19 the phonology and morphology of arabic

[...]... (Versteegh 199 7: 17) 1.2.1 The spread of Arabic The original homeland of speakers of Arabic is the central and northern regions of the Arabian Peninsula The lower half of the Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by speakers of languages known as Epigraphic South Arabian (Hetzron 199 2: 412) The end of the sixth century ce, however, saw the rise of the new religion of Islam promoted by the Prophet Muhammad within the. .. race through the pyramids and past the ancient Marib dam, the real living jewels of the Orient A journey which reminds the traveller that the Orient is its people and their story; and a journey which reminds the Arabist that beside the written language and the learned works of those who went before us there is another Arabic A living language with traces of the past and hints of the future; and a language... as colourful as the images they saw But there is a dierent type of travel in these lands Travel through the words and sounds of the people of the Orient A journey which takes the traveller into the upper rooms of ancient houses and into the deep, dusty backstreets of ageless markets A journey of listening, and recording, sounds and words and utterances, secrets and memories and hopes A journey which... Sections 1.2.13, I consider the spread of Arabic from the Arabian Peninsula, the development of the standard language and the phenomenon of diglossia In Section 1.3 I introduce the main focus of this work, the modern dialects of Cairene and Sanani Arabic 1.1 T H E S E M I T I C L A N G UAG E FA M I LY Arabic is a member of the Semitic language family, which itself is part of the wider Afroasiatic phylum... in other dialects of Arabic, has the reex /c/ (Fischer and Jastrow 198 0: 52; Holes 199 5: 60) In Bedouin dialects and the dialects spoken in the central region of northern Yemen, including Sanani, the reex of *q is a voiced velar stop, /g/.3 A vestige of the original uvular articulation of /g/ is seen in the back articulation of surrounding /a/ vowels in these dialects Thus, the vowel quality of //... in the Arab world is brought up speaking Standard Arabic as their mother tongue:8 an Arab childs mother tongue will be the regional or social variety of Arabic of its home region, while Standard Arabic, if it is mastered at all, is learnt formally at school or at home as part of the childs education Standard Arabic is conned to formal written and spoken occasions, and the regional/social variety of Arabic. .. some northern Yemeni dialects (Behnstedt 198 5: 42), Upper Egypt and parts of Sudan (Fischer and Jastrow 198 0: 105) In the Syrian desert, Khuzistan, Hadramawt, Dhofar, and the Gulf dialects, the sound has lenited to a palatal glide, /j/ In many areas of the Levant, especially the major cities of Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem (Holes 199 5: 61) and in the majority of Maghribi dialects (cf Heath 198 7: 201... stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are rather dierent from those of Classical Arabic, the morphology and syntax have remained basically unchanged over the centuries (Fischer 199 7: 188) The vernacular Arabic dialects, by contrast, have developed markedly during this period Like a number of other languages, therefore, Arabic came to have one standard variety and a large number of regional and social... Vollers 190 6; Wehr 195 2; Diem 197 3, cited in Fischer 199 7: 188) Dialects of Arabic form a roughly continuous spectrum of variation, with the dialects spoken in the eastern and western extremes of the Arab-speaking world being mutually unintelligible On the basis of certain linguistic features, Arabic 7 In this book, the term Standard Arabic is used when referring to the literary language in general; the. .. particular aspects of phonology or morphology taking examples from Arabic In this book, I seek to provide a more comprehensive and integrated account I focus on two dialects from the eastern group: Cairene, and the dialect spoken within the old city of Sana (the capital of the Republic of Yemen) Where relevant I draw comparisons with Standard Arabic, and other modern varieties of near-eastern Arabic, including . alt="" The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic THE PHONOLOGY OF THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES General Editor: Jacques Durand The Phonology of Danish Hans Basbǿll The Phonology of Dutch Geert Booij The Phonology. d’Andrade The Phonology and Morphology of Kimatuumbi David Odden The Lexical Phonology of Slovak Jerzy Rubach The Phonology of Hungarian Péter Siptár and Miklós Törkenczy The Phonology of Mongolian. sense, and the images they record are every bit as colourful as the images they saw. But there is a diff erent type of travel in these lands. Travel through the words and sounds of the people of the