stability across very different
contact varieties over at least 200 years (see also Abdel Jawad 1981,
Owens 1998, Al-Wer 2003 for further). Evidence from Arabic in 2.4
below will confirm that multiple reflexes of an originally unitary pho-
neme can co-exist over very long periods of time. While Driver’s
historical linguistic conclusions are suspect, his careful variationist
reading of the data, with different graphemic variants representing
different pronunciations, is entirely plausible.
2.3. Proto-Semitic
The change of *ð > z is well attested in Semitic. It is, in fact, the rule.
All Ethiopic Semitic has it, Akkadian does, and so does Hebrew, the
closest, well-attested sister of Aramaic. Indeed, given other highly
characteristic shared retentions or shared innovations with Hebrew
(*p, *š, *x > ħ, *γ > ʕ, etc.), it would almost have been perverse for
Aramaic not to have shared, initially at least, in the ð > z shift.
Furthermore, the innovations shared with Hebrew are early ones,
very likely (in the view taken in this paper) in the pre-historic era
(“historical” in the sense of n. 2). The *ð > z/d change equally fits
into an early spectrum of change in NW Semitic.
2.4. Parallels in Arabic

Arabic is one of the few Semitic languages to have maintained proto-
Semitic *ð > ð up to the present day. It has, however, not done so
uniformly across all varieties. Reflexes of *ð are, broadly, as follows.
*ð > ð, Eastern Arabia, Yemen and Persian Gulf, Iraq, Eastern Libya,
occasionally in North Africa (e.g. Tunisia, Mauretania)
d, Egypt, Sudan, Jedda, Damascus, North Africa
z, Uzbekistan, Anatolia (Azex, Jastrow 1978:36-7))
v, Anatolia (Siirt)
d̻ (ð̻ > d̻ ?), Western Sudanic Arabic
The reflex \ found in Western Sudanic Arabic perhaps arises via

an emphatic variant of *ð, as occurs in a number of Arabic dialects
(e.g. Jordanian hāð̻a “this”) and by this reckoning could be conjoined
with the ð > d change. Whatever the origin, it will not be considered
further here.
On a geographical basis maintenance of the proto form *ð > ð is
the most widespread, followed by d, with z and even more so v being
restricted. The presence of z in Uzbekistan Arabic (Central Asian
Arabic) is significant on historical grounds, as this variety forms a
Sprachinsel which was cut off from the rest of the Arabic-speaking
world by the end of the eighth century. The existence of the same
reflex in Anatolia suggests an early common origin. Assuming this
early origin, along with its continued existence today, this reflex has
existed for some 1,200 years (at a minimum), co-terminously with
ð. Note that this time span is approximately the same as the proposed
co-existence of the d ~ z reflexes of *ð in the Aramaic up to Nabataean
times.
The development of present-day distributions can be modeled
using the wave representation of language change (e.g. Bailey 1973).
In Diagram 1, the numbers in the top row represent historical lin-
guistic stages, the rows representing dialectal variants. Roughly
speaking, the present-day situation is as in step 3. Steps 4 and 5 are
future hypothetical developments, as will be discussed presently.8
Diagram 1. “ð” in Arabic, past, present and hypothetical future
1 2 3 4 5
ð ð ð ð d
ð ð ð d d
ð ð d d d
ð d d d d
ð v v v v
ð z z z z
At some point, some ð speakers innovated to v, z, and d.9 I assume

that the changes to v and z were roughly at the same time, as they
8
Note that there is no need here to cite Classical Arabic ð as justification of an
original proto-Arabic *ð. This follows, I believe by inspection, from the reflexes of
the forms in present-day Arabic (roughly, stage 4). Of course, it is relevant that Clas-
sical Arabic (ð) does not contradict this reconstruction.
9
Or, Arabic acquired speakers who substituted for *ð.
It cannot be ruled out that the merger of *ð with d in some dialects of Arabic
wasn’t due in part to sub- or adstratal influence from Aramaic. Given the “natural-
ness” of the change, however, proving this is probably impossible, and in any case
does not affect the theoretical point being made.
12 jonathan owens
are attested only in contiguous areas. I also assume that at least the
change to z occurred early (by 800 ce), to account for the Uzbekistan-
Anatolia isogloss.
As noted, Step 3 is roughly where the distributions of the forms
are today in geographical terms, though if one were representing the
distributions to scale, the z and v reflexes would be quite small. There
is no certainty that after Step 3, Step 4 will ensue. It is true that local
changes of ð > d are attested, for instance in the Arabic of Amman
and in Bethlehem Arabic (Al-Wer p.c. 2007,10 Amara 2005), though
it remains to be seen whether this change will spread throughout the
region.
Nonetheless, steps 4 and 5 are added in order to make the analogy
to Aramaic concrete. Hypothetically, step 4 could occur, and as noted
in the previous paragraph, if ð does change, it changes to d in the
contemporary Arabic world. Step 5 would be the final change of ð
to d and at this stage no more ð reflexes would remain. The analogy
to Aramaic is clear, and indeed, the fact that a nearly identical change
did go to completion in Aramaic lends speculative concreteness to
our stages 4 and 5. Step 1 represents a proto-Semitic origin, and from
step 2 innovations begin, with *ð merging in some variants or dia-
lects of the language. Our hypothetical Step 5 represents either (2)
or (3) above, the endpoint of a merger that has finally moved across
the entire language community.
Returning now to the major problem, whether (2) or (3) best rep-
resents the linguistic history of *ð, on the basis of our analogical
reasoning, between (2) and (3), the relevant analogy with Arabic is
(2). In Arabic *ð has ultimately split into d, z and v. This produces
a nearly perfect parallel with (2), the only difference being that no v
variant is attested in Aramaic. This interpretation-by-analogy
10
Al-Wer (p.c.) notes that Amman Arabic is decisively influenced by migration
from West Bank Palestinians and from rural Jordanian speakers. Urban Palestinian
dialects have d as a reflex of *ð, but Jordanians generally have ð. Currently in Amman
developments are moving in the direction of the stop variant d, aligning Amman
with Damascus and Beirut. Nonetheless, Al-Wer (p.c.) notes “… that evidence of the
pre-merger state will be present for a very long time since the split state of affairs
continues to be the majority form in the country as a whole (although crucially not
so in the large urban centres); relic forms, not from the Standard, will always be
found in Amman in the future”.
The parallel with the current data is clear: alternative variants of the same proto-
form can subsist side by side over long periods of time.
combines Driver’s variationist z ~ d stage, with contemporary

Aramaicists’ derivation of all reflexes from ð.
Our hypothetical example from Diagram 1 further allows us to
clarify and criticize the reasoning behind the alleged development in
(3) above.
i. Let us assume a situation where stage 5 is now the contemporary
stage and in this stage there is a one-to-one graphemic-phonemic
mapping, hence “d” = d, “v” = v and “z” = z.
ii. Further, assume that stage 5 reflexes lead to a reconstruction of
*ð, from which all varieties attested in stage 5 derive.
iii. Further assume that the only older surviving sources are those
of a form of Middle Arabic where etymological *ð is written only
as d (e.g. only haadih, as in n. 7).
Given the hypothetical contemporary (stage 5) reflexes d, v, z, one
might be led to assume that our Middle Arabic “d” was used to rep-
resent both etymological d , and the reconstructed ancestor *ð of d
~ v ~ z, i.e. one would claim that the scribes used “d” for both d and
ð. But in our controlled thought train, we know that this conclusion
would be erroneous. The surviving token of d in fact represented
only Middle Arabic “d” = d.
My claim for understanding Old Aramaic “z” is similar. Aramaicists
have simply worked in the opposite direction from the reasoning
given in the previous paragraph (see Owens 2006:21 for similar cases
among Arabicists). Given the existence of proto-Semitic *ð, they
conjecture that “z” represented the “earlier” proto-form ð. However,
there is no guarantee that this inference is any more correct than the
patently incorrect inference outlined in the previous paragraph that
Middle Arabic d represented more than one value. Instead, it is
equally likely that “z” represented something else; for instance, itself,
z.
There is a further lesson for the interpretation of the Aramaic
developments that can be derived from our extended analogy with
Arabic. Assuming stage 5 is reached, *ð is available only via recon-
struction since it is not attested in the contemporary community.
Changing assumption iii. above for the sake of illustration, assume
that by stage 5 no direct evidence for ð survived in our records of
Arabic, either in written attestations or in the dialectal and sociolin-
guistic studies which attest to its presence today. In this situation,
nothing comparable to Middle Arabic is available. It would be impos-
sible to prove the step-by-step development of the loss of ð as
14 jonathan owens
represented in Diagram 1. A development such as the following is

only a logical possibility. Diagram 2 essentially is (2) above, with an
added stage 2 in between. This represents Garr’s second suggestion,
that ð > z/d at different times.
Diagram 2. Possible development of d and z in Aramaic
1 2 3
ð ð d
ð z z
Diagram 2 could be inferred out of general theoretical assumptions

certainly, and by our analogy with incontrovertible facts of Arabic,
represented in Diagram 1. However, Garr’s second suggestion, that
*ð existed as a dialectal variant, along with z (< *ð) is not supported
by any direct evidence in the historical record.
Diagram 2 is situated in comparative linguistic time, not in chro-
nological time. Where should Diagram 2 (or the split represented in
(2) above) be situated historically? Given the lack of any direct evi-
dence for ð within the historical Aramaic era (beginning the tenth
century bce), it can be concluded that Aramaic entered the historical
era in stage 3 (Diagram 2), which is equally the endpoint of the split
represented in (2) above.
In the final analysis, the indeterminacy of the comparative method
can be constrained by our considerations here, but the constraints
are rather lax. If stage 2 in Diagram 2 occurred, it is inferred only
indirectly. When stage 3 occurred is uncertain. At a certain point,
all historical linguistic conclusions become inferential. I believe that
the best interpretation of the data is the representation in (2), that
*ð split into z and d in a pre-historical period. Variational theory
easily supports the maintenance of z ~ d reflexes over long periods
of time thereafter, and the split itself is sanctioned by a sober and
straightforward reading of Aramaic orthography, as well as by appli-
cation of the comparative method. Furthermore, analogies with a
nearly identical development in Arabic, along with an extended but
plausible hypothetical scenario for a future development of Arabic
helps us to better conceptualize the competing interpretations, and
all in all lend credence to the interpretation proposed here.
Bibliography
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in Amman. PhD thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Al-Wer, Enam. 2003. ‘Variability reproduced: a variationist view of the [^_ ]/[ḍ] oppo-
sition in modern Arabic dialects’. M. Haak, R. de Jong & K. Versteegh (eds),
Approaches to Arabic dialects. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 21-31.
Amara, Muhammad. 2005. ‘Language, Migration, and Urbanization: the Case of
Bethlehem’. Linguistics 43. 883-902.
Collins, John. 1993. A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Bailey, C-J., 1973. Variation and linguistic theory. Center for Applied Linguistics,
Arlington VA.
Cantineau, Jean. 1930. Le Nabatéen I: Notions générales—écriture, grammaire. Paris:
Librairie Ernest Leroux.
Cantineau, Jean. 1935. Le Nabatéen II: Choix de textes—lexique. Paris: Librairie
Ernest Leroux.
Degen, Rainer. 1969. Altaramäische Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Driver, G. R. 1926. ‘The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel’. Journal of Biblical Literature
1. 110-119.
Garr, Randall. 1985. Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 b.c. Philadelphia:
University of Philadelphia Press.
Folmer, Margaretha. 1995. The Aramaic Language in the Achaemenid Period.
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 68. Leuven: Peeters.
Holes, Clive. 1987. Language Variation and Change in a Modernising Arab State.
London: Kegan Paul International.
Holes, Clive. 1991. ‘Kashkasha with fronting and affrication of the velar stops revis-
ited: A Contribution to the historical philology of the pensinsular Arabic dialects’.
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652-78.
Huehnergard, John. 1995. ‘What is Aramaic?’. Aram 7. 261-82.
Jastrow, Otto. 1978. Die mesopotamisch-arabischen Qəltu-Dialekte. Bd. 1: Phonologie
und Morphologie. Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Kaufman, Stephen. 1974. The Akkadian Influence on Aramaic. Chicago: Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago, Assyriological Studies 19.
Macuch, Rudolph. 1982. Grammatik des samaritanischen Aramäischen. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Mahdi, Muhsin. 1984. The Thousand and One Nights. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
Muraoka, Takamitsu and Bezalel Porten. 2003. A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic,
(second revised edition). Leiden, Boston: Brill.
Owens, Jonathan. 1998. Neighborhood and Ancestry: Variation in the Spoken Arabic
of Maiduguri (Nigeria). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Owens, Jonathan. 2006. A Linguistic History of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University
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Segert, Stanislav. 1975. Altaramäische Grammatik. Leipzig: VEB Verlag.
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16 jonathan owens
from qǝltu to gǝlǝt 17
FROM qǝltu TO gǝlǝt: DIACHRONIC NOTES ON LINGUISTIC

ADAPTATION IN MUSLIM BAGHDAD ARABIC
Heikki Palva
1. Introduction
Since Haim Blanc’s Communal Dialects in Baghdad (1964), it is a

well-known fact that the dialects spoken in Baghdad can be divided
into three communal groups, corresponding to the speakers’ religious
affiliation. The dialect of the Muslims (MB) belongs to the so-called
gǝlǝt group of Mesopotamian Arabic, whereas the dialects of the Jews1
(JB) and the Christians (CB) belong to the qǝltu group. Historically,
JB and CB are regarded as direct descendants of medieval Iraqi
Arabic, whereas the present-day MB with its numerous Bedouin-type
traits clearly diverges from it.
As a gǝlǝt dialect MB is often classified as a dialect of Bedouin type,
or being of Bedouin provenance.2 These are of course rather impres-
sionistic notions based on a number of linguistic variables the relative
typological significance of which depends on the adopted stand-
point.3 Thus, in comparison with qǝltu dialects, most differences dis-
played by MB are undeniably of Bedouin type, but if MB is compared
1
The Jewish community in Baghdad was relatively big: most Jews left Iraq in
1950-51 and are now settled in Israel. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the
Jews and Christians lived in their ancient quarters north and west of Sūq al-Ghazl
respectively, while the population of al-Karkh was mainly Muslim Arabs (Duri
1960:907). In 1884 there were 30,000 Jews in Baghdad, by the beginning of the 20th
century 50,000, and ca. 100,000 Jews after World War Two. http://www.bh.org.il/
Communities/Archive/Baghdad.asp 15.11.2007.
2
“Bedouin-type dialects, such as are spoken in southern Iraq including Bagh-
dad…” Holes 1995:57; “gǝlǝt Arabic is of Bedouin provenance, unlike Christian
Baghdadi…” Abu-Haidar 2006a:222.
3
The relevance of all linguistic classifications depends on the aim as well as the
criteria applied. If the interest is purely synchronic, the classifications can be made
on the basis of an adequate selection of synchronically well-documented linguistic
variables for each dialect or group of dialects, without consideration of diachronic
and extralinguistic criteria. If the interest is focused on cultural and historical points
of view, diachronic and comparative data play a crucial role (Palva 2006:604).
18 heikki palva
with Bedouin dialects of ʿAnazī or Šammarī, or even of the šāwiya

type, its sedentary profile would become apparent (cf. Palva 1994:
460-465; id. 1997 passim).
The aim of this paper is, however, not to try to establish appro-
priate criteria for an adequate classification of MB. Here the approach
is diachronic. It is my aim to examine the historical interaction of
qǝltu and gǝlǝt dialects that has resulted in the present-day Muslim
dialect of Baghdad. As the material I use a number of typologically
prominent linguistic features in MB representing, on the one hand,
the urban dialect type related to JB and CB, and on the other, the
rural type related to Bedouin dialects spoken in southern Iraq and its
neighbourhood. In a short paper the number of variables treated is
necessarily restricted, and their relative weight in the argumentation
may be questioned.
Because MB has not been documented before the twentieth cen-
tury, its historical development can only be traced by using the pre-
sent dialect as the starting-point and by considering its structure in
the light of common rules of linguistic change, particularly in contact
between dialects of Arabic. Although changes that have taken place
hundreds of years ago have probably followed the same common
rules as today, the diachronic conclusions drawn depend on many
uncertain presumptions concerning matters such as communication
patterns between different social and religious groups or language
attitudes among them in different historical contexts, not to speak
about varying fashionable or stigmatized linguistic features among
different social groups. Yet, recent and ongoing developments in dif-
ferent dialects certainly are serviceable points of comparison. As to
individual linguistic features, relatively reliable diachronic conclu-
sions can also be drawn on the basis of past developments documen-
ted in other dialects.
2. qǝltu-type Features in the Muslim dialect of Baghdad
2.1. Use of the Reflex q of *q in a Number of Items, Instead of the

Main Reflex g
2.1.1. These include numerous lexical borrowings from Standard
Arabic, e.g., qallad ‘to copy, imitate’, qarrar ‘to decide on’, ṯaqqaf ‘to
impart education’, rāqab ‘to watch, observe’, ṭabbaq ‘to apply’, qtiraḥ
‘to suggest, recommend’, qāran ‘to compare’, qayyam ‘to estimate,

assess’, niqad ‘to review’, wiṯaq ‘to trust’, niqa ‘to cancel, abolish’,
waqqaʿ ‘to sign’. This group consists mostly of items connected to
different institutions of modern society, and the q reflex is adopted
as part of the lexical item.
2.1.2. On the other hand, there is another group of words which

display the q reflex but which belong to the everyday vernacular
vocabulary and obviously cannot be regarded as borrowings from
Standard Arabic. These ‘core items’ include, e.g., the following: quba
‘to receive’, ‘to collect’, qubal/qibal ‘to agree’, ‘to accept’, qarrab ‘to
cause to come near’, ‘to get close’, qira ‘to read’, ‘to recite’, qisam,
qassam ‘to divide’, qiṣad ‘to intend’, qaṭṭar ‘to drop’, qifaz ‘to jump’,
qufaṣ ‘to catch’, qufal ‘to lock’, qilla ‘shortage’, qalīl ‘few’, quwa ‘to be
or to become strong’, quwwa ‘strength’, qawi ‘strong’, qāʿ ‘bottom’,
baqar ‘cow’, ‘cattle’, buqa ‘to stay’, ‘to remain’, ṣiqaṭ ‘to fall’, ‘to top-
ple’, ṣaqqaṭ ‘to cause to fall’, ʿiqab ‘to follow’, ‘to succeed’, xilaq ‘to
create’, xōzaq ‘to stick’, ‘to cheat’, ‘to take in’, sibaq ‘to be, come, or
happen before or ahead of ’, ‘to precede’, and ṭarīq ‘way’. The most
plausible explanation to the use of the q reflex in this group of items
is that they are inherited MB qǝltu words adopted with the q reflex
by rural immigrants at a stage when the urban MB qǝltu for them
was the prestige dialect, that is, before the bedouinization process
started.
2.1.3. In some other high-frequency items which at first sight would

seem to belong to the core item category, the background of the q
reflex is different. Thus, e.g., the MB items sāq ‘to drive’ and sāyiq
‘driver’ are obvious Standard Arabic forms, whereas the genuine dia-
lectal sāg is used in the meaning ‘to drive, herd (animals)’. Another
q—g pair of the same type is liḥaq ‘to attach, append’, cf. liḥag ‘to
follow, trail after’. There are several other q—g pairs with different
or overlapping semantic fields, while some are free variants, e.g.,
qarrab ‘to cause to come near’ and garrab ‘to bring close’, ‘to get
close’; farraq ‘to divide’ and farrag ‘to distribute, dispense’; qisam and
gisam ‘to divide, split’; xuluq ‘character’ and xulug ‘temper’; siqa and
siga ‘to water, provide water for’; ṣidaq and ṣidag ‘to be truthful, tell
20 heikki palva
the truth’.4 In such cases the lexical distribution of the variants is

moving towards stylistic variation (see 3.1. below).
2.1.4. In present-day MB, forms with q are as a rule younger than

those with g, with the exception of a number of items exemplified in
section 2.1.2. above. A further group, related to both 2.1.2. and 2.1.3.,
consists of technical terms associated with the urban culture of the
past. Abu-Haidar illustrates the case with a few striking examples.
One of them concerns the term saqqa ‘water-carrier’, which used to
be part of MB vocabulary when water-carriers were a common sight
in inner Baghdad, but which is unknown to the younger generation:
“An elderly woman, when asked what a water-carrier did, replied:
is-saqqa čān yisgīna mayy ‘the water-carrier used to give us water to
drink’, using the /q/, /g/ morphophonemic alternation. Compare
also: nigalit il-manqala ‘I carried the brazier’, and giʿad ʿal-maqʿad ‘he
sat on the seat’, &c”. (Abu-Haidar 1987:47, n. 14.) Here saqqa, man-
qala and maqʿad are old, well-established technical terms for instru-
ments used in urban environments, adopted by rural immigrants in
their qǝltu-type form.
2.2. Use of the Verb Modifier da- the Most Common Function of
Which is Present Continuous or Habitual Action
Examples: dayiktib ‘he is writing’, šdatsawwi? ‘what are you doing?’
(Blanc 1964:115-116; Malaika 1963:80; Abu-Haidar 2006a:229).5 The
use of verb modifiers to mark different tense and aspect categories
is a prominent sedentary feature very well developed in all qǝltu dia-
lects (see Jastrow 1978:299-311), whereas in rural gǝlǝt dialects these
categories as a rule are unmarked. The same verb modifier is used in
JB and CB as well, but, significantly, in these dialects it occurs only
with the 1st p. sing. and plur. of the imperfect and has optative
4
Abu-Haidar 1987:46 gives a list of 15 items in which the g > q shift involves
semantic change from concrete to more abstract, ‘sophisticated’ meanings, e.g., ḥagg
‘bride-price’, ḥaqq ‘right, truth’. She also gives 5 examples of older, well-established
forms with q co-occurring with corresponding forms with g, e.g., warga ‘leaf’, warqa
‘piece of paper’; gubba ‘room’, qubba ‘dome’. A third list consists of 6 q—g pairs in
which the items with the q reflex are technical terms associated with medicine or
science, e.g., fatig ‘rip, tear’, fatiq ‘hernia’.
5
It may also function as an optative marker as in JB and CB, but, in contradistinc-
tion to these, also be preceded by xal- when the form is an unambiguous optative,
e.g., xaldangūl ‘let’s say’ (Blanc 1964:116).
function (Blanc 1964:116; Mansour 2006:239), while the present and

non-contingency markers in them are JB qad-/qa- and CB qa- (Blanc
1964:115; Abu-Haidar 1991:88; Mansour 2006:239). Apart from MB
there are no Muslim dialects in the Mesopotamian dialect area which
use the present marker da-; consequently, the feature has to be
regarded as an inherited MB qǝltu trait.
2.3. Use of Futurity Markers laḥ and raḥ

E.g., ma-raḥ yiği ‘he’s not going to come’ (Blanc 1964:117-118; Erwin
1963:138-139); according to Malaika (1963:82), laḥ is the more com-
monly used variant. In JB and CB the marker is ġaḥ (Abu-Haidar
1991:88-89; Blanc 1964:117 CB ġāḥ), which implies that, apart from
the difference as to the “non-Muslim” reflex of OA r, the markers are
identical. This is strong evidence of the common qǝltu background of
the feature. As a salient sedentary feature it could also be explained as
a result of the natural drift towards a relative tense system, but in that
case it would be an unlikely coincidence that the form of the marker
in MB would have become practically identical with those in JB and
CB. Generally speaking, the use of futurity markers derived from
*rāyiḥ is an old urban feature in the Mashriq, as suggested by its
occurrence also in Egypt (ḥa-, ha-, Behnstedt & Woidich 1985:
224-225), Damascus (laḥ(a) and raḥ(a), more rarely ḥa-, Grotzfeld
1965:87), Beirut (ṛāḥ-, Behnstedt 1997, Map 162), and parts of Leba-
non (ḥa-, ibid.).6
2.4. Use of the Proclitic d(ǝ)- to Add to the Imperative a Note of

Impatience or to Intensify the Sense of the Imperative
Examples: duklu ‘eat (pl.)’, ditkassaḥ ‘clear off!’ This feature is of com-
mon occurrence in MB, JB and CB (Blanc 1964:117; Malaika 1963:84;
Erwin 1963:140). In addition to JB and CB, the imperative modifier
d(ǝ)– has not been attested in qǝltu dialects; to my knowledge, the
only exception is the Mardin group (dē or prefixed də-, Mardin town
6
The use of futurity markers in sedentary dialects of the area probably dates from
medieval times already, as is suggested by the fact that dialects which make use of
markers going back to the conjunction ḥattā, used in Anatolian qǝltu dialects (ta-, tǝ-,
Jastrow 1978:301-302) and the dialects spoken in the surroundings of Aleppo (ta-,
Behnstedt 1997, Map 162), share this trait with Cypriot Arabic (tta-, ta-, Borg
1985:101-102). The markers < * ḥattā seem to have been an early northern Syrian–
Mesopotamian feature.
22 heikki palva
also dī, used like an interjection before the imperative, Jastrow

1978:311-312). This indicates that it is, or has been, a more or less
restricted local feature. Since the form and function in JB and CB are
identical with MB, the possibility that it in MB is a feature borrowed
from JB or CB cannot be definitely excluded. However, as dialect
shifts as a rule tend to move in the direction of the prestigious variant,
this development is unlikely. Therefore the plausible conclusion is
that in MB this is a trait inherited from medieval MB qǝltu.
2.5. Marking the Definite Direct Object of a Verb with an

Anticipatory Pronominal Suffix + a Proclitic l-
Examples: bāʿa lil-bēt ‘he sold the house’, ma-aḥibba l-hāḏa ‘I don’t
like him’ (Feghali 1928:362-363; Blanc 1964:128; Malaika 1963:63;
Erwin 1963:332; Abu-Haidar 2006a:230-231). Significantly, this con-
struction appears in JB and CB as well. It is also worth noticing that
MB makes more often use of the unmarked construction while in CB
the marked construction occurs more commonly (Abu-Haidar 1991:
116); most frequent it is in JB, according to Blanc, actually the normal
one (Blanc’s emphasis, 1964:129). In sedentary Arabic dialects spoken
in the Mashriq this syntactic feature is an obvious Aramaic substrate
device (e.g., Feghali 1928:362-363). In view of the language situation
in the Syrian–Mesopotamian area during the last pre-Islamic and the
first Islamic centuries it is not unexpected that this feature also occurs
in Maltese and Cypriot Arabic, spoken by Christians, as well as in the
insular Arabic dialects in Central Asia, spoken by Muslims (Borg
1981:35-62; Borg 1985:138; Blanc 1964:130; Blau 1961:215; Fischer
1961:262-263). As an Aramaic substrate device its more frequent
occurrence in JB and CB is rather natural, but there is no reason to
suppose that it would have been adopted by MB speakers from the
non-prestigious JB or CB. Therefore, in MB it must be regarded as a
trait inherited from the medieval MB of the qǝltu type.
2.6. Use of a Prefixed Indetermination Marker, a Variant of Which

in MB, JB and CB is fad(d)
Examples: hayy čānat fadd fikra mumtāza ‘that was an excellent idea’
(Erwin 1963:355); walad zēn / fadwálad zēn ‘a good boy’; cf. ‘some’,
‘one’: fadyōm ‘one day’, faššī ‘something’ (Blanc 1964:118, 126;
Malaika 1963:69; Erwin 1963:355-358).
All three dialects have also an uncontracted variant of fard: MB

farǝd, JB faġad, CB faġǝd. The development of a new indetermination
marker is a sedentary feature found in the Mesopotamian dialect area
as well as in a number of North African dialects (*wāḥid plus article).
Apart from the dialects spoken in Baghdad, it is attested in the qǝltu
dialects of ʿĀna (fadd, farǝd) and Mosul (fadd, faġǝd), and signifi-
cantly, insular Arabic dialects in Central Asia (fat), a fact that is evi-
dence of its early, Abbasid times emergence (Blanc 1964:119). It
might be worth noticing that a marker of the same type is used in the
surrounding languages: Turk. bir, Pers. ye(k), Northeastern Neo-Ara-
maic xa (Blanc 1964:119; Edzard 2006:189.)
2.7. Absence of Separate Feminine Plural Forms in Personal

Pronouns and Finite Verbs
This is a feature shared by most present-day sedentary dialects of
Arabic, whereas in Bedouin dialects to the east of Egypt and in rural
dialects spoken in southern Mesopotamia and the Gulf coast, the
feminine plural forms are retained (Ingham 1982:38). In MB, the
reduction of morphological categories in personal pronouns and
finite verbs is probably an inherited qǝltu trait, although the natural
drift combined with dialect contact would probably have led to the
same development, as it has actually done as part of sedentarization
process, e.g., in urban centres such as Basra, Zubair and Kuwait (ibid.;
Palva 2006:611).
2.8. Absence of Form IV as a Productive Morphological Category

According to Blanc, traces of Form IV verbs can be recognized only
by the perfect and the participle, such as the MB ǝnṭēt ‘I gave’, mǝnṭi
‘having given’. In addition, there are some fossilized items, e.g., agbal
‘he came forward’ and awdaʿ ‘he took leave of ’ (Blanc 1964:111). The
qǝltu-type vernacular dialect(s) spoken in Baghdad in Abbasid times
may actually have lacked Form IV, as suggested by its absence in JB
and CB (see Mansour 2006:238; Abu-Haidar 1991:50-51). Therefore
it is worth noticing that also the sedentary Baḥārna dialect does not
use Form IV except in fixed expressions; otherwise it is replaced by
Forms I and (mainly) II (Holes 2006:252). According to Johnstone,
Form IV is used in Bedouin-type dialects spoken in Kuwait and
Qatar, how productively, is however not mentioned (Johnstone 1967:
73, 111).
24 heikki palva
2.9. Absence of Salient Bedouin-type Syllable Structures

The typologically most conspicuous Bedouin-type syllable structures
are “the gahawa syndrome”, e.g., gahwa —> gahawa, yaxbuṭ—>
yaxabuṭ and the Najdi resyllabification rule, e.g., gahawa —> ghawa,
yaxabuṭ —> yxabuṭ, katabat —> ktibat; zalama —> zlima (De Jong
2007:151-153), which are absent from MB. This is an obvious major
case of phonetic adaptation by immigrant Bedouin speakers, the ex-
Bedouin rural population in southern Iraq included (Blanc 1964:166;
Johnstone 1967:6-7).7
3. gǝlǝt-Type Features in the Muslim Dialect of Baghdad
3.1. Use of the Voiced g Reflex of OA q
In a classification based on linguistic contrasts, the voiced reflex of

OA q is the most exclusive Bedouin feature. The Bedouin character
of MB is, however, compromised by the fact that in a number of
items the reflex is q, and on the other hand, that the g reflex is used
without its phonetically-conditioned affricated allophone ğ, which is
part of the phonetic system of the neighbouring Bedouin dialects as
well as, e.g., of the dialect spoken in Basra and Kuwait until the mid-
twentieth century (Johnstone 1967:5, 29-32). However, in a few items
the affrication has been retained and adopted as an established form
used in Baghdad regardless of religious affiliation, e.g., Bāb eš-šarği
‘the East Gate (quarter)’, (hawa) šarği ‘east wind’, but: šarqi ‘eastern’
(Blanc 1964:27). The form šarği may well be explained as an adopted
Bedouin term which, used with the definite article, is the name of a
special kind of wind, but the historical context in which the name of
a city quarter has been established in its Bedouin form is not known.
A comparison with urban dialects that display certain Bedouin fea-
tures suggests that the first step in the bedouinization process proba-
bly is adopting separate lexical items associated with the rural sphere.
This stage obtains in urban Maghribi Arabic, which usually displays g
in rural-based items such as bagra ‘cow’, girbe ‘waterskin’, gīṭūn ‘tent’
and gnīn ‘rabbit’ (Marçais 1902:17; Heath 1989:6; Boucherit 2002:
7
Forms such as laḥam ‘meat’, šahar ‘month’, baḥar ‘sea’, baġaḷ ‘mule’ do not
belong to the gahawa syndrome cases, but the latter a-vowel is an anaptyxis (Blanc
1964:55).
40-41). The second stage is reported by Talmoudi from Sūsa (Sousse):

In the old genuine dialect of the town, the q and g reflexes of *q are in
lexical distribution, whereas “in the koineized ‘Sūsi’ of the suburbs
and of the younger generation the pattern is changed: [g] is rather a
stylistic variant of [q] and can replace it anywhere, whereas the /g/ in
early loans cannot be replaced by /q/”. (Talmoudi 1980:22-23.) The
adoption of the g reflex does not necessarily imply that the rural dia-
lects are in the majority or are felt as prestigious, but this particular
feature may be perceived of as carrying positive connotations such as
“toughness, manhood and masculinity” in Amman (Abdel-Jawad
1981:176; Palva 1994:466). In Tunisia, the rural g reflex has infiltrated
from the suburbs of Sūsa to the Medina, where youngsters use it in
order to appear as tough (Talmoudi 1980:22).
A parallel development has been attested in the Euphrates group
of Mesopotamian qǝltu dialects. Thus, ʿĀna and Hīt have grayyeb
‘near’, Dēr ez-Zōr bgaṛa ‘cow’ and nāga ‘she-camel’, which all are
Bedouin loanwords. On the other hand, both dialects have items like
gahwa ‘coffee’, bagra ‘cow’ (ʿĀna and Hīt, Blanc 1964:27) and gaḷib
‘heart’, gāʿ ‘ground’, bāg, ybūg ‘to steal’ (Dēr ez-Zōr) in which g has
been substituted for the older qǝltu -type q (Jastrow 1978:42). In the
Euphrates group dialects this development may have been going on
for several generations, as is indicated by the fact that forms such as
gdr ‘to be able’, gṭʿ ‘to break up’, q/gwl ‘to say’, bagra ‘cow’, rigba
‘neck’, and grīb ‘close’ were attested among the Karaite Jews at Hīt by
Khan, whose fieldwork among them was undertaken in Beersheva
forty years after they left Iraq (Khan 1997:56). In all probability, these
first signs of incipient bedouinization reached the Muslim population
of the town well before the local Jews.
3.2. OA k > k/č With a Mainly Phonetically-conditioned

Distribution
In the dialects of Arabic, the affrication of k is not only a Bedouin
trait but also well known from some rural sedentary dialects spoken,
e.g., in Bahrain, Soukhne and Central Palestinian villages. These dif-
fer, however, from Bedouin dialects in that the affrication in them is
not phonetically conditioned, but probably attributable to a push
chain development due to the fronting of *q (*q > k; *k > č) (Behn-
stedt 1994:7-11; Holes 2006:242; Palva 1995:181-187). In Jordan as
well as in the West Bank, the large-scale migration and the rapid
26 heikki palva
urbanization process along with the resulting dialect levelling have

led to a substantial regression in the use of the k-affrication, which in
urban environments is not only a non-prestigious feature, but is even
suppressed as a stigma (Abdel-Jawad 1981:176-177; 301-302). Con-
trariwise, in MB similar development has not taken place. Before the
gǝlǝt vs. qǝltu split in Baghdad, the non-affricated variant k was used
indiscriminately by Muslims, Jews and Christians. The adoption of
the k/č variation by Muslim speakers rendered it a sociolinguistic
marker which differentiated the prestigious MB from the non-presti-
gious JB and CB minority dialects. The function of the reflexes of *q
and *k as social group markers thus seems to have led to an asym-
metry between the phonemically and phonetically parallel cases in
the phonemic system of MB.8 However, this explanation is rendered
uncertain when compared with the situation prevailing in Dēr ez-Zōr,
where differences between religious groups are not involved. There
the lexically restricted transition of q to g is phonetically unconditio-
ned, and g is not affricated, whereas the affrication of k in a number
of items is always phonetically conditioned (Jastrow 1978:42-43; this
applies to ʿĀna as well, Blanc 1964:26-27).
3.3. Use of C-ǝč and V-č as the Suffixed Personal Pronoun for the
2nd p. sing. fem. Instead of the qǝltu-Type Forms -ki (CB) and
C-ǝk, V-ki (JB)
The development is illustrated by the examples abūč, bētǝč MB, abūki,
bētǝk JB, and abūki, bētki CB (Blanc 1964:65; Abu-Haidar 1991:81;
Abu-Haidar 2006a:226; Mansour 2006:236). As far as the affrication
of k remains phonetically conditioned, the contrast bētǝk vs. bētǝč is
purely phonetic, whereas the contrast abūki JB, CB vs. abūč MB pro-
ves that the change from qǝltu to gǝlǝt in this case implied one further
step, namely adoption of the phonetically unconditioned use of -č as
a feminine morpheme.9 The medieval qǝltu-type MB may, of course,
8
Abdel-Jawad explains the similar asymmetry prevailing in Amman by the spea-
kers’ mixed backgrounds (1981:163-165).
9
Cf. the development in Amman, where the unconditioned č of the Central Pale-
stinian rural dialects is a very stigmatized variant and where the affrication of *k is
generally avoided. Most resistant to de-affrication is the suffixed personal pronoun
for the 2nd p. sing. fem. (Abdel-Jawad 1981:279, 282). This feature is naturally con-
nected with the established morphological use of the contrast -k (masc.) vs. -č (fem.),
which implies that the reflexes of *k in this case are phonetically unconditioned.
have had the same uniform -ki form as JB and CB, but the change to
the gǝlǝt forms was not purely phonetic in that case either.
3.4. Application of the Low Vowel Raising Rule

When OA /a/ in a stressed open syllable is followed by /a/ in the next
syllable, it is as a rule—with many exceptions—raised to /i/, which is
realized as ǝ or u, depending on the consonant environment, e.g.,
sǝmač ‘fish’, sǝma ‘sky’, ğǝbal ‘mountain’; ḅuṣal ‘onions’, gumar ‘moon’,
kuḅar ‘to grow up’ (Blanc 1964:40). Because this rule is operative in
verbs as well, the sedentary-type perfect base patterns CaCaC and
CiCiC10 in Form I of the triradical strong verb have been transformed
into CiCaC, with a phonetically-conditioned allomorph CuCaC: kitab
‘to write’, giṭaʿ ‘to cut’, buram ‘to twist’; šǝrab ‘to drink’, nǝzal ‘to des-
cend’, wugaʿ ‘to fall’. Interestingly, this systematic Bedouin-type pho-
netic change did not affect the rather unsystematically distributed q
reflex of *q (2.1.2. above), which seems to indicate that the q reflex in
this group of items was well established before the low vowel raising
rule became operative.
3.5. Use of /-t/ as the 1st p. sing. Morpheme in the Perfect, Instead
of /-tu/ Typical of the qǝltu Dialects
This change implied also neutralization of the former morphological
contrast 1st p. sing. vs. 2nd p. sing. masc. in the inflection of the per-
fect. Concomitantly, the rural and Bedouin /-tū/ morpheme of the
2nd p. plur. used in the adjacent areas replaced the qǝltu-type mor-
pheme */-tum/.
3.6. Use of āni as the 1st p. sing., ǝḥna as the 1st p. plur. and ǝntu
as the 2nd p. plur. Independent Personal Pronoun Instead of the
qǝltu-Type Forms ana, nǝḥna and ǝntǝm
Here MB follows the patterns commonly used in the Bedouin dialects
of the Syrian-Mesopotamian group and the gǝlǝt dialects spoken in
10
JB has only one pattern, CaCaC, whereas CB has two, CaCaC and CiCiC,
which are used also in the qǝltu dialects spoken in Anatolia, Mosul, Tikrīt, Dēr ez-Zōr,
and Albū Kmāl (Blanc 1964:40; Johnstone 1975:92; Jastrow 1978:146-157; Behnstedt
1997:264-267; Abu-Haidar 1991:42-43). This indicates that also the former qǝltu-type
MB had these two patterns.
28 heikki palva
Lower Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain11 (Cantineau 1936:70; Johnstone

1967:91, 104), as a rule differing from the forms used in qǝltu dialects
(Blanc 1964:60; Jastrow 1978:130-131; Abu-Haidar 1991:80; Abu-
Haidar 2006a:226; Mansour 2006:236) as well as in the sedentary dia-
lects of Syria and Lebanon (Behnstedt 1997, Map 255). The progress
of bedouinization in the Euphrates Group of the qǝltu dialects is illu-
strated by the gǝlǝt-type ǝḥna in _ēr ez-Zōr (Jastrow 1978:131) and in
JB, apparently as a majority dialect variant used side by side with
nǝḥna (Mansour 2006:236).
3.7. Use of gāʿed with the Imperfect as a Present Continuous

Marker
In addition to the qǝltu-type verb modifier da-, MB also makes use of
the unshortened active participle gāʿed in the same function, although
it might be relatively infrequent (Blanc 1964:115). This is an obvious
imported rural gǝlǝt-type form, which has been only phonetically—
by suppression of affrication—adapted to the prevalent urban dialect,
as is the case in Kuwait and Bahrain as well (Johnstone 1967:144, 152;
Holes 2006:253). In the village of Kwayriš at the ruins of Babylon, the
genuine Bedouin-type affrication has been attested: ğāʿed yiktib (Denz
1971:110, 116). This feature is well documented from the Syrian
Desert (ğāʿid) and Ḥōrān (gāʿid) as well (Behnstedt 1997, Map 161).
3.8. Use of the Bedouin-Type Adverb hnā ‘here’, Instead of the

qǝltu-Type Form hōn(i)
As reported by Blanc, qǝltu dialects as a rule make use of forms of the
type going back to OA *hāhunā, whereas its equivalents in gǝlǝt dia-
lects have developed from OA *hunā or *hinā (Fischer 1959:115-116;
Jastrow 1978:112-113). Blanc also points out that the qǝltu-type forms
hawna and hūni are attested for eleventh-century Iraqi vernacular and
for fourteenth-century Baghdad, respectively (Blanc 1964:139-140;
Levin 1994:326). As representatives of the gǝlǝt type, the Gulf dialects
have hnī, ihna, and the like (Johnstone 1967:17, 68; Holes 2006:248;
Fischer 1959:117). In Syria both sedentary and Bedouin dialects—like
the Mesopotamian qǝltu dialects—have forms going back to *hāhunā
or *hāhinā, whereas Mʿa amiyye, besides Dēr ez-Zōr the only qǝltu-
11
In the ʿArab dialect of Bahrain the 1st p. sing. is, however ana/āna, Holes
2006:247.
speaking locality in Syria, contrary to expectations, has hini; only

some villages around the Soukhne oasis have reflexes of *hinā (Behn-
stedt 1997, Map 280).
3.9. Use of a Number of Core Items Belonging to Bedouin

Vocabulary
These include, e.g., zēn ‘good’ (cf. JB mlīḥ, CB malēḥ); mūzēn ‘bad’ (cf.
JB dūni, CB mū malēḥ); bāčer ‘tomorrow’ (cf. JB, CB ġada); yamm
‘beside’ (cf. JB, CB ṣōb); nǝṭa ‘to give’ (cf. JB, CB ṭaʿa); rağǝl ‘husband’
(cf. JB, CB zōğ); hdūm ‘clothes’ (cf. JB, CB ḥwās) (Blanc 1964:133-
159).
3.10. Use of the Personal Morphemes t-…-īn, y-…-ūn and t-…-ūn

in the Imperfect
The personal morphemes of the 2nd p. fem. sing., 2nd p. plur. and
3rd p. plur. in the imperfect, t-…-īn, y-…-ūn and t-…-ūn, respecti-
vely, are identical with their counterparts in most Bedouin dialects of
the Peninsular type. In this context, this feature is not relevant, howe-
ver, because MB shares it with the urban JB and CB dialects, e.g., JB
tkǝtbēn, tkǝtbōn, ykǝtbōn, CB tǝktǝbīn, tǝktǝbūn, yǝktǝbūn, respectively
(Blanc 1964:100).
4. The Historical Context
The historical development of MB is inseparably connected with the

history of Baghdad. For an adequate interpretation of the provenance
of the gǝlǝt-type MB, the first crucial point of time is the Mongol
devastation of the city in 1258 and the subsequent decades. The key
question concerns the position of the old qǝltu-type urban dialect of
the Muslims vis-à-vis the Bedouin-type dialect of the rural immi-
grants to the city at that period. Was it likely that the urban Muslim
population after the catastrophe still was numerous and influential
enough to retain its position as a model for linguistic accommodation
for Muslim immigrants to Baghdad?
It is a commonly held idea that when Hülegü had conquered
Baghdad in 1258, a general massacre broke out and continued for
forty days, during which the majority of the inhabitants perished.
Although several almost contemporary accounts are available, of the
30 heikki palva
medieval Muslim chroniclers no one actually witnessed the events

that took place in the city (al-Faruque 1988:194). In medieval sources
the number of those who were killed varies between 800,000 and
2,000,000—fantastic figures, perhaps given in order to create hatred
of Mongols, or just to underline the huge proportions of the catastro-
phe. For a realistic assessment it is necessary to keep in mind that
already at the end of the eleventh century many quarters in Western
Baghdad were ruined and deserted, and in 1184, when Ibn Jubayr
visited the city, it was already in decline. Yaqut’s report from 1226 is
by and large in accordance with Ibn Jubayr’s description. According
to these reports, Western Baghdad was a series of isolated quarters
each with a wall and separated by waste land of ruins. The situation
grew still worse in the 1250s when several floods ruined parts of the
city (Duri 1960:902). In these circumstances the number of the vic-
tims of the 1258 massacre must have been essentially smaller than
reported; according to Duri it “probably exceeded a hundred thou-
sand”. This is in line with the Chinese traveller Ch’ang Te’s report
(1249)—obviously from Mongol sources—that several tens of thou-
sands were killed (ibid.) as well as with Hitti’s estimate: “The indiscri-
minate one-week slaughter, chroniclers claim, left 700,000 victims,
which may have been 70,000, including refugees from the environs”.
(Hitti 1973:106) However, the gap between different figures is still
huge: al-Faruque (1988:199) estimates that 800,000 of the total popu-
lation of two million were killed.12
According to the anonymous work Marāṣid al-Iṭṭilāʿ, nothing re-
mained of Western Baghdad except isolated quarters of which the
writer mentions six, among them al-Karkh, which was the most
populated area. As to East Baghdad, the author of Marāṣid adds an
interesting information: “When the Tartars came, most of [East
Baghdad] was ruined. They killed its people and few were left. Then
people from outside came”. (Marāṣid, Cairo ed., p. 201, pace Duri
1960:903.) It is a reasonable explanation that a considerable number
of rural immigrants came to Baghdad soon after the devastation of
the city. Although they scarcely formed a majority of the population
of the whole city, as a result of the Mongol invasion the relative
power of different groups was changed. The Sunnites had obviously
12
al-Faruque takes Duri’s figure of 1,5 million inhabitants in the tenth century as
the basis of his estimation but disregards the fact that at the time of the Mongol con-
quest parts of the city were already deserted.
suffered most, as is indicated by their outbreaks against non-Mus-

lims. The Il-Khans patronized Christians and some Jews rose to pro-
minent posts (Duri 1960:903). The Christian population was still very
numerous, and among the Shī‘ites, the Twelvers were the best protec-
ted group (Spuler 1970:163-164).
As a consequence of epidemics that followed the massacre the
population was further reduced. Although Baghdad was badly ruined,
it was not depopulated. The city was partly restored, and it became a
provincial centre. Yet, as pointed out by Hourani, it never recovered
from the decline of the irrigation system of southern Iraq, the Mon-
gol invasion and the movement of the trade from the Gulf to the Red
Sea. At all events, after another sack in 1401 and several epidemics, it
still remained the largest city in Iraq. At the beginning of the Otto-
man rule in the middle of the sixteenth century it with its estimated
50,000-100,000 inhabitants was, together with Cairo, Aleppo, Damas-
cus, and Tunis, one of the biggest Arab cities (Hourani 1991:234).
From the thirteenth century on, in spite of the decline, for any
immigrant from the countryside Baghdad must still have been
impressive, and its inhabitants were undoubtedly dominant both
politically and economically. Consequently, the language form used
by its Muslim inhabitants very likely was the local prestige dialect to
which Muslim immigrants from the country were disposed to adapt
themselves. When Ibn Battuta in the 1320s and 1330s visited the city,
he reports that it had eleven Friday mosques, eight on the right bank
and three on the left, and many other mosques and madrasas (Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa, Cairo ed. 1908, I:140-141). Irrespective of the correctness of
these figures, Baghdad was an important administrative and com-
mercial centre. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the city
was still in decline and the number of its inhabitants may at times
have been relatively small. For the whole population in the seven-
teenth century Duri gives the low figure of about 15,000, based on
Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French merchant who in 1651 visited
Baghdad (Duri 1960: 904).13 At any rate, from the Mongol invasions
13
“Enfin depuis la prise de Bagdat par Sultan Amurat, le nombre des habitans ne
peut guere monter qu’à quinze mille ames, ce qui montre assez que la ville n’est pas
peuplée selon sa grandeur”. Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, écuyer baron
d’Aubonne, qu’il a fait en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes… Gervais Clouzier: Paris,
1676; p. 213. The low figure may be rather correct; the map of Baghdad sketched by
Tavernier did not radically differ from that drawn by the British on their occupation
in 1917 (Hitti 1973:108; the number of population ibid., 1,400, must be a misprint).
32 heikki palva
until the beginning of the Ottoman rule in 1534, and finally in 1638,
Baghdad experienced a long period of stagnation and decay.
The decay of ḥaḍari culture, both urban and rural, brought about
growing immigration of Bedouin tribes most of which moved from
northern Arabia to southern Iraq. The majority of these were sheep-
raising šāwiya tribes linguistically belonging to the Syro-Mesopota-
mian group (Cantineau’s Group C) whose dialect did not essentially
differ from that spoken by the filḥ, the settled ex-Bedouin. It was the
policy of the Ottomans to settle them as peasants, and in the course
of time many of them did so. The seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries were in Iraq a time of rapidly increasing sedentarization of šāwiya
tribes. Another kind of Bedouin migration, outside the control of the
Ottoman government, was the invasion of the camel-herding
Šammari tribe from the northern part of Arabia over the Euphrates at
the end of the seventeenth century. They remained nomadic, and
when their enemies, the big camel-nomad tribe of the ʿAnaze in the
eighteenth century moved to the Syrian Desert, the southern borders
of Iraq and to the coasts of the Gulf, they found even better pastures
in the Jazira between the rivers in the northwest. These two tribes
were strong enough to collect xūwa taxes from the sheep-raising tri-
bes and protection money from villages and towns. Life in the
countryside was felt insecure, and many villagers probably moved to
towns.14 The ʿAnaze also received dues for safe-conduct on the trade-
route between Iraq and Syria, and they had right to collect the ṣurra
from pilgrims travelling through their tribal area. The situation was
not altered before the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
Ottomans got control over the Euphrates valley. (Blunt 1968:175-187;
Oppenheim 1939:55, 68-72.)
Baghdad remained a provincial capital—although under Mamluk
governors between 1749 and 1831—for the rest of the Ottoman
period. During this more stable period the city started growing
again, and the number of its inhabitants increased manyfold. In the
nineteenth century the population varied between 40,000 and
100,000, being at its lowest after the plague and flood of 1831. The
figures given by the local inhabitants to travellers were of course
14
Cf. the situation in the Balqā’ district of Jordan, where es-Salṭ from about the
fifteenth century was the only permanently inhabited locality. Only in the middle of
the nineteenth century the Ottoman state gained some control over the Bedouin
tribes, and the peasants could settle down in villages. (Palva 2004:222 and references
there.)
much higher. In 1878, during a plague, Anne Blunt writes that there
were ca. 80,000 to 100,000 inhabitants in the city, of which 18,000
were Jews, 2,000 Armenian Christians, and 7,000 Turks, Persians and
Indians (Blunt 1968:192). In 1918 the population was estimated at
200,000;15 in 1947 it was 467,000, and one year before the 1958 revo-
lution it had mounted to 735,000 (Duri 1960:906-908). At the pre-
sent, the number of inhabitants in the metropolitan area is
approximately 7,000,000, a figure which is not only a result of high
birth rate but perhaps even more of mass immigration from the
countryside. Of the new suburbs especially planned for immigrants
the most important is the Sadr City, founded in 1959, with its two
million mainly Shīʿī inhabitants.
5. Discussion
5.1. The present-day MB is thoroughly coloured by three prominent

phonetic features of Bedouin type: the g reflex of *q, the k/č reflexes
of *k, and the low vowel raising rule. From the diachronic point of
view, it is most interesting to notice that the phonetic bedouinization
q > g has at some stage ceased to be operative, and the q reflex has
been retained in a number of core items. It is rather natural that, after
the incorporation of a few cultural Bedouin loanwords, adopting the
g reflex often is the first step in the bedouinization process, as it does
not bring about any further phonetic changes, whereas the low vowel
raising implies substantial synchronic changes in the syllable struc-
ture and thus affects the shapes of both nominal and verbal syllable
patterns. Therefore the low vowel raising rule does not allow excep-
tions as easily as the *q > g change. This is why in dialect contact
situations it is not commonly suppressed, whereas suppression of the
phonetically-conditioned affrication of g is a common koineizing or
levelling feature, in fact often the first Bedouin trait to be suppressed.
Other often suppressed phonetic traits are the gahawa syndrome and
the resyllabification rule.
15
According to British statistics of 1917, the total population of Baghdad was
202,200. Of them, 80,000 were Jews, 12,000 Christians, 8,000 Kurds, 800 Persians,
101,400 Sunnites, Shiʿites, and Turks (Rejwan 1985:210-211). The large number of
Jews was a result of the explosive increase of commerce in the area of the Indian
Ocean after the opening of the Suez Canal 1869.
34 heikki palva
Among Bedouin-type features in MB the independent personal

pronouns āni, ǝḥna and ǝntu, as well as the demonstrative adverb hnā,
are traits which belong to the most readily adopted rural features.
A prerequisite for the incorporation of these items and the above-
mentioned phonetic features is that the Bedouin-type gǝlǝt dialect at
some stage was prestigious, or rather, at least certain individual lin-
guistic variables in rural dialects were used as positive social markers
indicative of the speaker’s status within the community.
Against this background it might seem rather surprising that MB
displays a number of salient sedentary features. If bedouinization of
MB was an early phenomenon caused by a massive immigration from
the countryside to the city soon after 1258, or after 1401, why did it
leave the morphology of MB substantially unaffected? If the immi-
grants formed an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the city, this
would necessarily imply that they absorbed all these sedentary featu-
res from the urban minority of Muslim speakers in existence, which
is highly improbable though not impossible. On the other hand, if the
urban Muslim population was virtually wiped out and the deserted
quarters were flooded by immigrants from the countryside, also the
old qǝltu-type MB virtually disappeared and was replaced by the rural
gǝlǝt dialect. In that case, the sedentary features of MB must have
appeared to the speech of the new gǝlǝt-speaking population either
from the dialects of the non-Muslim minorities or from Muslim
qǝltu-speaking immigrants from other parts of the country. The for-
mer alternative disregards the social distance16 between the religious
groups in general and the higher social status of the Muslims in par-
ticular. In the Middle Ages the distribution in the use of communal
dialects was scarcely different from that of the past two or three gene-
rations, when the Jews and the Christians spoke JB and CB at home
and with members of their respective communities, but with Muslims
they used MB (Mansour 2006:231-232; Duri 1960:907). If the massa-
cre of the Baghdad Muslims was as total as described in the most
exaggerating reports, the only remaining alternative source of qǝltu-
type features in MB would be the dialects of the returning Muslim
refugees or sedentary Muslim immigrants from other parts of the
16
Most Jews and Christians lived in quarters of their own on the left bank of the
river, not mixing in their everyday lives (quarters, schools, religious institutions).
There was no ghetto system, but the segregation was voluntary. Although some
families lived outside their traditional quarters, the social distance between Muslims
and non-Muslims remained substantial.
Mesopotamian dialect area. But this improbable assumption would

actually not affect the general pattern of the linguistic change from
qǝltu to gǝlǝt.
That the present MB would have emerged from the rural gǝlǝt dia-
lect through innerdialectal development is utterly impossible. In par-
ticular, the partially retained q and the Aramaic-style marking of
direct object by anticipatory suffix plus l- are features that are thorou-
ghly inconsistent with such an assumption. Also, the use of da- as a
present continuous verb modifier, laḥ and raḥ as futurity markers,
and the proclitic d(i)- with the imperative are sedentary MB traits
which, when compared with their cognate counterparts in JB and CB,
are improbable results of a relatively autonomous development of a
rural gǝlǝt into the urban-type gǝlǝt dialect. Among sedentary features
discussed above (2.1.–9.), only the absence of separate feminine plu-
ral forms in personal pronouns and finite verbs as well as the absence
of Form IV as a productive category are reductional changes which
need not be inherited from the older qǝltu-type MB, as is also the case
with the apophonic passive, which is not absent in sedentary dialects
only, but in many Bedouin dialects as well. It must be concluded that
MB is a continuation of the pre-Abbasid sedentary dialect spoken by
the Muslim population of Baghdad, and that its bedouinization is of
relatively recent date.
5.2. After the catastrophes in 1258 and 1401, although dramatically

reduced in number, urban Muslims most probably remained as the
bulk of population in the city. Immigration from the countryside was
not massive enough to radically transform the linguistic structure of
the old qǝltu-type MB. On the contrary, the immigrants must by and
large have accommodated to the speech of the urban people. As the
linguistic change in language contact as a rule starts with a phonetic
adaptation and adoption of separate culturally-based lexical items
from the predominant language, the rural immigrants who came to
Baghdad before the sixteenth century certainly incorporated techni-
cal terms associated with the urban culture, and a majority of them
most likely substituted the urban q for their rural g. Adaptation to the
mainly qǝltu-type morphology must have been a slower process.
Later on, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the
rural migrants became dominant in some sectors of the population
and the bedouinization of MB gained ground, the process naturally
started with adoption of certain rural loanwords and the spread of
36 heikki palva
the rural g in approximately the same way as today in many cities

which are drawing masses of immigrants from the countryside, e.g.,
in the Maghrib. It is not necessary to assume that the Bedouin speech
as such, and to all speakers, was prestigious, but as pointed out by
Miller, “[i]n case of inter-dialectal contact within the city, the level-
ling/koineization process is not systematically, and at all linguistic
levels, in favour of the pre-existing urban dialect” (Miller 2004:180,
194, 197; Behnstedt & Woidich 2005:47). Over time, also a few mor-
phological Bedouin traits such as personal pronouns, the adverb hnā,
and certain personal morphemes in the perfect, were adopted.
Because the q > g development probably is the first systematic step in
the bedouinization process—as suggested by the well-documented
present-day parallel developments—it probably ceased before the low
vowel raising rule became operative; otherwise, typologically hybrid
forms such as qibal and buqa would not have come about.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the rural immi-
gration grew massive enough to strengthen the status of the gǝlǝt-type
dialect to the extent that the new immigrants did not abandon their g
and k/č reflexes and their low vowel raising rule, but freely used these
when talking to qǝltu speakers, and, as a result, these features spread
among the urban Muslim population. As all gǝlǝt speakers were Mus-
lims, these rural traits soon became Muslim group markers, a develop-
ment which, I would argue, played a crucial role in the q > g change
by the Muslim urban population.17 This brought about a new socio-
linguistic contrast between the purely urban JB & CB qǝltu and the
rural-influenced urban MB qǝltu.18 Among the Muslims, the rural dia-
lect did however not become more prestigious than the urban dialect,
as is shown by the fact that the q reflex was retained in a number
of items, and the mainly sedentary-type morphology of the urban
speakers was not substantially changed. The newcomers did not
actually have to abandon their grammar; in contact with urban Mus-
lim population they gradually adopted sedentary elements such as
da-, laḥ/raḥ, d(i)-, which could simply be added to the unmarked ver-
bal forms. On the other hand, the previous Muslim qǝltu speakers did
17
Cf. the situation in Baḥrain, where the Shīʿite community tends to replace the
genuine ḳ+č pair by the Sunnī and “areal standard” equivalents g + k, but not the
“Sunni-marked” affricated ğ variant of g (Holes 1983:13; Holes 1987:40-41).
18
According to Blanc, in the fourteenth century, the Baghdad Muslims were still
speaking a qǝltu type dialect and were, presumably, undifferentiated from the non-
Muslims (Blanc 1964:170).
not adopt the phonetically-conditioned g-affrication of the new-

comers, and in the course of time the rural immigrants suppressed it
as well. Thus the linguistic adaptation which led to the rise of the new
gǝlǝt-type MB was mutual. As a result, again a new sociolinguistic
contrast emerged: urban gǝlǝt vs. rural gǝlǝt, exemplified by /g/ = [g]/
[q] vs. /g/ = [g]/[ğ].19 The rather enigmatic retainment of q in certain
core items might actually have become a marker of urbanity at a stage
when bedouinization was progressing most rapidly, most probably in
the eighteenth century.
Conclusion
Diachronically, the present-day gǝlǝt dialect of the Baghdad Muslims

is the result of a process of bedouinization of a relatively undifferen-
tiated urban qǝltu dialect, mainly during the past three centuries. The
process probably started—as in a number of urban dialects at the pre-
sent—with adoption of separate lexical items associated with the rural
sphere. The items which had the g reflex of *q were adopted as such,
without phonetic adaptation. At first, the q and g reflexes were lexi-
cally distributed, but along with an increasing immigration the g
reflex spread as a stylistic variant of q. As all speakers who used the g
reflex were Muslims, it became recognized as a Muslim group mar-
ker, and it soon grew predominant. Concomitantly, as the previous
Muslim qǝltu speakers did not adopt the phonetically-conditioned
g-affrication, the rural immigrants suppressed it as well, and a new
contrast emerged between urban gǝlǝt and rural gǝlǝt. This contrast
was enhanced by retention of the q reflex in a number of core items.
On the other hand, the new immigrants did not suppress the affrica-
ted reflex of k, and in course of time the k/č variation was adopted by
the urban Muslim speakers as well. As high-frequency elements, the
19
Blanc (1964:165-166) draws broad outlines of this contrast by comparing some
MB features with their counterparts in the rural dialect spoken in Kwayriš (see also
Jastrow 2004:138-139). At the present, as a result of the rapidly increased rural popu-
lation, the Bedouinization process is going on. Bedouin features such as the phone-
tically-conditioned affrication of g and gender distinction in personal pronouns and
in finite verbs are gaining ground, predominantly in the Shīʿite community in Sadr
City (Abu-Haidar 2006b:271-272). Thus, the contrast between urban and rural gǝlǝt
is diminishing, which would deepen the gap between MB and CB. However, the
dominance of MB is apparent, and the speech of Baghdadi Christians is constantly
shifting in the direction of the gǝlǝt variety (Abu-Haidar 2006a:222).
38 heikki palva
g and k/č reflexes became prominent markers which differentiated the

prestigious MB from the non-prestigious JB and CB minority dia-
lects. A further phonetic development was the Bedouin-type vowel
raising rule, which was adopted by the urban Muslim population,
whereas the Bedouin-type gahawa syndrome and the Najdi resyllabi-
fication rule were not adopted. Grammatical developments followed
the same kind of accommodation process. The old urban verb modi-
fiers, the indetermination marker and the Aramaic-type marking of
the definite object were adopted by rural immigrants, while many
rural forms, such as personal pronouns, phonetically unconditioned
use of -č as a feminine morpheme, and personal morphemes in the
perfect were adopted by urban speakers. Thus, the linguistic adapta-
tion was mutual: the old urban dialect was bedouinized, and the
Bedouin-type dialect of the new immigrants was urbanized.
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asp
the g/|-question in egyptian arabic revisited 41
THE g/ǧQUESTION IN EGYPTIAN ARABIC REVISITED
Manfred Woidich and Liesbeth Zack
1. The Problem
One of the most eye-catching, or rather ear-catching features when

listening to what is generally called “Egyptian Arabic”, is the voiced
velar plosive /g/ [g]. This sound corresponds to w /ǧ/ in Classical
Arabic, and, respectively, in other Arabic dialects to a variety of other
palatalized or affricated prepalatals, dentals or sibilants such as [ʤ],
[gj], [d], [ʒ], [z], [j], [ɟ], [ʧ], [ʦ], to mention only the most common
of them; for more details see Zaborski (2007), Kaye (1970), Cantineau
(1960:56ff). Within contemporary Egypt we find /g/ in the standard
variety as spoken by urbanized persons, which is based on the dia-
lect of the capital Cairo and its surroundings, as well as in modern
Alexandria, the central parts of the Delta, in the north-eastern Delta
in a corridor stretching along the Damietta branch of the River Nile,
and south of Cairo in the Provinces of Fayyūm and Bani Swēf. Other
rural areas show one of the other allophones indicated above.1 The
distribution of /g/ ~ /ǧ/ parallels within Egyptian territory that of /’/
~ /g/ (Old Arabic *q), in the sense that the two phonemes show an
implicational relationship: /g/ (< *g) implies /’/ or /q/ (< *q), and a
dialect with /ǧ/ ~ /ž/ (< *g) will have /g/ (< *q).2
Classical /ǧ/ and Egyptian /g/ both hark back to Semitic /g/, a fact
which immediately begs the question whether this Egyptian /g/ deri-
ves directly from an older variety of Arabic which had kept the old
Semitic /g/ and which did not, like the variety which we call “Classical
Arabic”, take part in the palatalization and affrication of /g/, or
whether this Egyptian /g/ is a newly developed sound, i.e. a de-affri-
cation of /ǧ/ or something like it.
1
See Behnstedt and Woidich II (1985) maps 10–14.
2
Exceptions are the oases of Farafra and, partly, Dakhla and Kharga with /q/
and /ž/ or /ǧ/. For contact situations see Behnstedt and Woidich I (1985:70).
42 manfred woidich and liesbeth zack
This question has been answered by Blanc (1969:23, 27), and above
all Blanc (1981), who resolves the issue in favour of the idea that
Egyptian [g] for w is an innovation. This position is upheld by Hary
(1996) in an article which aptly adduces all the arguments in favour
of this opinion. Both assume the depalatalization/back-shifting of the
/ǧ/, referring to Bergsträßer’s (1928:157) remark “ǧ ist in Ägypten in
das altsemitische g zurückverschoben” [ǧ has back-shifted in Egypt
to the old Semitic g].3 According to them, this depalatalization dates
back to quite recent times and was only completed in the first half
of the 19th century. Hary (1996:153) describes the subsequent stages
in the following way:
g => g~~ǧ => ǧ => ǧ~g => g
6th–7th cent. 8th–11th cent. 12th–17th cent. 17th–19th cent. 19th–20th cent.
ǵ has to be seen here as a slightly palatalized /g/ [gj] and ǧ as a [ʤ].4

As Zaborski (2007:495b) rightly remarks, this supposed phonetic
shift ǧ > g, i.e. from a dental affricate back to a full velar stop con-
tradicts the normal development we know from other language fami-
lies such as Romance or Germanic languages, all of which show the
reverse, i.e. a shift from stop to affricate.5 In view of this “idiosyn-
cracy of Arabic”, as Zaborski loc.cit. puts it—and which, to his aston-
ishment, is advocated by some Arabists –, the arguments put forward
in favour of this back-shift deserve a critical investigation.
The purpose of this paper is to review part of the evidence on
which Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996) base their assumptions and,
then, to adduce further evidence for a far more common and earlier
presence of /g/ in Lower Egypt than hitherto suggested. This leads to
3
In contrast to Fischer (2002:18 §30 Anm.4, and so already in the first edition
1970): “Die ursprüngliche Aussprache des g ist heute noch in Unterägypten (Kairo)
erhalten”. [The original pronunciation of g is preserved till today in Lower Egypt
(Cairo)], cf. as well Spitta (1880:X).
4
With palatalization we mean a modification of the /g/ by shifting of “the front
edge of the area of tongue-velum contact slightly forwards” (Catford 1988:108)
which gives the characteristic [j]-off-glide when the contact is released (Schubiger
1977:78). This is a secondary articulatory gesture (Ladefoged 2006:229) which does
not change the primary dorso-velar articulation point of the /g/, and remains sub-
phonemic.
5
There seems to be a phonetic reason for this apparent asymmetry, as in lab
based experiments, the sequence /ki/ is often misinterpreted as /ti/ by listeners, but
hardly ever the reverse happens, see Ohala (2005:421). We thank R. de Jong for
having brought this to our attention.
the conclusion that the apparent variation between /g/ and /ǧ/ in the
documents of the 17th and 18th centuries as described in these two
articles rather has to be dealt with as a diatopic/diastratic variation
and not as a variation caused by a ‘linear development’ and as ‘sound
shift in progress’, as described in Hary (1996:153).
2. /g/ Outside Egypt
Egypt is not the only region in the Arabic world with a /g/,6 corre-
sponding to Classical Arabic /ǧ/ and Semitic /g/, it is attested in South
Yemen7 and in Oman8, at the periphery of the Arabian Peninsula, as
well as in more central regions.9 Although this geographical distribu-
tion of /g/ suggests that /g/ is an old feature which, according to the
areal norms of dialect geography, was preserved in the periphery of
the area,10 we cannot use this as an argument here, because these
areal norms, developed within Romance and German dialectology
with a predominantly sedentary population, are of doubtful useful-
ness in the Near East with its often migratory regions (see Behnstedt
and Woidich 2005:147).11 May we conclude then that a variety of
Arabic with /g/, a realisation of w well attested for Classical Arabic
(see Blanc 1969:11 ff.),12 was introduced then and did survive some-
6
Spitta (1880:5) refers to this ‘trockene Aussprache’ [dry pronunciation] as /g/
of the Egyptian, “die er wahrscheinlich seinen Voreltern aus Jemen und Negd ver-
dankt” [which he presumably owes to his ancestors from Yemen and Naǧd]. For the
South-Arabic provenance of certain Egyptian features see Corriente (2008:235).
7
For Aden see Feghali (1991:XVII). For the Southern part of Yemen see map 2
Behnstedt (1985:42).
8
Holes (2008:479a).
9
Wallin (1858:607) reports it for the Naǧd as [gj] and says: “Diese Aussprache
des w kommt auch dem ägyptischen harten g so nahe, dass ich in den meisten Fällen
nicht im Stande war das eine von dem anderen zu unterscheiden ...” [This pronun-
ciation of the w comes so close to the Egyptian hard g that I was not able in most
cases to distinguish one from the other ...]. For the possible existence of /g/ of the
Šammar in Tēma see Palva (1980:116).
10
See Behnstedt and Woidich (2005:141ff.). This does not rule out that the norm
can be applied to smaller regions with a predominantly sedentary population of
farmers such as the Egyptian Delta.
11
Cf. already Hockett (1958:480).
12
As to the case of the phonetic quality of w , we should keep in mind that
Sībawayhi mentions the pronunciation [g] but disapproves of it, see Zaborski
(2007:495a), Fleisch (1961:228), thus giving evidence of its existence (see Cantineau
1960:57 in particular for Yemen and Bagdad). Schaade (1911:72 f.) concludes from
Sībawayhī’s description that [g] existed in Persian loans at least.
how in Egypt? There are other arguments as well for the existence of
an Old Arabic /g/ in pre- or early-Islamic times:
1. In Classical Arabic, /ǧ/, a dental affricate, does not belong to the
group of “sun letters”, i.e. dentals and sibilants which assimilate the
/l/ of the article. So we should expect that /ǧ/, i.e. the dental affricate
[ʤ], as well, should belong to this group. But it does not, and this
fact suggests that the affrication of /g/ must have been a later devel-
opment which started after the assimilation rules for the article had
been established. We can therefore not exclude the possibility that
there were varieties of Arabic which did not take part in the affrica-
tion of /g/, but whose speakers nevertheless were amongst the tribes
who immigrated into Egypt in the 7th century.
2. Another argument for the existence of w = [g] in pre- and early-
Islamic times may be deduced from the facts presented by Arnold-
Behnstedt (1993:53) in their study of Arabic-Aramaic relations in the
Qalamūn. There are two layers of Arabic loans with w in Maclūla-
Aramaic, an older one with /ġ/ as a reflex of w (farraġ “to watch,
view”, ġmōʿča “people”) and a newer one with /ž/ or /ǧ/ (žayša/ǧayša
“army”, rōžaʿ/rōǧaʿ “to return”). Aramaic /ġ/ in the first case can
only go back to /g/, not to /ǧ/. This means that the speakers of an
earlier variety of Arabic which came into contact with Aramaic in
Syria must have had /g/ and not /ǧ/.
3. Moroccan dialects display /g/ = [g] instead of /ž/ in words which
contain sibilants such as gǝzzār “butcher”, glǝs “to sit down”, gīš
“army” etc. (Caubet 1993:12; Heath 2002:136 ff; Aguadé 2008:288).13
Forms with /g/ are rather northern, e.g. gza, yǝgzi “to suffice”, gǝṣṣāṣ
“plasterer”, gǝzz “to shear (sheep)” while more southern dialects
show /d/ in the latter forms: dǝṣṣāṣ, dza, yǝdzi, dǝzz. This is normally
explained as a dissimilation of *ǧ in the presence of sibilants, or
as “dissimilatory deaffrication” as Heath (2002:136) puts it. Apart
from the problematic development [ʤ] > [g], which would involve a
change in the primary articulation point, this leaves unexplained why
13
The actual distribution of /g/- and /d/-forms, in spite of a route north-south
basis is ‘messy’ due to later dialect borrowing, mainly the generalization of old /g/-
forms for certain lexical items such as gǝzzār “butcher”, glǝs “to sit own”, gīš “army”
(Heath 2002:137). For the different forms for *cagūz in North-Morocco see Behnstedt
and Benabbu (2005) map 12. In Upper Egypt, [dj] > [d] is regular even without the
presence of sibilants, see Behnstedt and Woidich II (1985) maps 13,14. With thanks
to Peter Behnstedt for clarifying to us the rather complex situation, any errors are
our own.
in one dialect /g/ comes up and in others /d/. If we take the velar stop
[g] as starting point (*gǝbha “forehead” vs. *gǝzz “to shear”) which
develops through several steps into the modern [ʒ], this splitting into
[g] and [d] can roughly be accounted for in the following way.
dialects A dialects B
origin gǝbha gǝzz gǝbha gǝzz
palatalisation g jǝbha gǝzz g jǝbha g jǝzz
depalatalisation d jǝbha --- d jǝbha d jǝzz
depalatalisation --- --- --- dǝzz
affrication ʤǝbha --- ʤǝbha dǝzz
deaffrication ʒǝbha --- ʒǝbha ---
___________________________________________
ʒǝbha gǝzz ʒǝbha dǝzz
[g] underwent palatalisation to [g j], except for a large group of dia-

lects A where it remained a velar stop in the presence of sibilants:
gǝzz vs. g jǝbha. This [g j] was misinterpreted as [dj] by the hearers,14
which resulted in gǝzz vs. djǝbha, and, respectively d jǝzz vs. d jǝbha in
the other dialects (group B). [dj] lost its palatal off-glide by dissimila-
tion in the presence of sibilants and became [d]: dǝzz vs. djǝbha.
Without the presence of sibilants, [dj] eventually developed into the
prepalatal fricative [ʤ], which lost its closure, thus turning into a
sibilant [ʒ]. Again, we have to see this latter development as triggered
by the hearer or learner, who did not identify the closure as the
primary articulation gesture but the off-glide, so the closure became
negligible to him.
If this scenario is correct, Moroccan /g/ in words such as gǝzzār,
glǝs, gza, gīš and so on, is not back-shifted from an affricate but repre-
sents the oldest stage of /g/.
3. The Blanc ()—Hary () Thesis
To put it briefly, Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996) make the following
two assumptions:
1. Modern Northern Egyptian /g/ which corresponds to Modern
Standard and Classical Arabic /ǧ/ is “zurückverschoben”15 from
the affricated variant, which according to Hary (1996) developed
14
For such misinterpretations by hearers see Ohala (2005:421).
15
I.e. “back-shifted”, see Bergsträßer (1928:157).
in the 8th–11th centuries and was the only variant present in the
12th–17th centuries (see Hary’s schema above).
2. This back-shifting took place in relatively recent times and was
only finished somewhere towards the middle of the 19th century,
since in the second half of the 19th century there is no trace of a
/ǧ/ in Cairo and parts of Lower Egypt and only /g/ is reported.
The argumentation put forward by Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996) is

based mainly on two sources: documents from the 17th century writ-
ten in Jewish Arabic and in Hebrew letters, and on Arabic words,
names and phrases reported by European travellers in Early Modern
times, among them Forskål’s list published in Niebuhr’s 1772 account
(Danish/German) and others (French).
3.1. Judeo-Arabic Texts

It is not necessary here to go into the intricate details of the study of
colloquial Arabic transcribed in Hebrew letters. This has been done
exemplarily by Blanc (1981), Hary (1996) and others16, and we are
far from questioning their findings. But there is a principal question
which has to be raised from the very beginning concerning the inter-
pretation they give to these findings.
This question concerns the relation between a linguistic minority
and a linguistic majority, the main-stream variety: can we conclude
anything with respect to the dialect of the vast majority from a dialect
of a minority spoken in a closed community and which, as Judeo-
Arabic ethnolects in general, has to be seen as an “independent lin-
guistic entity” (Hary 1996:154 fn.3)? To put it directly, how far does
Jewish Arabic as spoken at certain times in Cairo and Lower Egypt
tell us anything about the Arabic spoken by the Muslim majority in
Cairo at the same time? In our view, if a variation between /g/ and /ǧ/
can be established on the basis of the documents analyzed by Blanc
(1981) and Hary (1996), then this tells us in the first instance some-
thing about the Jewish Arabic of this time, not necessarily something
about the variety in which Jewish Arabic is embedded.17 In the same
vein, if there is a variation of this type, this does not necessarily mean
16
See Palva (1997) and the article “Judeo-Arabic” in EALL III (Geoffrey Khan).
17
Nobody would come up with similar conclusions in comparable cases such as
Jewish Baghdadi and Muslim Baghdadi, or Jewish Tripoli and Muslim Tripoli.
that we have to interpret this fact as an internal phonological devel-

opment, i.e. as an unusual back-shifting from /ǧ/ to /g/. We could as
well think of a replacement of /ǧ/ by /g/ in Jewish Arabic triggered
by sociolinguistic reasons, i.e. by adaptation to the more common
and more influential18 variety of Arabic.19 For the speakers of Jewish
Cairo/Egyptian Arabic, the fact that this mainstream variety had /g/
could well have been a reason to adapt and to switch from /ǧ/20 to
this less conspicuous and generally accepted /g/. Following this line
of reasoning, we come to a different scenario than the one suggested
by Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996). It seems much more likely that
/g/ for w was simply present at that time in Muslim Cairo Arabic
and that the Jewish community was in a process of adaptation to the
mainstream variety of Muslim Cairo Arabic. The variation displayed
in the Judeao-Arabic documents harks back to a sociolinguistically
triggered change, not to ‘linear development’ or ‘sound shift in prog-
ress’.
3.2. European travellers’ accounts

The other source which Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996) rely on, are
accounts of European travellers, in particular earlier than the begin-
ning of the 18th century. This is where another question comes in:
How reliable are the notations of these travellers as evidence for the
linguistic situation? Generally speaking, evidence from these sources
faces several problems: Firstly, the notations used by these travellers
are far from being conclusive and their interpretation remains doubt-
ful. The reason for this is that they had to base them on the, some-
times, not very well established orthography of their maternal
18
More influential by virtue of the number of speakers it commanded, and hence
more frequently encountered by both the adult and children’s populations which, in
turn, gives it an advantageous position. We thank Enam al Wer for clarifying this
point to us.
19
In the 12th century and immediately afterwards the speech of the Egyptian
Jews was of the Maghrebinian type (Blau 1981:55f.). Since later a substantial part of
the Cairo Jews were of Andalusian or North African origin, we can safely assume
that the original pronunciation at least of this migrated part was an affricate or a
sibilant as it was in their homelands.
20
A similar case can nowadays be observed in Dakhla in Egypt. In the Central
and North-Western parts of the oasis, a variation between [gj] and [g] can be noted,
see Behnstedt and Woidich (1982:41), Woidich (2002:823). Rather than assuming a
direct phonetic development from [gj] > [g], it is far more probable that the Cairene
[g], always present in the media, is gaining ground.
languages in an accidental, often idiosyncratic way, so many varia-

tions and inconsistencies are the rule when it comes to writing down
words in an unknown language. Secondly, and more importantly, in
most cases we do not know from whom these travellers got their
linguistic information, who told them the place names for example,
who where their teachers or companions, and where they came from.
In particular, in a big city like Cairo, all varieties of Egyptian Arabic
may be heard today, and more so in the earlier times, as Cairo has
always been a melting pot which attracted people from all over the
country to make a living there. In most cases we do not know who
the travellers met and who informed them. We even cannot rule out
the possibility that what happens today was the order of the day in
earlier centuries, namely that foreigners are in the first instance
expected to learn and speak a kind of Fuṣḥā, not the plain colloquial
of the street or a local dialect, a fact which may have influenced the
informants of the travellers as well. Thirdly, some of these early trav-
ellers, and in particular the members of the Danish expedition,21 had
studied Arabic already in Europe, i.e. classical Arabic, not the
spoken language, often with Maronite teachers.22 So it is more than
likely, even naturally, that the linguistic information23 they picked
up, was filtered by this earlier knowledge and the attitude of their
teachers. When talking to an Egyptian in the manner they were
taught, i.e. Fuṣḥā-like, the travellers may have received answers in a
more Fuṣḥā-like manner by the natives.
In view of this background, it seems not very surprising that ir-
regularities and contradictory notations occur in their accounts, and
21
The so-called Niebuhr expedition (1761–1765), as Carsten Niebuhr was the
only one to survive.
22
It is interesting to note what Niebuhr as an experienced traveller in Arabic
countries says about learning Arabic: “Doch man muß ja nicht glauben, daß man die
Araber verstehen werde, wenn man Arabisch aus alten Büchern gelernet hat” (Nie-
buhr 1772/1969:xv) [But you must not think that you will understand the Arabs,
when you have learned Arabic from old books]. Forskål even spent some time in
Rome to study Arabic with the Maronites (Niebuhr 1772/1969:xiv). Cairo was the
first Arabic speaking place the expedition reached and it would be very astonishing
if the Arabic of the members of the expedition were not influenced by the earlier
experience with this language they made during their preparations for the expedi-
tion. During their stay in Cairo they had Arabic lessons from a Maronite teacher
from Aleppo. Judging from his remarks on the Arabic alphabet, Alpin (1581-84)
must have studied Arabic as well during his stay in Egypt (see Alpin 1979:165).
23
Our reference here in particular is to place names or names of animals, plants
etc.
that a certain bias to use graphic symbols in Latin script which can be
read as an affricate or a sibilant should be expected. Interpreting this
heterogeneity as reflecting faithfully the linguistic situation seems a
rather bold statement, and any argumentation based on this type of
information has to be scrutinized very carefully.
4. More Evidence for gm
Nevertheless, going through some of these accounts by European

travellers we shall detect much more evidence for the existence of
/g/ than brought forward by Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996). Moreover,
there is new evidence for /g/ from Arabic texts as well which was not
available yet to Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996). This evidence does
not only corroborate the presence of /g/ in the 17th century, but goes
even farther back than the 17th century to the 16th, maybe even to
the 15th century. Another strong argument for /g/ comes from the
dialect geography of the Egyptian Delta which presents geographical
forms of its distribution that must go much farther back in time than
the 17th century, when according to Hary (1996) the “Rückver-
schiebung” started.
4.1. European Travellers24

From the Danish expedition, Blanc (1981:191) quotes only one single
item with {g} {Igauvis} = /iggawwiz/ “er hat geheyrathet” [he mar-
ried] which is taken from Forskål’s word list (see Niebuhr
1774/1968:87). Apparently, only this word list was examined by
Blanc (1981), but there is much more data for /g/ to be found in
Niebuhr’s two accounts. So, only two pages later on p.89, the Upper
Egyptian place name {Girge} = /girga/ shows up and gives another
piece of evidence for /g/.25 More importantly, in the first volume of
24
For a more detailed research see Woidich (to appear).
25
In three cases Niebuhr writes Calidsg with a {g} at the end for the common
Cairo place name xalīǧ, Niebuhr 1774/1968:58,110, and we find it again even on the
accompanying map. If it is not a simple printing error, this can only be interpreted
as intermediate writing between orthography and phonetics. Niebuhr knew that this
word had to be written with a letter w in Arabic, but heard it as a /g/, therefore
he mixed it up trying to represent both facts by writing {dsg} instead of {dsj] which
he normally uses for transliterating w . Forskål’s plant names have not yet been exam-
ined systematically, but there is at least one relevant case qazalgaq = Turkish qyzylǧyq
Niebuhr (1772/1969:75–94) there are three lists both by Niebuhr and

Forskål containing more than 300 place names from the Egyptian
Delta, both in transcription and in Arabic script, collected during
several trips along both branches of the River Nile and noted accord-
ing to the pronunciation of the local population.26 We do not know
where his company came from, but in Niebuhr’s two lists, 8 out of
32 possible items show {g, gh, gu} in the transcription which in view
of the German linguistic background of Niebuhr can only be read as
a phonetic [g]. Moreover, from these place names, 5 are written in
Arabic script with a , presumably the kāf al-caǧamīya. To give an
example:
`# Isrîghe Niebuhr (1774/1968:82) =
3 `# Ramzī27 2,2:213

A

More surprisingly even, when we look at the corresponding map of
the Delta given in Niebuhr (1774/1968) on page 88, we note that 7
out of the 8 place names with /g/ are located at the Damietta branch
of the Nile, thus following the same distributional pattern of /g/ as
today (see section 5 below). Niebuhr’s map on p.88 is not in perfect
agreement with his lists, some items are not present in the lists and
vice versa, but nevertheless it reflects even more clearly the same
distribution of graphemes standing for /g/ with 9 out of 13 lying on
the Damietta branch (Rašīd-branch: one out of 18).
Forskål, unfortunately, contains only place names from the
Western branch, the way between Rosetta and Cairo. He notes only
2 cases out of 14 with /ǧ/, but 12 with /g/ = (one with ‫ ﻙ‬in Arabic
script, the rest with w = {g} or {gh}). This pattern is unexpected,
because today we hear mainly [ʤ] or [ʒ] there. Why do we find so
many /g/ here in contrast to Niebuhr’s list? The reason is, as Niebuhr
tells us p.91 fn., that they corrected Forskål’s notes and had them
written in Arabic script by their scribe according to the pronuncia-
tion of his donkey driver in Cairo, and this must be the reason why
so many voiced velar stops /g/ show up here. The only conclusion to
“European cornel” [Kornelkirsche, Cornus mas L.], quoted in Meyerhof (1918:199

fn.149).
26
Niebuhr had a scribe write down and read aloud “nach der Mundart der Leute,
die mich begleitet hatten” [according to the idiom of the people who had accompa-
nied me] the names of the towns and villages he had recorded during his trips on the
two arms of the River Nile (Niebuhr 1774/1968:72).
27
Muḥammad Ramzī, al-Qāmūs al-ǧuġrāfī li-l-bilād al-miṣrīya. al-Qism al-ṯānī
al-ǧuz’ al-ṯānī. al-Qāhira 1958.
be drawn here is that /g/ was much more widespread and consoli-
dated in the 18th century than these earlier studies suggest.
If we go further back in time, we find traces of a similar variation
of [g] ~ [ʤ] in earlier travellers’ accounts. In his accounts of Egyptian
Medicine, Botany and Natural History, Alpin (1979), (1980a), and
(1980b) respectively, the Venetian physician and scientist Prosper
Alpin, who visited Egypt from 1581 to 1584, writes a couple of
words with spellings which suggest a pronunciation [g], besides oth-
ers which presumably should be read [ʤ]. For example, talking of
the famous xalīǧ “canal” of Cairo he writes twice a {g} as in {caleg}
(Alpin 1980b:118), {calig} (Alpin 1981a:92), elsewhere written with
a {z} {caliz} (Alpin 1979:166; 1980b:34,116) which could be read as
[ʤ]. Other cases would be {uzeg} for ʿawsag (Lycium Shawii, Alpin
1980b:60) and {hamirag} (Alpin 1980b:76), which represents 'amīr
alḥāgg. This means that we find here the same alternations as in
Niebuhr’s and Forskål’s lists, but 180 years earlier.
At the same time as Alpin, in 1581 the German pilgrim Salomon
Schweigger visited the Holy Land and wrote a book in German on
his travels from Constantinople, to Jerusalem and Egypt, which was
printed in Nuremberg in 1608. It includes a chapter called “Von den
Sprachen in Aegypten”28 [On the languages in Egypt], where he notes
that both Arabic and Turkish are in use there, and that these two
languages are mutually unintelligeable, but that the Egyptian numer-
als can be compared with the Hebrew ones. He further gives a list with
several words which he clearly notes down as Egyptian (Schweigger
1608/1964:266), some of them written with a {g} or {G}, which
can according to German orthography only be read as a /g/: {Nigme}
“Stern” [star], {Ragil} “Mensch” [human being 29], {Gibne} “Käß”
[cheese]. There is only one case of a grapheme cluster which has to
be interpreted as a /ǧ/, namely {dscherma} “Meerschifflein” [small
sea-going boat] written perfectly following German writing conven-
28
Schweigger (1608/1964:265). Schweigger spent only about three weeks in Alex-
andria and Rosetta, and could not continue the planned tour to Cairo and Sinai
because of the plague (Schweigger 1608/1964:256). So he had to go on to Palestine
directly by sea. Apparently, this was enough time to make interesting annotations,
not only linguistic ones, which must rely on direct observation. Anyway, his way of
writing differs so much from von Harff’s and Breydenbach’s that copying from these
earlier lists can be excluded.
29
Of course a misunderstanding for “man”.
tions, and which represents the Italian word germa30. This means
when Schweigger heard an affricate, he wrote it as such, and, accord-
ingly, any {g} in his list should be read as a velar stop. There is only
indirect evidence for /ǧ/ in Schweigger’s list, because, not very sur-
prisingly, he was not able to distinguish different dialects of Egyptian
Arabic and he mixes them. So we find in his list {zagid} “schlaffen”
[to sleep]31 with a /g/, this time harking back to a *q, and dialects
with *q > /g/ normally have an affricated variant of *g (see the implic-
tions given in the introduction). All in all, Schweigger (1608) offers
a clear evidence for /g/ in the Egypt of the 16th century.
Ninety years before Schweigger, in 1496, another pilgrim, the
German knight Arnold von Harff left Cologne to Rome and then
Venice, where he embarked for the Holy Land. He passed through
Egypt, where he spent about four months. After having completed his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he continued to Constantinople, then
to Venice again, then to Santiago in Spain, returning, finally, to his
hometown after an absence of nearly three years. Apparently he was
an amateur linguist, because his account, while sometimes all too
fanciful and not very reliable as to its stories and adventures,32 con-
tains word lists for 9 languages (Albanian, Arabic, Basque/Euscarian,
Bretonic, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian and Turkish), besides
specimens of 8 different alphabets. His Arabic list has been examined
by Stumme (1914) and Grotzfeld (1995), and both rightly come to the
conclusion that these words reflect a Syro-Palestine urban dialect.33
Words containing *g are all represented here with graphemes like {s}
and {z}, which indicates an affricated or sibilant pronunciation. But
we have to look farther than the word list. In the description of his
voyage from Alexandria to Cairo by ship on the Rosetta branch of the
Nile he talks about an island called in Arabic {Getzera de Heppe} /
gizīrit iddahab/, a name which he correctly translates with “eyn insull
des goltz” [an Island of gold]. This could be read with /g/ according
to German orthography, but there are some doubts about this. Von
30
Schweigger (1608/1964:255, 256). Ital. germa “bastimento mercantile usato
sulla costa egiziana” (Randall Herz, Die `Reise ins Gelobte Land` Hans Tuchers des
Älteren (1479–1480), p. 574u. Wiesbaden: 2002.
31
Apparently misprinted for {ragid}.
32
Harff’s pilgrimage has been studied and written on intensively, see Groote
(1860), Hetzer (1981), Khattab (1982), Beckers (1985), Brall-Tuchel (2008).
33
About two thirds of his list are copied from an earlier list by Breydenbach, see
Khattab (1982:310).
Harff must have been familiar with Italian or Venetian, since he did
his pilgrimage mostly in company with Venetian merchants, and he
could have applied the orthographic rules of these languages to ren-
der /ǧ/. Indeed, he occasionally applies {g} for [ʒ] in other word lists,
writing for example Croatian žena “woman” as {gena}, see Stumme
1914:33. In this latter case, the {Getzera} must be read /ǧizīra/.
Judging from this evidence from von Harff, we cannot establish
the existence of /g/ in Egypt at that time for sure, but we cannot ex-
clude it either, since this only one example is too inconclusive. But
from the other evidence provided by Alpin and Schweigger we may
safely assume that the same variation as stated by Blanc (1981) and
Hary (1996) for the 17th and 18th centuries, already existed in the
16th century, thus prolonging its existence with 100 years. It is rather
unlikely in our view that a linear phonetic backshift from /ǧ/ to /g/
in Cairo should have taken more than 300 years until its completion.
The variation must have other reasons.
4.2. Arabic Sources

Another piece of evidence for earlier /g/ comes from a hitherto un-
known passage in Širbīnī’s Hazz al-Quūf. Davies 2005:XXXV, in the
introduction to his new edition of this important source for Egyptian
Arabic in the 17th century, quotes a verse (p.207,7 of the edition)

which runs as follows: Jf0U
GH? ( 34 R ST0U “He says, ‘O Gā\ī!’ with
z q`

the letter w ”. The person about whom this is said, is a peasant. The
equalisation of this sound with the letter w makes only sense if we
suppose that the actual pronunciation of this letter was [g] and not

[ʤ], since [g] is a reflex for ' in many regions of Egypt, whereas the
affricated [ʤ] as a reflex of the latter, common nowadays for example
in Najdi dialects, is nowhere attested for Egypt. So it is rather safe
to assume that Širbīnī meant that this peasant pronounced *q as a w
[g]. The circumstance that this fact is used here for description and
comparison means that the pronunciation [g] for w must have been
commonplace for Širbīnī, contrary to what Blanc (1981:192) says
based on older editions of Širbīnī. This means that [g] is attested as
closely connected with the letter w about 70 years earlier than Blanc
could conclude from his sources.
Yet another hint for [g] as a usual pronunciation comes from the
second important source for the 17th century, i.e. Yūsuf al-Maġribī’s
Daf ʿ al-Iṣr ʿan kalām 'ahl Miṣr, written in 1606.34 Though al-Maġhribī
never states explicitly that w was pronounced /g/ in Cairo at that
time,35 there is indirect proof of this in the form of a mawwāl which
displays a type of pun called zahr, a word play which involves pho-
netic modification.36
 
/
]34  B b=  D EgU+Zf0U19 R 
/
] D
E


E GL 19 R ( v = GL Z[\D
E /
] D  E
/
] D

E Mp0 I v R ( A34Sr / 
/
] D
z =


 E su A A!"# p0o B b
/
] D 34 / &O =
gabbēt [gabbēt] mawwāl fi-l-maḥbūb wi hū gāb bēt [gabbēt]
gabbēt [kabbēt] ḥasūdī wi lī qāl ilwarā gabbēt [gabbēt]
wi l-ḥabbǝ fī qahwatu qāl lī ʿalēk gabbēt [gabbēt < *gabba]
wi gād bi-bōsu wi maṣṣu qumt anā gabbēt [kabbēt]
I brought up a mawwāl for the beloved and he brought up one back,
I threw out my envious (adversary) and all mankind said to me: you
won (you gave the final answer),
So the coffee beans (nipples) inside his coffee (areola) said to me: we
give ourselves to you for free,
He was generous with kissing and sucking, so I came.37
The point of this mawwāl is the pronunciation and the interpretation
of the sequence gabbēt. In the first line it is a variant of gibt “I brought”,
a form which today can be found in the Kharga-Oasis (Behnstedt
and Woidich 1994:55).38 The last word of the first line, gāb bēt ‘he
came up with a verse’, sounds the same as gabbēt and gives an exam-
ple of zahr involving phonetic similarity ‘at the level of the morphe-
mic tiers of the consonantal root’ (Eisele 1997:751). In the second
and fourth line, it should be read as kabbēt ‘I threw out’ (line 2) and
‘I came, ejaculated’ (line 4). This is an indication that in al-Maġribī’s
time, the letter w was pronounced as /g/, because the association of
/g/ with /k/, from voiced to voiceless velar plosive (gabbēt—kabbēt),
is very plausible, while it is far less plausible that /ǧ/ could be
34
See Zack 2009: 5.
35
The other evidence for /ǧ/ adduced by Blanc 1981 (ragl, lagan) is rather doubt-
ful and presumably a misinterpretation, see Zack 2009:86 f..
36
On zahr in Egyptian popular poetry see Slyomovics 1987:9f, Cachia 1989:
34;60ff, Eisele 1997.
37
We thank Eli Kallas for helping us with the translation of this mawwāl.
38
For forms like kannēt for kunt ‘you were’ in Sudan see Reichmuth 1983:244.
associated with /k/. In fact, Cachia (1989:142) mentions an example

of devoicing of /g/ to /k/ in a mawwāl: gamkann (kām kān). Eisele
1997:754, too, notes that in the zahr puns, “the most common type
of feature change involves voicing or devoicing, and less often a
change in emphasis”. Again, we may conclude from this that at
al-Maġhribī’s time w pronounced as a velar stop /g/ was a common
feature.
5. Evidence from Dialect Geography
With the appearance of the Egyptian dialect atlas in 1985, another

argument not available to Blanc (1981) comes into play, namely the
geographic distribution of /g/ and /ǧ/ in the Nile Delta, which we
have already referred to when talking about Niebuhr’s place names.
/g/, paralleled by the glottal stop [ʔ] for *q, extends from Cairo to
the centre of the Delta and, more importantly, along the Eastern
branch of the River Nile up to Dumyāṭ (Damietta). Dumyāṭ was in
the Middle Ages the major port of Egypt for the trade from and
towards the Levant. The picture displayed on the map can be inter-
preted in two ways: It could show the spreading of the Cairene fea-
ture /g/ along the medieval trade route39 in a corridor along the
Damietta branch of the River Nile dividing the rest of the Delta into
two parts with /ǧ/ ~ /ž/ (< *g) and /g/ (< *q). More likely seems to
us is the reverse interpretation, i.e. the resistance of /g/ in this cor-
ridor to the impact of Bedouin or bedouinised dialects with /ǧ/ from
the western and eastern parts of the Delta. /g/, which may have cov-
ered originally the whole Delta, was backed by the existence of this
trade route and the entailing influence of Cairo Arabic against the
spread of an affricated /ǧ/ imported with the influx of Bedouin tribes
settling on the East and West flanks of the Delta throughout the
Middle Ages (Barrierenrelikt).40
In either case, the sheer existence of this corridor makes clear
that the pronunciation /g/ must be old, since it takes centuries to
develop such a geographical pattern.41 If we assume the first scenario
39
For the existence of this trade route see Behnstedt and Woidich II (1985) map
551.
40
See for more discussion Woidich (1996:346 f.) and Behnstedt and Woidich
(2005:157 f.).
41
/g~ǧ/ and /’~g/ are not the only isoglosses to delimit this corridor, see Woidich
(1996:346 f.) and Behnstedt and Woidich (2005:157 f.).
as correct, we have to conclude that it harks back at least to the

Middle Ages when this trade route between Cairo and Dumyāṭ was
active. Since Alexandria regained its economical importance, which
led to the reactivation of the Rosetta trade route, only at the begin-
ning of the 19th century, a change of /ǧ/ to /g/ in the 18th and 19th
centuries in Cairo as proposed by Blanc 1981 and Hary 1996, can
hardly explain today’s geographical distribution of /g/. If Cairo had
had /ǧ/ in the late Middle Ages, there would have been no reason
for /g/ to spread along the trade route, because it simply would not
have existed yet. By the same token, the reverse scenario presupposes
/g/ at even an earlier stage, presumably from the time of the Arabic
conquest of Egypt onward. Either way, /g/ in this area must be a relic
from a far past.
Conclusion
With the evidence examined in this paper, both from European and
Arabic sources, we hope to make clear that the voiced velar plosive
/g/ was much more common in Egypt and existed there, along with
the voiced dental affricate /ǧ/, long before the 17th century as sup-
posed by Blanc 1981 and Hary 1996. In particular the dialect geo-
graphical evidence suggests that /g/ has been present in Northern
Egyptian Arabic since very early times, presumably from the Arabic
conquest onwards, and that there has been no ‘linear development’
g > gj > ǧ > g as sketched by Hary 1996. The final part of this scenario
seems unlikely for phonetic reasons, since a /ǧ/ [ʤ] would rather be
interpreted as a [d] or a [ʒ] by hearers and learners and replaced by
one of these two sounds, not as a [g].
The apparent variation /g/ ~ /ǧ/ displayed in the Jewish Arabic
documents and the accounts of European pilgrims and voyagers of
the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries does not necessarily point to a
linear internal back-shifting of a dental affricate /ǧ/ to a velar /g/.
It can also be accounted for by the assumption that a /ǧ/-speaking
minority adapted to a /g/-speaking majority, thus giving way to fluc-
tuation and variation in written texts. With regard to the travellers’
accounts, we have to take into consideration that their knowledge
of Arabic was poor, and their informants and sources are unknown.
Apparently, they took from different dialects. Many of them had no
consistent way of rendering Arabic sounds in Latin script, and were,
at least the scientists among them (Niebuhr, Forskål), influenced by
their knowledge of Classical Arabic. Again, this leads to a variation

in these accounts between writings which have to be interpreted as
/ǧ/, and others which should be read as /g/.42 Nevertheless, closer
examination brings to light many more cases than hitherto assumed
which point to the existence of /g/. And, astonishingly enough, the
distribution of place names with /g/ on Niebuhr’s map corresponds
to the actual distribution of /g/ today.
This leads us to the assumption that speakers with /g/ and speakers
with /ǧ/ coexisted for a very long time, i.e. a situation similar to what
we find today, but, presumably, with a different geographical distri-
bution. There might have been a slight palatalisation of the /g/ as as-
sumed by Blanc (1981) from the very beginning onwards,43 which in
some places may have developed further to /ǧ/ or, more likely, have
been replaced by /ǧ/ due to Bedouin impact, but at the same time it
seems obvious that /g/ [g ~ gj] must have survived in other places as
in Cairo, the Center of the Delta and along the Damietta branch of
the River Nile. In the long run, apparently, the /g/-speakers gained
ground in Cairo and many /ǧ/-speakers, including minority groups
such as the Jews, switched over to /g/ [g], thus adapting to the more
common and less conspicuous variant.44
At the moment we can only infer all this on the grounds of the
linguistic data found so far in these sources. We can only hope that
in the future more documents will come to light which would give
us more insight into the social and the linguistic history of Egypt, in
order to test the thesis presented in this article even further.
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Addendum: Further evidence for /g/ in Egypt as a standard pronunciation in the

early 19th century offers the account of Seetzen on his stay in Cairo and Lower
Egypt between 1807 and 1809, see “Ulrich Jasper Seetzen’s Reisen durch Syrien,
Palästina, Phönizien, die Transjordan-Länder, Arabia Petraea und Unter-Aegypten.
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Verlegt bei G. Reiner”. Besides a significant number of transcriptions containing {g}
rather than {dsch}, Seetzen clearly notes with reference to sycomores: "Dschümmês
oder nach ägyptischem Dialekt Gümmês" (158) [Dschümmês or in Egyptian dialect
Gümmês] and "Sycomoren (Gümmês nach ägyptischer, und Dschümmês nach syris-
cher Aussprache)" (346) [Gümmês according to Egyptian, and Dschümmês accor-
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the affricate is ‘Syrian’.
words and things 61
DESCRIPTIVE DIALECTOLOGY
62 peter behnstedt
words and things 63
WORDS AND THINGS
Peter Behnstedt
1. Introduction
“Wörter und Sachen” (“words and things”) is a well-known linguistic

concept which was refined by the Indo-Europeanist R. Meininger
and the romanist H. Schuchardt in the late 19th century and which
had become some kind of a linguistic movement during earlier stud-
ies, especially in dialect geography. It simply means that one has not
only to study “the words”, their meanings and history, but also “the
things”, the cultural artefacts and concepts, which are designated.1
The concept is meanwhile well-established, and to come right to the
point: “a lamb” within an Arab sheep-rearer’s world is not simply “a
lamb”, it might be “weaned”, “fat”, “have two or four new incisors”,
it might be “one year old or two” and consequently have different
names. “A well” in Arabic dialects is not simply a well, it may be
deep, shallow, narrow, broad, dry in summer, have much water, have
little water, it may be walled or not, with bricks or something else,
etc. Accordingly, different designations may be used.2 Differences in
vocabulary of various dialects, which apparently are regional syn-
onyms, as for example English “cock—rooster”, may be due to
(sometimes slight) material differences of the things which are
named.
Some of the problems which arise when working on the lexical
maps for the “Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte” (WAD) are related
to the reliability of the data in so many different sources to be con-
sulted, the ambiguity of the words themselves, their translations into
different languages (does “herbe” in a French source mean “grass”
or “herb”?), certain inaccuracies of translations, but also differences
1
One of the results of this “school” was K. Jaberg, J. Jud: Sprach- und Sachatlas
Italiens und der Südschweiz.
2
For the different types of wells and their designations cf. Behnstedt and
Woidich 2005: 201-204.
64 peter behnstedt
in material culture, and sometimes different perceptions of reality.

The qibla, the direction to which Muslims turn in praying, is for them
an important geographical point of reference, but according to the
speaker’s position gibla, gibli may mean “south, southern” (e.g. in
Egypt), “north, northern” (e.g. in Yemen), “west, western” (e.g. in
Ḥa\ramawt, Ḏ ufār, Uzbekistan), strangely enough also in eastern
Mauritania, where it should mean “east”, but where it primarily does
not refer to the qibla, but to the gәbla, the southwestern region of
this country. In the Shukriyya dialect of Sudan, of course, it means
“east, eastern”.3 “Green” and “blue” for a Berber from northern
Morocco are the same colour, in some Arabic dialects azrag is not
only “blue”, but also “brown” or “black”. For a westerner a “bed”
normally implies a bed-stead, Arabs might differentiate between a
“bed-stead” and “a bed which consists of a mattress and blankets
directly put on the ground”, or they may mean by fṛāš “bed” = “a
bed with the necessary fittings like blankets, mattress etc.”. For “us”
lizard is a quite clearly defined general term for a certain species of
animals. In many Arabic dialects there exists no such general term,
often only the subspecies are distinguished. So when a form like
lizagah is translated by “lizard” in whatever source, one has to
suppose that a “gecko” was meant.
When using the different sources every word has to be weighed
and scrutinized. Here are a few examples4.
2. Village
The concept of “village” seems to be quite clear. A village can be

defined as “a rural settlement bigger than a hamlet and smaller than
a town”. So the different designations one can find for it should not
pose any problem. There is a neat geographical distribution as for
the different terms. The problem is, however, that often closely related
3
Somebody who is not familiar with Arabic, reading such forms in an atlas may
think that the explorers have confounded the cardinal points. Errors during field
work do occur. In the beginnings of French dialect geography, by one explorer com-
pletely different objects were noted by the same word: šepá. It turned out to be a
“badly” pronounced French “je ne sais pas”!
4
Many of the examples quoted are from the WAD questionnaires filled in by the
collaborators of the WAD project. Many thanks to them, also to Manfred Woidich
who in the last minute has provided me with more material.
words and things 65
meanings cover a wider area. This is partly a cartographic problem.

When stating on a map by colouring or by symbols that illa, hille,
hile “village” is typical for Sudan, Chad and Nigerian Arabic, the map
also should show that the form is common in bedouin dialects of the
Arabian peninsula but with the meaning of “collection of tents,
camp” (Kurpershoek); cf. also Oman illa “small settlement”
(Brockett). In such cases, of course, an accompanying semasiological
map showing the semantic field would be more appropriate.
ḍayʿa ~ ēʿa are restricted to Lebanon, Syria (sedentary dialects),
dialects of Turkey namely those of Antiochia, Cilicia and Anatolia.
kafr (čafr) used in the Nile Delta is equally common in the ayʿa-
area, but only in the topography (e.g. Kafr Ḥalab, Kfar ʿAbīda).
The form firīğ seems to be restricted to Khuzistan (“we say firīj”
Ingham 1982: 171) and the Trucial Coast (Johnstone 1967: 171), cf.
also Holes 2001: 394b farīg, firīğ “quarter, neighbourhood”, Shukriyya/
Sudan farīg “Zeltreihe” (Reichmuth 231 = “row of tents”), Kurpershoek
firīğ “a camp of 5 -10 tents”, “a camp with less than ten tents”. Other
forms for “village” in Khuzistan Arabic are in the pl. iddihāt “the
villages” from Persian dehāt in Ingham 1982: 174, dīra ibidem; nazil
in Ingham 1982: 170 is translated p. 171 by “settlement”.
The form dīra “village”, given in Ingham 1982: 168 for Kūt/Iraq
(iddīra jirīb, translated p. 169 “The village [that I came from] is quite
close”), is also used in Barayn as “village, town, populated area (as
opposed to barr)” Holes 2000: 186a, in Oman Holes 1998: 356, but
means in Woodhead-Beene “district, area, region”, in Meissner 122
dīre = “Land, Gegend”. German “Land” is ambigous. Does it mean
“land” or “countryside”? “Countryside” quite would fit with “village”.
In Kurpershoek dīra is “territory, region, tribal homeland”; cf. also
untranslated dīra in Ingham 1982: 110 “go back and return to your
dīra”, 157 “the dīra of Tubbaʿ”. Here again we have the same problem
as with illa. dīra is typical for a certain area, but has different related
meanings.
Finding āra “village” in Brockett at first glance might amaze the
reader, since normally it means “quarter of a town or a village”, but
cf. above the polysemy of farīg—firīğ. Also Rhodokanakis I 89
menâder “Dörfer” seems strange, since elsewhere in Oman it corres-
ponds to bender = “the Khābūra fort”, “’market’ near the Khābūra
fort” (Brocket), or in Barayn bandar “port” (Holes 2001: 55b); cf.
66 peter behnstedt
also Egyptian banda “town in contrast to village” which is the

contrary of the meaning given by Rhodokanakis.5
As for qarya, ğarya, they are the current forms in Syrian bedouin
dialects (ğarya), Iraqi Arabic (qarya), Khorasan (ğarya), Palestine,
Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Libya. Being pan-arabic qarya may be used
in Sudan as an elevated form for modern villages (cf. Reichmuth 46
= ġarya; cf. also Chad xarya) and may be used as a parallel form
elsewhere (e.g. Rhodokanakis I 111 giryeten ~ girīten).
balad, too, can be considered pan-arabic being the most common
form in Northern Africa (in the Maghreb often in the plural blād),
but may be used also in Sudan (Hillelson), the Levant, Oman
(Brockett), the Gulf etc.
nağʿ, very common in the topography of the Nile valley (cf. Nagʿ
ammādi, nowadays a town) normally refers to a hamlet of Bedouin
settlers at the the border of the cultivated land and the desert.
Typical Maghrebi forms are dašra, dәša (e.g. Ph. Marçais 505, W.
Marçais 20) and duwwā.
The area of dašra, dәšra begins in southern Tunisia, but in the
Marāzīg region it is restricted to place names, “village” being called
blayyda.
The form dašra is still used in assānīya Arabic. For my younger
informants for northern Ḥassānīya daša, however, was “a big town”,
a “village” for them was blāa or qarya6. When checking up this
contradiction in Taine-Cheikh the word turned out to be ambiguous.
Taine-Cheikh, indeed, gives “ville” and “village”. So does Heath. For
original tent-dwellers obviously the main contrast to be named was
that of “fixed settlement with houses, whether big or small” vs.
“movable campment of tents”. Other “synonyms” for “village” to be
found in Taine-Cheikh have special meanings, namely kar which
also elsewhere in the Maghreb is “a fortified village”, or āgemni “vil-
lage de paillotes”, edebāy “village d’affranchi cultivateurs”.
The duwwā originally meant a “campment of tents” and is still
used in this sense in Algeria and Morocco. In Algeria it is rather used
by bedouins or rural people, city-dwellers using blād or even French
village. bādyih in Jiblih/Yemen translated by “Dorf”7 is rather
“countryside, especially in the lowlands”.
5
Explained in footnote 1: al-banādir = al-bilād (written in unvocalized Arabic).
6
They were from Tindouf (Algeria) and possibly blāa is due to Algerian
influence. The form is not to be found in Taine-Cheikh.
7
See Behnstedt 1992 s.v. The translation is not mine.
words and things 67
3. Kitchen
The concept of “kitchen” as a special room of a house or an appart-

ment in which cooking is performed is not universal due to different
material cultures. It does not fit with a bedouin tent, where there
might be found a māgad ~ mawgad a fire place e.g. in the women’s
part of the tent (maram, maram)8. As for Germanic languages the
concept and the designation of “kitchen” are not original: kitchen,
keuken, Küche are derived from late Latin coquina with respective
phonetical changes and have been introduced to Nordic languages
(kök) via Middle Low German. This loanword implies that a “kitchen”
as a special room for cooking formerly was unknown in the North.
Anglo-Saxon houses had indeed only one room with a hearth for
cooking, heating and light.
Arabic mabax mainly used in the Mašriq (partly in Libya besides
kučīna; Egypt, the Levant, Iraq etc.) is according to Lane only “a place
of cooking, a place in which cooking is performed”, thus not neces-
sarily a special room in a house as implies a modern mabax. The
fact that the Maghreb almost as a whole has kūzīn, kūžīna, kūzīna,
kәššīna from different Romance sources (French, Italian) for a kit-
chen in our modern European sense might suggest that something
new had been introduced to the Maghreb by European colonialists.
This would be too simplistic. Words and concepts like sīmāna “week”,
lāfāmīy “family” (the latter normally used with the French definite
article), very common in Maghrebi Arabic, certainly are not European
inventions introduced to the Maghreb with their respective French
or Spanish designations. That there is no lacuna in the vocabulary as
for “kitchen”, is shown by the forms e.g. in ʿAsīr and Barādah pro-
vince in Saudi-Arabia. Traditional houses there have a mabax as a
“common kitchen for summer time” in the ground floor or a muġlaq
wa mabax as a “store-room and kitchen in the upper floor” (Dostal
16, 17).
As for the geographical distribution there are, as said above, two
major areas with either kūzīna etc. (West) or mabax (East). The
lateral areas Sudan, Chad, Uganda, Kenia, the South of the Arabian
peninsula, Uzbekistan have their own designations partly of non-
Arabic origin like Uzbekistan Arabic ōšxōna from Tajik (Chikovani
8
See List 87 māgad qahwa, 83 maram and similars.
68 peter behnstedt
11) or Ki-Nubi jokón from Swahili jiko-ni “in the kitchen” (Heine
76).
Some of the forms to be found in Yemen do not imply the idea
of a special room for cooking in the interior of a house. The forms
daymeh (daymih), dēmeh in the central highlands refer to a special
hut for cooking outside the house proper. The original meaning must
be “hut”, since daymeh is also to be found in the meaning of “guard’s
house” mostly in fields, especially qāt-plantations9. Another designa-
tion of the “kitchen” also refers to a hut, namely kibs used in the
arīb area, which originally means “earth with which a well, ...a
cavitiy or pit ... is filled up” (Lane), in Wahrmund also as “Lehmhütte”
(“hut made of clay”). The northern Sudanese xuss (Hillelson 1925)
is nothing else than xu “hut”, which in Egyptian Arabic is a “hut
made of leafage for storage”. A “conical grass hut, especially kitchen”
is also Sudanese tukl, tukul in Hillelson 1935 206a. Qāsim 93a quotes
tukul, pl. takala = al-mabax wa laʿallahu summiya kaḏālika li’an-
nahu ʿādatan yakūnu matkūl (sic!) ’ay masnūd ’ilā l-bayt; cf. also in
Qāsim takala, takalān = al-ʿitimād. As for southwestern Saudi-Arabia
Dostal only gives the form mabax. masgaf “kitchen” documented
for Rufaydah in Prochazka 17 is related to misgaf in Landberg 1901:
399 (with drawing) which refers to the fourth floor of the house
where the kitchen maxdam or maʿsam is to be found. maʿsam accor-
ding to footnote 2 p. 399 is derived from ʿsm (not vocalized) “faire
la cuisine, ʿassām cuisinier seulem. en \. bx et qly sont inconnus
dans le sud (Yéman et Aden exceptés comme toujours.)”. Yemeni
mawgad in the outermost north originally refers to the “oven” (see
below).
jūwu in the Yemeni Tihāmah had been elicited without asking
about its type10. The form might imply another type of cooking place.
Landberg 1920-1942: 375 is more precise and gives āğī “cuisine sur
le toit” for the ugarīyah, meaning in a^_ramawt “cour de la mai-
son”. One possible place for cooking, indeed, is the courtyard of a
9
In Ṣanʿ ā’ daymih is the older form, to be found within the house, maṭbax is the
modern one.
10
The form was elicited in Zabīd and as-Suwayq west of Zabīd. A “last minute
information” comes from Samia Naïm (WAD questionnaire for Zabīd) which indi-
cates aqīfah “cuisine traditionnelle” and mabax “cuisine”. It has to be verified what
kind of “kitchen” ṣaqīfah is, one on the roof of the house or a roofed cooking place,
e.g. in a courtyard.
words and things 69
house, which can be partly roofed as in Upper Egypt: bēt il-fun

(Behnstedt and Woidich).
murakkab (Mecca)11, marčab (al-Qahabah in Prochazka 16) “kit-
chen”, yemeni Tihāmah marakkabu “oven” (M.-C. Simeone-Senelle
et al. 221), are related to Sudanese rakkab aš-šāy = waaʿahu ʿalā
n-nār, rakkab al-lūba = abaxahu (sic!) bi-waʿihi ʿalā n-nār (Qāsim),
rakkab “faire cuire dans l’eau” (Pommerol), rekkeb “cuire”, terkīb
“cuisson” (Roth-Laly), Nigerian rakkab, birakkib “to cook” (Kaye).
The forms reflect the idea of putting sth. on the fire, but might also
be influenced (metathesis?) by karrab “allumer (le feu), s’enflammer”
(Pommerol), Landberg 1920-1942: 2564 takarrab “se chauffer au
feu”, 2565 karīb, makrīb “feu”; cf. also karab-āb “kitchen” in Sudanese
Arabic (Hillelson) which sounds like a loan from Beja; cf. further
Chadian Arabic bēt an-nār “kitchen”. Also to “fire” (“flame”) refers
milhab in Rijāl Alma in the Saudi ʿAsīr province.
The Chadian forms ladāy, bēt al-ladāy originally do not refer to a
room, but to an object (*al-adāy = CA al-’adāh “tool, implement”),
namely the fireplace made of three stones. ladāy is polysemic.
Pommerol gives “foyer, pierres du foyer, cuisine, trois pierres consti-
tuant le foyer de la cuisine, trépied qui cale et soutient la
marmite”.
4. Baking Oven
The problems of interpretation partly result from the ambiguity of

Arabic terms and are mainly cartographic. One and the same word
might designate “a baking oven, a baking pit, a bakery, a furnace” or
according to the form of the oven different terms might be used.
A baking oven might be rectangular, bell-shaped, cylindrical or conic.
Forms like ṭabūn ~ ṭabūna ~ ṭabōna used in Upper Egypt, Sudan,
Lebanon, Palestine, but also in Tunisia, and sporadically even in
Yemen, do not necessarily refer to a certain type as suggest Dalman
74 ff. and the photographs nr. 12, 13 and 14, also Behnstedt and
Woidich 417, which show bell-shaped implements in contrast to the
very rudimentary drawing in Saada table XI which is conic having
at its side a rectangular block for putting the bread on it. As for
Egypt, abūna rather appplies to a bell-shaped oven, but this might
11
As for the form cf. muallan “place of prayer”.
70 peter behnstedt
also be called fun etc., and in Sudan according to Qāsim 469b abūn
is a ufra tufa fīha n-nār.
The tannū, however, often has a certain form, i.e., it is cylindrical
whether underground or overground and implies the sticking of the
dough to its walls. The form tannū (a\ramawt, Ḏ ufār: tinnār) at
first glance seems to be mainly used on the Arabian peninsula
(Levant, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia, the Gulf, Yemen, see e.g. Dostal 29,
Kurpershoek, Reinhardt 78 etc.) and adjacent areas (Anatolia, also
Uzbekistan tandīr). For Abu Ḏ abi Rawi 197 gives the meaning
“Backgrube” (“baking pit”). Hillelson quotes it also for Sudan as “fur-
nace” (“oven” being furn or abūna). The form stretches into the
Maghreb and Le Quellec mentions it for Libya (Tripoli and Fezzan)
as “four domestique utilisé pour cuire le pain”. As a general form he
mentions furn. One of the common forms in North Africa, fun, is
also used in Syria (fuәn, firәn) and Iraq (firin), but means “public
(statal) bakery”, “a neighbourhood bakery”, the “oven” being called
tannū.
Other forms for “baking oven” in Libya are kōša for Tripolitania,
the ʿAwāmma tribe, bedouins in the south-west of Sirt12, and kušša
(sic!) in Owens 150 for Eastern Libya as “bakery” as suggests his
example ibgīt nišri fil-xubza mil-kušša translated by “I’ve been buying
it from the baker”. Griffini gives kūša “fornace da calce” (“limekiln”)
and furn “forno”. As “furnace” for making bricks the form kōša is
already used in Egypt. In the dialect of the Marāzīg/Tunisia kōša is
not used for an oven to bake bread in, but as “four provisoire en
pierre ... exclusivement pour la viande”, for a bread baking oven
ābōna ~ ābūna “petit four à pain” is used (Boris). In Algeria kūša
is polysemic meaning “four à pain, à chaux, fournil” (Beaussier,
Madouni—La Peyre). In Morocco it normaly refers to a “four à
chaux, à plâtre, à charbon de bois”, but in Fes and Marrakesh it is
also “a baking oven” = kūša ~ fәān әl-kūša (De Premare). Besides
the older fәn ~ fәṛān, fū from French four may be used in the
Maghreb. As for assānīya the form vәrne “fourneau malgache”
(“Madagascar stove”) given by Taine-Cheikh refers to a metal stove
recently introduced to the country13.
12
Boris s.v.
13
Which according to http://www.bvco.org.uk/BVCO_Stoves.htm. looks like a
tannū, but obviously is a stove for cooking.
words and things 71
Yemeni forms like māfī, mawfā, mūfā, mīfa14, mabkal, madannā,

madagah, the latter “eine Art Ofen” (“a kind of oven” in Behnstedt
1992 s.v.), are not defined; madrē might have been misunderstand,
since also madfē is to be found in the same dialect (Jabal Rāzi); this
madfē in another dialect = madfā (Minabbih) is defined in Gingrich
74 as “Ofen für Getränke” (“oven for drinks”) whatever this may be,
in the central highlands = madvā is “a fire place consisting of two
stones”; mangal is a portable clay oven of drum shape, in Landberg
(1920-1942) 2816 “poële portatif”, so is mawqad; as mawgid it can
also be “a furnace for destilling resin”; manwar is an “oven made of
stone”, uʿd In Behnstedt (1996) is simply translated by “Backofen”,
muʿidih and masʿaeh as “kleiner uʿd”, “very small clay oven”, uʿd
is defined as “Dreifuss (zum Kochen)” = “tripod for cooking”, too.
5. To Light a Fire
The different forms for “to light a fire” at first glance seem to be
unequivocal. Forms derived from šʿl, wlʿ, wqd need not many com-
ments15. The latter, however, in some regions, has undergone a para-
digmatical change, e.g. in Egypt gād, ygīd or in Tunisia (Marāzīg)
gidē, yigdi or assānīya gda, yigdi. Some forms of the Arabian penin-
sula, however, are semantically tricky. One typical form is šabb, yšubb
an-nā mainly to be found in bedouin dialects. The sources consulted
give “to light, kindle a fire” (Holes 262b šabb (i) 1. “kindle (fire)”, 2.
“turn on light”, 3. “catch fire”, Ingham 1982: 143 šubb annār, 146 =
“to light the fire”, Ingham 1986: 284: yšubbūn awwhum: translated
288 “they were kindling a fire”; Behnstedt 2000: 515/516 nafir afar
w nšubb buh nā for the Šammar dialect; Kurpershoek 154 šabbihaw
nīrānhum. Cf. also Wehr šabba, yašubbu “to light, kindle (fire)” and
for Sudan Qāsim 384b šabb = ittaqadat.
Landberg 1901: 136 calls in question this translation: “šabb ... n’est
pas, comme disent nos dictionnaires européens, allumer, mais raviver
le feu, en y éventant dessus, soit avec un éventoir, la main, ou, comme
le font les bédouins, avec le pan de la chemise...”.
The question is whether all those specialists have been mistaken
as for the meaning of šabb as Landberg’s statement may allege. He
14
To be found mainly in the south (e.g. Aden).
15
A “last minute information” comes form the WAD questionnaire for Zabīd
(Samia Naïm): sarrag, nawwar, wle’.
72 peter behnstedt
is certainly right in asserting that šabb originally meant “to fan” and
not “to light a fire”, a distinction which is still true for a\ramawi
for which he quotes iršin an-nār w šubbha! “allume le feu et évente-le
(ou souffle dessus)!”. This original meaning of šabb is confirmed by
Omani mšebb “woven palm-leaf hand-fans” (Brockett). Most proba-
bly “all those specialists” have not been mistaken, šabb simply has
undergone a semantical change due to contiguity.
Another semantically tricky word for “to kindle a fire” is only
typical for dialects on the peninsula (bedouin and sedentary), namely
forms derived from ʿlq like ʿilag “to, light, ignite, set on fire”, hāk
iš-šixxāa w iʿlig il-aab! “take the matches and light the firewood!”
(Woodhead-Beene); ʿallaq “allumer (le feu)” (Barthélemy, Denizeau),
aʿlag “to ignite, kindle” (Sowayan, Glossary), p. 104/107 yiʿli =
“ignite the powder in the gun barrel”, aʿlag, yiʿli “to light a fire”
(Palva 129), Soukhne: iʿlik, yiʿlak “‘sich entzünden (Feuer)’, ʿallak,
yʿallik “anzünden” (Behnstedt 1994 II glossary). The problem is
cultural and semantic. What has “to light a fire” to do with the basic
meanings of ʿlq “to hang up, suspend, cling, stick etc.”. Of course a
kettle or a cauldron may be hung up over a fire, and ʿallig! might
have undergone a semantic change from “hang up the kettle!” to
“light the fire!”, cf. yiʿallag iš-šāy “to make tea” in Barīs/Kharga oasis
in Egypt. But is this the normal way of cooking tea or food? A tea-
kettle normally is not hung up over a fire and cooking may be per-
formed on a kānūn, a clay or mud-brick hearth. Also in coffee-drinking
societies like some bedouin ones on the peninsula no kettle is hung
over a fire for preparing it. Furthermore “lighting a fire” does not
necessarily imply “cooking”.
Another strange form is aʿrab, yiʿrib from Sinai. When looking up
the different meanings of ʿrb in Lane one finds indeed some related
ones (not to be found in Wehr), i.e. ʿariba “said of a camel’s hump
... it became swollen and purulent” which one could also translate
by “became inflamed”, or taʿrīb “cauterizing”. The other Sinai form
ša, yšu most probably is related to Lane šāa, yašīu “it burned”
or “became burned”, also common in many dialects, e.g. Egypt šā,
yišī “to be burned, to be singed”. kazz quoted by Landberg 1901:
126 has a special meaning, namely “allumer le feu dans le four à pain
tinnār, approcher le feu à la poudre, au canon”. It is used in other
Yemeni dialects as “to burn, to blind”, cf. also yemeni kizz(ah)
“spark”. As for karrab “to light a fire” see above under “kitchen”.
words and things 73
6. Water-tap
A water-tap within a kitchen certainly is something new since run-

ning water in houses partly is an achievement of modern times.
Therefore it is not astonishing to find French robinet as rabīna in
southern assānīya, Spanish grifo as grīfu in the northern assānīya
dialect, English valve written as welf by Brockett in Oman, in Barayn
wilf “valve, tap, stopcock” (Holes 2001: 567a). Elsewhere words origi-
nally referring to public fountains (e.g. in a mosque) are used. The
most common being anafiyya in Egypt, Sudan, the Levant, Iraq,
partly Yemen. sabbāla is used mainly in Tunisia (cf. sabīl “public
fountain”) and Algeria (e.g. in Oran) and still has the meaning of
“public fountain” in Moroccon Arabic (cf. Brunot 361, according to
him introduced by the French from Algerian Arabic). çešmāye in the
Çukurova, šīšma in Libya (Le Quellec) and Tunisia (Singer 125) are
derived from Turkish çeşme “traditional public fountain”. In Tunisia
šīšma is used according to Singer only by the rural population and
in Sousse, Sfax and Mahdiyya. Tunis itself, also the Marāzīg-dialect,
have sabbāla (sabbēla). The form mzambila given paralelly to
anafiyya by Woodhead-Beene might be related to sabbāla and per-
haps be influenced by zamzam. ʿayn used in Algiers, sә’’āya, sәqqāya
in Tlemcen and Maghniyya, too, originally mean “well, fountain”.
Another possibilitiy of naming this new object is using an existing
term used for sth. with a similar function, namely “nozzle, spout”,
e.g. in Meccan Arabic bazbūz; bәzbūz in Moroccan Arabic; bizbiz,
bizbizī in some Yemeni dialects. To these are to be added māsūra in
Sudanese and Chadian Arabic, mosúra in Ki-Nubi, būri in Kirkuk/
Iraq and ʿәmbūb in Moroccon Arabic all meaning “pipe”, urumba
“pump” (Baghdad questionnaire). Further enquiries certainly will
furnish more designations, also for the other items dealt with
above.
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Stuttgart.
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Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Südarabische Expedition. Band VIII,
X. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Saada, L. 1981. Etudes sur le parler arabe de Tozeur (Tunisie). Paris: Geuthner.
Simeone-Senelle, M. C., Vanhove, M., and Lonnet, A. 1994. ‘Les dialectes arabes de
la Tihāma du Yémen’. Actes des premières journées internationales de dialectologie
arabe de Paris. D. Caubet and M. Vanhove (eds). Publications Langues ’O. Paris.
217-231
Singer, H. R. 1984. Grammatik der arabischen Mundart von Tunis. Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter.
Sowayan, S. S. 1992. The Arabian Oral Historical Narrative. An Ethnographic and
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76 peter behnstedt
arabic dialect of Šaww community of northern oman 77
THE ARABIC DIALECT OF A ŠAWĀWĪ COMMUNITY

OF NORTHERN OMAN
Domenyk Eades
1. Introduction
The Šawāwī mountain nomads of northern Oman live in the moun-

tains and inner pediment region of Jabal ajar, the vast mountain
chain which extends from Musandam in the north of Oman in a
broad arc through the interior of the country to Ra’s al-add in the
south-east (Cordes & Scholz 1980:3-6).1 They reside mainly in the
foothills, grazing their herds during the day on the sparse vegetation
of the mountain plateaux and the wadis. They breed large numbers
of donkeys, goats, sheep, and in some cases camels, and trade with
the populations of nearby towns and villages in animals and animal
products (Zaibet et al. 2004:133). In recent years most Šawāwī have
permanently settled either within their traditional lands or in the
long-established towns and villages of the mountain region. Never-
theless, rural Šawāwī communities generally retain much of their
traditional social structure and pastoral way of life to this day.
The traditional lifestyle of the Šawāwī is distinguished in a number
of ways from that of the Badu. Prior to the recent settlement of most
Šawāwī communities, they would camp for periods of up to a year
within a single location, moving over relatively short distances within
the mountain region. In contrast, the Badu would migrate over vast
distances, and would typically camp in a single location for no more
than a few months at a time. The Šawāwī are also distinguished from
the Badu by their unique relationship with the sedentary populations
of the towns and villages, as observed by Wilkinson (1977:63):
1
I am grateful to the Šawāwī speakers who graciously participated in this study,
in particular Suhail bin ʿAbs al-Rawāḥī. Many thanks are also due to Mubārak bin
Ḥamūd al-Hidyīwī and Xalīfa bin Saʿīd al-Hidyīwī for introducing me to them, and to
Khalṣa al-Aghbārī for her assistance in the transcription of the text.
78 domenyk eades
“[F]irst, they are more or less incorporated into the tribal structures of
the settled people, second, they have peculiar rights in the villages with
which they associate, and third, they act as the main long distance
transporters of the goods between the settled communities”.
Another way in which the Šawāwī are distinguished from the Badu
is by their speech. The principle classificatory division of the ver-
naculars spoken throughout much of the Arab world is that of the
socially-based Bedouin (B) versus sedentary (S) dichotomy (Holes
1995:95-102; Ingham 1982:31-2). In Oman, dialects of the former
type are spoken by the nomadic and recently settled populations
of the desert regions, and those of the latter type by the settled a\arī
populations of the towns and villages concentrated in and around
the mountain regions. On the basis of the various structural con-
trasts marking this division described in studies by Clive Holes
(1989, 1996), the Šawāwī dialect conforms in every respect to that
of the Omani S type. A striking feature of the Omani dialect area
noted by Holes is the fact that relatively fewer structural contrasts
mark the distinction between the S and B dialects than distin-
guish the S and B dialects in the northern Arab world. He suggests
that a major reason for this is most likely the fact that there are
fewer social and economic contrasts distinguishing S communities
from B ones than in the northern Arab world (Holes 1989:50).
The situation with regard to the Šawāwī is strikingly illustrative of
this.
No study of the speech of the Šawāwī has been undertaken to date,
and the present study is a contribution towards filling this gap. Here
we describe the speech of a Šawāwī community who live in the hin-
terland of Izki, in the mountains of the Dāxilīya region. The corpus
for this study consists of a transcribed interview totalling approxi-
mately 1,800 words, as well as written notes recorded during nume-
rous discussions with Šawāwī speakers. The principle informant is
Suhail bin ¡Abs al-Rawāī, who also supplied the text. Suhail is sixty-
five years old and maintains a nomadic lifestyle to this day. At the
time of this study he was camped in a temporary dwelling approxi-
mately fifteen kilometres to the south-east of the town of Izki, and
maintained a large herd consisting of mostly goats as well as some
sheep. Other examples of the dialect contained in the corpus are
drawn from data collected from speakers living in the nearby village
of Saimā’. This article is based primarily on impressionistic evalua-

tion of the dialect, with a focus on the verbal morphology.
2. The Šaww Dialect in Relation to the Omani Dialects
The Šawāwī dialect exhibits all features characteristic of the Omani

S type. The voiceless uvular plosive q (<OA2 *q), characteristic of S
dialects throughout Oman and elsewhere in peninsular Arabia is
retained, thus bringing the dialect into contrast with those of the B
type, in which this reflex is represented by the voiced velar plosive
g. The Omani S type is further divided into two geographically-
defined subdivisions: S1 and S2. These are distinguished on the basis
of the following phonological criteria (Holes 1989:455):
TYPE S1 3
q < OA *q
k < OA *k
g or ɟ 4 or 5 < OA *|
CvC(v)Cv(C) forms only
qahwa only
š only for 2nd sg. fem. pronominal enclitic
TYPE S2 6
k < OA *q
č 7 < OA *k
< OA *|
CvC(v)Cv(C) forms only
qahwa only
š only for 2nd sg. fem. pronominal enclitic
The Šawāwī speech of the corpus conforms with the S1 type, and is
in contrast with the S2 dialects by the fact that OA *q and *k have
not been fronted or affricated to k and č respectively.
2
Old Arabic: the putative ancestor of the modern dialects in terms of phonology
(Holes 1995:xiii)
3
Dialects of this type are the more widespread of the two types, and are spoken
in Karshā-Nizwā, Bahlā, Qalhāt, Ibrā, Rustāq, Muḍaibi, Zāhib (Sharqīya) dialects
(Holes 1996:43)
4
ɟ (IPA [ɟ])is a palatal plosive
5
ǧ (IPA [dʒ]) is a voiced alveo-palatal affricate.
6
Dialects of this type are spoken in Wādi Saḥtān and the Wādi Bani ʿAuf villages
(Holes 1996:43)
7
č (IPA [tʃ]) is a voiceless alveo-palatal affricate.
80 domenyk eades
3. Phonology
3.1. Segmental Phonology
Plosive Fricative Approximant Nasal Liquid
Labial b m
Labiodental f
Dental ṯ
Alveolar t d s n l, r
Emphatic ṭ

ṣ
Alveo-palatal š
Palatal ɟ y
Velar k x ġ
Uvular q
Pharyngeal ḥ ʿ (ʕ)
Glottal ʾ(ʔ)
Labiovelar w
1. The dialect preserves almost all of the OA consonant system,

reflecting the phonological conservatism which is characteristic of the
Omani dialect area. The alveolar spirants {ḏ, , ṯ} have been retained,
but OA *ḍ and *^_ have merged into a single phoneme .
2. There are three short vowel phonemes: i, a, u, and five long vowels:
ī, ā, ē, ū, ō. The OA short diphthong *aw occurs in all environments
as ō: bōš ‘camel’, xōf ‘fear’, yōb ‘approximately’; šarbō ‘they drank’;
yōkil ‘he eats’. The OA short diphthong *ay is monophthongised in
all phonological environments to ē: bēt ‘house, dwelling’, mašḗt ‘I
walked’, ṣēf ‘summer’, ġēr ‘other than’.
3. The reflex of OA *ǧ is represented by the palatal plosive ɟ: wāɟid

‘very, much’, ɟabal ‘mountain’, ɟānib ‘side’; this is in free variation in
all environments with the voiced alveo-palatal affricate [ ǧ]: ǧalas
(~ ɟalas) ‘he sat’, ǧāi (~ ɟāi) ‘coming’. The affricated variant occurred
most consistently in the position immediately following a nasal:
finǧān ‘cup’ (/finɟān/), nǧī (/nɟī/) ‘we come’, nǧīb (/nɟīb/) ‘we bring’.
The only other S1 dialects in Oman in which OA *ǧ is represented

by the modern reflexes ɟ or ǧ are those spoken approximately two
hundred kilometres away in rural communities located around
Rustāq and Wādi Saḥtān, and in some communities of the Bāṭinah
coast who trace their ancestry to the populations of the mountains
(Clive Holes, personal communication).8 In dialects of the settled
communities around Izki as well as in most other towns and villages
throughout Oman, including the area in and around the capital
Muscat, the reflex of OA *ǧ is represented by the velar plosive g. As
such, the phonetic realisation of this reflex is a salient contrast
between the Šawāwī dialect and those of the nearby sedentary com-
munities. A certain amount of higher prestige is associated with the
g pronunciation, which is evident by the fact that this pronunciation
tends to be adopted by the settled Šawāwī of the larger towns.
3.2. Non-segmental Phonology

3.2.1. Syllable Structure
1. The pattern I strong verb exhibits the syllable structure Cv́CvC:
šarab ‘he drank’, daras ‘he studied’, qatil ‘he killed’. The addition of
a suffix to these stems triggers the deletion of v2, forming stems with
the structure Cv́CCv(C): šarbat ‘she drank’, darsat ‘she studied’ (daras
‘he studied’), qatlō ‘they killed’ (qatal ‘he killed’). This structure also
applies to nouns: baṣlah ‘onion’ (baṣal ‘onions’), samkah ‘a fish’
(samak ‘fish (pl.)’), raqbah ‘neck’) (< OA *raqabah).
2. Some nouns have resyllabified free variant forms: laḥm ~ laḥam

‘meat’, taḥt ~ taḥat ‘under, below’, following the widespread tendency
across peninsular Arabia for the resyllabification of the sequence
C1aC2C3 C1aC2aC3 (where C2 is ḥ, x, ġ, h, or ʿ). This occurs in the
Šawāwī dialect only where the cluster is word final (…aCC#); the
forms qahwa ‘coffee’ and raqba ‘neck’ do not have variant forms.
3. A restricted class of word medial three-consonant clusters arises

through the addition of a suffix to stems with a final consonant clus-
ter, e.g. ʿind + -him gives /ʿindhim/ ‘with them’: /zarbhim/ ‘their (ani-
mal) enclosure’, /bintha/ ‘her daughter’.
8
Whether the Šawāwī who live in the Izki region are an offshoot of these distant
communities remains open to further research.
82 domenyk eades
3.2.2. Final Clusters and Anaptyctics

1. An anaptyctic vowel /u/ is inserted into a word-final consonant
cluster where final C is represented by r, with word stress falling on
the resulting final syllable: ṣabúr ‘patience’ (< OA ṣabr), ʿaṣúr (< OA
ʿaṣr). In other stems, final clusters are preserved: ṣubḥ ‘morning’, farq
‘difference’, ṯalǧ ‘ice’, zarb ‘animal enclosure’, qalb ‘heart’, xubz
‘bread’.
2. The anaptyctic vowel is deleted when a suffixed element is added:

ṣabr-i ‘my patience’. A non-anaptyctic vowel in a final syllable is
deleted in stems upon the addition of a suffixed element: qalm-i ‘my
pen’, qalm-ak ‘your pen’ (qalam ‘my pen’), wald-uh ‘his son’ (walad
‘boy, son’), ḥabl-i ‘my rope’ (ḥabal ‘rope, cord’), naxl-i ‘my palm trees’
(naxal ‘palm tree’).
3. Initial consonant clusters are formed by the deletion of an

unstressed v1 in nouns with the underlying structure C1vC2vv(C3v),
where C1 and C2 are contrasted in terms of manner or place or articu-
lation. The resulting stem has the structure C1C2vv(C3v): ḥmār ‘don-
key’, bṭūn ‘stomachs’, ṣġīr ‘small’, ryūq, ‘breakfast’ rɟūl, ‘legs’, ɟwāni
‘sacks’.
4. Morphology in Relation to Omani B and S Types
Holes (1989:454) notes four separate morphological parameters by

which Omani B dialects are contrasted with those of the S type,
remarking that dialects spoken in areas with histories of sustained
contact between speakers of B and S dialects exhibit combinations
from both types. In the Šawāwī dialect, all four of these parameters
correspond to those described for the Omani S type. This is demon-
strated in the following; contrasting B type equivalents are given in
brackets:
1. Final -u and -i mark 3 pl. masc. and 2 sg. fem. imperfect verbs
respectively (B: -ūn and -īn): yisawwyu ‘they make’ (B: yisawwūn),
tizarʿi ‘you (sg. fem.) plant’ (B: tizarʿīn).
2. Final -uh is the 3 sg. masc. object/possessor enclitic: nširb-uh ‘we
drink it’ (B: nširb-ah), bēt-uh ‘his house’ (B: bēt-ah).
3. Weak verbs with an initial hamza exhibit initial /yō/ in the active
imperfect (in contrast with the B type /yā/): yōkil ‘he eats’ (B: yākil),
yōxaḏ ‘he takes’ (B: yāxaḏ)
4. Prefixes for verbs Form V and VI show /yit/- and not the B-type
/yti/-: yitʿallam ‘he learns’ (B: ytiʿallam), yitkallam ‘he speaks’ (B:
ytikallam), yitnaqqal ‘he moves around’ (B: ytinaqqal). Attachment of
first person plural prefix ni- triggers resyllabification, forming a struc-
ture identical to those of the B type: ntiʿallam ‘we learn’ (other S
dialects: nitʿallam). This resyllabification applies only to verbs bearing
the nasal prefix; all other forms exhibit the initial CvC structure, e.g.
yitʿallam ‘he learns’.
4.1. Verbal Morphology

This section surveys the verbal inflectional paradigms of the
Šawāwī dialect, and is organised according to the tense and conjuga-
tion class of the verb. The dialect exhibits the morphological conser-
vatism typical of the Omani dialects in general. Most of the inflectional
categories of OA have been preserved, including agreement for the
categories of plural feminine and second person feminine.
4.1.1. The Strong Verb: Perfect

There are two conjugations in the perfect: CáCaC and CáCiC. These
are shown in the following table:
sg. 3. masc. šárab ‘he drank’ qátil ‘he killed’

fem. šárbat qátlit
2. masc. šarábt qatílt
fem. šarábti qatílti
1. c. šarábt qatílt
pl. 3. masc. šárbō qátlō
fem. šárban qátlan
2. masc. šarábtu qatíltu
fem. šarábtin qatíltin
1. c. šarábna qatílna
Other examples include: árab/ḏ̣árbat ‘to hit’, dáxal/dáxlat ‘to enter’,

‘to kill, ɟálas/ɟálsat ‘to sit’, rákaḏ̣/rákḏ̣at ‘to run’; kátib/kátbit ‘to write’,
másik/máskit ‘to hold’
84 domenyk eades
4.1.2. The Strong Verb: Imperfect

There are two conjugations for the imperfect strong verb: -CCaC and
-CCiC. The vowel in a stressed prefixed element of an imperfect verb
beginning with a post-velar consonant is /a/ {ya-, ta-, na-}, and in
all other environments (except in sg. 1 c.) is /i/ {yiti-, ni-}:
sg. 3. masc. yíšrab ‘he drinks’ yáqtil ‘he kills’
fem. tíšrab táqtil
2. masc. tíšrab táqtil
fem. tišrábi taqítli
1. c. ášrab áqtil
pl. 3. masc. yišárbu yaqítlu
fem. yišárban yaqítlan
2. masc. tšárbu taqítlu
fem. tšárban taqítlan
1. c. níšrab náqtil
Other examples include: yírɟaʿ ‘he returns’, yíktib ‘to write’, yímsik ‘he
holds’, tírkiḏ̣ ‘she runs’; táʿrif ‘she knows’, yáqtil ‘he kills’, yíḏbaḥ ‘he
slaughters’, yáʿtaš ‘he gets thirsty’.
4.1.3. The Strong Verb: Imperative

sg. 2. masc. šǝráb ‘drink!’ mǝsík ‘hold!’
fem. šárbi míski
pl. 2. masc. šárbu mísku
fem. šárban mískan
4.1.4. The Strong Verb: Geminate Verbs

There are two conjugations of strong geminate stems. The first of
these has the structure CiCC/-CiCC, and is illustrated in the follow-
ing table:
Perfect Imperfect Imperative
sg. 3. masc. mídd ‘he spread’ yimídd ‘he spreads’
fem. míddat timídd
2. masc. middḗt timídd mídd ‘spread!’
fem. middḗti timíddi míddi
1. c. middḗt amídd
pl. 3. masc. míddō yimíddu
fem. míddan yimíddin
2. masc. middḗtu timíddu míddu

fem. middḗtin timíddin míddin
1. c. middḗna nimídd
Other verbs of this conjugation include: sídd/yisídd ‘to stop up’ and
tímm/yitímm ‘to complete’. The second conjugation class of strong
geminate verbs exhibits the pattern CaCC/-CuCC, e.g. qáṣṣ/yiqúṣṣ ‘to
cut’.
9
4.1.5. Weak Verbs: Initial Hamza

sg. 3. masc. kál ‘he ate’ yṓkil ‘he eats’
Fem. kálat tṓkil
2. masc. kalḗt tṓkil kil ‘eat!’
Fem. kalḗti tṓkli kíli
1. c. kalḗt ákil9
pl. 3. masc. kálō yṓklu
Fem. kálan yṓklin
2. masc. kalḗtu tṓklu kílu
Fem. kalḗtin tṓklin kílin
1. c. kalḗna nṓkil
Other examples of this class include xáḏ/yṓxaḏ/yṓxḏu ‘to take’; the

active participles of these forms are mākil and māxiḏ.
4.1.6. Weak Verbs: Initial w

The imperfect inflection of weak stems with an initial w has merged
with that of hamza-initial stems. These are contrasted only in the
perfect conjugation.

sg. 3. masc. wáqaf ‘he stopped’ yṓqif ‘he stops’
fem. wáqfat tṓqif
2. masc. waqáft tṓqif qíf ‘stop!’
fem. waqáfti tṓqfi qífi
9
This has the same form as that of the weak initial w conjugation, e.g. áqif
‘I stop’.
86 domenyk eades
1. c. waqáft áqif
pl. 3. masc. wáqfō yṓqfu
fem. wáqfan yṓqfin
2. masc. waqáftu tṓqfu qífu
fem. waqáftin tṓqfin qífin
1. c. waqáfna nṓqif
Other examples: wáṣal/yṓṣil ‘to arrive’, wázan/yṓzin ‘to weigh’
4.1.7. Weak Verbs: Initial y
Perfect Imperfect
sg. 3. masc. yíbis ́
yības
pl. 3. masc. yíbsō ́
yībsu
4.1.8. Weak Verbs: Hollow Verbs

There is one conjugation in the perfect and three conjugations in the
imperfect for hollow verbs. These are summarised in the following
́ ‘he sleeps’: 10
with yiqūĺ ‘he says’, yibīʿ́ ‘he buys’, and yinām

sg. 3. masc. qāĺ ́ ́ ́
a. yiqūl b. yibīʿ c. yinām
fem. ́
qālat tiqūĺ
2. masc. qilt tiqūĺ a. qūl b. bīʿ c. nām
fem. qílti tiqū́ lin ́
qūli bīʿí ́
nāmi
1. c. qílt aqūĺ
pl. 3. masc. qālṓ tiqūlú
fem. qā́lan tiqūĺ in
2. masc. qíltu ́
tiqūlu qūlú ́
bīʿu ́
nāmu
fem. qíltin tiqūĺ in qūĺ in ́
bīʿin nām ́ in
1. c. qílna nqūl10
Other such verbs include sāq/sāqat/yisūq ‘to drive [animals]’, rāḥ/

rāḥat/yirūḥ ‘to go’, bāʿ/bāʿat/yibīʿ ‘to sell’.
10
The ellipsis of the vowel in the 1 pl. prefix ni- and the assimilation of the nasal
to the position of the adjacent consonant follows the general rule whereby an initial
unstressed vowel is deleted (see section 2).
4.1.9. Weak Verbs: Verbs Final y

sg. 3. masc. máša ‘he walked’ yímši ‘he walks’
fem. mášit tímši
2. masc. mašḗt tímši ímši ‘walk! go!’
fem. mašḗti tímši miší
1. c. mašḗt ámši
pl. 3. masc. míšyō yimíšyu
fem. míšyan yimíšyin
2. masc. mašḗtu timíšyu míšyu
fem. mašḗtin timíšyin míšyin
1. c. mašḗna nímši
Another example of weak verbs of the pattern Ca(C)Ca/-Ci(C)Ci is

sáqa/sáqat ‘to water’. Some weak final y stems exhibit a separate con-
jugation in the imperfect: -C(C)a, an example of which is báġa/yíbġa
‘to want, will’.
4.1.10. Weak Verbs: Doubly Weak Stems

sg. 3. masc. ɟa ‘he came’ yiɟí ‘he comes’
fem. ɟat tiɟí
2. masc. ɟīt tiɟí taʿāĺ ‘come!’
fem. ɟītí tiɟí taʿālí
1. c. ɟīt aɟí
pl. 3. masc. ɟáō yiɟyú
fem. ɟan yiɟín
2. masc. ́
ɟītu tiɟú taʿāĺ u
fem. ́
ɟītin tiɟín ́
taʿālin
1. c. ɟīná nɟí
The active participle for this verb is: ɟāi/ɟāyǝh ‘come’.
4.1.11. Derived Patterns

Various derived verbs occurred in the corpus:
88 domenyk eades
Pattern II Pattern VII

kassar/kassarat; yikassar ‘to infataḥ/infataḥat; yinfataḥ ‘to open
smash’ (intransitive)’
Pattern III Pattern VIII
lāqa/lāqat; yilāqi ‘to meet’ iltamm/iltammat; yiltamm ‘to gather’
Pattern V Pattern IX
tkallam/tkallamat; yitkallam ‘to iḥmarr/iḥmarrat; yiḥmarr ‘to redden;
talk’ become red’
Pattern X
starāḥ/starāḥat; yistarīḥ ‘to rest’
4.1.12. The Apophonic Passive

The apophonic passive (AP) is one of several conservative grammati-
cal features retained to varying degrees of productivity in all Omani
dialects described to date. In a survey of the AP in S dialects of dif-
ferent locations in Oman, Holes (1998) showed that productive AP
morphology was restricted to imperfect weak or strong geminate
stems with third person agreement, reflecting restrictions also
reported for dialects of northern Arabia (Ingham 1985:26-28).
Example (1) shows the AP in a geminate stem, and in example (2) a
weak stem:
(1) ṣūf hāḏa mi l-ɟaʿd, yiqaṣṣ ‘This wool is from sheep, it is cut’. (yiquṣṣ ‘he
cuts’)
(2) firāš hāḏǝ yiqāl luh sēḥa ‘This cloth is called sēḥa’. (yiqūl luh ‘he calls
it’)
Other examples from the corpus include: yibāʿ ‘it is sold’, yākil ‘it is
eaten’ and yisawwā ‘it is made’. One token occurred in the corpus of
an unelicited AP verb which was not in the third person. This is
shown in example (3):
(3) niḏrab
̣ bi ʿaṣā. ‘We [would] get hit with a cane’. (niḏrib
̣ ‘we hit’)
In spite of the productivity of the AP in the Šawāwī dialect in the
imperfect, no AP verbs occurred in the corpus in the perfect. Speakers
employed functionally equivalent non-passive strategies when
describing completed or past actions involving an implicit agent. One
such strategy involves the use of the passive participle:
(4) l-hōš maḏbūḥ ams. ‘The goat was slaughtered yesterday’.
The loss of the perfect AP conjugation in the Šawāwī dialect suggests

that the AP is in recession in the dialect, as in the interior S dialects
described by Holes (1998). In contrast, fully productive AP morphol-
ogy with perfect and imperfect inflections were reported for an S
dialect of Rustāq (Reinhardt 1894:154-7), and more recently in a B
dialect of the Šarqīyah region in the Omani interior (Eades forthcom-
ing) and various B and S dialects of the Bāṭinah coast (Brockett
1995). The following table shows the full inflectional paradigm for
the strong verb qatil ‘to kill’ in the Šawāwī dialect:
Imperfect Perfect
sg. 3. masc. yíqtal ‘he is killed’ --
fem. tíqtal
2. masc. tíqtal
fem. tiqátli
1. c. áqtal
pl. 3. masc. yiqátlu
fem. yiqátlin
2. masc. tiqátlu
fem. tiqátlin
1. c. níqtal
4.1.13. Suffixation of active participles and imperfect verbs

The suffix -inn is one of several features common throughout the
Omani dialect area (Holes 1989:448). It occurs between an active
participle and a pronominal object enclitic, and always attracts word
stress; the vowel in an attached 3 sg. masc. pronominal enclitic -uh
is lowered to -ah. Examples include nāsínn-ah ‘[x] forgot it’ and
šāyifánn-ah ‘[x] saw it’, and mātínn-hin ‘[x] brought them’:
(5) nǧi mātínn-hin. ‘We [would] come bringing them’. (mātī ‘bring’)
This suffix also attaches to imperfect verbs with a following pronomi-
nal object:
(6) rǧūl yʿawwaránn-ak ‘[Your] feet hurt you’ (ʿawwar ‘to blind; cause
pain’)
90 domenyk eades
5. Personal Pronouns
The following table shows the personal pronouns:

Independent Bound (possessive/object)
sg. 3. masc. húwwa -uh
fem. híyyǝ -ha
2. masc. nta -ak
fem. nti -iš
1. c. ánǝ -i /-ni
pl. 3. masc. hǝ́ mma -him
fem. hǝ́ nna -hin
2. masc. ntu -kim
fem. ntǝn -kin
1. c. ḥnuh, ḥnu -na
The second person singular pronoun enclitics are: -ak (2 sg. masc.)
and -iš (2 sg. fem.). The form -iš is common throughout southern
Arabia, distinguishing these dialects from those of northern Arabia,
in which the equivalent is -ik (Holes 1989:448).
5.1. Attachment of Pronominal Enclitics

The following examples show nouns and verbs with attached pro-
nominal enclitics:
+3 sg. masc.: kitb-uh ‘he wrote it’, kalēna-h ‘we ate it’, sidd-uh ‘he stopped it
up’, šarb-uh ‘he drank it’, ašūf́ -uh ‘I see him’, nšírb-uh ‘we drink it’, yikitb-uh
‘he writes it’, yišírb-uh ‘he drinks it’ amísk-uh ‘I hold it’, kallamátt-ah ‘she spoke
to him’, katbatt-ǝh ‘she wrote it’. yilíbsin-ǝh ‘they (f.pl.) wear it’; bēt-uh ‘his
house’, baqárt-uh ‘his cow’, qalm-uh ‘his pen’, smǝ-h ‘his name’
+3 sg. fem.: katáb-ha ‘he wrote it’, masák-ha ‘he held her’, baqrát-ha ‘her cow’,
qalám-ha ‘her pen’, maʿnát-ha ‘its meaning’
+3 pl. masc.: misákt-him ‘I held them’, baqrát-him ‘their cow’
+3 pl. fem.: kallámt-hin ‘I told them’, šift-hin ‘You saw them’, ɟibna-hin ‘we got
them’,
+2 sg. masc.: xabbarátt-ak ‘she told you’, makān-ak ‘your place’, qalm-ak ‘your
pen’, ʿind-ak ‘you have’
+2 sg. fem.: xabbárt-iš ‘I told you’; zōɟ-iš ‘your husband’, qalm-iš ‘your pen,
baqárt-iš ‘your cow’
+1 sg.: šāf-ni ‘he saw me’, waṣlát-ni ‘it reached me’; zōɟ-i ‘my husband’, qalm-i
‘my pen’
+1 pl. c.: šāf-na ‘he saw us’, misák-na ‘he held us’; bēt-na ‘our house’, qalám-na
‘our pen’
The following examples show the attachment of the bound pronomi-
nals to the preposition li ‘to, for’:
sg. +3 masc.: luh ‘to him’ pl. +3 masc.: lhim ‘to them’
+3 fem.: lha, lha +3 fem.: lhin
+2 masc.: lak +2 masc.: lkim
+2 fem.: liš + 2 fem.: lkin
+1 c.: lī +1 c. lǝna,lna
6. Syntax
6.1. Future Intention

The future prefix ba-, which occurs in many Omani B dialects, and
some S ones, does not occur in the Šawāwī dialect. Future intention
is expressed in the dialect by means of the auxiliary verb yíbġa ‘he
wants to/will…’11:
(7) yíbġa yibannad l-bāb. ‘He wants to/will close the door’.
́ :
This verb is frequently used in its active participle form bāġi
́ arūḥ hnāk. ‘I want to/will go there’.
(8) ana bāġi
(9) bāġīn yōklū-h ‘[They] want to eat it’.
6.2. Relativisation
Relative clauses are formed with the relativising particle bū, which is
exclusive to S-type dialects throughout northern Oman, and is con-
trasted with the particle illi of the B dialects:
(10) ḏīk al-ʿīšəh bū nōkil-ha ‘the food which we ate’
(11) āḏə l-ɟānib bū təlī āḏə l-ɟānib ‘the side [of the mountain] which is next
to this [other] side’.
Non-verbal relative clauses are also introduced by bū:
11
This verb is cognate with the future prefix ba-, which occurs in dialects spoken
elsewhere in Oman.
92 domenyk eades
(12) wa yišarbu-h kill n-nās bū hnāk ‘All of the people who were there would
drink it’.
(13) mītēn, mīya ṯǝlāṯ, āḏǝ bū ḏāk. ‘Two hundred [goats], one hundred, three
hundred; that’s what was there’.
A relative clause may be introduced by the interrogative pronoun mā
‘what, whatever’:
(14) mā šāyyifann-ah bū yilibsina-h l-badwiyāt. ‘What [you] see is what the
Bedouin women wear’.
6.3. Relative Adverb ‘When’

The adverbs min ‘when (from that moment)’ and yōm ‘when (at that
moment)’ are used to introduce adverbial clauses of time:
(15) mōǧūdāt min ǧīna mi l-bēt. ‘They were there when we came from the
house’.
(16) yōm nimši, mitkasḥīn ‘When we walk, [we] are in pain’.
6.4. The Existential Particle: šē

The Šawāwī dialect exhibits the existential marker šē ‘exist; thing’,
which is common to both B and S dialects throughout the Omani
dialect area:
(17) ḥmīr šē; l-ḥmīr barra ‘There [were] donkeys; they were outside’.
(18) lō šē ṣahha, al-ḥamdu lillāh ʿala faḏ̣īla hāḏi! ‘If we were healthy [lit. if
there was good health], then [we would] thank God for this blessing’.
This particle may occur in combination with the noun šē ‘thing,
something’, forming the expression šē šē ‘there is something’:
(19) awwal ma šē šē sāxin u šē bārid. kill awwal ṭāziǧ. ‘Long ago there was
nothing [eaten] hot or cold. Everything [we ate] long ago was fresh’.
The existential šē is negated by the negative marker mā:
(20) mā šē ḥmīr maʿna. ‘We don’t have any donkeys’. [lit. ‘There are no don-
keys with us’.]
(21) mā šē xsārǝ wāɟid. ‘It wasn’t a great loss’.
7. Other Lexical Features
7.1. The Demonstrative Pronouns

The demonstrative pronouns are as follows:
sg. masc. hāḏa ‘this (masc.)’ hāḏāk, ḏāk ‘that (masc.)’

sg. fem. hāḏi ‘this (fem.)’ hāḏīk, ḏīk ‘that (fem.)’
pl. c. ḏīla ‘these’ hāḏlāk, ḏīlāk ‘those’
7.2 The interrogatives and adverbs of time and place

man ‘who’, mū ‘what’, mǝnta ‘when’, hēn ‘where’, kēf ‘how’, kam ‘how
much, many’, lēš ‘why’, tō ‘now’, l-yōm ‘today’, bākir ‘tomorrow’, hina,
hna ‘here’, hnāk ‘there’
8. Lexical Contrasts
The Šawāwī dialect shares a number of high-frequency lexical items

with the dialects of sedentary communities of the Omani interior
which have contrasting equivalents in Bedouin speech. Some of these
are given in the following table:
Sedentary and Šawāwī speech Bedouin speech

yātī buh (or yigībuh/yiɟībuh) yiyībah only ‘he brings it’
banned (or sakkar) sakkar ‘to close’
tō al-ḥīn ‘now’
mū ēš, hēš, šunú ‘what’
ḥāl (or māl) māl ‘thing owned or possessed’
Other forms which are similar to those in the speech of some interior
sedentary communities include the affirmative response hē ‘yes’ (sed-
entary, Nizwa: hēwa, hī), and the syncopated variant forms āḏa
(~ hāḏa) ‘this’, mi (~ min) ‘from’, and wāḥi (~wāḥid) ‘one’. Some
distinctly Bedouin lexical items which were used in the place of sed-
entary equivalents occurred in the Šawāwī corpus: yirbaʿ ‘run’ (sed-
entary: yirkaḏ̣), and hēn ‘where’ (sedentary: wēn). The Hindi words
94 domenyk eades
čuku12 ‘child, baby’ and namuna ‘type’ occurred repeatedly in the

corpus, and are indicative of the speaker’s frequent contact with
Hindi speakers in the markets of the towns and villages.
9. Discussion and Conclusion
The purpose of this article was to describe certain structural and

lexical features of the speech of a Šawāwī community who live in the
hinterland of Izki in the interior of northern Oman, and to place the
findings within the broader Omani typological context. It was shown
that the language of the corpus conforms with the S1 type proposed
by Holes (1989, 1996), the type which includes the dialects of sed-
entary communities throughout northern Oman, with the exception
of some communities of the Jabal Akhdar region in which S2 dialects
are spoken. The present study thus illustrates Holes’ (1996:52) obser-
vation that in social terms “the categories “Bedouin” and “sedentary”
are not as clearly demarcated in Oman as they are in the Fertile
Crescent”.
In the northern Arab world, significant structural contrasts occur
between B- and S-type dialects which do not occur in the Omani
dialect area. This fact is tied to the contrasting socio-historical cir-
cumstances in which the dialects of each type have developed. In the
north, for example, dialects of the B type are generally noted for their
preservation of certain conservative grammatical features13 which
have disappeared from those of the S type. The more tight-knit social
structure of many rural Bedouin communities of the north and their
isolation from outside influences have resulted in the general conser-
vatism of the B dialects of certain conservative structural features
which have disappeared from the dialects of the settled communities
as a result of contact-induced change. S-speaking communities have
more typically been subjected to sustained periods of outside cultural
and economic influence, resulting in a greater degree of morpholo-
gical levelling and innovative morphology and syntax than in the
rural B-speaking communities.
12
The speaker articulated the original pronunciation of the voiceless alveo-pala-
tal affricate in this form, which is extra-systemic to the Šawāwī phonological inven-
tory.
13
Examples include the apophonic passive and gender distinctions in the 2nd
and 3rd person plural inflections.
In Oman, in contrast, there are significantly fewer structural

contrasts associated with the S/B division than in northern Arabia.
Omani dialects of both the B and S types retain conservative features
which have disappeared from virtually all dialects outside of Oman
except for those of the isolated Bedouin communities of the Najd.
Holes (1996) noted that the remarkable degree of structural homo-
geneity of the Omani dialects is due to the fact that the social and
economic contrasts with the S/B division are fewer than in the nor-
thern Arab world:
“There is simply less of a social fault-line between village people and
nomads in Oman than elsewhere, and this helps to explain why the
Bedouin-sedentary distinction is also less clearly demarcated linguis-
tically” (p. 52).
In the preceding sections it was shown that the dialect of the Šawāwī
mountain nomads of the Izki region of northern Oman conforms in
every respect with the Omani S type. These facts thus illustrate earlier
observations that a more blurred relationship between lifestyle and
dialect type exists in the Omani dialect area. In the case of the
Šawāwī, the label ‘S-type’ is extended to include the speech of a tra-
ditionally nomadic section of the populace. It remains to be seen how
the current social and economic changes taking place throughout
Oman will affect the dialects of the rural Šawāwī communities in the
coming years.
10. Text: The Life of the Šaww
The following text is a sample taken from an interview with Suhail bin
ʿAbs al-Rawāḥi, and was recorded in June 2007 about fifteen kilometres
from the town of Izki, in the Dāxilīya region of northern Oman.
A = interviewer (the author)

B = Šawāwī speaker, male, aged sixty five
1. A zaman awwal, kēf kānat al-maʿīšəh?

2. B: tō wāɟid farq, tō. awwəl ḥnūh niqayyil ṭūl annəhār, nisraḥ ḥaywān, nzēn.
ṭūl n-nəhār, ṭūl n-nəhār, ṭūl n-nəhār, nirǧaʿ marrəh as-siʿah waḥdəh
marrəh as-siʿah hintīn marrah nǧī ʿaṣur… ənzēn. ǧīna ʿaṣur durna…
allah yarḥam ḏīk al-ʿīšəh bū nōkil-ha. šwayit ṣuḥ wə šwayit ʿēš, kalēnā-h.
qālō l-nā “yalla rawwiḥu ʿan al-hōš, yōklan-hin ḏiyāb!” rawwaḥna wara
96 domenyk eades
l-hōš, sirna nāti-hin mi hna wə mi hna wə mi hna.

3. A ḏiyāb šē zaman awwal?
4. B hē, zaman awwal hāḏə ḏiyāb. hē, nzēn, ɟibnā-hən l-yōm nsūq b-hin
nwaddī-hin āḏə l- ɟānib bākir āḏə l-ɟānib wəra bākər āḏə l- ɟānib bū
təlī āḏə l-ɟānib. hē nitbaʿ-hin, kill marrəh kill yōm fi ɟānib. fi l-lēl ʿidne
nəlāym-hin fi l-lēl nədaxxal-hin fi zarb al-hōš.
5. A šē bōš?
6. B hā, ma šē bōš. ma šē. ḥmir šē. l-ḥmir barrə. hnā wə hnā. kān fī-hin wild,
nidxil naʿṭi lə-m wālid čuku hāḏə ṣaġēr naʿṭi-hin ḥalīb min mhāt-hin, min
hāḏə šwayə. minə šwayə, minə šwayə. lēn nikammil siddēna ʿalē-hin zarb.
ma waḥdah ma ṯintēn, yōb arbaʿmīt rās. wāgid wə ḥnūh ntəbaʿhin ṭūl
n-nəhār. ṯnīn ṯnīn ṯnīn ṯnīn. wa ṣ-ṣubḥ ǝnfallat-hin nišrab finǧān qahwə.
ḥabtēn… ar-ryuq saḥtēn nōkil zaman awwəl. hāḏi l-bṭūn xaliyyāt yōm
nimši, mitkasḥīn. ma fī-na wable wə l-hōš mawgūdāt tars ad-dinyə, nzēn.
mawǧūdāt min ǧīna mi l-bēt, in qasrit wəḥdəh, min ḏilāk l-aġnām, ʿidnə
niḏ̣rab bi ʿaṣā nrawwəḥ b-hi al-hōš ʿan yōkil-hin ḏīb wallə ʿan yiġibən
mi hnā wə mi hna nlāyam-hin. “wəḥaw wəḥaw wəḥaw… ha’ ha’ ha’”.
nlāyam-hin ʿād niltamm-hin kids. nǧi mātinn-hin. ʿidnə nāti-hin li l-bēt.
“wəš wəš wəš” waɟidāt…. waṣlan l-bēt, dāran “mba’ mba’ mba’ mba’”
wə ḏak čuku taḥt ʿaṭēna-hə ulād-ha. durna marrəh alləh yarḥam ḏīk
ǝl-ʿīšəh. ǧa l-ʿaša, šwayit ʿēš, allah yarḥam…
7. A kunt mutanaqqal awwəl wəllə baqēt fi makān wāḥid?
8. B la, la, nitnaqqal.
9. A baʿīd?
10. B: hē, nitnaqqal baʿīd. hāḏə niɟlis fi-h sanəh waḥdəh aw səntēn baʿdēn nruḥ
maʿ l-maxtaraʿ walla tṣāwīr walla luxšabəh, min ḏāk ṣōb. ntimm hnāk
nubə yimkin səntēn sanəh. təḥawwəlna marrəh ṯānyəh. makān ndur
ḥiywān ndur lhin akil… mi hna wə mi hna wə mi hna lēn allah təʿāla
yikūn l-ḥayə wāgid jalasna makānə ṯənin sanəh ṯəlāṯ sanəh u wāḥi sanəh,
kaḏā. māi mitwaffar ḥnuh gālsin, māi mā mitwaffər, tankar.
Translation
1. A: How was life long ago?

2. B: Now it is very different, now; before, we moved all day, we would
graze [our] animals all day, all day. We returned sometimes
at one o’clock, sometimes at two o’clock, and sometimes we
came back in the late afternoon… alright? We came in the late
afternoon, we roamed around… O the food we ate! [lit. ‘God
have mercy on that food we ate’]. We would eat a few dates
[and] a little rice; [Our parents] would say to us: “Come on!
Go to the goats so that the wolves won’t eat them!” We went up
behind the goats. We went and brought them from here and
here and [then] here.
3. A: Wolves?
4. B: Yes, long ago there were wolves. Yes, we took them [i.e. the
goats], took them for a day, we drove them, we took them [to]
this side [of the mountain] behind, the next day to that day to
the side [of the mountain] which is next to this [other] side. At
night we collected them and herded them into the pen.
5. A: Did you have any camels?
6. B: There weren’t any camels, there weren’t. There were donkeys.
The donkeys were outside, here and here [said pointing].
[If] they had a foal, we went in and gave it the little one, the
parent of this foal. We gave them milk from their mothers,
from this, a little… we finished and we shut the pen on them.
There were around one, two, or [even] four hundred head [of
goats], so many. We followed them all day. In the morning
we would untie them and have a cup of coffee, two pieces of
[interrupted]… Breakfast was [just] two dates back in the old
days. [Our] stomachs were empty all day, and we would walk
around [feeling] tired. We didn’t have any stamina, and there
were many goats [lit. the world was full of them], right. They
were there from when we came from the house. If there was
one missing, one of those goats, we would get hit with a cane.
We would go with the goats so a wolf wouldn’t eat them, or
so they wouldn’t get lost from here or there. We would gather
them in [while calling out]: “wahaw, wahaw, wahaw! ha, ha,
ha!”. We would get them in and they would gather together in
a large herd. We came bringing them. We would bring them to
the house [while saying]: “wisht, wisht, wisht”. There were a lot
of them. They would get to the house and start [bleating]: “mba
mba mba mba”. [If one of] those [goats] had a kid, we would
give them their kid. We went around once. What hardship
we faced! [lit. ‘God have mercy on that life we had’.] When
evening came, [we had] a little rice. God have mercy…
7. A: Long ago did you travel around or did you stay in one place?
8. B: No, no, we moved around.
9. A: Far?
10. B: Yes, we travelled far. We would stay here for a year or two, then
98 domenyk eades
we would go again to Maxtaraʿ, Taṣāwīr, or to Xašabah, in that

direction. We would also spend about a year or two there, and
then move on to look for a place with food for the animals…
here and there, here and there. [If] God Almighty provided
water [lit. ‘life’], we stayed for a long time in the place, for one,
two, or three years, like that. [If] water was available, we stayed;
[if] water wasn’t available, [we got] a tanker.
Bibliography
Brockett, Adrian. 1985. The Spoken Arabic of Khābūrā. Manchester: Journal of

Semitic Studies Monograph No. 7.
Cordes, Rainer & Scholz, Fred. 1980. Bedouins, Wealth and Change: A Study of Rural
Development in the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman. Tokyo:
United Nations University No. 7.
Eades, Domenyk (forthcoming) ‘Retention of the Passive Verb in a Bedouin Dialect
of Northern Oman’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik.
Holes, Clive. 1989. ‘Towards a dialect geography of Oman’, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 52, 3. 446-62
Holes, Clive 1995. Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties. London:
Longman.
Holes, Clive. 1996. ‘The Arabic Dialects of South Eastern Arabia in a socio-historical
perspective’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 31. 34-54.
Holes, Clive. 1998. ‘Retention and loss of the passive verb in the Arabic dialects of
Northern Oman and Eastern Arabia’. Journal of Semitic Studies XLIII/2, Autumn
1998. 347-362.
Ingham, Bruce. 1982. North east Arabian dialects. London: Kegan Paul
International.
Reinhardt, Carl. 1894. Ein Arabischer Dialekt Gesprochen in Oman und Zanzibar.
Stuttgart & Berlin: W. Spemann.
Webster, Roger. 1991. ‘Notes on the dialect and the way of life of the Āl-Wahība
Bedouin of Oman’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 54.
473-85.
Wilkinson, J.C. 1977. Water and Tribal Settlement in South-East Arabia. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Zaibet, L., P.S. Dharmapala, H. Boughanmi, O. Mahgoub, A. Al-Marshudi. 2004.
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the dialect of the euphrates bedouin 99
THE DIALECT OF THE EUPHRATES BEDOUIN,

A FRINGE MESOPOTAMIAN DIALECT
Bruce Ingham
1. Introduction
In the spring of 1977 I was able to record material from three sources
which showed a similar type of dialect. One of these I recorded in
Kuwait in the area of al-Rauḏ atain and two others in the area north
west of Nāṣiriyyah in Iraq. These were all recorded from nomads,
who were grazing camels at the time. The dialects were interesting
in that they showed a resemblance both to the South Mesopotamian
type, the so called gilit dialects1, and to the Najdi type. Geographically
the nearest examples of the Najdi type would have been either that
of the Muṭair, ʿAwāzim and Rashāyidah tribes in Kuwait and Eastern
Saudi Arabia, or the Shammar and Ḏ afīr in Northern Saudi Arabia.
The two Bedouin groups in the Nāṣiriyyah area identified themselves
as the Al Ḥumaid and the Rufaiʿ, while those in Kuwait identified
themselves only as Ahl al-Shimāl ‘People of the North’ and I will use
that term in this paper to refer to them. These latter were in fact only
one family i.e. one tent in the vicinity where I interviewed them.
There may however have been more of them nearbye over the admit-
tedly rather flat horizon. The Rufaiʿ group visited consisted also of
one tent encamped near the Hollandi Canal near a village of Sudan
marsh dwellers at a place called Jisr Sūdān. There were four or five
other tents in the vicinity. The Ḥumaid were a quite substantial group
of perhaps twenty tents, from whom I was able to obtain answers to
a short questionnaire. Later on in the 1980s and 1990s I met nomads
in Saudi Arabia in the vicinity of Ḥafar al-Bāṭin who were also from
the Rufaiʿ and spoke a similar type of dialect.
All of these spoke a similar, though not identical type of dialect,
which one could characterize as fringe south Mesopotamian, since
it had the broad phonological inventory of the gilit type on the Lower
1
See Blanc (1964:passim) for a characterization of these dialects.
100 bruce ingham
Euphrates, but differed in some features of distribution and morpho-

logy. In this respect they showed some relationship, in so far as could
be seen from the rather meagre data, to the North Najdi type of the
Shammar. Although in terms of recent history i.e. the 19th and 20th
centuries the Ḏ afīr would have been nearer neighbours to them, their
dialect showed Shammari features, which the Ḏ afīr dialect does not
show, corresponding to the later arrival of the Ḏ afīr in the area,
which is borne out by their own oral traditions and historical
sources2.
The groups interviewed are all in fact referred to by populations
further south as Ahl al-Shimāl ‘people of the North’3 or Badu al-Furāt
‘Bedouins of the Euphrates’. This distinction arises presumably from
the fact that other Bedouin of the region were accustomed to encoun-
ter them in the north in the grazing period and recognized them as
following a slightly different grazing pattern and spending a period
of the year along the Euphrates. It was explained to me that this
different grazing pattern was facilitated by their owning a different
breed of camel the jūdi (pl jwāda), which was immune to certain
types of insect which bred along the Euphrates in spring. This meant
that as soon as grazing became scarce in the desert they could move
into the banks of the Euphrates. Other more strictly Najdi Bedouin,
did not keep the jwāda and could only come to the Euphrates in the
high summer (gēḏ ). Before that they were confined to wells in the
desert south west of the Euphrates. Their dialect was also recognized
as linking them to the northern region. A further distinguishing fea-
ture of these groups is that they were all traditionally Shiʿah, which
was in contrast to the Najdi Bedouin, but linked them to the tribes
of the Lower Euphrates.
2
See Ingham (1986: 12-16).
3
The Rwalah of the Syrian desert also use this term, but slightly differently. It
occurs frequently in Musil (1928). On p.138 it indicates tribes camping in the region
of Hawran; then on p. 615 it indicates the Bani Ṣakhar and occurs without specifica-
tion on p.641, 642 and 658 and in the Rwalah texts in Ingham (1995:127 and 134). It
is important to remember that in the local geographic taxonomy of Eastern Arabia
šimāl ‘north’ in fact refers to ‘north east’ ie down country towards the Euphrates. If
reference is made to the true or polar north the word jadi ‘Pole star’ can be used. The
use of this term by more strictly Arabian Bedouins to refer to these people may indi-
cate ‘people towards the Euphrates’ or may even refer to their earlier location in the
north when the later emigrants, the Shammar, ‘Anizah and Ḏ afīr, were still in Najd
to the south. Cantineau (1936:24) notes the term as used by Wetzstein (1868:163) as
referring to the Syro/Jordanian tribes Sardiyyah, Bani Ṣakhar, Fuḥail, Sirḥān and
Sharārat.
2. Dialect Features
2.1. Southern Iraqi Features

The broad features of the dialect which show an affinity to southern
Iraq are shown below. The three dialect sub types will be distin-
guished as ASh (Ahl al-Shimāl), R (Rufaiʿ) and Ḥ (Ḥumaid):
i) Reflexes of Classical kāf, qāf, and jīm as –č-, -j- and –y-, as in čōl ‘desert’,
jilīb ‘well’ and yāl ‘scarp’, and the occurrence of the vowel –i- or –u-,
rather than –a- in the imperfective verbal person prefixes as in yinšid
‘he asks’, tinšid ‘you, she ask(s)’ and ninšid ‘we ask’. (but yašḥat ‘play on
a musical instrument’ ASh)
ii) The anaptyctic –i/u- separating final clusters occurs in all environments
in Iraqi dialects, but in a more restricted set of environments in Najdi,
namely where the second element of the cluster is a liquid –r-, -l-, or
-n- such as badir ‘full moon’, zamil ‘camels’ and ibin ‘son’. Examples of
the Iraqi type occurred inconsistently in the data in ṯiliṯ ‘third’, and gilit
‘you said’ ASh and šamis ‘sun’ R, but the final cluster type of form also
occurred sporadically as in ʿabd ‘slave’ and šift ‘you saw’ ASh.
iii) The Iraqi dialects generally show a vowel –a- in the feminine plural
verbal and post nominal suffixes. This is usually –i- in Najdi. Examples
of –a- occurred frequently in ASh as in šiftakan ‘I saw you f.pl’, šiftanni
‘you f.pl.saw me’, tḥaṭban ‘you f.pl. cut wood’ and intan ‘you f.pl’. One
example also occurred in R ibnan ‘build f.pl!’ R., but the Rufaiʿ and
Ḥumaid generally showed –i- as in yirčibin ‘they f. ride’, šūfin ‘look
f.pl!’, yḥasbinni ‘they f. consider me’ Ḥ and yidrin ‘they f. know’ and mā
yin’addin ‘they f. are uncountable’ R.
iv) Lexical features linking the dialect to southern Iraq were anṭa/yinṭi ‘to
give’ ASh, ham ‘also’ Ash (ham šift wāḥid akram minni? ‘have you also
seen anyone more generous than me?’), čōl ‘desert’.
2.2. Northern Najdi Features

Certain morphological features occur in the data which link the dia-
lects to the North Najdi or Shammari type. These are more dominant
in the Rufaiʿ and Ḥumaid dialects than that of the Ahl al-Shimāl.
They were:
i) The form –i(h) for the feminine singular marker in nouns and adjectives
as in yizīrih ‘Jazirah’, xēzarānih ‘staff’, mallih ‘burning heat’, dīrih ‘tribal
area’, miḥīlih ‘drought’, ghawih ‘coffee’, sāḥi ‘tent curtain’ R. The Ahl al-
Shimāl in contrast showed –a(h) as in dīrah ‘tribal area’, dallah ‘coffee
pot’.
ii) The North Najdi type shows an idiosyncratic set of object/possessive
pronoun suffixes namely –an 1st s., -uh 3rd m.s., -ah 3rd f.s., -ham 3rd
102 bruce ingham
m.p and –kam 2nd m.p. The forms -uh 3rd m.s., -ah 3rd f.s are shown
in both the Ahl al-Shimāl, Rufaiʿ (and Ḥumaid) dialects. The Rufaiʿ
also show –an as in mʿallman buh ant ‘did you teach me that?’ and
jāni nšidan ‘he came and asked me’, while the Ahl al Shimāl showed
the more usual –ni as in ʿaṭni ‘give me!’. Both groups showed –uh and
–ah as in mā buh ši ‘there is nothing in it’, šiġlitu ‘his work’, addinya
sāhi wa lā bah ġēm ‘the weather is clear and there is no cloud’ R, ʿāf 4
ʿinnu wakrumu hāddīrah ‘he released him and gave him the dīrah (as
a gift)’. Neither group showed the open vowel m.pl. suffixes, but have
the more wide spread –u- forms as in abašširkum ‘I give you m.pl. good
news’, antum ‘you m.pl’ R, wiyyāhum ‘with them m’., yōm innihum ‘when
they…’ ASh.
It is interesting to compare this data with the dialects investigated

by Cantineau in Syria in the 1930s shown in Cantineau (1936-7).
Cantineau isolates three groups among the dialects of the nomads
corresponding roughly to the time in which the speakers arrived in
the northern desert (ibid:117). The first are the most recently arrived
‘grands nomades’ as he calls them, namely the Shammar and ʿAnizah
camel herding tribes, who are thought to have arrived in the northern
desert in the 18th and 19th centuries and who still maintain links
with relatives in Najd. The last group, the oldest, are the Ḥadīdīn,
Nuʿaim, Faḏ ul and Manāḏ rah, ‘une groupe de tribus apparues depuis
très longtemps, dans la région’ and of whom he notes that ‘on sait
d’une facon assez sure que les Faḍol dominaient la bādiyat aš-Šām
au XIVe siècle’ i.e. implying that they have been there since at least
the 14th century. The second group in his terms ‘serait venu a une
époque intermédiaire impossible a préciser’. These are the ʿUmūr,
Ṣlūt, Sirḥān and Bani Khālid.
In the second part of his study Cantineau (p.226) offers an alter-
native classification of the dialects of the nomads of the Syrian desert
into three main groups: A the dialect of the ʿAnizah, who are the
most recently arrived group, coming from central Najd in the 18th
and 19th centuries, but thought to have originated in the region of
Khaibar, B the dialect of the Shammar who have spread out from the
Jabal Shammar in Northern Najd, the historic Jabal Ṭayy, arriving
before the ʿAnizah in the 18th century, C the Syro-Mesopotamian
dialects, most of the rest, who he refers to as ‘petits nomades’ or
‘demi-sédentaires’ and who are the earliest arrivals and lastly a
4
Possibly ʿafa ʿinnu ‘he forgave him’.
subgroup Bc, who include the ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt, Sirḥān and Bani Khālid,
referred to above, who he regards as clearly related to the Shammar
(B), but having some relationship to the ‘petits nomades’ C, hence
the classification Bc. In his words:
‘Chez eux, l’essentiel de la structure d’un parler Šammar se retrouve….
Mais par d’autres côtés (qui relèvent d’ailleurs plutôt de la phonétique
et du vocabulaire que de la morphologie) ces parlers rapprochent plu-
tôt des parlers C’.
In analysing the relationship of the Bc group to the rest he says:
‘Il ne s’agit donc pas seulement de parlers de transition entre parlers
de Šammar et parlers des petits nomades. Il faut plutôt penser à des
tribus, peut-être d’abord géographiquement voisines des Šammar,
peut-être satellites des Šammar, peut-être même apparentées indirec-
tement aux Šammar’.
This second classification does not differ from the first in terms of
the time of arrival of the groups, but emphasizes more the relation-
ship of the ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt, Sirḥān and Bani Khālid group Bc to the
Shammar.
If we compare the dialect of the Euphrates Bedouin to those exa-
mined by Cantineau, we do not in fact find that there is an exact
correspondence between the Euphrates Bedouin and any of his three
groups, though they show the closest resemblance to some members
of the second, intermediary, group namely the ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt and
Sirḥān5. This can be shown by considering the features a) –uh as 3rd
masc sing objective suffix, b) –ah as 3rd fem sing objective suffix, c)
–an as 1st sing objective suffix and d) –ih as fem sing nominal suffix.
We find that a), the most widespread, is found among the Ḥadīdīn,
ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt, Nuʿaim, Manāḏ rah, Faḏ ul, Bani Khālid and Sirḥān, b)
and c) are found among the ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt and Sirḥān and d) among
the Ḥadīdīn, ʿUmūr, Ṣlūt, Nuʿaim, Manāḏ rah, Faḏ ul and sporadically
the Bani Khālid. Interestingly also the pronunciation of jīm as –y- is
found among the Sirḥān and Sardiyyah. Can this indicate that the
Euphrates Bedouin considered in this paper are of the same antiquity
as Cantineau’s second group?
5
See Cantineau op cit: 20-3, 72-3 and 45.
104 bruce ingham
2.3. General Arabian/Najdi Features

Features which are not specifically North Najdi, but generally Najdi
or Arabian are easier to find. Possibly the most salient is the presence
of the –in ending reminiscent of Classical tanwīn. Both groups
showed this both in poetic fragments and in prose, though due to
the paucity of the data, examples are few. Examples occuring are bah
ʿišbin lā yṭūl ‘there is grass, which is not far off’, ilnijrin ṭawāli llēl
ḥissu ḏibūḥi ‘for a coffee mortar which rings all through the night’
R, waddīwān jāʿdin ʿindu ‘the diwān were sitting with him’, lu šāwrin
bah čīs mā hu mʿayyar ‘he has a tobacco box with a tobacco pouch
in endless supply’, čabdin tyabbisah u čabdin tibillah ‘you make the
heart (literally ‘liver’) of one man dry and moisten another’ ASh.
Lexical items shown in such a small corpus of data were usually
common to both areas and did not reveal a distinction of the dialect
as Najdi or Iraqi and in fact in one place the ASh speaker hesitates
between the two, saying saḥab assēf yirīd/yabi yiḏbaḥ hālʿabd ‘he
draws his sword wishing to kill that slave’, showing hesitation between
the Iraqi yirīd and the Najdi yabi for ‘he wants’. The fact that both
texts involved Bedouin culture, in the one case in the form of a story
and in the other in the form of a kind of monologue means that they
both showed a lot of vocabulary which would not be heard in Iraqi
dialects, but purely because of the subject matter.
3. Relationship of the Euphrates Bedouin to Neighbouring

Populations
The Euphrates Bedouin are not mentioned widely in the ethnographic

literature as a group and, as far as I know, are only mentioned in the
linguistic literature in Ingham (1982 and 1986). The tribes usually
referred to under this heading are the Ḥumaid, Rufaiʿ, Sāʿdah and
Buʿaij. My informants also mentioned a group called the Harāksah,
about whom I have found no reference elsewhere. Glubb (1978:108)
does however refer to some of the component tribes, though not
under the name Euphrates Bedouin. He also mentions (ibid) a “small
independent section, who camped along the edge of the desert west
of Samawa”, called the Kwidah, who by his description fall into this
group. He continues “They claimed a somewhat tenuous relationship
with the Shammar, but at the same time were Shiite though all the
desert tribes were Sunnites [excluding presumably Euphrates tribes
referred to here]. This conversion to Shiism must have meant that

they had already been several centuries in Iraq”. It seems that in an
earlier period, mainly in the 18th century, the Euphrates Bedouin
were part of the confederation of the Qashʿam (also referred to in
earlier times as the Ghaziyah), who were in control of the lower
Euphrates region and that in the 19th century the Ḥumaid and Rufaiʿ
had joined the Muntafiq, who in that period had become the most
powerful confederation of the region (Oppenheim 1952 Band III,
1-2:408-13). Glubb mentions (1960: 273 and also in a personal com-
munication), that in the early 20th century these tribes did not nor-
mally venture into the southern desert, but had begun to nomadize
out in the desert to the west during the period of his involvement
there during the 1920s, because of movement away by stronger tribes.
The movement of the Ḥumaid into the southern desert is referred to
in a Ḏ afīri verse reported in Ingham (1986:43) yā ḥeif rāḥat dīriti
liḥmeid u ʿafnīn alkalām ‘Oh woe that my lands are lost to the
Ḥumaid and those of impure speech’, also including an interesting
Najdi comment on the speech of others, though it is not clear here
whether ‘those of impure speech’ are actually the Ḥumaid or other
non-Bedouin tribes. A similar situation is reported for some tribes
in the west of the Syrian desert by Chatty (1990:127), where she
mentions a “crossing of specializations” since “the poorer tribes con-
tinue to herd camels, while the richer ‘noble’ tribes herd sheep deep
into the desert with the help of modern technological equipment”.
To summarize we can view the socio-linguistic position of the
Euphrates Bedouin as in contrast to two other groups i) The truly
Mesopotamian and shiʿah groups of agriculturalists and shepherd
tribes (šāwiya) intimately connected with the Euphrates and ii) Najdi
Bedouin and Sunni groups, some connected less intimately with the
Euphrates and some not at all. If one is to construct a cline running
from more Mesopotamian to more Najdi, the Rufaiʿ stand between
the two groups mentioned, sometimes geographically and sometimes
only linguistically and culturally, depending on the time of year and
their migratory cycle. The interpretation of their position in the dia-
lect spectrum could be in one of two ways. Either, if as suggested
above, these tribes were more frequently located close to the Euphrates
in earlier times, they could have absorbed their Iraqi characteristics
through contact with the riverine tribes or, considering their earlier
emigration to the Euphrates region as mentioned in the sources as
106 bruce ingham
part of the Qashʿam confederation, perhaps they represent an earlier

type of Najdi speech, before the sound shift of –č- to –c- [-ts-] and
–j- to –ǵ- [–dz-]. This latter explanation fits in rather with the ex-
planation given by Cantineau for similar dialect types investigated
by him in Syria mentioned above, namely that dialect type corre-
sponds to antiquity in the region and is I think preferable. However
the presence of the change of –j- to –y- in the Euphrates dialect seems
easier to explain as the result of assimilation to the dialects of
Southern Iraq, where that feature is widespread, being general to
southern Iraq, Khuzistan and the Gulf Coast so that it seems more
likely that it would have been acquired by the Euphrates bedouin
after their arrival. As mentioned above, this change also occurs
among the Sirān of the Syrian Desert (Cantineau 1936-7:24), but it
seems difficult to establish any link between the two. Nevertheless
the hypothesis that it was brought by the Euphrates Bedouin from
an original Arabian homeland cannot be discounted.
Text
The text shown here was recorded from the Rufaiʿ informant and
appears in Ingham (1982:137). I reproduce it here to exemplify the
dialect and also because it is in itself an interesting text in terms of
the way it was composed. It is a brief description of some phases of
the nomadic life cycle, delivered not as a descriptive account, but
rather in the manner of a commentary on the action as though it is
unfolding in front of the speaker, punctuated by occasional state-
ments, commands or salutations to the imagined participants. It also
contains traditional sayings
Most of the texts I have obtained from tribal people have been
fictional stories, historical or personal narratives, sometimes imagi-
nary, or imaginary conversations, performed by one or more infor-
mant, very often accompanied by poems and in one case by a song.
This is one of the few descriptive ones I have and it is interesting that
it is delivered almost as a narrative or performance. It encapsulates
part of the yearly life cycle of the Rufaiʿ, mentioning the daily grazing
movements of the herds at different times of day and the yearly
seasonal movements out to the desert and back to the Euphrates, also
describing different weather conditions and the search for grazing.
1. almuar muar iššimāl, walfiʿl fiʿl iryāl, walšēl šēl iymāl.

2. iddinya sāi walā bah ġēm, wil£ār iġbār nsammīh ʿayy.
3. sraat alabāʿir, lō ġyāb iššamis rawwiat. lō £ār inšarat i££ubu.
4. ilaʿaw lilbarr, irjaʿaw liddīrih. baššita ni¥har. wāid yrawwid ʿišib yitlaʿ
arrawwād. lō £ār mā liga yi¥ul6. addinya maal u gaa mā-buh ši. iddīrih
miīlih.
5. rabbuʿat iddinya. nirwi māy ġadīr. māy šurba. nwarrid “šīlu rabīʿ ibširu
balxēr”.
6. “ibširu balxēr. ibširu barrabīʿ u šīlu wintaklu”.
7. abašširkum bah xēr u bah ʿišbin lā yūl”.
8. irjaʿaw liddīrih. addaraw ša ilfarāt. inzalaw halna banaw ilbyūt. “ibnan
ibsāʿ giaʿna ljūʿ nrīd ačil u čāy”. iydigg ighawih wiyyūn almasāyiir
yišurbūn ighawih. “ayyuh, ayyuhum allah balxēr antum!”
Translation
1. The rain is the rain of the north, the deeds the deeds of men and the
carrying the carrying of camels.
2. The weather is clear and there is no cloud. If there is dust we call it
ʿayy.
3. The camels have gone out to pasture. If it is in the evening, we say
rawwiat, if we say nšarat that is in the morning.
4. They have gone out to the desert. They have come back to the camping
ground. In the winter we go out. One person goes out to scout for pas-
ture. He, the scout, goes out. If it happens that he finds nothing, he stays
[until he does find something]. The land is dry and in drought, there is
nothing there. The dīrah is in drought.
5. The land is covered in grass. We drink water from the pools, drinking
water. We bring the flocks down to drink. “Move camp! it is spring,
rejoice in the good fortune”.
6. “Rejoice in the spring. Rejoice in the good fortune. Move camp and trust
[in God]!”
7. “I bring you good news. There is good fortune and there is grass which
is not far off”.7
8. They have come back to the camping ground. They have come down to
the river Euphrates. Our families have dismounted and pitched their
tents. “Pitch the tents quickly (Oh women). Hunger has broken us. We
want food and tea”. He pounds coffee and the wayfarers come in and
drink coffee. “Greetings to him. Greetings to them8. God keep you
well”.
6
yiḏul < yiḏull, but with the stress on the first syllable.
7
Or perhaps “which will not last long”.
8
These greetings are in the form of an imperative with the recipient of the greet-
ing referred to in the 3rd person. In fact the person to whom the imperative is
addressed is God, as can be seen by longer versions such as allah ḥayyuh “God greet
him!”
108 bruce ingham
Bibliography
Blanc, H. 1964. Communal Dialects in Baghdad. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press.
Cantineau, J. 1936-7. ‘Etudes sur quelques parlers de nomades arabes d’Orient’.
Annales de l’Institut d’Etudes Orientales d’Alger II-III. 1-237.
Chatty, D. 1990. ‘The Current Situation of the Bedouin in Syria, Jordan and Saudi
Arabia and their Prospects for the Future’. Carl Philip Salzman and John Galaty
[eds], Nomads in a Changing World. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale.
Glubb, J.B. 1960. War in the Desert. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
Glubb, J.B. 1978. Arabian Adventures. London: Cassell.
Ingham, B. 1982. North East Arabian Dialects. London: Kegan Paul International.
Ingham, B. 1986. Bedouin of Northern Arabia: Traditions of the Al Dhafir. London:
Kegan Paul International.
Ingham, B. 1995. ‘Texts in the dialect of the Rwalah of Northern Arabia’. Dialectologica
Arabica: a Collection of Articles in Honour of the Sixtieth Birthday of Professor
Heikki Palva. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society.
Musil, A. 1928. Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. New York: American
Geographical Society.
Oppenheim, Max Freiherr von. 1939-1952. Die Beduinen Bands I-III. Leipzig and
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Wetzstein, I.G. 1868. ‘Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der Syrischen Wüste’. Zeit-
schrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft XXII. 69-164.
l’arabe de Damas à la fin des années 1970 109
QUELQUES DONNÉES SOCIOLINGUISTIQUES

SUR L’ARABE PARLÉ À DAMAS À LA FIN DES ANNÉES
MILLE NEUF CENT SOIXANTEDIX
Jérôme Lentin
1. Introduction
Les données ici présentées ont été recueillies à Damas entre 1976 et
1981, alors que j’avais la chance d’y résider, d’abord comme ‘pension-
naire scientifique’, puis, à partir de 1979, comme ‘bibliothécaire sci-
entifique’ de l’Institut Français d’Études arabes de Damas (I.F.E.A.D.).1
Elles ont été rassemblées et analysées dans ma thèse de doctorat de
troisième cycle2, non publiée à ce jour.3 Si je me résous, plus de
vingt-cinq ans après, à en faire état, sans avoir eu le temps de les
reprendre ni d’en réélaborer la présentation, vu que le temps était
compté pour la rédaction de cette contribution et bien que je sois
conscient des défauts du travail du jeune chercheur que j’étais alors,
c’est qu’il m’a semblé que c’était précisément leur âge qui pouvait
faire encore l’intérêt de ces données.4 On voudra bien se souvenir
aussi que la sociolinguistique n’avait pas encore développé ses méth-
odes jusqu’au degré de sophistication où elles sont depuis parvenues.
Pourtant Clive Holes, mon aîné de quelques mois, avait lui aussi, peu
de temps auparavant, soutenu à l’Université de Cambridge une thèse
qui, publiée dans une version remaniée en 1987, devait marquer une
date dans les études de sociolinguistique arabe. Il y utilisait, pour
étayer de multiples considérations par ailleurs fort nuancées, des
1
Devenu depuis une des composantes de l’Institut Français du Proche Orient
(I.F.P.O.).
2
Préparée sous le direction de mon maître David Cohen (Lentin 1982a).
3
À l’exception d’une version remaniée de la section 1 du chapitre VII (Lentin
1982b), qui traite plutôt d’un problème d’histoire du dialecte.
4
D’autant que, sauf erreur, aucune étude sociolinguistique sur Damas n’a été
publiée depuis lors (malgré leurs titres, les travaux de J. Daher portent en réalité sur
les interférences entre dialecte et arabe standard à Damas). Ce n’est que tout récem-
ment que cette regrettable situation a commencé à changer, grâce aux travaux d’Ha-
nadi Ismail (Ismail 2007 et 2008 ; v. aussi dans ce volume).
110 jérôme lentin
instruments d’analyse dont, me référant pourtant souvent aux mêmes

auteurs que lui (au premier rang desquels naturellement William
Labov), je ne m’étais pas moi-même servi. Je ne suis pas sûr de le
regretter tout à fait. Oserai-je dire que l’attitude circonspecte que je
manifeste ainsi d’un mot trop rapide, et sans argumenter, à l’égard
de certains usages de théories par ailleurs fécondes (attitude dont
j’espère qu’elle ne froissera pas les éditeurs du présent volume), ne
sera peut-être pas pour déplaire à Clive Holes, si j’en juge du moins
par des conversations que nous avons pu avoir, ou par son œuvre
ultérieure ? Quoi qu’il en soit, je formule le souhait qu’il trouve
quelque intérêt à la présente étude, qui lui est amicalement dédiée.
2. Objectifs et déroulement du travail
Il s’agissait d’essayer d’identifier, dans un des dialectes arabes les

mieux décrits mais encore inexploré du point de vue sociolinguis-
tique, des variantes phonologiques, morphologiques, syntaxiques,
lexicales et, par l’observation et l’enquête (y compris au moyen de
questionnaires), de les corréler éventuellement à des (combinaisons
de) paramètres sociaux ; au-delà, d’atteindre certaines données objec-
tives contribuant—inconsciemment le plus souvent—à la représen-
tation consciente que se font les locuteurs de la langue de leur
communauté linguistique et qui intervient dans les jugements sociaux
qu’ils portent les uns sur les autres ; enfin, d’essayer de réunir des
éléments de description et d’analyse du changement linguistique, en
décrivant des processus et en déterminant éventuellement des groupes
sociaux novateurs. L’entreprise se heurtait à la relative pauvreté des
données sociologiques dont on disposait alors sur la ville de Damas
d’une part, sur l’histoire de son dialecte de l’autre. Le nombre des
descriptions disponibles et leur richesse permettait par contre de faire
un premier inventaire des variantes déjà signalées (et parfois com-
mentées), et la lecture attentive des sources (recueils de textes en
particulier) d’en repérer d’autres. Il fallait donc s’efforcer de voir si
l’enquête permettrait d’en confirmer ou d’en préciser l’existence, en
identifier d’autres (certaines nous ont été signalées par les informa-
teurs eux-mêmes), et voir comment elles se distribuent. Il s’est avéré
que, dans certains cas, les diverses formes sont en distribution com-
plémentaire, en fonction de contraintes syntaxiques ou sémantiques,
ou de conditionnements lexicaux, qui n’avaient pas été aperçus ; mais
dans beaucoup d’autres cas, qu’il s’agissait bien de variantes socio-

linguistiques, en partie au moins. En d’autres termes, on a toujours
essayé de clarifier la part respective du sociolinguistique et du plus
proprement linguistique, même si ces deux faces sont indissoluble-
ment liées : le social est constamment réinvesti dans les variantes, et
oriente leur devenir. Une autre préoccupation constante a été de
toujours prendre en compte et, quand c’était possible, de privilégier
la dimension historique des problèmes rencontrés : on ne peut en
effet, à notre sens, parvenir à une explication satisfaisante des don-
nées sociolinguistiques recueillies qu’en les mettant dans une per-
spective diachronique. Pour cette raison, sources et travaux anciens
(et moins anciens) ont été aussi souvent que possible mis à contribu-
tion, et, lorsqu’ils paraissaient suffisamment fiables, et qu’ils fournis-
saient les renseignements nécessaires sur l’origine des données, ils
ont été considérés comme des ‘informateurs’ (soigneusement distin-
gués des nôtres, cela va sans dire).
Autour de 1980, Damas compte 1,3 million d’habitants, en très
grande partie des jeunes ; un quart de sa population n’est pas origi-
naire de la ville. La communauté chrétienne est encore partiellement
regroupée dans son quartier traditionnel. On peut observer la coexis-
tence d’une ancienne répartition sociale, accessoirement confession-
nelle ou ethnique des habitants par quartiers avec une nouvelle, plus
socio-économique, mais où se retrouvent ces paramètres, le tout s’ac-
compagnant de changements plus ou moins brusques, très sensibles
aux habitants, des structures sociales traditionnelles. La vieille ville
(et ses alentours en direction du Mīdān)5, le Mīdān, les faubourgs,
l-ʾAkrād sont les quartiers les plus populaires ; le nord ouest (Ṣālḥiyye,
Rawḍa), et le nord est (ʾAṣṣāʿ en partie), les plus beaux quartiers ; par-
tout ailleurs, quartiers anciens ou modernes voient se côtoyer des
populations plus ou moins modestes.
Les 60 informateurs—tous nés ou ayant toujours vécu depuis leur
enfance à Damas—n’ont pas été choisis en vue de constituer un
échantillon représentatif de la population de Damas : peu sont très
âgés ; peu sont très jeunes ; les femmes sont sous-représentées (1/3
5
Une liste alphabétique des noms de tous les quartiers cités est donnée sous la
légende de la carte qui figure en fin d’article (avant les Références bibliographiques),
avec des numéros permettant de les situer sur cette carte.
112 jérôme lentin
des informateurs) ; les Chrétiens sont surreprésentés (30%) 6 les

Chrétiens sont surreprésentés (30%) ; certains quartiers très populai-
res, ou les faubourgs, ou encore l’extension nouvelle d’al-Mazze sont
peu ou pas représentés. L’ensemble est malgré tout socialement rela-
tivement homogène (il représente les couches moyennes).
Il était a priori raisonnable de penser que les paramètres princi-
paux à prendre en compte étaient la classe sociale, le niveau d’ins-
truction, l’âge, le sexe, l’appartenance communautaire (confessionnelle)
et le quartier d’origine (et le cas échéant le(s) quartier(s) de résidence
ultérieurs) ; des informations sur les origines des parents ont été
également recueillies. On verra que, dans l’analyse, ce sont les trois
derniers paramètres : quartier d’origine, sexe et appartenance commu-
nautaire qui ont été privilégiés. Il faut naturellement souligner que
la prise en considération de ‘l’appartenance communautaire’, élément
parmi d’autres de l’identité sociale, est requise si on veut tenir compte
des réalités sociologiques et historiques de la société damascène et,
conséquemment, que l’utilisation de termes comme ‘Musulmans’,
‘Chrétiens’ et ‘Juifs’ est purement ‘sociologique’.
L’enquête a concerné 43 informateurs sur les 60. Sur certains
points précis, un questionnaire spécial a été confectionné et soumis
à 25 informateurs (dont 8 des 43), d’où le total de 60 (43 + 17 [25–8]
= 60). On pourra s’apercevoir, en particulier au § 5, que, pour des
raisons diverses, toutes les variantes n’ont pas toujours pu être étu-
diées avec l’ensemble des 43 enquêtés. C’est une des raisons pour
lesquelles les résultats sont donnés pour des nombres d’informateurs
variables. D’autres raisons en sont que des résultats incertains ont
été laissés de côté ici, et que par ailleurs, dans certains cas, les résul-
tats des 17 informateurs supplémentaires ont été intégrés à l’en-
semble.
Le système de transcription adopté est celui qui est généralement
utilisé par les spécialistes du dialecte de Damas (on se souviendra
que *q est réalisé et transcrit ʾ, sauf en cas d’emprunt au standard).
Consonnes (dans l’ordre de l’alphabet arabe) : ʾ, b, t, ž, ḥ, x, d, r, z, s,
š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, (ḏ ), ʿ, ġ, f, ʾ, k, l (ḷ), m, n, h, w, y ; voyelles : a, e, i, o, u, ǝ (et
ǝ
pour la voyelle de disjonction) ; ā, ē, ī, ō, ū.
6
En 1960, dernière année pour laquelle on disposait à l’époque d’un recensement
relativement précis, ils étaient estimés représenter 8,5% de la population damas-
cène.
Abréviations utilisées : C = Chrétien(s) (ou : consonne) ; C1, C2, C3

= 1e, 2e, 3e consonne radicale ; ex. = exemple ; F = femme ; fém. =
féminin ; H = homme ; inf. = informateur(s), informatrice(s) ; J =
Juif(s) ; litt. = littéralement ; M = Musulman(s) ; masc. = mascu-
lin ; pers. = personne ; plur. = pluriel ; pron. = pronom ; qqc = quelque
chose ; qqn = quelqu’un ; sing. = singulier ; V = voyelle.
3. La perception de la situation sociolinguistique

et son expression
– Appréciations sur les quartiers. Les quartiers contigus du Mīdān et

de Šāġūr, souvent cités ensemble, semblent constituer la seule entité
géolinguistique reconnue par les informateurs, qui pensent pouvoir
en reconnaître les locuteurs, opérant cependant entre eux une dif-
férence : le ḥ aki (“façon de parler ; dialecte (de l’arabe) ; façon
d’articuler”) du Mīdān est plus muhazzab (‘relevé, policé’), moins
‘emphatique’ ; bien que parfois jugé vulgaire, il est surtout considéré
comme emblématique d’un parler populaire au sens positif du terme,
voire ‘viril’. On se trouve ici au croisement de deux phénomènes : une
coloration effectivement ‘emphatique’ des voyelles d’une part, et
d’autre part un allongement des finales et même un débit posé et
‘épais’, si l’on peut dire, qui est en effet une caractéristique, au-delà
de ces quartiers, d’une façon de parler sentie comme ‘populaire’
(v. § 6)7, que de nombreux locuteurs peuvent produire si les circon-
stances s’y prêtent ; ce qui change à Damas, en fait, c’est la manfaxa,
la taxāne, l’‘enflure’ et l’‘épaisseur’ que l’on donne à son discours. Le
mīdānī et le šāġūrī présentent en général, à des degrés divers, ces deux
phénomènes simultanément ; leur langage est perçu ipso facto comme
populaire ; inversement, on attribuera facilement à ces deux quartiers
un langage ressenti comme populaire. Le mīdāni se caractériserait
par un allongement des finales (maṭṭ, v. plus bas), l’emploi de mots
du Ḥōrān (sāyeḥ pour ḥāra “ruelle”). À Šāġūr on rencontrerait le
langage le plus radīʾ, ‘vulgaire’, spécialement ‘populaire’, ‘très dialec-
tal’, et la prononciation y serait plus mufaxxam/muḍaxxam ‘(phoné-
tiquement) emphatique’, tʾīl (‘épaisse’). Sans caractériser ce langage
7
Nous utilisons beaucoup le terme ‘populaire’ : il convient de préciser que,
lorsqu’il est utilisé pour rapporter des jugements émis par les informateurs, il ne
traduit pas en général un terme arabe particulier, mais résume plutôt leur apprécia-
tion. Pour les termes ‘techniques’ qu’ils utilisent, v. un peu plus loin.
114 jérôme lentin
de façon très précise, les informateurs lui attribuent plus facilement

qu’à tout autre telle ou telle variante qu’ils jugent spécialement popu-
laire ou ancienne. Bāb ǝs-Srīže est associé à Šāġūr car il lui est lui
aussi contigu, et son langage jugé ‘très dialectal’. À Sūʾ Sarūža (autre-
fois résidence des fonctionnaires de l’Empire ottoman et appelé pour
cette raison Stambūl ǝz-zġīre, “la petite Istamboul”) on parle avec
murūne (‘douceur’), le parler y est nāzīk (‘raffiné’)—mais pour
d’autres il est ‘vulgaire’ comme celui du Mīdān et de Šāġūr. Le parler
de Mhāžrīn est positivement apprécié, mais celui de (Šēx) Muḥyǝddīn
est ‘(trop)’ populaire. Le parler de ʾAṣṣāʿ rappellerait les dialectes
libanais ; celui des grecs catholiques s’y distinguerait de celui des
grecs orthodoxes, comme dans la vieille ville. Celui des Chrétiens de
Žūra (est de la vieille ville, au nord de Bāb Tūma) et surtout l-Masbak
est considéré comme vulgaire (baladi) et constitue donc un modèle
à éviter. Un informateur nous a donné une vision d’ensemble qui
reflète assez bien le contenu implicite de bien des discours recueillis.
Il distingue trois grands ensembles : Mīdān et Šāġūr, lǝ-Mhāžrīn et
ṣ-Ṣālḥiyye ; Žuwwāt ǝš-Šām (Sūʾ Sarūža + vieille ville etc.).
– Termes techniques. Un certain nombre de termes sont récurrents

dans les appréciations des informateurs
a) šāmi ‘(typiquement) damascène’—même si de fait le trait ainsi
décrit peut se retrouver ailleurs—vs mu šāmi ‘non attesté à Damas’
et donc d’origine extérieure. On emploie aussi baladi pour damas-
cène par opposition à ce qui ne l’est pas (baladi pouvant signifier par
ailleurs ‘vulgaire’). ʾ aṣī l signifie ‘damascène depuis toujours’.
ġarīb qualifie ce qui n’est pas familier (et donc pas damascène) vs mu
garīb ‘reconnu comme damascène’ (même s’il n’est pas employé par
l’informateur).
b) ʿatīʾ (souvent prononcé en allongeant la voyelle ī) ‘très ancien’,
‘employé seulement encore par les personnes âgées, éventuellement
compris des jeunes’, signifie souvent ‘vieilli’, ‘vieillot’, ‘archaïque’, ou
même ‘disparu depuis un moment déjà’.8 ždīd ‘(relativement) récent’,
éventuellement ‘d’importation récente’, signifie le plus souvent ‘né
d’un développement relativement récent’, ou ‘(forme) employée en
concurrence avec (une forme) ʿatīʾ et considérée comme devant être
bientôt la seule employée’.
8
šāmi ʿatīʾ signifie “vieux damascène, typique, à l’ancienne” mais qualifie une per-
sonne, non son langage.
c) ‘doux’ vs ‘lourd’, ‘distingué’ vs ‘non distingué’, ‘vraiment dia-

lectal’ vs ‘faisant cultivé’ vs ‘snob’. nāʿem ‘doux à l’oreille’ vs tʾīl
(‘lourd’), txīn (‘épais, grossier’). Ce dernier terme qualifie une pro-
nonciation plus traînante, plus ‘emphatique’, donc plus ‘populaire’
et éventuellement plus ‘vulgaire’ ; il n’est cependant pas nécessaire-
ment péjoratif. La taxāne (associée à la manfaxa) peut ainsi qualifier
l’emphase (au sens non phonétique). tʾīl peut avoir ce sens, mais le
plus souvent s’oppose à nāʿem et signifie donc ‘désagréable à l’oreille’,
soit par l’emploi de phonèmes considérés comme moins ‘doux’, soit
par une prononciation plus traînante, jugée moins ‘économique’, soit
par l’emploi de termes jugés ‘peu élégants’. Notons aussi le terme
(assez méprisant) ḥafīri9 “plouc, qui ne connaît rien de la ‘civilisa-
tion” citadine (dans ses comportements, sa façon de s’habiller etc.”.
Enfin, bǝšeʿveut dire ‘vilain’, pas joli à entendre et qu’on doit donc
éviter d’employer.
La douceur et la musicalité peuvent être décrites aussi par le terme
murūne ; si on leur associe la distinction, on emploiera les qualificatifs
nāzīk ou mhazzab. musaqqaf a un sens différent, et très précis : il
réfère à l’emploi de tournures, à une prononciation, etc. … considé-
rés comme plus proches de l’arabe standard et faisant donc plus
‘cultivé’. Il peut s’opposer à ʿāmmi ‘(pleinement) dialectal’, qui qua-
lifie (le langage d’) une personne du peuple, sans culture académique
(le terme est surtout employé, pas forcément péjorativement, par des
personnes qui se considèrent être à un niveau supérieur dans la
société. baladi, on l’a dit, désigne à la fois le parler local et qualifie
éventuellement un parler considéré comme ‘vulgaire’ (ktīr ʿāmmi litt.
‘très/trop dialectal’). Pour qualifier un langage pédant, snob, affecté on
emploie kallaf (bikallef b-ḥakyo ‘il parle avec affectation’, ḥakyo
mǝtkallef ‘il a un langage affecté’ ou byǝtṣannaʿ(ou byǝṣṭǝneʿ) b-ḥakyo
(avec l’idée d’une façon de parler peu naturelle, artificielle, par oppo-
sition à la façon ordinaire de parler, de s’exprimer, qui n’est pas
muṣṭanaʿ. Le terme peut aussi stigmatiser simplement un comporte-
ment linguistique ‘différent’ : ainsi de cette informatrice (ayant pour-
tant appris l’arabe classique quand beaucoup l’ignoraient) mais
parlant l’arabe dialectal avec une nette emphase des consonnes
emphatiques (alors que son groupe de condisciples emphatisait peu).
Inversement, une prononciation non emphatique pourra être stig-
matisée comme singeant les Européens.
9
Nisba sur le nom de Ḥafīr, près de Damas.
116 jérôme lentin
Excursus historique : les Zgǝrtiyye. Jusqu’au début du 20e siècle, les

Zgǝrtiyye étaient des caïds de quartiers, à la fois redoutables et redou-
tés, mais tous parfaitement intégrés dans la société, où ils exerçaient
des professions honorables. Ils se conformaient à des principes et à
des codes sociaux très raffinés : défense de l’opprimé, stoïcisme dans
l’épreuve, élégance du costume, des comportements, des formules de
politesse et aussi de la façon de parler et de prononcer, dont voici
une description10:
… ṯumma min ʿādat hāʾulāʾi z-zgǝrtiyye ʾan yatakallamū bi-l-ʾaḥruf
bi-milʾ ʾašdāqihim wa ḥulūqihim wa bi-šakl mufaxxam, wa yamuddūna
baʿḍ al-kalimāt ṯumma yantahibūnahā bi-surʿa ʿinda nihāyatihā.
… Ces Zgǝrtiyye ont pour habitude de prononcer tous les sons en arti-
culant bien et à pleine bouche, en emphatisant, et d’allonger [les fina-
les de] certains mots avant de les escamoter brusquement pour finir.
… fa yaruddu ʿalayhim as-salām bi-qawlihi : ʿalēk11 ǝs-salām ʾaxi, wa
yamudduhā, ṯumma yašfaʿu ḏālika bi-qawlihi : wa raḥmatu ḷḷā wa
barakātuhu fa yuxaffifu ḍ-ḍaġṭ ʿalā ḥarfay at-tāʾ fī kalimatay ‘raḥmatu
ḷḷāh’ wa ‘barakātuhu’ wa yašudduhā šaddan, ṯumma yašfaʿu bi-qaw-
lihi : ‘tfaddal ʾaxi’ (ʾay tfaḍḍal ʾaxi), ‘ʾAḷḷa yudīm ʿizzak yā tayyib’ (ʾay
yā ṭayyib) fa yunaʿʿim at-ṭāʾ wa t-tāʾ wa d-dāl wa ḍ-ḍād bi-sāʾir ʾalfāḍ⃯ihi
yasḥaquhā saḥqan.
… [le Zgǝrti] rend la salutation en disant : “ʿalēk ǝs-salām ʾaxi” en allon-
geant, et il enchaîne : “u raḥmatu ḷḷā w barakāto” (‘et la miséricorde et
les bénédictions divines’), avec des t très légers [= d’occlusion mini-
male] dans raḥmatu et barakāto, et étirés, et il continue : “tfaddal ʾaxi”
(pour tfaḍḍal ʾaxi), “ʾAḷḷa ydīm ʿǝzzak ya tayyeb” (pour ṭayyeb), en
adoucissant [en réduisant l’occlusion / en désemphatisant] l’articula-
tion du tāʾ, du ṭāʾ, du dāl et du ḍād dans tous les mots où ces sons
apparaissent et en les réduisant à peu de chose.
– Le seul véritable terme ‘technique’ employé par les informateurs
est maṭṭ (nom d’action maṭṭ) ou maṭmaṭ (nom d’action maṭmaṭa)
“allongement de la syllabe finale, finales traînantes”. Ce trait est tou-
jours cité comme caractéristique soit du parler populaire, soit du
parler de Damas en général (et souvent de celui des Juifs)12. Ceci veut
10
al-ʿAllāf 1976, p. 245, l. 6-8 et 15-20.
11
Le texte comporte ici une kasra sous le lām, d’où la transcription, qui sinon est
plus classicisante, et plus proche d’une translittération ; dans la traduction par contre,
la transcription a été volontairement modifiée, pour se rapprocher de ce qu’on peut
imaginer des paroles que le texte vise à rendre, sans qu’il soit évidemment possible
de le vérifier.
12
Cf. Grotzfeld 1964, p. 39 n. 2). On dit d’ailleurs, à qui allonge beaucoup les
finales : “Tu parles comme un vieux Juif”. Pour Alep, où ce trait est attribué aux Juifs
dire d’une part que les Damascènes sont conscients de cette particu-
larité, et d’autre part qu’ils la stigmatisent (quand elle est trop pro-
noncée à leurs yeux), l’attribuant alors à tel ou tel groupe qu’ils
veulent marquer comme spécialement populaire, ou baladi, ou plus
simplement particulier.
– Un certain nombre de formes sont souvent citées par les
Chrétiens comme leur étant propres. Les Musulmans—quand ils les
connaissent—les qualifient de ‘chrétiennes’ ou de ‘libanaises’. Il est
probable en effet que, par contacts avec des Chrétiens libanais, et des
Libanais en général, ils fassent des emprunts à leurs dialectes ; mais
il est possible aussi, comme on le verra, que les Chrétiens libanais et
damascènes aient conservé des traits perdus par le(s) dialecte(s) des
Musulmans de Damas.
– On indiquera pour finir qu’on peut entendre qualifier de ʿāmmi
ʾaktar ‘plus dialectal’ des formes etc. qui ont par ailleurs une variante
(jugée) plus proche de l’arabe standard, et on fera surtout remarquer
que cette appréciation peut être tout à fait positive : ‘c’est ainsi qu’on
dit, ou qu’on doit dire, quand on parle le ‘vrai’ dialecte’.
4. Existe-t-il une norme?
Cette dernière observation nous amène tout naturellement à la ques-

tion de la norme dialectale.13 Nous avons vu que les mêmes variantes
sont l’objet de jugements variés, mais, à y regarder de près, cohérents,
ce qui amène à plusieurs conclusions:
– un certain nombre de formes ou de variantes, décrites soit
comme vieillies, très dialectales, populaires, vulgaires, voire non
damascènes, et qui sont effectivement anciennes et probablement en
voie de disparition, suggèrent qu’il existe ‘de la norme’;
– un certain nombre d’appréciations traduisent l’ignorance, ou la
surdité à certaines formes pourtant typiquement damascènes, et sug-
gèrent une relative ignorance réciproque des groupes sociaux quant
à leurs usages linguistiques, et donc éventuellement une relative
ségrégation sociale, mais en tout cas une inconscience et/ou une tolé-
rance dont la conséquence est la coexistence possible de plusieurs
normes—quelques unes, ou une, pouvant tendre à s’imposer, et à
et aux Chrétiens, cf. Sabuni 1980, p. 66 et n. 4.

13
Il va sans dire que l’existence d’une communauté linguistique implique néces-
sairement l’existence d’une norme ; mais celle-ci peut être plus ou moins souple ou
contraignante.
118 jérôme lentin
devenir la référence à laquelle les autres se conforment, ou non. C’est

par référence à cette norme ou plus vraisemblablement à l’une de ces
normes que les productions des locuteurs sont éventuellement
jugées : un informateur juge par exemple māni (cf. § 5 variante 37)
‘ʾaṣaḥḥ’ “plus correcte” (alors qu’il ne l’emploie pas lui-même, mais
māli). Cette part d’ignorance réciproque fait que, confronté (par l’en-
quêteur) à une forme non connue ‘subjectivement’, le locuteur /
informateur questionné l’attribuera à un groupe social qui n’est pas
le sien, fournissant ainsi du même coup un élément de l’appréciation
qu’il porte sur sa propre appartenance sociale, et la nature des grilles
à sa disposition ; plus la réponse est fantaisiste plus elle est intéres-
sante car, confrontée au système présidant aux appréciations données
sur des formes connues de lui, elle permet de mieux cerner ce qui
joue dans les appréciations ‘sociologiques’ sur les faits linguistiques
(ce qui déplaît, par exemple pour des raisons d’euphonie, sera jugé
populaire, vulgaire, snob etc.) et de mieux comprendre comment
elles s’organisent en système, et comment celui-ci fonctionne.
Les différentes grilles d’appréciation (populaire/moins populaire,
vieux/récent, chrétien/musulman, du quartier x/ du quartier y) sont
utilisées simultanément, comme il est naturel. Mais ce qui est remar-
quable, c’est le caractère nuancé des appréciations portées et la rela-
tive rareté des jugements induits à partir d’un ‘raisonnement’
purement ‘sociologique’ (du type : tel quartier, plus populaire, se voit
attribuer une forme ressentie comme populaire).
On peut observer aussi que les informateurs sont souvent conscients
que le choix entre les différentes formes à leur disposition est dans
plus d’un cas déterminé (partiellement) par des facteurs d’ordre
sémantique, syntaxique …, ce qui détermine un grand nombre
d’évolutions possibles au niveau de la communauté linguistique prise
dans son ensemble, le choix de la voie qui sera finalement empruntée
étant déterminé in fine par des facteurs d’ordre sociologique (prestige
d’un groupe par exemple), choix toujours susceptible d’être mis en
cause dans la diachronie. Corrélativement, ces variantes ne sont pas
‘vécues’ comme sociolinguistiques.
Le large éventail de qualificatifs utilisé par les locuteurs pour expri-
mer leurs jugements reflète deux réalités : l’habitude d’entendre dire
par d’autres que soi des choses (légèrement ou très) différentes de ce
qu’on dit soi-même (que l’on pense à la diversité dialectale de la
Syrie, sans parler de celle du monde arabe, aujourd’hui omniprésente
par le canal de la télévision), et aux contacts quotidiens avec les

habitants de Damas non originaires de la ville : la diversité linguisti-
que fait partie du quotidien des Damascènes (ce qui explique à la
fois leur ‘tolérance’, leur finesse de perception et, souvent, l’intérêt
qu’ils prennent à parler de ces questions) ; certaines variantes, repé-
rées ou non, ne sont assorties d’aucun jugement d’aucune sorte, ceci
étant renforcé peut-être par le fait qu’on les retrouve, mutatis mutan-
dis, ailleurs qu’à Damas (par ex. l’alternance e/o de la voyelle d’inac-
compli de certains verbes, cf. § 8).
Il n’est pas possible d’aborder, dans ces quelques pages, le rôle que
joue la référence, implicite ou explicite, à la norme de l’arabe stan-
dard. Il est évidemment à prendre en compte, et s’exerce, comme
souvent dans le monde arabophone, de façon complexe et parfois
contradictoire (d’autant qu’une forme standard ou réputée telle
pourra, selon le contexte, être ressentie comme élégante ou pédante—
ces valeurs associées évoluant d’ailleurs avec le temps). Il apparaît en
tout cas clairement que cette référence n’est qu’un des facteurs parmi
d’autres de l’évolution du dialecte, et n’est certainement pas le plus
important. On s’aperçoit ainsi que lorsqu’un informateur déclare
avoir consciemment ‘réformé’ son propre usage (mʿaddǝl-a “j’ai cor-
rigé cette façon que j’avais de dire telle chose”), c’est en général pour
adopter une forme plus koinique, moins marquée socialement, et
souvent ‘plus dialectale’, au sens qu’on a déjà indiqué de ‘plus éloi-
gnée’ de la forme standard correspondante. En tout cas, si les
emprunts, lexicaux en particulier, à l’arabe standard sont sans doute
de plus en plus nombreux, ils sont acclimatés, et finalement dialec-
talisés (souvent assez rapidement, via quelques étapes intermédiaires
parfois), aussi bien sur le plan morphonologique que sur le plan
sémantique. Et l’on ne peut qu’être frappé, lorsqu’on compare les
usages contemporains à ceux qui sont documentés pour les périodes
antérieures, tant dans la littérature dialectologique que dans les textes
dialectaux ou dialectalisants de périodes plus anciennes, par la ‘résis-
tance’ et la grande stabilité du dialecte de Damas, malgré l’impor-
tance des apports de populations nouvelles à l’époque récente.14
14
C’est à juste titre que C. Miller (Miller 2003a p. 193-194 et 2003b p. 254-255)
range le dialecte de Damas dans la première des quatre catégories qu’elle distingue à
cet égard, celle des ‘Old capital-cities with a prestigious and well-established dialect’,
catégorie dont elle dit : “Their vernacular developed long ago in a sedentary environ-
ment and the historical leveling processes did not seem to have led to radical struc-
tural changes”.
120 jérôme lentin
À la question posée : existe-t-il une norme ? on peut donc répondre

que, si elle n’est pas explicitée (car non explicitable, au moins sur un
plan théorique, pour des raisons idéologiques évidentes), il existe
pour chaque groupe de locuteurs une norme, ces différentes ‘sous-
normes’ étant fédérées, si l’on peut dire, par le recours à une norme
unique, elle-même une ‘multinorme’, en ce qu’elle est en permanence
construite par le locuteur, qui se réfère d’abord à son propre modèle
linguistique (celui du groupe auquel il appartient), à celui/ceux du
modèle du/des groupe(s) qu’il considère comme prestigieux ou dans
lesquels il se reconnaît, à des critères ‘esthétiques’ (eux-mêmes en
dernière analyse déterminés par des paramètres sociologiques), au
modèle de ceux des autres groupes qu’il connaît et qui sont toujours
incarnés dans des locuteurs sur lesquels il porte un jugement de
valeur sociale, et enfin, par ailleurs, à la norme (syrienne !) de l’arabe
standard. On voit que cette norme complexe ne peut, vu sa nature,
qu’être en perpétuelle évolution. Il importe de souligner que les évo-
lutions sont loin d’être irréversibles. Il n’est pas rare que tel ou tel
lexème, par exemple, jugé pendant une période plus ou moins longue
comme ‘baladi’ (et en conséquence évité par certains locuteurs dans
certains contextes), car ayant vu son usage se cantonner progressi-
vement à tel ou tel groupe de locuteurs, soit de ce fait, dans une étape
ultérieure, considéré seulement comme ‘ancien’ ou vieilli puis voie
son usage, pour une raison ou pour une autre, être réactivé, se
répandre à nouveau et même devenir (redevenir ?) prestigieux, par-
fois parce que considéré comme … nouveau. Ce sont là des processus
bien connus dans l’histoire des langues.
5. Quarante-sept variantes
Les variantes15 qui vont être passées en revue ci-après16 ont des
statuts différents, en ce sens que si certaines sont parfaitement con-
nues des locuteurs, d’autres échappent, parfois totalement, à leur
15
N.B. Contrairement à un usage plus habituel, ‘variante’ sera employé ici le plus
souvent pour désigner l’ensemble des formes (qu’elles diffèrent du point de vue de la
prononciation, du lexique, de la morphonologie … ou sur deux ou trois de ces plans
à la fois) recensées pour l’ensemble des locuteurs ; ‘forme’ désigne l’une des formes,
précisément, que prend la ‘variante’.
16
Les variantes 1 à 47 ci-dessous correspondent respectivement aux variantes 3,
4, 5, 33, 6, 21, 24, 27, 39, 43, 1, 46, 42, 34, 30, 31, 11, 28, 29, 26, 18, 41, 44, 7, 8, 14, 40,
9, 15, 16, 22, 38, 12, 10, 19, 25, 17, 47, 37, 45, 20, 32, 23, 35, 36, 2 et 13 dans Lentin
1982a.
conscience linguistique. Par ailleurs, on pourra constater que figurent

dans la liste quelques emprunts, récents ou anciens, à d’autres langues
ou à d’autres dialectes. Nous n’avons pas considéré qu’il y avait là
un problème, y voyant au contraire une possibilité supplémentaire
de repérer les traces de phénomènes sociolinguistiques ailleurs moins
visibles.
On trouvera pour chaque variante, avec plus ou moins de détails,
un court résumé des résultats de l’enquête17, parfois des appréciations
des locuteurs et, quand cela nous a paru possible, la proposition éga-
lement le plus souvent résumée d’une interprétation, souvent de type
historique. Malgré leur formulation, les considérations sur la répar-
tition par quartiers sont purement indicatives : le petit nombre d’en-
quêtés ne permet, dans le meilleur des cas, que de dégager ou plutôt
de hasarder quelques tendances, et on ne trouvera certes pas ici un
atlas linguistique de Damas, ni même son esquisse.
L’ordre de présentation est le suivant : variantes morphonologi-
ques / lexicales (1 à 10), lexicales (11-23), de prononciation 1 (24 à
27), de prononciation 2 : a / ǝ, (28 à 32), morphonologie (33), mor-
phologie : ajout de -n (34 à 36), morphologie de la négation (37-38),
morphologie nominale (39-40), morphologie verbale (41-45), alter-
nances entre formes verbales dérivées (46-47).
1. ʾǝxtyār (ʾǝxtiyār, ʾǝxǝtyār) / xǝtyār “vieillard, homme âgé”

La forme ʾǝxtyār (17 inf.), plus proche du turc auquel le mot—
vraisemblablement d’origine arabe—est emprunté, est la plus
ancienne. Si on l’associe aux formes proches ʾǝxtiyār et ʾǝxǝtyār, elle
est dominante (xǝtyār est aussi chez 17 inf.). xǝtyār est sans doute
une forme issue par aphérèse de ʾǝxǝtiyār, ou/et d’une réanalyse de
l-ʾǝxtyār en l-ǝxtyār (cf. l-ʾǝwlād ~ lūlād “les enfants” d’une part, bnāni
< lǝbnāni “libanais” d’autre part). Elle semble dominer dans les nou-
veaux quartiers,et s’introduire dans les anciens quartiers par le sud
ouest et le sud de la vieille ville. La forme intermédiaire ʾǝxǝtyār est
attestée à la frontière (ou non loin) entre les zones où prédominent
l’une ou l’autre des deux formes principales.
17
Les informateurs pouvant employer plusieurs formes pour la même variante,
la somme des chiffres donnés pour chaque forme excède souvent le nombre total
d’informateurs.
122 jérôme lentin
2. fa/āṣūlya (8 inf.), fa/āṣūlye (7 inf.), fa/āṣūli/íye (5 inf.), fa/āṣūlíyye/

fāṣuliyye (21 inf.) “haricots (blancs)” sont les principales formes
attestées (qui sont donc nombreuses) ; noter l’accentuation de í dans
certaines. Une inf., qui a fāṣulíye, emploie une forme ‘de contexte’
(ou ‘allegro’)18, avec -a, dans des syntagmes comme fāṣulíya w rǝzz
“du riz aux haricots” ; une autre, qui a fāṣūlye, emploie faṣūlya pour
désigner non pas le légume mais un plat (cuisiné) de haricots. C’est
là l’indice de l’ancienneté de cette forme, conservée ici comme une
sorte de nom propre. Sa répartition semble le confirmer (elle est
surtout représentée chez les C des quartiers traditionnels). La mor-
phologie inhabituelle de la forme primitive de cet emprunt ancien
(rapporté d’abord à un schème qui n’est utilisé que pour des pluriels)
explique sa transformation progressive, dont on ne précisera pas ici
le détail (avec sans doute réanalyse en faṣūl → fāṣūl et -ya → -iyye).
3. baze/ēlla / bazālya “petits pois”

Cet autre emprunt ancien a deux formes principales : bazella (18 inf.),
bazālya (21 inf.) ; on a relevé aussi bazēlya (2 inf., dont 1 inf. juif),
bezēlya (1 inf. chrétienne). Là encore, un inf., qui emploie bazālya,
dit pouvoir employer bazella pour le plat cuisiné, ce qui pourrait
suggérer qu’il s’agit là de la forme la plus ancienne. Tous les Chrétiens
interrogés ont exclusivement baze/ēlla, que n’emploient que 4 inf.
musulmans. On peut supposer une évolution bazélla → bazālya, avec
des formes intermédiaires bazēlya, avec passage de ll à ly puis trans-
formation de la séquence vocalique inhabituelle a — ē en a — ā (ou,
dans la seconde forme intermédiaire bezēlya, en e — ē), ce qui dis-
pense de recourir à l’emprunt parfois supposé au turc pezelya. La
forme ancienne baze/ēlla est parfaitement préservée, et amorce peut-
être une expansion (comme le suggère l’exemple des 3 inf. musul-
mans de Ṣālḥiyye qui ont aussi cette forme ‘chrétienne’).
4. ṣōbya (/ ṣōb(y)e), / ṣōb(b)a “poêle (à mazout)”

ṣōbya 32 inf. ; ṣōba 4 inf. ; ṣōbba 3 inf. La forme ancienne de cet
emprunt roman, venu par le turc soba, est probablement ṣōb(b)a (peu
conservée—un peu mieux peut-être dans la vieille ville –, et même
ignorée de certains inf.).
18
Cf. Lentin 1982b.
5. farāše / farrāše / fǝrrēše “papillon”

farāše (22 inf.), farrāše (13 inf.) ; fǝrrēše (5 inf., tous chrétiens). farrāše
est représenté en partie à ʾAṣṣāʿ, au Mīdān, dans la partie nord ouest
de la vieille ville et dans les quartiers avoisinants, ainsi qu’à
Ṣālḥiyye ; ailleurs on a farāše, sans doute plus récente.
6. ʿǝllēʾa / ʿallēʾa / ʿallāʾa / taʿlīʾa “cintre (à vêtements)” (certains inf.

utilisent ʿallāʾa pour “porte-manteau”). Certains utilisent ʿallāʾet
ʾawāʿi, taʿlīʾet ʾawāʿi / tyāb.
ʿǝllēʾa 12 inf. (on note un pluriel ʿalāli, à côté du plus usuel
ʿǝllēʾāt) ; ʿallēʾa 12 inf.;ʿallāʾa 6 inf. ; taʿlīʾa 7 inf. La répartition ne
permet pas de décider que ʿǝllēʾa serait une forme plus ancienne, ou
un emprunt (libanais) ensuite ‘damascénisé’.
7. ḍōže / ḍažže “bruit, vacarme”

La forme ḍōže semble unanimement jugée comme la ‘plus dialectale’
(et est la seule possible dans des locutions comme walad ḍōže “un
enfant bruyant”).
ḍōže 31 inf. ; ḍažže 16 inf. (dont 8 ont aussi ḍōže). La vieille ville
montre une situation mélangée, avec dominance de ḍažže ; les
quartiers plus récents au nord ouest voient se côtoyer les deux formes
(presque tous les locuteurs ʾAṣṣāʿ les utilisent). Bāb ǝs-Srīže, ʾAnawāt
et Sūʾ Sarūža ont presque exclusivement ḍōže.
8. f/w/ʾarža “faire voir, montrer (qqc à qqn)”

ʾarža seule 2 inf. ; farža seule 6 inf. ; warža seule 10 inf. ; ʾarža et
farža 4 inf. ; farža et warža 5 inf. ; ʾarža et warža 3 inf. ; ʾarža, farža
et warža 9 inf. Les trois formes sont à peu près également utili-
sées ; cependant warža domine, étant la plus utilisée aussi bien seule
qu’en combinaison. La situation la plus mélangée s’observe dans les
quartiers récents, farža semble dominer à Ṣālḥiyye, warža à ʾAnawāt,
et ces deux formes se partager Sūʾ Sarūža (situé entre ces deux
quartiers) ; ʾarža semble dominer au Mīdān.
9. ʾaw(wa)lāni, ʾawwali etc. “premier”

Sauf dans la construction particulière : ordinal + pronom indéfini /
nom (ʾawwal wāḥed “le premier”, ʾawwal yōm “le premier jour”) où
seul ʾawwal est possible, les usages diffèrent sensiblement d’un infor-
mateur à l’autre. On peut cependant observer les tendances sui-
vantes:
124 jérôme lentin
“le premier (d’une série)” : l-ʾawwalāni (majoritaire) et l-ʾawwal ; “le

premier (en classe)” : l-ʾawwali 5 inf., l-ʾawwal 3 inf. (et deux autres
ont ʾawle au fém.), l’une ou l’autre de ces deux formes (2 inf.) ou
encore ʾawlāni ; mais tous les informateurs utilisent dans ce sens une
forme différente de celle qu’ils utilisent pour “(le) premier d’une
série”.
ʾawlāni est employé par 9 inf., ʾawwalāni par 24 inf. Pour le fémi-
nin de ce dernier on note, outre ʾawlāniyye etʾawwalāniyye : ʾūlāniyye,
ʾawalāniyye et l’emprunt au standard ʾūla. Il y a des croisements entre
les paires de formes pour les emplois au masculin et au féminin. On
peut envisager l’existence, à époque ancienne de deux systèmes dif-
férents : a) ʾawwal (fém. ʾawle) “premier d’une série” / ʾawwali “pre-
mier de la classe (etc.)” ; b) ʾawlāni (fém. ʾawlāniyye) “premier d’une
série” / ʾawwal “premier de la classe (etc.)”. Les locuteurs ayant le
système b) auraient emprunté la forme à suffixe -āni, d’abord peut-
être au fém. ʾawlāni serait ainsi plus ancien que ʾawwalāni (et serait
préservé en partie par les Chrétiens).
Le fémininʾawle (relevé par exemple par Lecerf)19 est encore attesté
pour quelques informateurs, mais vestigiel ; on en trouve par ailleurs
une trace dans (18) ʾawletǝmbāreḥ.
10. b/mnōb
Cet adverbe signifie “complètement, tout à fait” en absence de néga-
tion dans l’énoncé, et “(pas) du tout” en énoncé négatif. Employé
seul, il prend l’une ou l’autre de ces deux valeurs suivant le
contexte.
Les deux formes (mnōb et bnōb) sont à peu près également repré-
sentées (bnōb un peu plus) ; plusieurs inf. ont les deux.
La répartition par quartiers pourrait suggérer que la forme avec
m est plus ancienne (on la rencontre plus dans la vieille ville, moins
dans les quartiers récents ; elle est également moins présente chez les
jeunes). Bergsträsser 1924 a mnōb (p. 64,11 ; 86,8 ; 90,21 ; 102,37),
comme Kassab 1970 (p. 42). Si l’hypothèse de Bergsträsser 1915 est
exacte, on assisterait alors au retour de la forme ‘originelle’.20
19
Dans des questionnaires linguistiques ronéotés, remplis à la fin des années 1930,
qu’avait bien voulu me confier Jean Lecerf peu avant sa mort.
20
Bergsträsser 1915 avait inclus cette variante dans son atlas (§ 80 et carte 33, plan-
che liii). La forme (bédouine) bnaub serait la forme originelle ; b(a)nōb était cou-
rant à proximité de Damas, qui se trouvait dans la zone mnōb (mnawb).
11. “nez”
mǝnxār (15 inf.), mǝŋxār (2 inf.), mǝxxār (7 inf.), muxxār (8 inf.),
maxxār (3 inf.), manaxīr (11 inf., dont une seule C) ; ʾanǝf, ʾamf, ʾǝnǝf
(et ʾanāf, 1 inf.).
mǝnxār est la forme la plus commune et ne caractérise aucun
groupe ; manaxīr et mǝxxār sont ‘plus dialectales’, et paraissent
vieillies à certains. muxxār pourrait être une forme ‘musulmane’ et
des anciens quartiers de la partie ouest des anciens quartiers, [u]
pouvant être la trace de la forme avec [ŋ] (< [n]). ʾanǝf est la forme
la plus relevée (encore jugée prétentieuse par certains de ceux qui ne
l’emploient pas), ʾǝnǝf la forme en voie d’installation. C’est bien sûr
un emprunt au standard ; mais comme il n’est pas nouveau (ʾǝnǝf est
donné par Cantineau & Helbaoui 1953), il pourrait s’agir d’une
‘reclassicisation’, avec donc, diachroniquement, a → ǝ → a.
12. ʾīd / maske /massāke / ṭōba / ṭōbe “poignée de porte”

ʾīd : 21 inf. (8 exclusivement, 13 en combinaison) ; maske 17 inf. (5
exclusivement, 12 en combinaison) ; massāke 4 inf. (1 exclusivement,
3 en combinaison) ; ṭōba 10 inf. (5 exclusivement, 5 en combinai-
son) ; ṭōbe 9 inf. (3 exclusivement, 6 en combinaison) ; 2 informatrices
chrétiennes emploient également (en combinaison) ṭābe (par ailleurs
“balle”).
ʾīd est présent partout sauf au Mīdān (et dans une petite zone au
nord de ce quartier, qui a ṭōba/e) ; maske est peu ou pas représenté
à Ṣālḥiyye, Sūʾ Sarūža, ʾAnawāt et, plus au sud, au Mīdān. Si on
retrouve l’ensemble des formes dans les nouveaux quartiers, on peut
distinguer une bande nord, d’ouest en est, avec ʾīd ; une zone du sud
à l’est avec maske, les deux se recouvrant dans la vieille ville et à
ʾAṣṣāʿ.
13. ʾbāl, bǝʾbāl, mnǝʾbāl, mǝʾbāl, mʾābel, m(a)ʾā/abīl, mwāžeh, ʾǝddām

“en face de, face à”. Plus marginales sont les formes maʾābl- (à l’état
construit ; de *maʾābel) et son ‘pluriel’ mʾāblīn, et maʾābīl.
ʾbāl 6 inf., bǝʾbāl 2 inf., m(n)ǝʾbāl 2 inf., mʾābel 15 inf., m(a)ʾā/abīl
22 inf., mwāžeh 15 inf., ʾǝddām 4 inf. Beaucoup d’informateurs
emploient plusieurs formes ; les combinaisons le mieux représentées
sont mʾābel et maʾā/abīl (4 inf.) mʾābel, maʾā/abīl et mwāžeh (4 inf.),
(mǝ)ʾbāl et mwāžeh (3 inf.). ʾǝddām n’est combiné qu’avec mʾābel et/
ou maʾā/abīl. mwāžeh et ʾǝddām s’excluent mutuellement (sauf pour
un inf.).
126 jérôme lentin
Il est permis de penser que ʾbāl est la forme ancienne ; elle peut
être étoffée par b- ou mǝn. On la trouve dans la vieille ville (et spo-
radiquement ailleurs dans les quartiers populaires). Plus récente
est mʾābel ; elle se concentre à l’ouest de la vieille ville. En dérive
probablement son ‘pluriel’ m(a)ʾā/abīl, présent partout mais essen-
tiellement à ʾAṣṣāʿ et dans les quartiers neufs. Seule, c’est la forme la
plus utilisée ; on a vu aussi qu’elle se combine avec mʾābel précisé-
ment dans le quartier où cette dernière domine. Déjà dominant, son
usage se répand. mwāžeh est sans doute aussi en expansion. Enfin
l’emploi de ʾǝddām avec le sens de “en face de” est vraisemblablement
influencé par l’arabe standard ; sa valeur principale à Damas est en
effet, comme dans beaucoup de dialectes arabes, “à côté, dans le pro-
che voisinage de, que l’on voit depuis” (ceci pouvant inclure “en face
de”). Vu qu’ils représentent la moitié des informateurs qui l’utilisent,
les Chrétiens pourraient avoir été les vecteurs privilégiés de l’inno-
vation m(a)ʾā/abīl.
14. hadǝnk / hado/ōlīk “ceux-là, celles-là”

ha/ādǝnk, (aussi hadǝnke et hadǝnken) est la forme la plus répan-
due ; certains locuteurs ont également, ou uniquement, hadolīk
(forme étrangère à certains de ceux qui n’utilisent que ha/ādǝnk).21
Sur 42 inf., 22 utilisent hadǝnk (etc.) exclusivement, 13 hadǝnk et
hado/ōlīk, 4 hado/ōlīk exclusivement. Du 1er au 3ème de ces trois
groupes, le pourcentage de Chrétiens est croissant ; sur les 4 inf.
n’utilisant que hado/ōlīk, 2 sont C (on peut ajouter le témoignage de
Kassab 1970, p. 32—qui transcrit hadūlīk) et 2 sont J. Il ne faut pas
en conclure que cette forme est uniquement ‘chrétienne et juive’. Il
y a d’ailleurs 4 informateurs C qui ont les deux formes, et 6 (dont
des inf. de ʾAṣṣāʿ et de Bāb Tūma) qui ont seulement hadǝnk. Le
témoignage de Cantineau & Helbaoui 1953, qui ont également
hadōlīk, invite plutôt à considérer que hado/ōlīk est une forme ‘de la
vieille ville’, peut-être davantage chrétienne. La répartition semble
indiquer une zone où elle n’est pas ou peu représentée (Mīdān, Bāb
ǝs-Srīže, Sūʾ Sarūža et ṣ-Ṣālḥiyye). Mais il est difficile de savoir si elle
est ancienne, ou d’importation—c’est le sentiment de certains infor-
mateurs—plus ou moins récente, et de déterminer si elle est en
expansion.
21
Nous n’avons pas rencontré la forme hǝndǝnk (Ferguson 1954, p. 570 et Cowell
1964, p. 552) ; cf. déjà Grotzfeld 1964, p. 45.
15. msažžle / msažžel “magnétophone”

msažžle 32 inf. (1 a musažžle) ; msažžel 3 inf. Dans le premier groupe,
5 (et dans le deuxième groupe 1) ont aussi ʾālet tasžīl ; 1 inf. (du
premier groupe) a makanet tasžīl.
D’abord sans doute désigné par musažžel → msažžel (cf. Kassab
1970, p. 327 et 330), ʾālet tasžīl (cf. Stowasser & Ani 1964 p. 235, s.v.
tape) et aussi makanet tasžīl (cf. Barbot 1964, p. 1998 qui donne ces
deux dernières formes), le magnétophone a maintenant pour dési-
gnation courante msažžle. Ce mot est néanmoins forgé à partir du
standard, comme en témoigne la gémination souvent audible du ž
(dans une position où normalement elle ne l’est pas), et le schème
lui-même, peu utilisé pour les noms d’instrument22 (Cowell 1964,
p. 306-307 ne le cite pas).
16. ḍawwaʿ / ḍayyaʿ “perdre, égarer (qqc)”

ḍawwaʿ 13 inf. ; ḍawwaʿ et ḍayyaʿ 16 inf. ; ḍayyaʿ 11 inf. Les deux
formes sont également employées, même si la première semble être
considérée comme plus dialectale, et est à ce titre parfois moquée.
Les informateurs font état de différences d’emploi, réelles ou sup-
posées : ḍawwaʿ serait utilisé plutôt avec un complément d’objet pro-
nominalisé, ḍayyaʿ avec un complément nominal ; la personne
employée jouerait un rôle, ainsi que la nature du référent du complé-
ment : ḍawwaʿt waʾti “j’ai perdu mon temps” mais ḍayyaʿt žǝzdāni
“j’ai perdu mon porte-monnaie”. Peut-être faut-il en déduire que
l’emploi de ḍawwaʿ permet de focaliser sur le sujet, et ḍayyaʿ sur
l’objet ou le résultat de l’action.
17. mal(y)ān, tal(y)ān “plein, rempli”

N.B. L’étymologie de tal(y)ān est claire : la VIIIe forme mtala a été
réanalysée comme VIIe forme d’une racine TLY (d’où talyān—ainsi
que le verbe talla “remplir”—talān ayant été formé sans doute par
analogie à malān).23
malān seule 9 inf., en combinaison 4 inf. ; malyān seule 12 inf., en
combinaison 9 inf. ; talān en combinaison 5 inf. ; talyān seule 3 inf.,
en combinaison 9 inf.
22
Un autre exemple est mnabbeh “réveil”.
23
Comme beaucoup des variantes étudiées ici, celle-ci se retrouve fréquemment
dans la région ; cf. Cadora 1979, p. 84.
128 jérôme lentin
talān et talyān sont plus marquées comme dialectales. Une majorité

d’informateurs n’emploie qu’une seule forme (surtout malyān) ; toutes
les combinaisons de deux formes sont possibles, mais ce sont celles
avec malyān et talyān qui sont le plus attestées. malān n’est pas
attesté au sud de la vieille ville. Ceci, joint au fait que les locuteurs
plus âgés interrogés emploient aussi plutôt cette forme (qu’on trouve
également dans les sources anciennes) suggère qu’il s’agit d’une
forme plus ancienne que les autres.
Du point de vue sémantique, un groupe d’informateurs semble
opposer malān “plein, rempli” (par opposition à “vide”) à malyān
“plein, rempli d’objets” ; un autre oppose deux formes (pas toujours
les mêmes) en fonction de la taille de l’objet décrit comme plein. Ces
deux types de distinctions, et d’autres encore qu’on croit aperce-
voir, suggèrent qu’on a une hiérarchie malān—malyān—tal(y)ān, du
moins marqué au plus marqué (particularisé sémantiquement), ce
qui pourrait d’ailleurs confirmer que malān serait la forme la plus
ancienne, sur laquelle viendrait empiéter malyān (qui l’a déjà élimi-
née pour un groupe de locuteurs) ; tal(y)ān pourrait être le prochain
candidat à l’hégémonie, bien qu’elle soit pour certains encore, on l’a
dit, marquée comme très (trop) dialectale, ou pittoresque. On aurait
alors un exemple de perception retardée ou d’une mauvaise inter-
prétation d’un processus déjà en cours (la référence implicite au
standard malʾān étant néanmoins susceptible de le contrarier).
18. ʾawwal(t)ǝmbāreḥ “avant-hier”

Ce sont là les formes principales ; on a aussi ʾawwal(t)ǝmbáreḥ
etʾawwal(t)ǝmbárḥa (avec a bref mais accentué), ʾawwaltə́ mbāreḥ
(avec accent principal sur ǝ)24, ʾawwantǝmbāreḥ (avec n) ; un inf.
juif a ʾawletǝmbāreḥ (pour ʾawle, cf. variante 9). On peut supposer
dans cette dernière forme, comme dans l’accentuation d’une
autre : ʾawwáltmbāreḥ, la trace de la constitution de cet adverbe, à
partir d’un état construit (ou d’une construction analogue).
Sur 39 informateurs, 5 ont ʾawwalǝmbāreḥ, 23 ʾawwaltǝmbāreḥ et
11 les deux formes. On peut raisonnablement supposer l’existence
ancienne de deux formes distinctes.
24
Cantineau & Helbaoui 1953 ont ʾawwal mbāreḥ (sans voyelle épenthétique).
19. lǝssaʿta (etc.) “elle25 est encore …”

Les différentes formes possibles sont : lǝssāʿǝt(h)a, lǝssaʿt(h)a, lǝssāta,
lǝssāha.26
Forme avec -āʿt- : 18 inf. ; avec -aʿt- : 17 inf. ; avec -āt-1 : 5 inf. ; avec
-ā- : 12 inf.
Les deux formes avec préservation du ʿ (de *sāʿa) sont encore bien
vivantes, et même, ensemble, majoritaires. Sur les 12 informateurs
qui ont la forme avec -ā-, 10 sont chrétiens (mais d’autres ont des
formes avec ʿ).
20. raḥ, raḥa, laḥ, laḥa, rāyeḥ, ḥa (particules du futur)

raḥ seul 10 inf., en combinaison 10 inf. ; raḥa seul 1 inf., en combi-
naison 6 inf. ; laḥa seul 6 inf., en combinaison 1 inf. ; laḥ seul 3 inf.,
en combinaison 1 inf. ; ḥa en combinaison 8 inf. ; rāyeḥ seul 2 inf., en
combinaison 8 inf.
raḥ domine (20 inf. sur 37 l’utilisent) ; aucun informateur n’utilise
exclusivement ḥa, qui par ailleurs semble être plus utilisé suivi d’un
verbe à la 1e pers. (sing. ou plur.) ; aucun informateur n’utilise à la
fois raḥ(a) et laḥ(a) ; rāyeḥ27 joue un rôle important (c’est la deuxième
forme la plus employée après raḥ. Le fait qu’elle ne soit citée par
aucun informateur chrétien est sans doute un hasard de l’enquête
(on en a des attestations dans Bergsträsser 1924, par ex. 95,22 ; 100,17).
Pourtant, cette forme est peu représentée dans la vieille ville et à
Ṣālḥiyye ; peut-être a-t-elle connu une vogue (des années vingt aux
années 50 ? ) au siècle dernier, sans s’implanter durablement dans
certaines zones, mais en conquérant de nouvelles.
21. h(o)nīk(e) “là-bas” (la forme honīk(e) est parfois réalisée hunīk(e)
et hǝnīk(e)).28
hnīk(e) 21 inf. ; honīk 12 inf. ; hu̥nīk 5 inf. ; henīk 1 inf. ; hǝnīk(e) 2
inf.
25
La 3e pers. fém. sing. a été choisie à cause du pronom -(h)a. Mais l’essentiel des
faits se retrouverait à toute autre personne.
26
Dans toutes ces formes, le ǝ est souvent réalisé [i].
27
Qui peut être invariable, ou fonctionner comme auxiliaire et s’accorder alors
en genre et en nombre avec le sujet du verbe auxilié. Par ailleurs, pour Jean Lecerf
(voir n. 19 ci-dessus), rāye était ‘emprunté au beyrouthin’. Mais des attestations
anciennes, comme déjà dans Callenberg (xviiie s.), permettent d’en douter.
28
Cette variante est aussi régionale (cf. Cadora 1979, p. 102).
130 jérôme lentin
Tous les informateurs qui ont une forme honīk(e), seule ou alternant
avec hnīk(e) sont chrétiens ou juifs. On peut penser (comme l’exemple
de deux enfants musulmans d’une dizaine d’années semble bien le
confirmer) à un processus d’extension de la forme ‘chrétienne et
juive’, avec modification de sa distribution et de ses connotations
sociolinguistiques ; mais le processus semble moins avancé que pour
māni (v. plus de détails plus loin, variante 37 māli / māni). Il est de
ce point de vue particulièrement intéressant de noter que la quasi
totalité des informateurs qui présentent des formes intermédiaires
(du point de vue de la valeur de la première syllabe), sont des Chré-
tiens : non seulement ils ne sont pas actifs dans le processus d’expan-
sion de la forme ‘chrétienne’, mais ils accommodent celle-ci à la
forme ‘musulmane’.
22. (b)xāṭrak (formule pour prendre congé)

La forme sans b- est sans doute la plus ancienne (cf. Callenberg 1729
1e partie, p. 2,-3) et la plus damascène. Mais sur les 14 utilisateurs
de la forme avec b-, 8 sont chrétiens, et les autres sont originaires du
Mīdān, de la vieille ville, de Šāġūr, Bāb ǝs-Srīže et Sūʾ Sarūža, c’est-
à-dire du groupe de quartiers dont d’autres variantes montrent qu’ils
sont susceptibles d’avoir conservé des formes anciennes. Il peut s’agir
aussi d’une innovation récente (comme pourraient le suggérer des
réactions contrastées à la forme sans b-, jugée ‘plus amicale’ par un
inf. (C) mais ‘moins respectueuse’ par un autre (M). On pourrait
penser dans ce cas au renforcement expressif d’une expression quo-
tidienne, et peut-être en même temps à un emprunt, à des dialectes
libanais par exemple, par l’intermédiaire de Chrétiens. b- apparaît
en tout cas comme la forme marquée (bien qu’elle soit très vraisem-
blablement la forme étymologique).
23. dǝlǝʿ “qui manque de sucre / fade / douceâtre / …”

Cette variante (signalée par Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 134 n. 3, et
connue de plusieurs informateurs) est particulièrement intéressante,
en ce qu’elle pourrait témoigner d’une période où cet adjectif avait
des sens différents suivant les communautés. Comme il s’emploie en
particulier pour qualifier le café (ʾahwe dǝlʿa), c’est sur le sens de dǝlǝʿ
dans ce syntagme que les informateurs ont été interrogés. Leurs
réponses peuvent se résumer ainsi : “peu ou pas sucré” (13 inf.) ; “qui
manque de sucre” (5 inf.) ; “fade” (1 inf.), “sans sel ni sucre” (3 inf.),
“qui manque de sel” (1 inf.) ; “très sucré, douceâtre, trop sucré”
(7 inf.) ; “(trop) léger et sucré” (3 inf.) ; mais aussi, significative-

ment : “pas assez, ou trop, sucré” (2 inf.)
On voit que—à l’échelle de la communauté entière des locuteurs—
les valeurs attachées à dǝlǝʿ se répartissent sur deux des zones d’un
continuum allant du ‘très sucré’ (entre ‘trop sucré’ et ‘proche du
sucré’) au ‘ni sucré ni salé’ (entre ‘proche du non sucré ou du non
salé’ et ‘pas assez sucré (et donc fade ou écoeurant)’, qui ont en
commun d’être connotées par le ‘désagréable’ (la zone du non désa-
gréable, située entre ces deux zones, n’étant pas concernée). Pour la
plupart des informateurs, dǝl ǝʿ ne réfère qu’à une seule des deux
zones, en un de ses points précis. Pour quelques autres, il réfère aux
deux points extrêmes, ou aux deux (sans doute en raison de leur
histoire linguistique personnelle, cumulant une valeur apprise et une
valeur acquise). Enfin, on remarque que sur les 7 informateurs qui
ont la valeur ‘très sucré, douceâtre, trop sucré’, on compte 5 Chrétiens
et un Juif.
24. Prononciation plus ou moins ‘emphatique’ de nahǝr “fleuve”

Les faits sont complexes et ne peuvent être détaillés ici ; l’emphase
varie selon les locuteurs, et n’affecte pas toujours également tous les
segments du mot. En distinguant grossièrement cinq prononciations,
les informateurs se répartissent ainsi : sans emphase 3 inf. ; peu
emphatique 10 inf. ; assez emphatique 12 inf. ; emphatique 10 inf. ; très
emphatique 1 inf.
Les femmes emphatisent un peu plus que les hommes ; les Chrétiens
emphatisent moins que les Musulmans ; ces deux tendances se cumu-
lent : 4 sur 6 des femmes musulmanes interrogées ont la prononcia-
tion ‘emphatique’. Le nombre d’informateurs est évidemment trop
restreint pour que ces chiffres puissent être considérés comme vrai-
ment significatifs ; v. cependant d’autres conclusions à la variante
suivante (25 nār).
25. Prononciation plus ou moins ‘emphatique’ de nār “feu”

Contrairement au précédent, ce mot n’est jamais (à une exception
près) prononcé sans aucune emphase.
Si on distingue, comme pour la variante précédente, cinq pronon-
ciations de base, mais en ajoutant trois prononciations intermédiai-
res, les informateurs se répartissent ainsi : sans emphase 1 inf. ; très
peu emphatique 1 inf. ; peu emphatique 4 inf. ; entre peu et assez
emphatique 7 inf. ; assez emphatique 13 inf. ; entre assez emphatique
132 jérôme lentin
et emphatique 9 inf. ; emphatique 17 inf. ; entre emphatique et très

emphatique 4 inf. ; très emphatique 1 inf.
Les femmes emphatisent un peu plus que les hommes ; les Chrétiens
emphatisent plus que les Musulmans ; ces deux tendances se cumu-
lent (4 des 5 inf. qui emphatisent le plus sont des femmes chré-
tiennes).
Si on compare maintenant ces données à celles concernant la
variante précédente, on constate que si, pour les prononciations ‘sans
emphase’ et ‘peu emphatique’, un groupe d’informateurs (exclusive-
ment des Musulmans) se comporte de la même façon pour nahǝr et
nār, un autre (constitué de Chrétiens, et d’un Juif) emphatise beau-
coup plus nār. Par ailleurs, un petit groupe d’informateurs de quar-
tiers proches (Ṣālḥiyye et Sūʾ Sarūža) se caractérise par le phénomène
inverse (ils emphatisent nahǝr plus que nār). Les autres groupes d’in-
formateurs emphatisent nahǝr au même degré que nār : emphatisa-
tion forte (informateurs de Bāb ǝs-Srīže, š-Šāġūr, ʿAmāra, Sūʾ Sarūža
[surtout les femmes], de la vieille ville ; emphase moyenne chez les
hommes et forte chez les femmes (Mīdān) ; emphatisation faible (Sūʾ
Sarūža [les hommes] et des quartiers relativement récents dans la
zone nord ouest). Le schéma suivant apparaît ainsi assez nette-
ment:
– emphase maximale : quartiers centraux, traditionnels
– emphase moyenne : à la périphérie de ces quartiers.
Le cas de nhār : une confirmation
Un test sur la prononciation de nhār “jour, journée” (et sur celle de
nār) auprès d’un petit nombre d’informateurs (24) a donné des résul-
tats comparables à ceux obtenus pour la variante 24 nahǝr : sans
emphase 1 inf. ; très peu emphatique 2 inf. ; peu emphatique 8
inf. ; entre peu et assez emphatique 1 inf. ; assez emphatique 9
inf. ; emphatique 4 inf. ; même contraste entre la prononciation de
nhār et celle de nār (qu’entre nahǝr et nār) ; réalisations peu ou pas
emphatiques des Chrétiens ; tendance des femmes à emphatiser.
26. Prononciation plus ou moins ‘emphatique’ de bǝrdʾān “oran-

ges”
Les réalisations phonétiques varient entre [bǝrdʾǟn] et [bǝrḍʾʌ̄n]. Les
réalisations ‘emphatiques’ sont jugées, par les informateurs, particu-
lières aux Chrétiens, ou, quand ils les ignorent (ne les ont jamais
remarquées), sont qualifiées d’‘alépines’.
L’‘emphase’ se réalise toujours essentiellement par la ‘couleur’ du

ā (1 inf. réalisant en outre le ǝ [u]).
37 informateurs ont été interrogés, et 22 autres (dont 5 des 37)
spécifiquement ‘testés’ sur leur prononciation de ce mot (soit au total
54 inf.). Pour les 22 inf. du 2e groupe, les enregistrements ont été
soigneusement écoutés, à de très nombreuses reprises29, et 12 réali-
sations phonétiques du mot ont été distinguées, en fonction du tim-
bre de ses deux voyelles (ǝ et a). Les résultats confirment absolument
le sentiment des locuteurs : les réalisations (les plus) emphatiques
sont très nettement celles des Chrétiens, qui en ont tous une.30 Le
seul informateur juif interrogé sur cette variante ne présente pas non
plus de réalisation emphatique, ce qui est bien sûr insuffisant pour
faire l’hypothèse que, sur ce point, les locuteurs juifs et chrétiens se
distingueraient.
En ce qui concerne les informateurs musulmans, ceux des quar-
tiers récents emphatisent plutôt moins, ceux de la vieille ville moyen-
nement, ceux du Mīdān relativement plus, et ceux de Šāġūr ont les
réalisations les plus emphatiques.
27. Prononciation de ṣ/sǝf ǝr “zéro”

Le mot ṣǝf ǝr est parfois prononcé avec s ; cette prononciation est sou-
vent considérée comme ‘chrétienne’, et parfois comme marquant la
volonté d’‘imiter les Européens’. L’enquête montre qu’elle est bien
‘chrétienne’, au sens où la quasi totalité des informateurs qui ont une
réalisation avec [s], ou un ṣ très peu emphatique, sont chrétiens. mais
des informateurs musulmans (du Mīdān, de Šāġūr et de Mhāžrīn)
présentent aussi des réalisations peu emphatiques. Il pourrait donc
s’agir d’une prononciation ancienne31, conservée en effet partielle-
ment par les Chrétiens, mais aussi dans les milieux populaires.
29
Ce qui ne saurait évidemment remplacer une analyse instrumentale, qui n’a pu
être faite.
30
Sauf un, du Mīdān, dont on peut penser, compte tenu de bien des faits le
concernant dégagés au cours de l’enquête sur les autres variantes, qu’il cherche à se
démarquer de façon générale de la prononciation de ce quartier.
31
Elle est attestée ailleurs dans la région, par exemple à Alep (Barthélemy
1935-1969, p. 344) ou en Palestine (Elihai 1973, p. 414).
134 jérôme lentin
28. nǝḥna / naḥna etc. “nous” (pron. 1e pers. plur.)

A nǝḥna (9 inf. dont 3 C et 2 F), B nǝ/äḥna (10 inf. dont 4 C et 4 F),
C näḥna (14 inf. dont 3 C et 8 F), D nä/aḥna (6 inf. dont 3 F), E
naḥna (19 inf. dont 4 C et 3 F), F lǝḥna (3 inf. dont 1 J).
Les Chrétiens sont le plus représentés dans le groupe B, sont pré-
sents dans les groupes A et C, peu dans le groupe E. Les femmes sont
nombreuses dans le groupe C, bien représentées dans les groupes B
et D, peu dans les groupes (‘extrêmes’) A et E.
La forme A est représentée à Bāb Tūma, au nord ouest de la vieille
ville et à Ṣālḥiyye et dans les quartiers avoisinants, pas du tout à
ʾAṣṣāʿ ni au Mīdān (à une exception près). On peut associer à ce
groupe les trois informateurs qui ont la forme F lǝḥna.
La forme E est représentée à ʾAṣṣāʿ, dans les quartiers récents au
nord ouest de la vieille ville jusqu’à Mhāžrīn, et au centre et au sud
ouest de la vieille ville (là où il n’y a pas A).
La forme C est représentée surtout à ʾAṣṣāʿ et au Mīdān (quartiers
qui relèvent plutôt de la zone de la forme E).
L’impression se dégage que nǝḥna et naḥna sont deux prononcia-
tions anciennes concurrentes, la première dans certains quartiers
traditionnels, la seconde dans d’autres quartiers tout aussi tradition-
nels.32
Certains faits pourraient plaider pour une plus grande ancienneté
de la forme A à Damas : elle est représentée à Bāb Tūma, ne l’est ni
au Mīdān ni à ʾAṣṣāʿ, les deux informateurs juifs ont l’un A et l’autre
F (avec ǝ), cette forme F n’a pas de correspondant *laḥna ; enfin, aussi
bien autour de Damas que dans les autres grandes villes de la région33,
on a des formes avec ǝ (ou i).
Cependant, la forme E naḥna est bien attestée dans plusieurs sour-
ces, depuis la fin du 19e s. jusqu’aux années 1950 ; peut-être est-elle
seulement plus populaire (pas de formes A au Mīdān, par exem-
ple).
On reviendra, à propos de plusieurs des variantes suivantes, et
encore au § 7, sur les rapports entre a et ǝ, et sur l’existence éven-
tuelle de deux systèmes d’harmonie vocalique différents. Il convient
en tout cas de remarquer que les informateurs qui ont naḥna sont,
32
Oestrup 1897 transcrit nina/ā dans les textes de son informateur principal
(musulman) mais nana dans le texte de son informateur chrétien (p. 118, ligne 8 du
bas).
33
Cf. Cadora 1979, p. 105.
à peu de chose près, les mêmes que ceux qui ont laʾanno (variante
32).34
N.B. La forme nǝ/aḥǝn semble avoir disparu. Un informateur né
au Mīdān peu avant la deuxième guerre mondiale signale naḥǝn à
ʾAdam (sud de ce quartier) ; Abadi (1999, p. 119) rapporte nahan
dans la bouche d’une Chrétienne vers 1920.
Nous n’avons rencontré à Damas ni ʾǝḥna (dont l’existence, réelle
ou supposée, est signalée par plusieurs informateurs), ni ḥǝnna
(signalé par Lemée 1938, et par Wetzstein 1857—mais vraisembla-
blement pour certains villages de la Ġūṭa, où nous l’avons précisé-
ment entendu, à Zǝbdīn).
29. C1ǝ/aC2C3ān
La réalisation C1ǝC2C3ān du schème (d’adjectif, de pseudo-participe)
C1aC2C3ān est un peu particulière : non signalée dans la littérature35,
elle n’est pas non plus, en général, reconnue par les informateurs
(qui la jugent le plus souvent ‘libanaise’). C’est sans doute parce
qu’elle relève d’un phénomène plus général, la tendance à la centrali-
sation de a (v. § 7) ; elle est en outre sans doute conditionnée, au
moins partiellement, par la nature de la première consonne. Il nous
a cependant semblé qu’il s’agit là d’une ‘vraie’ variante ; il n’est
d’ailleurs pas indifférent de remarquer que la forme C1ǝC2C3ān est
attestée dans plusieurs dialectes de la région.
25 inf. ont toujours C1aC2C3ān. Mais on relève, chez 10 autres, l’une
ou l’autre des réalisations suivantes : nǝsyān “qui a oublié”, hǝrbān
“qui s’est enfui, en fuite”, mǝlyān “rempli, plein”, šǝrbān “qui a (déjà)
bu”, ṣǝfyān “qui est resté, qui s’est retrouvé” avec un [ǝ] franc, ou : ra/
ǝfʿān “qui a minci”, ša/ǝrbān, ha/ǝrbān, na/ǝsyān “qui a oublié”, avec
une première voyelle intermédiaire, notée ici par convention a/ǝ. Une
informatrice chrétienne de Bāb Tūma remarquait même que la pro-
nonciation [bǝrdʾå̄ne] (“une orange”, cf. variante 26) permettait
d’éviter la confusion avec bǝrdāne “qui [fém.] a froid”.36
34
De même, plusieurs informateurs qui ont nana ont aussi, occasionnellement,
badd-o (pour bǝdd-o “vouloir”).
35
Ou même niée : ainsi Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 198 ligne 20 et n. 5, jugent que
žǝryāne n’est pas du vrai (‘echt’) damascène. On notera cependant nisyān (Dietrich
1956, n° 37).
36
Ne tenant donc pas compte de la présence de ʾ.
136 jérôme lentin
Sur les 10 informateurs présentant une ou des réalisations

C1ǝC2C3ān, 5 sont de Sūʾ Sarūža (ou en sont originaires), 2 de ʾAṣṣāʿet
3 de l’est de la vieille ville (2 de Bāb Tūma, 1 du quartier juif).37
30. ta/ǝC1C2īC3
Comme pour la variante précédente, il s’agit d’une alternance a / ǝ
pour la première voyelle (non accentuée et suivie de deux consonnes)
d’un schème nominal, ici celui du nom d’action de la IIe forme ver-
bale dérivée. La majorité des informateurs (musulmans comme chré-
tiens) a la forme avec a, mais un petit nombre—tous des Chrétiens—a
des formes en ǝ, comme tǝšrīf “hommage”, tǝtxīte “petit réduit amé-
nagé au-dessus de la cuisine ou de la salle de bains”, tǝrtīb “organisa-
tion”. Bergsträsser 1924 note tiC1C2īC3 (par ex. 57,18 ; 84,1 ; 96,5 ;
101,25), qui doit être interprété comme tǝC1C2īC3 (cf. ibid. partie
phonétique, p. 14-15). Kassab 1970 donne tǝṣlīḥ “réparation”, tǝbdīl
“échange, remplacement” (p. 72), mais tabdīl (p. 77), tǝʾlīd “imita-
tion” (p. 222) et, significativement, tǝʿlīm ou taʿlīm “enseignement”
(p. 212), et taʿrīb “traduction en arabe” (p. 300) pour un emprunt
caractérisé au standard.
Grotzfeld 1964, p. 29 bas et p. 80, considère que *taC1C2īC3 était
passé à *tiC1C2īC3 dans le dialecte de Damas, et que cette forme a été
conservée uniquement par les Chrétiens ; les Musulmans auraient
‘restitué’ taC1C2īC3. Bien que seuls des informateurs chrétiens pré-
sentent en effet des exemples de la forme avec ǝ (l’un d’eux explique
qu’il l’emploie pour les mots ‘bien dialectaux’), l’hypothèse deman-
derait à être étayée. Des exemples comme Tūfīʾ (le prénom ‘Tewfiq’)
pourraient suggérer un ancien passage *ǝw > ū, mais il semble exister
(ibid. p. 24 § 29) des exemples de *aw > ū (et non ō). Il n’en est pas
moins très probable que la référence au schème standard taC1C2īC3
de nombreux emprunts a joué et joue un rôle dans ce que Grotzfeld
appelle la ‘restitution’ de cette forme.
31. ma/ǝskīn et ʿa/ǝzzābi “célibataire”

Sont regroupés ici deux autres exemples de nominaux avec alter-
nance a / ǝ pour la première voyelle (non accentuée et suivie de deux
consonnes), dans le but de voir si la distribution des formes est sem-
blable ou différente pour les deux mots.
37
Ce quartier a porté différents noms au cours de l’histoire ; aujourd’hui il est
couramment appelé (ḥayy) ǝl-ʾAmīn.
44 inf. sur 54 (dont 17 F sur 23) ont mǝskīn ; sur les 12 qui ont
maskīn on compte 6 F (et 5 C sur 14). maskīn se rencontre essentiel-
lement à ʾĒmariyye, dans la vieille ville, à ʾAṣṣāʿ, au Mīdān et dans
les quartiers les plus récents.
39 inf. sur 54 (dont 16 F sur 23) ont ʿǝzzābi ; sur les 15 qui ont
ʿazzābi on compte 7 F (et 8 C sur 14). ʿazzābi est concentré dans la
vieille ville et à proximité immédiate.
Les détails de la distribution, complexes, ne peuvent être analysés
ici ; il est intéressant toutefois d’observer que les quartiers où les for-
mes minoritaires—dans les deux sens du terme—de ces deux varian-
tes sont présentes, fût-ce marginalement, sont à peu près les
mêmes.
32. laʾǝ/anno “parce que”

La forme liʾanno est donnée par 2 inf. (chrétiens) ; on la trouve chez
Bergsträsser 1924 (p. 94 ligne 25) et Kassab 1970 (p. 52 et 59). Elle
est vraisemblablement la forme de départ, ce mot étant un emprunt
relativement récent au standard. Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964 ont, outre
laʾǝnno (passim), liʾǝnno, par ex. pour un inf. de Ṣālḥiyye (p. 80 lignes
15 et 17 et p. 82 ligne 22). La forme laʾǝnno domine (19 inf.) ; elle est
en effet l’aboutissement normal de liʾanno (il faut songer aussi à
l’analogie avec kaʾǝnno ou (ʿa)šǝnno, auparavant utilisés dans le
même sens), comme l’est laʾanno (9 inf.), également issue de liʾanno
mais sans le passage a accentué → ǝ accentué. Une forme avec voyelle
intermédiaire, qu’on notera ici a/ǝ, est donnée par 6 inf. (laʾa/ǝnno),
et lǝʾǝnno (sans doute < laʾǝnno) par 1 inf. seulement.
33. (-ī)re / a (féminin des adjectifs en -ʾīr et des participes en -(C)

Cer)
Certains adjectifs terminés par -īr (faʾīr “pauvre”), ainsi que des par-
ticipes actifs en -(C)Cer (ʿāmer “prospère”, mfakker “qui pensait
que”) prennent au féminin une terminaison -a, -e ou les deux.38 Cette
variante, particulièrement intéressante pour les éléments qu’elle
apporte sur l’histoire de la terminaison ‘féminine’ et, au-delà, les
38
Cf. par exemple Ambros 1977 § 3.3.1.5. et Cowell 1964, p. 138-139 (qui men-
tionne en outre le cas comparable, qui ne sera pas traité ici, des noms féminins de
schème C1ǝC2C3e/a quand C3 = r, ex. nǝmra/e).
138 jérôme lentin
phénomènes de pause39, sera néanmoins examinée ici seulement en

synchronie.
Le tableau 1 récapitule les combinaisons les plus fréquentes consta-
tées chez les informateurs, pour quatre exemples:
Tableau 1. Terminaison du féminin des adjectifs en -r et des participes en -(C)Cer
ʾaṣīra/e ou faʾīra/e fātra/e msāfra/e mbak(k)ra/e

e e e (a) e
a/e a/e a/e a/e
e e a a (e)
e a a (e) a (e)
a a a a (e)
On observe également qu’on n’a jamais:
e e a a (e)
Ce sont donc ʾaṣīre et faʾīre qui ont (conservent) -e ; ensuite vient

fātre, puis msāfre et mbak(k)re (qui est attestée d’ailleurs dans la
dernière série du tableau, a a a a, sans doute parce qu’il s’agit d’un
mot qui se trouve dans des énoncé très courants et plus ou moins
figés).
Ce tableau général est confirmé par les informateurs soumis au
‘test’ qui comportait : ʾaṣīra/e, msāfra/e (deux fois, d’abord dans ʾēmta
msāfra/e ?, puis dans msāfra/e bǝntek kamān ?), et mbak(k)ra/e.
Sur 23 informateurs, 15 ont produit la série e a a a, 6 la série a a
a a, 1 la série e e a e (une Chrétienne, dont son cousin dit qu’elle
parle ‘plus vieux que son âge’) et 1 autre la série e e e e (une Musulmane
du Mīdān).
Les formes ʾaṣīre et faʾīre sont souvent jugées plus populai-
res ; msāfre est parfois jugé impossible, mais pas mbak(k)re.
Si on accepte l’hypothèse d’un ancien système à formes lento/alle-
gro40, on peut considérer que, désormais obscurci, il a donné lieu à
de multiples et diverses situations, ou interprétations : harmonie
vocalique (waḥde ʾaṣīre “une femme de petite taille” vs tannūra ʾaṣīra
“une jupe courte”), forme de pause/forme de contexte, spécialisation
syntaxique ou énonciative (bukra msāfre “Elle part demain” vs msāfra
39
Cf. Lentin 1982b.
40
Cf. note précédente.
“(Mais) elle est partie (voyons) !”) ou systématisation en e ou en a.

Quoi qu’il en soit, la situation actuelle est si complexe qu’il est pra-
tiquement impossible de prévoir la forme que va utiliser tel ou tel
locuteur.
N.B. Les trois variantes suivantes (34 à 36 : hǝnne(n) ḥada(n)
lamma(n)) ont en commun la présence possible, pour l’une des formes,
de -n. Il faut souligner qu’il s’agit sans doute, du point de vue de
l’étymologie, de trois -n différents. Mais on peut noter des similitudes
dans les conditions favorables à l’emploi de cette forme
34 . hǝnne(n) (pronom indép. de 3e pers. plur.)

hǝnnen : 19 inf.
hǝnne : 15 inf.
les deux formes : 9 inf.
Certains informateurs ‘redécouvraient’ -n à l’occasion de l’enquête,
certains assurant énergiquement ne jamais l’employer. Ceux qui
l’employaient en étaient plus conscients, la revendiquant même par-
fois. Actuellement la forme avec -n est sans doute marquée comme
‘très, vraiment dialectale’. Mais la situation échappe en grande partie
aux locuteurs. Il est malaisé de se faire une idée claire de la situation
qui a pu prévaloir antérieurement : y avait-il deux groupes distincts
de locuteurs ? Une forme à allomorphes (conditionnés phonétique-
ment et/ou syntaxiquement ?). On peut relever qu’un informateur
dit employer la forme en -n quand le mot apparaît seul (par exemple
en réponse à une question:—mīn ? “qui ?”;—hennen “eux”.
35. ḥada(n) “quelqu’un”

30 inf. ont ḥada, 1 (J) ḥadan seulement, 10 les 2 formes (dont 5
C ; aucun des 5 autres n’est d’un quartier très ancien).
ḥadan apparaît comme forme liée : ʾǝza ḥadan ʾǝža (vs ʾǝza ʾǝža
ḥada) “si quelqu’un vient”, en énoncé interrogatif : ḥadan bǝddo
ʾahwe ? “Quelqu’un veut-il un café ?” ou comme forme d’insistance,
en particulier en énoncé négatif : ma fi ḥada “Il n’y a personne” vs
ma ḥadan ʾāla “Personne n’a dit ça”.
On peut donc formuler deux hypothèses : soit celle d’un ancien
système à deux formes, soit celle de deux formes anciennes distinctes.
Il importe de se souvenir que ḥadan est très fréquent dans les textes
en moyen arabe de toutes périodes (la graphie la plus fréquente, avec
ʾalif, est ambiguë mais la forme est assurée par plusieurs autres gra-
phies, avec tanwīn ou même un nūn). On peut de ce fait envisager
140 jérôme lentin
une troisième hypothèse : une forme de base ḥadan, ensuite dédou-

blée par réinterprétation du -n.
La forme ḥade, signalée par 3 inf., n’a pas été entendue.
36. lamma(n) “lorsque”

Pour Bloch 1965 (p. 32-33 § 30, et p. 12 § 2b) lamma, forme nouvelle
(empruntée à la langue classique) par rapport à lammen, empiète sur
celle-ci, la confinant dans des emplois limités, et est avec elle dans
un rapport semblable à celui de ʾǝza à ʾǝn. L’emploi serait le sui-
vant : lamma et lammen + accompli “lorsque, après que” ; lamma +
inaccompli avec b- “lorsque (dans l’avenir)”, + inaccompli sans
b- : répétition dans le passé ; + l’un ou l’autre inaccompli : présent
général. L’usage actuel [vers 1980] n’est pas celui-là.
Les résultats de l’enquête, peu fournis (d’autant que de nombreux
inf. n’emploient ni lamma ni lamman) sont les suivants:
lamma : 20 inf.
lamman : 11 inf. (dont 3 n’auraient que cette seule forme)
lamma est plus constative, et peut apparaître dans des énoncés
complets (en réponse à une question par exemple) ; lamma/ǝ/en est
plus proche d’une particule conditionnelle. Malgré Bloch, lamman
n’est pas seulement suivie d’un accompli (lamma brūḥ / bǝddi rūḥ
“quand je vais / je voudrai aller”, cf. d’ailleurs un exemple dans Bloch
& Grotzfeld 1964, p. 24, 20-21 : lammen bǝddna šaġġīl “quand nous
avons besoin d’un ouvrier”). Il est tentant de penser qu’on se trouve,
un peu comme pour la variante précédente, devant les traces d’un
système à deux formes syntaxiquement distinctes, ayant caractérisé
peut-être une partie seulement des locuteurs (Sūʾ Sarūža et Ṣālḥiyye
n’ont pas lamman), certains ayant généralisé lamma (qui ne serait
donc pas un emprunt à la langue classique, ni en passe de margina-
liser lamman). Mais les deux formes pourraient bien être en voie de
disparition.
37. māli / māni (négation prédicative du pronom personnel)

Ce syntagme associe la négation (verbale) aux pronoms personnels
suffixes en fonction de sujet de phrase, en les incorporant en un élé-
ment prédicatif. On le rencontre surtout en phrase nominale (très
souvent avec des participes actifs), mais il peut être suivi d’un verbe
à l’inaccompli si celui-ci est précédé des particules préverbales de
concomitance : ʿ am(ma) (Grotzfeld 1964, p. 130, n. 1) ou de
futur : raḥ etc. (māli laḥ ʾǝṭlaʿ mǝn bēti bukra “Je ne sortirai pas de
chez moi demain”). Il peut prendre trois formes : māl-i/ak etc., mān-i/
ak etc. et, plus rarement, mann-i/ak etc. Certains inf. n’utilisent
qu’une seule forme, d’autres emploient les deux premières, plus ou
moins indifféremment mais vraisemblablement avec certaines con-
traintes d’ordre syntaxique dans le choix d’une des deux formes
(nous en avons rencontré trois sortes : māl/ni ṭāleʿ vs māli laḥ ʾǝṭlaʿ “Je
ne sortirai pas” ; mālo žāye “Il ne vient pas” vs māno hōn “Il n’est pas
là”41 ; manna “ne sommes-nous pas … ?” dans une question vs mālna
dans la réponse) ; un groupe a des systèmes mixtes, où c’est souvent
la personne du pronom qui est déterminante dans le choix de la
forme. Sur le plan syntaxique, la forme avec -l- est plus modalisée,
celle avec -n- plus constative.
Callenberg 1729 et 1740 a deux exemples avec -n-42.
Résultats de l’enquête : -l- : 21 inf. ; -n- : 9 inf. ; -l- / -n- : 11 inf.
(dont 7 présentent des contraintes d’emploi en fonction de la per-
sonne du pronom, ou de la syntaxe) ; mann-i (< māni, et > *māl-ni)
est attesté chez 6 inf.
Peut-être -l- et -n- se répartissaient-elles entre groupes de locu-
teurs, qui se sont fait ensuite des emprunts réciproques puis ont
spécialisé différemment les formes. La répartition par quartiers sug-
gère une autre hypothèse : -n- aurait été une forme chrétienne et juive
qui, du fait d’une relative déségrégation sociale, se répandrait (cer-
tains jeunes n’ont que -n-), avec des quartiers relais. Elle peut même
apparaître comme nouvelle et plus chic. Les quartiers musulmans
populaires, et même chrétiens de la vieille ville autres que Bāb Tūma
sont peu ou pas touchés pour l’instant par -n-.
Remarque. Les deux inf. juifs qui ont (variante 21) honīk (forme
qu’ils valorisent, la trouvant plus jolie ou plus classique) ont māni.
Par contre, les Chrétiens qui ont māli ont aussi la forme ‘non chré-
tienne’ hnīk. Un inf. chrétien de ʾAṣṣāʿ a un comportement diffé-
rent : s’il valorise māni, il préfère se fondre dans la masse de ceux qui
ont hnīk. On peut y voir l’indice de ce que le processus n’est pas aussi
avancé que pour māni. Mais même si les quartiers touchés sont
moins nombreux, le phénomène semble très comparable dans les
deux cas, avec transformation des valeurs des deux formes.
41
Ce qui pourrait être une façon de distinguer entre deux types de phrase nomi-
nale.
42
II, dernière conversation, phrase 5 ligne 3 ; III, p. A2 ligne 1.
142 jérôme lentin
38. mu, ma, (mi) etc. … (négation prédicative ou non prédicative

non verbale)
Cette particule négative est employée peut porter sur tout ce qui n’est
pas forme verbale personnelle (mais elle peut précéder un verbe
quand elle porte sur un énoncé commençant par un verbe, avec la
valeur “n’est-ce pas (que)”). māhu et māhi ont connu des évolutions
diverses : maw, mow, mu, mo (et peut-être aussi ma, v. plus bas) ; may,
mi. Mu et ma sont de loin les plus employées ; mi est résiduelle,
comme may. Hormis mu et ma, les autres formes n’ont été recueil-
lies, sauf dans un cas (l-wazne mi ṣaḥīḥa “ce n’est pas bien pesé”,
auprès d’un informateur musulman de 60-65 ans, de Sūʾ Sarūža) que
dans ce qui est presque des locutions figées : mi / may ḥǝlwe “ce n’est
pas bien, ça ne se fait pas” ; maw žāye “il ne vient pas” ; maw lāzem
“ce n’est pas la peine”.
L’évolution est rapide, car mow n’a pas été entendu lors de l’en-
quête, et maw une fois seulement (cf. l’ex. ci-dessus), alors que
Oestrup 1897 a mow et mu, Malinjoud 1924 maw, mu, mahu, mahi
et mo, Bergsträsser 1924 maw et ma, Dietrich 1956 mọw (p. 325,-10
et -9 ; n° 8, 2 ; n° 12,2 ; n° 48,2 et 3 ; n° 52,2), Grotzfeld 1964, p. 131
maw et mu, Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964 maw (p. 118,14 ; 120,4 ; 162,17)
et ma (31,19).
mu comme ma s’emploient aussi adverbialement, en fin d’énoncé
(où leur voyelle est alors très allongée) : “n’est-ce pas ?”.
Les informateurs emploient rarement la même particule dans des
énoncés comme mu/ma ḥǝlwe, afin de distinguer ainsi les deux sens
possibles (“elle n’est pas jolie” et “ce n’est pas bien (de faire/dire …
ça)”).
ma peut être analysée comme une forme abrégée de maw ou/et de
may, ou comme la négation verbale dont l’emploi aurait été étendu
(elle nie des participes, des pseudo-verbes). Aucun informateur ne
semble l’employer exclusivement. Peut-être ancienne et caractéristi-
que des Chrétiens, elle est en tout cas minoritaire, et marquée, ce qui
explique sans doute les appréciations diverses portées sur elle par les
informateurs (‘vulgaire’ ; ‘je me suis mis à l’employer sous l’influence
d’une amie’ ; ‘plus récente, elle s’emploiera plus volontiers dans une
situation un peu formelle’ ; ‘un énoncé comme ma samʿānta “je [fém.]
ne l’ai jamais entendue” est nouveau’).
39. zbūnāt / zabāyen “clients [pluriel de zbūn]”

zbūnāt : 4 inf. (H, de ʾĒmariyye, ʾAnawāt, du quartier juif et de Mīdān
sud) ; zbūnāt et zabāyen : 20 inf. ; zabāyen : 14 inf. (plus jeunes que
ceux du groupe précédent ; surtout de l’ouest de la vieille ville, du
nord du Mīdān au sud à Sūʾ Sarūža, ainsi que dans les nouveaux
quartiers et à Ṣālḥiyye).
Il y a des éléments qui permettent de penser que la forme ancienne
est zbūnāt, sur laquelle empiète de plus en plus zabāyen. Les locuteurs
sont pleinement conscients de cette situation ; les plus jeunes ne l’em-
ploient plus guère ; zbūnāt peut être employé avec une valeur nou-
velle (“clientes”), et se cantonne à des emplois plus ou moins figés
ou traditionnels, ou de “clientèle”, ou encore dans des emplois plus
spécialisés et expressifs (“clients d’une prostituée”).
40. ḥammāmāt / ḥamamīm “hammams [pluriel de ḥammām]”

Les formes attestées sont ḥamamīm, ḥamāmīm, ḥammāmīn, ḥamāmīn
(et ḥamamīn ?) ; ḥammāmāt.
-āt : 22 inf. ; -āt, -īm : 2 inf. ; -im, -īm : 8 inf. ; -īn : 2 inf. (chrétien-
nes).
Une inf. utilise ḥamamīm au sens de lessive(s). On constate que
ḥammāmāt domine, mais rien ne permet, dans ces données, d’attri-
buer à une forme ou une autre une valeur sociolinguistique particu-
lière, qui a pourtant dû exister, si l’on compare au cas du dialecte de
Tlemcen par exemple où, vers 1900, au témoignage de W. Marçais,
les femmes utilisaient ḥmāim et les hommes ḥammāmāt.
41. byǝ/byūC2VC3 (inaccompli des verbes à C1 = W)

Les verbes à première consonne radicale w ont deux formes
d’inaccompli possibles, l’une semblable à celle des verbes de racine
à trois consonnes saines, l’autre avec chute du w, par exemple : wǝṣel
“arriver”, inaccompli byūṣal ou byǝṣal (les deux formes sont issues
de *byǝwṣal, avec ǝw → ū ou → ǝ).43
Sur 44 inf., 20 ont exclusivement ū, 5 surtout ū, 12 les 2, 4 surtout
ǝ, 3 exclusivement ǝ. Mais les informateurs n’ont pas tous été inter-
rogés sur tous les verbes, ni à toutes les personnes. Ces résultats sont
donc indicatifs.
43
Les verbes à C1 y sont soumis, mutatis mutandis, au même traitement (ǝy → ī
ou → ǝ).
144 jérôme lentin
La forme brève, minoritaire, est-elle une forme ancienne (cf.

Grotzfeld 1964, p. 72-73, avec renvoi à Cantineau 1940-1946 p.
187-188), en voie d’être supplantée, ou une forme nouvelle ? Rien
n’interdit de penser qu’elles sont toutes les deux anciennes (mais les
deux ex. de Callenberg 1729 et 1740 sont avec aw) ; Ḥasībī 1968-1969
en a un de chacune des deux formes.
La forme longue apparaît le plus souvent après la particule pré-
verbale de concomitance ʿam ou après le pseudo-verbe bǝdd- “vou-
loir”, alors que la forme brève apparaît plutôt lorsque le verbe est
suivi d’un complément d’objet direct. La prosodie de la phrase serait
aussi sans doute à prendre en considération.
42. byǝnḥǝki / byǝnḥaka

De nombreux verbes à C3 y ont deux formes d’inaccompli (ainsi que
d’impératif et de participe actif) de VIIe forme verbale dérivée, de
schéma vocalique ǝ i et a a : ainsi nḥaka “se dire, pouvoir être dit”,
inaccompli byǝnḥǝki ou byǝnḥaka ; il en va de même pour un petit
nombre de verbes de VIIIe forme, comme ltaʾa “se rencontrer, être
trouvable”. Cowell 1964, p. 92-93 distingue deux classes de verbes,
ceux qui ont les deux formes et ceux qui ont seulement a a ; il ajoute
que, dans l’aire syrienne, il y a une tendance à utiliser les deux formes
indifféremment. Damas semble bien dans ce cas ; pour certains verbes
cependant, le schéma a a semble exclu (*byǝnʾǝri, de nʾara “se lire,
être lu”).
L’enquête n’a été faite que pour quelques verbes : nḥaka, rtawa “se
raconter, être raconté”, nkasa “se mettre, pouvoir être porté (vête-
ment)”, nʾara ; ltaʾa.
Le schéma a a est majoritaire : sur 23 inf., 16 l’ont exclusivement,
2 ont les deux formes, et 5 ont le schéma ǝ i.
Il y a sans doute une relative spécialisation du schéma ǝ i pour des
valeurs d’actif ou de moyen et du schéma a a pour des valeurs de
passif (parfois pour le même verbe : byǝltǝʾi “il rencontre” byǝltaʾa “il
se rencontre, se trouve, est disponible”). L’alignement par analogie
des deux schémas vocaliques ǝ i et a a sur ceux des inaccomplis de
la VIIIe et de la Ve formes respectivement, vu leurs valeurs souvent
analogues (actif/moyen ; passif44) pourrait être une explication sim-
ple, qui permettrait de faire l’économie de la référence discutable à
44
Même si la Ve forme a souvent aussi une valeur de moyen.
d’anciens passifs de type yunsaqā (Grotzfeld 1964, p. 78), au demeu-

rant peu fréquents dans la langue classique.
43. madda/ǝllo
Quand une forme verbale, terminée par une consonne géminée pré-
cédée d’une voyelle a (-a/ǝdd), est suivie d’un complément pronomi-
nal introduit par la préposition l-, celle-ci apparaît alors sous la forme
de son allophone -Vll-, et la voyelle qui précède ll est soit a soit
ǝ : radda/ǝllo “il lui a rendu”. D’après Grotzfeld 1964, p. 64 et n. 1, a
ne serait pas utilisé par les Chrétiens ; mais Kassab 1970 a a, et les
résultats de notre enquête ne confirment pas cette assertion : a : 25
inf. dont 9 F et 5 C ; ǝ:23 inf. dont 11 F et 6 C.
Chacune des deux formes, on le voit, est utilisée par à peu près la
moitié des informateurs chrétiens et par la moitié des informateurs
musulmans. Par contre, la forme a semble plus ‘féminine’. La répar-
tition par quartiers montre une relative dispersion, avec une certaine
concentration de la forme a à ʾAṣṣāʿ, à Ṣālḥiyye et au Mīdān.
44. ram(y)et
Aux 3e pers. fém. sing. et 3e pers. plur. de l’accompli des verbes de
racine à C3 y, de type C1aC2a, byǝC1C2i, le y n’apparaît pas normale-
ment à Damas ; certains locuteurs pourtant produisent pour ces per-
sonnes des formes avec y (analogues aux formes normales des verbes
de type C1ǝC2i, byǝC1C2a de racine à C3 y), et on a alors ramyet,
ramyu (voire rǝmyet, rǝmyu), comme nǝsyet, nǝsyu “oublier” au lieu
de ramet, ramu.
Sur 37 inf., 4 présentent des formes ‘anormales’ pour rama “lan-
cer” et ʾara “lire”. Peut-être s’agit-il là d’un trait ancien du dialecte
(Oestrup 1897, p. 58, 10 et 98,-9 a žǝryet “elle a couru” ; plus récem-
ment Dietrich 1956 a ʾaryet “elle a lu” (n° 38, 3 et 4 à côté de ʾǝret
n° 39,3), trait qui serait préservé dans quelques verbes. Mais on peut
plutôt penser à un alignement de certains verbes de type C1aC2a sur
ceux de type byǝC1C2i, pour des raisons d’ordre sémantique, qui com-
mencerait par l’inaccompli.
45. byǝstrīḥ / byǝstrāḥ

Certains verbes à la Xe forme dérivée, de racine à C2 w/y ont deux
formes d’inaccompli, l’une à vocalisme i (ī), l’autre à vocalisme a
(ā) : byǝstrī/āḥ “il se repose”, byǝstfī/ād “il tire profit”.
146 jérôme lentin
Sur ce point, l’enquête n’a été menée qu’avec un nombre réduit

d’informateurs : 9 ont la forme en i, 2 ont la forme a à côté de celle
en i. Une des raisons de la prévalence de la forme en i est probable-
ment la valeur d’actif/moyen associée à cette voyelle (à l’inaccom-
pli) ; si tel est bien le cas, on peut s’attendre à ce que la forme en i
évince à peu près totalement celle en a.
46. ṭālaʿ / ṭallaʿ “sortir, extraire qqc (de sa poche, d’un sac …)”
8 inf. ont la IIe forme seule, 14 ont les deux (6 préférant la IIe et 4 la
IIIe). Pour les informateurs qui emploient les deux formes, le choix
peut varier ex. en fonction du complément, ou suivant que le verbe
est à l’accompli (II) ou à l’inaccompli (III après la particule de futur
raḥ, mais II ou III après le pseudo-verbe bǝdd- “vouloir”) ; pour cer-
tains, il y a une légère différence de sens (III = “sortir quelque chose
qui était mieux caché ou rangé”, sans doute à cause d’une valeur
iconique de l’allongement de la voyelle dans III). La forme III, déjà
bien attestée dans les sources arabes anciennes, domine ; II semble
relativement plus récente. Quoi qu’il en soit, II est actuellement une
forme essentiellement ‘chrétienne’, sauf dans la vieille ville. Les dis-
tinctions d’emploi ou de sens évoquées ci-dessus, qui sont le fait
d’informateurs utilisant les deux formes, et dont le parcours dans la
ville s’est fait en direction de quartiers récents, montrent comment
une forme nouvelle s’introduit (par ex. dans les formes verbales non
assertives). La IIe forme est bien attestée au Liban, et en Palestine ; le
fait qu’à Damas elle soit présente surtout chez les Chrétiens (et peut-
être introduite par eux) pourrait plaider en faveur d’une importation,
du Liban par exemple.
47. ṭafa / ṭaffa “éteindre”

Pour “éteindre” (la lumière, le feu d’un réchaud à gaz ou à pétrole,
un incendie etc.) on emploie soit une forme simple ṭafa, soit la IIe
forme dérivée ṭaffa ; beaucoup d’informateurs distinguent séman-
tiquement les deux formes.
I : 13 inf. ; I et II : 8 inf. ; I (et II pour un incendie) : 12 inf. ; II :
2 inf.
La question de savoir comment on dit “éteindre le feu” (d’un
réchaud ou d’une cuisinière) a en outre été posée à 26 autres infor-
mateurs : I 22 inf. ; II : 4 inf.
14 inf. ont déclaré spontanément qu’on emploie la IIe forme quand
il s’agit d’éteindre “qqc de grand”, comme un incendie. Mais c’est là
sans doute en partie un commentaire qui fait référence à la valeur

d’‘intensif’ que la tradition scolaire, et métalinguistique, associe, à
tort ou à raison, à cette forme. La situation est en réalité plus com-
plexe, et on observe par exemple que la IIe forme est employée en
énoncé non assertif (interrogatif, exclamatif, impératif) par des infor-
mateurs qui emploient sinon la Ie forme. Il n’en reste pas moins que
certains n’emploient réellement pas la IIe forme. La majorité emploie
les deux formes, quelques uns semblent n’employer que la IIe.
I est présente presque partout dans la vieille ville, et au sud et à
l’ouest de celle-ci, jusqu’aux quartiers les lus récents ; ce n’est qu’à
partir de Sūʾ Sarūža et au delà, vers Ṣālḥiyye, qu’on rencontre les
informateurs qui n’emploient que II ; à ʾAṣṣāʿ vers l’est se côtoient
tous les emplois.
Ce tableau confus ne permet pas de privilégier un scénario d’évo-
lution : I et II étaient-elles employées dans des parties différentes de
la ville, et les locuteurs I ont-ils emprunté II ? Ou l’emploi de cette
forme est-il une innovation, mais née où ? Ou II avait-elle des valeurs
différentes pour une partie des locuteurs, tout en étant interchangea-
ble dans certaines conditions avec I pour d’autres ? etc.
Quoi qu’il en soit, il faudra tout particulièrement prendre en
compte, pour répondre à ces questions, les valeurs et les emplois de
la IIe forme (qui alterne souvent avec la Ie dans des conditions com-
plexes, et tend peut-être à la remplacer, au moins partiellement).45 Il
est d’ailleurs intéressant d’observer que les groupes de locuteurs qui
emploient I et ceux qui emploient II coïncident très largement avec
ceux qui, respectivement, n’utilisent pas ou utilisent la IIe forme pour
l’inaccompli des verbes à voyelle radicale d’inaccompli e / o (voir
plus loin § 8). On voit ainsi se confirmer qu’il y a bien une zone
(vieille ville essentiellement) où I domine.
5.1. Petit bilan provisoire

Que peut-on conclure de l’examen de ces quarante-sept variantes
d’inégale importance ?
– D’abord, que la diversité linguistique est présente, dans la ville,
dans la famille, chez le même individu. La constatation a son impor-
tance, pour mieux comprendre les appréciations portées par les locu-
teurs, ainsi que pour mesurer des problèmes d’intercompréhension
45
Cf. Lentin 1991.
148 jérôme lentin
(intradialectale) dont on aurait pu méconnaître l’existence. À cet

égard, les problèmes dans une même ville ne sont pas qualitativement
différents de ceux auxquels doit faire face l’intercompréhension
interdialectale. Un coup d’œil aux variantes lexicales traitées par
Cadora 1979 montre vite qu’on retrouve un certain nombre de celles
qui ont été signalées ici.
– Les différentes formes ne sont presque jamais attribuables à tel
ou tel groupe de locuteurs, car leurs conditionnements sont com-
plexes, mais on note des tendances de groupes à employer plutôt telle
forme (avec éventuellement un conditionnement syntaxique).
Emprunts, recouvrements se font à partir de distributions anciennes,
sans doute plus nettes, des diverses formes.
– Sont conservées à Damas des formes plus anciennes que d’autres,
en particulier dans la vieille ville (elles sont assez souvent mieux
conservées par les Chrétiens, cf. par ex. 9 ʾawlāni) ; il arrive qu’elles
soient adoptées hors des limites des groupes qui les ont conservées,
et qu’elles soient ainsi pour ainsi dire ‘réinjectées’—avec les modifi-
cations d’emploi que cela implique—délogeant éventuellement alors
des formes pourtant plus récentes (cf. 37 māni, 21 honīk).
– Ces phénomènes indiquent selon toute vraisemblance une évo-
lution de la situation sociale à Damas, caractérisée par une intensi-
fication et une ampleur sans précédent des brassages (certes anciens)
qui déterminent plus de contacts, d’emprunts réciproques entre
groupes sociaux.
– Un des phénomènes les plus clairs est que les locuteurs chrétiens,
en tant que tels, outre le fait qu’ils ont conservé plus que d’autres des
traits anciens, partagent (et ont dû par le passé en partager davantage
encore) un certain nombre de traits qui leur sont propres. La situa-
tion est certes, dans le détail, plus compliquée : un informateur chré-
tien du Mīdān, par exemple, a certains de ces traits mais pas tous ; et
on observe, entre les locuteurs chrétiens des quartiers de Bāb Tūma
et ceux du cœur de la vieille ville des différences, les seconds étant,
dialectalement, plus ‘musulmans’. Ces différences doivent recouper
d’ailleurs en partie des différences sociales entre deux groupes dis-
tincts, comme l’indiquent les jugements que l’on entend exprimer
parfois par Grecs catholiques et Grecs orthodoxes.
– Cela dit, il existe incontestablement des traits dialectaux ‘chré-
tiens’ : 2 faṣūlye etc., 3 bazella / bazālya, 5 farāše etc., 26 bǝrd’ān, 30
ta/ǝC1C2īC3, de même qu’une emphase apparemment plus forte (mis
à part le cas particulier de nahr) que celle des musulmans.
– Une question intéressante serait de savoir si le dialecte des Juifs

partage avec le dialecte ‘chrétien’ des traits, et est plus proche de lui
que du dialecte ‘musulman’ ; il semble que oui (et c’est le sentiment
nettement exprimé par un des deux informateurs juifs que nous
avons interrogés).46
– Quartiers : mis à part le quartier juif, ʾAṣṣāʾ et surtout Bāb Tūma,
où appartenance communautaire et de quartier se recoupent très
largement, et les nouveaux quartiers, où brassage et situation linguis-
tique mélangée vont de pair pour certaines variantes (8 f/w/ʾarža, 16
ḍawwaʿ / ḍayyaʿ), le Mīdān semble constituer une entité relativement
autonome ; les quartiers à l’ouest de la vieille ville (Bāb ǝs-Srīže—avec
Šāġūr plus à l’est—ʾAnawāt et Sūʾ Sarūža) constituent une zone où
les quartiers se groupent différemment, suivant les variantes, S ūʾ
Sarūža etc. formant parfois unité avec le Mīdān, ʾAnawāt et Sūʾ
Sarūža allant souvent de pair.
– Pour des traits éventuellement caractéristiques des femmes,
v. § 6.
– Certaines formes sont empruntées à d’autres aires dialectales—
mais emprunter ne veut pas dire nécessairement emprunter à l’exté-
rieur. Outre le fait que des formes peuvent être communes à des
dialectes extérieurs et à des sous-groupes à l’intérieur de la ville,
d’autres peuvent en effet avoir été apportées à Damas par des groupes
qui s’y sont installés et les ont ensuite diffusées.
– Il paraît bien difficile de déterminer des zones d’où partiraient
des innovations, ou des trajets suivant lesquels elles se répandraient.
Le Mīdān paraît être une zone assez conservatrice ; les Chrétiens, on
l’a vu, sont ‘porteurs’ de formes dont l’usage peut se répandre hors
de leur communauté, et ils sont parfois vecteurs d’innovation.
6. Colorations vocaliques d’ensemble?
Les enquêtes sociolinguistiques sont souvent centrées sur l’examen

détaillé d’une ou de quelques variantes, et ne s’intéressent peut-être
pas toujours suffisamment à des questions comme : existe-t-il des
groupes de locuteurs qui se caractériseraient par ex. par une ‘colora-
tion vocalique d’ensemble’, un plus ou moins grand degré d’emphase,
46
Je n’ai pas eu accès aux travaux qui ont pu être consacré en Israël aux Juifs
damascènes émigrés, ni eu connaissance de travaux consacrés à ceux d’entre eux qui
ont émigré aux États-Unis.
150 jérôme lentin
une zone privilégiée pour les points d’articulation des consonnes,

etc. ? 47 De telles caractéristiques de groupe, si elles existent, constitu-
ent en effet, qu’elles soient consciemment ou non perçues par eux,
un élément objectif d’appréciation des jugements que portent les uns
sur les autres les divers (groupes de) locuteurs, de la façon dont ces
jugements se constituent et sont, plus ou moins abusivement, étendus
et systématisés ; de ce fait, elles constituent des caractéristiques lin-
guistiques plus importantes que celles qui sont plus immédiatemet
accessibles à leur conscience (ou à celle de l’observateur).
L’observation et l’écoute des enregistrements faits au cours de l’en-
quête nous avaient amené à nous poser la question sur la ‘coloration
vocalique d’ensemble’, et à tenter de lui apporter quelques éléments
de réponse. Un petit ‘test’, auquel il a déjà été fait allusion, avait été
confectionné à cet effet, afin de pouvoir comparer dans 44 phrases,
pour 101 points précis, dont les timbres vocaliques, les réalisations
de 25 locuteurs.48
Ce qui frappe à Damas (comme sans doute partout ailleurs) est
une grande variété dans la réalisation phonétique des phonèmes
vocaliques (d’autant plus, naturellement, que ceux-ci sont relative-
ment peu nombreux). ; il n’y a pas deux locuteurs qui présentent des
configurations identiques, y compris pour les même voyelles dans
exactement le même environnement consonantique, voire dans les
mêmes mots. Voici, sans entrer aucunement dans les détails, quel-
ques observations qui ont pu être faites49:
– les trois jeunes informateurs (25 ans environ) du Mīdān présen-
tent une sorte d’harmonie vocalique, dans le sens qu’il y a rarement
dans un même mot un grand écart entre les voyelles du point de vue
de la localisation, ainsi qu’un phénomène de pharyngalisation (? on
utilisera ci-après le terme impressionniste d’‘emphase’) des phonè-
47
Sans parler des types et des volumes de voix, de la prosodie etc.
48
Ces phrases étaient écrites, et il était demandé aux informateurs de les lire.
Cette procédure pose évidemment un certain nombre de problèmes méthodologi-
ques (et elle exclut de surcroît, par définition, la possibilité d’enquêter sur des locu-
teurs analphabètes). Mais elle a des avantages, en particulier celui que la graphie
arabe permet souvent de ne suggérer aucune forme particulière d’une variante ; par
exemple, pour la variante 47, la phrase proposée (bǝddi yāki trūḥi tǝṭfi/tṭaffī-l-na n-nār
“Je voudrais que tu (fém.) ailles nous éteindre le feu”) permettait de déterminer, dans
de bonnes conditions, si l’informateur était plus spontanément porté à utiliser ṭafa
ou ṭaffa.
49
Répétons (cf. note 27) que nos observations ne s’appuient sur aucune étude
instrumentale.
mes vocaliques50; leurs consonnes emphatiques ne sont jamais très

emphatiques. L’impression globale est que, bien qu’ils produisent des
voyelles d’avant comme d’arrière, fermées comme ouvertes, leurs
voyelles sont relativement ouvertes et relativement d’arrière : ‘graves’.
On note une abondance relative des [a] par rapport aux [ǝ] (deux
des trois informateurs sont ceux qui, parmi les 25, en présentent le
moins ; ils sont d’ailleurs parmi ceux qui centralisent le moins le /a/,
v. § 7). Une articulation globalement plus en arrière des voyelles et
une sorte d’harmonie vocalique : ces éléments sont certainement
parmi ceux qui expliquent l’appréciation populaire (voir le début du
§ 3) sur la façon de parler du Mīdān (on notera que les deux femmes
du même quartier ont plus de [ǝ]).
– les femmes, de façon générale, présentent moins d’harmonie
vocalique, mais, corrélativement, elles ont une grande gamme de
timbres vocaliques différenciés ; à la fois un continuum de [i] à [a],
mais aussi la possibilité de contrastes plus grands. Elles semblent bien
emphatiser moins les consonnes emphatiques ; l’impression qu’on
peut avoir qu’elles les emphatiseraient plus est due au fait que l’en-
semble des voyelles qu’elles présentent étant moins ‘emphatique’, les
consonnes emphatiques ‘ressortent’ davantage que dans le cas, par
exemple, des informateurs du Mīdān. Ce sont les femmes qui, de
façon très nette, offrent le contraste le plus grand entre les deux a de
mots comme harbān “en fuite” et kamān “aussi”. L’impression glo-
bale est qu’elles ‘articulent mieux’ et ne ‘ramassent’ pas toutes les
voyelles des mots dans une même zone articulatoire.
– pour d’autres locuteurs, pour lesquels [a] et [ǝ] sont bien repré-
sentés (et [ä] moins), la présence par ailleurs de voyelles d’avant
fermées donne une tout autre coloration générale à la prononciation,
plus ‘à bouche fermée’, avec là encore une réalisation peu emphatique
des consonnes emphatiques.
– certains locuteurs présentent une configuration qui se rapproche
de celle des femmes (avec cependant moins de [ä], qui serait donc
plus ‘féminin’), en ce sens qu’ils emploient à la fois [a] et [ ǝ] en
nombre important, et qu’ils ont des [ü] (réalisation de certains /ǝ/).
– on observe aussi une prononciation labialisée de /ǝ/ après les
consonnes labiales (les réalisations sont diverses : [ü], [u], [o], [u])
chez des informateurs qui sont de la vieille ville ou de quartiers pro-
50
On pourrait parler de voyelles ‘bémolisées’—si l’on peut employer ce terme
pour qualifier des voyelles—ou encore rhotacisées.
152 jérôme lentin
ches en direction du Mīdān (mais pas de ce quartier). Ce type de

réalisation est considéré comme ‘populaire’, ce qui invite à raffiner
la définition des éléments contribuant à cette appréciation, et montre
qu’elle est, de fait, loin de concerner les seuls habitants du Mīdān.
7. La centralisation de a
Un phénomène frappant est la grande proximité phonétique de cer-

taines réalisations de /a/ avec [ǝ]. Il n’est certes pas rare que, dans
les langues, deux phonèmes (ici /a/ et /ǝ/) aient des réalisations
proches, voire identiques, et la remarque pourrait paraître anecdo-
tique (et due uniquement à une sensibilité—ou à une faiblesse—de
l’oreille d’un enquêteur de langue française). Mais plusieurs des vari-
antes examinées au § 5, et beaucoup d’autres faits invitent à se poser
plus sérieusement la question d’un possible processus de centralisa-
tion de a en cours à Damas, sans préjuger de ses futures éventuelles
conséquences sur le système vocalique du dialecte.
On peut observer d’abord que dans certains cas la centralisation
de a est déjà opérée dans le dialecte, si on suppose un *a par exemple
pour le participe passé des verbes C3 = y : mǝC1C2i (ex. mǝʾli “frit”)
ou pour certains schèmes de pluriels nominaux, par ex. ʾǝrǝġfe “pains”.
La morphologie présente des alternances régulières a / ǝ, par ex.
tlāte / tlǝtt à l’état construit (“trois”).
Dans beaucoup de cas, avec des mots outils ou dans le maniement
de lexèmes ou de constructions d’emploi constant, on observe une
‘libre’ alternance a / ǝ : *ṣār-lo > ṣa/ǝr-lo “il lui est arrivé” ou “cela
fait [tant de temps] que” ; štaʾtǝllak / štǝʾtǝllak “tu me manques/m’as
manqué” ; radd auxiliaire : rǝdd ṭǝleʿ “il est reparti” ; (nombres cardi-
naux de 11 à 19 à l’état construit) : tmǝntaʿšar / tmǝntaʿšǝr sǝne “dix-
huit ans” ; préposition la- + article –l- → la-l- / lǝ-l- ; yalli/yǝlli (relatif) ;
ʿand/ʿǝnd “chez” ; yamma / yǝmma, lamma/lǝmma “soit … soit”.
Rappelons les alternances rencontrées au § 5 : 6 ʿallēʾa / ʿallāʾa, 28
nǝḥna / naḥna, 32 laʾǝ/anno “parce que”, 43 madda/ǝllo, 44 ramyet,
ramyu parfois réalisés rǝmyet, rǝmyu, et la notation (Dietrich 1956)
ʾǝret (= ʾaret), et tout particulièrement celles qui ont été étudiées de
ce point de vue précisément : 29 C1ǝ/aC2C3ān, 30 ta/ǝC1C2īC3 et 31
ma/ǝskīn et ʿa/ǝzzābi. Rappelons que pour plusieurs de ces variantes,
les formes en ǝ sont explicitement reconnues comme autonomes et
distinctes (au point que certains informateurs les récusent).
On recense un nombre relativement réduit de paires opposant par
exemple des noms de schèmes C1aC2C3a/e et C1ǝC2C3a/e (xabze “four-
née”, xǝbze “morceau de pain”) ou maC1C2eC3 et mǝC1C2eC3 (mǝġreb,
“coucher du soleil”, Maġreb “Maghreb”).
Voici une petite liste d’exemples de réalisations [ǝ] de /a/ dans
diverses formes nominales ou verbales, recueillis à Damas:
• en syllabe prétonique, le phénomène s’observe souvent (comme
dans le cas des variantes 29 et 30) avant un groupe de deux conson-
nes (différentes ou identiques ; cf. Cowell 1964 p. 13-14 pour certains
dialectes de la région) : t-ta/ǝnēn “lundi” ; Bǝġdād “Bagdad”, sǝbbāṭ
“chaussure”, ʾǝmwāt “morts”, zǝngīl “riche”, ḥǝzzēra “devinette”,
xǝzēt ǝl-ʿēn “que le mauvais œil soit écarté de …”.
• en syllabe accentuée (là encore souvent avant un groupe CC) : šǝʾfe
“morceau”, fǝḍḍa “argent (métal)”, tfǝrraž “regarde” ; après C : fǝʾǝr
“pauvreté”, ta/ǝzkara “billet”.
• en syllabe posttonique : ʿawanṭǝži “fumiste”.
On voit donc que /a/ se comporte parfois, dans certaines condi-
tions et pour certains locuteurs, comme /e/ et /o/, à savoir qu’il est
centralisé et réalisé [ǝ] en syllabe non finale (cas des enclitiques
inclus). Les facteurs facilitant ce passage semblent être les suivants:
– L’environnement consonantique : surtout après f, m ; s, š, ž ; avant
r, l, b, ž. Mais on trouve des exemples après tous les phonèmes du
dialecte, y compris ʾ, ḥ, x, ṣ, ḍ et ṭ (sauf ḏ , ġ, h, w et y, mais sans
doute est-ce par le hasard des exemples recueillis). Parfois même on
observe une labialisation du ǝ : Buġdād, subbāṭ (par contre le passage
à i, comme dans siyyāra “voiture” et ṭiyyāra “avion” pourrait être dû
à l’emprunt).
– Le tempo : tḥaṭṭǝmet wǝ tdammaret “elle a été complètement
détruite”.
– L’attention portée au discours (ainsi quand on répète pour insis-
ter, ou pour quelqu’un qui aurait mal entendu, on a toujours a).
Du point de vue sociolinguistique, parmi nos informateurs, on
remarque par exemple que le groupe des hommes du Mīdān présente
peu le phénomène ; la majorité des exemples provient de locuteurs
de la vieille ville et de femmes chrétiennes, c’est-à-dire, on l’a vu, de
groupes qui ont une variété plus grande de timbres vocaliques et des
voyelles non ‘emphatiques’. Mais le phénomène touche, inégalement
l’ensemble des locuteurs. Il nous semble qu’il mériterait de faire l’ob-
jet d’une étude sociolinguistique particulièrement soigneuse, vu son
154 jérôme lentin
importance et celle des implications qu’il a pour l’évolution future

du dialecte.
N.B. Les formes avec ǝ de ma/ǝskīn et ʿa/ǝzzābi (variante 31) ne
semblent pas être déterminées par les mêmes facteurs.
8. Verbes à voyelle radicale d’inaccompli e / o
Il est bien connu que, comme dans d’autres dialectes de la région

(par ex. Alep, cf. Barthélemy 1935-1969), beaucoup de verbes à
accompli C1aC2aC3 peuvent avoir un inaccompli en byǝC1C2eC3 ou
en byǝC1C2oC3. Pour Grotzfeld 1964, p. 69-70, o est la vocalisation
‘de loin la plus courante’ ; elle apparaîtrait ‘toujours’ au voisinage
(‘bei’) des emphatiques, et souvent à celui de k, x et b. Mais on trouve
en réalité des exemples de e en contexte emphatique : byǝḥṣer “il
encercle ; il est oppressé”, byǝfṭem “il sèvre”, byǝʾṣef “il brise” etc.
14 informateurs ont été interrogés systématiquement sur 115 ver-
bes, dont 24 à C2 ou C3 = ʾ.51 Il n’est pas toujours facile d’obtenir des
réponses fiables, les informateurs hésitant d’autant plus qu’ils utili-
sent spontanément beaucoup de ces verbes avec un pron. pers. suffixe
(et non un complément nominal), cas où la voyelle radicale, passant
dans l’avant-dernière syllabe, devient ǝ dans les deux cas, ou parce
que certains utilisent une IIe forme à l’inaccompli (sur ce point cf.
§ 5 variante 47 ṭaffa).
Parfois deux sens différents sont distingués par les informateurs
suivant la vocalisation : byǝbseṭ “il fait plaisir”, byǝbsoṭ “il étend”.52 De
nombreux informateurs n’emploient pas (toujours) la même voyelle
à l’inacc en b- d’une part, à l’inacc sans b- et à l’impératif d’autre part
(ex. byǝḥfor, ʿam yǝḥfer “il creuse” ; byǝkbos / kbēs). Certaines voca-
lisations (en o surtout) sont jugées par certains comme ‘plus dialec-
tales’. La vocalisation radicale des mêmes verbes en arabe standard
semble ne jouer qu’un rôle mineur (bien que certains informateurs
l’évoquent ; d’ailleurs plusieurs de ces verbes acceptent aussi la double
vocalisation i/u). Pour certains verbes, il semble que la possibilité
d’avoir l’une ou l’autre des deux vocalisations soit à peu près
51
En outre, 25 informateurs (dont 1 seul des 14) ont été interrogés sur 9 verbes
(ḥazar “deviner”, ġalab “l’emporter sur”, xatam “sceller”, ʿažan “pétrir”, tarak “laisser,
quitter”, masak “saisir, empoigner”, ḥamal “emporter”, bazẚ “cracher” et kabas “pres-
ser, appuyer”).
52
Un informateur fait la même distinction, mais avec un vocalisme inversé.
équivalente (y compris pour le même locuteur) ; pour d’autres au

contraire, c’est l’une des deux qui est majoritaire à l’échelle de l’en-
semble des informateurs ; pour une troisième série de verbes enfin,
il semble que les deux vocalisations distinguent deux groupes cohé-
rents de locuteurs. Il est donc un peu artificiel de regrouper tous ces
verbes dans le même tableau. Cela permet cependant d’indiquer des
tendances (même si le nombre d’informateurs est réduit).
Les pourcentages des deux vocalisations, pour les 14 informateurs
interrogés sur 115 verbes, se présentent ainsi (tableau 2)
Tableau 2. Vocalisation e ou o de l’inaccompli de 115 verbes C1aC2aC3
II II II II II
3% 7% 9% 5% 4,5% 98%
95,5%
91%
76,5%
e
62% 63%
57%
49%
45% 47% 47% 47%
33%
31,5% O
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Liste des informateurs (H = homme, F = femme ; M = Musulman,

C = Chrétien ; âge ; quartier d’origine, éventuellement quartier
actuel ; profession) : 1 : HM 25-30 ʾAnawāt ; 2 : FM 20-25, Sālḥiyye/
Mazraʿa, employée ; 3 : HM, 20-25, Šaʿlān, étudiant ; 4 : HM 45-50,
Bāb ǝs-Srīže, enseignant ; 5 : HC 45-50, ʾĒmariyye puis nouveaux
quartiers, haut fonctionnaire ; 6 : HM 30-35, ʾAbǝr ʿĀtke, fonction-
naire ; 7 : HM 20-25, Šāġūr puis Mīdān, étudiant ; 8 : FM 20-25, ʾAbu
Rummāne, étudiante ; 9 : HM 35-40, ʾAnawāt puis ʾAbu Rummāne,
universitaire ; 10 : FC 20-25, Žisǝr puis l-Mālki, employée ; 11 : HC
35-40, l-ʾAṣṣāʿ ; 12 : FC 35-40, ʾAṣṣāʿ ; 13 : H C 35-40, ʾAṣṣāʿ ; 14 : FC
35-40, ʾAbu Rummāne, enseignante.
La vocalisation en o (60%) est plus fréquente que celle en e
(38%) ; les 2% d’informateurs restants n’emploient aucune de ces
deux formes, mais la IIe forme.
L’examen des quartiers d’origine, des milieux sociaux, de l’âge et
du sexe des informateurs ne suggère pas de répartition claire en
156 jérôme lentin
fonction de ces paramètres ; il est cependant frappant de constater

que les 5 inf. (n° 10 à 14) ayant la proportion la plus élevée de o sont
tous chrétiens (le sixième Chrétien, inf. n° 5, originaire de la vieille
ville, se situant au milieu de ceux qui ont un pourcentage
moindre).
On a, comme pour plusieurs des variantes du § 5, le choix entre
deux interprétations possibles : soit la vocalisation en o est ancienne
et a été conservée par les Chrétiens ; soit il s’agit d’une forme ‘chré-
tienne’ (et il faudrait alors déterminer si elle est stable, en expansion
ou en régression).
On ne peut appuyer la première hypothèse sur le fait qu’on trouve
chez Cantineau & Helbaoui 1953 (informateur musulman de la vieille
ville) certaines vocalisations en o : les verbes concernés, en effet, sont
de ceux pour lesquels une très grande majorité de locuteurs a o, soit
de verbes pour lesquels l’inf. n° 5 a lui aussi o ; de plus les deux
auteurs ont e pour des verbes comme xalaʿ et ʿazam, comme l’inf.
n° 5, alors que les inf. n° 10 à 14 ont o.
L’ hypothèse d’une forme ‘chrétienne’ semble plus cohérente, a
contrario pour les raisons qui viennent d’être dites, ensuite parce que,
pour certains verbes au moins (ḥamal “emporter”, ʿazal “mettre à
l’écart”, ʾafal “fermer à clef”, kasar “casser” par exemple—remarquer
les sonantes en C3), la situation semble particulièrement claire : les
quelques informateurs qui ont la vocalisation o pour ces verbes sont
en effet tous des Chrétiens.
9. Autres variantes ; traits disparus ou en voie

de disparition
9.1. Autres variantes

– Une variante morphologique très intéressante concerne la 3e pers.
fém. sing. de l’accompli verbal, sans ou avec pronom personnel suf-
fixe et—il s’agit de la même structure syllabique que celle de l’une
des formes verbales possibles—les noms de schème C1aC2aC3a/e
suivis d’un pronom personnel suffixe.53 Le tableau 3 donne les dif-
férentes formes possibles:
53
N.B. Sont ici passées en revue, plus rapidement, des variantes supplémentaires,
qui pour l’essentiel n’ont pas fait l’objet d’une enquête systématique. Il nous a paru
utile de les signaler et d’en commenter certaines, pour indiquer des pistes de recher-
ches qu’il faut espérer voir entreprendre.
Tableau 3. 3e pers. sing. des verbes C1aC2aC3 et C1ǝC2eC3 (kat(a)bet “elle a écrit”,
lǝbset “elle a mis (un vêtement)”) et noms féminins C1aC2aC3a/e (samake “un pois-
son”) avec pronom personnel suffixé.
A B C
3e pers. sing. verbes
C1aC2aC3 kátbet kátabet kátabet
+ pron. pers. -V(C) kátǝbto katabə́ to katbə́ to
+ pron. pers. -(C)V katbǝta katabə́ to katbə́ to
3e pers. sing. verbes
C1ǝC2eC3 lǝbset lǝbset lǝbset
+ pron. pers. lə́ bǝsto lǝbsə́ to lǝbsə́ to
C1aC2aC3a/e samake samake samake
+ pron. pers. sámǝkt-i/ak/ek/o samakə́ t- samkə́ t-
samkə́ t-a/na/kon/on i/ak/ek/o/a/na/ i/ak/ek/o/a/na/
kon/on kon/on
Cette variante multiple touche, on le voit, des formes constamment

utilisées, et révèle l’existence, à Damas même, d’une diversité par
ailleurs bien connue à l’échelle des dialectes de la région. Elle a été
identifiée par Bohas 1978 (v. en particulier 1/2, p. 32-33 et 1/3, p. 61,
62 et 65 le traitement qu’il en propose dans le cadre de la phonologie
générative de l’époque) ; A, B et C distinguent pour lui trois groupes
de locuteurs (B et/ou C caractérisant plutôt les—ou des—Chrétiens).
Notre propre enquête n’a porté que sur le premier point (3e pers.
sing. verbes C1aC2aC3 seule et avec pron. pers.). Si elle a confirmé
sans doute possible l’existence de toutes ces formes (dont on aurait
pu douter au vu des descriptions des grammaires)54, les résultats
obtenus permettent de penser que A, B et C pourraient recouvrir
plutôt trois systèmes, dont certains locuteurs au moins se servent
alternativement, dans des proportions et dans des conditions que
nous n’avons pu préciser.
On peut ajouter qu’une autre variante distingue les locuteurs C
des locuteurs A et B, pour les 2e pers. fém. sing. et les 2e et 3e pers.
pl. de l’inaccompli en byǝC1C2e/oC3:
54
Les grammaires en effet ne décrivent que le système A. Dans la littérature, on
trouve cependant des exemples de formes B et C, dont il semble qu’elles n’avaient
pas attiré l’attention des descripteurs : une dizaine d’exemples dans Oestrup 1897 (p.
56,-3 et -2 ; 60,10 ; 102,10 ; 112,6 etc.), un exemple dans Dietrich 1956 (texte n° 21,4),
etc.
158 jérôme lentin
A et B : btǝkǝtbi, bt/yǝkǝtbu ; btǝlǝbsi, bt/yǝlǝbsu

C: btə́ ktǝbi, bt/yǝkǝtbu ; btə́ lbǝsi, bt/yǝlǝbsu
et (avec pronoms personnels suffixés):
A et B : btə́ kǝtbo etc.

C: btə́ ktǝbo etc.55
– -h- ou -w- / -y- /—Ø—dans les pronoms suffixes de 3e pers. fém.

sing. et 3e pers. plur.
Cette variante, signalée depuis longtemps par les descripteurs,
n’avait jamais été l’objet d’une étude systématique. Elle vient d’être
étudiée en détail par H. Ismail pour un quartier de Damas et pour
la banlieue nouvelle de Dummar (Ismail 2008).
À Damas, le h des pronoms concernés n’est pas en voie de dispa-
rition totale (il réapparaît par exemple facilement en contexte d’in-
sistance), mais il est certainement en voie de marginalisation, comme
le montrent éloquemment les formes56 du type kátaba “il l’a écrite”
(comme kátabo “il l’a écrit”), produites en particulier par des jeunes
et des enfants, et non katáb(h)a des autres locuteurs. Il est même
probable que, pour ces locuteurs au moins, on puisse poser la forme
-a (et non plus -ha) pour le pron. pers. suff. de 3e sing. (et -on pour
la 3e plur.). Il est intéressant de constater que si le h était, à l’époque
de l’enquête, souvent présent entre deux voyelles (en particulier dans
le cas de -āha, par ex. šǝfnāha “nous l’avons vue” ; dans le cas des
groupes -ūha et -īha on entendait souvent -ūwa et -īya respective-
ment), la situation s’est modifiée depuis, et l’on peut entendre des
formes que rien n’interdit de noter -āa, -ūa et -īa : šǝfnāa, xallīa
“laisse-la”, lǝffūa “oubliez l’affaire”.
Il faut signaler une forme qui semble récente dans le dialecte57,
parfois attribuée à une influence libanaise58, qu’il n’est en vérité pas
besoin d’invoquer, même si elle peut jouer un rôle adjuvant. Elle peut
s’expliquer en effet par les débuts d’une sorte de convergence entre
les pronoms suffixes de 3e pers. masc. et fém. qui serait une consé-
quence de l’évolution ha → a. Dans un cas précis (au moins) en effet,
celui de l’allomorphe fī- de la préposition b(ǝ)- avec pron. suffixe, on
55
Bohas 1978, 1/2, en particulier p. 40 et 55.
56
Id., 1/1, p. 126 n. 10.
57
Elle s’est depuis répandue de façon sensible.
58
La forme existe ailleurs, par exemple à Alep (Sabuni 1980, p. 199,7).
entend (là encore semble-t-il davantage chez les jeunes locuteurs)
fiyo / fīo (et non fī)59 : hal-barrād fiyo šaġlāt ǝktīre “ce frigidaire, il y
a beaucoup de choses dedans”. L’enquête, rapide sur ce point, n’a pu
préciser s’il y a des restrictions à l’emploi de cette forme, par exemple
en fonction des valeurs sémantiques diverses de b(ǝ)- ou, de sa place
dans l’énoncé (elle semble exclue en fin d’énoncé).
– Le relatif peut prendre à Damas, comme cela a été régulièrement
signalé dans la littérature, diverses formes : yalli, yälli, yǝlli, ʾǝlli, ǝlli,
lli et halli. Elles sont le plus souvent présentées comme des variantes
libres ; halli est parfois mis à part. Ambros 1977, p. 89 et tableau p.
43, en a proposé un traitement : lli, ǝlli et ʾǝlli sont des allomorphes
(comparables à ceux de l’article) ; halli, yalli et yǝlli60 en sont des
variantes libres. Notre enquête, peu poussée sur ce point, n’a pas
permis de proposer une analyse satisfaisante de faits d’une com-
plexité redoutable. Nous nous contenterons de suggérer ici que halli
est probablement une forme ancienne, peut-être unique à une cer-
taine période (elle est fréquente dans les sources anciennes), et qu’elle
n’avait sans doute pas la valeur marquée (due à l’élément ha-) qu’elle
(re)trouve peut-être actuellement.
– Le choix entre construction transitive directe ou indirecte de
certains verbes ou, dans ce dernier cas, entre des prépositions régis-
sant leurs compléments, peut varier suivant les locuteurs61 : faržīni
yā / ʿalē “montre-le moi” en est sans doute un exemple, bien que
certains informateurs disent faire entre les deux constructions une
différence de sens. Ceci n’est pas exclu, mais le fait fondamental est
que la deuxième est plus ‘populaire’ (certains disent ne jamais l’em-
ployer pour cette raison). Un cas similaire est celui du verbe
štāʾ : štaʾnā-l-kon / ʿalēkon “vous nous avez manqué”. ma trǝdd fīni
“ne me réponds pas (avec insolence)” est repris par certains, qui
diraient ma trǝdd ʿalayyi. Le verbe saʾal s’emploie avec ʿan ou
ʿala : saʾal ʿannak / saʾal ʿalēk “il a demandé si tu étais là, il a demandé
à te voir”, saʾal ʿalēk pouvant signifier aussi “il a demandé de tes
nouvelles, etc.” ; mais certains informateurs emploient saʾal ʿalēk dans
les deux cas.
– La préposition (attributive, etc.) l(a)- a plusieurs allomor-
phes : la-, l-, -ǝll-.62 Lorsque le syntagme l- + pron. pers. est prédicatif,
59
Il ne s’agit pas ici de fi “il y a”.
60
Encore un exemple de l’alternance a / ǝ, et peut-être de la centralisation de a.
61
Les distinctions aspectuelles entre par ex. complément direct et complément
avec b(ǝ)-+ nom / fī-+ pronom sont bien sûr exclues ici.
62
Pour le détail cf. Cowell 1964, p. 480-481.
160 jérôme lentin
et a donc une forme autonome, la préposition est phonétiquement

renforcée : ʾǝl- (hāda ʾǝlak ? “C’est à toi ?” ; ʾǝlo bēt “Il a une mai-
son” ; ʾaddēš ʾǝlak nāyem ? “Ça fait combien de temps que tu
dors ?”) ; s’il ne peut, pour quelque raison, être suffixé au verbe, on
utilise aussi ʾǝl- (bišūf-na ʾǝli w ʾǝlak “Il nous voit toi et moi”).
Or ce syntagme pronominal autonome peut être étoffé par pré-
fixation de la- (qui n’apparaît en principe que devant un nom) : la-ʾǝl-o
(litt. “à à lui”) “à lui”63 ; ce nouveau syntagme prépositionnel com-
plexe peut prendre une valeur d’insistance (‘à lui, et pas à quelqu’un
d’autre’) mais est le plus souvent équivalent à la forme sans la-. Par
contre, il est souvent jugé comme moins relevé stylistiquement. Cette
forme la-ʾǝl-i/ak/ek/o/a etc. faisait, autour de 1980, l’objet d’appré-
ciations diverses (‘féminine’, ‘récente’, ‘palestinienne’, ‘ancienne’ …).
Aujourd’hui [2008] de plus en plus répandue, en particulier chez les
jeunes, elle est le plus souvent considérée comme récente, et, assez
souvent, comme d’origine libanaise (là encore, le fait qu’elle soit en
effet d’un usage plus répandu encore au Liban peut avoir joué un
rôle dans son expansion).
9.2. Variantes lexicales
– Les formes qu’on pourrait appeler ‘lourdes’ (augmentées d’un suf-

fixe) de mots outils ou d’adverbes usuels sont jugées ‘plus dialectales’
(que les formes courtes correspondantes), voire peu esthétiques ; elles
sont en effet plus dialectales, et plus populaires ; ex. : hallaʾtēne,
hallaʾtīniyye “maintenant” (cf. hallaʾ ‘d°’) sont senties comme ‘popu-
laires’ ou ‘anciennes’64. kamāniyye “aussi” (cf. kamān ‘d°’) n’a pas été
entendu (cf. Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 116 n. 2).
– mūsem ‘saison, époque où on trouve tel ou tel fruit ou légume,
etc’. aussi mōsem Bergsträsser 1924, p. 93,5 et mōsam Kassab 1970,
p. 270. Sur 20 inf. interrogés, 16 ont mūsem, 3 mōsem (dont 1 a aussi
63
Le renforcement d’une préposition par une autre est courant (ʾabǝl mǝnno
“avant lui”, etc.) ; v. des exemples § 5, variante 13. Ces nouvelles prépositions com-
posées sont dans certains cas des formes plus populaires ; dans d’autres, elles sont
complètement lexicalisées. Dans le cas de la-ʾǝl-, la particularité est que le renforce-
ment se fait par la répétition de la préposition elle-même.
64
Malgré l’informatrice de Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 148 n. 2, pour qui ces
formes ne sont pas damascènes. V. cependant ibid., p. 120 n. 3, où il est dit que ces
formes ne sont pas rares.
mōsam) ; 1 inf. a mawsem. Plusieurs n’emploient pas le mot (ils disent

waʾt), qui est peut-être un emprunt à des parlers ruraux (cf. ū quand
on attendrait ō).
– lǝxer, rǝxer, l/rǝxri, l/rāxar “autre”65 sont marquées dans certains
milieux comme populaires, ce qu’elles sont en effet.
– Souvent, lorsque objets et notions culturels changent, les mots
qui les désignent changent aussi ; dans dialecte de Damas, on a sou-
vent une succession emprunt au turc → emprunt à des langues occi-
dentales → mot arabe (formation dialectale ou emprunté au standard,
ou l’un puis l’autre, etc.) : ʾǝ/iž/zaziyye → ṣay/ēdaliyye “pharma-
cie” ; kǝzlok → ʿwēnāt → naḍḍārāt “lunettes”. Il n’est pas rare que les
termes anciens restent en service, parfois longtemps, leur emploi se
distribuant alors entre groupes d’âge.
– “Chaussures”. L’usage standard : sa/ǝbbāṭ, kǝndra “chaussure
d’homme” ; skarbīne, kǝndra “chaussure de femme” ; bōṭ “chaussure
montante” ; žazme “botte”. Pour certains informateurs chrétiens,
kǝndra est ‘musulman’ (c’est parfois aussi le cas de sabbāṭ). bōṭ est
parfois employé, surtout par les anciennes générations, dans le sens
de “botte” (une chaussure montante étant alors appelée nǝṣṣ bōṭ, litt.
“demi-botte”). Un autre terme, vieilli, pour “chaussure” est ṭǝbǝʾ.66
– Une variante lexicale oppose assez nettement les usages chrétien
et musulman : il s’agit de l’emploi des mots désignant la louche et
l’écumoire. D’après Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 116 n. 10, kafkīr et
ʾaššāše (cf. Bergsträsser 1924, p. 90,9) sont respectivement les dési-
gnations musulmane et chrétienne de l’écumoire. Barbot 1964–,
p. 1856 a kǝfkīre et ʾaššāše. Le tableau 4 regroupe les données qui ont
pu être rassemblées dans les sources et celles de l’enquête.
Tableau 4. Les mots pour “louche” et “écumoire”

(E = “écumoire”, L = “louche” ; C, c = chrétien ; M, m = musulman)
1. kǝbžāye 2. kafkīr(e) 3. ʾaššāše
Cañes L
Bloch-Grotzfeld 1964 Em Ec
Barbot 1964 ? Em Ec
M1 L m (C : kabža)
65
L’article a été incorporé à ces formes, mais le sens est bien “autre” (et non
“l’autre”) : wāḥed lǝxǝr “un autre”.
66
Cf. Barbot 1964–, p. 834, pour qui le terme est ‘populaire’.
162 jérôme lentin
1. kǝbžāye 2. kafkīr(e) 3. ʾaššāše
M2 L E (L)
C1 et C1’ L (m ?) Lc Ec
C2 (L) Lc Ec
C3 Lc Lm
Alep (Barthélemy L (+ čämčǟye, Sabuni 1980, E
1935-1955) p. 170)
Il semble donc qu’on ait une série de trois termes, l’un désignant,
lorsqu’il est utilisé, la louche : kǝbžāye ; kafkīr désigne soit la louche,
soit l’écumoire (les deux pour l’informatrice C1’ ; ʾaššāše étant (pour
les C seulement ?) l’écumoire. Les trois combinaisons possibles pour
“louche” et “écumoire” sont 1-2, 1-3 et 2-3.
– Selon plusieurs informateurs, l’accentuation du mot ṣala “prière”
distinguerait les Chrétiens (ṣála) des Musulmans (ṣalá).
ṣála : 5 inf., dont 2 C et deux FM ; ṣalá : 2 inf. / ṣalā ́ : 13 inf. dont
une FC ; ṣálā67́ : 5 inf. dont une C.
Dans Ḥasībī 1968-1969, 2e partie, p. 141,5 on trouve >&OP89 . Il sem-
ble qu’on ait affaire à deux mots différents : ṣála, peu ou pas employé
avec pronom personnel suffixe, et ne changeant pas à l’état construit ; et
́ à l’état construit. Le premier serait plus répandu chez les
ṣalá, ṣalāt-
Chrétiens, le deuxième chez les Musulmans ; ṣálā ́ serait une forme
‘intermédiaire’.
– Quelques autres différences lexicales entre Musulmans et Chré-
tiens. Le tableau 5 rassemble les données recueillies principalement
auprès de deux informateurs, un Musulman et un Chrétien. Les pai-
res de lexèmes ainsi rassemblées ne constituent sans doute pas, dans
la majorité des cas, des différences d’usage telles qu’elles puissent être
utilisées comme critères pour identifier l’appartenance communau-
taire d’un locuteur.68 Les plus assurées sont signalées par un *. Les
autres indiquent des tendances d’usage, et reflètent en tout cas la
conscience linguistique, sinon de l’ensemble des locuteurs, du moins
67
Il nous a été impossible de déterminer quel est l’accent principal.
68
Plus généralement, on peut observer qu’aucun informateur ne peut, ni ne le
prétend d’ailleurs, déterminer l’origine (de quartier par exemple) d’un interlocuteur
damascène. Tout au plus est-il en mesure de diagnostiquer un parler ‘traditionnel’
et/ou populaire ou, parfois, de suspecter, à tort ou à raison, une appartenance
communautaire chrétienne.
des informateurs. Ont été écartées des paires dont l’un des deux élé-
ments est en réalité une forme qui, moins ou mal connue de l’infor-
mateur—elle peut être simplement vieillie et/ou très dialectale—a été
abusivement attribuée par lui à l’autre communauté que la sienne.
De plus, il y a vraisemblablement des cas non repérés comparables
à celui de fǝzʿān, à propos duquel une informatrice chrétienne expli-
que que pour elle ce mot est moins fort que xāyef, c’est-à-dire des
cas où un locuteur A n’utilisant pas un mot appartenant au lexique
des locuteurs B (qui eux ont les deux), le ramène à un des siens et
l’étiquette à tort comme son synonyme.
Tableau 5. Quelques différences lexicales entre locuteurs musulmans et chrétiens
sens ‘musulman’ ‘chrétien’
artichaut ʾanginār ʾarḍišōki

caoutchouc maṭṭāṭ mǝġġēṭ
chausse-pieds* sakaža karata
cour intérieure d’une maison ʾarḍ ǝd-dyār (ʾarḍ ǝ) d-dār
traditionnelle (sol de la –)*
enceinte (femme) ḥāmel ḥǝmle
je pensais que tu … ḥassabtak fakkartak
le voilà šaḥḥo ʾaḥḥo
livres (plur.) k ǝ t ǝb kǝtob / kǝt ǝb
malade marīḍ ḍʿīf
médecin daktōr ḥakīm
n’est-ce pas mu hēk ? ma hēk ?
ǝ
oreille* ʾǝd n dēne
pauvre, à plaindre* mǝskīn ḥazīn
pétard fǝttāš(e) fǝttēš(e)
pisser ṭaʾʾaš kabban
pot de chambre nūniyye ʾarḍiyye
que Dieu bénisse (ces jours ʾǝṣʾaḷḷa saʾalla
heureux)
qui a peur* xāyef fǝzʿān
tuyau (souple)* barbīš narbīš
véranda baranda varanda
voiture (à cheval, …) ʿarabāye ʿarabiyye
164 jérôme lentin
9.3. Traits disparus ou en voie de disparition

– ʿašǝnn “parce que”—seul ou avec pron. pers. suffixe—, est attesté
surtout dans Bergsträsser 192469, chez qui ʿašǝnno n’apparaît qu’une
fois (101,4). Une informatrice chrétienne dit employer ʿašǝnno et
ʿašān (connus de plusieurs autres inf.). šǝnno “parce que, c’est que”70
est sans doute en voie de disparition et s’emploie surtout par plai-
santerie. kaʾǝnno (sans doute de *kāyen ʾǝnno) semble aussi disparu
(quand il est employé, c’est avec le sens de son homonyme stan-
dard : “comme si”).
– hu et hi comme formes brèves de huwwe et hiyye (pron. 3e pers.
masc. et fém. sing.) semblent aussi quasiment disparus ; cf. pour hu
Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 126,671 et pour hi id, p. 120,19 (et, qua-
rante ans auparavant, Bergsträsser 1924 p. 67,13).
– šīt : cette particule (autre forme : šiyāt, semble avoir été long-
temps utilisée comme ‘particule génitive’ avant d’être largement sup-
plantée par tabaʿ. Pour Cowell 1964, p. 490, elle est encore ‘commune’.
Dans un seul des exemples recensés72 (Malinjoud 1924, p. 279
ligne17), šīt / šiyāt est suivi d’un pronom personnel suffixe ; dans tous
les autres il est suivi d’un nom. Ce n’est sans doute pas hasard, šīt-i/
ak/ … étant une désignation euphémistique et familière du sexe de
l’homme ou de la femme.73
– ʾēno etc. interrogatif (“(le)quel ?”)
ʾēno, ʾēna et les formes composées ʾēnu, ʾēni etc. semblent avoir été
longtemps les formes les plus courantes de cet interrogatif. On en
trouve plusieurs exemples dans Callenberg 1729 et 1740 (écrits ʾayn,
ʾaynah, ʾaynā). Oestrup 1897 a ʾēnhu (52,15) et ʾēnhi (90,-1). Huart
1883, p. 57 donne ʾēna, ʾana, ʾēnahu, ʾanahu/i, Lemée 1938, p. 90
69
V. Bloch 1965, § 22b, avec une dizaine de références, auxquelles on peut ajou-
ter 86,16 ; 93,21 ; 95,12 et 13 ; 97,39 ; 98,24-25 ; 99,20.
70
À distinguer de ši ʾǝnno “dès que”.
71
Transcrit hū, mais on entend distinctement hō dans l’enregistrement de la
pièce de Ḥikmat Muḥsen en notre possession, qui est visiblement de meilleure qualité
que celui dont ont pu disposer les transcripteurs et traducteurs de ce texte.
72
Déjà Ḥasībī 1968-1969, 1e partie 71,-1 ; 2e partie 134,-4 ; 139,-6 ; 144,-6 (šīt) et
145,-3 (š(i)yāt). Oestrup 1897, p. 90,20 ; 96,3 ; Lemée 1938, p. 81 ; Malinjoud 1924,
p. 261,-2 ; 278,3 ; 279,17 ; Bergsträsser 1924, p. 102,28 ; Saussey 1937-1938, p. 20,13 ;
Bloch & Grotzfeld 1964, p. 54,29 ; 56,26 ; 118,35 (2 fois) ; 182, 30 pour šīt et 54,28 et
56,22 pour šiyāt.
73
Dans les années trente, les deux emplois étaient distincts : ainsi Jean Lecerf
(voir n. 19 ci-dessus) notait-il šīti “à, de moi”, šíyi “obscène” ; de même Lemée 1938,
p. 81 : šiya / šīt “sexe de la femme”. On comparera à : šēto, šayyə́ ta “machin, au sens
obscène” à Alep (Barthélemy 1935-1969, p. 422).
ʾēno, ʾēni/e et tome 2 p. 93 ʾéyney. Grotzfeld 1964, p. 49-50, rapproche

les formes actuelles (ʾanu et ʾani)74 de ʾaynu/i ou ʾēnu/i passées à
ʾanu/i dans des dialectes auxquels celui de Damas aurait pu les
emprunter, et invoque le fait que ʾanu/i aurait seulement un emploi
adjectival (et non pronominal). Mais les attestations qui viennent
d’être citées, et la possibilité, au moins actuelle, d’employer ʾanu/i
pour “lequel, laquelle ?” portent à y voir plutôt des formes
autochtones.
– La préposition mšaʾʾīt “à côté de” (cf. Lemée 1938, p. 142 : mšēʾit,
mšaʾit et, ‘rare’ : bšaʾit) est jugée ‘très vieillie’ par plusieurs informa-
teurs, mais elle est en réalité encore employée. D’après un informa-
teur, on entend aussi bšaʾʾīt et bšaʾʾīt-ǝl-mǝn.
– On signalera pour finir des formes de noms de nombres en passe
d’être supplantées par d’autres, qui alternaient auparavant davantage
avec elles : sātet “sixième” s’efface devant sādes, tmānye “huit” devant
tmāne et ḥdaʿš “onze” devant ʾidaʿš.
En guise de conclusion
Comme il a été dit en conclusion du § 5, une réelle diversité linguis-
tique règne à Damas, même si elle est d’une ampleur relativement
limitée ; et c’est une diversité en mouvement. Les paramètres sociaux
que nous avions choisi de privilégier comme critères dans l’analyse
(quartier d’origine, sexe et appartenance communautaire) jouent en
effet un rôle dans l’origine, le maintien et l’évolution de cette
diversité.
Quartiers : la vieille ville, si elle est certes ouverte aux innovations,
est relativement conservatrice. Le Mīdān l’est aussi, différemment ; on
y relève une prononciation plus ‘emphatique’ des voyelles, qui va de
pair avec l’absence de centralisation de a. Les autres quartiers tradi-
tionnels, extra muros, à l’ouest, sont des quartiers carrefour, qui
s’apparentent tantôt à la vieille ville, tantôt au Mīdān, tantôt aux
quartiers plus récents. C’est dans ces derniers que la situation est le
plus mélangée.
Sexe : l’impression d’emphase forte que donne souvent le langage
des femmes vient sans doute, comme on l’a vu, du fait qu’elles uti-
lisent un plus large éventail de timbres vocaliques que les hommes.
74
ʾanu tend de plus en plus à devenir la forme unique. On entend aussi pour le
pluriel la forme ʾanon, mais elle est considérée comme ‘vieillie’.
166 jérôme lentin
Appartenance communautaire : peut-être une des réalités le plus

immédiatement perceptibles est-elle que les Chrétiens présentent des
particularités (qu’ils partagent peut-être avec les Juifs) ; les différences
lexicales entre eux et les Musulmans concernent souvent les noms
d’objets de la vie courante. Enfin, les Chrétiens, surtout dans la vieille
ville, ont conservé souvent des formes anciennes, et c’est souvent
aussi par leur intermédiaire qu’elles connaissent une nouvelle
fortune.
Ces paramètres sont évidemment en interaction permanente. Ils
ne sont sans doute plus aujourd’hui aussi déterminants que par le
passé, les structures et les ségrégations sociales qui leur donnaient
leur poids connaissant des mutations profondes. Il était donc légi-
time, tant qu’il en était encore temps, de leur donner une certaine
priorité comme instruments d’analyse, et de s’en aider pour éclaircir
des problèmes dont les données, dans un avenir peut-être pas éloi-
gné, seront davantage encore obscurcies.
Si on confronte la réalité sociolinguistique à la représentation que
s’en font les locuteurs, et aux appréciations qu’il en donnent, on
s’aperçoit que celles-ci sont justes dans l’ensemble, une fois la part
faite des généralisations hâtives, inévitables dans la description d’un
réel qu’on n’appréhende jamais dans sa totalité. On est cependant
frappé d’une certaine méconnaissance réciproque entre groupes de
la société. Du coup, et dans le même temps, des variantes reflétant
d’importants changements linguistiques en cours échappent à la
conscience linguistique des locuteurs.
L’identification de formes ou de traits en voie de disparition (cf.
§ 5 et très sommairement § 9.2.) pose à nouveau, implicitement, le
problème de la norme dialectale. On constate que des formes que les
informateurs eux-mêmes appellent ‘lourdes’, et d’autres jugées plus
éloignées de la norme standard, tendent, non pas à disparaître, mais
à être davantage marquées comme dialectales (du moins dans les
milieux sociaux touchés par notre enquête). Certaines vont se confi-
ner au registre ‘populaire’, d’autres seront, dans certaines circons-
tances, laissées momentanément de côté par les locuteurs, un peu
comme un provincial dissimule des traits qu’il sait stigmatisés ; mais
ici c’est le natif de la capitale qui, dans la capitale même, dont le
langage constitue par ailleurs une norme de référence pour l’ensem-
ble de la Syrie, adopte ce type de comportement.
L’âge et la classe sociale (qui déterminent une façon de se situer
par rapport à la culture, et donc à la langue) sont évidemment des
La ville de Damas vers 1980. En noir: quartiers et villages anciens, en hachu-

res rapprochées: débuts de l’extension moderne; en blanc: extension vers
1980; en hachures espacées: Ġūṭa.
Carte: Irène Labeyrie, d’après A.-M. Bianquis 1980, p. 365.
Quartiers cités dans le texte: ʾAbǝr ʿĀtke 27, ʾAbu Rummāne 19, l-ʾAkrād
12, l-ʿAmāra 4, (ḥayy) ǝl-ʾAmīn 5, l-ʾAnawāt 24, l-ʾAṣṣāʿ 40, Bāb ǝs-Srīže
26, Bāb Tūma 3, Bāb ǝž-Žābye 25), l-ʾĒmariyye 1, l-Ḫarāb 8, l-Mālki 18,
l-Mazraʿa 23, lǝ-Mhāžrīn 16, l-Mīdān 31 à 38, Rawḍa (entre l-Mālki 18 et
ž-Žisǝr 17), Rǝkn ǝd-dīn 11, Šēx Muḥyǝddīn 15, š-Šāġūr 10, ṣ-Ṣālḥiyye 45,
Sūʾ Sarūža 43, š-Šaʿlān 20, ž-Žisǝr 17.
168 jérôme lentin
paramètres tout aussi importants, et ils auraient sans doute dû être

pris plus systématiquement en compte. Espérons que cette étude aura
pu suggérer des pistes de recherche pour des recherches futures,
parmi beaucoup d’autres qui restent à identifier.75 Il faudra aussi à
l’avenir prendre en compte la Ġūṭa de Damas. Des sondages trop
rapides nous ont permis de mesurer la grande diversité linguistique
qui y règne (peut-être en régression aujourd’hui [2008]) et les gran-
des différences que présentent ses dialectes par rapport à celui de la
capitale. Cette situation est à mettre en regard d’une autre, bien
connue mais importante : nombre de faits, de variantes, … observés
à Damas, se retrouvent—certes avec des significations sociolinguis-
tiques différentes—dans d’autres villes du Proche Orient, comme
nous l’avons rappelé à plusieurs reprises. On a souvent observé qu’à
beaucoup d’égards ces dialectes sont relativement proches (ce concept
de ‘proximité’ demanderait à être élaboré) les uns des autres, et en
tout cas davantage que ne l’est chacun d’eux des dialectes (ruraux)
qui l’environnent. Le fait reste pourtant encore insuffisamment expli-
qué. Pour toutes ces raisons il faut souhaiter que se multiplient les
recherches sociolinguistiques, sur Damas comme sur toutes ces villes.
Ce n’est que dans une perspective comparative qu’on comprendra
mieux leurs situations présentes et passées, et qu’on progressera dans
la description et l’analyse des changements linguistiques d’aujour-
d’hui.
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contact, isolation, and complexity in arabic 171
CONTACT PHENOMENA
172 peter trudgill
CONTACT, ISOLATION, AND COMPLEXITY IN ARABIC
Peter Trudgill
1. Introduction
The role of language contact in linguistic change seems to have

caused considerable perplexity and bewilderment in the historical
linguistics and sociolinguistics literature in the last decades.1 There
may be total consensus amongst scholars that language contact can
have structural consequences for the languages involved, but what
seems to be confusing or controversial is what the nature of those
consequences might be. Nowhere is this more true than in the issue
of simplification versus complexification. The fact is that some lin-
guists are convinced that language contact leads to simplification;
and others are equally convinced that it leads to complexification.
It is perhaps still necessary to say that, in this discussion, the terms
simplification and complexification imply no value judgements of any
kind. Contemporary linguistics is happy to accept that some langua-
ges may in some sense be more or less complex than others, since it
is clear that we are working with technical definitions of simplicity
and complexity that have no connection whatsoever with factors
such as cognitive and expressive adequacy.
This controversy about the structural consequences of contact has
been wryly commented on by Thomason, who observes that there is
a common proposal in the literature that “contact-induced change
leads to simplification, not complication” (2001: 64) and that “the
opposite claim has also been made—namely, that interference always
complicates the system” (2001: 65). She quite rightly points out that,
obviously, “all the examples that support the claim that interference
leads to simplification are of course counterexamples to the opposite
claim” (2001: 65).
1
Thanks for their help with this paper to Chryso Hadjidemetriou, Bruce Ingham,
and Jonathan Owens.
174 peter trudgill
2. Simplification
Proponents of the “contact-leads-to-simplification” view very often

point out that the simplest languages in the world are obviously pid-
gins and thus creoles, and that these languages are equally obviously
the result of language contact. Then, the argument goes, we can see
the same type of process which leads to the development of pidgins
occurring to a less drastic extent in other languages which have expe-
rienced contact but to a lesser degree.
Following on from pioneering work by Ferguson (1971) and
Mühlhäusler (1974), it seems clear that linguistic simplification
consists of a diachronic development that involves as its major pro-
cesses the following (Trudgill 1996):
a. an increase in regularity
b. an increase in transparency
c. a reduction in redundancy, which in turn consists of (i) the loss of
morphological categories, and (ii) the loss of syntagmatic redundancy
i.e. repetition of grammatical information, as with agreement.
Typically, pidgin and creole languages have no irregularity, high
transparency, no morphological categories, and no syntagmatic
redundancy.
For less drastic developments along the same line in languages
which are not pidgins and creoles, we can note examples from the
history of English such as:
a. the loss of irregular past tense forms such as rew as the preterite of row;
and the loss of irregular nominal plurals such as kine as the plural of
cows
b. the loss of thrice and its replacement by the more transparent three
times; and the (currently ongoing) gradual replacement of seldom by
not often.
c. (i) the loss of the dual number, and grammatical gender; and (ii) the
loss of person and number agreement on verbs
Many of the developments in English of this type have been ascribed
by sociohistorical linguists to the influence of language contact, nota-
bly contact with Old Norse. For example, Milroy (1992: 203) writes
of the trend towards simplification in the transition from Old English
to Middle English that “it seems clear that such a sweeping change
is at least to some extent associated with language contact”. Poussa
has it that contact with Old Scandinavian was responsible for “the
fundamental changes which took place between standard literary OE
and Chancery Standard English” such as the loss of grammatical

gender and the extreme simplification of inflexions” (Poussa 1982:84).
Kroch et al (1995) make precisely the same point; and so does
McWhorter (2007: 90ff). And there has long been general support
for this kind of approach to simplification in language generally: the
Norwegian linguist Hans Vogt (1948: 39) wrote six decades ago that
“on observe souvent qu’une langue ….. perd des distinctions formel-
les, dans des circonstances qui rendent l’hypothese d’influence
étrangère assez naturelle”.
3. Complexification
However, as we have already noted, there is also very considerable

support for the view that contact leads to complexification—which
obviously involves the reverse of the developments associated with
simplification: an increase in irregularity, opacity, morphological
categories, and syntagmatic redundancy.
For example, Nichols (1992) examines morphological complexity
in 174 different languages from all parts of the world and from a very
wide range of language families—where morphological complexity
refers to the morphological marking of syntactic relations: “any form
of inflection, affixation, cliticisation, or other overt morphological
variation that signals some relevant relation, function, or meaning”
(1992: 48).
Nichols develops a method for quantifying this complexity, and
shows that of the languages in her sample those with the highest
degrees of complexity are the Sumerian and Akkadian, Mangarayi
and Djingili (Australia), Basque, and Southern Sierra Miwok (USA).
The least complex languages are !Kung, Chitimacha and Zuni (USA),
Gilyak/Nivkh (Sakhalin), Mixtec, Miao/Hmong, and Mandarin
Chinese.
Nichols compares languages which occur in spread zones to those
which occur in residual zones. Spread zones show little genetic diver-
sity, low structural diversity, a history of rapid spreading of langua-
ges; and typically have an innovating centre and a conservative
periphery, and no long-term increase in diversity. Examples are wes-
tern Europe (Indo-European), central Australia (Pama-Nyungan),
interior North America (Algonquian and Siouan), and central
Oceania (Austronesian). Residual zones have high genetic diversity,
176 peter trudgill
high structural diversity, no appreciable spread of languages or fami-

lies, no obvious innovation centre, and a long-term increase in diver-
sity. Examples are the Caucasus, the Pacific North West, the Balkans,
and New Guinea.
Nichols then writes (1992: 192) that languages in “spread zones
show lower complexity relative to their continents” while residual
zone languages show higher complexity. Moreover, most “high-com-
plexity languages are in areas of considerable linguistic diversity and
contact”. Her crucial conclusion from this is that “contact among
languages fosters complexity, or, put differently, diversity among
neighbouring languages fosters complexity in each of the lan-
guages”.
Nichols claim is, then, that morphological complexity is promoted
by language contact because languages in contact borrow morpho-
logical categories from one another. In other words, this is not repla-
cive borrowing, such as the replacement of the Old English
third-person plural pronouns by the Old Norse pronouns, but addi-
tive borrowing, where features are acquired from other languages in
addition to already existing features.
Many other examples could be given. For example, Aikhenvald
(2002) shows that the Brazilian Arawakan language, which has been
in long-term contact with a number of languages of the East Tucano
branch of the Tucano language family, has acquired a whole system
of evidential morphology from East Tucano. Foley (1986) suggests
that switch-reference morphology may have spread from the Papuan
language Enga into the non-related language Alamblak (1986: 267).
In Europe, as is well-known, Slavic languages generally do not have
definite articles, but Bulgarian and Macedonian have acquired them
as a result of contact in the Balkan Sprachbund. And, similarly,
Upper Sorbian has acquired definite articles as a result of contact
with German (Stone 2002)
So, as Dahl (2004: 127) says, “contact-induced change” leads to
the spread of grammatical elements from one language to another
and, as a consequence, languages which have experienced relatively
high degrees of contact are more likely to demonstrate relatively
higher degrees of additive complexity than languages which have
not.
4. Two Types of Contact
Language contact, then, can fairly obviously be associated with both

simplification and complexification. The controversy would appear
to be a non-controversy, in that both points of view are clearly cor-
rect. But how are we to understand this? Why does language contact
sometimes lead to simplification, and sometime the reverse? In
Trudgill (2009) I have proposed a solution to this puzzle from the
perspective of sociolinguistic typology—a term which is to be under-
stood as referring to an attempt to provide sociolinguistic insights
into the distribution of linguistic features over the world’s languages.
The thesis on which sociolinguistic typology is founded is that dif-
ferent types of society and social structure may tend to produce dif-
ferent types of language and linguistic structure.
In this case, a sociolinguistic-typological perspective suggests that
if contact produces different types of outcome, then we have to sup-
pose that we are dealing with sociolinguistically different types of
contact. As Owens (2006 :118) quite rightly says, “intensive contact
with foreigners alone does not imply simplification”.
If we have two different types of outcome, then a useful assump-
tion is that we are dealing with two different types of contact. In fact,
the solution proposed in Trudgill (2009) rests quite simply on the
fact that while young children are excellent language learners, adults
are not. As Trask (1999: 63) says, “young children learn perfectly any
language to which they are adequately exposed… [while] few adults
can perform the same feat”.
The solution to the puzzle is therefore that language contact situa-
tions involving (especially short-term) imperfect adult language
acquisition are relatively more likely to produce simplification, the
most extreme though least usual instances being in the case of pid-
gins. Changes such as reduction in morphological categories, gram-
matical agreement and other repetitions, as well as increase in
regularity and transparency, make for greater ease of adult learnabi-
lity. On the other hand, contact leading to complexification will be
of a different type. Additive complexity will tend to develop in stable,
long-term, co-territorial contact situations which involve efficient
childhood mutual bilingualism or trilingualism etc., small children
being able to cope with any degree of linguistic complexity.
In the context of the present volume, I now turn to an examination
of the two different types of language contact in Arabic, as these have
178 peter trudgill
occurred in different sociolinguistic situations, in an attempt to see

if data from this language can help to strengthen this proposal.
5. Contact-induced Simplification in Arabic
What evidence is there that contact has led to simplification in

Arabic?
The clearest cases are, as one would expect, the Arabic-based pid-
gins and creoles, as outlined in Owens (1997). The Nubi Arabic
creole of southern Sudan/northern Uganda has received particular
attention (Heine 1982; Musa-Wellens 1994; Owens 1985, 1995, 2001).
Nubi has relatively high transparency compared to other varieties of
Arabic, and it has experienced a “radical loss of morphology” (Kusters
2003: 149), having eight inflectional categories as opposed, for exam-
ple, to 45 in Western Sudanese Arabic (Owens 2001: 366).
Owens (2001: 349) illustrates the simplification that has occurred
in Nubi with a number of examples, including that of imperfect verb
forms. Unlike other varieties of Arabic, in these forms Nubi has no
person, gender or number marking, and a total absence of ablaut.
The effects of simplification can be seen very clearly by comparing
the Nubi imperfect verb paradigm with that of Eastern Libyan
Arabic:
E. Libyan Nubi
‘I write’ a-ktub ana gi-katifu
‘you (s.) write’ ti-ktib ita gi-katifu
‘you (s) write (f.)’ ti-kitb-i
‘he writes’ yi-ktib uwo gi-katifu
‘she writes’ ti-ktib
‘we write’ ni-kitb-u ina gi-katifu
‘you (pl.) write (m.)’ ti-kitb-u itakum gi-katifu
‘you (pl.) write (f.)’ ti-kitb-an
‘they write (m.)’ yi-kitb-u umwon gi-katifu
‘they write (f.)’ yi-kitb-an
As can be seen, simplification has the consequence that the Nubi

paradigm is entirely regular and analytic. The verb form is invariant
throughout, with person and number indicated solely by pronoun
subjects, and gender not marked at all. The invariant gi- prefix is a
progressive marker.
It is well known that Nubi arose as a result of massive language

contact and a break in normal transgenerational transition. According
to Owens (1997) and Kusters (Kusters 2003), Nubi originated in a
pidgin Arabic which developed, in the second half of the 19th cen-
tury in the southern Sudan, out of interaction between speakers of
local Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages, which were not
mutually intelligible, in what were essentially refugee camps housing
defeated troops from an Egyptian-led army which had been attempt-
ing a conquest of southern Sudan.
Contact-induced simplification in non-creole varieties of Arabic
generally has been a more controversial topic. Versteegh’s (1984)
suggestion that contact-induced simplification had occurred did not
by any means meet with immediate approval. In the light of Kusters
(2003) and McWhorter (2007), however, the fact that contact has
been responsible for some of the simplifications which Arabic has
undergone would now seem to be incontrovertibly established. And
the contact we are thinking about here is the contact which ensued
from the expansion of Arabic out of the Arabian peninsula and the
language shift to Arabic from North African and Middle Eastern
languages which followed. The assumption is that the relatively rapid
acquisition by large numbers of adults of Arabic in contact situations,
followed in subsequent generations by the loss of the indigenous
languages and total shift to the newly and somewhat simplified colo-
nial language, was the main mechanism involved.
The work of Kusters is especially persuasive in this respect. In his
book, the link between contact and simplification is very ably
demonstrated, in detail and quantitatively. He examines the history
of degrees of complexity and simplicity in verbal inflectional mor-
phology in Quechua, Swahili, and the Scandinavian languages as well
as Arabic. For Arabic, he measures simplification in three different
varieties in terms of the degree to which they have undergone deve-
lopments such as loss of dual number—the loss of a morphological
category—and decrease in allomorphy—an increase in transparency.
His highly detailed quantitative analyses lead him to conclude that
“the level of [linguistic] complexity is related to the type of speech
community” (2003:59) in that language varieties with a history of
higher contact also tend to demonstrate higher degrees of simplifi-
cation. He shows that all forms of Modern Arabic demonstrate at
least some simplification as compared to Classical Arabic, but that
some have undergone much more contact than others, and therefore
180 peter trudgill
have much more simplification. In addition to Nubi, he also discusses

the Najdi Arabic of central Saudi Arabia (Ingham 1994a), and
Moroccan Arabic (Caubet 1993; Holes 1995). Just as Moroccan
Arabic has more complexity than Nubi, so Najdi has more com-
plexity than Moroccan. This is because, although Moroccan Arabic
has a continuous tradition of maintenance of native speakers and
normal transgenerational transmission, it has also experienced consi-
derable contact. First, dialect contact took place as a result of the
migrations to Morocco from different parts of the Arabian peninsula
and Egypt in the 7th and then again in the 10th centuries, with spea-
kers of different regional dialects coming into contact in the new
location. Secondly, there was very considerable language contact in
Morocco, most especially with speakers of the different indigenous
Berber languages. In the case of Najdi, however, there has been no
migration, and relatively little contact.
The conclusion is that different degrees of simplification have
occurred in different Arabic varieties to the extent that adult lan-
guage learning and dialect contact have also occurred.
6. Contact-induced Complexification in Arabic
It is not the case, however, that contact has led only to simplification
in the history of Arabic. As the hypothesis outlined above would lead
us to expect, in different types of sociolinguistic situation complexi-
fication has also occurred.
One example of this is provided by Maltese. Malta is only approxi-
mately 50 miles/90 kilometres from Sicily, and the two islands were
united politically for over 400 years, from 1090 to 1530, and contacts
remained close after that. It is therefore not surprising that, as is well
known, Sicilian influence on Maltese has been very considerable,
notably on the lexis (Aquilina 1959). But Heine and Kuteva (2005:
151-2) suggest that Maltese has also experienced grammatical
influence from southern Romance. In particular, Heine and Kuteva
suggest that Maltese did indeed acquire additional contact-induced
complexity through the addition of a new morphological marker
which is lacking from other Western Arabic varieties—although
Maltese is sociolinguistically no longer a variety of Arabic, linguisti-
cally it is very clearly a Western Arabic dialect.
Following Borg and Mifsud (2002:34), Heine and Kuteva show

that Maltese marks human definite direct objects with the indirect
object marker, translated below as “to”, while inanimate objects
receive no object marking. The examples they cite are:
il-tifel ra lil Marija
The-boy saw to Mary
compared to
Marija qabdet il-ballun
Mary caught the-ball
This parallels the familiar Spanish distinction of:
el chico vió a María
The boy saw to Mary
compared to
María cogió la pelota
Mary caught the ball
But, in fact the actual source in this case is very likely to be Sicilian.
Heine and Kuteva tell us that of Western Romance that “in a vast
area stretching from Portuguese and Spanish through popular French
to southern Italian, instances of direct object marking can be found,
involving the preposition ‘to’ and being involved with animate and
definite participants (Borg and Mifsud 2002: 42)”. Crucially, in Old
Sicilian, constructions such as
truvau a Micheli
He-found to Michael
were usual.
As noted above, this Maltese phenomenon does not occur in any
of the western dialects of Arabic to which Maltese is closely related,
and Borg and Mifsud therefore suggest that its occurrence in Maltese
may well be due to influence from southern Romance. Heine and
Kuteva concur that it is very likely that it developed as a result of
“intense language contact with Romance languages”. And of course
the most obvious source is Sicilian.
Even more telling examples of this same type of phenomenon
come from Central Asian Arabic. The first Arabic speakers migrated
to the area of what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and northern
Afghanistan in the 8th century, during the Muslim expansion. It is
182 peter trudgill
important for our purposes that speakers of the language have the-
refore been in contact with speakers of the Turkic language Uzbek
and of the Indo-Iranian language Tardif for more than 1,200 years.
Ingham (1994b) stresses that “this area is in fact one of considerable
linguistic diversity” which is “on the border of the Indo-European
and Altaic language areas”. As a consequence, there was very consi-
derable influence from these languages, particularly Tardif, on the
local Arabic (Versteegh 1984:6).
According to the thesis being considered here, this type of pro-
longed co-territorial contact should have led to complexification, and
indeed this does seem to be the case. Ingham shows that, crucially,
some of the borrowing from the other languages which Afghan
Arabic demonstrates is of the additive type: Arabic acquired features
from its co-territorial neighbours while maintaining original Arabic
features. Notable examples of this kind of complexification are:
1. The pattern relative clause + noun occurs “alongside the original
Arabic noun + relative clause” (Owens 2001:355). That is, Central
Asian Arabic has two relative clause structures, compared to main-
stream Arabic’s one.
2. Similarly, we see “the construction possessor + possessed occurring
alongside the Arabic possessed + possessor” (Owens 2001: 355). Again
there are two structures as opposed to the original single structure.
3. An interrogative suffix -mi is attached to verbs to perform the
function of question-formation, which is “presumably identical with
the Turkish suffix -mi of the same function” (Ingham 1994b). Ingham
supplies the examples:
hint battīxa kalinnak-mi Have you eaten the water melon?
sōġ amōn hastinnak-mi Are you healthy and well?
4. Ingham also informs us that “postpositions which occur in Turkish
but not in Persian are represented in Afghan Arabic”. Those which
Ingham recorded are –jimīʿ ‘with, together with’;
-xila(f) ‘after’, and -giddām ‘before’:
faras-jimīʿ by horse, with horses
ʿašar daqīqa-xilā(f) in ten minutes
min nayamān-giddām before sleeping
Conclusion
There is, then, evidence, that the two different types of language con-
tact have indeed given rise to two different kinds of outcome in
Arabic in terms of complexification and simplification. Of course,
the dichotomy I have suggested between the two different kinds of
contact is itself a serious simplification of what actually happens on
the ground in real-life situations. Obvious complicating factors
include the following:
one type of contact can chronologically be succeeded by the other in
the same location;
the two types of contact can overlap chronologically, and the propor-
tions of speakers of different ages will be very relevant;
the degree of contact may vary considerably between different situa-
tions;
the terms “long-term” and “short-term” are very vague with, for exam-
ple, “long-term” covering periods from thousands of years down to
much shorter periods;
linguistic factors are not irrelevant—for instance, the degree of rela-
tedness of languages in contact may important.
An acceptance of this distinction between the two main types of
contact and their different outcomes would also raise another impor-
tant sociolinguistic-typological issue. We can suppose that varieties
which experience little or no contact, like Najdi, will tend to maintain
existing levels of complexity fairly well in the absence of contact-
induced simplification and complexification. But this still leaves us
with the issue of, to put it simply, where complexity comes from in
the first place. What can we say about the spontaneous development
of complexity? What do we know about the sociolinguistics of the
process of non-additive complexification? A reasonable assumption
must be that this too is chiefly associated with low-contact language
varieties (in which case of course we can predict that linguistic com-
plexity is likely to decrease in the future).2
Arabic support for this thesis may be provided by a suggestion
made by Owens. Owens (2006: 115) argues that “it is assumed that
case-marking in Semitic is a younger trait than nominals lacking case
marking on the basis of the Afroasiatic evidence” and “since caseless
forms can be comparatively reconstructed at least as early as the
2
The sociolinguistic typology of spontaneous complexification is the subject
matter of Trudgill (2008); and of Trudgill (forthcoming).
184 peter trudgill
seventh/eighth centuries, from the time of the Arabic diaspora, they

are minimally as old as the case-Arabic described by Sibawaih, and
hence can be projected into proto-Arabic as well” (2006:116). Given
that Classical Arabic had case-marking, the inference has to be that
Arabic gradually developed case-marking at a time when the lan-
guage was spoken by a rather small number of speakers, and most
likely in a sparsely populated, low-contact area of the Arabian penin-
sula. But this is of course at this stage pure, if not totally uninformed,
speculation.
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loan verbs in arabic and the do-construction 187
LOAN VERBS IN ARABIC AND THE DOCONSTRUCTION
Kees Versteegh
Cross-linguistically, it seems to be true that it is easier to borrow

nouns than verbs. Moravcsik (1975) even goes so far as to maintain
that verbs cannot be borrowed at all: in her view, loan verbs first
have to be nominalized before they can be used in the borrowing
language. As we shall see below, this claim is exaggerated: while the
overwhelming majority of loans is nominal in nature, there are exam-
ples of successful borrowing of verbs. In this paper, we shall be con-
cerned with the question of how different varieties of Arabic deal
with verbal borrowing. Generally speaking, two strategies are
involved. The first strategy consists in the morphological integration
of a foreign verbal form. The second strategy consists in incorporat-
ing a foreign (verbal) noun or verb with the help of a light verb or
dummy verb meaning ‘to do’; this will be referred to here as the
DO-construction.
In Muyskens’ (2000) typology of code-mixing, these two strategies
are analyzed as two different modes of code-mixing: the morpholo-
gical integration of a verbal form is a form of insertion, whereas the
construction with a light verb is a form of alternation. Gardner-
Chloros and Edwards (2004:1444-1445; 2007:86) emphasise that
these different modes belong to different social contexts, and are
subject to different constraints. In insertion, foreign material is inser-
ted within a matrix belonging to one language that is primarily acti-
vated; this type of code-mixing is more related to borrowing and
takes place when there is a clear asymmetry between the speakers’
proficiency in the two languages. In alternation, the elements before
and after the switch are not structurally related, and the two langua-
ges involved may be said to be activated alternately; according to
them, this is what happens in stable bilingual communities.
A different terminology is used by Boumans (2007), who discusses
the contexts in which borrowing takes place in terms of the ‘social
dominant language’, i.e. the language to which individual speakers
are most exposed in their daily life (2007:291). The socially dominant
188 kees versteegh
language may be either the community language, in which the bor-

rowings are embedded, or the superimposed language, from which
the borrowings derive. On the basis of examples from Greek and
Portuguese code-mixing with English in two different contexts,
Boumans concludes (2007:307) that “all other things being equal,
morphological integration is the norm in homeland settings where
the matrix language is socially dominant, while the periphrastic
construction [i.e. the DO-construction] is found in migrant commu-
nities where the embedded language is dominant”.
Others focus on a diachronic interpretation of the strategies invol-
ved in loan verb borrowing. Wichmann and Wohlgemuth (2005),
for instance, set up a hierarchy describing the diachronic ordering
of borrowing strategies for verbs in general. They distinguish between
four types:
i. the light verb strategy consisting in the use of a dummy verb, usually a
verb meaning ‘to do’
ii. indirect insertion consisting in the use of a special affix for borrowed
verbs
iii. direct insertion, consisting in the integration of loan verbs in the mor-
phological structure of the receiving language
iv. paradigm transfer, in which the loan verb is taken over with its own
morphology.
Their Loan Verb Assimilation Hierarchy assumes that the first three
strategies are increasingly higher degrees of assimilation. The fourth
strategy is regarded by them as a special case because in this strategy
the foreign verb is not assimilated at all; still, they regard it as part
of the hierarchy, probably coming at the end of the process.
The term ‘diachronic’ in the context of borrowing may give rise
to some confusion. The selection of borrowing strategies is carried
out by the speakers within a certain sociolinguistic and communica-
tional context. They are confronted with the problem of having to
take over morphologically complicated elements from the embedded
language, and their performance depends on their proficiency in both
languages. This is not a matter of diachronic development, in the
sense of a language going through several stages and undergoing
certain processes. Obviously, the result of these strategies may become
conventionalised and thus, become part of the repertoire of the entire
speech community. When, in the course of the community’s history,
speakers of the language apply different strategies, this results in a
layering of the loanwords, reflecting the stages the speakers have
gone through. The existence of these different layers may give the
impression of a diachronic development in the language itself, whe-
reas in reality the speakers have made different choices at different
times.
Speakers of Arabic, too, have used different strategies for the
incorporation of foreign material in different contexts. The integra-
tion of loanwords in the root-and-pattern system of Arabic goes back
to the Classical period, and has given rise to many denominal verbs,
e.g. tawwaja ‘to crown’, formed after Persian tāj ‘crown’, or falsafa
‘to philosophize’ from Greek philósophos ‘philosopher’. This proce-
dure has remained current throughout the history of Arabic, as dem-
onstrated by recent denominal verbs like talfana ‘to call by telephone’
of fakkasa ‘to fax’.
In the case of these examples, foreign verbs were not borrowed
directly, but derived from a previously borrowed noun. Direct mor-
phological integration of verbal loans in Arabic takes place when
these are borrowed from languages like Aramaic/Syriac or Ivrit,
which have a similar non-concatenative lexical structure. Thus, we
find, for instance, in Lebanese Arabic naṭar ‘to guard’ (< Syriac nṭar)
(Retsö 2006), and in Palestinian Arabic yiṭabbal ‘he takes care’
(< Ivrit yitapel); yišaxbel ‘he duplicates’ (< Ivrit yišaxpel) (Amara
2007). Berber, whose structure is rather different from that of Arabic,
still preserves enough of the non-concatenative structure to allow for
relatively easy integration of Berber verbs in Arabic, for instance, in
Moroccan Arabic ḥaf/iḥuf ‘to descend’; bərnš/ibərnəš ‘to diversify
[crops]’ (El Aissati 2006). This process of incorporation is not res-
tricted to loanwords from related languages with a non-concatenative
structure. Ibero-Romance loanwords in Arabic from the period of
the Reconquista, when Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese had started
to function as superstrate languages, include verbs that have been
integrated in the structure of the language, e.g. nifindir ‘I defend’
(< Spanish defender).
Integration of foreign verbs often takes place in a colonial context,
in which a European language acts as the superimposed language.
This is what happened, for instance, with French loans in Algerian
and Moroccan Arabic (e.g., in Moroccan Arabic ḍiklaa/yḍiklai ‘to
declare’ < French déclarer, cf. Hadj-Sadok 1955; Heath 1989), or with
Italian verbs in Maltese (e.g., ffirma/jfirmi ‘to sign’ < Italian firmare,
Mifsud 1995:47-48). In Maltese, a special situation obtained because
virtually all Italian and English loan verbs were integrated in this
190 kees versteegh
way. Mifsud (1995:47-48) distinguishes between older loan verbs

which constitute a closed class (e.g., pitter ‘to paint’), and newer loans
which were assimilated to the weak-final verbs, either fully, like
sploda ‘to explode’, or with an unanalyzed stem (e.g., ffirma ‘to sign’,
pprogramma ‘to program’). Mifsud (1995:79) mentions some exam-
ples of periphrastic constructions, e.g. għamel telefon ‘to telephone’
(1995:79), but these are not frequent and may have been calqued on
European examples.
A similar situation exists in the case of the technical vocabulary
studied by Smeaton in al-asā in Saudi Arabia. Here, English verbs
are usually integrated in the morphology of Arabic, e.g. (1973:71)
fanniš ‘to fire someone’ (< English to finish), and the same thing
happens in loans from other languages as well, e.g. (1973:80) bannid
‘close!’ (< Hindustani band ‘to close’). Most verbs based on foreign
material seem to be denominal, however, e.g. (1973:70) dabbil ‘to
double-clutch’, (1973:74) sallif ‘to step on the starter’ (< English self
(-starter)) and this procedure to accommodate foreign verbal mate-
rial is similar to the one in Classical Arabic that was mentioned
above. Still, the above examples show that it is possible to integrate
verbs directly, and such borrowings are current in all Eastern Arabic
dialects (pace Boumans 2007:296, n. 4, who insists that in Eastern
varieties of Arabic integrated verbs are infrequent).
In the preceding examples, the loanwords were integrated in a
context in which the superimposed language was not socially domi-
nant. But the same procedure is also followed in situations where the
speakers live in a society in which the superimposed language is the
socially dominant language. Lebanese immigrants in Brazil regularly
use in their daily life both Arabic and Portuguese. In their code-
mixing, there is a large degree of flexibility in incorporating Portu-
guese verbs in the morphological structure of Arabic. Nabhan (1989)
gives many examples of Portuguese verbs in sample sentences, but
since she does not provide much information about the context, it
is not certain that these sentences stem from spontaneous conversa-
tion. Examples that do not look like ad hoc borrowings in a code-
switching mode in her corpus include: ana naumart ‘I fell in love’
(< Portuguese eu namorei) (1989:312); ana vaiažt kitir ‘I traveled a
lot’ (< Portuguese eu viajo) (1989:286); balacht ʿam-bi-maskiet ‘I began
peddling’ (< Portuguese eu comecei mascateando) (1989:287); bi-
master ‘he shows’ (< Portuguese mostra) (1989:287).
The second strategy to incorporate foreign verbs, with the help of

a DO-construction is frequently used in a migration context, for
instance, in Moroccan Arabic/Dutch code-mixing in the Netherlands,
where the light verb dar ‘to do’ is constructed with Dutch verbs, e.g.
dar ontmoeten ‘to meet’ (< Moroccan Arabic dar ‘to do’ + Dutch
ontmoeten ‘to meet [inf.]’, cf. Boumans 1998:229). In the first stage
of this process, dar is used with a Dutch infinitive, which functions
as the direct object of the auxiliary, so that direct objects of the infi-
nitive itself have to be encoded as indirect objects, as in (1).
(1) ana-ya dert-l-u ontmoeten
I-Emph do1s-to-him meet.Inf
‘I met him’ (Boumans 1998:229)
This parallels the structure of the construction dar + verbal noun +
direct object introduced by l- in monolingual Moroccan Arabic
(Boumans 1998:228-229).
At a later stage, the verb dar loses its full verbal character and
becomes a real auxiliary carrying all inflectional markers of the full
verb. The Dutch infinitive no longer functions as the direct object,
and its pronominal direct object can therefore be encoded as a direct
object, as in (2) and (3).
(2) ka-ne-bġi n-dir-hum ontmoeten
Dur-1sg-want 1s-do-them meet.Inf
‘I want to meet them’ (Boumans 1998:231)
(3) ma ka-t-dir-ha-š voelen

Neg Progr-2s-do-it-Neg feel.Inf
‘Don’t you feel it?’ (Boumans 1998:233)
According to Boumans (1998:262), the use of the DO-construction
with dar in Moroccan Arabic/Dutch code-switching is a good exam-
ple of a grammaticalisation process, by which the Moroccan Arabic
full verb dar becomes a device to embed Dutch verbs in Moroccan
Arabic.
The various stages of such a grammaticalisation are illustrated by
Backus’ (1996:241-244) analysis of the Turkish light verb yap- in
Turkish/Dutch code-switching. This verb exhibits a decreasing
semantic load, depending on the object with which it is combined.
When a verbal noun is the object of yap-, the semantic load of the
verb is rather low (e.g., yemek yap- ‘to make food’, aktiviteit-ler-i
yap ‘to perform activities’, kutlama yap- ‘to congratulate’, and all the
192 kees versteegh
examples with Dutch infinitives such as pakken yap- ‘to grab’, kij-
ken yap- ‘to look’). The process of bleaching progresses even further
when the verb yap- is combined with a non-volitional verb, e.g. wen-
nen yap- ‘to get used to’.
Examples from other languages show that this is not the final stage
of the grammaticalisation process. In the Domari dialect of Romani,
for instance, the two light verbs used in complex loan verbs, origi-
nally meaning ‘to do’ and ‘to be’, have been demoted to the status of
an infixed marker, -kar- for transitive and -ho- for intransitive loan
verbs, e.g., štri-kar- ‘to buy’ (< Arabic ištarā) and skun-ho- ‘to dwell’
(< Arabic sakana) (Matras 2002:129).
Moroccan Arabic/Dutch code-mixing is not unique in its use of
a light verb for the incorporation of foreign verbs. In Egyptian
Arabic/English code-switching in the United Kingdom, the verb ʿimil
can perform a similar function. Othman’s (2006) corpus has two
possible examples, given in (5) and (6).
(5) fī ʿā’ilāt ma-byitkallimūš ʿarabi maʿa l-’awlād ʿašān yiʿmilū-lhum
improving
‘There are families that do not speak Arabic with the children to improve
their English’ (Othman 2006:56)
(6) batkallim ’inglīzi lamma baʿmil shopping
‘I speak in English when I do shopping’ (Othman 2006:62)
In the same corpus, there are only two examples of inserted English
verbs (2006:46, 47 ma-CANCEL-t-iš and ma-sayyif-t-iš). The verb
ʿamal as a light verb also seems to be available in Brazilian Arabic as
a less current alternative to the predominant integration of Portuguese
loan verbs, e.g. ’ana bamil muvimẼtu ‘I move’ (< Portuguese movi-
mento ‘movement’) (Nabhan 1989:308), mnamil al Ĩterega ‘we
hand in’ (< Portuguese entrega ‘handing in [noun]’) (Nabhan 1989:
311). It is not clear, however, whether these actually represent
DO-constructions.
These examples show that speakers of Arabic have applied both
strategies for borrowing verbs, but in different contexts. Speakers of
other languages, too, have adapted their strategy for the incorpora-
tion of foreign verbs to the context. Hausa speakers, for instance, use
the DO-construction in the western Sudan when they borrow Arabic
verbs, whereas in the eastern Sudan they integrate freely any Arabic
verbs in their code-switching discourse (cf. Abu Manga 1999).
Backus (1996:224-225) and Boumans (2007) give yet other examples
of languages in which the different strategies for the incorporation

of borrowed verbs can be contrasted. Apparently, therefore, the
choice of the strategy does not depend on features of the borrowing
language, and cannot be explained by linguistic constraints.
It has sometimes been suggested that the use of a DO-construction
depends on the availability of such a construction in the embedded
language (Boumans 2007:297). Since both strategies may co-occur
in one language, it might be the case that the use of auxiliaries is
always available in an emergency. Nuytens (1962:155), for instance,
mentions the use of the dummy verb doen ‘to do’ in the Twents
dialect of Dutch, which is used for the insertion of verbs or verbal
compounds borrowed from the standard language. He ascribes its
use to uncertainty on the part of the dialect speaker as to the correct
inflection of these borrowings. In his view, this use of the auxiliary
is related to its use as an auxiliary in cases of verb topicalisation
where the verb must be topicalised in a non-inflected form in order
to avoid confusion with the verb-initial interrogative sentence type.
Here, too, the auxiliary is made to carry all the inflectional markers,
just as in the case of borrowed verbal compounds.
There are some indications that light verbs indeed function some-
times as an auxiliary device that paves the way for their use in the
incorporation of foreign loans. According to Jäger (2004), cross-lin-
guistically there are four types of obligatory DO-periphrasis:
i. the presence of lexical or morphological elements that trigger periph-
rasis, e.g., negation;
ii. maintaining regular word order in case of verb topicalisation, interroga-
tion, or focusing;
iii. lexical features of the main verb, in particular the fact that verbs are
borrowed;
iv. marking of subordination.
Jäger mentions a large number of languages that belong to type iii,
among them Basque, Pipil and Cakchiquel, and connects this use
with “an avoidance strategy for morphological complexity or uncer-
tainty in the case of borrowed stems” (2004:10). Note that in all his
examples, the light verb is combined with a foreign verb, rather than
with a foreign noun.
A similar function of the light verb is found in the Siberian varieties
of Mennonite Low German, Plautdiitsch (Nieuweboer 1999). In Low
German dialects, various uses of the periphrastic construction with
the verb ‘to do’ have been observed, for instance to denote an aspec-
tual nuancing of the normal construction, as in the Swiss German
194 kees versteegh
dialect of Kerenzen, which distinguishes between i tua webä ‘I am

weaving’ and i wibä ‘I weave’ (Nieuweboer 1999:166). The DO-con-
struction is also used to disambiguate verbal forms in those dialects
where present and preterite have merged. Here, the DO marker has
grammaticalised to some degree, and this process of grammaticali-
sation is continued in the Plautdiitsch varieties of Siberia: the normal
restriction of the DO-construction to subordinate clauses is lifted
and the verb döune is even used as a marker with the lexical verb ‘to
do’, which has the same form. This is not possible in other dialects
of Low German.
Even more relevant to the present discussion is the additional
function of the light verb as an integrator of Russian loan verbs
(Nieuweboer 1999:175). Normally, Russian verbs, at least those in
-at’ can be integrated in Plautdiitsch morphologically with the help
of the suffix -eie. In principle, such verbs can receive all inflectional
endings of the Plautdiitsch paradigm, but normally this is restricted
to a few forms in the present, for the preterite tense the auxiliary is
used, e.g., prawazheie ‘to see off’, etj prawazhei ‘I see off’ or etj döu
prawazheie; for non-integrated verbs this is the only way, e.g. daut
döune ze nü remontirovat’ ‘they are repairing it now’ (?) (Nieuweboer
1999:176). Interestingly, other varieties of Plautdiitsch that are spo-
ken in North and South America do not make use of this
DO-construction (Nieuweboer 1999:181). It is not clear from the
material whether there is a diachronic layering, but from the texts it
appears that increasingly, speakers of Plautdiitsch are shifting to
Russian, and insert finite verbs from Russian into their conversation,
which may signal an imminent language shift.
Even when a light verb is available in the embedded language to
facilitate the incorporation of foreign material, borrowers do not
always choose to use this device. According to Boumans (2007), the
reason why speakers prefer the DO-construction in a situation of
intense contact is the automatisation of the linguistic rules of the
superimposed language. As the speakers become more familiar with
this language, they replace the integrated loanwords with new
periphrastic constructions since this “entails little or no phonological
or morphological adaptation to the matrix language” (2007:308). This
type of change is called ‘denativisation’ and is linked by him with
the increased knowledge of the superimposed language. Less adept
code-switchers in Boumans’ corpus indeed seem to be unable to use
the DO-construction and resort to integration of Dutch verbs,

although much less frequently, as in (4).
(4) ka-t- bewijs belli ’t goed is
Progr-2s- prove that it good is
‘You prove that it’s correct’ (Boumans 1998:261)
A second explanation Boumans offers for the use of the light verb is
language loss on the part of speakers of the community language,
which prevents them from resorting to morphological integration of
loanwords in the community language, whose rules they are no lon-
ger familiar with (2007:308-309). Presumably, therefore, knowledge
of both the community language and of the superimposed language
are necessary conditions for the successful use of the light verb. This
is confirmed by other examples of the use of a DO-construction in
a situation in which the command of the first language is deficient.
Makihara (2005:748) states that the Spanish verb hacer ‘to make, to
do’ in Rapa Nui Spanish is used by younger speakers who are losing
their Rapa Nui in order to introduce Rapa Nui material without its
complicated pre- and postverbal morphology. Similar suggestions
are made by Gardner-Chloros and Edwards (2007) and by Boumans
(2007:308-309). Jäger (2004) mentions the fact that a similar ten-
dency has been observed in (first) language acquisition (referring to
Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1990:21-21; Van der Auwera 1999:60).
The main factors determining the choice between the two strate-
gies, therefore, are the sociolinguistic relationship between the two
speech communities and the proficiency in both the embedded and
the matrix language. The four available options are:
i. bare verbs: pidginisation
ii. DO-constructions: extensive bilingualism
iii. morphological integration: full bilingualism
iv. inflected verbs: language shift
The first option is the one chosen in initial contact situations, for
instance by speakers of Arabic pidgins/creoles. The second option
is that of using light verbs in a DO-construction. This is the option
chosen for Dutch loan verbs in Moroccan Arabic/Dutch code-switch-
ing. The third option is the full morphological integration of foreign
verbs, for instance in Brazilian Lebanese Arabic. The fourth option,
borrowing inflected verbs, may be selected during the final stage of
linguistic contact and may be indicative of an ongoing language shift,
as in the case of Plautdiitsch/Russian code-mixing mentioned above.
196 kees versteegh
Another example is provided by the use of Greek inflected verbs in

Cypriot Arabic (cf. Borg 1985), as in (7).
(7) w-anankástika taxótt žréy
and-I.was.forced put legs-my standing
‘I was forced to put my legs [through] first’ (Borg 1985:182)
The difference between options iii and iv correlates with Boumans’
distinction between a situation in which the superimposed language
is socially dominant, and one in which the community language is
dominant. When Arabic/Dutch code-switching takes place in a
migratory context, in which Dutch is the standard of the country the
speakers are living in, the effect on the code-switching/borrowing
strategies differs from that in North Africa, where French/Arabic
code-switching took place either within a colonial context or in a
post-independence context in which the French language remained
a prestigious model. This explains why in North Africa no examples
of the DO-construction are found, while fully integrated French
verbs are frequent. It also explains the difference in the borrowing
practice between West Sudanic and East Sudanic Hausa.
The correlation of DO-constructions with a migration context
faces a problem, however, since it also occurs in other contexts, in
which there is no intensive contact and no socially dominant supe-
rimposed language. Arabic loanwords in a great many Islamic lan-
guages, such as Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, are always incorporated
with the help of a light verb, e.g. Persian ta’lim kardan ‘to teach’,
Turkish tebdil etmek ‘to change’, Urdu intazar karna ‘to wait’
(Versteegh, forthcoming). In all of these languages, borrowing usually
takes place through the work of Islamic scholars, who start using
them in their writings, while the rest of the population is unlikely to
be proficient in the embedded language. The examples of DO-con-
structions in such cases of written transmission are characterised by
the fact that the foreign element combined with the light verb is
never a verb, but always a noun. Probably, therefore, a distinction
needs to be made between two different kinds of DO-construction,
depending on the linguistic category to which the embedded element
that is combined with the light verb belongs. The examples given by
Backus for Turkish/Dutch code-mixing mostly involve the infinitive,
but he has also recorded participles (1996:225-227), and even finite
verbs (1996:227-228). In the examples from Moroccan Arabic/Dutch
code-switching, the embedded Dutch elements in a complex verb are
usually bare infinitives. Elsewhere, the same rule applies. In Persian/

Swedish code-switching, for instance, only Swedish bare infinitives
are found, and there are no combinations of nouns with the Persian
light verb kardan ‘to do’ (Lotfabbadi 2002). This contrasts with the
Arabic loanwords in Persian. Likewise, in Panjabi/English code-
mixing. the verbs kərna ‘to do’ and hona ‘to be’ are combined with
English verbs or noun-verb phrases, whereas the older Arabo-Persian
loans in Panjabi that are combined with the same verbs are predo-
minantly nominal (Romaine 1989:120-123).
The instances of light verbs with foreign nouns have in common
that most of the borrowing takes place or has taken place through
written transmission. A parallel might be the case of the Chinese and
English loanwords in Korean, discussed by Park (2005). In Korean,
the light verb ha is used chiefly with verbal nouns borrowed from
Chinese, which presumably derive from a process of written trans-
mission, but in combinations of the light verb with English loanwords,
the latter are always verbs, never nouns (Park 1995:351). Likewise,
the Arabic loanwords that are used in complex verbs in Persian,
Turkish, Panjabi, and Urdu, are always verbal nouns, i.e. nouns with
a highly verbal character.
The use of light verbs with a (verbal) noun does not qualify as
alternation in the sense of Muysken’s (2000) typology of code-mixing,
but unlike the DO-construction with infinitives or inflected verbs, it
represents a case of insertion. This is confirmed by comparing these
instances of borrowing through written transmission with the cor-
relation set up by Gardner-Chloros and Edwards (2004). They assign
the insertion mode of code-mixing to situations of asymmetric pro-
ficiency in the superimposed and the community language, while the
alternation mode is typical for situations of stable bilingualism. In
the case of languages like Persian and Urdu, the only people with
any degree of proficiency in (written) Arabic are the Islamic scholars,
so that there is a clear asymmetry, and one should expect in such a
situation insertion rather than alternation.
Not only do DO-constructions occur outside a migratory context,
but sometimes, the integration strategy is used in a migratory context.
According to Boumans (2007:297, n. 7), the expected DO-construction
in Arabic/French code-mixing in France is not used because the
speakers use a strategy that was already in place in the homeland. In
such a case, one might say that the speakers simply use loan verbs
that were already available in their community language. A similar
198 kees versteegh
case is that of the English loanwords in Greek in a migration context,

which according to Boumans (2007) already existed in homeland
Greek. Note, however, that this does not explain the Portuguese loan
verbs in Brazilian Lebanese Arabic that were mentioned above: for
obvious reasons, these could not have been introduced in the home-
land. Perhaps in this case, one might argue, what is preserved is not
the actual lexical items, but the strategy of integrating loan verbs, for
instance from French, which the Lebanese immigrants brought with
them to Latin America and applied there to Portuguese and Spanish
verbs. This might also explain why Moroccan Arabic speakers in the
Netherlands do not integrate any Dutch loan verbs. It is possible that
their deficient knowledge of the home language does not include the
strategy at the disposal of adult fluent speakers of Moroccan Arabic,
who are able to apply this strategy to Dutch loanwords, just as it is
applied in Morocco to French loanwords. Those speakers who do
integrate Dutch verbs may do so, not because of their lack of fluency
in Dutch, but because of their fluency in the home language: presu-
mably, these speakers are recent arrivals in the Netherlands, hence
their lack of fluency in Dutch.
Moravcsik (1975:4) claims that foreign elements (even when they
were verbs in the original language) never function structurally as a
verb when embedded in another language; in her view, they have to
be nominalised before they can become the complement of a light
verb. This claim was rejected by Muysken (2000:188) on the basis of
code-mixing patterns in Quechua verb, where the verb sabi-ran-
kitaq (< Spanish saber) means the same and is formed in the same
way as the native word acha-ran-kitaq ‘if only you knew’. The above
examples support this rejection of Moravcsik’s claim and show that
it is indeed possible to borrow verbs from another language.
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when najd meets hijaz: dialect contact in jeddah 201
SOCIAL DIALECTOLOGY
202 aziza al-essa
WHEN NAJD MEETS HIJAZ: DIALECT CONTACT IN JEDDAH
Aziza Al-Essa
1. Introduction
Since the publication of Peter Trudgill’s book Dialects in Contact

(1986), a series of studies followed investigating linguistic changes
resulting from mobility and in-migration, for example Kerswill and
Williams 2000, and Britain 1997, 2002. In the Arab world, a number
of studies examined situations where dialect contact was involved:
Holes’ 1987 study of Bahraini Arabic, Al-Wer’s 1991 study of
Jordanian Arabic, and her 2002, 2003, 2007 studies of new dialect
formation in Amman, Jabeur’s 1987 study of Tunisian Arabic, and
Hachimi 2007 study of Casablancan Arabic. In Saudi Arabia, dialect
contact was investigated in four sociolinguistic studies: Al-Jehani
(1985) and Al-Ahdal (1989) examined dialect contact in Mecca,
Kahtani (1992) studied dialect contact in Abha, and Al-Shehri (1993)
investigated dialect contact in Jeddah.
Dialect contact has a number of consequences. The basic conse-
quence of dialect contact is dialect levelling: a process whereby
socially or locally marked variants are eliminated form the speech of
speakers. Dialect contact may also lead to the emergence of interdia-
lect forms. Trudgill (1986) maintains that sometimes in dialect
contact situation between mutually intelligible dialects the accom-
modation process is incomplete and that intermediate forms between
the original and the target dialect develop as a result. Both linguistic
consequences, dialect levelling and the rise of intermediate forms,
are demonstrated in the dialect contact situation under study.
This article investigates the consequences of the dialect contact
between two varieties of Arabic: the Najdi variety and the urban
Hijazi variety. It adopts the methods of quantitative sociolinguistics
to analyse the variation in the speech of Najdi speakers who live in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in relation to the affrication of /k/ and /g/.
Affrication in Najdi Arabic is manifested in two domains; in the stem
where the velar stops /k/ and /g/ are realised as [ts] and [dz], respec-
204 aziza al-essa
tively, in the environment of the front vowels most of the time; and
in the domain of the 2nd p. fem. suffix. The variation attested in the
use of these variables is analysed within the framework of variationist
theory. I intend to examine the correlation between these linguistic
variables and the social factors of age, gender and contact in this
article.
2. The Sociolinguistic Situation in Jeddah
The city of Jeddah is located in the Western region of Saudi Arabia

on the coast of the Red Sea, and is considered to be the country’s
commercial capital. The area of the city is calculated to be 463 square
miles (1,200 square km). Jeddah is also the 30th largest seaport in
the world.1 With a population of 2.8 million, it ranks second in popu-
lation size after Riyadh, according to the recent census carried out
by the Central Statistics Department of the Ministry of Economy and
Planning in September 2004.
By virtue of its strategic location on the trade routes and being the
main port of entry to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah in the
Hijaz region, the City has evolved into a cosmopolitan city with a
heterogeneous population. Many of the pilgrims from different parts
of the Muslim world opted to settle in the main cities of Hijaz.
Migrants came from Arab countries like Morocco, Syria, and Egypt
and from other Asian countries like Turkey, India and Indonesia.
The largest numbers, however, came from Hadramawt (south),
Yemen (south) and Najd (central and eastern provinces). The diver-
sity in the origins of the City’s population has increased even further
after the discovery of oil. The latter type of migration included eco-
nomic migrants who came to fill the job opportunities which were
created through economic growth. Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Jordan
and Iraq came to Jeddah to work as teachers, engineers, physicians,
nurses and skilled labourers. After the oil boom in the 1970s, the
modernization of Saudi Arabia required the use of foreign labour
force, and, therefore, new waves of workers arrived in the City from
different parts of the world, mostly non-Arab. Today the population
of Jeddah is a mixture of all of these ethnic groups in addition to its
native inhabitants, most of whom are of non-tribal descent.
1
http://www.aapa-ports.org/pdf/WORLD_PORT_RANKINGS_2004.xls
3. The Najdi Community in Jeddah
According to Soraya Altorki(1968:11) the immigration of Najdi fami-

lies started near the end of the Turkish rule of Hijaz. Nevertheless,
it is only after the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in
1932 that Najdis came in large numbers to settle in Jeddah. Najdis
were referred to as Shurug ‘people from the east’ by the Hijazi locals
who identified themselves as ahl al-balad, which is a term used by
the native population of Hijaz whose origins lie outside Arabia to
distinguish themselves from the recent immigrants and from the
Beduins who settled on the outskirts of the city. This distinction
reflects the cultural difference between the people of the city and the
outsiders, particularly those of tribal origin who adopted some of the
traits of the cosmopolitan culture of Jeddah.
Unlike the other ethnic groups who settled in Hijaz, Najdis main-
tained a separate identity. Except for a few known families, the majo-
rity of them have led a conservative way of life and, therefore, have
not assimilated into the more open Hijazi community. Most of the
early immigrant families used to huddle in certain neighbourhoods
and they exerted little effort to socially explore their new home. Their
contact with the Hijazi locals was limited to formal encounters in
the marketplace, workplace and schools. The conservative Najdi
community also has imposed restrictive rules of socialization on girls,
thus restricting socialisation outside the family boundary. Most
importantly, the assimilation of Najdis into the Hijazi community is
hindered by the fact that they traditionally observe strict marriage
laws that disfavour intermarriage with non-Najdis including urban
Hijazis. Although one may witness instances of such intermarriages,
they are generally frowned upon.
4. The Varieties
Najdi (henceforth N) and Urban Hijazi (henceforth UH) are varieties

of Arabic that differ in most aspects. Najdi Arabic belongs to the
North Arabian group of the dialects spoken in the Arabian Peninsula
(Johnstone1967). It is geographically associated with the Najd region.
In modern Saudi Arabia, Najd is called the Central Region. Riyadh,
the country’s capital is located there. Najdi Arabic is spoken by a
large number of culturally homogenous people who are spread over
206 aziza al-essa
large and distant areas within and outside geographical Najd. Pro-
chazka (1986:11-12) and Ingham (1994: 4-5) give a list of different
groups who speak varieties that can be labelled as ‘Najdi dialects’.
Although there are phonological and morphological variations
among the Najdi sub-dialects, mutual intelligibility among them is
total. Generally speaking Najdi dialects are morphologically uniform.
(see Prochazka 1986, and Ingham 1994). Najdi is classified as a
‘Beduin dialect’ (as opposed to sedentary). One of its major phono-
logical features is the affrication of stops /k/ and /g/ (Versteegh 1994,
Ingham 1994), which is the feature discussed in this article.
The Urban Hijazi Variety is a variety that is spoken in the western
province, namely in the cities of Jeddah, Makkah, Madinah and Taif.
It is the final linguistic product of a multitude of ethnicities that
mixed in the melting pot of Hijaz. It is a levelled dialect which exhi-
bits similarities to other urban Arabic dialects outside Arabia (Ingham
1971: 273). It differs from the other tribal dialects in the western
region and most of the other varieties in Saudi Arabia, including
Najdi, in many phonological and morphological features. The absence
of the affrication of /k/ and /g/ is one of the phonological features
that distinguish Urban Hijazi from the Najdi dialect.
5. Affrication in Najdi
In the central Najdi dialect, /k/ and /g/ are usually realised as [ts]
and [dz] most of the time in the environment of front vowels. The
affrication of /k/ and /g/ to [ts] and [dz], respectively, was recognised
and discussed by early Arab grammarians such as Sibawaih, Ibn-Jinni
and Ibn Yaʿish and referred to as Kaskasah. Within contemporary
western Linguistic tradition it was discussed by many linguists.
Johnstone (1963) analysed the affrication of /k/ and /g/ as it is real-
ized in the Arabic dialects of the Arabian Peninsula. Because the
affricated variant [ts] occurred consistently in the 2nd fem sing suffix
form /k/, Jonhstone did not consider it a variant of (k) in this posi-
tion. In his classification of the Najdi sub dialects both inside and
outside Arabia, Ingham (1982) uses affrication of /k/ and /g/ to dis-
tinguish between the inner Najdi dialects, which have [ts] and [dz]
and the peripheral ones, which have [tʃ] and [dʒ]. Prochazka (1988)
discusses the treatment of /k/ and /g/ in different dialects and he
maintains that in all Najdi dialects /k/ and /g/ are affricated to [ts]
and [dz], respectively. In the examples he cites, affricated [ts] occurs

when /k/ is in the stem as well as when it occurs in the suffixed pro-
noun. Holes (1991) investigates the phenomenon of affrication of the
velar stops in contemporary Arabic dialects. He attempts to explain
the origin of the affricated variants of /k/ and /g/ in the different
dialects by proposing different stages in their historical development.
According to Holes in Bedouin dialects the affrication of /k/ and /g/
as [ts] and [dz] is the last stage in a long process of fronting that
extended over many centuries (Holes 1990:671).
The following examples, taken from my data, illustrate the various
processes of the affrication of [k] and [g] (IPA symbols are used
throughout)
(a) [k] in the stem
tse:f < ke:f how
tsin < kin as if
mitsa:n < mika:n place(n)
ba:tsir < ba:kir tomorrow
tsiðejta < kiðejta like this
jabtsi < jabki he cries/he is crying
iltsibi:rah < ilkibi:ra the big one (fem.)
jatswu:n < jakwu:n they(masc.) iron/ they are ironing
(b) [k] in the 2nd person feminine suffix /-k/:

ummits < ummik your mother
ð͎alamna:ts < ð͎alamna:ts we wronged you
ʕindits < ʕindik with you
(c) Affrication of [g]:

ṭiri:dz < ṭiri:g road
badzi:n < ba:gi:n the remaining ones
ildza:blah < ilga:blah tomorrow
tiwa:dzi < tiwa:gi hats
ra:dzdi:n < ra:gdi:n asleep
ṭildzat < ṭilgat she was divorced
Because affrication of the stop consonants [k] and [g] in the stem
differ (in ways that will be explained presently) from affrication of
[k] in the suffix form, in the discussion below these features are dis-
cussed separately.
208 aziza al-essa
6. Methodology
Data for this research were collected through sociolinguistic inter-

views with a sample of 61 Najdi male and female speakers who were
born in Hijaz, or emigrated from their cities of origin in Najd at an
early age, not later than their late teens. The speakers were inter-
viewed for 30-60 minutes in their homes most of the time or in their
offices. I conducted the interviews with 50 male and female speakers,
while the remaining 11 speakers were interviewed by my male and
female assistants. For the analysis of the second person feminine
suffix, out of the 61 speakers interviewed for this study I only calcu-
lated the frequency for the 51 speakers who were interviewed by a
female, since affrication of [k] in the suffix form only occurs in items
which address a female speaker.
The researcher and her assistants belong to the Jeddan Najdi com-
munity, and, therefore, closely match their subjects ethnically and
linguistically. Since the modifications detected in the informants’
speech occur in the presence of the speakers’ compatriots, so to
speak, it may be possible to claim that these modifications represent
long term changes (i.e genuine linguistic changes), rather than tem-
porary short-term accommodation (cf. Trudgill 1986).
The affricated variants were examined in relation to three social
variables: age, gender and contact. The sample was classified into 4
age groups that represent three generations of male and female Najdi
speakers. The speakers were classified into two groups according to
the level of contact: low contact speakers and mid to high contact
speakers. Four criteria were used to determine the level of contact:
– formal relationships at school and at work.
– involvement in neighbourhood affairs.
– close friendships with Urban Hijazi locals.
– kinship and intermarriage in the family.
The informants were assigned one point for each criterion they ful-
filled. An index score, ranging between 1 (low) and 4 (high) was used
to determine the degree of contact for each speaker. A low contact
speaker would score 1 meeting the first criterion only. A mid to high
contact speaker, on the other hand, would score from 2 to four. The
data were subjected to statistical tests using SPSS 14.
7. Results and Discussion
7.1. (k) and (g) in the Stem

The data obtained from the speakers in this study show that affrica-
tion of stem /k/ and /g/ is becoming obsolete in the speech of Najdi
speakers in Hijaz. The data presented in Tables 1 and 2 clearly show
that the rate of use of stem [ts] and [dz] is extremely low, and is
largely confined to middle aged and older speakers.
Table 1. Use of Stem [ts] and [dz]
Variant % rate of occurrence No of tokens
[ts] 7 49/668
[dz] 9 19/217
Table 2. Use of stem [ts] and [dz] by age
Age Group % [ts] (N) % [dz] (N)

(Over 55) 21 (172) 8 (76)
(39-55) 1 (137) 0 (39)
(25-38) 7 (150) 0 (40)
(10-24) 0 (209) 0 (62)
Total 49/668 19/217
ANOVA=2.439, p = 0.074 ANOVA=1.983, p = 0.127
Only four speakers of the 61 interviewed for this study used stem
[ts]. Three of these speakers belong to the low contact group and one
speaker to the mid-high contact group. Speakers 6 and speaker 17
contributed only three tokens, 46 tokens, however, were obtained
from two old low contact speakers who were also the only ones who
contributed the 19 tokens obtained for [dz]. I examined the variation
in the use of the affricated variants in the speech of these two speak-
ers who happened to be a husband and wife, and found it to be
related to their limited pattern of socialization. This couple belong
to the low contact group. The woman is 65 years old; she has the
least contact of all speakers in this study. Although she came to Hijaz
at the age of 14, she has had very limited contact with the locals
whom she might run into only if she needs to go to the market. Her
210 aziza al-essa
socialisation is limited to the confines of her home and her immedi-

ate family. On the other hand, her husband, who is a retired judge,
has a very limited social network. He convenes a ‘majles’ (social gath-
ering) in his house every afternoon where relatives or acquaintances
may attend. His majles is rarely frequented by urban Hijazi locals.
The differences among speakers in the use of [ts] and [dz] by age
are not statistically significant according to the ANOVA tests (as
shown in Table 2).
Turning to the effect of contact, Table (3) below shows the corre-
lation between the use of the affricated variants and the level of
contact. Unsurprisingly, the use of [ts] and [dz] are found to be
inversely correlated with the level of contact in that the speakers with
the highest degree of contact with urban Hijazis are the ones who
use the traditional affricated variants least frequently, and vice versa.
The statistics given in the Table indicate that the differences among
speakers by the level of contact is significant in the case of [ts], but
not in the case of [dz].
Table 3. Use of stem [ts] and [dz] by contact
Contact %[ts] (N) %[dz] (N)
Low 14 (340) 15 (124)

Mid-high 1 (328) 0 (93)
t-test = 2.218, p = 0.035 t-test = 1.435, p = 0.163
With respect to the effect of gender, the differences between the two
sexes in the use of stem [ts] and [dz] is shown in Table 4. Although
the data show that the female speakers use the affricated variants
more than male speakers, this difference is not statistically significant
according to the results of t-tests given in the Table.
Table 4. Use of stem [ts] and [dz] by gender
% [ts] (N) % [dz] (N)

Male 7 (294) 5 (118)
Female 8 (374) 13 (99)
t-test = 0.638, p = 0.526 t-test = 0.032, p = 0.975
The disappearance of stem [ts] and [dz] can be ascribed to “the

greater awareness attached to overtly stigmatized forms” (Trudgill
1986: 11). Najdis in Hijaz are aware of the saliency of the variants
[dz] and [ts] because they are phonetically radically different from
the urban Hijazi [k] and [g]. They are also aware of the social stigma
associated with this highly ‘marked’ feature that is associated with
rural or Bedouin population. So the salient “localised” variants [ts]
and [dz] are abandoned in favour of the ‘unmarked’ variants [g] and
[k]. A pilot study conducted on a group of Najdi speakers living in
Riyadh indicates a similar decline in the use of these variants though
less pervasively.
7.2 Clitic (-k)

In Najdi Arabic gender in the second person is indicated by the suf-
fixes [-ik] for the masculine and [-its] for the feminine. In Hijazi, the
forms used vary according to the phonological environment: in post-
consonantal environments [-ak] is the masculine form, and [-ik] is
the feminine form; in the environment following a vowel, the forms
are [k] for the masculine, and [ki] for the feminine. The traditional
forms in Najdi are listed under (d) and those in Hijazi are listed
under (e). Examples comparing the forms used in both dialects are
under (f).
(d) Traditional Najdi forms
masc. -ik
fem. -its
(e) Traditional Hijazi forms
– following consonants masc. –ak
fem. –ik
– following vowels masc. –k
fem. –ki
(f) Examples:
Following consonants: ʃa:f “to see”
Najdi: masc. ʃa:fik Hijazi: masc. ʃa:fak
fem. ʃa:fits fem: ʃa:fik
Following vowels: xalla “to leave/maintain/let be”

Najdi: masc. xallik Hijazi: masc. xallak
fem. xallits fem. xalki
As illustrated above, there is a considerable complexity involved in
moving from a Najdi system to a Hijazi system. We notice, firstly,
that in the Hijazi system (the target variety) the phonetic form of the
212 aziza al-essa
suffix is conditioned by the preceding sound, whereas no such con-

ditioning operates in the Najdi system. Secondly, in the environment
following a consonant, the Najdi masculine form is identical to the
Hijazi feminine form. It is worth recalling in this context that no
such complexity is present in the case of Hijazi versus Najdi forms
when [k] occurs in the stem; in this case, the difference is purely
phonetic and involves straightforward substitution only: [k] for [ts].
We can expect, therefore, that the two features, stem /k/ and clitic
/k/, are likely to show different patterns in the contact situation
under study. Put simply, given the relative complexity involved in
accommodating to the Hijazi clitic /k/ form, the speakers would be
less ‘successful’ in this case than they would be in the case of stem
/k/. Similarly, one would expect that in a process of second dialect
acquisition or dialect convergence, interdialectal forms, which do not
exactly match the target features, are likely to be used (cf. Chamber
1992, Trudgill 1986). Let us then see what the Najdi speakers do in
accommodating to the Hijazi pattern.
The data show that Najdi speakers used four variants to mark the
feminine gender in the second person: [-ts]2 [-ik] [-ki] and [-k]. They
used [ik] most of the time post-consonantly, and thus matching the
UH in this environment. The examples in g-j below illustrate the
usages of these variants to mark the feminine.
(g) [ik] post-consonantally:
maʕ-ik with you (fem.)
ʔagu:l-ik I tell you (fem.)
kta:b-ik your book (fem.)
But a number of speakers used [k] post-vocalically. The final vowel
is lengthened and [k] is attached, as illustrated in (h):
2
7 female speakers produced the second person feminine suffix as a fricative [-s]
along with [-ts]. Detailed and reliable studies of the dialect in general (Ingham 1994)
and affrication in Central Najdi dialects in particular describe this variant as an
affricate: [-ts] (Johnstone 1963). To account for this, sound change from an affricate
[ts] to fricative [s], I have examined the preceding environment to check whether
this phonetic change is phonologically conditioned. I have found that both variants
occur with the same sets of consonants and vowels and that some speakers would use
both forms to mark the feminine gender in the same word, e.g. [ummis] and
[ummits] ‘your mother’. This process of simplification (lenition) seems to be pho-
netically motivated. It can be argued that it is easier for the speaker to produce a [s]
than the phonetically more complex [ts]. Both phonetic variants are described as [ts]
for the purpose of this paper.
(h) [k] post-vocalically:

jiza:-k may you be rewarded (fem.)
yiʕṭi:-k he gives you (fem.)
ʔubu:-k your father (fem.)
fi:-k in you (fem.)
The second form which Najdi speakers used to indicate the feminine
gender is [-ki]. However, they do not observe the morphophonemic
rule of the Urban Hijazi dialect which restricts its use to words which
end in vowels. They used [-ki] with words ending in consonants as
well as vowels:
(i) [ki] post-vocalically:
yajza:-ki may you (fem.) be rewarded
fi:-ki in you (fem.)
ʔubu:ki your father (fem.)
(j) [ki] post-consonantally:
wiʃlo:n-ki how are you (fem.)
ʔakallim-ki I speak to you (fem.)
dʒamb-ki beside you (fem.)
The inter-dialectal gender morphophonemics in the second person
singular as used by the Najdi speakers in Hijaz and the traditional
UH forms are summarized schematically below:
Najdi Dialect in Hijaz Urban Hijazi Dialect
2nd per masc sg [-ik] [-ak]
2nd pers fem sg [-its], [-ki]/C+V, [ik]/C+V [ik]/C-, [ki]/V-
The use of these variants is discussed in the following sections.
7.2.1. Accommodation to the urban Hijazi Dialect

Overall, the use of the affricated variants has decreased considerably.
However, compared to the use of [ts] as a stem consonant, the use
of [ts] in the clitic form shows a higher frequency, as shown in Figure
1 below.
To mark the feminine gender in the second person, they use a
range of variants. Although the majority of Najdi speakers who were
interviewed for this research replaced the 2nd person singular femi-
nine suffix [ts] with [k], and thus accommodated to the Hijazi sound,
they nonetheless did not consistently observe the phonological condi-
tioning factors for the use of [ik] versus [ki] in the feminine clitic.
In other words, all three variants occurred in all environments.
Accommodation to the Hijazi form goes through a process of pho-
214 aziza al-essa
Figure 1. Use of affricated variants of /k/ and /g/
netic and phonological approximations; it is perfectly possible to

attribute the use of the intermediate forms to some sort of “imperfect
accommodation” (cf. Trudgill 1986: 62).
To account for the maintenance of [-ts] and the presence of the
intermediate forms one has to recognize the morphosyntactic func-
tion performed by the suffix [-ts], which marks the feminine gender
in the second person. In the following sections I will examine the
use of [ts] and the interdialectal variants, and the social variables of
age, gender and contact.
7.2.2. The Use of the Variants by Age

Figure (2) illustrates the distribution of post-consonantal variants of
the 2nd p. f. suffix across the age groups.
The zigzag line in Figure (2) indicates an implicational relationship
between the use of [ts] and the intermediate form C\-[ki]. In each
age group the increase in the use of [-ts] is mirrored by a decrease
in the use of C\-[ki] and vice versa. The use of [-ki] to mark the
feminine gender in the first generation is relatively low because [ts]
is still in use in this generation, However, in the second generation
(39-54) the sharp decrease in the use of [ts] is compensated for by
an increase in the use of the intermediate form C\-[ki] to mark the
feminine gender along with the target variant [ik].This contrastive
pattern continues in the other age groups. On the other hand, the
Figure 2. Distribution of the 2nd p. fem. suffix post-consonantal variants by age
target variant [-ik] is steadily rising in all age groups. Nevertheless,

the acquisition of the target form even in the youngest generation,
who were born and raised in Hijaz, is not complete. Trudgill (1986:
38) maintains that complex phonological contrasts and allophonic
conditioning are sometimes not acquired at all unless speakers have
been exposed to them in the speech of their parents.
As illustrated in Figure (3) below, in post-vocalic environment,
three variants are used.
Figure (3) shows that the regional variant V\-[ts] and the target
variant V\-[ki] are interrelated in the same contrastive relationship
as in the case of post-consonantal -its and -ki .The increase in the
use of one variant is mirrored by a decrease in the use of the other.
The variant [-ki] is taking over the function of feminine gender mar-
king in the post-vocalic environment from the traditional variant
[-ts]. The figure also shows that there are innovative speakers from
all age groups who use the variant [-k], which is a new form to both
dialects.
7.2.3. The Effect of Contact

Figure (4) below shows that in the case of the high contact group
there is a decrease in the use of the traditional variant [ts] and an
increase in the use of the target form C\-[ik]. This correlation between
these two variants and the level of contact is statistically significant
216 aziza al-essa
Figure 3. Distribution of the 2nd p. fem. post-vocalic suffix variants by age
as shown by the use of t-test at significance level 5% (Table 5).

Though the mid-high contact speakers use less of the intermediate
and incorrect variant C\-[ki] than the low contact group, this differ-
ence is not statistically significant using the t-test.
Figure 4. The use of the 2nd p. fem. suffix post-consonantal variants by contact
Table 5. Results of the t-test of the significance in the difference among speakers in
their use of -ts ,-ik ,and –ki according to the level of contact
t-value p =
C\-[ts] 2.320 0.025
C\-[ik] 3.433 0.001
C\-[ki] 1.545 0.129
As for the post vocalic variants, Figure (5) below shows that the high
contact group show ‘better’ degree of approximation to the Hijazi
system since they use less of the traditional variant V\-[ts] and more
of V\-ki than the low contact group. T-test shows that the difference
among speakers in the use of V\-ki by contact is not statistically
significant
(p = 0.191). As for the intermediate form VV\-k, its use is very
small in both groups.
7.2.4. The Effect of Gender

Female speakers fare better than male speakers in their accommoda-
tion to the UH variety. They use less of the ‘marked’ variant [ts] than
the male speakers. They show better accommodation by using more
of the target variant C\-[ik] and less of the intermediate form C\-ki
(Figure 6). T-test shows that the difference in the use of C\-ki between
Figure 5. The use of the 2nd p. fem. suffix post-vocalic variants by contact
218 aziza al-essa
Figure 6. Use of post-consonantal variants by gender
men and women is statistically significant (Table 6). Women commit

fewer mistakes in their approximation to the Urban Variety.
The observed pattern of gender differentiation may be explained
in terms of the principle of local density (Bloomfield 1933). Labov
summarizes the principle of local density as follows: “each act of
communication between speakers is accompanied by a transfer of
linguistic influence that makes their speech patterns more alike”
(Labov 1990: 207). The use of the feminine suffix seems to be affected
by the configuration of the social interaction between men and
women in the Najdi community. In a traditional society like the
Najdi community social interaction between men and women out-
side the family sphere is not allowed. Najdi men have limited access
to contexts where they would be involved in face-to-face interaction
with urban Hijazi women. We argue that the urban Hijazi suffix –ik
is habituated in the speech of Najdi female speakers with the recur-
rent verbal exchanges in their face to- face- interaction with urban
Hijazi women. On the other hand, since Najdi men are less likely to
be involved in frequent face-to face verbal exchanges with urban
Hijazi women, the habituation of the urban Hijazi variant in their
speech takes longer and depends on the rate of the occurrence of –ik
in the speech of their mothers\caregivers.
Table 6. Use of post-consonantal variants by gender
C\-[ts] % C\-[ik] % C\-[ki] %

Male 28 43 29
Female 19 70 11
t-test=0.384, p = 0.703 t-test=-1.832, p = 0.073 t-test=2.424, p = 0.019
Figure (7) below shows that in the postvocalic environment men use
more of the target variant V\-ki than women; however this difference
is not statistically significant (P< P<0.975). The figure also indicates
that women are better at accommodating to the urban Hijazi variety
by using less of the traditional variant [ts] and they are more innova-
tive by using the new form –k.
7.2.5. VV\ -[k]

It is noticeable that the intermediate form VV\[-k] is only used by
women in this sample.
In this section I will attempt an explanation for the emergence of
the intermediate form VV\-[k]. There are indications in the data that
the use of the intermediate variant VV\ –k may not be the result of
the outcome of the contact between the Najdi and the urban Hijazi
speakers. Rather, it might be the outcome of the process of levelling
affecting the Najdi dialect in the urban centres of the Najed region.
Figure 7. Use of post-vocalic variants by gender

220 aziza al-essa
This assumption is based on the data obtained from 13 female spea-

kers (25% of the sample) who used this innovative form. It is found
that the speakers who produced the highest number of tokens with
–k are speakers who were born and raised in Riyadh. This association
between the higher use of postvocalic [–k] and speakers with connec-
tion to the city of Riyadh points to the possibility that this variant
is the product of another levelling process which originated in
Riyadh. It is my argument that the levelling process of the Najdi
dialect in the urban centres in the region of Najd is different from
the levelling of the Najdi dialect spoken in Hijaz. In other words, if
the suffix [-ki] is a viable variant which is accessible to Najdi speakers
who have face to face interaction with Hijazi locals in Hijaz to replace
the Najdi variant [-ts], it is not available to Najdis living in Najd.
Instead, the levelling of the Najdi dialect in the urban centres of Najd
will operate as a process of deaffrication, and the resulting forms
would be C\-ik and V:\-k. The diffusion of this new variant in the
speech of other speakers in the Najdi community in Hijaz may be
attributed to contact with those speakers who use this variant.
Conclusion
The data presented in this article show that the de-affrication of [ts]
and [dz] in Najdi is sensitive to the morphophonemics of the dialect.
The second person feminine singular suffix [-ts] shows a higher fre-
quency of use and considerable complexity in the range of variance
than stem [ts] and [dz] .The data show that Najdi speakers are more
successful in substituting stem [ts] by [k] and stem [dz] by [g] which
is a fairly simple phonetic process. This difference in the behaviour
of stem [ts] and the second person feminine suffix [-ts], given that
they are phonetically identical and involve identical phonetic pro-
cesses, can be explained in terms of the mophosyntactic function of
[-ts], namely that it carries gender information. To maintain gender
distinction and achieve maximal comprehension, the speakers who
have abandoned [ts] to mark the feminine gender extend the use of
the Urban Hijazi variant [-ki] to both consonant and vowel final
words. Another new form to both dialects emerges as a minority of
speakers use the suffix [-k] post-vocalically and therefore risk the
neutralization of gender in the second singular form. This article also
shows that there is a correlation between contact with Urban Hijazi
locals and the de-affrication of [ts] and [dz] and the use of other
variants to mark the feminine gender in the second person. The inter-
action between the social variables of contact and gender is mani-
fested in the female speakers’ higher level of approximation to the
urban Hijazi suffix forms compared to male speakers. We argued
that this pattern of gender differentiation may be the result of the
traditional configuration of the social interaction between men and
women in the community.
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“big bright lights” versus “green and pleasant land” 223
“BIG BRIGHT LIGHTS” VERSUS “GREEN AND PLEASANT

LAND”?: THE UNHELPFUL DICHOTOMY OF ‘URBAN’
VERSUS ‘RURAL’ IN DIALECTOLOGY
David Britain
1. Introduction
In the 1960s, there was an ‘urban turn’ in dialectology.1 It began in

the very important sociolinguistic studies carried out in Anglophone
western cities, but soon spread to encompass urban communities
outside English-speaking countries, both in developed and develop-
ing countries. Today ‘urban dialectology’ using sociolinguistic meth-
odologies is, by some distance, the dominant and most influential
approach to analysing contemporary language variation and
change.
The ‘urban turn’ began, despite a few smaller earlier works in
social dialectology (on which more later), with the publication of The
Social Stratification of English in New York City by William Labov
in 1966, in which he lays out not just his proposals for a dialectology
of urban centres, but also a number of key theoretical constructs in
sociolinguistics which have survived to this day—the linguistic varia-
ble, the speech community, inherent variability, style-shifting, change
from above and below—critiqued and adapted over time by scholars
working on different communities and within different sociological
paradigms, but nevertheless still some of the principal concepts of
our discipline today. So influential was Labov’s work in shaping the
emerging field that many see ‘sociolinguistics’ as being the study of
1
This chapter has developed from ideas first presented, rather sketchily and inco-
herently, it has to be admitted, at the “Conference on the Evolution of Arabic Urban
Vernaculars: the effects of Migration and Social Change” in Aix-en-Provence in
2004, where I first met Clive. It was his encouragement at that meeting that per-
suaded me to think about these ideas further, and so I am honoured to have the
opportunity to present them to him in a hopefully somewhat better developed form
in this Festschrift to celebrate his 60th birthday. Thanks also to Enam Al-Wer and
Rudolf de Jong, both for their invitation to contribute and for their patience, and to
David Hornsby for some vital help along the way.
224 david britain
dialect variation and change in social contexts (see, for example, the
coverage of the subject in Chambers’ (2003) Sociolinguistic Theory
and Hudson’s (1996) Sociolinguistics). And because most of the early
influential sociolinguistic work was carried out in cities—New York,
Detroit, Montreal, Panama City, Norwich, etc, urban settings almost
became synonymous with studies of variation and change, to the
extent that variationist methods—sampling from right across the
resident community, assumptions of inherent variability, use of the
linguistic variable as an analytical construct) are, wherever they are
conducted, often labelled “urban dialectology” or ‘urban socio-
linguistics’.
But what is “urban” about variationist sociolinguistics? Can it only
be conducted in urban areas? In this paper, I want to argue that there
is nothing at all that is essentially urban about variationist social
dialectology. I will claim not only that its theoretical assumptions,
methodological approaches and analytical techniques can all be
applied successfully to rural areas, but also that there is no a priori
reason why we would expect to find patterns of variation and change
in rural areas to fundamentally differ from those in urban areas.
More important, I will argue (following Trudgill 1997, 2002), is the
nature of dialect contact and isolation (wherever that may occur, in
urban or rural settings), which, in combination with the difference
(that lies at the heart of dialect contact approaches to variation and
change) between child and adult language acquisition, is the crucial
factor in determining distinct typologies of linguistic change.
Important to the argument here is the fact that contact is blind to
urban or rural location—it may happen more often and more inten-
sively in urban areas but is noṯ restricted to such areas.
I begin by looking at the reasons why dialectology, which once
shunned cities altogether, abandoned rural areas and turned to exa-
mine urban centres. Then, by drawing on the work of urban and
rural geographers, I show that while urban and rural areas certainly
trigger very distinct images and attitudes in our minds, there are in
fact no absolute differences between them—there are no causal social
processes which affect urban areas but not rural, or vice versa. Indeed
such geographers quite openly admit that ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ are
extremely difficult terms to define robustly. I end by exemplifying
the fact that one factor which is crucial in determining variation and
change—dialect contact—although often associated with research in
cities—produces typologically the same outcomes in both urban and
rural locales, suggesting that contact dialectologists should look out-

side the city as well as within it, since rural areas too, far from being
homogeneous and backward, can undergo the same sorts of socio-
linguistically complex processes as our largest and most cosmopoli-
tan cities.
2. Throwing the Rural Baby Out with the Traditional

Dialectological Bathwater: The Urban Turn in Studies of
Language Variation and Change
The urban turn in sociolinguistic dialectology partly had its roots in

a reappraisal of traditional dialectology. Traditional dialectology
largely had a historicist (rather than geographical) agenda to examine
“the oldest kind of traditional vernacular… which would demon-
strate the continuity and historical development of the language and
also serve as a historical baseline against which future studies could
be measured” (Orton, Sanderson and Widdowson 1978). Many (but
not all, e.g. Ellis 1889) traditional dialectological studies before the
arrival of the Labovian sociolinguistic enterprise tended to concen-
trate on rural areas because it was felt that there they would be more
likely to find the traditional vernacular. At the same time, though,
they also tended to restrict their investigations to examining older
males, again in the hunt for the historically most early dialect forms.
Labov argued very strongly that social dialectology owed much to
the detailed work of the dialect geographers, but that in some respects
it had to part company (see, for example, Labov 2006: 22):
– Traditional dialectology tended to use fairly rigid questionnaires,
with an output from the informants of isolated words or short
phrases in response to fieldworker questions; social dialectology
recognised the importance of rapid and continuous speech.
– Because recording equipment was either non-existent or tended
to be bulky, expensive and, especially to the types of informant
whose voice was sought, off-putting, traditional dialectological
surveys tended to rely on the ability of fieldworkers to remember
and instantly transcribe into IPA the realisations of words pro-
duced by the informants, and without the back-up of recordings
to check reliability later; social dialectology has always been reliant
on recordings of continuous speech which can be checked many
times and be subjected both to reliability tests across a number of
226 david britain
analysts and to acoustic analysis. Trudgill (1983: 35-41), for exam-

ple, points to a number of examples of fieldworker inaccuracies in
the Norfolk localities of the Survey of English Dialects (SED) and
Trudgill, Gordon and Lewis (1998: 39) and Trudgill (2004: 47)
argue that sometimes the transcriptions in the SED are simply not
detailed enough to be helpful.
– Traditional dialectology was not able to systematically analyse
intra-speaker variability, whereas such variability has, from the
start of social dialectology, to the present, played a very important
role in our theorisation of the mechanisms of change and the
meaning of variation in contemporary speech communities (Labov
1966, Bell 1984, Coupland 2007).
– Because the fieldwork for traditional dialectological surveys was
so time-consuming, many surveys used a large number of field-
workers and it was often difficult to ensure each one was working
to the same script. Britain (1991), for example, found evidence in
the SED that different fieldworkers in Eastern England had tran-
scribed the vowel continuum between [ʊ] and [ʌ] for vowels in the
STRUT lexical class (Wells 1982) differently, triggering dialectolo-
gists using the data later to classify the variation in that part of the
country incorrectly (see also Ryfa, forthcoming).
– Traditional dialectology tended to place more importance on geo-
graphical coverage than on depth within a particular locality—
very often localities are represented by just one (old rural male)
person who may or may not be representative of that section of
his community in general. Although by no means fully representa-
tive, sociolinguistic dialectology has seen it as imperative, if we
wish to understand more about the social locus of linguistic
change, to draw its informants from a much broader cross-section
of the population2.
So social dialectology made some rather radical advances, and rather

suddenly, relative to traditional approaches, and at the same time as
addressing these methodological issues, it also, for the most part,
shifted its attention from rural areas to urban areas.
2
Usually, however, social dialectological studies of individual speech communi-
ties tend to exclude the under-16s and very old people, with the latter being largely
ignored and the former subject to specific studies looking at children or adolescents
in isolation from the adults in their communities.
There were other reasons for the urban turn, though. The social
sciences more generally at the time were engulfed in the quantitative
revolution that was facilitated by new waves of technological advan-
cements, making mass statistical processing of data much more
straightforward3. These developments coincided with a growing poli-
ticisation of social problems centred around ethnicity, gender and
disadvantage which were at their most visible and pressing in large
multicultural urban centres. Indeed the founders of sociolinguistics
all directly engaged with these concerns as they applied to language:
Labov in his (ongoing) educational work on behalf of speakers of
AAVE; Fishman in his work counteracting misunderstandings about
multilingualism and Hymes in his work on cross-cultural (mis)
communication.
And, undoubtedly, urban centres were seen as the places where
one could gain access to the most fluid and heterogeneous commu-
nities, and therefore to tackle the issue of the social embedding of
linguistic change ‘where it’s all happening’—Miller (2007: 1, her
emphasis), for example, in her very first words in the very first chap-
ter of a book she co-edited, states that “Cities are “par excellence”
places of contact and heterogeneity”. In the popular imagination,
cities were sites of diversity, conflict, contact, complexity, variation,
change. Rural areas, by contrast, are portrayed as the insular, the
isolated, the static, and in some parts of the West as idylls of peace,
security and tranquillity. Since the early days of the subject, the vast
bulk of variationist sociolinguistic work has been restricted to the
investigation of urban areas, despite the salience of the small amounts
of rural work (e.g. that by Walt Wolfram, Natalie Schilling-Estes and
their teams investigating rural communities of the eastern coast of
North Carolina and Maryland (e.g. Schilling-Estes and Wolfram
1999, Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1995, Wolfram 2002); the work
of Tagliamonte and her teams investigating relatively isolated British
communities in order to establish connections between British and
North American varieties (e.g. Jones and Tagliamonte 2004, Taglia-
monte and Smith 2002, 2005; Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence
2005a, 2005b); as well as my own work in the British Fens; see also
3
I have written about the parallel developments of sociolinguistic dialectology,
sociology and human geography elsewhere (see Britain 2002, 2004, in press a, in
press b).
228 david britain
Jones 1998, Kingston 2000, Marshall 2004; Amos, forthcoming;

Piercy, forthcoming).
3. Urban and Rural in Social Dialectology
The dominance of urban areas in the application of variationist

method is intriguing for at least a couple of reasons. Firstly, social
dialectological studies of cities tend not to open the urban area up
for a close investigation of its internal geographical diversity, and
secondly, when urban dialectological studies are probed in more
detail, there is often actually relatively little social diversity examined
(for perfectly reasonable practical methodological reasons), certainly
no more than one could comfortably find in rural areas in the same
country.
Urban social dialectology, with a few exceptions, has, until recently
and like many of its counterparts in the social sciences in the 1960s
and 1970s, often (to cite the human geographer Doreen Massey)
“continued to function, by and large, as though the world operated,
and society existed, on the head of a pin, in a spaceless, geographi-
cally undifferentiated world’ (Massey 1984: 4). Since other social
factors have perhaps seemed more pressing than geography—class,
ethnicity, gender—and since random sampling has often been used
(and consequently there has been a desire to hold all other external
factors constant to allow for the careful control and analysis of the
chosen variable social factors), spatial variation within the city has
been largely ignored. Labov’s (1966) study of “New York City”, for
example, was, of course, a study of just the Lower East Side of NYC
and, even then, only a part of it (Labov 2006: 104). So space was
carefully controlled out of the study, and spatial variation within the
neighbourhood (let alone within the city) itself not examined. But
this is typical of variationist research in general. Whilst the resear-
chers themselves are usually honest in the text that data come from
just one (or perhaps two) restricted parts of large city X, those studies
are often then referred to as studies of X, rather than of very small
subsections of X.
A few early studies did, however, (albeit briefly) consider intra-
urban diversity. Trudgill’s 1974 study of Norwich random-sampled
from five different parts of the city since doing so ‘opens up the
possibility of investigating geographical variation’ (1974: 22). He
addressed geographical variation within the city specifically in the

analysis of (ō) (the reflexes of Middle English /ō/ in words such as
‘boat’ and ‘goat’), showing that in the suburb with areas of newest
housing—Lakenham—peripheral to the urban centre, more
diphthongs were found than in other suburbs, when social class was
held constant. And the important work of James and Lesley Milroy
(e.g. L Milroy 1987, J Milroy 1992) in urban Belfast—examining three
different sub-communities of the city—demonstrated that the diffe-
rential effects of socio-economic factors such as unemployment levels
and gendered socialisation and working patterns on the three city
locales led to distinct patterns of sociolinguistic variation and change
in each.
It is dialectologists of the Arab world who have tended to be most
sensitive to the internal sociolinguistic geographies of cities. As Miller
(2007) makes clear, large-scale urbanization in Arabic-speaking
countries has been recent and dramatic. Its recency has enabled dia-
lectologists not just to carefully plot the development of koineised
new urban varieties (e.g. Al-Wer 2003, 2007), but also to examine
urbanization and migration in the context of social and geographical
differentiation within the city itself (e.g. Messaoudi 2001, El Himer
2001, Ismail 2007).
In the preamble to the Social Stratification of English in New York
City –THE key text of early variationism—Labov (1966, 2006)
contrasted his earlier work on largely rural Martha’s Vineyard (Labov
1963/1972a) with the 1966 research on the Lower East Side of New
York City (NYC), making it clear that the latter represented ‘a much
more complex society’ (Labov 2006: 3), despite the fact that ultima-
tely NYC was distilled down to the variables of age, class, ethnicity
and gender, factors, which, as is made very clear (Labov 1972a: 4-6)
are also some (but not all) of the key pivots of social diversity in
Martha’s Vineyard too. There, in this largely rural community, in
addition to a large population of ethnically English inhabitants, resi-
dents of Portuguese, Native American and other miscellaneous eth-
nicities make up half if not more of the population (Labov 1972a: 6),
even before we take into consideration a small resident population
coming originally from the Mainland and the large numbers of tou-
rists who flock to the island each summer. Furthermore, these popu-
lations are not distributed geographically evenly across the island,
and are, naturally, engaged in a range of economic activities. As the
results of Labov’s analysis demonstrated, the community showed
230 david britain
considerable sociolinguistic diversity with respect to age, location,

occupation, ethnicity, orientation towards the island and desire to
stay or leave (1972a: 22, 25, 26, 30, 32, 39). In terms of social and
linguistic structure, Martha’s Vineyard hardly fits the rural stereotype
of quiet and sleepy pastoralism, or of traditional dialectological
NORMs, as Labov so succinctly showed. By contrasting a highly rural
area with a highly urban one, Labov’s work demonstrated that there
are large-scale social(-linguistic) processes which are perhaps most
obviously and vividly expressed in cities but are not confined politi-
cally, sociologically or epistemologically to an urban context.
4. The Geography of Urban and Rural
Human geographers have, for some time, argued that, although the
terms ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ conjure up very clear and distinct images,
there are no qualitative absolute differences between the two, the two
are very difficult to define, neither demonstrates internal homogene-
ity, yet both can show very remarkable similarities with each other
in some domains. The main argument is that while there may be
tendencies for urban areas to show certain social, economic, geo-
graphical, historical characteristics more frequently/intensively etc
than rural areas, all of these are quantitative tendencies rather than
absolute differences, and are simply triggered by causal processes
which have had spatially uneven consequences, thereby affecting
urban areas more than rural. This has led some of the most highly
regarded sociologists and geographers of our time to be really rather
forthright and unequivocal in their dismissal of rural versus urban
as a distinction of major theoretical importance:
“Today, the social distinctions between city and country have dissol-
ved” (Harris 1983: 101)… [Defending the distinction between urban
and rural on the grounds of convenience—DB] “encourages us to
believe that the term urban might explain something. To the contrary.
…In its spatial sense ‘urban’ adds nothing to our understanding of
proximity and its effects as they vary in intensity over space. This
conclusion offers new support to the emerging consensus that, when
applied to the present, ‘urban’ explains nothing. If the ghost has not
yet been laid, there is now another nail in the coffin (Ibid.: 104)
“It is my contention…that with the development of capitalism, the city
has ceased to be a sociologically significant unit in Western societies
(Saunders 1985: 76)…. There can be no social theory of the city in

contemporary industrial capitalist societies” (Ibid.: 79).
“The development of capitalism has not led to the consolidation of the
institutions of the city, but rather to its eradication as a distinct social
form” (Giddens 1981: 148).
“In everyday usages, terms like ‘city’ and ‘town’ are unproblematic and
convey clear spatial images of built-up areas and hence the form is
intrinsic to the definition….Theoretical analyses of capitalist urbanisa-
tion have shown that there is no material basis for this definition; the
relations and activities found in such areas are not unique to them and
so what seems analytic and necessary in everyday thought is shown to
be synthetic and contingent by theory” (Sayer 1985: 58, emphasis in
original)
“The broad category ‘rural’ is obfuscatory, whether the aim is descrip-
tion or theoretical evaluation, since intra-rural differences can be enor-
mous and rural-urban similarities sharp (Hoggart 1990: 245)…the
designation ‘rural’ is for many researchers merely a symbol of interest
in small settlements or in particular kinds of economic activity: it is
not a statement about unique causal properties (Ibid.: 246)… In effect,
rural researchers have been focussing their attention on the outfield,
with too little appreciation that the same rules of engagement apply in
the penalty box (Ibid.: 246)…I do not mean by this that there are no
differences between (most) rural and urban places, but rather that, in
the main, these are generated by the uneven presence of some known
causal factor X, as opposed to either rurality or urbanity. The obvious
follow-up point is that for theory to progress we should focus on X”
(Ibid.: 251).
While rural and urban sociology and geography have still survived
as robust disciplines of academic enquiry since the theoretical turns
voiced by these statements, they have done so on a more secure foot-
ing, investigating both the causal mechanisms that bring about social
development and change in rural and urban areas, in addition to
studying heterogeneity, difference and otherness within both urban
and rural spheres (e.g. Philo 1992 and the papers in Cloke and Little
1997), highlighting that rural areas, like urban ones, are composed
of heterogeneous communities, of contact, of change, of progress
and of conflict) and the social construction of urbanity and rurality
(e.g. Halfacree 1993, 2003). Furthermore, as Johnston (2000: 877)
suggests, much of this work is now carried out under the somewhat
different banners of political, economic, social and cultural geogra-
phy, recognising both that, on the one hand ‘urban areas changed
232 david britain
their roles within geography: rather than being the focus of attention
per se, they became the contexts within which cultural, economic,
social and political processes and conflicts were played out” (2000:
878), and, on the other, that it is impossible to ‘identify any specific
social process which is peculiar to, or explicable in terms of, the city
[or the countryside—DB] as a spatially bound unit” (Saunders 1985:
76).
So when we deal with the terms urban and rural in dialectology
and sociolinguistics, we do need to be careful not to endow these
terms with the causal powers they clearly don’t have. And while we
might quite reasonably find strong tendencies (e.g. for diffusing lin-
guistic innovations to originate in urban areas; for weaker networks
to be found in heterogeneous and mobile metropolises; for conser-
vative linguistic forces to be most evident in rural areas, we have to
quite simply recognise that these are but tendencies. The sorts of
strong social networks that are often used to justify rural linguistic
conservatism can be present in urban areas—after all, social network
models in sociolinguistics, and especially the role of strong networks
in language and dialect maintenance, largely drew on research in
large urban centres, often drawing from the concept of the urban
village (cf. work by Lesley and Jim Milroy (J Milroy 1992; J Milroy
and L Milroy 1985; L Milroy 1987, 2002a) in urban Belfast, with
earlier studies of network-like groups or communities of practice
carried out by Cheshire (1984) (urban Reading), by Labov on AAVE-
speaking gangs in urban New York City (Labov 1972b) and Eckert
on high-school students in urban Detroit (Eckert 2000)).
It has been widely recognised that rural areas in many Northern
European and North American countries have been expanding
demographically at the expense of (esp. large metropolitan) urban
areas, as a result of counterurbanisation—the move of (esp. middle
class) residents out of metropolitan cities and into the countryside
well beyond suburbia (Champion 1989, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2005,
Fielding 1982, Halfacree 1994, Kontuly 1998). One linguistic correlate
of this counterurbanisation is that rural areas can adopt incoming
innovations more quickly than neighbouring urban areas in the same
region. One example can be seen in Figure 1, comparing three loca-
tions—a village, Glemsford, a town, Sudbury and a city, Ipswich, all
in the English county of Suffolk (Kingston 2000, Spurling 2004). The
use of 3rd person present-tense singular zero is a longstanding dialect
norm of Eastern England (Trudgill 1974, 1998), but in Suffolk is
80
70
60
% use of 3rd person zero
50
40
30
20
10
0
Old Young
Age
Glemsford Sudbury Ipswich
Figure 1. Attrition of 3rd person present tense zero in 3 Suffolk locations: Glemsford
(village); Sudbury (town), Ipswich (city) (based on Kingston 2000 and Spurling
2004).
undergoing attrition in favour of the form used by standard and

non-standard speakers alike in the more urbanised south-east of
England, marking with –s. But as the Figure shows, this decline is
least marked in the most urban location, a consequence of a number
of counterurbanisation and urban planning measures since the 1960s:
rural gentrification, middle class flight from London to the
countryside, and urban overspill developments in small rural towns,
such as Sudbury. Rural areas, given the right social conditions, can
undergo linguistic change more rapidly than urban areas just as
urban areas can, again given the right circumstances, be sites of rela-
tive linguistic conservatism. It is interesting to note that, observing
the geographical scope both of widespread dialect levelling and the
vigorous diffusion (apparently from London) of a number of prima-
234 david britain
rily consonantal innovations in England, one of the locations that

has been the most resistant to the adoption of the new diffused or
levelled forms is urban Liverpool, demographically England’s 4th
largest city, but with a population that has halved since 19314. Recent
work by Watson (e.g. 2006) has highlighted the divergent nature of
many of the linguistic changes currently underway in this large and
important city of northern England (see also Britain 2009), changes
that do not appear to be spreading far beyond the city’s core sphere
of influence.
5. The Urban Fetish
It has to be admitted that this crucial point—that the important

sociolinguistic processes are at their most visible and extreme in
urban areas, possibly, but are not exclusive to them—has sometimes
not been picked up, resulting in an urban fetishism that still pervades
much of the discipline. Worryingly, I feel, in the context of the very
clear stance taken by contemporary human geographers, some recent
work in geographically-oriented dialectology has proceeded either to
endow great powers to the urban, or to project it as engendering a
special sort of process—‘linguistic urbanisation’—through which dis-
tinctive social and therefore linguistic processes may unfurl, as if
there are sociolinguistic processes that are restricted to contexts of
urbanization or urban centres. The most forceful arguments in favour
of such a concept are made by the French sociolinguists Louis-Jean
Calvet and Thierry Bulot, and the Moroccan linguist Leila Messaoudi
(see Calvet 1994, Bulot 1999, 2002, 2004, Messaoudi 2001). Calvet
argues forcefully for a sociolinguistics of the city, reiterating on a
number of occasions the need to highlight what is specific and special
about the urban: ‘la sociolinguistique urbaine ne peut pas se conten-
ter d’étudier des situations urbaines, elle doit dégager ce que ces situ-
ations ont de spécifique, et donc construire une approche spécifique
de ces situations’ (Urban sociolinguistics cannot be content to study
urban contexts, it must tease out what is specific about these contexts
and build a specific approach to these contexts) (Calvet 1994: 15).
4
See http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/data_cube_table_page.jsp?data_theme=
T_POP&data_cube=N_TPop&u_id=10105821&c_id=10001043&add=N. Last ac-
cessed 17th March 2009.
He suggests that ‘la ville produit aussi des formes linguistiques spéci-
fiques, des parlers urbains’ (the city also produces specific linguistic
forms, urban dialects) (Calvet 1994: 13). But when we probe what it
is that is special about the city, once again we come across factors
which might be most obvious and immediate in urban areas but are
not restricted to them, so:
“Pourquoi la ville? Lorsqu’on observe les taux d’urbanisation des dif-
férents pays du monde, on se rend compte que la ville se dresse à
l’horizon de notre histoire immédiate comme un inévitable destin. Par-
tout les ruraux se précipitent vers les fausses promesses de la cité, vers
ses lumières, vers l’espoir d’un travail plus lucrative. Et cette conver-
gence de migrants vers la cité a sa contrepartie linguistique (Calvet
1994: 10)….cette réalité plurilingue de la ville nous mène dans un pre-
mier temps à trois thèmes…la ville comme facteur d’unification lin-
guistique, la ville comme lieu de conflit de langues et la ville comme
lieu de coexistence et de métissage linguistique (Ibid.: 11)…mais com-
ment démontrer qu’un lieu—la ville—et une function—la véhicula-
rité—ont des effets comparables sur des langues différentes?
(Why the city? One needs only to look at rates of urbanization in dif-
ferent countries around the world to realize that the city represents an
inevitable outcome of our recent history. People from rural areas eve-
rywhere are lured by the false promises of urban life, by its bright lights
and the hope of better paid work. And this coming together of migrants
to the city has linguistic consequences. The reality of urban multilin-
gualism leads us, in the first instance, to three themes: the role of the
city in linguistic unification, the city as site of language conflict and
the city as site of language mixing and language co-existence. But how
can a setting—the city—and a function—communication via a com-
mon medium—be shown to have similar effects on different langua-
ges?).
He answers this by pointing to such linguistic outputs as semantic
transparency and the levelling of grammatical and morphological
redundancy.
La ville est d’une part…l’avenir de l’humanité. La ville occupe dans
l’espace européen une place de plus en plus importante….la ville est la
quintessence du plurilinguisme, elle draine les différentes situations
linguistiques du pays…les solutions linguistiques que la ville apporte
à la communication sociale ont toutes les chances de s’imposer à l’en-
semble du pays: telle une pompe, la ville aspire du plurilinguisme et
recrache du monolinguisme, et elle joue ainsi un rôle fondamental dans
l’avenir linguistique de la région ou de l’État (1994: 129-130).
(The city is, on the one hand, the future of humanity. It consumes an
ever-increasing part of the European landscape....the city embodies
236 david britain
multilingualism, drawing on the range of linguistic situations from the

surrounding area. The linguistic mixes that the city brings to social
communication are very likely to affect the rest of the country: like a
pump, the city breathes in multilingualism and spits out monolingua-
lism, and thus plays a fundamental role in shaping the linguistic future
of the region or state).
L’urbanité signifie une accélération des processus de vie, de la mobilité
des individus, de l’innovation des structures et des institutions et d’une
nouvelle différenciation sociale (Erfurt 1999: 9).
(With urban living comes an acceleration of everyday life, individual
mobility, structural innovation and new social divisions).
“Nous entendons par urbanisation “…un processus a travers lequel la
mobilité spatiale vient structurer la vie quotidienne” (Rémy and Voyé
1992: 10)” (Bulot 1999: 24).
(By urbanisation we mean a process through which spatial mobility
comes to shape everyday life).
Nothing presented in these examples above, though, points squarely
to processes which are restricted to urban areas: multilingualism,
mobility, the ‘speeding up’ of everyday life, linguistic hybridity—
these are typical characteristics of what Giddens (1991) has called
‘late modernity’, and not essentially tied or restricted to urban
areas.
One British example of such an approach is Marshall’s (2004) use
of urban and rural ‘life modes’ to explain patterns of variation and
change in a rural area of the North-East of Scotland. In it, his defi-
nitions of the different modes fall into the trap of associating ‘urban’
with certain social characteristics which, although possibly stereoty-
pical of urban areas, are not necessary conditions of urban life or
impossible conditions of living in the countryside. His list of ‘urban’
traits included detachment of work from family life, the delegation
of child-minding and food production to outsiders, not having to
associate with one’s neighbours; and solidarity with co-workers
against the boss and management. Rural traits include lack of sharp
distinction between work and leisure, participation in local clubs
with local friends, an ideology of mutual responsibility, indepen-
dence, co-operation (2004: 42) 5. His operationalisation of these
5
Marshall does admit that this mode is synonymous with family farming, so the
scope of such ‘lifemodes’ needs to be placed firmly in the context of the proportions
of the population employed in agriculture. Recent figures for England show that just
5% of the population in rural areas is employed in ‘agriculture, hunting and forestry’
concepts in his research in rural Scotland led to the development of

a “mental urbanisation index”, using a Likert scale to assess the
extent to which people agreed with statements such as: “I notice what
people are wearing in Aberdeen. I like to keep up with city fashion”;
“I mostly watch TV programmes about city life and avoid nature/
environmental programmes”; “I think it is very important to own a
PC”; “I never eat traditional meals. I prefer modern/international
dishes”; and “A good education, getting on in life, and having all the
modern equipment and appliances is more important than quietness
and having a good family life” (Marshall 2004: 112). People largely
disagreeing with these statements were deemed to have a low mental
urbanisation index and those largely agreeing with them, a high one.
But quite what is ‘urban’ about wanting to own a PC (cf. recent
research showing that more rural people have Broadband internet
connections than urban people (OFCOM 2008)), eat ‘modern’ food
and have a good education? And what is rural about not bothering
to keep up with the latest fashion, watching nature programmes on
TV, and having a good family life? These indexical measures may
well be measuring something, but is it really anything causally
connected with urban and rural? Here, I feel, ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ are
being presented as determining characteristics of social behaviour,
but are in fact simply proxies for some unknown causal force, and
we are consequently actually no nearer to being able to determine
what it really is that is actually shaping these lifestyle choices.
Thankfully, other researchers, especially those who have conduc-
ted systematic and complex variationist analyses of language varia-
tion and change in rural areas, are sensitive to the fact that the urban/
rural dichotomy is of less relevance to our understanding of mecha-
nisms of change and are careful to make the point that diversity—
social and linguistic—can be found everywhere: ‘No matter how
small and seemingly homogeneous the community, social status dif-
ferences play an essential role in shaping dialect differences and can
never be entirely discounted’ (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998: 32),
and there are some early and significant examples of variationist
studies of rural areas to supplement Labov’s work on Martha’s
(Taylor 2008: 123). In Scotland the figure is higher but only reaches 16%, for these
three industries combined, in what the Scottish government calls ‘remote rural’
areas, and is lower elsewhere (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/08/
27154843/4: last accessed 17th March 2009).
238 david britain
Vineyard (e.g. Wolfram and Christian 1974, Christian, Wolfram and

Dube 1989).
The fetishism of the urban which continues to affect sociolinguis-
tics is not, or rather was not, of course, confined to this discipline
but was prevalent right across the social sciences in the post-war
period (Britain 2002, in press a, b). It came under sustained critique
from social theorists such as Harvey (1973) and Castells (1977) from
the 1970s onwards. Important to remember, in this context, however,
is the fact that the very same cultural, economic, social and political
processes and conflicts can affect rural areas as affect urban—less
routinely, less visibly, less intensively (or of course, more routinely,
visibly, intensively…) perhaps, but affect them nevertheless—our job
as social dialectologists is to unpick and deconstruct those forces
which are causing language variation and change to operate with
different outcomes in different places.
6. Contact as a Causal Mechanism
I want to argue here that language/dialect contact rather than urban

life or urbanisation is one of the more important forces that triggers
language to change in a particular direction. Importantly for the
argument here, as I will show, presence or absence of high levels of
contact can be socio-geographically located in both urban and rural
areas. Contact often occurs as a result of migration and mobility,
factors which are often seen as being most intense and most visible
in the city. But crucially, rural areas are not immune from such
mobility and contact, and the linguistic outcomes of contact in rural
as well as urban areas are typologically the same. Drawing from the
important work on social networks and dialect maintenance by
Lesley and Jim Milroy, Peter Trudgill, in work on sociolinguistic
typologies, has argued that levels of contact are able to shape the
speed and, most importantly, types of linguistic changes that are
likely to affect communities, rural and urban alike. In his book,
Dialects in Contact, Trudgill (1986) provided the trigger for what has
turned out to be one of the most important research paradigms in
variationist sociolinguistics—contact dialectology. This approach has
not only examined, in a wide range of different languages and social
settings, the linguistic consequences of the contact of distinct but
mutually intelligible varieties, but it has also led to calls from some
to reinterpret existing sociolinguistic analyses from other theoretical

paradigms (e.g. L. Milroy 2002b). Trudgill demonstrates that where
such dialect contact occurs the linguistic heterogeneity of the com-
munity that has experienced the contact undergoes koineization—
processes of linguistic accommodation characterised by a relatively
restricted typology of linguistic changes resulting in a more focussed
variety. The types of change that tend to be found are:
– levelling: of all the dialect forms that originally came into contact,
those that are in the majority in the mix, and especially those that
are unmarked and not socially or regionally highly restricted, tend
to survive, at the expense of minority, marked, restricted forms
(e.g. Sudbury 2000);
– simplification: contact tends to lead to structural regularisation,
transparency, and the eradication of paradigmatic redundancy: the
variety that emerges as an outcome of contact is likely to have
fewer grammatical categories that are marked morphologically,
less irregularity, and fewer exceptions than the varieties which
formed the input to the dialect contact situation (e.g. Mühlhäusler
1980, Trudgill 2002);
– Interdialect formation: contact leads to the emergence of novel
structural forms which are in some way (e.g. phonetically) inter-
mediate to the ingredient dialect forms in the mix (e.g. Britain
2001);
– Reallocation: here, two or more ingredient forms survive the koi-
neization process, but become refunctionalised, doing somewhat
different linguistic or sociolinguistic work than they had been in
the input dialects (Britain 1997, Britain and Trudgill 2005).
Importantly, researchers have demonstrated that all of these can
occur in both urban and rural contexts, if, for whatever reason, con-
tact has been central to the formation of that variety. Researchers
have investigated a very wide range of factors that might provoke
contact: colonisation; indentured labour migration; New Town for-
mation; land reclamation; and, yes, urbanisation, but also counter-
urbanisation (the following give a feel for the breadth of contexts
where contact has produced koineization: Barz and Siegel 1998,
Britain 1997, Kerswill and Williams 2000, Trudgill 1986, 2004). So
whilst levelling has been reported in urban Milton Keynes in England,
it has also been shown to be crucial to an understanding of the for-
mation of the English of the Falkland Islands—one of the most
240 david britain
sparsely populated territories in the world6 (Sudbury 2000, Britain

and Sudbury, in press); simplification has been reported both in
urban Amman in Jordan (Al-Wer 2003) as well as in rural Ocracoke
off the coast of North Carolina in the US (Wolfram and Schilling-
Estes 1995); interdialect formation has occurred both in urban
Reading, as well as rural East Anglia (Trudgill 1986, Britain 2001),
and researchers have proposed reallocation as the underlying trigger
of dialect forms in urban Norwich as well as the rural Fens in England
(Britain and Trudgill 2005). These processes may well be more evi-
dent in urban locations, but they most certainly are not restricted to
them.
Trudgill has argued in later work that communities experiencing
widely differing levels and intensities of contact may well undergo
different types of changes. He has contrasted the types of change
typical in the situations exemplified above, characterised by extensive
adult and post-adolescent contact of speakers of different dialects7,
with the sorts of changes that occur in highly isolated speech com-
munities where social networks have remained extremely strong and
tight-knit, and where residents come into contact with relatively few
speakers of varieties other than their own. In these contexts, it has
been shown, linguistic change tends to be much slower, leading to
the preservation of archaic and marked forms, but also, when change
does occur, it does so in directions that could be seen as the opposite
to the types of change in contexts of contact: complexifying changes,
leading to the emergence, rather than the eradication, of exceptions
and irregularities, to the development of marked, rather than unmar-
ked forms, and to the grammaticalisation of rapid speech phenomena
into (consequently somewhat opaque) slow speech phenomena (see
further Trudgill 1995, 2002). Such communities tend to be found in
(especially isolated, insular) rural areas, but again are not theoreti-
cally restricted to them. So, for example, the well-reported complexi-
fying and conservative nature of Faroese—a North Germanic language
6
In fact Greenland is the only territory with a permanently resident population
that has a population density lower than that of the Falklands.
7
It is argued that the relatively late age of this contact is one of the causes of the
levelling, simplifying nature of koineization, because adults tend to be less successful
and less accurate linguistic accommodators and acquirers of non-native varieties
than children (see, for example, Trudgill 1986, 2004). Trudgill adds an important
proviso, however, to the contact = simplification story, making it clear that complex-
ity can also be the result of heavy contact, but here the contact is in very long term
pre-critical threshold situations, such as in the Balkans (Trudgill, in press).
spoken in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean—applies to

the islands’ capital of Tórshavn (housing a population of 20,000, over
two-fifths of the islands’ total) as well as to the outlying non-urban
settlements.
Too little research has sought, in urban centres, the kinds of low-
contact changes outlined above, but recent research in rural Maryland
may provide us with some clues about the sorts of cities where lin-
guistic conservatism, if not actual complexification, might be found.
Schilling-Estes and Wolfram (1999) examined patterns of language
change on Smith Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, once relatively iso-
lated but where today more and more speakers from the island are
coming into contact with people from the mainland and are moving
away to seek better employment prospects. The island shares a num-
ber of distinctive dialect characteristics with other offshore islands
of the central east coast of the US, such as Ocracoke (Wolfram and
Schilling-Estes 1995): a back and raised nucleus of /ai/: [ʌı] and a
front gliding realization of /au/: [æı]. However, whilst Ocracokers,
for example, appear to be losing these distinctive features, Smith
Islanders are increasing their use of them and continuing, therefore,
to diverge from neighbouring dialects (see Wolfram 2002: 770). The
important socio-demographic distinction between the two commu-
nities is that while Ocracoke is becoming a popular destination for
short and long term residence by non-islanders (causing dialect
contact), few people are moving onto Smith Island and many are
leaving, resulting in a concentration of the dialect in the mouths of
the few that remain (dialect isolation). Depopulation is a characte-
ristic which Smith Island shares, perhaps surprisingly, with a number
of large urban centres of Western Europe. In the UK these include,
for example, the North-Western urban centres of Liverpool (which,
as was mentioned earlier, saw its population halve between 1931 and
2001) (population today around 435000), Manchester (population
also halved since 1931, now at around 392000) and Burnley in
Lancashire (population decline of one third since 1911, now at
around 90000). In the context of the present discussion, it is interes-
ting to note that Burnley is one of only a very few urban centres of
the North-West to retain rhoticity—lost in much of the rest of
England—and that Liverpool has quite robustly defended a number
of accent forms which mark it as divergent from other parts of the
North-West of the country, forms some of which appear to have their
genesis in the immigration and demographic expansion of the city
242 david britain
in the 19th century, e.g. TH stopping, NURSE-SQUARE merger on

[ɛː], and the frication of stops (see, for example, Honeybone 2007,
Watson 2006). As Oswalt and Rieniets (2006: 6) state, however,
counter to Calvet’s claims noted earlier:
“between 1950 and 2000, more than 350 large cities experienced…
significant declines in population. In the 1990s, more than a quarter
of the world’s large cities shrank. Their number is continually increasing,
even though urban growth will continue to dominate in decades to
come. An end is in sight, however: somewhere between 2070 and 2100,
the world population is expected to reach its zenith, with the process
of urbanization largely coming to a close”.
The linguistic consequences of urban shrinking in the longer term
will be for future generations of dialectologists to explore, but the
glimpses we get from examining depopulating cities today suggest
that it will not just be rural areas that may provide homes for lin-
guistic conservatism.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I’ve argued that concepts of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, con-
cepts which social geographers themselves admit are ‘obfuscatory’
(Hoggart 1990), are of little theoretical importance in helping us to
understand the nature of linguistic change. This is because there are
no causal social processes which affect urban areas but not rural, or
vice versa, and no categorical social, cultural, economic differences
between the two. Complex patterns of sociolinguistic heterogeneity
can be found in both urban and rural alike, and linguistic changes
can affect both in very similar ways—in contexts where contact
occurs between speakers of mutually intelligible but distinct language
varieties, processes of koineization can lead to very similar outcomes
both in small rural villages as well as in the world’s largest cities;
similarly, isolation can have the same linguistic consequences in both
town and country. Changing patterns of migration and demographic
change in Western societies will mean that rural areas will increas-
ingly become sites of linguistic contact and conflict, though the out-
comes of that contact may well be rather familiar to those used to
examining our larger cities.
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248 david britain
the variable (h) in damascus 249
THE VARIABLE H IN DAMASCUS: ANALYSIS OF A STABLE

VARIABLE
Hanadi Ismail
1. Introduction
Variation in the presence of (h) in the 3rd person feminine and plural
suffixes is a distinctive urban feature of the Syro-Lebanese dialects
of the Levant. Descriptions of other dialects of Arabic indicate that
this feature is also present in the Ḥijāzi dialect of Mecca in Saudi
Arabia and in the qultu dialects of Iraq (Ingham 1971, Owens, per-
sonal communication). Data and examples available from the Arabic
dialects of Africa and Uzbekistan, where Arabic is spoken as a minor-
ity language, also show that (h) is subject to variation in the pro-
nominal suffixes in these dialects. In the Standard variety, i.e. Classical
Arabic, /h/ is invariably present in the pronominal suffixes; that is
in the 3rd person masculine, feminine and both the feminine plural
and the masculine plural suffixes. In the case of Damascus Arabic,
variability in the presence or absence of [h] in the dialect is known
to have existed for over a century. Descriptions of the Syrian dialects,
the earliest of which dates back to 1901, when Damascus was the
metropolis of Greater Syria (present day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and
Palestine), refer to the co-occurrence of two forms of the suffixes:
/-ha/, /-hon/ and /-a/, /-on/; i.e. either with [h] or with Ø. Despite
being identified as a variable feature in Damascus for over a century,
(h) has not been investigated as a sociolinguistic variable in the dia-
lect, and in fact not in any of the aforementioned dialects.
This paper is a sociolinguistic investigation of the variable (h) in
the pronominal suffixes in the dialect of Damascus. The variation
concerns the presence or absence of the variant [h] in the 3rd person
feminine suffix /-ha/ and the plural, feminine and masculine, suffix
/-hon/. The analysis is based on a speech sample taken from two
localities in the city: an inner-city traditional quarter and a suburban
district. The theoretical and methodological frameworks of the study
take into account the urban extensions of the metropolitan city and
250 hanadi ismail
the need to use a joint analytical tool which can engage a macro and
micro approaches simultaneously in the analysis of the socio-econo-
mic structure of the city’s communities. The interpretation and dis-
cussion of the results make use of the available data on (h) in the
pronominal suffixes in other Arabic dialects and of the geographical
distribution of (h) in Syria based on the available dialect maps of
Syria (Bergsträsser 1915, Behnstedt 1997). In the course of the dis-
cussion, the morpho-phonology of the 3rd person singular and plural
suffixes in the dialect is examined with the aim of providing a better
understanding of the variation in question. An introduction of the
variation of (h) in the pronominal suffixes, as it occurs in the dialect,
is given followed by an outline of the methodology followed. In the
final section, the data and the results are discussed.
2. Background
The earliest description of the variation in the presence of [h] in the

pronominal suffix was noted by Crow in 1901. In the beginning of
the century, however, there were no political borders in the Levant,
and the material available to us from that period does not offer accu-
rate data on the geography of this variation. Later descriptions and
maps of the dialect, such as Bergsträsser (1915), Bergsträsser (1924),
Blanc (1953), and Cowell (1964) Grotzfeld (1965), Cantineau (1966),
and Ambros (1970), Lentin (1981) and more recently Behnstedt
(1997), give unquantified data on the co-occurrence of [h] and Ø in
the feminine and plural suffixes following a consonant, and [h] and
[j] or [w] following a vowel.1
In the Standard variety, [h] is invariably present in 3rd person
pronominal suffixes. The urban varieties in the Levant, including the
Syrian varieties, differ from the Standard variety with respect to the
suffix in two ways. Firstly, there is no gender marking in the plural
suffixes. Some dialects neutralise the plural suffixes in favour of the
masculine form, e.g. the Jordanian varieties, while others generalise
the use of the feminine form, e.g. the Lebanese, the Syrian, and most
of the urban Palestinian varieties. Secondly, the variant [h] only
appears in the singular feminine and the plural suffixes. The dialects
of the Levant, however, differ in the variation found in these suffixes.
1
Cowell (1964) uses high vowels [i] and [u] instead of [j] and [w] alternatively.
While both forms with or without [h], i.e. -ha/-a, -hon/-on, occur in
Syrian and Lebanese dialects, generally speaking in the Jordanian and
Palestinian dialects only the h-ful forms are found. The h-ful forms
are also characteristic of the Syrian dialects which are akin to the
Bedouin norm, e.g. the Mesopotamian type in the east and the Ḥoran ̄ i
dialects in the south.
3. The City of Damascus
Damascus is the oldest-established metropolis of the Levant and one

of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. The population of the
Damascus Governorate is 1.552.000, according to the 2004 statistical
abstract2. The Governorate of Damascus is administratively separate
from the governorate of Rural Damascus Muḥāfaḏ at Rīf Dimašq,
which includes the satellite towns, villages and suburbs that surround
the City. The suburb of Dummar, the suburb included in this study
follows the Governorate of Damascus, and hence the City’s popula-
tion is inclusive of the Dummar suburb. The Old City is located in
the centre of Damascus and is surrounded by the Ghuta, or the Oasis,
and bordered by the south bank of the River Barada. The neighbour-
hoods of Meedan, Shaghoor, and ʿAmaara are among the oldest in
the City and used to be the main quarters before the surrounding
villages and towns started to stretch outwards
4. The Sample
The data were obtained from two areas in the city: Shaghoor, a tra-
ditional quarter located in the south of the Old City, a generations-
old residence to local families; and Dummar, a suburb of relatively
recent history of development and a residence to a significant num-
ber of the Syrian capital’s liberal intellectuals. The present paper is
based on the speech a sample of 59 men and women, 30 of whom
are based in Dummar and 29 in Shaghoor. Speakers were divided
into old, middle and young age groups. The old age starts from the
age of 46, the middle age are 30-45, and the young age group are
17-29. In setting the age boundaries, factors such as the span of edu-
cation, the level of career productivity of the speakers, and the aver-
2
http://www.cbssyr.org/aindex.htm, June 2007.
252 hanadi ismail
age life expectancy of the population in general were taken into

account. The communities of Shaghoor and Dummar are presented
as the self-employed life-mode 1, and the career-professionals life-
mode 2, respectively. Table 1 shows the distribution of the sample
according to age, gender and life-modes.
Table 1. Distribution of the speakers according to age, gender and life-mode
Dummar/life-mode 2 Shaghoor/life-mode 1
Old Middle Young Old Middle Young N
Male 5 5 5 5 4 5 29
Female 5 5 5 5 5 5 30
Total 59
5. The Communities: A Life-mode Approach
The ‘life mode’ concept was first proposed as a sociolinguistic analyti-

cal tool by L. Milroy and J. Milroy (1992). The Milroys proposed that
the concept of life-mode can be used to explain language change in
an urban context, being a tool which benefits from integrating the
macro tool of class with the microscopic variable of the social net-
work. Introduced by Højrup (1983), and subsequently extended in
Højrup (2003), life-mode can be defined as an analytical framework
which accounts for cultural and social differences in a society on the
basis of the mode of production. The mode of production itself is a
structure of both economic and social relations, which can be
extended to include ideological, political, legal and social relations.
Based on theoretical relations rather than empirical data, the concept
is used to describe the class and the ideology specifics of a life-mode.
Each life-mode has a set of distinctive class-defining practices that
are associated with its mode of production. Of close relevance to
these practices are the concept of activity, and the manoeuvring of
work and leisure times in terms of mean-end relation.
The neighbourhoods of Shaghoor and Dummar are located in two
geographically separate areas. Dummar is a relatively newly-built
suburb, 6 kilometres towards the western fringe of the city, whereas
Shaghoor is an inner-city traditional quarter commonly viewed as
the archetype of vintage Damascene lifestyle and architecture. The
suburb was originally built by the Damascus Association of the
Professional Guilds and is today a residence to middle-class profes-

sionals and the Capital’s intellectual elites. It has recently become
also a leisure venue for the fashionable youth of the City. Dummar
residents, who had moved to the suburb from different residential
areas, have developed a homogeneous lifestyle and social character
in what can be described as part of a suburbanisation process.
Another aspect of suburbanising is manifested in the highly structu-
red socio-political organisation of the Dummar dwellers. Local ame-
nities including basic services and businesses, in addition to social
clubs and associations are run through structured elected commit-
tees, the majority of which work on a voluntary basis. For the com-
munity of Shaghoor, cultural solidarity cuts across economic status.
Both wealthy local business owners as well road-side fruiterers wear
the traditional serwāl (traditional trousers), and share a similar lifes-
tyle and aspirations. The local marketplace and the coffee shop are
the social spaces for the locals. This solidarity is shared by men and
women of the younger generations too, and is enhanced by locally-
based kinships. Although houses are designed to cater for privacy,
the space of the privacy extends to a territorial proximity.
A significant differentiating factor with respect to the mode of
production of a life-mode relates to a group’s approach to the con-
cepts of work time and free time. Along the lines of the life-modes
developed by Højrup (2003) for the Copenhagen society, in the
Damascus study (Ismail 2008) I have used two life-modes: the self-
employed life-mode and the career-professional life-mode. The for-
mer is applied to the Shaghoor community and the latter to the
suburb Dummar. For the Shaghoor community, which will be refer-
red to here as life-mode 1 (LM1 hereafter), both concepts of work
time and free time are meshed together in one activity, namely the
market-oriented daily pursuit. On the other hand, free time for the
suburban community, (LM2), is used to promote social status and
leisure activities (further details are in Ismail 2008).
6. Phonology of (h) in the Pronominal Suffixes
The 3rd person feminine suffix in the dialect of Damascus is /-ha/,

and the masculine suffix is /-o/. There is no gender marking for the
plural suffix /-hon/. The suffix can affix to verbs, nouns, prepositions,
adverbs and to complementisers introducing subordinate clauses, as
demonstrated below.
254 hanadi ismail
Table 2. The 3rd person pronominal suffixes in the dialect of Damascus
ing. fem. Sing. masc. Pl. (fem. & masc.)
Verbs ʃəfət-ha ʃəft-ɔ ʃəfət-hɔn

I saw-her I saw-him I saw-them
ʔəm-ha ʔəmm-ɔ ʔəm-hɔn

Nouns mother-her mother-his mother-their
her mother his mother their mother
mən-ha mənn-ɔ mən-hɔn

Prepositions from-her from-him from-them
from her from him from them
taħət-ha taħt-ɔ taħət-hɔn

Adverbs below-her below-him below-them
below her below him below them
laʔan-ha laʔann-ɔ laʔan-hɔn

Complementiser because-she because-he because-they
because she because he because they
The suffix can follow a consonant or a vowel, as the following exam-

ples illustrate:
sg. fem. pl. (fem. & masc.) sg. masc.
Following a consonant: maʕ-ha maʕ-hᴐn maʕɔ
with her with them with him
Following a vowel: fi:-ha fi:-hɔn fijɔ

she can they can he can
Variation of (h) in this study concerns the presence of [h] and its
absence in the feminine and the plural suffixes /-ha/ and /-hon/
respectively. When /h/ is followed by a consonant, it alternates with
Ø; as in /tja:bha/ and /tja:ba/ her clothes. When preceded by a vowel
at the syllable boundary, /h/ is subject to phonotactic constraints
depending on the type of vowel that precedes the pronominal suffix.
The preceding vowels which can occur before the suffix are high front
long vowel /i:/, high back long vowel /u:/, mid front long vowel /e:/
(which occurs in a limited number of words), and long low vowel
/a:/. When /h/ is preceded by /i:/, it alternates with the palatal glide
[j],and the vowel is shortened to [i]. Examples of this are listed under
(1) below.
1. /mnəħki:ha/ ⇒ /mnəħkija/ we say it

/mnəʃwi:hɔn/ ⇒ /mnəʃwijɔn/ we grill them
When /h/ is preceded by /u:/, it alternates with the bilabial glide [w],
as in:
2. /ʃa:fu:ha/ ⇒
/ʃabu:hɔn/ ⇒ /ʃabuwɔn/ their father
The [j] and [w] can be geminated in compensation for the loss of
vowel length, as the examples below show.
3. /ʃi:li:ha/ ⇒ /ʃi:lijja/ take it off!
/ʃi:mi:hɔn/ ⇒ /ʃi:mijjɔn/ take them away!
The insertion of the glide is clearly related to the emergence of the
hiatus position as a result of the deletion of [h] in the suffix. The
syllable phonology in the dialect does not allow a vowel initial syl-
lable, as in 4.
4. /ax.du:.ha/ ⇒ * ax.du:.a they took her
/ħa:.ki:.ha/ ⇒ * ħa:.ki:. a talk to her!
The open syllables allowed in the dialect are CV and CVV. The bila-
bial glide [w] and the palatal glide [j] are the best intrusive conso-
nants to fill the hiatus in terms of phonetic quality. Hence, [w] or [j]
is inserted as a compensatory syllable onset according to whether the
preceding vowel is [u:] or [i:], respectively, as the following examples
show:
5. /sammu:ha/ ⇒ /sammuwa/ they named her
/mnəħki:ha/ ⇒ /mnəħkija/ we say it (fem.)
As for the two other vowels which are allowed before the suffixes /
ha/ and /hon/, namely /a:/ and /e:/, the data show that the h-ful form
occurs nearly categorically after the mid vowel /e:/ as in /ʕale:hᴐn/
on them. This environment was, therefore, excluded from the analysis
since very few occurrences of /e:ha/ tokens occurred in the data. The
occurrence of /e:ha/ is limited to a number of lexical items in the
dialect. As far as the low vowel /a:/ is concerned, the data show that
the /a:ha/ environment is the only phonological environment where
[h] is obligatorily present in the suffix; hence this environment has
also been excluded from the analysis. This applies indiscriminately
to both the feminine and plural suffixes. Examples of the latter envi-
256 hanadi ismail
ronment include /ʕɑṭɑ:ha/ he gave her, /bala:ha/ without her,

/wara:hᴐn/ behind them and /ʕməlna:hᴐn/ we made them.
7. Stress
Variation in the presence or absence of /h/ in the feminine and plural

suffixes induces changes in the patterns of word stress. In the case
of the h-ful form of the suffix, the syllable stress falls on the suffix
except when a preceding syllable includes a long vowel. This applies
to both disyllabic and polysyllabic words alike. This is illustrated by
the examples in 6a and 6b (the sign for stress ` directly precedes the
stressed syllable):
6a Disyllabic words
CVC # ha: /mən`ha/ from her and /ʃəl`hᴐn/ for them.
CVVC # ha: /`ʃa:lha/ he took it, /`be:tha/ her house and /`fi:ha/ in it.
6b Polysyllabic words
CVCVC# ha/hon: / ʃə x ə t`ha/ her sister and /b ə n ə t`h ᴐ n/ their
daughter.
CVCCVC# ha/hon: /ʃarʃaħ`ha/ he ridiculed her and /ḍɑrbət`hᴐn / she
hit them.
CVCCVV# ha/hon: /ṭɑʕ`mi:ha/ feed her! and /daʃʃ`ri:hᴐn/ leave
them!
CVVCVCVC# ha/hon: /` ṭɑ :la ʕə tha/ she has taken it out and
/`fa:taħəthᴐn/ she has opened them.
The syllable stress patterns differently, however, in the case of the
h-zero form of the suffixes /a/ and /on/. There is no change in the
stress pattern for disyllabic words, as it is retained on the suffix in
CVC# a, and on the first syllable in CVVC# a, as illustrated in (7a)
below. As the examples in (7b) show, the deletion of /h/ induces
resyllabification. Therefore, polysyllabic words such as /bənət`ha/ her
daughter becomes /`bənta/ in which case the stress falls on the first
syllable. As far as polysyllabic words are concerned, the stress falls
on the penultimate syllable as in (7b)
7a Disyllabic words
CVC # a/on: /mən`na/ /mən`ha/ from her and /ʃə`lᴐn/ /ʃəl`hᴐn/ ‘for
them’.
CVVC # a/on: /`ʃa:la/ /`ʃa:lha/ he took it, /`be:ta/ /`be:tha/ her house
and /`fija/ /`fi:ha/ in it,
CVCC# a/on: /`əxta/ /`əxtha/ her sister and /`ʃəftᴐn/ /`ʃəfthᴐn/ I saw
them.
7b Polysyllabic word
CVCCVC# a/on: /ʃar`ʃaħa/ vs. /ʃarʃaħ`ha/ he ridiculed her and /
ḍɑr`bətᴐn/ she hit them.
CVCCVV# a/on: /ṭɑʕ`mija/ feed her! and /daʃʃ`rijᴐn/ leave them!
CVVCVCVC# a/on: /ṭɑ:la`ʕəta/ she has taken it out and /fa:ta`ħətᴐn/
she has brought up the subject with them.
The stress in the 3rd person feminine singular, not plural, suffix of
syllable type CVCCVC# a is phonemic as the examples under 8
show:
8. /dᴐ:`kara/ he decorated it (fem.) /`dᴐkara/ decoration
/mar`ӡaħa/ he swung her /`marӡaħa/ swinging
/ṃɑṭ`ṃɑṭɑ/ he prolonged it (fem.) /`ṃɑṭṃɑṭɑ/ prolonging
/mɑṣ`mɑṣɑ/ he sucked it /`mɑṣmɑṣɑ/ sucking
The phonemic distinction, illustrated in (8) above, concerns transi-
tive verbs followed by the feminine nominal clitic form /a/, whose
nominal derivations (an event noun) have /a/, rather than /e/ as their
feminine ending marker. The stress in this case distinguishes between
verb and noun. This distinction applies to feminine nouns whose
infinitives end with a non-coronal sound, e.g. pharyngeals, emphatics
and velarised consonants. Nouns ending with a [+coronal] consonant
have the vowel /e/ as their feminine ending, such as /fakfake/ dis-
mantling, which contrasts in stress as well as in final vowel with /
fak`faka/ he dismantled it and /`fakfake/ ‘dismantling’. An exception
to this pattern is the consonant /r/ which behaves like coronal sounds
only when in the vicinity of /i/ or /i/-type vowel; otherwise /r/ behaves
like emphatic sounds in prohibiting the raising of the final vowel, as
in /`dᴐkara/ decoration, /ӡar`ӡara/ he dragged her and /`ӡarӡara/
dragging, and /so`kara/ he secured it and /`sokara/ securing3.
3
Cozma (1980), cited in Lentin (1981:102, 103), discusses the feminine endings
/a/ and /e/ following /r/. Cozma maintains that the feminine ending /a/, is [a] after
[r], when [r] is preceded by emphatics, velars, another [r] and vowels [a, a:, ᴐ:, u:, e:,
ə]. The only exception in which a vowel preceding [r] raises the feminine ending to
/e/, is when the preceding syllable contains /i/, as in /kbi:re/ big (adj. fem) and /si:re/
talk (n. fem). Al-Wer (2000), discussing the raising of vowel (a) in Amman, explains
that in her data from the city of Sult, the feminine ending is /a/ except after coronal
sounds, including /r/, where the vowel is raised to /e/ (phonetically [ɛ]). The conso-
nant /r/ in Al-Wer’s data presents some exceptions; similar to its effect in the Damas-
cus data, it only induces raising and fronting of the feminine ending when the
preceding syllable contains /i/ or an /i/-type vowels; thus, we have /ʃahi:re/ she is
famous (with raising) but /ʃuhra/ fame (without raising). Al-Wer maintains that in
her Amman data from Jordanian and Palestinian speakers, /r/ generally has a back-
ing effect also in other contexts; for example, whereas the long vowel /a:/ in the
258 hanadi ismail
8. The Data
Variants of (h) are coded for two linguistic environments: a preced-

ing consonant and a preceding vowel. Tokens of (h) are coded
regardless of whether (h) has occurred in the feminine or in the
plural suffix. In other words, the suffix type, plural versus singular
feminine, has not been factored in the analysis of the data. The two
variants coded are [h] and Ø. Instances of the glides [w] and [j],
which obligatorily occur if [h] is dropped after high front and high
back vowels, were counted as tokens of the variant Ø. The analysis
of the variable (h) was conducted using Goldvarb X programme. Five
factor groups were taken in total: the linguistic environment, gender,
age, life-mode, and individual speakers.
Table 3. The coding procedure
(h) in the pronominal suffix
Following a vowel Following a consonant
[h] Ø [h] Ø
/ʔabu:ha/ /ʔabuwa/ her father /ʔəmmha/ /ʔəmma/ her mother
9. The Results
The results below are based on the analysis of 3199 tokens of the
lexical items in which the variants [h] and Ø appeared. The chart
displays the overall results of (h) analysis with Ø being the applica-
tion value.
Figure 1 displays the results of analysis in general. Results show
that the h-less form of the suffix is the favoured variant in the sample
as a whole. The difference in the score of [h] between men and
women is only 1%, with the men using [h] in 4% and women using
it in 5%. Results also show that there is no difference in [h] usage
between the old age group and the middle age one, with both groups
using the h-ful form in 6%. The young age group, however, have the
lowest percentage of variant [h] with a percentage score of 1%. The
contact dialect of Amman moves to the front and is raised in all contexts, the raising
and fronting in the vicinity of /r/ is not nearly as consistent as in other contexts (see
also Ismail 2008, Chapter 5).
Figure 1. Percentage usage of Ø according to the linguistic environment, gender, age

and life-mode.
probability of [h] occurrence in LM1 is 4%, while for LM2 it is 5%.

With regard to the linguistic environment, [h] is more likely to occur
after a vowel, with an occurrence probability of 6%, whereas after a
consonant it is likely to occur in 4%.
The cross-tabulation of age and life-modes show that in LM1,
inner city Shaghoor, the young age group use the variant [h] in 1%
of the total, compared with the middle and old age groups who use
it in 6% and 5% respectively. The zero form is the favoured form of
the suffix for speakers of LM1, with the young age group being the
highest users. The highest scores of [h] among the speakers of LM1
belong to two men from the middle age group. Speaker Q, who used
[h] in 23% of the total, runs a local carpentry shop and works as a
part-time taxi driver, and speaker U, whose score of [h] is 20%, runs
a local family-owned business. The highest users of [h] among women
in this life-mode are also from the middle-age group, with scores of
14% and 13%. There is no significant gender differentiation in
LM1.
The values of Varbrul weights for age in LM1 show that the favou-
red variant among the younger speakers is Ø at a weighting of 0.759.
On the other hand, the weights of the middle age and old age spea-
kers are 0.372 and 0.402 respectively.
The distribution of age groups in LM2, displayed in Figure 3,
reveals that, like LM1, the favoured variant in the suburb is Ø. The
260 hanadi ismail
Figure 2. Percentage usage of (h) usage according to age groups in LM1.
Figure 3. Percentage usage of (h) usage according to age groups in LM2.
pattern of [h] distribution in LM2 is also similar to the pattern in

LM1, in that the middle and old age group have almost similar per-
centage usage of [h] compared with the younger speakers. Similar to
LM1, the young group use the variant Ø in 99%, whereas, with a
slightly higher percentage than their counterparts in LM1, the middle
and old age groups use [h] in 7% of the total.
The Varbrul weighting of age in LM2 further supports the obser-
vation that variant Ø is the highly favoured form for the younger
speakers’, weight being 0.746, and the middle and old age speakers
at 0.361 and 0.363, respectively. The pattern of distribution across
age groups in both neighbourhoods, especially the stability demon-
strated in the [h] usage by the middle and old age groups, and the
relatively small difference between the scores of these two groups
Figure 4. Percentage usage of (h) by gender in LM1
and the younger group, suggest that (h) is in stable pattern of varia-
tion in the dialect. The high scores of Ø among the younger genera-
tion agree with the observation made by Lentin (1981:235) that [h]
is less-frequently used or largely “marginalised” in the dialect. This
suggests that the popularity of the zero form of the suffix is not a
recent phenomenon in Damascus.
The difference between the percentage usage of [h] between men
and women in LM1, demonstrated in Figure 4, shows that there is
no gender differentiation in the use of [h] in LM1 with men using
the h-ful form in 4% and women in 5% of the total. The likelihood
of [h] usage for men is very similar to that of women in LM1. Men
favour Ø at 0.508, only slightly more than women who do so at 0.493.
Gender shows no statistical significance in LM1 at P= 0.879.
The gender pattern of (h) usage in LM2, as shown in Figure 5,
shows similar results to that of LM1. Men and women use [h] equally
frequently, at the rate of 5%. The likelihood of (h) use in LM2 is at
0.514 for men, and 0.488 for women. Similar to LM1, gender is not
statistically significant in LM2 at P= 0.671.
Comparing the relative position of the factor weights of men and
women in both life-modes in Table 4, we find that the range of dif-
ference between the weights of men and women is quite small. This
suggests that there is an almost equal likelihood of [h] occurrence
and Ø preference across gender categories in both life-modes.
262 hanadi ismail
Figure 5. Percentage usage of (h) by gender in LM2
Table 4. Range of factor weights of gender in LM1 & LM2
Factor weights
Range
Men Women
LM1 .508 .493 .015
LM2 .514 .488 .026
The Figures above reveal that there is no gender differentiation in

the use of (h) in either life-mode. The stability of (h) variation in the
dialect, demonstrated in the figures of factor weights and the graphs,
support the speakers’ lack of social awareness of this variation. When
asked whether they thought the suffix is h-ful or h-less in the speech
of Damascus, speakers were not aware of this variation. The results
of age and gender analysis strongly suggest that the variable (h) has
been in stable variation in the dialect for a considerable period of
time.
In stable linguistic variation, according to Labov’s Principle II,
women use a lower rate of stigmatised variants, and a higher rate of
prestigious variants than men (2001:266). Labov (2001:270) also indi-
cates that in order for Principle II to be viable women must have
access to the prestigious forms, and they must be aware of the social
meaning which may be associated with the use of the variable.
Variable (h), as mentioned above, does not seem to carry a social
meaning nor are the speakers aware of the variation that exists in
the dialect. On the basis of the data of this study, the conclusion that
Figure 6. Percentage usage of (h) by age and gender in LM1
Figure 7. Percentage usage of (h) by age and gender in LM2
one can make in this respect is simply that (h) is a stable variable
which shows no sex effect. Labov (2001:269) makes the point that
not all sociolinguistic variables show a sex effect. It may be the case
that it is exactly the absence of social meaning that leads to there
being no sex differentiation in the use of variables in stable variation,
such as (h) in Damascus. Alternatively, it may be argued that the
absence of social meaning is a result of the absence of sex-differ-
entiation.
The cross tabulation of age and gender for speakers of LM1, Figure
6, shows that men and women of middle and old age groups have
almost equal percentage of [h] use, namely 6% and 5% respec-
tively.
The young men and women, on the other hand, are the least likely
to use [h], with an [h] score of 1% and 2%, respectively. Figure 7
264 hanadi ismail
shows the distribution of variable (h) across gender and age groups
in LM2.
The percentages of [h] use LM2 are overall moderately higher than
LM1, although the values of Ø in both life-modes are significantly
higher than the [h] values, with the former ranging between 92%-99%.
Both men and women in LM2 from the middle age group have a flat
pattern of [h] use at 7%, showing a similar pattern to their counter-
parts in LM1. There is no gender differentiation of (h) use among
the middle age group speakers in either community. In the Old age
group, the tabulation of gender and age reveals that men use [h] in
slightly higher percentage than women at 8%, while women use it in
6%. The most advanced user of [h] among the old age men is speaker
M, 54 year old technocrat, who had a score of 29% of [h] in his
speech. Among the young age group, men have 100% of Ø use, while
the female speakers use [h] in 3%. Only two speakers from the young
women group used [h]; they are a 19 year old university student who
used 2% of [h], and a 27 year old female speaker who used 10% of
[h].
The distribution of (h) across gender and age in both life-modes
shows a similar pattern. The age difference seems to be more noti-
ceable within the young age groups across life-modes. Of the young
age group, [h] is used in higher percentage by the young males of
LM1 (3%). The highest user in this group is speaker P, who is 18
years old, and having left school at the age of 12 he works in the
family owned local patisserie shop. His use of [h] will be commented
upon below. The cross tabulation of age and gender shows a statis-
tical significance in both life-modes. Age and gender in LM1 show
a statistical significance of p < 0.001, whereas the significance of age
and gender in LM2 is p = 0.046.
10. Notes on [h] Occurrences
A finer examination of the [h] tokens in the speech of high users of

the h-ful form of the suffix reveals two points: (i) [h] occurred in the
speech of two speakers who used Standard Arabic in some parts of
the interview; (ii) in the speech of two younger speakers, [h] appeared
systematically in prepositions. One question with respect to (i) is
whether the presence of [h] is related to stylistic variation, particu-
larly with regard to lexical borrowings from Standard Arabic. The
other remark is whether the occurrence of [h] in prepositions means

that the syntactic category of a lexical item is significant.
I argue, based on an examination of the speech sample, that while
the occurrence of [h] might coincide with the use of a Standard lexi-
cal item, the pattern of [h] occurrence is not lexically constrained by
the Standard variety. Variant [h] appears in dialectal lexical items
such as /wa/ətha/ at the time or then (fem.) and //abu:hɔn/ and alter-
nated with the zero form in similar items. Thus, whether or not an
item is cognate with the Standard is irrelevant as far as this variation
is concerned
Lentin (1981:235) suggests that the context of ‘emphasis’ may be
significant to the presence of [h] in the suffix in Damascus. My data
supports the proposition that in the context of ‘emphasis’ [h] rather
than zero is more likely to occur. For example, few occurrences of
[h] as a result of emphasis appeared in the speech of an old woman
in Shaghoor. During a narrative in which she was telling a dream,
she used the variant Ø in the suffixes. She paused during the narrative
to repeat an expression, in which two occurrences of the variant [h]
occurred.
In the speech of the second high user of [h], Standard features
were used at the beginning of the interview, and were not confined
to [h]; in addition to h-ful forms, the speaker also used Standard
interdental sounds (rather than Damascene stop/sibilant sounds) and
even case vowels (ḥarakāt). However, later in the same interview and
as soon as a rapport was established between the interviewer and
interviewee, the speaker lapsed into casual speech, consistently using
non-Standard features. The use of Standard Arabic during the first
part of the interview indicates a style shift prompted by the speaker’s
expectations and/or her tuning in to the manner of giving a press
interview.
A closer look at the tokens provided by two of the relatively high
users of [h] reveals that all tokens of [h] occurred in prepositions,
particularly where (h) was preceded by a consonant. Instances of the
prepositions in which [h] appeared include: /maʕha/ ‘with her’ and
/mənha/ ‘from her’. No occurrences of [h] were observed in a pre-
position where (h) was preceded by a vowel. The preposition /fiya/
in it, for example, consistently appeared in the zero form. On the
other hand, not all prepositions where (h) is preceded by a consonant
had the variant [h]. In addition to /mənna/ from her, the Ø variant
appeared in /kəllɔn/ all of them, /ʔəla/ for her, and /ʕanda/ at her.
266 hanadi ismail
The occurrence of [h] in prepositions was sporadically detected in

the speech of other informants too. This included, however, both
preceding consonant and vowel environments. The discussion on the
variable presence of [h] in prepositions can also be linked to empha-
sis. In other words, it is possible that emphasis was placed on the
prepositions in which [h] appeared. In general, the total number of
tokens in which [h] appeared was overall low, as the figures above
show, which did not allow for an in-depth exploration of the effect
of emphasis on the variant [h].
11. Urban Hierarchy Model: The Geography of (h)
The linguistic atlas of Syria by Behnstedt (1997) is the only detailed

evidence of the geographical distribution of /h/ in the pronominal
suffix in Syria. Map 1 shows that the h-less form extends along the
coastal strip in the west, covering the coastal towns and cities of
Tarṭūs, Banyās, and Lattakia.
It is also noticeable that the h-zero form extends from the coast
inlands to include the third largest city of Ḥomṣ and the fifth largest
city of Ḥama. The h-less zone is also prevalent towards the north of
Syria in Aleppo, the second largest city, and in the city of Idleb. The
h-less form also appears in the east of Syria in the cities of Al-Ḥasake,
Qāmišli and Albu Kamāl. Other h-less patches appear on the map
in dispersed areas, including the area of Damascus.
The h-variable pattern mainly hovers around the boundaries
between the h-ful form zone and the h-less form towards the inland
of Syria. More specifically, it appears in between the cities of Ḥomṣ
and Ḥama, between Lattakia and the town of Banyās, and around
the provincial areas of Damascus. The urban dialects of the coast are
h-less, i.e. the 3rd person feminine and plural suffixes in these dia-
lects are /a/ and /on/ respectively. As Behnstedt’s map shows, the
h-variable form occurs in some of the rural dialects of the coast. The
h-zero suffix form takes a progressive pattern along the coastal area,
starting from the north of Syria to the borders of Lebanon south of
Ḥomṣ, and also throughout Lebanon, a pattern which confirms that
the h-zero form is a feature that is characteristic of the coastal
dialects.
The pattern of the geographical distribution of /h/ in Syria suggests
that the h-zero form of the suffix has diffused from the urban coastal
Map 1. The geographical distribution of (h) in Syria (reproduced by Peter

Behnstedt)
dialects to inland locations in a fashion that shows the “urban hierar-

chical pattern” (Chambers & Trudgill 1980, Britain 2002). According
to the urban hierarchy diffusion model, a linguistic innovation can
hop from city to city, before it affects nearer by smaller towns or
villages. This model does not replace the spatial model which simply
predicts that innovations which originate in a particular locality will
spread to nearby localities before they affect farther away regions;
rather it refines it, by incorporating the factors of the size of the
locality (and hence demography), and contact (see Chambers and
Trudgill 1980, and Trudgill 1986). Applied to Syria with respect to
/h/ in the pronominal suffixes, the urban hierarchy model would
predict the following scenario. The dialects along the Syrian coast
(possibly including the Lebanese dialects) characteristically had no
[h] in the pronominal suffixes, contrasting thereby with the inland
dialects which maintained [h]. At some stage, the coastal feature
diffused to inland locations, affecting not only relatively nearby large
urban centres, such as Ḥomṣ, Ḥama and Aleppo, but also much
268 hanadi ismail
farther away urban areas which are located in the heartland of h-ful
areas, such as Al-Ḥasake, Qāmišli and Albu Kamāl. The rural areas
around these cities, and those nearer to the coastal cities, such as the
hundreds of villages in Horan and all of the rural locations east of
Aleppo, do not seem to have been affected by this diffusion; rather,
the feature hopped from one large urban centre onto another before
it affected or without affecting nearby rural locations. With respect
to the dialect of Damascus, the evidence available suggests that the
dialect has been predominantly h-zero, or variable with respect to
this feature for at least a century. The location of Damascus on the
border between h-zero and h-ful dialects would predict that h-ful
forms have existed alongside the more dominant h-zero form. On
the basis of the frequency of occurrence of the two variants in
Damascus, namely that overall [h] occurs in less than 10% of the
time, it is reasonable to suggest that the children acquire an h-zero
system first, and that they learn later on through exposure to other
speakers, and possibly to the written form, that [h] can be inserted
in certain contexts. It is also reasonable to suggest that the city of
Damascus has itself become a focus for the diffusion of h-zero forms
to surrounding Ḥorāni villages, given the fact that historically the
dialects of Horan maintain the [h], and some of them show variation
with respect to this feature according to Behnstedt. It may be worth
noting in this context that the Ḥorāni city and village dialects on the
Jordanian side, such as the dialects of the cities of Ajloun, Irbid and
Ramtha, are firmly h-ful dialects (Enam Al-Wer, pc.).
Conclusion
This article presents fresh sociolinguistic analysis of an old linguistic

variable. The statistical analysis provides evidence in real time that
both the h-ful form and the zero form of the suffix have been in stable
variation in the dialect for a considerable period of time. On the basis
of these results, it is possible to make two conclusions. (i) In the
dialect of Damascus, the zero form is (or has become, see below) the
primary form; the [h] form is derived by a phonological rule: [h] is
inserted obligatorily in hiatus positions (specifically following /a:/).
The forms ha/hon, although occur with [h] only marginally in the
dialect, are also invariably found, perhaps as fossilised cases, in lexical
items such as /ʕal:eha/ on her, /ʕale:hon/ on them (fem). On the basis
of the low frequency of occurrence across the population, regardless

of the social factors, it may be hypothesised that the children acquire
an h-less system and formulate a rule which inserts [h] in hiatus.
Therefore, synchronically the occurrence of [h] in the third person
pronominal suffixes can be accounted for by a rule of insertion. (ii)
The geographical distribution of this feature combined with the sta-
tistical information suggests that the h-less form is characteristically
a feature of the dialects spoken along the coast; the feature diffused
to inland locations as an innovation. Although the h-less forms are
found in city as well as village dialects along the coast, in inland
locations it is primarily a city feature. While the innovation has
reached inland locations as far away as the eastern border, it has
bypassed very large stretches of rural locations, a pattern of diffusion
which is typical of the urban hierarchical model of diffusion.
With respect to the history of the feature in the Damascus dialect
over a period of one century, i.e. the period of time from which data,
however sporadic, are available, it is of course possible to assume
that the dialect may have been h-ful and that a linguistic change has
taken place, and, further, that the current rate of variation represents
the tail end of the change; or the change simply ceased to be opera-
tive for whatever reason(s). Assuming that the heartland of h-less
dialects is indeed the coast and that of the h-ful dialects is the inland,
as suggested by Behnstedt’s maps, it may be stated that the variation
between [h] and Ø in Damascus may have come about as a direct
result of the geographical location of the City at the border between
h-less and h-ful dialects, and/or the mixture in the dialectal bac-
kgrounds of the population.
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the variety of housewives and cockroaches 271
CODE MIXING
272 reem bassiouney
THE VARIETY OF HOUSEWIVES AND COCKROACHES:

EXAMINING CODECHOICE IN ADVERTISEMENTS
IN EGYPT
Reem Bassiouney
1. Introduction
In this article, I examine the discourse function of code-choice in

advertisements in Egypt and show how advertisements reflect and
influence attitudes towards language use in the Egyptian com-
munity.
I will first define diglossia and shed light on Badawi’s levels and
their significance for this study and then I will show how the makers
of advertisements use code choice and stylistic devices in Egypt with
examples from my data. On the basis of my analysis of the data I
argue that:
(i) the attitude of Egyptians towards both Modern Standard Arabic
(MSA) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) as exhibited in the
language of advertisements does not give a full and realistic picture
of the language situation in Egypt. The producers of these advertise-
ments are Egyptians, as such they seem to have a stereotypical fixed
idea about how different people from different backgrounds, different
social groups and with different levels of education use language.
(ii) diglossic switching as part of code switching is used to create
an effect on the audience, since speakers want to leave the utmost
effect with the least effort on their part (Sperber and Wilson 1986).
Switching is used to “minimise costs and maximise rewards” (Myers-
Scotton 1993, 1999). It is noticed that speakers use more stylistic
devices when they are using one variety by itself (ECA or MSA), and
less stylistic devices if they are using a mixed code (ECA and MSA).
This is because using a mixed variety is a device in itself. Therefore,
if no switching is used the speaker will use other devices to minimise
costs and maximise rewards, whether these devices are linguistic or
paralinguistic in nature. This is very true for advertisements.
274 reem bassiouney
Egypt is a diglossic community, i.e. a community in which two

varieties of Arabic—namely, MSA and ECA—exist side by side
(Ferguson 1959). Switching between MSA and ECA does occur in
television advertisements.
In Ferguson’s scheme, the ‘high variety’ (=H, in this case modern
standard Arabic, MSA) is the “highly codified” language used in edu-
cation, for example, while the ‘low variety’ (=L, Egyptian colloquial
Arabic, ECA) is the one used in everyday situations. Ferguson pro-
ceeds by giving situations in which H is appropriate, like university
lectures, mosque sermons, political speeches, and others in which L
is appropriate like soap-operas, conversations between family and
friends, etc. Diglossia in Egypt has been examined by a number of
linguists (Holes 2004, Mejdell 2006, Bassiouney 2006). These linguists
concluded that speakers in Egypt tend to switch between H and L in
the same stretch of discourse.
Following Ferguson, some linguists such as Badawi (1973) and
Mitchell (1980) claimed that there are more than two levels. They
claim that there is in fact a linguistic continuum. Badawi was the first
Egyptian linguist to use levels in analysing the linguistic situation in
Egypt from a sociolinguistic perspective, in relation to education.
Badawi based his study on the output of the Egyptian media. His
classification is both more crucial and more problematic than other
linguists, because his labelling of varieties implies both stylistic arran-
gement and a social hierarchy.
Badawi tries to explain which levels of the spoken language are
typical of which types of speaker and which type of situation in
Egypt. The levels he identifies are listed below.
1. fuṣḥā al-turāṯ,‘heritage classical’: this is the classical Arabic of the
Arab literary heritage and the Qur’an. It represents the prescrip-
tive Arabic grammar as taught at traditional institutions like Al-
Azhar University (Egypt’s oldest university). It is a written
language, but is heard in its spoken form on religious programmes
on TV.
2. fuṣḥā al-ʿaṣr, ‘contemporary classical’: this is what I, as well as
western-trained linguists call MSA, which is a modification and
simplification of Classical Arabic created for the need of the mod-
ern age. It is used in news bulletins, for example. It is usually read
aloud from texts and, if the speaker is highly skilled may also be
used in the commentary to the text.
3. ʿāmmīyat al-muṯaqqafīn, ‘colloquial of the cultured’: this is a collo-

quial influenced by MSA which may be used for serious discus-
sion, but is not normally written. It is used by ‘cultured’ (i.e.
well-educated) people on television. It is also often the language
used in formal teaching in Egyptian universities, and it is becom-
ing the means of educating students and discussing with them
different topics. In other words, it is becoming the medium of
instruction in Egyptian classrooms.
4. ʿāmmīyat al-mutanawwirīn,‘colloquial of the enlightened (basically
educated)’: this is the everyday language that people educated to
a basic level (but not university level) use with family and friends,
and may occur on TV in a discussion of sport or fashion and
other ‘non-intellectual’ topics. Cultured and well-educated peo-
ple also use it when talking in a relaxed fashion about non-serious
topics.
5. ʿāmmīyat al-ʾummīyīn,‘colloquial of the illiterates’: this is the form
of colloquial, which is characterised by the absence of influence
from MSA. On TV, it occurs only in the mouths of certain char-
acters in soap operas, children’s shows and comic situations.1
Badawi explains that almost everyone has more than one of these
levels at their disposal; people often shift between them in the same
conversation (1973: 93). Illiterates and the less well-educated, how-
ever, may find it difficult to shift as much, since they control only
one or two levels with confidence. It is noteworthy that, when he
defines different levels, Badawi uses sociolinguistic factors like educa-
tion. Using education as a criterion can be considered a problem in
his description. It is not clear whether the colloquial levels are built
on socio-economic variables like education or are just ‘stylistic reg-
isters’, or whether they can be both.
The difference between all these levels is in the quantity of MSA
used. Thus, it seems to be a quantitative difference more than any-
thing else.
My data consists of 30 contemporary Egyptian advertisements
taken from the national television channels of Egypt. The products
advertised vary, ranging from motor oil to ghee. I have chosen to
1
In Egyptian soap operas almost all characters—even the educated ones—speak
in ECA. Only in defined situations, like a lawyer in a courtroom, would a speaker use
MSA or switch to any of the levels mentioned by Badawi. This has been the case since
the beginning of the soap opera market in Egypt in the 60s.
276 reem bassiouney
examine advertisements because advertisements are different in

nature from other types of interaction: first, advertisements are pre-
composed. Second, the time for advertisements is limited, as one
pays for each word that is said. Thus, language is chosen to have the
utmost effect possible. Studying code-choice as well as code-swit-
ching in such a case is of great importance. There are also very few
attempts that examine diglossic switching as a type of code-switching
in advertisements in Egypt.
An indicator of the importance of language in television commer-
cials is the fact that the advertisements chosen for analysis here are
also used on the Egyptian Radio without modification, that is, with
no added paralinguistic features. In other words, these advertise-
ments rely purely on their language content.
Unlike discussion programmes on television, advertisements are
prepared—there is no element of surprise. In advertisements, there
is also no element of interaction between the speaker and the
audience. The maker of the advertisement has to predict what the
audience want to hear and/or see, and the best way to market her/
his product.
In this article I show how code-choice is related to the nature of
the product advertised and the target audience. The paper is divided
into two parts, one that deals with sociolinguistic stereotypes specific
to Egypt and the second deals with stylistic devices.
2. Sociolinguistic Stereotypes: The Variety of Housewives

and Cockroaches
Bell (1984, 2001) thinks that a person’s style is no more than her/his
response to the audience. He not only mentions shifts in style within
one language, but he also refers to bilingual and diglossic communi-
ties (1984:189). The audience’s importance is very clear in advertise-
ments. Since the main purpose of the maker of the advertisement is
to appeal to the audience, s/he will use the variety or language of the
audience. That is to say s/he will modify her/his language towards
that of the audience in order to gain their approval. According to
Giles et al. (1987) this is called ‘accommodation’ or convergence.
The producers of these advertisements are Egyptians. As such they
seem to have a stereotypical fixed idea about how different people
from different backgrounds and different social groups use lan-

guage.
For example, in an advertisement, about ghee, housewives are
addressed (target audience), and they are addressed in pure ECA.
The advertisement starts with a lower middle class housewife who is
cooking and complaining that her husband spends all his time with
his friend at the coffee house. A voice in the background advises her
to try using a certain kind of ghee (clarified butter) in her food. After
using that particular brand of ghee, she boasts happily that her hus-
band now spends all his time at home eating her food.
Another advertisement which addresses ‘the working woman’ who

has no time to prepare the food of her baby is in a mixed variety
between MSA and ECA. The advertisement appeals to the educated
woman who wants to give her child the best food possible. MSA is
in italics.
(1) (A mother speaking)
baʿd iš-šahr ir-rābiʿ/ iflik biyitāɡ l-il-ġiḏāʾ il-munāsib/ ġi āʾ fīh
al-ʿanāṣir il-muhimma zayy il-vitamināt wa-l-maʿādin w-il-
borotīːn wi bi-n-nisab il- mutawāzina/ liʾanni miš xabīrit
taġîyya/ balāʾī £uʿūba kibīra ʾinni ʾaḥṣul ʿala it-tawāzun da/ fi ʾakl
il-bēbi/ nistli serilak
biyiʾaddim li ifli il-ġiḏāʾ il-mutawāzin/ ʾadīf il-mayya il-maġliyya
baʿd ma tibrad/ wi ʾah̩s ̩ul ʿala waɡba muġaḏḏiyya/ mutawāzina
(Comment)
nistli serilak aḏ-ḏāʾ al-mutawāzin fi kull waɡba
(Mother):
“When your baby is four months old, he needs the right food with all
important nutrients, like vitamins, minerals and proteins, and in the
right proportions. Because I am not a dietician, I find it really difficult
to achieve that balance in the baby’s food. But Nestle Cerelac gives my
child a balanced diet. I just add boiling water when it cools down, I
have a nourishing yet balanced diet”.
(Comment):
“Nestle Cerelac, the balanced food for every meal”.
In this example, the mother uses a number of lexical items from
MSA, including ġiḏāʾ (nourishment); the first person singular verb
ʾaḥṣul (I obtain) and the adjective mutawāzina (balanced). She also
uses MSA phonological features, such as [ḏ] in ġiḏāʾ (food), and
278 reem bassiouney
muġaḏḏiyya (nourishing), rather than the ECA [z]. According to

Badawi’s classification this advertisement would be classified as
belonging to the colloquial of the enlightened. In fact, the mother is
educated enough to realise what is good for her child and to search
for the best food for her baby. One can even take ‘enlightened’ here
to refer to a way of thinking reflected in the way she speaks. The
question is, would it have been possible for the woman to speak in
MSA or ECA only instead of a mixture of both and still get her mes-
sage through? Perhaps this is or is not possible. However, the adver-
tisement is successful and this may imply that the switching in the
example provides the trust the audience need in the woman; she can
get her point through by using both varieties, therefore she is knowl-
edgeable. Her knowledge of MSA gives her more status, since MSA
is the H variety supposedly used by presidents, scholars and so on
and so forth. This is not necessarily a reflection of the way the woman
actually speaks at home, but the way the woman should speak in
order for us to believe her.
An even more interesting example is the one in which different kinds of

people explain why “Mobil One oil” is good for their cars.
(2) S 1: zēt mobil is only for professionals
S 2: zēt mobil huwwa illi biyināsib ɡamīʿ ʾanwāʿ is-sayyārāt wi
biyuwaffar fi ʾistihlāk il-waqūd wa ʿadad marrāt taġyīr iz-zēt
S 3: wi liʾanni zēt mobil wan zēt naqī miyya fi-l-miyya fa bi-t-
tālī
biyuwaffar fi takālīf al-ʾiṣlāḥ wa ṣ-ṣiyāna
S 4: ʾana baʿtamid ʿala zēt mobil liʾannu al-waḥīd illi biyaʿmal
bi kafāʾa tū̩ l il-yōm xuṣūṣan ʾawʾāt iz-zaḥma
S 1: “Mobil oil is only for professionals”
S 2: “Mobil oil is appropriate for any kind of car, and it helps decrease
fuel consumption as well as the frequency of oil change”.
S 3: “And because Mobil oil is a hundred percent pure, it decreases the
cost of repairs and maintenance”.
S 4: “I rely on Mobil oil because it is the only oil that works perfectly all
day, even in heavy traffic”.
The first speaker is a male foreigner and he speaks in English. The
second speaker is a male engineer, i.e. he is educated and he switches
between MSA and ECA. The last two speakers are women of different
age groups who own cars, and for this reason, are assumed to be
working educated women by the maker of the advertisement.

Therefore, they also use a mixed variety (cf. Mitchell 1986). S1 obtains
his credibility from speaking in English. He claims he is professional
and English proves this to his audience. Speaker two uses what
Badawi classifies as the colloquial of the cultured. He uses a great
number of MSA lexical items like sayyārāt (cars) rather than the ECA
counterpart ʿarabiyya. He also uses the nominalised phrase ʾistihlāk
il waqūd (fuel consumption) which is in MSA. Speaker three (woman)
also speaks in what Badawi classifies as the colloquial of the cultured.
The last female speaker speaks in what Badawi classifies as the col-
loquial of the enlightened.
One of the best advertisements I came across, and the one I would
like to conclude this section with, is the following advertisement
about an insect spray called ‘Raid’ used to get rid of different kinds
of insects.
(3) (A commentator)
rēd akwa ʾɑktiv/ bi tarkībatihi al-farīda bidūn rāʾiḥa/ fa yaqḏ̣ī
ʿala-l-ḥašarāt aṭ-ṭāʾira/ bi surʿa wa bidūn rāʾiḥa/
(A cockroach to his cockroach friend):
ʾana miš šāmim ḥāɡa// rēd//
(The commentator again):
rēd akwa ʾaktiv/ bidūn rāʾiḥa/ faʿʿāl/ wa yuzīl fi-l-ḥāl min
jonson maṣr.
(Commentator)
“Raid Aqua Active with its unique odourless formula kills all flying
insects swiftly and with no smell”.
(A cockroach to his cockroach friend):
“I can’t smell anything…….Raid!” (they both die)
(Commentator)
“Raid Aqua Active without smell is effective and kills instantly from
Johnson, Egypt”.
The male commentator uses MSA, what Badawi calls ‘contemporary
classical’ while the male cockroach utters his last words, unsurpris-
ingly in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, what Badawi calls ‘colloquial of
the illiterates’. The cockroach says to his friend:
ʾana miš šāmim ḥāɡa// rēd//
“I can’t smell anything…….Raid!”
280 reem bassiouney
The cockroach uses ECA negation with the ECA participle form ʾana
miš šāmim (I not smell). So, is ECA the variety of housewives and
cockroaches? Fortunately for us, the answer to this question is no.
This brings us back to Badawi’s levels. Badawi also distinguished
people according to the quantity of MSA used. Advertisement makers
do the same thing. They associate MSA with education, working
women, even wealth, while ECA is the trivial variety used by the
cockroach in the example above. I believe the preconception that
advertisement makers have about language use is not realistic, for
we have data of very educated people speaking in what Badawi terms
“colloquial of the illiterates” (cf. Bassiouney 2006). In fact, I have a
recording of a university lecture in ECA (cf. Reem Bassiouney 2006).
Likewise, the former president of Egypt, Nasser, was capable of hol-
ding a speech in pure MSA, pure ECA or a mixed variety to achieve
a cognitive effect on his audience (cf. Holes 1995). Unlike Badawi
(1995:38), I do not think advertisements reflect real language situa-
tions. They rather reflect misconceptions about language use. These
misconceptions are shared by many Egyptians and this may explain
the success of these advertisements.
3. Diglossic Switching as Part of Code Switching:

Minimise Costs and Maximise Rewards
Diglossic switching as part of code switching has one significant

characteristic: it is used as a linguistic devise to create an effect on
the listener or audience. In other words, speakers use language to
create a cognitive effect (Sperber and Wilson 1985). According to
Myers-Scotton (1997) switching is used to minimise cost and maxi-
mise the rewards of the speaker, i.e. the speaker wants to achieve the
utmost effect on his/her audience with the least effort on his/her part.
Therefore, if no switching is used, the speaker will use other devices
to minimise costs and maximise rewards, whether these devices are
linguistic or paralinguistic in nature. This is very true for advertise-
ments. An advertisement which is in a mixed variety does not have
singing, dancing, different scenes or stylistic devices. In Advertisements
which are in pure ECA, there are usually pretty girls singing or danc-
ing, or a narrative (see example 5). In advertisements in pure MSA
there are usually more stylistic devices, repetition, parallelism, over-
use of co-ordination, etc. (cf. Johnson 1990; Fakhri 1999; Aitchison
2007). Consider the following example in which repetition is in

italics:
(4) munḏu ʿāmi ʾalf wa ṯumnumiʾati wa ṯamānīna/ wa ḥatta al-ʾān/
tata¡āqabu il-½aɡyāl/ wa tatalāaqu al-½adā¾/ wa dā½iman kāna
½adā½una mutamayyizan/ fi qimmat al-½iqti£ād il-qawmī/ mi%a
wa 'amāniyat *ašara *āman mina-l-xibra/ fi-l-wa\ā½i¡ wa-l-isābāt
al-ɡāriya / mi%a wa 'amāniyat *ašara *āman mina-l-xibra / fi-s-sūqi
il-¡iqāriyy im-mi£ri/ mi%a wa 'amāniyat *ašara *āman mina-l-xibra
fi tawīr al-xadamāt al-ma£rafiyya/ mi%a wa 'amāniyat *ašara
*āman mina-l-xibra fi tamwīli wa taswīqi al-mašrū¡āt/ mi%a wa
'amāniyat *ašara *āman mina-l-xibra ¡amalun mustamirri
li xidmat al-½iqti£ād al-qawmi/ al-bank al-¡iqāri al-mi£rī ½awwalu
bankin mi£riyyi
‘Since the year 1880 and until today, as generations have come and
gone and events have taken their course, our performance has taken a
leading role in the national economy. [One hundred and eighteen years
of experience with bonds and current accounts, one hundred and eigh-
teen years of experience as the running Egyptian real estate market,
one hundred and eighteen years of experience in developing financial
services, one hundred and eighteen years of experience in financing
and marketing projects, one hundred and eighteen years of experience
in a continuous effort to serve the national economy. The Egyptian Real
Estate Bank, the first Egyptian bank’
Now consider the following example which is in pure ECA. This is
an advertisement about a company that produces television sets. The
producer of the advertisement uses singing by beautiful girls, para-
linguistic features as well as repetition (in italics) and rhyme (in ital-
ics and underlined).
(5) Singing girls:
lamma tiʾūl samsonɡ tibʾa ʾinta ʿāyiz tilifizyōn ʾalwānu ɡinān
lamma tiʾūl samsonɡ miš bass fi baṭnak baṭīxa ṣīfī lẚ wi šitwī
kamān
lamma ti%ūl samsonɡ timsik rimōt kontrōl wi tinzil boss *ašān
samsunɡ da £ōtuh h̩anūn
la ti½ūl li ɡitār wala %anūn
lamma ti½ūl hāt ....samsonɡ
‘When you say Samsung, it means you want a television with wonderful
colours.
When you say Samsung, you can really rest assured.
282 reem bassiouney
When you say Samsung, you take the remote control in yours hands
and start kissing it in joy because,
Samsung has a tender voice even more tender than a guitar or a kanun
(a string instrument).
When you say give me…Samsung’.
The first three lines have a rhyme scheme. Again in advertisements
that are in MSA or ECA there is more rhetorical devices like rhyme
scheme, repetition, and so on and so forth. Note that unlike the
advertisements which use ECA, in those that use MSA there is usu-
ally no singing or dancing. Therefore diglossic switching as part of
code switching is used in itself as a device. This fact was also noted
by Gardener-Chloros et al when they compared bilinguals’ and
monolinguals speeches’ (2000).
The nature of the product advertised is also crucial in the choice
of code. The assumption is that customers who will use banks in
Egypt are well off and educated enough to choose the best option for
their investments. At least this is the assumption that comes across
to the audience. The use of MSA in this case gives credibility to the
bank and the investor. Televisions on the other hand, are the kind
of products that must appeal to all people, regardless of their educa-
tion or wealth.
Conclusion
Advertisements serve as an example that demonstrates the attitude

and misconceptions of Egyptians towards the use of H and L. The
division of speech into levels related to education only falls short of
giving a thorough picture of the situation in Egypt, although it reflects
the popular conception of the language situation and therefore the
use of language in advertisements. However, producers appeal to
popular beliefs, and that is why they are successful.
Diglossic switching as part of code switching has a discourse func-
tion, namely to leave the utmost effect possible on the audience. The
form of language used by the producers has a clear motivation and
function. Holes (2004:344) highlights the relation between form and
function in relation to the use of MSA. He posits that:
“In any passage of Arabic speech, whether monologue or conversation,
one cannot track, still less make sense of, the moment-by-moment,
unpredictable changes in language form unless one is also aware of
co-occurrent changes in the ideational content of the discourse and the
interpersonal relationships of the participants, as perceived by the par-

ticipants themselves. Changes in the form of what is said are a complex
set of signals- the rules of which have yet to be worked out- of these
underlying changes”.
Speakers tend to use more linguistic and paralinguistic techniques if
they are using only ECA or MSA, but if they are switching between
ECA and MSA, they use fewer of these devices. Switching in itself is
a device used to leave the utmost effect on the listener/audience. I
would like to conclude by citing a quote by Joseph Addison 1710.
He says “The great art in writing advertisements, is the finding out
a proper method to catch the reader’s eye: without which a good
thing may pass over unobserved” (cited in Aitchison 2007:140). The
diglossic situation in Egypt provides a rich fertile ground for catching
the reader’s eye.
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index 285
INDEX
% (hamza): verbs C1 = __ 83 Al umaid 99-107

a vowel raising rule 27, 33, 36, 38, 135, ʿalāli 123
136, 137, 257, 258 Alamblak 176
*ǝzzābi/*azzābi 137 Albanian 52
AAVE > African American Vernacular Albu Kamāl 266, 268
English Albū Kmāl 27
%abǝl mǝnno 160 Aleppo 21, 31, 60, 116, 133, 154, 158,
½Abǝr ¡Ātke 155, 167 162, 164, 266, 267, 268
Ablaut 178 %ālet tasžīl 127
above: change from __ 223 Alexandria 41, 51, 52, 56
absolute: qualitative __ differences 230 Algeria 66, 70, 73, 189
½Abu Rummāne 155, 167 Algonquian 175
accommodation 29, 35, 38, 130, 190, al-asake 266, 268
203, 208, 212, 213, 214, 217, 219, 239, al-Karkh 17, 30
240, 276 allomorph/allomorphy 27, 139, 158, 159,
acoustic analysis 226 179
acquisition of language 177, 179, 195, al-Mazze 112
212, 215, 224, al-Qahaba 69
Aden 68, 71 Altaic 182
adverb/adverbial 28, 34, 36, 92, 93, 124, alternation 4, 5, 20, 51, 187, 197
128, 142, 160, 253, 254 alveolar spirant(s) > interdental(s)
advertisement(s) 273-283 ¡Amāra/ ¡Amaara 132, 167, 251
affix(es)/affixation 175, 188, 253, ½Amīn 136, 167
affrication/affricate 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 36, Amman Arabic 12, 25, 26, 203, 240, 257,
37, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 52, 53, 55, 258
56, 60, 79, 80, 94, 203, 206, 207, 208, *āmmi 115, 117
209-221 ¡Āna 23, 25, 26
Afghanistan Arabic 181, 182 ana 27, 28, 91, 164, 178, 190, 191, 192,
Africa: Arabic dialects of __ 10, 23, 47, 279, 280,
66, 70, 179, 196, 249 analysis: acoustic __ 226
African American Vernacular English anaptyxis 24, 82, 101
227 Anatolia 10, 11, 12, 21, 27, 65, 70
age 111, 112, 128, 138, 155, 161, 166, ½anawāt 123, 125, 143, 149, 155, 167
177, 183, 204, 208, 209, 210, 214, 215, *Anazī 18, 32
216, 224, 229, 230, 233, 240, 251, 252, Andalusia 47
253, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 278 %anǝf, %amf, %ǝnǝf, %anāf 125
agreement: person and number __ 83, %anginār 163
88, 174, 177 āni 27, 34
-ah (pron. suffix) 82, 89, 90, 92, 102, 103 %anon 165
%ao 163 anticipatory pronominal suffix 22, 35
Ahl al-Shimāl 99-107 Antiochia 65
Ajloun 268 %anu/i 164
Akhdar > Jabal apophonic passive 35, 88, 94
Akkadian 5, 10, 175 *arabāye/*arabiyye 163
½Akrād 111, 167 Arabo-Persian loans in Panjabi 197
%aktar 117 Aramaic/Syriac 189
286 index
Aramaic 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, Barādah province 67

35, 38, 44 baranda 163
Aramaic: Official __ 4, 6, 8, 9 barbīš 163
Aramaic: Old __ 6, 7, 9, 13 bare verbs 195, 197
(%ar ǝ) d-dār 163 Barīs (Kharga oasis) 72
%ar ǝd-dyār 163 Barrierenrelikt > relic form(s)
%arišōki 163 Basque 52, 175, 193
%ariyye 163 Basra 23, 24
%arža 123 Bāinah coast 81, 89
%aa 118 bazella/bazēlla/bazālya 122
*ašǝnno 137 Bc (classification Cantineau) 103
¡Asīr province 67, 69 bǝ%bāl 125
½A££ā¡ 109-168 Bedouin (type of) dialect(s)/bedouiniza-
%aššāše 161 tion 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29,
assimilation 44, 86, 188, 190, 205 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 55, 57, 65, 66, 70,
asymmetry 26, 42, 187, 197 71, 72, 77-98, 99-107, 124, 207, 251
*atī% 114 Beirut 12, 21, 129
attitude(s) 273, 282 Beja 69
attrition 233 below: change from __ 223
Australia: central 175 Berber 64, 180, 189
Austronesian 175 bǝrd%ān 132, 133
automatisation of linguistic rules 194 Bethlehem Arabic 12
auxiliaries 91, 191, 193, 194, Biblical __ 4, 5, 7
%aw(wa)lāni/%awwali 123, 124 bilingualism 177, 187, 195, 197, 276,
awareness of variation 210, 262 282,
¡Awāzim 99 bir (Turkish) 23
%awle 124 bnāni < lǝbnāni 121
%awletǝmbāre/%awwal(t)ǝmbāre 128 bnōb 124
borrowing(s) 18, 19, 22, 44, 176, 182,
B (classification Cantineau) 103 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195,
Bāb ǝs-Srīže 114, 123, 126, 130, 149, 155, 196, 197, 198, 264
167, bō 161
Bāb ǝž-Žābye 167 Brazilian Lebanese 190, 192, 195, 198,
Bāb Tūma 114, 126, 134, 135, 136, 141, Bretonic 52
148, 149, 167 bša%%īt 165
back shift 42, 45, 46, 47, 56 bša%%īt-ǝl-mǝn 165
backing effect of r 257 bū (relative particle) > relative
Badawi’s levels 273, 274, 275 Bu¡aij 104
Badu al-Furāt 100 Bulgarian 176
Baghdad/Bagdad 17-38, 44, 47, 73 bxārak 130
Baārna > Bahrain byǝltǝ%i, byǝlta%a 144
Bahrain Arabic 5, 10, 25, 28, 36 byǝnǝki/byǝnaka 144
%bāl 125 byǝstrī/byǝstrā 145, 146
baladi 114, 115, 117, 120 byǝtanna* (or byǝǝne*) b-akyo; muana*
Balkan Sprachbund 176 115
Balkans 176, 240
Balqā½ 32 C (classification Cantineau) 103
Bani Khālid 102, 103 -č (pron. suffix) 26
Bani akhar 100 C1ǝC2C3ān/C1aC2C3ān (nǝsyān hǝrbān mǝ-
Bani Swēf 41 lyān šǝrbān ǝfyān bǝrdāne) 135, 136
Banyās 266 Cairo Arabic 41-57, 60, 273-283
Barada River 251 čämčǟye 162
index 287
capitalism: development of __ 230 conditioning: phonetic/phonological __

career productivity: level of __ 251 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 37, 38, 135, 139, 153,
career-professional 252, 253 212, 213, 215,
case-marking 183, 184, 265, 268, conflict: site of language __ 235
Caucasus 176 conservatism 80, 83, 88, 94, 95, 117, 130,
causal social processes 224 133, 136, 148, 149, 156, 164, 165, 175,
CB > Christian Baghdadi 205, 232, 233, 240, 241, 242
Central Asia 11, 22, 23, 181, 182 conspicuous feature(s) 24, 47, 57; >
centralisation of a 135, 151, 152, 153, markedness
159, 165 constraints 14, 187, 193, 254
Chad Arabic 65, 66, 67, 69, 73 contact 10, 18, 23, 33, 35, 36, 41, 44, 82,
change from above 223 94, 106, 117, 119, 148, 173-221, 224,
change from below 223 225, 227, 231, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242,
Chitimacha and Zuni 175 258, 267
Christian Baghdadi 17-38 contact: co-territorial __ 177, 182
Christian(s) 17-38, 109-168 contact-induced change 94, 173, 176,
Cilicia 65 178, 179, 180
cities in the Near East 168 contemporary classical 279
class: social __ 112, 166, 228, 229, 232, content: language __ 276
233, 252, 253, 277, 283 continuum: linguistic __ 274
class-defining practices 252 corridor 41, 55
Classical Arabic 3, 9, 11, 41, 43, 44, 46, counter-urbanisation 232, 233, 239
48, 57, 101, 104, 179, 184, 189, 190, 249, creole(s) 174, 178, 179, 195
274, 279; Standard Arabic, MSA, fu£ā Croatian 52
classical: contemporary __ 279 cross-section 226
clauses of time: adverbial __ Çukurova 73
cliticisation/clitic(s) 21, 22, 35, 79, 82, cultured: colloquial of the __ 279
89, 90, 175, 211, 212, 213, 257 Cyprus Arabic 21, 22, 196
closed class 190
closed community 46 *ð: proto-Aramaic __ 6
cluster(s) 81, 82, 101 *ð: proto-Semitic __ 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 13
code-choice 273-283 *\: reflex of __ 4
code-mixing 187, 188, 191, 192, 195, *d: reflex of __ 5, 6
196, 197, 198, 279 ð~d 9
code-switching 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, ð > z 4, 7, 10, 14
273, 276 d as reflex of Arabic *ð
co-existence: site of language __ 235 d(ǝ) (proclitic) 21
cognitive effect 280 da- verb modifier 20, 21, 28, 35, 38
colloquial of the cultured 279 Dakhla oasis 41, 47
colloquial of the enlightened 278 daktōr 163
colloquial of the illiterates 279 Damascus Arabic 10, 12, 21, 109, 110,
colonialism 67, 179, 189, 196, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123,
community: speech __ 5, 179, 188, 195, 126, 130, 134, 135, 136, 144, 145, 148,
223, 226, 240, 245 149, 150, 152, 153, 157, 158, 159, 160,
comparative method 3, 14, 183 161, 165, 168, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254,
compensatory lengthening (gemination) 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268, 269
255 Damietta 41, 50, 55, 57
compensatory syllable onset 255 Daniel: Book of __ 3, 4
complexity/complication/complexifica- dar ‘to do’ 191
tion 120, 147, 148, 160, 173-184, 188, data processing: mass statistical __ 227
193, 195, 211, 212, 215, 220, 225, 227, awwa* 127
240, 241, 242, 283 Dāxilīya region 78, 95
288 index
ayya* 127 %ǝž/zaziyye 161

dǝ- (proclitic) 21 early dialect forms 225
dē 21 Eastern Arabia 10, 100, 190
de-affrication 44, 45 -ǝč (pron. suffix) 26
dǝlǝ* 130, 131 %ǝddām 126
deletion of v > elision %ǝdǝn 163
demonstrative(s) 34, 93 education: levels of __ 273, 283
denativisation 194 Egypt Arabic 10, 21, 41-57, 60, 64, 66,
dēne 163 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 180, 192, 204,
denominal verbs 189, 190 273-283
dental(s) 41, 42, 44, 56, 80 %ǝna 135
de-palatalization 42, 45 ǝna 27, 28, 34, 135
Dēr ez-Zōr 25, 26, 27, 28 -ǝk (pron. suffix) 26
derived verb patterns 87, 88 elision of vowel(s) 81, 82, 86
de-segregation 133, 141 *ǝllē%a/*allē%a/*allā%a 123
development g > > g 56 ǝlli (relative particle) > relative
dī 22 %ǝlli (relative particle) > relative
diachronic development 174, 188, 189 ½Ēmariyye 137, 143, 155, 167
dialect geography/geographers 43, 49, embedded language 47, 188, 191, 193,
225 194, 195, 196, 198
dialectal norms 43, 230 embedding: social __ of linguistic change
dialectological surveys: traditional __ 227
225 emphasis/emphatics 10, 55, 80, 113, 115,
diatopic/diastratic variation 43 116, 131, 132, 133, 148, 149, 150, 151,
dichotomy 183, 223 154, 165, 257, 265, 266
*īf 163 enclitic(s) 79, 82, 89, 90, 153
differential effects of socio-economic fac- Enga (Papuan) 176
tors 229
English: Chancery Standard __ 175
differentiation: gender __ 218, 221, 259,
English: Middle __ 174, 229
261, 262, 263, 264
enlightened: colloquial of the __ 278
diffusion: urban hierarchy __ model 266,
267, 269 %ēno/%ēna/%ēnu/%ēni 164
ǝntǝm 27
diglossia 8, 9, 273, 274
diglossic switching 280 ǝntu 27, 34
direct insertion 188 %ǝ%a<<a 163
disambiguation 8 es-Sal/Sult 32, 257
disappearing/-ed features 156, 164 Ethiopic Semitic 10
discourse function 273-283 ethnicity 111, 204, 205, 206, 208, 227,
distribution of linguistic features 11, 12, 228, 229, 230
20, 25, 27, 34, 37, 41, 43, 44, 49, 50, 55, Euphrates group 25, 28, 99-107
56, 57, 64, 67, 100, 130, 137, 148, 161, Euscarian 52
177, 214, 215, 216, 229, 250, 252, 259, %ǝwlād/%ūlād 121
260, 264, 266, 267, 269 existential marker šē 92
Djingili 175 expansion (of Arabic) 179, 181
DO-construction 187-198 exposure to other speakers 268
dominance of urban areas in variationist %ǝxtyār/%ǝxtiyār/xǝtyār 121
studies 228 Ezra: Book of __ 3, 4
dominance 37, 188, 228
ōže/ažže 123 fa/āūlya/fa/āūlye/fāuliyye etc. 122
dual number 174, 175, 179 fad(d) 22, 23
Dummar 158, 249-269 faġad/faġǝd 23
dummy verb 187, 188, 193 fakkartak 163
Dumyā > Damietta Farafra oasis 41
index 289
farāše/farrāše/fǝrrēše 123 giddām (“before”) 182

fard 23 Gilyak/Nivkh (Sakhalin) 175
farǝd 23 gi-prefix 178
farža 123 glottal stop 55, 57, 80
fashionable features 18 Goldvarb X programme 258
fashionable youth 253 grammaticalisation 191, 192, 194, 240
fat 23 grands nomades 102
Fayyūm 41 Greek 52, 188, 189, 196, 198
Fa¥ul/Fa^_ul 102, 103 Gulf Arabic 10, 23, 28, 66, 70
feminine plural forms 23, 35, 83, 101, Ġūa/Ghuta 135, 167, 168, 251
249, 250
fetishism: urban __ 234, 238 (h) variable 203-269
fǝttāš(e )/ fǝttēš(e) 163 a 129
fǝz*ān 163 a- 21
fieldworker inaccuracies 226 ha- 21, 159
fil 32 habitual action 20
fossilization 8, 9, 23, 268 ada(n) 139
free time 253 a\arī > settling
free variation 19, 36, 80, 81 ade 140
fringe 99, 252 hadǝnk 126
fronting 25, 79, 207, 257, 258 hadǝnke 126
Fuail 100 hadǝnken 126
fu£ā 48, 49, 273-283; > Standard Arabic, adīdīn 102, 103
MSA, Classical Arabic hadolīk 126
futurity 11, 21, 35, 91, 129, 140, 146 adramawt 204
afar al-Bāin 99
g ~ [dz] 203, 204, 209 afīri 115
g ~ | 43, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56, 57 *hāhinā/hāhunā 28
| ~ ɟ 80 ajar > Jabal
*|: reflex of __ 44, 53, 80, 81, 101, 103 aki 113
[gj] ~ [g] 47 akīm 163
gā*ed (present continuous marker) 28 halla%tēne 160
ğā*ed/ğā*id > gā*ed halla%tīniyye 160
ġa/ġā 21 halli (relative particle) > relative
gahawa syndrome 24, 33, 38, ama 266, 267
ġarīb 114 amamīm 143
gǝlǝt/gilit 17-38, 99, 101 āmel 163
gender: grammatical __ 37, 94, 174, 175, ammāmāt 143
178, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 220, 221,
āra 113
250, 253
Harāksah 104
gendered socialization 229
Harīb 68
gentrification: rural __ 233
harmony: vowel __ 134, 138, 150, 151
geographical coverage 226
geographical variation 228, 229 asake 266, 268
geographically-oriented dialectology assabtak 163
234 assānīya Arabic 66
geography/geographers: dialect __ 43, 49, attā 21
225 Hausa 192, 196
German 43, 46, 51, 52, 65, 67, 176, 193, hawna 28
194 (ayy) ǝl-½Amīn 136, 167
Germanic languages 42, 43, 67, 240 azīn 163
Ghaziyah 105 da*š 165
290 index
Hebrew 3, 10, 46, 51, 52 indigenous language 179, 180

ǝmle 163 indirect insertion 188
ǝnna 135 Indo-European 175, 182
hǝnne(n) 139 Indo-Iranian 182
heterogeneity 49, 204, 227, 231, 232, Indonesia 204
239, 242 inflection 27, 83, 85, 89, 94, 175, 179,
hierarchy 128, 188, 266, 267, 269, 274 191, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197,
hierarchy: urban __ model 266, 267, 269 influence: grammatical __ 180
Hijaz 8, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, inherent variability 223, 224
213, 215, 220 -inn suffix 89
*hinā 28, 29 innovation 215, 219, 220, 232, 234, 267,
hini 29 269,
historical linguistics 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, 173 inscriptions 4, 5, 7, 8
Hīt 25 insertion 82, 187, 188, 192, 193, 194, 197,
hnā 28, 34, 36, 93, 96 255, 268, 269,
hnī 28 insular dialects 22, 23, 227, 240
hnīk(e) 129, 130 integration 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 194,
Hollandi Canal 99 195, 196, 197, 198, 252,
hollow verbs 86, 145 intellectual elites 253
homogeneity 95, 112, 205, 225, 230, 237, intelligibility: mutual __ 51, 147, 148,
253 179, 203, 206, 238, 242
om£ 266, 267 interdental(s) 6, 80, 265
honīk(e) 129, 130 interference 109, 173
ōrān/Hawran 28, 100, 113, 251, 268 interjection 22
Hugarīya 68 internal development 47, 56
*hunā 28, 29 internal homogeneity 230
Hungarian 52 internal sociolinguistic geographies 229
hūni 28 International Phonetic Alphabet 225
hybrid form(s) 36, 236 interrogative 92, 93, 139, 147, 164, 182,
hybridity: linguistic __ 236 193
intra-rural differences 231
-i (final) 82, 90, 101, 141, 157, 178 intra-speaker variability 228
%īd 125 IPA > International Phonetic Alphabet
%ida*š 165 Iraq Arabic 10, 17, 18, 24, 25, 28, 65, 66,
idiosyncracy 42, 48, 101 67, 70, 73, 99-107, 249
Idleb 266 Irbid 268
ihna 28 (-ī)re/a 137
illi (relative particle) > relative isogloss: ½āf – gāf 55
illiterates: colloquial of the __ 279 isogloss: gīm – ǧīm 55
impatience 21 isogloss: Uzbekistan – Anatolia 12
implausibility: phonetic __ 5, 7 isolated words or short phrases 225
implicational relationship of phonemes isolation 30, 94, 95, 173-184, 224, 227,
41, 214 240, 241, 242,
-īn (final) 29, 82, 143 Ivrit 189
-īn (imperfect verb ending 2nd p. sg. %iž/zaziyye 161
fem.) 29, 82 Izki 78, 81, 94, 95
-in > tanwīn
inaccuracies: fieldworker __ 226 ɟ (as reflex of *|) 41, 79, 80, 81
incorporating loan(s) 33, 34, 35, 187, ɟa, yiɟí verb “come” 87
189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, Jabal Akhdar 94
independent linguistic entity 46 Jabal ajar 77
indetermination marker 22, 23, 38 Jabal ¿ayy 102
index 291
Jazira 32, 101 laa 129

JB > Jewish Baghdadi lāâr/lāxar 161
Jewish Arabic 17-38, 46, 47, 56, l-½Akrād 111, 167
109-168 l-¡Amāra/¡Amaara 132, 167, 251
Jewish Baghdadi 17-38 lamma(n) 140
Jiblih 66 lammen 140
jim (“with, together with”) 182 l-½Anawāt 123, 125, 143, 149, 155, 167
Jisr Sūdān 99 l-½A££ā¡ 109-168
Jordan Arabic 10, 12, 203, 250, 251, 257, Latin script: Arabic in __ 49, 56
268 Lattakia 266
layering 188, 294
*k: reflex of __ 25, 26, 33, 79, 101 learnability 177
k ~ č 26, 37 Lebanese Arabic 21, 28, 65, 69, 114, 117,
k ~ [ts] 203, 204, 209 123, 130, 135, 146, 158, 160, 189, 195,
kabban 163 198, 249, 250, 251, 266, 267
kabža 161 lǝêr / lǝxer 161
ka%ǝnno 137 lǝna 134
kāf al-*aamiyya 50 lǝ^ri / lǝxri 161
kafkīr 161 l-½Ēmariyye 137, 143, 155, 167
kallaf (bikallef b-akyo) (akyo mǝtkal- lǝ-Mhāžrīn 114, 133, 134, 167
lef) 115 lento/allegro 138
kamān 151, 160 lǝssa*ta 129
kamāniyye 160 Levant Arabic 66, 67, 70, 73, 249, 250
Karaite Jews 25 levelling 26, 33, 36, 94, 119, 203, 206,
karata 163 219, 220, 233, 234, 235, 239, 240
Karkh 17, 30 l-%ǝwlād/lūlād 121
kǝbžāye 161 l-Âarāb / l-Xarāb 167
kǝndra 161 Libya 10, 66, 67, 70, 73, 178
kǝtǝb 163 life expectancy: average __ 252
kǝtob/kǝtǝb 163 life-mode(s) 236, 252, 253, 258, 259, 261,
kǝzlok 161 262, 264,
Kharga oasis 41, 54, 72, lifestyle(s) 77, 78, 95, 237, 252, 253
Khorasan 66 light verb 187, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194,
Khuzistan 65 195, 196, 197, 198,
-ki (pron. suffix) 26, 27, 211, 212, 213, lil (indirect obj. marker) 181
214, 215, 217, 219, 220, 221 linear sequence/development 4, 6, 43,
kinships: locally-based __ 208, 253 53, 56
Ki-Nubi 68, 73, 178, 179, 180 linguistic adaptation 17- 38, 47, 56, 57,
Kirkuk 73 194,
koineization 25, 33, 36, 119, 229, 239, linguistic diversity 118, 119, 147, 157,
240, 242 165, 168, 175, 176, 182, 227, 230, 237
ktīr 115 liquid 80, 101
!Kung 175 lli (relative particle) > relative
Kuwait Arabic 23, 24, 28, 99 l-Mālki 155, 167
Kwayriš 28 l-Masbak 114
Kwidah 104 l-Mazra¡a 155, 167
l-Mīdān/Meedan 109-168
l- (proclitic) 22, 35 Loan Verb Assimilation Hierarchy 188
labialisation 151, 153 Loan(s) 25, 33, 35, 44, 67, 69, 112, 117,
la%ǝ/anno 137 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129, 136,
la 129 137, 140, 141, 147, 148, 149, 153, 161,
la 21, 35, 36, 129, 141 165, 187-198
292 index
location 77, 88, 100, 180, 183, 224, 230, matrix (language) 187, 188, 194, 195
232, 233, 267, 268, 269 ma 113, 116
locus: social __ of linguistic change 226 maā 163
long-term contact 176 maw 142
l-Xarāb > l-Âarāb mawwāl 54, 55
Mazra¡a 155, 167
m(a)%ā/abīl 125, 126 Mazze 112
ma hēk ? 163 MB > Muslim Baghdadi
ma 142 mǝ%bāl 125, 126
ma/ǝskīn 136 Mecca/Makkah 69, 73, 203, 204, 206,
m%ābel 125, 126 249
Macedonian 176 mechanisms of change 226
madda/ǝllo 145 mǝġġē 163
M*a amiyye 28 mǝnxār, mǝxxār, etc. 125
Maghniyya 73 merged reflex of *½ and w 85
Maġrib/Maghreb Arabic 24, 36, 47, 66, merged reflex of *ð and d 5, 11
67, 70, 153 merged reflex of *ð and z 5, 6, 8
main-stream variety 46 merged reflex of and 80
majority dialect(s)/form(s) 12, 25, 28, merger 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 80, 85, 194, 242
35, 46, 56, 128, 129, 136, 144, 147, 153, mǝskīn 163
155, 156, 213, 239 Mesopotamian Arabic 17, 21, 23, 25, 28,
makanet tasžīl 127 35, 99-107, 251
Makkah > Mecca Mhāžrīn 114, 133, 134, 167
mal(y)ān 127, 128 -mi interrogative suffix 182
māli/māni 140 mi 142
Mālki 155, 167 Miao/Hmong 175
Malta Arabic 22, 180, 181, 189 Mīdān/Meedan 109-168
Ma¡lūla-Aramaic 44 Middle Arabic 9, 13, 139
manaxīr 125 middle class professionals 253
Manā¥rah/Manā^_rah 102, 103 Middle English 174, 229
Mandarin Chinese 175 Migration/immigration/emigration 12,
manfaxa 113 25, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 77, 105, 106,
Mangarayi 175 180, 181, 191, 196, 197, 198, 203, 204,
mann-i/ak etc. 141 205, 223, 229, 238, 239, 241, 242,
manoeuvring of leisure times 252 minority dialect(s)/form(s) 26, 34, 38,
manoeuvring of work times 252 46, 56, 57, 137, 142, 144, 220, 239, 249,
Mardin 21 minority language: Arabic as __ 249
marī 163 misconceptions about language use 280
markedness 20, 22, 36, 203, 211, 217, mixing: site of language __ 235
233, 239, 240; > conspicuous Mixtec 175
marker: present continuous __ gā*ed 28 mnǝ%bāl 125
marker: sociolinguistic __ 21, 26, 34, 36, mnōb > b/mnōb
37, 38 mnōb 124
marking: direct object __ 181 mo 142
marking: indirect object __ 181 mobility 203, 236, 238
Maronite teachers 48 mode of production 252
Masbak 114 Modern Standard Arabic > MSA
Mashriq/Mašriq 21, 22, 67 modifier: verb __ da- 20, 21, 28, 35, 38
maske 125 Morocco 44, 45, 64, 66, 70, 73, 180, 189,
massāke 125 191, 192, 195, 196, 198
material culture 63, 64, 67 morphological marker 175, 180
mama / -a 117 morphology: loss of __ 174, 178
index 293
mōsam 160 network: social __ 210, 232, 238, 240,

mōsem 160 252
Mosul 23, 27 New Guinea 176
mountain region of Oman 77-98 newly-built suburb > Dummar
mow 142 nhār 132
MSA 273-283; > Standard Arabic, fu£ā, Niger-Congo language 179
Classical Arabic Nigeria Arabic 65, 69
mša%%īt 165 Nile Valley 66
msažžel/msažžle 127 Nile-Delta 41-57, 65
mu hēk ? 163 Nilo-Saharan language 179
mu 142 nomad(ic) 32, 77, 78, 95, 99, 102, 103,
muaxxam 113 105, 106
mufaxxam 113 nominalization of verbs 187, 198, 279
muhazzab 113 non-concatenative lexical structure 189
multicultural urban centres 227 non-contingency marker 21
multilingualism 227 norm: dialect __ 117
Muntafiq 105 norms: dialectological __ 43, 230
murūne 114, 115 Norse: Old __ 174, 176
Musandam 77 North Africa Arabic 10, 23, 47, 70, 179,
musaqqaf 115 196
Muscat 81 North America 175, 227, 232
mūsem 160 Northeastern Neo-Aramaic 23
Muslim Baghdadi 17-38 Norwich 224, 228
nūniyye 163
Muslim(s) 17-38, 46, 47, 64, 109-168
Muair 99
occupation 230
mutual intelligibility 51, 147, 148, 179,
Oceania: Central __ 175
203, 206, 238, 242
Old English 174
mwāžeh 126 Oman Arabic 43, 65, 66, 72, 73, 77-98
opacity 175, 240
Nabataean 5, 7, 8, 9 optative function/marker 20
naārāt 161 Oran 73
nā*em 115 ordering: diachronic __ 188
Na|d / Najd Arabic 43, 53, 95, 99, orientation 230
100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 180, 183, orthography 7, 8, 9, 14, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53
203-221 overspill: urban __ 233
nahǝr 131 over-use of co-ordination 280
Najdi resyllabification rule 24, 38
nār 131, 132 Pacific North West 176
narbīš 163 palatalization 41, 42, 45, 57, 79, 80
Nā£iriyyah 99 Palestine Arabic 12, 25, 26, 52, 66, 69,
natural drift/change 11, 21, 23, 26, 33, 133, 146, 160, 189, 249, 250, 251, 257
35, 37 Pama-Nyungan 175
naturalness of change 11, 21, 23, 33 Papuan 176
nāzīk 114, 115 papyri: Aramaic __ 4, 21
nǝ/aǝn 135 paradigm transfer 188
negation 92, 121, 124, 139, 140, 142, 193, paralinguistic features 273, 276, 280,
280, 281, 283
nǝǝn 135 parallelism 280
nǝna/nana 134 passive: apophonic __ 35, 88, 94
nǝḥna/naḥna 27, 28, 134, 152 past tense: irregular __ 174
nǝ bō 161 pastoralism 77, 230
294 index
patterns of sociolinguistic variation and qualitative absolute differences 230

change 229 quantifying complexity 175
patterns of variation and change 236 quantitative tendencies 230
peninsula: Arabian __ 29, 43, 65, 67, 70, Quechua 179, 198
71, 72, 79, 81, 179, 180, 184, 205, 206 Questionnaire(s) 64, 68, 71, 73, 99, 124,
periphery 43, 175 225
periphrasis 188, 190, 193, 194
petits nomades 102 re 137
phonemic stress 257 Ra½s al-add 77
pidgin(s) 174, 177, 178, 179, 195 radī% 113
pilgrim(s) 32, 51, 52, 53, 56, 204 ra/ā > la
placenames 48, 50, 55, 57, 66 ra 129
plosive(s) 41, 54, 56, 79, 80, 81; > stop(s) raa 129
plurals: irregular nominal __ 174 rāâr / rāxar 161
postposition(s) 182 raising of short vowel a 27, 33, 36, 38,
pre-composed text 276 135, 136, 137, 257, 258
pre-Islamic 22 ram(y)et, ram(y)u 145
prepalatal(s) 41, 45 ramet, ramu 145
preposition(s) 91, 145, 152, 158, 159, Ramtha 268
160, 165, 181, 253, 254, 264, 265, 266 random sampling 228
present continuous action 20, 28, 35 Rashāyidah 99
prestige feature/dialect 19, 22, 25, 26, 31, Rašīd > Rosetta
34, 36, 38, 81, 118, 119, 120, 196, 262 Rau¥atain / Rau^_atain 99
Principle II: Labov’s __ 262
Raw\a 111, 167
proclitic d(ǝ)- 21
rāye 129
proclitic l- 22, 35
rāyi / rāye 21, 129
production: mode of __ 252
re 137
proficiency 187, 188, 195, 197
progressive marker gi - 178 reconstruction 3, 11, 13, 183
pronoun(s)/pronominal(s): personal __ recording equipment 225
22, 23, 26, 27, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 79, 89, reduction of morphological categories 23,
90, 91, 102, 123, 127, 129, 134, 139, 35, 174
140, 141, 143, 145, 154, 156, 157, 158, redundancy 174, 175, 235, 239
159, 160, 162, 164, 176, 178, 191, 207, reflex of *^_ 4
249-269 reflex of *ð 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
proportions of speakers 183 reflex of *r 21
proto-Arabic *ð 11, 184 regularity/irregularity 174, 175, 177, 178,
proto-Aramaic *ð 6 193, 239, 240
proto-Semitic *ð 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 rǝêr / rǝxer 161
Proto-Semitic 3-14 rǝ^ri / rǝxri 161
Rǝkn ǝd-dīn 167
q ~ ʕ 4 relative marker/clause 4, 5, 91, 92, 152,
*q: reflex of __ 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 37, 159, 182
41, 52, 53, 55, 79, 101, 112 reliability tests 225
q as reflex of proto-Semitic *ð 4 relic-form(s) 12, 55, 56
qa- / qad- 21 religious affiliation 17, 18, 24, 26, 34
Qahaba 69 repetition of grammatical information
Qalamūn 44 174, 177
Qāmišli 266, 268 repetition 280
Qash¡am 105, 106 representative (of a section) of a commu-
Qatar Arabic 23 nity 226
qǝltu / qultu 17-38, 249 residual zones 175, 176
index 295
resyllabification of C1aC2C3 (where C2 is Sardiyyah 100, 103

, x, ġ, h or ¡) > gahawah syndrome sātet 165
resyllabification 24, 33, 38, 81, 83, 256 Saudi Arabia 67, 68, 69, 70, 99, 180, 190,
rhotacism 151 203, 204, 205, 206, 249
Rijāl Alma 69 Šawāwī 77-98
Romance languages 42, 43, 67, 180, 181, Šāwiya 18, 32, 105
189 aydaliyye/ēdaliyye 161
Rosetta 50, 51, 52, 56 sāye 113
Rückverschiebung > back shift Scandinavian 174, 179
Rufai¡ 99-107 šē (existential marker) 92
Rufaydah 68 SED > Survey of English Dialects
‘rural’ as category obfuscatory 231 sedentary dialect(s)/feature(s) 18, 20,
‘rural’: definition of __ 231 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 65, 72,
rural Baghdadi 18 77-98, 102, 206
rural Damascus 251 segregation 34, 117, 141, 166
rural dialect(s)/features 20, 23, 24, 25, ŠēÃ/Šēx Muyǝddīn 114, 167
26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35. 36, 37, 38, 41, 94, self-employed 252
223, 266, semantic load: decreasing __ 191
rural gentrification 233 Semitic: proto- __ > proto-Semitic
rural Jordanian 12 šǝnno 137
rural speaker(s)/area(s)/feature(s) 12, settling/settled 17, 32, 55, 66, 77, 78, 81,
18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 94, 205, 231, 241
32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 66, 73, 77, 81, sex effect 263
94, 95, 211, 223-242, 251, 266, 268, 269 Sharārāt 100
rural-urban similarities 231 Shi¡ah/Shi¡i(te)/Shiite 33, 36, 37, 100,
Rustāq 79, 81, 89 104, 105
shifting: style __ 223, 265
š as reflex of k > affrication Shukriyya 64, 65
/ǝf ǝr 133 ši %ǝnno 164
S1 (> S-type Oman) 79, 81, 94 Sibawaih 43, 44, 60, 206
S2 (> S-type Oman) 79, 94 sibilant(s) 6, 41, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 57,
sabbā/sǝbbā 161 265
sa%alla 163 Sicily 180, 181
Sā¡dah 104 Sierra Miwok: Southern __ (USA) 175
sādes 165 simplification 173-184, 212, 239, 240,
Sadr City 33, 37 274
šao 163 simultaneity 4, 5, 113, 118
Saimā½ 79 Sinai 72
sakaža 163 Siouan 175
ála/alá/alā́ 162 Sirān 100, 102, 103
salience 21, 24, 34, 81, 104, 211, 227 šīt 164
Sal/Sult 32, 257 šiyāt 164
Samaritan __ 5, 9 skarbīne 161
Samaritan Aramaic 5, 9 Slavic 176
Samaritan Hebrew 9 lūt 102, 103
Samawa 104 ōbya/e, ōb(b)a 122
šāmi *atī% 114 social embedding 227
šāmi 114 social processes: causal __ 224
Šammar/Shammar 18, 32, 43, 71, 99, socio-economic structure 111, 229, 250,
100, 101, 102, 103 275
sampling 224 socio-political organization 253
sampling: random __ 228 solidarity 236, 253
296 index
Sorbian: Upper __ 176 superimposed language 188, 189, 190,

Soukhne 25, 29, 72 194, 195, 196, 197
Sousse 25, 73 superstrate language(s) 189
South Arabic 43 Sūq al-Ghazl 17
space 228, 230 Survey of English Dialects 226
spatial variation 228 Sūsa > Sousse
speech community 5, 179, 188, 195, 223, Swahili 68, 179
226, 240, 245 syllable structure(s) 24, 33, 81
speech: rapid and continuous __ 225 synonym(s) 63, 66, 163
spirantization 8, 9 Syria Arabic 9, 21, 28, 60, 65, 66, 100,
split 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 26, 45 102, 105, 249, 250, 251, 266, 267
Sprachbund 176 Syrian Desert 28, 32, 100, 102, 105
spread zones 175, 176 Syro-Mesopotamian 21, 22, 27, 32, 102
š-Šāġūr/Shaghoor 109-168, 251
š-Ša¡lān 167 ta- 21
£-āliyye 109-168 ta/ǝC1C2īC3 (tǝšrīf tǝt^īte/tǝtxīte tǝlī
Stambūl ǝz-zġīre 114 tǝbdīl tǝ%līd tǝ*līm) 136
Standard Arabic 12, 18, 19, 41, 46, 109, a%%aš 163
112, 115, 117, 119, 120, 124, 125, 126, ābe 125
127, 128, 136, 137, 154, 164, 166, 249, afa / affa 146
250, 264, 265, 273, 274; > fu£ā, MSA, Tajikistan 67, 181
Classical Arabic tal(y)ān 127, 128
static 227 āla* 146
ta*lī%a 123
status 5, 34, 36, 237, 253, 278
talla 127, 128
stereotype(s) 273, 276
alla* 146
stigmatized features 18, 26, 115, 117,
tanwīn 104, 139
166, 210, 211, 262
Tardif (Indo-Iranian) 182
stop(s) 8, 12, 42, 45, 51, 52, 55, 57, 203, target audience 277
206, 207, 242, 265; plosive(s) Tarūs 266
strategies for borrowing 88, 187, 188, taxāne 113, 115
189, 191, 192, 193, 196, 198 tǝ- 21
stress 27, 82, 84, 86, 89, 106, 153, 256, Tēma 43
257 tendencies: quantitative __ 230
stress: phonemic __ 257 Tihāmah 68, 69
strong verb 27, 81, 83, 84, 89 Tikrīt 27
STRUT lexical class 226 t%īl 113, 115
style-shifting 223, 265 Tlemcen 73, 143
stylistic devices 280 tmāne 165
S-type (subdivision Oman) 91, 94, 95 tmānye 165
Sū½ Sarūža 109-168 ōba/e 125
substrate 22 topicalisation of verb 193
suburbanization process 253 trade (route) 31, 32, 55, 56, 77, 204
succession of (different) types of con- traditional quarter > Šāġūr
tact 161 transfer: paradigm __ 188
Sudan 10, 54, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, transmission: written __ 196, 197
71, 73, 99, 178, 179, 192, 196 transparency: increase in __ 174, 177,
Sudanic 10, 196 178, 179, 239
suffixation 89 trilingualism 177
Sumerian 175 Tripoli 47, 70
sun letters 44 trivial variety 280
Sunni(te) 30, 33, 36, 104, 105 Trucial Coast 65
index 297
tta- 21 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 127, 128, 129,

-tu (verbal perfect ending 1st p. sg.) 27; > 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 139,
qǝltu 140, 141, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153,
-tū (verbal perfect ending 2nd p. pl. masc.) 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 166, 168,
27 203, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212,
Tucano 176 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220,
-tum (verbal perfect ending 2nd p. masc. 221, 249, 250, 258, 259, 260, 262, 265,
pl.) 27 266, 268
Tunisia Arabic 10, 25, 66, 69, 70, 71, 73 variation z ~ d 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 30
Turkey Arabic 65 variation [gj] ~ [g] 47
Turkic 182 variation ð ~ d 91
Turkish 50, 51, 52, 73, 182, 191, 196, 197 variation g ~ [dz] 203, 204, 209
txīn 115 variation g ~ | 43, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56, 57
type(s) of contact 177, 183 variation | ~ ɟ 80
typology 17, 18, 24, 36, 94, 177, 183, 187, variation k ~ č 26, 37
197, 224, 238, 239 variation k ~ [ts] 203, 204, 209
variation q ~ ʕ 4
-u (final) 82, 90, 178, 191 variation suffix –a ~ -ha
Uganda 67, 178 or –on ~ -hon 249, 250, 254, 256, 261,
-uh (pron. suffix) 82, 89, 90, 102, 103 262, 263, 264, 265, 268, 269
%ūlād 121 variation: language/dialect __ 223, 224,
¡Umūr 102, 103 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 236, 237, 238
-ūn (final) 29, 82 variation: meaning of __ 226
variation: morphological __ 175, 206
-ūn (imperfect verb ending pl. masc.) 29,
variation: spatial __ 228
82
variation: stable __ 249-269
unemployment 229
variation: stylistic __ 20, 25, 37, 160, 264,
unification: linguistic __ 235 273, 274, 275, 276, 280,
unmotivated change 5 variational/variationist 6, 7, 10, 13, 14,
Upper Egypt 44, 49, 69 204, 224, 227, 228, 229, 237, 238
‘urban’: definition of __ 231 variationist method(s) 224, 228
urban dialect(s)/feature(s) 12, 18, 19, 21, variationist sociolinguistics 224
24, 26, 28, 29, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 52, 203, velarization 257
205, 206, 210, 211, 213, 218, 219, 220, verb form IV 23, 35
221, 223-241, 249, 250, 266, 267, 268, verb form V 83
269 verb form VI 83
urban dialectology 223-242 verb modifiers 20, 21, 28, 35, 38
‘urban turn’ 223 verbal morphology 83
urban overspill 233 vocabulary 19, 20, 29, 63-73, 67, 104,
urbanisation 26, 38, 41, 229, 234, 235, 109-168, 190
236, 237, 238, 239, 242 vowel continuum 226
Uzbekistan Arabic 10, 11, 12, 64, 67, 70,
189, 249 w: verbs C1 = __ 85, 143
w: verbs C2 = __ 86, 145
v as reflex of Arabic *ð W ādi Satān 79, 81
varanda 163 *wāid + article 23
Varbrul weighting 259, 260 warža 123
variability: inherent __ 223, 224 weak verbs 83, 85, 86
variable (h) 203-269 *wēnāt 161
variable social factors 228 West Bank 12, 25
variant(s) 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, women’s speech 131, 132, 143, 149, 151,
21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 36, 37, 46, 52, 54, 153, 165, 218, 219, 258, 261, 262, 263,
57, 80, 81, 93, 110, 111, 112, 114, 117, 264, 278, 279, 280
298 index
work time 253 yǝlli (relative particle) > relative

working patterns 229 Yemen Arabic 10, 43, 44, 64, 66, 68, 69,
70, 71, 72, 73, 204
xa (Northeastern Neo-Aramaic) 23
xal- 20 z ~ d 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 30
Xarāb 167 *z: reflex of ð 5, 6
xārak 130 zabāyen 143
xāyef 163 Zabīd 68, 71
xilā(f) (“after”) 182 Åafīr 99, 100, 105
zahr 54, 55
y: verbs C1 = __ 86 zbūnāt 143
y: verbs C2 = __ 145 ždīd 114
y: verbs C3 = __ 87, 144 Zgǝrtiyye 116
yalli (relative particle) > relative Zubair 23
yälli (relative particle) > relative Zuni: Chitimacha and __ 175
yap (Turkish light verb) 191, 192 Žuwwāt ǝš-Šām 114
ye(k) (Persian) 23 ž-Žisǝr 167

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Arabic Dialectology

Enam Al-Wer and Rudolf de Jong

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Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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TOPICS IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Indeterminacy and the Comparative Method: Arabic as

Words and Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Contact, Isolation, and Complexity in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Loan Verbs in Arabic and the DO-construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

When Najd Meets Hijaz: Dialect Contact in Jeddah . . . . . . . . . 203

The Variety of Housewives and Cockroaches: Examining

The contributors to this volume have supported this project at short

Arabic Dialectology is a collection of articles written by leading schol-

and local traditions, it ingeniously uncovers a 4,000-year old literary

professor and a Fellow of the British Academy. But, most of all we

Enam and Rudolf

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CLIVE HOLES

1988e Review of Karmi, H. Al-Mughni Al-’Akbar (English-Arabic Dictionary),

Vols.), Pergamon/ Aberdeen University Press: Vol.1. 191-194, 300; Vol.

2003c Review of Borg, A. (ed.) The Language of Color in the Mediterranean,

 5)*+  7)*+89   ;<  -

TOPICS IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

INDETERMINACY AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD:

Historical linguistics seeks not only to render plausible reconstruc-

He argues against this by noting a chronological transition in the

2. Did Aramaic *ð > z Occur?

No one to my knowledge has argued that ‫ = ז‬ð obtains throughout

gestion. The issue of diglossia in Aramaic requires separate consid-

2.2. Language Variation and Change

of Arabic-speaking regions. Holes (1987) on Bahraini Arabic cited

2.4. Parallels in Arabic

The reflex \ found in Western Sudanic Arabic perhaps arises via

Diagram 1. “ð” in Arabic, past, present and hypothetical future

At some point, some ð speakers innovated to v, z, and d.9 I assume

combines Driver’s variationist z ~ d stage, with contemporary

represented in Diagram 1. A development such as the following is

Diagram 2 could be inferred out of general theoretical assumptions

FROM qǝltu TO gǝlǝt: DIACHRONIC NOTES ON LINGUISTIC

Since Haim Blanc’s Communal Dialects in Baghdad (1964), it is a

with Bedouin dialects of ʿAnazī or Šammarī, or even of the šāwiya

2. qǝltu-type Features in the Muslim dialect of Baghdad

2.1. Use of the Reflex q of *q in a Number of Items, Instead of the

‘to suggest, recommend’, qāran ‘to compare’, qayyam ‘to estimate,

2.1.2. On the other hand, there is another group of words which

2.1.3. In some other high-frequency items which at first sight would

the truth’.4 In such cases the lexical distribution of the variants is

2.1.4. In present-day MB, forms with q are as a rule younger than

function (Blanc 1964:116; Mansour 2006:239), while the present and

2.3. Use of Futurity Markers laḥ and raḥ

2.4. Use of the Proclitic d(ǝ)- to Add to the Imperative a Note of

also dī, used like an interjection before the imperative, Jastrow

2.5. Marking the Definite Direct Object of a Verb with an

2.6. Use of a Prefixed Indetermination Marker, a Variant of Which

All three dialects have also an uncontracted variant of fard: MB

2.7. Absence of Separate Feminine Plural Forms in Personal

2.8. Absence of Form IV as a Productive Morphological Category

2.9. Absence of Salient Bedouin-type Syllable Structures

3. gǝlǝt-Type Features in the Muslim Dialect of Baghdad

3.1. Use of the Voiced g Reflex of OA q

5)+ 7)+89  ;< -

also Egyptian banda “town in contrast to village” which is the

house, which can be partly roofed as in Upper Egypt: bēt il-fun